Wikipedia talk:Version 0.5 Nominations

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"Selection" project (Talk) schools selection Offline WP for Indian Schools

CORE TOPICS CORE SUPPLEMENT Core topics - 1,000 (Talk) (COTF) (bot)

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"Selection" project for kids ((t))


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Static content subcom.

Feeling

Why does Jareena's nomination of the article feeling falsely claim that (1) the article is on the WP:VA listing (it isn't, and never has been, though emotion is), and (2) the article is B-Class (when it's really Stub-Class, or at best somewhere between a really crummy Start-Class and a dab page)? Moreover, there is ongoing discussion to merge feeling into the emotion article. Was the wrong page nominated here? -Silence 21:14, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yea conflusion of article, got confused, meant to nominate emotion. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 21:19, 21 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination categories

The nomination categories don't match up with the categories in Wikipedia:Version 0.5. Is there a grand reason for this? Andjam 12:07, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, how about we move the links to the categories higher, so we don't need to scroll down? Maurreen 14:13, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. NCurse_work 16:12, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They used to match, but someone tried out a new format at V0.5 as an experiment. The category system used here at Nominations is the Wikipedia 1.0 standard, one we voted on after lengthy discussion. I recently proposed we switch back so they match again, are people here OK with that? See Wikipedia_talk:Version_0.5#Unbalanced_sections for more details. Walkerma 16:32, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Maurreen 16:40, 30 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

systematic bias

please explain why pop singer mariah carey deemed significant, yet hong kong action cinema isn't. strange that a single generic pop tart is somehow more important to the world than a century of cinema from the world's third biggest film industry. cheers. Zzzzz 10:08, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Dear Zzzzz! I agree with you now. Maybe the reviewer thought that Hong Kong action cinema is a too narrow topic to get into the first 200-300 articles. As Walkerma wrote on held nomination page: "We may be able to include Hollywood and Bollywood if we're lucky, but this one will have to wait till a later release". Jaranda passed Mariah Carey for Version 0.5. It is hard to always see and realize the difference between the importance of the topics. Anyway these articles will be reviewed again soon. NCurse_work 10:30, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think that we're suffering from the same problem that has plagued WP:GA: having things done by a single reviewer is always going to result in subtly different outcomes depending on which reviewer happens to check the article. I don't think it's too much of an issue for a test release, though; given the timeframe we're working with, it's likely to have a fairly random selection of articles no matter what we do. Kirill Lokshin 16:17, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's why I can't understand why we didn't started to use User:Chcknwnm/Sandbox... I loved that system. NCurse_work 16:28, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Probably because assigning articles to reviewers that they really couldn't know—or care—less about tends not to be the best way of maintaining their interest in being reviewers. What we need is a system that both (a) allows reviewers to self-select which articles/topics/categories they'll work with, but also (b) ensures multiple reviewers for each article. I don't think anyone has come up with anything other than a WP:FAC-like model, which might not really work given the small number of people we have at the moment. Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

"the small number of people we have at the moment" - I can't see why it is a problem. Our number is growing, and I think FAC system could work. But not in V0.5. NCurse_work 16:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it would be absolutely wonderful to have a system where different users can comment and, informally (to help determine consensus), "vote" on each entry's quality and/or significance while it's nominated. The GA system for approval is a weak, inefficient one; I have no real interest in going through the list in its current state and making removals or additions based on my personal opinion and evaluation alone, but I'd have a great deal of interest in a system where I could simply voice what I think about each article's qualifications, and listen to others' evaluations and responses, before an agreement is reached. The more users can voice their opinion, the more successful and popular the project, and the more accurate and consistent the inclusion standards, will become; when only a single one decides for each nominee, without input from users with varied perspectives, there will be a much higher error rate than if we had even 3 or 4 users going over the list to find a common ground. This would also help isolate and make explicit some of the implicit disagreements over notability and quality standards in the background of this project, allowing us to directly address them. -Silence 16:41, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was rather borderline with Carey, but being one of the most popular singers in the world, I let her though. We will probaly going to re-review the ones that was placed in held later on like Hong Kong cinema and Sandy Koufax in August. Still this is only a test release. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 18:56, 4 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I personally think Carey is a definite to include, based on the intro on her page:

