Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Australia/Assessment

message: My origional felling was to send the WikiProject Australia/Assessment to speedy delete. At this stage I'm happy with the compromise of moving the ratings to the project space.
At this point Iorek, Peta and myself seem to support the proposal with Scott curtailing some of his editing until the matter is decided. --WikiCats 08:30, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd be interested how to see how it can be done without screwing up the ratings and so forth, if the consensus comes to that. In the meantime, I'll be sitting on the fence for this one. --Arnzy (whats up?) 08:43, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Wow. I'm with the folks that just don't understand how someone could be offended at an assessment. If you disagree with an assessment, they're hardly clad in gold. Simply leave a note on the page, send a message to the assesser, or bring your objection here for the fastest response. As far as their purpose goes, the article assessments will help the project (once all articles are assessed) with overall progress reports, category progress reports, reports on which articles need the most attention (ie. top stubs and so on), reports on anything we choose really, be it to help guide the project or out of pure curiosity. This can all be done automatically with a bot, but to move assessments to this page turns this into a prohibitivly long manual process. Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 09:34, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: A further comment, the assessments on the talk pages of articles identifies those articles that we think could use improvement to users that might be able to help and then prompt them to do so. "Start class eh? I could help add a bit more info then". (Yes, impersonations are my specialty!! :P) Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 09:40, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Well ok, if statistics work like that, then just 3 people on this page out of ... what, 10? says there are many more times as many people who are for the assessments than against. Consensus dictates we keep the assessments. But ofcourse, statistics don't work like that and I think discussion is the best way of dealing with this. I must admit I'm still a bit confused about why an article assessment is offensive. Considering Peta has said that railways station articles would be considered of a lesser importance than the Australia article (to this project), I don't see what else could be the offensive issue. As far as time goes, I think it's fair to say we see it as a positive investment in time, else we wouldn't be doing it. So, can you please enlighten us (or at least me) as to why you think the assessments should be removed from the talk page since either of those two things don't seem to be it? Cheers, darkliight[πalk] 11:38, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I have rated less articles than Iorek, so my percentage complaint rate might be higher, but I find it interesting that the only response I have recieved was on one of the two pages on which I made additional comments. I have only realised this morning that was from WikiCats. In that case, I responded to a specific question on the talk page of whether it was a good article by identifying a few aspects of information missing. I was far more scathing in my only other assessment comment so far, which was deliberately phrased to draw comment, and there has been silence at Talk:Military of Australia.--Scott Davis Talk 01:06, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consensus

message: For the sake of consensus I am prepared to concede on these points:
* I'm happy to have the Assessment project proceed
* I'm OK with the ratings being on the Talk page
What I would like to see is Iorek's suggestion of a change in the terminology (or "renaming the rankings to prevent offense").
The terms importance, quality and class are where the problem is.
Rather than people misunderstanding these terms, we need to change them now to what is more suitable for the purpose.   --WikiCats 12:59, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I support renaming anything offensive (particularly the template names with -class), however many of those templates are outside the Australia project. I think it is extremely useful to be able to rate on two scales: quality of the current article (i.e. how far from Featured), and importance/significance of the topic (which generally does not change as the article improves). --Scott Davis Talk 00:51, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Apologies to go away on Wikibreak when such discussion takes place. It seems one can never leave for a few days without major change occuring :) Most of the points I was going to raise have mostly been covered and thanks to those who replied in defence of the project in my absence. I can see the point of view in regards to opposition in the use of words such as quality and importance, and to be honest I had my doubts as to whether those words were of any use to the project before it was setup. My first trial with the assessments skipped the importance component entirely, however I activated it for completness sake. I then decided to go with the model being used by the military project and mostly adopted their grading and scales, mostly because it was supported by a bot and didn't force us to manually create massive lists based on article quality. I notice that discussion is now being taken up with the WP1.0 people themselves on a grander scale which is a good thing. Any changes we make here may as well be compatible and standard to Wikipedia as a whole. Talk page spamming is another thing I've been aware of. If we can reduce the size but keep the functionality of the template (even move it to another space entirely?), I'm all for it. -- Longhair 00:47, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Consensus (take two)

