Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Archive 15

Using WP1.0 Bot to indicate GA status, remove GA from the assessment scale

I recently made this suggestion that we should phase out GA from the assessment scale, and instead use the bot to record whether or not an article is GA or not. The replies were - one strong support, one rather doubtful. We have had recurring questions that indicate that the GA level is an ongoing source of confusion - just a few examples are listed below:

• The discussion immediately prior to this one.
• Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#Order of_classes
• Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment#Article_progression from GA to A to FA.3F.3F.3F
• Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#Question_about_FA_downgrading
• Template_talk:Grading_scheme#Good_article_vs._A-class_article

The problem lies in the fact that GA is not typically something that is given by members of the project - it is by an external reviewer. As such it is not a natural part of the Stub/Start/B/A scale of progress - hence the confusion. Any GA-Class article could be equally well be tagged as B or A. FA does not suffer from this problem, even though it is also externally reviewed, because it is automatically higher than any other level. There is not the ambiguity or overlap found with the GA-Class level.

My proposal is as follows:

1. After discussion/agreement with folks at Good Articles, edit the GA talk page template so that it produces a category "GA articles". Create any other needed categories.
2. Get WP1.0 Bot to read this just like it reads articles for Version 0.5, and let it produce a (rather useless!) list called Good articles by quality or something like that. It's easiest just to let the bot do its thing!
3. WP1.0 Bot can then place a note "GA" in the "Versions" column of every "WikiProject Foobar articles by quality" list, just like it notes 0.5, etc. (see example). (It would've been better in the Comments column, but I don't think this is technically feasible).
4. Once this is established, we can abolish the GA level in the assessment scale, because it will become redundant. A project can see automatically which of their articles is a GA, and since this is tied to the GA template itself it will be more reliable/up-to-date than the current system. In other words, the project still has an external benchmark (this was the reason for adding the GA-Class level into the scheme originally). I don't want to force projects to stop using it immediately, rather we should (a) delete it from the standard assessment template and (b) encourage projects to actually assess the articles as A or B. (I suspect 95% or more will be A) We should leave the GA-Class template in existence, and still allow WP1.0 Bot to read it, but I think it will gradually fade away. In time we should be able to remove it from the statistics tables. This will remove a persistent source of confusion.
5. Meanwhile, there are great benefits to the GA project as well. They will get an update every night showing how many GAs there are, and for the first time they will have a log showing all of the changes to GAs (I have found at V0.5 this is very useful for catching talk page vandalism!).

Is this a viable solution? Or do most people prefer the way things are now? Walkerma 04:39, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

So, I guess you want the bot to read Category:GA articles in addition to reading each project's GA category, e.g., Category:GA-Class mathematics articles, then putting all that information into the "version" column. That should not be difficult to implement.

The problem is however that as soon as the bot stops treating "GA" as a rating, all those "GA-Class" articles will become "Unassessed-Class" articles and somebody needs to go through them and tag them to "A-Class" or "B-Class". That would be a lot of work and people at all projects need to be educated about it.

In short, the technical problems are solvable, as long as you can take care of everything else. Let's see also if people think that this change is worthwhile (I myself have no opinion). Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

You're right, projects would have to assess their GAs, and that's why we couldn't do this change overnight - there would have to be an announcement and a transition period. However, GAs account for only 1844 articles in total (some of those will be tagged as A anyway), and most projects only have a handful, so I don't think it's a big issue. Thanks, Walkerma 17:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I've been following some of this discussion for a while, and I think you should not implement this change with only one strong support vote. I strongly oppose the change in the scale as it is now. I understand the problem, but I think there are other solutions.

