Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Archive 8

message: I'm bad, I'm backtracking. :) My hope to bring up some things maybe you hadn't considerered. If we still disagree, I'll try to be quiet. Also, I'm hoping that I don't seem like "no, no, no" all the time.
But anyway ... I might be biased, but I'm not sure it's wise to invite wholesale revision to the main list now. That doesn't mean it can't be improved. But I have some concern that the work on the current topics could be hurt by giving a golden invitation to a mass of people at once. The list could become unsuitably unstable and possibly contentious.
One thing I've been thinking about that could have some overlap is tagging the current core articles with a template or category. That would bring more attention in general, and as people drop in, they could suggest or make changes as they see fit.
I do agree at least in principle with having Wikiprojects suggest further levels. But I think we should at least first consider how big we would want the next level to be. If it would be on the scale of about 1,000 or more, I'm estimating that WP already has a couple lists like that. So it could be better to suggest that those lists be tuned as needed.
If the next level after the current one would be closer to 500 topics, then I'd definitely like the Wikiprojects heavily involved.
But I think it would be more efficient all around to first make more progress on the core set we have now, and improving those. We could conceivably set levels of "coreness" for everything in WP, and that would be time that is not being spend on actually improving the articles.
Somewhat tangentiallly -- I think we need to be a little wary of specific commitments, given the inevitability inherenet in wikidome, volunteering, and the long duration of our project. I mean maybe this type of wording should be softened: "since at least some of these articles will be included on our test CD we plan to release in XXXX" to change "will" to maybe "are planned to be". 
Tangential point No. 2 -- Even with the Wikiprojects involved in setting lists, you guys might have already thought of this, just something to keep in mind, but we would probably want to guard against an accidental Wikiproject bias (that is, being heavy or light in various areas depending on whether the areas have a Wikiproject and how much it participates.
Hope I haven't gone overboard. Thanks for listening. Happy editing! Maurreen 07:01, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Levels of core topics

message: We have had a protracted debate over at Core Topics on how to organize the top level of articles (what we call the "tree-top", and discussed a huge variety of category sets.  We finally came up with some options that seemed to match people's views after a lot of effort!  Probably these classifications could be changed in the future if needed, but we need to have some way to organize things for the test release.  In A & B, language & communication are combined with arts, in C they are separate.  Please give your votes on the options by adding a bolded Support to the option you like, then sign. Note in A science and technology are combined, in B they are separated.  Thanks!
=== Option A ===
* Arts 
* Philosophy & Religion
* Geography
* History
* Mathematics
* Natural Sciences & Technology
* Social Sciences
* Society
Votes:
=== Option B ===
* Arts 
* Philosophy & Religion
* Everyday Life
* Social Sciences & Society  
* Geography
* History
* Engineering (or Applied Sciences) & Technology
* Mathematics
* Natural Sciences 
Votes:
=== Option C ===
* Arts 
* Language & Communication
* Philosophy & Religion
* Everyday Life
* Social Sciences & Society  
* Geography
* History
* Engineering (or Applied Sciences) & Technology
* Mathematics
* Natural Sciences 
Votes:
:Support Walkerma 17:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Support AtionSong 18:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Support Vir Note: Something that was overlooked in the C list (easy to do in the mass of options) is the last version of C (in core topics talk page discussion and on the category sets page) had replaced one word, Language with Communication (which is a very broad category of media and processes very closely related to language (even including it, but including much more)--which fits well there as a major cultural sphere). I made this minor edit in C above. I have notified Walkerma and AtionSong of this, so they can revise, in whatever direction, if need be. --Vir 19:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Support  I'm all for structure and categorisation, of course, but I think the proposed scheme(s) can be tweaked.  For comparison/example, perhaps we should peruse the Encyclopædia Britannica Propædia (God forbid! :)) to help round out a salient structure for our purposes?  And perhaps we should develop a similar outline/"tree" (e.g., with categories, subcategories, et al.)?  E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 03:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the comments.  Yes, E Pluribus, we have thoroughly looked at those systems, and I think Vir has in mind that eventually we will be able to offer several different categorisation schemes.  Please feel free to update/edit/make pretty the Core topics tree, and create your own sub-trees! Thanks, Walkerma 04:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Great; thanks!  I think the table is a little unwieldly, though; shortly, I think I'll boldly reorganise it into a bona fide "tree" – outline format – and tweak it. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 07:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Vote on top-level categories 

message: * Arts 
* Language & Communication
* Philosophy & Religion
* Everyday Life
* Social Sciences & Society  
* Geography
* History
* Engineering (or Applied Sciences) & Technology
* Mathematics
* Natural Sciences 
Votes:
:Support Walkerma 17:23, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Support AtionSong 18:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Support Vir Note: Something that was overlooked in the C list (easy to do in the mass of options) is the last version of C (in core topics talk page discussion and on the category sets page) had replaced one word, Language with Communication (which is a very broad category of media and processes very closely related to language (even including it, but including much more)--which fits well there as a major cultural sphere). I made this minor edit in C above. I have notified Walkerma and AtionSong of this, so they can revise, in whatever direction, if need be. --Vir 19:06, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Support  I'm all for structure and categorisation, of course, but I think the proposed scheme(s) can be tweaked.  For comparison/example, perhaps we should peruse the Encyclopædia Britannica Propædia (God forbid! :)) to help round out a salient structure for our purposes?  And perhaps we should develop a similar outline/"tree" (e.g., with categories, subcategories, et al.)?  E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 03:37, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks for the comments.  Yes, E Pluribus, we have thoroughly looked at those systems, and I think Vir has in mind that eventually we will be able to offer several different categorisation schemes.  Please feel free to update/edit/make pretty the Core topics tree, and create your own sub-trees! Thanks, Walkerma 04:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Great; thanks!  I think the table is a little unwieldly, though; shortly, I think I'll boldly reorganise it into a bona fide "tree" – outline format – and tweak it. E Pluribus Anthony | talk | 07:48, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Option C 