"best-selling female artist of all time"
"the most U.S. number-one singles for a female artist"

Otherwise I can agree with all of the above points. The system isn't perfect, and our list will be a long way from comprehensive. Right now our bias (as I see it) is in the natural bias within Wikipedia - we have no articles (as far as I know) on any major transnational corporation, for example. Remember this is not a simple one-dimensional judgement - it's a balance of quality, importance and breadth of article. Should we have one article on Popular Music of the UK and ditch narrower articles like The Beatles? How about East Asian Cinema, or Cinema of Hong Kong, instead of Hong Kong action cinema? Or just include Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan? The reality is (thankfully) - for V0.5, it doesn't matter too much, as long as we don't have anything too silly or bad. The main issue is to get a total of 1000+ article reviewed & approved in the next 8-9 weeks or so.

Going forward to version 1.0 (for which both Koufax and HK action cinema will likely qualify), the issues become more significant, and Silence has explained the advantages of more thorough reviews very nicely. If you look at Version 1.0 nominations (still closed) you'll see that Maurreen has already set it up along those lines, rather like FAC.

I'd like to see several things set up, particularly #2:

A disputes page, to handle things like this
A page where reviewers can leave comments on articles, either directly or via transclusion. The bot can now read reviewers comments from any page of the type [[Talk:Article/Comments]], if the template is set up to read them. These comments could also be transcluded into a review page, a held nominations page, etc.
I agree that Chuck's idea was nice except for the arbitrary assignment aspect. I think that system could work well if restructured, maybe in conjunction with #2.

However, I simply don't have time to set up such pages and moderate them. If someone is really interested in doing any of them, please go ahead! Meanwhile, we still have another 800 articles or so to review....! Walkerma 03:47, 5 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'm ambivalent about Mariah Carey. But I agree with Walkerma that we should keep the process streamlined for now. Some disagreements are likely inevitable. Maurreen 06:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Page format

I added links to the nomination categories at the top of the page and put the categories in alphabetical order. Maurreen 15:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FLAWED PROCESS

This process is very flawed; project articles that are KEY FAs are failed when minor pop stars, prison experiments, etc of low quality are included. It's all up to the reviewer, who is given vague guidelines and there is apparently no appeal process other than to resubmit and hope to get a different reviewer. I will not submit nor review any more articles for V0.5. What a joke. Rlevse 15:56, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We knew that even at the beginning, the Version 0.5 procedure wouldn't be perfect. That's why we are here now and work to see our faults and create a better system for the main Version 1.0. Version 0.5 is just a "playground" where we can build a better system. That's why I can't understand your anger or what. It is like evolution; some species had to vanish. Like now, some articles shouldn't be in even Version 0.5, some should be there. But at the end, when the final part of the processs will start, we will be able to solve these problems. That's why you should stay and work on. NCurse_work 16:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think there are two subtly different approaches we could be taking towards this:

Try and develop a workable system for 1.0 while at the same time avoiding upsetting too many of the all-too-few people involved here.
Try and develop a workable system for 1.0 while at the same time doing everything we can to upset people.

Why we seem to be increasingly favoring the second option, I can't fathom. Telling contributors that their article isn't "important enough" hurts, even if we don't intend it to. Why, then, are we rejecting FAs? There's no question of their quality, and even if we were to accept them all, we'd only have a thousand articles—far less than what we'd really want for a test release. Kirill Lokshin 16:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

NCurse: You can't understand why I'm upset when you've selected Sharon Tate, a minor actress notable only for being murdered, and a prison experiment when you reject Eagle Scout, which is an FA KEY article on a highly esteemed achievement? You have got to be kidding. No, I will not stay. Kirill makes excellent points and you should pay heed. Rlevse 16:40, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, we should have started with all FAs, then core topics, then fulfill the empty parts among these articles. We tried an other way which, as it seems, won't work. A process is needed where at least 2-3 reviewer have to express their opinions. Rlevse is right now with that example, but to be equal, plenty of articles are in their proper place in V0.5. Or continue this way, but in the end, before starting V1.0, nominate articles (already in V0.5) - which shouldn't be there - to remove. NCurse_work 16:45, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wonderful. I'm sure removing more articles will make us even more respected.