message: *As per Peta's point, to my mind the important thing is to identify important topics with articles that require improvement.  The present categorisation system does not allow us to do that and hence I think some of the frustration.  I appreciate the schema has been adapted from other projects, but I think it has problems if you can't see easily identify an article of higher importance with potential for improvement.--A Y Arktos\talk 01:14, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. There should be some way of seeing both the class and the importance of the article in a list or table of some kind. I just joined to help, I have no idea how one would go about doing something like that. Perhaps when an article is rated, it is placed in a table? So when you click on 'Top Importance' articles, you are shown a list of the Top importance articles and their classes, similar to this; (stolen from Version 1.0 places )
Contact with WP Mountains  	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains	Contact with WP Mountains
Article                    	Date                     	Assessment               	Comments                 	                         	                         	                         	
Mount St. Helens           	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
Mount Everest              	April 13, 2006           	                         	Former FA                	                         	                         	                         	
Mount Rainier              	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
Pikes Peak                 	April 13, 2006           	                         	FA in Project Colorado   	                         	                         	                         	
Stone Mountain             	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
Arklay Mountains           	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
Cheyenne Mountain          	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
Haleakala                  	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
List of peaks by prominence	April 13, 2006           	                         	                         	                         	                         	                         	
I think that would be better, but I don't know if it would be difficult to implement non-manually. --Iorek85 01:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: I don't think we have any Aussie bot writers, except Nickj, but it is my impression that these lists are manually collated, as seems to be the case on the 1.0 core topics page. As AYArktos says this system has been taken from other projects, is there anything to suggest that the talk page notices have been effective in improving participation and article quality?--Peta 01:24, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I have no idea. Having the notice on talkpages is an easy place to keep them, I suppose, and I think stub and start class tags would do more good than harm, encouraging people to get the articles up to GA or FA. The importance ratings are more for the project than the article, as you say, though. Perhaps they could be hidden?. As for doing it manually, I guess we have a lot of work ahead of us.--Iorek85 01:31, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've been on Wikipedia for a while now, and in my experience stub tags of any sort to very little to generate content. I like your idea about hiding the tags, since they cre just for project and potentially bot use they really don't need to be visible. Another problem that hasn't been mentioned is updating the tags - in particular quailty tags.--Peta 01:37, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Do you mean just renaming them, or adding a couple of categories? I think we could do with an additional level between Low and Mid, and I suppose we could rename them to something less 'offensive'. Something like Foundation, High, General, Detail, Specific? This, however, would ignore the well known nature of an article, like Echidna or Don Bradman, instead only classing by the level of detail or generality of an article. 
Also, I've started the table in Top Importance articles. I don't know if it's the right place for it, and it should probably be sorted by class, not alphabetically, but you get the idea. --Iorek85 01:53, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

text: *I think the assessment of quality and importance is normally done at the same time and thus could be a single variable.  No bots then required, editors looking for to-do items could simply search the cat called something like Australian articles with High-importance_Start-class quality and have a to do list - differing cats - not too many - could give a priority ranking for the to do potential items.  Articles assessed as being of low importance would not have their quality ranked.--A Y Arktos\talk 01:55, 18 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Relationship between importance and quality 

message: Platypus is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 13:59, 23 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Platypus]]

message: Is there a problem with dropping the template on "any" article and self-assessing as importance:low, quality:stub (if appropriate) - I DO want to encourage others to visit/view/improve the articles in question.
The articles are all related to suburbs of the City of Blacktown, most of which are stubs, most of which are low importance but a few are mid importance and could/should/hopefully will become better (if they ever become FA quality I'll be amazed though!)
Although now I think of it I do work on electoral districts, MP's etc. also.
--Garrie 00:31, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some see articles of low importance and tagging them as a waste of time. I don't. Any article relevant to Australia has potential to reach Featured Status, and can be graded accordingly. Be sure to use the correct parameter when tagging, in this instance, Sydney=yes. -- Longhair 01:06, 25 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  self-including, self-assessing 

message: I've upgraded the WikiProject Australia template to now accept comments when assessing articles. The process of adding comments is pretty straight forward (an explanation is on the template itself). If there's any hiccups, further tweaks needed, or questions, feel free to drop me a line at my talk page. -- Longhair 11:47, 26 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comments now live

