Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Assessment/Archive 2

message: It is proposed (see above) to change the way that we work
#. Some editors are to be given the right to assess without posting on the project page.
#. These editors are to appoint themselves and any others they are confident with.
#. They can assess any uncontroversial schools that are a stub or a start or low or mid without posting the results.
#. We will then only have monthly summaries on the main page of B's or higher and/or "high"s or higher.
#. The broad categories are to be moved to the main page.
#. Safeguard. We need to keep looking at the daily log
#. Suggest every asessor should post a weekly summary (eg Done about 60 stubs and 30 starts but found no important or B quality pages this week)
reason: It is estimated that the most productive assessors may be able to increase their productivity by 80-120%. We are currently assessing schools at about 10 a day ... new ones are being added at an equal rate or greater.
* Please edit and/or comment
Victuallers 15:32, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I generally think this is a good idea - it would just need to be well organised and implemented. I agree that any assessments with a rating of Start / Mid or lower should not have to be posted here for experienced assessors. I also like the idea of "apprenticeships" for new assessors, I assume we would use the assessment team list to show who is considered an apprentice and who is not. I also assume we would keep a lot on this page to prevent clutter on the main project page. Camaron1 | Chris 19:39, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Method of Working - Peer Review

message: Ok, so per a comment on the talk page I've revamped the assessment template. I haven't replaced it yet because I'd like some input. It's currently at User:Alanbly/Sandbox. Let me know what you think. Adam McCormick 04:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  {{tl|WPSchoolsAssessment}} take II 

message: I've just noticed that the assessment box on the talk page for St Crispin's School indicates that the school needs an infobox. The school already has an infobox and there was already an infobox there when the school was assessed. I'm not sure how to change the template to remove the requirement. Can anyone help? Dahliarose 11:00, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: This new template defaults to show that the article needs an infobox unless you specify otherwise, so just add needs-infobox=no to the template - see the template on this page for example. I hope that solves the problem. Camaron1 | Chris 11:06, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  You forgot to provide the link! If the template has been changed does this mean that all schools with infoboxes which were assessed before the template was changed will have the same problem? Dahliarose 13:04, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  When I say this page, I mean this page, in other words: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Assessment. And yes, some assessments will now be incorrect, I have heard that part of the template might be changed to stop it defaulting to yes. Camaron1 | Chris 14:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

text: Yes (I think) this is a lot of pages ... I did leave a note on Adams page as I guessed he would know how to fix, but this is a minor bug that is poor for our image. I have found two talk pages where editors have written complaints. (they must think we are omnipresent ... bless :-) ). Its easy to fix as you just add the assess box line. However editors who have these boxes (I est. c. 1000) will have had criticism that they don't feel is justified Victuallers 19:05, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for sorting it out. Dahliarose 19:25, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I am worried that there may be a bit confusion. I fixed one school ... there still the other 999 (est). Is someone "on to this?" Victuallers 19:43, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, I'm putting in a temporary fix til i can work this out Adam McCormick 23:22, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The default now only applies to assessed articles so blank templates don't "Needs Infobox" but assessed articles do. If we can find someone who knows bots we could add these dynamically Adam McCormick 01:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Another possible solution (well a workaround) is to add to the template a button with "trouble with info boxes?" and that takes you to a page that tells you how to fix it yourself. Its not great ..but it is an alternative if we can't get a bot writer. Eitherway I think we should put a notice on the Schools page maybe for concerned "customers" Victuallers 09:09, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've added a link to the template that explains how to add an infobox and how to get rid of the warning Adam McCormick 18:46, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks Adam but I'm not sure if the template is quite correct. I've now discovered that the High school talk page is incorrectly flagged as needing an infobox but I can't see any guidelines in the template on the page telling me how to change it. Dahliarose 22:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: It's really simple you add "|needs-infobox=no" to the template. Simple as that. Adam McCormick 00:19, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