It is my understanding that the A-class is of particular interest to the projects because they can classify articles that are at a high level from an expert's viewpoint in this category. GA, on the other hand, certifies that the article is at an advanced level from a writer/editor viewpoint. So it would have to be insured that A-class always means high expertise (even if it were rated by a community process like GA and FA, as was suggested recently by Ideogram). As the situation is now, some people think GA interferes with the continual improvement process within a project, because an outsider reviews it. I for my part think it should be (or can be since it's optional) valuable for an expert to see what an outsider thinks and to have some guidance as to whether a person without the expertise can understand the article (no jargon is one of the GA criteria if I remember correctly). If you separate the GA - FA process from the experts creating along their scale (stub to class A), you are likely to end up with a perfect article that is understood mainly be insiders and experts, which then moves on to be reviewed and graded by proofreaders and lay-people. I am not sure if the outcome can be satisfactory to any of the participants. Isn't there an advantage to having the processes intertwined as they are? --Grace E. Dougle 17:04, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

I certainly wouldn't make try to force through a major change like this without getting a good deal of support. I agree with you that GAs provide a good "reality check" for projects, that's why I've always been a strong supporter of the GA concept. That's also why I want to see the letters "GA" appearing in project worklists. However, I don't think people nominate an article for GA in order to get an assessment grade for their WikiProject (though some may be looking for an independent review) - so I don't think it will affect GA nominations or "separate the GA process from the experts". There is not a scale going B → GA → A, these are apples and oranges, that is what we need people to understand. That's why ideas such as combining A and GA simply won't fly. You mention some alternative solutions to this problem - can you elaborate? Thanks, Walkerma 17:49, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Will we need a new page to handle logs for GA listing changes if this bot is implemented? Homestarmy 20:03, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

The bot generates it automatically, and it would look like this example. The bot also automatically generates the worklist and statistics table, and it gets updated every night. So if someone passes the article [[Foobar]] on the talk page, it will be added in by the bot that night and you would see on the log, "Foobar added" or similar. (It might be best to leave the GA template without a quality assessment in it, to avoid conflicts with WikiProject assessments.) Walkerma 22:42, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Um, Martin, don't be so quick to assume that WikiProjects don't send their articles to get an assessment only. For some projects (WP:TROP comes to mind), GA is perhaps the only external assessment that they can obtain, as peer review has been kind of useless to us. (See Wikipedia:Peer review/Hurricane Mitch/archive1 for a typical example.) Also, this pushes the "Is a GA an A-Class article" problem elsewhere, to WikiProjects, but doesn't really solve it. Also, GAs are not generally As; at least in my experience, GAs still need a significant amount of editing for accuracy and technical precision. So, I would oppose an elimination of the GA level from the assessment scale. Titoxd^(?!?) 03:16, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a very good idea. --Ideogram 23:33, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Agree that this is a positive change, though I don't agree with Walkerma that 95% or more existing GAs are really 'A-class' articles. IMO, GA reviews and reviewers are so widely variable that they're generally not useful even for getting an external assessment. Opabinia regalis 01:30, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Thirded. The exact specifics of how the existing GAs will be assessed can be worked out on a per-project basis (I suspect that the larger projects will go through them in rather more detail than the smaller ones); but the basic idea of getting GA status out of its bizarre placement in the assessment scale is one I've favored for a long time. Kirill Lokshin 05:44, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

OK, thanks to everyone for their comments. Although I see on balance some support towards a change, it is by no means unanimous, and the number of people commenting is limited compared to the numbers affected. There are (IMHO) enough people opposed to the idea that I think we shouldn't force it through. However, there are many benefits to the GA project if they adopt the bot for keeping track of things. If the folks at GA start using the bot, then I'll see if Oleg can make the change in code to insert "GA" into the tables automatically. If and when that is established, I may raise this idea again - I suspect others will raise it anyway, once they see redundancy in the tables. But until such time there is strong consensus in favor of removing the GA level from the scheme, I'm reluctant to make such a drastic change. Walkerma 06:38, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there something we need to do first to have the 1.0 Bot list GA things? Homestarmy 16:19, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

(Pull left.) I was very interested in this proposal until I saw they the GA category in the ratings would be abolished. The problem I have had recently is that there aren't enough categories to put articles in, especially for the Olympics project. I find that many articles aren't stubs because they're full of tables, etc, but have little to no writing, so they're really not Start-class. Then, with your proposal, there'd be a huge gap between the Start and B classes, and I think there's a big distinction between them. I suggest maybe putting into place another category if you take out GA, because it's very hard to categorize articles into 3-4 categories. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  18:07, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Removing GA won't change the gap between Start and B at all. Also, an article consisting of nothing but some tables and no prose is a stub. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:39, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant between B and A. It seems that taking out this category would only cause problems with those editors who like to benchmark articles. Taking this out leaves a huge gap between B and A, the two major categories split by the promotion into GA. Once an article is made B-class, it should be watched and carefully reviewed until it reaches the top at FA. Taking GA out of the assessment puts articles at "A" before they are even GA'd, which eliminates a huge portion of this review process. I think this should be reconsidered.