I think some people are taking the putative 0.5 product itself too seriously here. The project is only in its infancy. More so than actually assembling a "finished" release, our objectives should be:

Demonstrating that a (more-or-less!) reasonable hard-copy release is feasible.
Convincing the rest of Wikipedia to support the effort.

Despite our progress (or lack thereof, in many cases) on the first issue, we're simultaneously having major problems with the second. We need to convince the editorial community that we're reasonable people with a worthy goal, not lunatics trying to impose bizarre standards of article selection; if doing so requires including some articles that we normally wouldn't, I think that's an acceptable price to pay. Kirill Lokshin 16:51, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, it seems like a number of people want changes to the system. Here are a couple of ideas, food for thought.

FAs would only be failed if their quality had deteriorated significantly.
Have two people agree on failures of importance, OR
Items would only be failed on importance if they had been nominated for X amount of time without being approved.

Maurreen 17:18, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think Kirill makes some excellent points, and NCurse has stated the situation well too. If we were reaching the point of having 5000 articles cramming a CD, "importance" would be more of a problem - but at present the main problem is a shortage of articles. Given that context, I think I would support the idea of opening up the held nominations page, and consider adding in anything that is not clearly obscure (assuming the quality is OK). Keeping people on board with the project is far more important than arguing over whether this baseball player is more important than that psychology experiment. I completely see why the article was held, I would have preferred to have seen articles like Scouting or Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell representing the scouting movement, but this article would certainly not look out of place on the CD, either. So let's consider revising our system such that only the most bizarre/obscure nominations are rejected on importance, and an appeal process is in place. Based on Maurreen's recent post, I'd agree, as long as we have liberal rules on what is important. In other words, two of us in fact agreed to reject Sandy Koufax on importance (not top 5 baseball player) under the current system, but under the new (more liberal) system we would allow the article (he is in the top 100 baseball players). This is what "test releases" are all about, ironing out these problems! Walkerma 17:24, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that seems a little too liberal for my taste. Can we compromise somewhere in the middle without setting the bar just a couple of inches from the floor? Maurreen 17:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In my view, the problem is not the small number of articles. If there is a problem, it might be that the decisions either way are just made by one or two people, which can make inconsistency.

Another idea would be to have two people other than the nominator approve any given article. Maurreen 17:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

What's our target size, anyways? If we're trying to get a hundred articles, we're being too liberal. If it's closer to 5,000 or 10,000, we're being far too strict. There simply aren't enough articles of a caliber that would be suitable for a (widely publicised) hard-copy release for us to be rejecting the ones we do get. Kirill Lokshin 17:37, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

About the number: Walkerma had generally talked about shooting for 2,000. Maurreen 17:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Okay then, ~1,000 FAs and ~1,000 other stuff should be feasible. Remember, the 0.5 release should focus on being a suitable publicity tool in addition to (and perhaps in priority over) a first attempt at a hard-copy encyclopedia. Sure, the coverage will be unbalanced; but the average quality of the articles is likely to be much more in our favor than if we select two thousand "important" topics and have the release widely derided because the articles are riddled with subtle errors. Kirill Lokshin 17:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The reason I nominated Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) is because it was a KEY FA of the Scouting project and hence of better quality than the Scouting or Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell or any other project article, which I'd suspect V0.5 would want all FAs to showcase Wiki quality (except maybe old FAs that don't have refs and such, from when the standards were lower for FAs). Granted the two articles Walkerma mention are more broad in scope, but their quality is not as high. This is why I nominated the Eagle Scout article first. Rlevse 17:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

