Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance

message: This page is part of a response to a discussion of importance rating at the Mathematics WikiProject. It is intended to develop mathematics-specific guidelines on assessing importance of mathematics articles. The page has been seeded with material from elsewhere in the Wikipedia 1.0 topic, together with some comments as to why the existing guidelines need refinement in the mathematical context. Please comment further here, or simply edit the article to improve it. Geometry guy 13:52, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

message: At WT:WPM, Salix alba suggested the following hierarchy.
::...loosely we could have coverage or scope
::*Of high importance across all numerate discipline - everyone should know this
::*Of high importance throughout mathematics - all mathematicians should know this
::*Of high importance in a major field of mathematics - all those working in the field should know this
::*Of importance within one field (high importance in a sub-field) - most working in the field would know this
::*Mainly limited to a sub-field
::*Specialist, mainly work of one researcher.
Even if coverage or scope is not implemented, these descriptors suggest improvements to the importance rating scheme. Geometry guy 20:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Ideas from coverage or scope

message: One of the issues with the current importance scheme is that there are several different ways importance can be described.
# The importance of the topic within its field.
# The impact of the topic beyond its specialty.
# How important it is that Wikipedia has an article on the subject.
One of the problems with the current template is that it mixes these different approaches (Top is described by method 3, High and Mid by method 1, and Low by method 2). Geometry guy 11:14, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree! This suggests to me that the importance scheme should be split into columns. Geometry guy 11:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Multiple ways of describing importance 

message: At WT:WPM it was generally agreed that there should not be too many Top-Priority mathematics articles (a few hundred). However, looking at the figures, it seems to me that the main issue currently is that there are too many High-Priority maths articles. Some of these may only be Mid-Priority, but I think it would be helpful to identify a handful of the most important among them, and raise their priority level to Top, in order to help editors find them, particularly as there are now not many Top-Priority articles of Start class or lower. Comments? Geometry guy 15:09, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi Geomety guy! In response to your comment, I've uprated about 40 articles from High to Top (I also downrated a couple). I was fairly conservative about which articles I uprated, so there is still room for other users to uprate a few more. Geometry guy 20:59, 3 June 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  High vs Top importance 

message: With almost 26,000 articles plus over 3,000 Mathematician articles it would appear that the ratios need to be scaled enough to be inclusive of growth over the next few years. Mathematics articles are almost certainly increasing by 5% a year—over a thousand articles per year. The fill of each Importance level should not exceed 75-85% of the projected quantities based on the ratios adopted.  Using 30,000 as a rough total of articles, a 75-85% fill would suggest the ratio plan should aim for 35,000-40,000 total articles.  I believe the 300-400 Top Importance articles is consistent with other projects.  A ratio of 4.5:1 for each level would produce a 35,000 total for 300 Top articles; almost 41,000 for 350 Top; over 46,000 for 400 Top.
When some consensus is reached, the current section should be rewritten to simply discuss the expected scope and goals.  The historical ratios and numbers should be clearly relegated to a history discussion.98.211.41.239 (talk) 01:45, 24 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scope and goals