In regards to the table, in the Olympics context, most of our articles are tables because a lot of what we deal with is results, medals, etc. That said, yes, writing should be there, but I certainly have a hard time calling a long, detailed, sourced list a stub. By general definition I see what you're saying, but I think our project must slide the scale a little bit, and this causes problems. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  19:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I think this is a faulty comparison. GA never had anything to do with WikiProject and Release Version assessments to begin with; the B to A gap has actually been there the whole time and isn't actually changing. GA still exists and can be sought independently (which was already the case anyway, since WikiProject and the 1.0 Ed Team don't assign GA status). I.e., nothing's really changing, other than clarifying the lack of relationship between the Start-B-A scale and GA status. The assessment scale also does not include WP:PEER review, either. As for your olympic tables, I don't see what problem is being caused. If the article lacks basic features - even lists should have explanatory introductions, then it is indeed a stub. I think this is a different topic, though. I too have some issues with the current scale (I think B is too easy to achieve, and I think that copyvio doesn't prevent B status is a huge error), but it doesn't related to whether GA should be in the scale when it doesn't actually relate to these assessments. (And it doesn't; it's quote common for something to be assessed as A-Class which has not achieved GA yet, or to be rated a GA when it has no assessment at all, not even Start.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:52, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, fair enough. But couldn't we make this an opt in (opt out?) thing? This seems to be a big change to the wikiproject assessments, which most wikiprojects have. I'm not sure if removing the GA bar would be beneficial. I know for our project, I've been trying to get GAs recently so that we can see where we have to go next as far as bringing up articles. We have an overwhelmingly high number of stubs and starts (which again brings me to the conclusion that we need another category between those two) but little above that. I personally like this category, and I don't think that everyone should have to conform to it, at least not until we get a better consensus. I would be willing to consent to a trial of the proposal to see how it would run, though. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  21:04, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Wasn't my idea to begin with, so I won't defend it much further than I already have. I think the fact that the scale also doesn't include WP Peer Reviews is significant. The lack of it doesn't seem to cause any problems. I can't see any need, personally, for something between start and stub; I could see B becoming more stringent and there being a C occupying the spot B is at now. But really, "Stub" and "Start" aren't particularly different. Both of them mean "this article sucks, work on it", the latter simply implies "this article doesn't suck quite as much as a stub would". B basically means "this article doesn't suck, but isn't very good yet either", and A means "this article is just about ready for FA status". If anything is missing, it seems to be something between B and A. While I can see that some people believed that GA filled that gap, it actually didn't, and removal of GA just highlights that the scale may need a little work.  :-) PS: I don't think anyone is trying "impose" something on all the Wikiprojects, per se. It's just about changing the 1.0/Release Version scale. That has the trickledown effect that all the WPP scales have to change to, since they derive from this one, but that's just how it is, I guess. If the assessment scales were a WikiProject thing that 1.0 had adopted, the relationship would be the other way around. But the whole poing of WPP assessmen scales is to tie into 1.0, so they necessarily have to keep pace with 1.0 or they won't be serving their purpose any longer. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:13, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

(outdent) I like the bot idea in general. However, I am opposed to phasing out the GA status from the assessment scales. The arguments made above against its exclusion already state most of what I would say. I simply believe GA reviews to be a valuable tool in evaluating the actual usefulness of the article to a reader. Vassyana 00:12, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