In the planning stages, I always stated (when asked) that the aim was to get 2000 articles. These would not simply include all FAs, because quality is not the only issue when we limit things to 2000 - the same way the SOS CD release (2000 articles) passed over many FAs in order to include more "important" GAs. If we could get 5000, I would be delighted, if we get only 500 I will be very disappointed. I's guess that with some effort we'll reach 1000, but 2000 looks unlikely now that reviewing has slowed to a trickle. Walkerma 17:46, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Even if we include all FAs, GAs, and project-rated A-Class articles, we're still only going to have 2,000 to 3,000 to work with. I really don't see why some people are so insistent on excluding the articles that serve as the best representatives of the quality of writing Wikipedia is capable of. Kirill Lokshin 17:50, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

One way to solve this issue would be to institute a system of different degrees of importance. Rather than making the only two options "it's important enough" and "it's not important enough", why not a 5-point system, where articles like Spoo (an FA on a trivial topic) would be "1", and articles like Sun (an FA on a core topic) would be "5"? "Eagle Scout" would probably be about a 2 or 3 on the list, thus allowing us to include "Eagle Scout" as a possible CD candidate, while still distinguishing between it and significantly more important articles, like Scouting itself. This would also mean that our initial evaluations wouldn't necessarily be completely useless to later evaluators, since even if our standards for inclusion are constantly changing, our evaluations of importance needn't be.
I think that dropping almost all importance standards altogether, as has been proposed above, has several major dangers that could sink this project. The first danger is that if we lower our standards to blatantly non-noteworthy articles, we'll piss off the editors of the articles we dismiss even more; missing the cut of a project with high standards isn't such a big deal, but missing the cut of a project with relatively low standards will seem like a slap in the face. This could also lead to a slippery slope of increasingly low standards.
The second danger is that if we base our inclusion standards on which editors make the biggest fuss (e.g., an editor bitched louder about Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America), so we caved in to his demands, but editors complained less melodramatically about Albert Einstein, so we left it off the list despite it's dramatically higher quality and importance), rather than on neutral evaluations of quality and importance, the entire project becames meaningless. It sounds above like users are more interested in popularizing this project so more editors become involved, than in actually keeping the project useful or consistent; it has been asserted above that making a certain editor happy is more important than actually treating the articles fairly. Although in the short term this is certainly a reasonable and practical method of making the project more active, in the long term this will utterly destroy the project as preferential treatness compounds further preferential treatment (e.g., "you let Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America) into the list because an editor complained about it and threatened to leave; why didn't you let Spoo into the list when an equally valuable editor threatened to leave the project?").
If we aren't willing to step on an occasional editor's toes in the interests of consistency and fairness—if this becomes an elaborate, politically-loaded popularity contest, not a fair collaborative article evaluation project—then we'll have lost sight of the entire purpose of the project in the process of trying to advance it. -Silence 17:52, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Other than the risk of having Britannica's editors point and laugh at the contents of our putative release (which will likely happen anyways), why do we need to enforce any substantial importance standards at all? The quality standards alone should keep the number of articles we can possibly include quite small relative to Wikipedia's total size. Kirill Lokshin 17:55, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Has it not occurred to you that we can improve articles that are extremely important but that don't yet have good enough articles? That's what Wikipedia's editors are here for, after all, isn't it? There are countless methods on Wikipedia for gathering editor support to improve certain articles that need it, and we can create even more if there's a need. Isn't this is a CD that will not be released until years from now? If it was coming out next month, then I'd agree, yes, let's focus only on articles that are already good enough. But for a long-term project of any sort, it seems utterly senseless to place all the weight on whether an article is already of high quality: for one thing, many articles will degrade in the time, and only a fraction of those will be caught by us, especially if our list has grown so large in the future (due to our lowered standards) that we can no longer keep track of all the pages; for another thing, many other important articles that have so far been neglected (like tool, food, health, and countless others) might have become GAs or even FAs by the time of the CD release if we'd put pressure on editors to improve them by noting their high importance and substandard quality. Is this purely a publicity release to demonstrate how few typos and grammar errors Wikipedia articles have, or is it also supposed to be a remotely decent demonstration of the quality of Wikipedia's articles on a variety of extremely important topics? If the only intent of this project is to make Wikipedia look good in the short term, not to improve Wikipedia's actual quality in the long term, then I've been misled by false advertisement, and will have to find somewhere else on Wikipedia to waste my time. :) Threatening to leave seems to be the only way to get anything done around here anyway. XD -Silence 18:07, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This (0.5) CD was meant to go out this fall, I think. We can plan all kinds of clever things in the long run, but if we actually wait for them to happen before doing anything practical on the release side, we'll be sitting here for a long time. Kirill Lokshin 18:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If we just wanted to do a showcase of FAs, we could have done that. That would be a collection of high-quality articles that could be an interesting way for a reader to pass time and learn.