text: I've got the hang of it now and I'm changing schools as I come across them. However, it's not at all obvious from the individual school talk pages how the template should be changed. We really could do with someone to sort it out with a bot. Dahliarose 16:38, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I am currently writing a bot to do this. BoxCrawler is currently awaiting approval. Adam McCormick 18:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Incorrect infobox parameter in template

message: I have changed both these schools from mid to high importance. They are both amongst the original nine English public schools and are both internationally famous though their articles don't currently do them justice. The film If... was famously filmed at Cheltenham College. Dahliarose 16:38, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Cheltenham College]] and [[Charterhouse School]]

message: I have given a quick review of "Top" importance articles and I have as a result changed the importance of three of them. They are...
*Miami-Dade County Public Schools - to High.
*Kamehameha Schools - to High.
*Early College High School - to Low.
If anyone wants these assessments changed again, please say. Camaron1 | Chris 17:57, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I would agree. It looks as though the editor of the Early College school has done his own assessment! We might need to keep a watch on the page. Dahliarose 20:24, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: A good place to check for people who promote their sites is on the daily log. Victuallers 22:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: The log is a good place to check on changes yes, though it can give you information overload by the amount of school articles that have their ratings changed every few days. Camaron1 | Chris 10:15, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Review of top importance school articles

message: One of our "Top" schools is in the "Did you know" section. Dahliarose and I think it should be tomorrow Victuallers 22:00, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes I have noticed it this morning, it says: ...that La Martiniere Boys' College in Lucknow, India is the only school in the world to be awarded a battle honour? Camaron1 | Chris 10:17, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: We briefly had the top spot with a picture. An admin got in a muddle and temporarily demoted the article, but it doesn't seem to have been possible to reinstate the picture and put us back at the top. I've added a new 'Did you know?' section for featured school articles to the main project page. Let's see if we can get a few more. Dahliarose 10:57, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

text: There's another school on today's front page in the did you know section. Two in one week!Dahliarose 08:33, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

text: There are three more Did you knows? at Portal:Schools but there are no corresponding dates on the articles' talk pages and I can't find an easy way of searching the Did you know archive to verify that they actually appeared. Does anyone have any ideas? The Schools Portal is very out of date. We could do with featuring some different articles. Dahliarose 14:23, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Oh and ....

message: As I mentioned earlier, I've got a bot (mostly) written to place correct infobox parameters on schools using the  banner. The WP:BAG folks are dragging their feet so I'm not sure when I can start really testing and implementing. I have all the logic and parsing code written but I can't start testing the page until I get the go ahead from a sysop. Anyhow, I just thought I'd give everyone an update for interest's sake. Adam McCormick 03:45, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, so I've got the bot working except for one glitch (it won't stay logged in) but you can see the way it works at: Special:Contributions/138.67.78.236 which is the IP address I was at when I ran it for its proof of concept. I'm working to fix this glitch and I hope to have full approval soon. (And to have checked for infoboxes on the 8000 pages in the project about nine hours later) Adam McCormick 01:06, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Bot has been approved-ish and will run through all 8000+ articles tinight and into tomorrow. I'll let everyone know in the morning when it's finished. Adam McCormick 14:59, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well done Adam. Thanks for getting that sorted. It will make a big difference.Dahliarose 15:40, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: BoxCrawler has made a couple passes over the schools and tagged all of them with "needs-infobox" parameters. It's having one last go now, so a aside from a few errors, everything should be correctly tagged. Have a look at the Log if you like, but I warn you it lists all 8000 Articles and it crashes my browser to look at it. Adam McCormick 14:17, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Bot Update 