But GAs already get flagged with nifty talk page templates of their own. GA status IS useful; the point is, in this topic and the like one below, that GA status doesn't actually relate in any meaningful way to WP1.0/RelVer and WikiProject assessments. I.e., no one is stabbing any kittens here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:06, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Then what leaves us from ruling out FA? That's pretty much the same idea as GA. It just wouldn't make sense to take one of them out, and not the other. And we certainly wouldn't want to take out FA. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  02:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Honestly, I wouldn't mind that either. There's no real connection between FA and WikiProject/1.0/RV assessments. It's entirely plausible that that an article could achieve FA (which is an independent process) while failing A-Class status, just because different sets of eyes and brains are examining it. I.e., no kittens would be stabbed by removing FA from the 1.0 assessment scale either. Mind you, I'm not advocating that. I think that we generally trust WP:FA to do a good job with assessments, and I think that most of us trust WP:FA to assess better than we trust random WikiProjects to do so. But I don't think that removing FA would do any actual violence to the assessment system. To me, once and article reaches FA, and is protected from boneheaded changes that endanger that status, the 1.0 assessment system is no longer of any particular relevance to that article at all. And FA's get their own nifty talk page banners too; they don't technically need to be flagged as FA by WikiProject banners. It's actually entirely redundant. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:46, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I would agree with pretty much SMcCandlish has said. (BTW, the B copyvio problem is something we could discuss later, I think, as copyvios are much less prevalent now than when the system was created) My perception is that although the weight of opinion is probably in support of this proposal, there is a significant minority who are strongly against. I wouldn't advocate riding roughshod over that, when there is no clear consensus to do so. I'm trying to get GAs set up with the bot at the moment, mainly because I think it would help the GA project itself, and if we get GAs autolisted by the bot that will help everyone. Once that becomes established, we can see once again if we can get a clear consensus to eliminate GA from the scale. In the meantime, I think that (as with importance) we can make the whole thing optional - in other words, some projects may choose not to use it, but that is entirely their decision after a vote of their own. Walkerma 06:17, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Assistance needed

Can someone inspect the link below? The page, although done by a bot, is messed up for some reason; http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Album_articles_by_quality/37&oldid=110517893 —The preceding unsigned comment was added by LuciferMorgan (talk • contribs) 22:57, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

Something in Talk:Vicious Delicious/Comments is messing it up, but I can't figure out what... Titoxd^(?!?) 22:59, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

That something was the assessment

{{Album
|class=Stub
|importance=
}}

which really had no reason to be on Talk:Vicious Delicious/Comments , as that's a comment page. I cut it out and now things are back to normal. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:00, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Biography articles by quality statistics modification request

I am one of the three editors running the present Biography articles assessment drive. As the present drive is reducing the number of unassessed biography articles, Kingbotk's tagging is increasing the number of unassessed biography articles (as the drive recently discoved). Keeping track of the number of unassessed biography articles for the drive has resulted in a motivational setback because the drive's gains on unassessed biographies have been set back by Kingbotk's tagging. To measure the drive's progress as a way of providing motivation to continue participating in the drive, we would like to keep track of the number of assessed biography articles. Would you please modify the Biography articles by quality statistics template to also present the number of assessed biography articles (e.g., total Biography articles minus number of unassessed articles). Thanks. -- Jreferee 05:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I could add such code to the bot, but it will then cause the statistics tables for all other wikiprojects to have that row of assessed articles. I could enable it only for the biography project, but I am very reluctant to make any changes to the code specific for any project (since there are more than 400 projects, and my code needs to be kept simple so that people translating it to other languages won't have trouble understanding it).

In short, I think your request should be satisfied in some other way than directly modifying the table. Perhaps one of you could write a simple bot which will read the statistics table, subtract from the total number the number of unassessed articles, and write that number somewhere else where you guys could see it easily. What do you think? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Can somebody point me towards the discussion....

Apparently, many empty categories are being deleted. Normally, I would be fine with this but many are placeholders for various WikiProjects. You can see the list at User:Betacommand/Datadump/To be Deleted. As you can see there are many unassessed categories, A class, FA class categoriy, etc in there. Is it a problem for these to remain? Was there a discussion about this deletion that I missed? Thanks in advance.↔NMajdan•talk 20:01, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh my! That was definitely a very bad idea on the part of whoever deleted those. Kirill Lokshin 21:50, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so it wasn't discussed. We probably should take action so they are not deleted again.↔NMajdan•talk 17:05, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Nevermind, I see you already have. Thank you!↔NMajdan•talk 17:07, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Its happened again.↔NMajdan•talk 14:08, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

New assesment

Hey. I just started up Wikipedia:WikiProject Electronics/Assessment. Can you please set up whatever else is needed. Thanks  :) Joe I 00:03, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