But it would not be a reference work. It would not be an encyclopedia.

Can we compromise on not failing FAs based on importance?

That would plausibly allow us to have 500-1,000 articles of the highest quality and 500-1,000 articles that are most important, and still keep a simple, streamlined system. Maurreen 17:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That's what I suggested above ;-) Kirill Lokshin 18:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not failing FAs? So articles like Spoo, Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner, Halloween III: Season of the Witch, Holy Prepuce, and Dawson's Creek would be automatically included, while articles like Brain, Earth, Television, Mathematics, and Water would not be? Is this really being considered? -Silence 18:21, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The "points" system that Silence brings up above would be a good idea. There have been many cases in which I've doubted whether to include an article myself or not (such as Sandy Koufax, for example) because the quality is good, but the importance is just on the edge. In the case we need more articles for the 2,000 to be released, we can always looka at which articles have a value just below the threshold and include them if necessary. It would necessitate a new quality review, to check they haven't deteriorated, but it could avoid this problem. I do see the point Kirill brings up above of not alienating editors; however, I also think that we should give out something with some semblance of a traditional encyclopedia. Tito xd^(?!?) 18:02, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. To put it in simple terms, 5 could be "definitely important enough", 4 could be "probably important enough", 3 could be "in the middle", 2 could be "probably not important enough", and 1 could be "definitely not important enough". So we'd have the same system we have now, but with the possibility of gradation. This, combined with a system to let people discuss what rating to give each article that's been proposed, would resolve most of the current problems plaguing this project (like inconsistency, caused by only 1 editor reviewing each submission, and lack of long-term significance, caused by the disregard for the significance of current decisions; and both caused by the ever-changing, vaguely-defined inclusion standards) and make the inclusion process both more rigorous and thought-out (though without overcomplicating matters with an elaborate or bureaucratic system), and more fair and consistent. I expect there would also be fewer after-the-fact complaints if each entry was discussed and "voted" on upon submission, since users could make their cases and reply to criticisms before any "final" decision is reached. -Silence 18:13, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, but we should change the system after Version 0.5 is ready or change it now? NCurse_work 18:17, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Why wait? When the system's broken, fix it. Everyone here seems to agree it's broken, so the only question is how to fix it, not whether or not to do anything at all. -Silence 18:22, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think the same, that's why I asked it. But what to do with previous nominations? In the new system we just should put our "points" next to the nominated article? NCurse_work 18:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We already have a system of a four point scale of importance, this is now being read by the bot so we shouldn't go switching to a different system mid stream. The problem is not whether or not it's a good idea, but how do we get a consensus at V0.5 to agree on these numbers? Our current output is about 4-6 articles reviewed per day, at that rate this project could ground to a halt if additional work is demanded of reviewers.

The reason for the importance criterion was to ensure some level of balance, both within a broad subject area and between subject areas. We didn't want to have 20 articles on a particular TV show, then find we didn't have anything on television itself, or engineering. I might mention, in contact with WikiProjects discussion on importance is being very fruitful, as projects start to focus their energies more on fixing their top-level articles and less on minor topics. This will (in time) give us a system whereby WikiProjects (ie subject experts) themselves will decide on importance, and that will be much more objective than a non-expert reviewers opinion.