message: Since the assessment is over, could someone please blank or move the discussion elsewhere. The header for the talk page is quite long and I want it cut down to size. Thanks. - RoyBoy 800 13:17, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've fixed it by moving the comments page into an archive. -- Longhair 13:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Talk:Steve Irwin]] 

message: Maybe it's a problem with my computer, but all of a sudden I can't access the list with all the unassessed articles. Has somebody removed the link? If so, why? Atlantis Hawk 05:03, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Nothing has changed in a major way to my knowledge. I'm not sure what list you're referring to, but there's a category containing all of the Unassessed Australia articles requiring assessment. You may also be looking for the automatically generated Australia articles by quality worklist. Hope this helps. -- Longhair\talk 23:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  What the hell? 

message: 09:48, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It is now. You can add the tag yourself if you like - the instructions are under the FAQ for next time. Iorek85 12:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dryness of the Australian Continent 

message: User:Outrigger has created a tool that alters the article heading colour to that of its rating and the sentence underneath from "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" to "xxx class article, from Wikipedia the free encyclopedia". I've been running this for just over a week without any problems, I've found it useful as an aid of the current article. I recommend to anyone who is assessing articles. Follow the instructions on this page User talk:Outriggr/metadata.js. Gnangarra 04:10, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Outrigger's tool is currently not enabled for use on WP:AUSTRALIA. Auroranorth (WikiDesk) 10:02, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment tool 

message: Is there a better way of saying 'low importance' - it doesnt look good for any article to be labelled low importance - perhaps mid class should be the bottom? --Astrokey44 08:25, 21 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: low importance doesn't mean that it is of no importance, if it had no importance it should be deleted.  The vast majority of articles could never be described as more than low importance to most users (and nobody could ever read 2 million articles anyway).--Grahamec 07:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  low importance 

message: Should there be so many top importance horse racing articles?  These may be top importance to punters, but I don't see that they are top importance to Wikpedia or even WP Aus.--Grahamec 07:17, 13 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Horse racing

message: I have recently been assessing some Melbourne articles. In the heading to :Category:Low-importance Melbourne articles it states: "Articles are automatically placed in this category when the corresponding rating is given using the WP Australia template;". This is not happening. It seems that the only way that an article appears in this category is if the parameter Melbourne-importance=Low is added. The WP Australia template does not have a parameter of "Melbourne-importance=". There are several thousand articles which do not have a City specific importance parameter included. Could someone with knowledge of Assessments please clarify if it is necessary to include a "City specific importance parameter" and a "City specific class parameter" and where I can find this information. -  Cuddy Wifter 05:39, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: City parameters

message: Importance raised from mid to high. 203.7.140.3 (talk) 06:07, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: logical change under the circumstances, Gnangarra 09:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Quentin Bryce]] 

message: Over at WikiProject Scottish Islands we had a bug with our assessment comments created by Template:WPSI, our equivalent of Template:WP Australia.  The talk page of an article without a comment on the template worked fine. However, for an article with a pre-existing comment clicking on the "edit" button in the WPSI template on the relevant Talk page took you to a "Server not found" error page. The only way to edit the comment was to go to the 'by quality' listings. Thanks to The Transhumanist this has just been fixed using this diff. Not sure how or why, but it seems to work now. I mention it as in looking into the issue you seem to have the same problem at e.g. Talk:Canberra, Talk:Platypus. Regards, Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 13:42, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I left a note on the template talk page. As the assessments themselves are fine, further discussion should be sent there. (BTW, I haven't seen any problem on Talk:Canberra). Regards, Comte0 (talk) 10:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yup - Canberra is fine now, and thanks for passing the comment on to the right place. Ben MacDuiTalk/Walk 18:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment comments 

message: Hi - at Military History they can rate articles against criteria and leave a record using Template:WPMILHIST  For example see this assessment of P-38 can opener.  I think the assessment against dimensions (for B-class such as
   1.  Referencing and citation: criterion met
   2. Coverage and accuracy: criterion met
   3. Structure: criterion not met
   4. Grammar: criterion met
   5. Supporting materials: criterion met
Could be really informative.  Do others agree?  Can we have the same capacity copied to our Template:WP Australia as at WPMILHIST ? --Matilda talk 00:50, 14 June 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Especially seeing as the new C-class seems to have been implemented, meaning B-class probably needs more stringent standards. We should use the criteria at Version 1.0 though (there are 6). Frickeg (talk) 04:47, 28 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Assessment rating similar to provision at Template:WPMILHIST 