It looks like you've got everything you need, now just wait for the bot to automatically add the project to Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index. It should happen within the next two days. - Trevor MacInnis (Contribs) 00:56, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Great, thanks. Joe I 01:02, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

Changing the assessment scale

Since the addition of GA, the A-grade seems to be a rather un-needed level. Most articles goes straight from GA to FA, without landing on A in between. I suggest firstmost to remove the A-level from the assessment scale. But by doing that, the B-level seems to be rather strange, as then it's the only level that is defined by a letter only, so I also suggest to rename that level into something else. Suggested renaming could be "Ok", "Mid", "Standard" or "Well"

The resulting scale would then be: Stub → Start → Okay → Good → Featured. _→AzaToth 01:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

This has been discussed many, many times now; the upshot is that (a) there's a strong consensus against removing A-Class, as the projects can't actually use GA-Class as an assessment level, and (b) there's a practical effort being undertaken to remove GA-Class from the scale entirely now. Kirill Lokshin 02:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

On that last point (b), I should clarify that we didn't get unanimous support for removing GA from the scale, but I think we plan to discourage use of the GA level where possible. We also plan to flag GAs automatically in the tables, so you can see that this A-Class article in the list is a GA, but this other one is not. On that note, I have been working on a template, so as to get the GA project using the bot. Note that the template does NOT have the class parameter (is this unique?), but it does include the category parameter like {{V0.5}}, since GA uses these same categories. The main thing it should do is to place things into the oxymoronic Category:GA-Class good articles (to keep WP1.0 Bot happy), as well as the main GA category; at present these cats have a colon in front, until I take the template out of my sandbox. Could someone knowledgable at templates (Kirill, Titoxd?) take a look over my crude cut & paste job for the GA project here? Thanks, Walkerma 03:18, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

NB: That's a redundancy, not an oxymoron; "GA-class stubs" or "Stub-class Good Articles" would be oxymora. :-) Anyway, I don't see any problem at all with removing GA from the assessment scale, since the two are not really related, other than it will take a lot of cleanup work - every article GA-rated by a WikiProject banner will need to instead be not-actually-downgraded to B-Class (or genuinely-upgraded to A-Class, if one is willing to do a close assessment and the article warrants the A rating), and then tagged with a GA header if not already so-tagged (either directly or in that new article history template that is making the rounds). An alternative that I don't think anyone has proposed before would be to fork GA into a "general" Wikipedia-wide GA assessment process at WP:GA and a new aspect that also empowers WikiProjects to do equivalent GA assessments, possibly obviating the need for A-Class to exist any longer, and with WP:GA able to countermand any WikiProject-assigned GA rating if the GA criteria were not actually met. I'm not proposing that, I'm just saying it is a possibility worth looking at and either discussing in depth for possible implementation, or consensus-rejecting (for) now "on the record", since it would almost certainly come up later anyway. I don't think this is WP:BEANS, as the "authority" of WikiProjects is growing all the time, and they are focusing more and more on assessments and ratings (cf. the rather new branch of the V1.0 Ed Team specifically about how WikiProjects tie in and assess importance/priority level, not to mention the near-Policy level of SfD, to which even CfD defers when it comes to stub categories, which was generated by WikiProject Stub sorting); if it's not discussed now it will still have to be at some point. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:36, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

PS: Category:GA-Class good articles is a redlink. Did it get moved, or did you mean something else? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:53, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for correcting my English - correctly right! Yes, the proposed cat is a red link, because I won't create it until the template goes "live" (ie., after people have checked it). Thanks for your thoughtful comments. Walkerma 21:58, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, I used the bot to create Category:GA-Class Good articles et al. The template looks ok, for the most part, although I'll tweak a thing or two. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I just found a typo, and that was pretty much it. It should work ok now. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:38, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

WikiReaders for the English Wikipedia?

After discussing Wikipedia:WikiReaders on a WP 1.0 IRC recently, Titoxd recently posted a nice blog on Wikireaders that appeared on Planet Wikimedia. In this he throws down the gauntlet - can we make Wikireaders on en, as the de:Wikipedia:WikiReader Germans have done? I think this is definitely possible. We may need to locate a suitable publisher, but other than that I don't see any major hurdles. We have enough people and infrastructure here at the 1.0 project to handle this. I would suggest the following:

1. Set up a WikiReaders subproject here at 1.0
2. Solicit suggestions from WikiProjects (WP:WVWP may be able to help with this).
3. Work with the relevant wikiproject(s) to put together at least one collection as a "demo".
4. Show the demo around some publishers till we find a suitable publisher of paper. (Maybe approach the German publishers too.) I would suggest focusing our efforts on small publishers, they are much more open to this (they stand to gain a lot of publicity).