message: I've noticed that some projects seem to have the facility to auto-categorise stub articles when a specific stub template is used. Is this something that could be done with the school stubs templates? There are a number of such templates at :Category:School stubs. It would certainly help to speed up the assessment process. Dahliarose 14:38, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Adding it to the template is easy, adding the parameter is a bit more involved. It's something that needs to be done with a bot. That said, I can add it to box crawler pretty easily (if it ever gets approved, they're so slow) and to the template, if it appeals to everyone. Adam McCormick 17:25, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If you can work something out with a bot crawler that would be brilliant. There are masses of stub articles and a large number don't even have the school template on the discussion page. At least it might help to give us some idea of numbers and the status of some of these articles. Can the bot crawlers be set up to add stub status retrospectively as well as adding the information to new articles? Dahliarose 17:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  There are a few ways to do it, the easiest is to just take every article in the "Unassessed Schools" category and search for stub templates or other stub ratings. Otherwise it could go through all schools articles. Box Crawler is designed to do this for infoboxes so extending it to stubs and stub templates wouldn't be difficult. Adam McCormick 17:34, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Auto-assessment of stubs

message: There was a suggestion earlier that we might want to establish a minimum number of words for a start article (So that we could mark articles as stubs automatically). My thought is fifty words or less than five sentences. I'm wondering if anyone has ideas as to lists and sections and such. Adam McCormick 03:05, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm going to go with 300 characters outside of tables and templates, Unless there are any objections? Adam McCormick 03:00, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd double or triple that. I'm assuming we are talking about the stub to start boundary. There is another boundary which is how many characters does an article have to have before it has any value whatsoever. I mention this because I'm not sure articles of less than 300 chars are of much value. Sorry I didn't respond to the original request (missed it). I'm all for auto assessment but we must add value. There is little value in just labelling all unlabelled stuff. So I would argue for a substantial increase. I suspect most good starts have at least a thousand words and also an info box etc. I'd be willing to look at a few and check. (Could the bot do that?) Victuallers 08:08, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is also the problem that some articles might contain a lot of content which is completely useless (ie, long lists of staff names, masses of trivia) which a bot wouldn't be able to pick up. A thousand words and an infobox might be the best minimum, and perhaps also a minimum requirement of three section headings. Dahliarose 10:23, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure on the infobox, lots of good start articles don't have an infobox (definitely required for a B but for a start?). I can agree with five hundred words but a thousand seems like a high standard. The example given on the ratings page only has 434 words in the text section. Adam McCormick 14:13, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: OK perhaps you're right about the infobox. It's difficult to envisage 500 or 1,000 words so I've had a look at Little Munden Primary School as an example. TerriersFan recently upgraded this from stub to start. I'm not sure if he's justified. What do you think? The article is c. 244 words without the references and 500 words with the references. Presumably a bot would count the references as well. The official definition of a start article is somewhat vague for the purposes of developing a bot. It says "The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element... 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." Dahliarose 17:29, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd put that at the low end of start but still in Start. My problem is that the "Stub" category is for articles that don't help anyone of help very few. I see a start article as any article with enough to get another editor started and a stub as any article which expanding would be the equivalent of writing the article myself. Adam McCormick 21:52, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. TerriersFan's article is a low start (not sure wshy its not on the list of things assessed?). Maybe I'm leading you astray Adam, but I think that although finding all the stubs is productive... or feels so ... it only counts the dross (I know unfair.. I apologise). What intrigues me ... Is .. How many "B"s and above are in the unassesed pile. Could we find them? Would be harder ... humans would have to help ... but we'd get value. Victuallers 20:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well my thought is that it would clear out the really short articles so that more Human effort could go into quality assessments and giving advice, rather than "That's one sentence...", "That has three words and a picture..." and most of our time spent giving the same six words of advice to all the stubs. It seems like the easiest way to find all those B's and above. (Oh and what does "counts the dross" mean? Adam McCormick 20:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Stubbing 

message: I have been following/ assisting an editor called EagleFan. (S)he adds sports references to catholic US schools and creates small but well designed stubs. Quite a few. I think that they are not great articles, BUT they do have a good structure and allow another new editor to see how to do a REF. I have asked him to add Stub/Low to all his new creations. I'm telling you this cos he may turn up in the daily reports and I'm on holiday soon Victuallers 20:37, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: No problem, I'll keep an eye out Adam McCormick 20:54, 27 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Confession