I think we do need perhaps to lower the bar for FAs for the reasons Kirill says, but it's still a case of where we set the bar. If we allow Heavy metal umlaut and Spoo, maybe we run the risk of being laughed at - unless we make it abundantly clear that these articles are included for "fun". Can we do that, or will we just look silly? This isn't just about one editor complaining - see the previous section in this talk page. My assumption is that we would revisit everything on the the held nominations list. As for Einstein, there was a temporary quality issue, that's why the article was "held" - for such situations (as with Bob Dylan recently) I now use the term "frozen" and place a comment in the nomination section.

Yes, we should fix things now, that's what tests are all about! Walkerma 18:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Another idea: why not dispense with the hand-selection process entirely (except as a sanity check immediately before release) and leverage the distributed rating system instead? For example, what happens if we allow all articles that are Top-Importance (in some WikiProject) and B-Class or higher to be included? How big of a set do we get?

(I'm aware that there will likely be a complaint that "trivial" WikiProjects may get articles in. I don't think this is a particular problem, since active WikiProject == interested editors == interested readers == will probably be of interest to some non-trivial number of people if it's included in the release.) Kirill Lokshin 18:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

(So much indenting and so many subthreads here I'm just gonna jump in below what I want to answer with a crazy indent number; please move if it you object) :) "Top importance" (to some Project)/at least B (I'd prefer "GA"/"A"/"FA" personally) articles plus articles on the core topics sounds like an excellent idea to me. Yes, there will still be some systemic (systematic? sp.?!?!) bias but at least this way they're self selecting and any systemic bias is reflective of the current state of Wikipedia. We can't right all of Wikipedia's wrongs in one go; all we have to do is get together a reasonable selection of showcase articles and this seems to me a quite reasonable way to do it. --kingboyk 19:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That would be biased toward active wikiprojects. For example, I think it would leave out a lot of articles on countries. Maurreen 18:27, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Aren't all of those all on the "core topics" list or something? Kirill Lokshin 18:29, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well, this is supposed to be the "sanity check", as many of the articles that are checked have already been reviewed by WikiProjects (see all the held tropical cyclone articles, for example), so I'm not sure whether distributing work that is already greatly distributed would be as effective as we hope for. Tito xd^(?!?) 18:30, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I meant a sanity check immediately before the release. Our problem here is that we're trying to do it without a clear picture of how many articles we have to work with. Kirill Lokshin 18:32, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think it's a great idea, once we get a core of important (there's the I word again!) articles together at V0.5. I'd be interested in that for version 0.8 or something like that. You've summarized the goals of Work via WikiProjects in a nutshell. There are a lot of active country (and city) WikiProjects, though some work through notice boards or Portals instead. Our job at WP1.0 will then be to rank the projects in terms of importance - and you thought ranking articles was controversial! Walkerma 18:35, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

We do have the list of articles at WP:VA. All of them should easily pass on importance, so how many have we reviewed? (Not a rhetorical question, I'm wondering if there is a page where all of that is already listed...) Tito xd^(?!?) 18:39, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and WP:WVWP would grind to a halt if we tried to categorize projects in terms of importance, so most likely that won't go well... but that's a separate discussion for another time. Tito xd^(?!?) 18:41, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's going to be difficult, certainly. Many articles are contenders for more than one Project and will have different ratings within those Projects, just to make it even more difficult! --kingboyk 21:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I think we should do it by project size ;-)

More seriously, I doubt that any ranking will be necessary. I would be very surprised if we wound up with more than ~10,000 Top-Importance articles in total; once the stubs and so forth are eliminated, we'll have even less. This is probably a reasonable number to be included in an early hard-copy release. Kirill Lokshin 18:43, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

By Project size is a wonderful idea! Smallest should get "top importance" (WP:KLF perhaps?) ;) --kingboyk 21:03, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