message: Hi! We at WP:INDIA are debating the introduction of C-class articles for our assessment. As this project was cited as an example of a big project that does use C-class, could someone from this project weigh in on the debate at Wikipedia talk:Noticeboard for India-related topics#C class articles? Input from users who've spent some time assessing articles would be appreciated. We'd like to know
# Did/does C-class complicate the assessment process?
# Does C-class involve more red-tape?
# Are the lines of distinction between Start and C, and Start and B classes blurred?
# Has the implementation of C-class been worthwhile overall? If so, how? (Has there been evidence of an increase in the quantity or quality of output by the introduction of this grade?)
Eagerly awaiting feedback. Ncmvocalist (talk) 10:04, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  C-class articles for WP INDIA 

message: I have done some tweaking of the list of top class articles in the Australia project. I've downgraded the ones that appeared most anomalous in terms of the assessment criteria, but there are still some dodgy ones in there. I would suggest we:
* remove Sydney Harbour Bridge to high - it is not the longest span, it isn't world heritage listed, we may all love it dearly, but it is a bridge.
* consider adding Sydney Opera House as World Heritage Listed (only Aus building that is, from memory), came up in some survey IIRC as most recognisable building in the world...
* remove AC/DC - the only band in the list
* remove Makybe Diva - the only horse in the list (!). Yes it's the country's most famous horse, but we don't have the country's most famous golfer, painter, etc etc
Other suggestions? hamiltonstone (talk) 03:41, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't think that the importance assessment is useful because it can be very subjective, and secondly I think people tend to just edit what they want if they are interested in it, or it is bad quality, but I don't think the importance changes people's editing pattern much. Although nobody is stopping you, I think most people don't worry much about importance and I don't consider it useful. YellowMonkey (bananabucket!) 04:10, 21 August 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reassessing the entries rating top class assessment 

message: How can you rate an article like the 2005 Cronulla riots as being more important than the article on the Australian Army Cadets.  Think about it, do people want to find out about the good things of Australia or about the stupid and idiot things of Australia.  I must also ask, is there anyone who assess articles been involved in the ADF at all.
Pattav2 (talk) 02:51, 27 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles of importance 

message: Typhoon Elsie in the examples column links to Usain Bolt.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 118.210.76.41 (talk) 04:34, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typhoon Elsie 

message: There has been ongoing work on the Long Range Desert Group article, which is currently rated as start class; any takers for further assesment? TIA Minorhistorian (talk) 19:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: BTW I'm told that for some reason the bibliography has to be formatted using the cite book; can this be confirmed?Minorhistorian (talk) 19:44, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Long Range Desert Group 

message: Hi,
Is the a chance you could re-assess the Urrbrae Agricultural High School page as it is much more higher quality.
Regards,
Trustt-noo-1 (talk) 08:43, 27 June 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Urrbrae Agricultural High School 

message: In the last few days, the internet "address" of all of the digitized newspapers, etc. that are held by the National Library of Australia have changed their "address". Whilst the identification number of the passage remains the same, the "address" of the entire holding has changed. Is there someone available who has the skill and the time to create a BOT that changes the http://newspapers.nla.gov.au/ segment of all of these now obsolete addresses that are stored within Wikipedia articles to the correct http://trove.nla.gov.au/ ?  Lindsay658 (talk) 02:15, 19 November 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  National Library's Digitized Newspapers, etc. 

message: Announcing Smoke night an article on the 19th and early 20th century male only habit when Australian men would sit around in large groups and smoke tobacco.  They also might wear dinner suits, eat dinner together, watch a revue, or attend an Annual General Meeting.  I've exhausted my sources to hand, so if someone would like to add to the article (I'm aware that the Vic = NSW railway meeting had something of the sort, and that white collar unions in the 00s and 10s did these too.  Fifelfoo (talk) 03:30, 28 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Smoke night]] 

message: Change the STUB CLASS EXAMPLE, the current example is now START rated NickGibson3900 (talk) 04:42, 6 June 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change the STUB CLASS EXAMPLE