message: I would be grateful if someone could take a look at the article on Melbourne High School (Victoria), which is currently one of the collaborations of the week. It seems to have been self-assessed by a local editor who has rated it as a B/Top. It seems to merit the B but I would have thought it is only high importance rather than top importance. A second opinion would be helpful before I downgrade it. Dahliarose 11:34, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, I'm fine with a Top or High rating as this is one of the better Aussie school articles I've seen and the school seems quite notable. Also, this article has the potential to be GA or FA. Would be a good article to bring up to snuff. If you're working on the article and don't agree with the top, then feel free to downgrade. Adam McCormick 13:31, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's leave it as Top for now. It's the only Aussie school which currently has the Top rating and we need a representative selection of top importance articles from each country. I'm not too familiar with Australian schools but adjustments can always be made later if necessary. Dahliarose 15:11, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Melbourne High School (Victoria)

message: Impressed. We seem to have it under control. It appeared that unassessed was slways going to be more than assessed. (Must go on holiday more often). Note also that we are failing to fill out the notable assessments... ie B or High etc rated school articles.... me too. Suggest we do it again? Victuallers 08:17, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've not done many notable assessments for a while. But I have posted those I've found. Adam McCormick 19:51, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment stats

message: Seth M.R.Jaipuria School, Lucknow has been deleted as unnotable. Its the 10th most respected school in India. Can you help Victuallers 11:34, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Seth M.R.Jaipuria School, Lucknow]]

message: I've had a go at assessing the Chinese schools. Hope I've done it right. Most of the articles are pretty poor - many are only one sentence. Some are potentially very important but have no references to back up their claims so I've not rated them higher than mid for the present. Dahliarose 20:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well the standard and practices we've been running under would suggest that you should post copies of any assessments you do to the main page. It's basically so that the dedicated assessors can have a look and offer our guidance on where your assessments are fitting in the scheem of things. I'm not sure if you need to go through the whole apprenticing process, but we'd all need to agree on that. At very least, all assessments above Start and all importances above Mid should be posted with explanations. Adam McCormick 05:23, 25 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Most of the Chinese articles had very little content other than to tell us that they were schools and were located in a particular town so they can be nothing more than stub/low. A lot of them were missing the WPSchools tag and it seemed easier to rate them at the same time as adding the template. There were only a couple of starts and nothing near a B. I've rated a few at mid importance. Some of these are potentially more important but the editors provide frustratingly little information about their schools and there is a complete lack of references. I've added a selection of the more interesting and important Chinese schools to the list of assessments for August. Feel free to upgrade them if necessary. I thought it was only necessary to notify the list of anything above a B or mid so apologies if I've got it wrong. Dahliarose 11:00, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

text: I have no problem as all of her assessments seem valid and sheis very motivated. I'll add my sentiments as well, Welcome to the team! Adam McCormick 16:48, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Joining the party

message: I've been trying to establish a list of all the UK articles which have been assessed as B class and have in the process done a review of some of the B class articles. I found a few self-assessed articles which had crept in without references and sometimes without sufficient content which I've now downgraded to start. I've put the list at User:Dahliarose/Sandbox. There are a few articles there which possibly don't qualify as Bs so I would welcome any further comments. I don't want to reduce the numbers too much but we should try and maintain standards!Dahliarose 17:51, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I've now downgraded Chew Valley. There seem to be a few rogue editors out there who are assessing articles and not reporting their assessments here! I agree that the non-English-speaking schools need encouragement but I think they should still have a few references to get the B. There is however no excuse for the English-language schools! I'm sure quite a few of the top 100 are close to GA. We could really do with at least one UK school as a good article and one non-English-speaking school to set an example. We could almost do with an extra category for good start articles. Dahliarose 22:57, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

text: Thank you for your kind comments. The only one which was completely lacking in references was Charterhouse School which I've now downgraded from B to start in the hope that it might motivate them into some action. Dahliarose 17:24, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Review of B class articles