OK, if it's OK with others, I'd like to synthesise all of these ideas into some coherent proposals, and we'll take votes next week. I have to head off to Boston on Saturday for five weeks, I will be active in July but I need a couple of quiet days this weekend for packing etc. I'll mull over things on the long drive. In the meantime, please KEEP REVIEWING AND NOMINATING! Let's reach 400 articles by July 20th! We have lots of high importance articles that should be easy to approve! Walkerma 20:25, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Boston? I recall you mentioning that you'd be giving a talk at Wikimania; is that still on? :-) Kirill Lokshin 20:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, a talk on WP1.0 and a discussion on article validation. Please come! Walkerma 20:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice! Kirill Lokshin 21:00, 6 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was planning to pass Eagle Scout today, as it's the key badge, and very major indeed, maybe pass it near the end, as it personally looks like about 1,000 articles will be in the release. I agree this the process isn't perfect, but it's just a test release. I don't agree with adding all FAs like Samantha Smith, Dawson's Creek, KaDee Strickland and Spoo to the release nither, as it's rather silly. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 02:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Instead of going through formal proposals and voting, maybe we can figure something out through discussion and reach a wide consensus. If we are going to make a change, how's this for a simple idea: When we either reach X number of approved articles or we are X amount of time away from declaring the set finalized, we give all the "held nominations" a second chance somehow. Maurreen 04:34, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

That doesn't really solve the immediate problem of people reacting negatively to the results of our selection process, though. Kirill Lokshin 04:41, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Maurreen proposal, we should give each of the held articles a second chance like a few weeks before the deadline. Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 04:51, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I think it could solve the problem, I just need to explain better. We change the template and the "Held noms" page to say something along the lines of: "This article (or "These articles") did not pass our initial review, but we will reconsider it when we are closer to publications." Maurreen 04:55, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe I'm missing something obvious here, but I can't see what relevance this has to the issue at hand (which can be concisely expressed as finding a suitable answer to the complaint that X was held but Y was passed, for arbitrarily bizarre cases of X and Y). Telling someone that their article will be reconsidered "closer to publication" won't be substantially more pleasant than telling them it will be reconsidered "for a future release", in my opinion. Kirill Lokshin 05:07, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

My thinking was that right now, we're saying that the article won't go in the first release version, period. We would change it so the held noms are all still pending, suspended, undecided.

But maybe we just disagree, that's OK.

Another simple option would be that failures for importance would need a second opinion. This method would still be streamlined, but somewhat less subjective, arbitrary and inconsistent. 05:16, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

I still contend that we should stop—or at least severely restrict—the possibility of failing articles which are of suitable quality purely for importance. We've only passed three hundred articles after a month and a half; if we keep going at this rate, it'll take us well into next year to gather even 2,000 articles for a release. Kirill Lokshin 05:37, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If we just wanted high-quality articles, we could have 1,000 from FAs and another 1,000 from GAs. It could be handled very quickly. There would be little or no need for us to do any screening. But the general plan has been to consider both quality and importance. I am trying to find a method that considers a variety of views and values. Maurreen 05:47, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree Kirill Lokshin, this process is rather slow and in this rate, it will be a while to reach 2,000. I still support that we should just renom the articles like a few weeks the process ends, and when in doubt, get another editor to help. As for Eagle Scout, that was a very borderline case and I agree, but too much fighting is happening over it, and it's a very well written and key article for the scouting project, I'll let it slide for passing now. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 05:49, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Or allow one of the regular reviewers (you know who they are by looking at this page) to put it into the release if it really is a toin coss, like Koufax was, and Martin approves. I say Walkerma as he is the one listed as the 0.5 coordinator with WP:1.0, so he would be the one to make the hard call in the worst case, right? Tito xd^(?!?) 05:56, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Kirill is absolutely right, considering things right before release does not solve the problems. The fact that the current system has significant problems is shown by the extensive discussions on this issue in this talk thread. The current system is arbitrary, vague,inconsistent, and slow. The good point is that everyone recognizes there is a problem, otherwise this discussion would not be taking place. The issues all center around what is deemed important and worthy of inclusion; which is much harder to define and subject to individual interpretation. The GA process works much better as it only deals with quality. Rlevse 10:00, 7 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]