I think it would be great to be producing CDs, DVDs and real books from this project - that was what the 1.0 project was originally conceived to be about. Walkerma 22:32, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I think #1 is as close to a "must" as there could possibly be. Again, the second point I brought up at Planet Wikimedia is that many users don't know they can make WikiReaders, but most importantly, they don't know how. One question, though: how large should a potential reader be? I mean, do we want things to be 10 pages, or do we want them to be in the order of magnitude of 100? 500? 1,000?

I ask because my dream as a member is to see a bunch of dead bark on a shelf, open it, and say, "I wrote that sentence." I imagine most people want to do the same too. It is much more feasible to print something as a WikiReader than to print the entire encyclopedia, for both legal (who wants to take the risk?) and practical (who wants to print 1.7 million articles?) reasons. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:48, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I have been meaning to get publish LGBT articles in Wikireaders for a while now, but got distracted by plans for an LGBT textbook on Wikibooks. However, if you want to use WP:LGBT as a starting ground (maybe by publishing all the Homosexuality and religion articles? They're a fairly well defined, broad series), I am happy to throw myself into it and haul the project along behind me if you would like. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 12:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Version 0.5 going on sale next week!

Assuming there are no last minute hitches, the Wikipedia:Version 0.5 CD should be going on sale on March 26 at www.wikipediaondvd.com for around 10 Euros/$US13-14 (a portion goes to the Foundation). It will also be made available for free download. It consists of 1964 articles and a set of navigation pages, with an open source (GPL) search engine, Kiwix, developed by Linterweb. We now have an ongoing collaboration with Wikimedia France, and User:Kelson wrote many of the scripts for Version 0.5. This CD will make a great birthday present for your loved one! Walkerma 05:54, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! :-) Kirill Lokshin 11:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It looks now like March 30, but that's looking pretty certain. Walkerma 09:18, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Great 164.116.80.114 18:19, 26 March 2007 (UTC) (I am eyu100)

Out of curiosity, how is this going to be advertised to the Wikipedia (and larger Wikimedia) community? This is an issue that has been raised on Wikibooks in the past, and unfortunately has not really been resolved. And it has been something that I have tried to tread very lightly around on proposals to build a for-profit publication, even if a major (even if nearly all) portion of the profits go to the WMF. IMHO letters in the various mailing lists is tantamount to commercial spam, and links on prominent pages of this project is also nearly identical to a form of commercial advertising as well.

I think if this were done directly by a local chapter, some of the advertising issues could be mitigated, or if some sort of "official" or even semi-endorsed arrangement with the WMF were to happen it might be possible. I guess I'm trying to say that this could be one very hot firestorm of trouble if you are not careful here with what you are doing, particularly since this website, "wikipediaondvd.com" is clearly using WMF trademarks, including the Wikipedia logo. The WMF did a DMCA take down notice when we tried this on Wikibooks. Don't say I didn't warn you, but this is going to be something absoutely huge on controversy if you aren't very, very careful here. And I'm not the one to convince either. --Robert Horning 00:52, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your concern. Don't worry, it's all official, the WMF is very much aware of the release. We have been keeping WMF informed throughout most of the process. A legal agreement was signed between Linterweb and the Foundation to allow use of the logo. The Foundation will also be issuing a press release about Version 0.5, even though this release has been totally produced by the wikicommunity and Linterweb. Note also that the collection will be made available for free download, and entire release is open source. Cheers, Walkerma 01:13, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Not sure if this happened just today, but on http://www.wikipediaondvd.com/ , you can browse the selected articles as they appear on the CD. It's going a little slow and I'm sure it'll go down if Digg or Slashdot link to it. The DVD won't be sold until April 3, because of an "information systems issue". It doesn't say if the free downloadable CD will be released today. Mahanga^{Talk to me} 17:14, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