message: I've started Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Geography, which we discussed briefly at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics some time ago. Maurreen 03:17, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Geography

message: Short version:
#Importance of entries
#Quality of entries
#When to publish
#Number of entries
Less short answer:
*Importance - I'd like to make sure we have the main things covered first. I'm not opposed to themed releases (Wikireaders and the like), but WP1.0 itself should deal with major topics first.  As it gets bigger I hope we can include fancruft etc.  If that means including some B-Class articles for completeness then we should (e.g., let's say if all the major planets are A-Class except Pluto at B-Class, we should include Pluto for completeness).
*Quality - Importance comes first, but I don't really want ot be associated with releasing poorly written articles.
*When to publish - I'm flexible, but I would like us to start thinking about when, for two reasons. (1) People need deadlines - if I say to may students "whenever" they only see the last five letters.  If I say "Monday or you get a zero" it's amazing how many manage to deliver.  (2) If we don't release something this year, I think people will think we are all talk and no action, and get disillusioned with the whole exercise.  We don't need to release WP1.0 itself, but we do need to release SOMETHING like WP0.5 or the gazetteer soon.
*I'd like to see at least 500 for a test release.  Since we have about1500-2000 articles now assessed from the WikiProjects (including worklists) we should be easily able to manage 1000, probably at least 2000.
Clarification: I assume Maurreen means balance & proportion of subject coverage (e.g., we shouldn't be strong in physics articles but weak in chemistry), rather than balance & proportion within articles (which I'd relate to quality). Walkerma 04:29, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Martin Walker

message: After watching some good articles in bad shape being called A-Class articles, and following the discussion that questioned how much of a reliable quality benchmark GAs are, I made a little change to , adding Good articles below A-Class articles, but ahead of B-Class articles. My reasoning is that a B-Class article would fail Good article criteria, and would not be promoted to GA, or should be delisted. As I was perhaps a bit bold, I'd like feedback about my reasoning. Any comments? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you did the right thing!  I think we need to preserve the value of the A-Class article, which is one that could be considered suitable for FAC (typically pre-peer review).  Thanks, Walkerma 04:32, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I disagree. I suggest it is helpful to keep the GA/FA evaluations separate from A/B-class ratings. Some Good articles are B-class or worse. The rankings are uneven. It seems helpful to have two columns in the core topics at this time for the different ratings. For a time, it seems better not to lose the independent evaluation rankings until the Good article evaluations have more than two people looking at them. If the systems over time show more consistencey, then great. But, now they don't show that. -- Vir 01:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I specifically reworded B-Class to fail Good article criteria. As the general sentiment at the Good articles WikiProject is not to adjust the criteria, but rather to delist articles that don't meet them (even if that means removing half of the articles), then any Good article that is a B-Class or lower in our scale should be re-evaluated by us and delisted if it doesn't pass our review. In a way, it would help to get more than two pairs of eyes on each GA. My original intent was for GAs to stop devaluing A-Class articles, as many WikiProjects were assuming that  = . Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  It could be that eventually that the scheme you describe will work just great. But, I think it is good to be cautious about the reliability of the GA ratings for some time. I am very unsure about the consistency of those ratings. (I estimate that it would take one expert reviewer at least hundreds of hours to review even half the list -- as it stands now. And, more than one review would be good.)  Sure, it is good to record that a GA rating is there. But, it is going to take months (at least) to see how things work out on GA list. Ideally, it would be good if the 1.0 group could have its own review system. If not that, perhaps the FA system will expand the amount of work it is taking on. However it may arise: More eyeballs = better overall evaluation, whatever the system is, eh? -- Vir 01:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I think we're both agreeing on something here: it's good to be cautious about GA's consistency for now. I saw A-Class articles, which I think of as basically FAs not passed through FAC, being compared with articles that quality-wise would be Start-Class, and I thought that it is not fair for A-article writers for those articles to be put on the same level. My line of reasoning directly from that is to not see GAs as A-Class articles, so I put GAs behind them. If I understand correctly, you would prefer B-Class to be ahead of GAs as well. As from my editing experience at WP Cyclones, I know that some good B-Class articles may be good articles, and A-Class articles would easily pass WP:WIAGA, but not all B-Class articles would, I decided to put GA in between, and use B-Class to help clean out bad GAs. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Yes, cautious as in double check reviews needed. I'm not saying where GA should fit now -- down the road doesn't matter. I personally think the GA process might change. There are different ideas about what GA should do. I don't think there is consensus. I think people just stopped talking for awhile. What I am saying is that the quality of B-class varies. For GA articles, my sense is the quality ranges from good to poor. The quality range is too wide to say where it fits just now in an A/B scale. But, eventually that will change. --Vir 21:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change to assessment scale 

message: There's many discussions in that page, all going on at the same time, and as they directly affect us, I'd like for everyone to give their opinions in that talk page. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Template talk:Grading scheme]]