There is another last-minute delay. The bank has not managed to set up the financial side of the online payment system, and the bank is not working on Monday (public holiday), so Pascal believes (hopes) the release will be on Tuesday April 3. See the website for more information. I think everything else is ready - the website is very bare-bones, but it's functional, and there is a very nice online browsable version (a great idea I think!). Once the bank gets things sorted, we'll be in business. Thanks for your patience! Walkerma 18:50, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Seeing as how it is Wednesday in France and evening in the U.S., I'm left wondering, where is the DVD? Mahanga^Talk 23:03, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks as if they are still waiting for the bank. I have been assured that the bank is the only thing we're waiting for. I'll give them a ring. Walkerma 13:18, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Stubs

How do we rate stub articles which have absolutely no scope of expansion? For example Guz is an obvious stub, without much chance of expansion, but for the topic it covers it can be rated as a class B too. (relatively speaking) =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:28, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

In general, stubs with no potential for expansion are good merge candidates, which solves the problem rather neatly. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 17:20, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Template help

Hey, would someone mind looking over {{WikiProject Indiana}} for me. Right now it doesn't include the dab, list, template, portal, image or cat classes. I have used those with the template on pages, but then it asks for an importance rating, which all but the list don't need. I tried updating it the way I know how(I'm very non-template knowledgeable) but I think the comment section was screwing me up. Anyways, would appreciate the help, thanks. Joe I 04:22, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment help

I am trying to set up assessment for my project but am having trouble understanding what i am doing. Are there any instructions on how to do this? Simply south 19:25, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Using the bot is a good place to start. Do you have your WikiProject template set up to accept ratings? I can create the categories for you using the bot, if you'd like. Mahanga^{Talk to me} 20:07, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm currently experimenting right now via a user sub-page on the WPTIS Banner. Simply south 20:12, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Version 0.5 now released!

Version 0.5 is now for sale at http://www.wikipediaondvd.com. The pricing is as follows:

• US: $13.90 + $1.54 shipping = $15.44
• Canada: CN$16.10 +$1.10 shipping = CN$17.20
• UK: UKP7.04 + UKP1.54
• Germany: E10.40 + E2.25 = E12.66
• Aussies, Kiwis and others will unfortunately have to order in Euros or US$, but the shipping to anywhere outside North America is a flat $US3.01 or E2.25.

For some reason the site doesn't like Mastercards, but I successfully bought two using my Visa. Please give us your feedback - remember this is our alpha test run, so we want to learn from our mistakes! Walkerma 20:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I suppose this should be the place for discussion about the release, since the project page has information about offline releases in general. Like I said on WP:0.5, good work everyone! I added an image of the software used, Kiwix to the project page. I'm going to post an announcement on the Community Portal. Has Wikipedia issued a press release (are they?) Mahanga^Talk 20:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

The press release is going out on Monday. The WMF thought Friday afternoon (night in Europe/Asia) would be a bad time for a press release, I think that's valid. It's only a limited press release, since it's only a test release, so don't expect to see this on CNN or the BBC. Thanks for your work. Mahanga! Walkerma 21:05, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

• What costs does the payment cover? Does any of the money go to any third party? Delta Tango • Talk 03:42, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Great! But why are there external links? Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 14:35, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

The cost covers the pressing of the CD, some of the development cost for the Kiwix reader software, as well as a contribution (around E1.50 I think) goes to the foundation. The external links go to the website selling the CDs, and to the Kiwix wiki where the software is managed. The site is expected to be multilingual, as they hope to do releases in English, French and many other languages. Walkerma 05:38, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

The website is now back up again. Walkerma 14:36, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Congrats Wikipedia for this release.  :) Samboy 17:59, 25 July 2007 (UTC)

500 WikiProjects

There are now more than 500 WikiProjects participating in the assessment program and over 765,000 articles tracked by these projects. I think that's great and felt that needed some exposure. :) Mahanga^Talk 05:25, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Stats

How can I get a chart like this for WP:WPChi? Please reply to my talk page if possible. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 21:14, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

You have it right here. :) Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Chicago_articles_by_quality_statistics Mahanga^Talk 00:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Some more good news

Mahanga has rightly pointed out (just above) the recent milestone in getting 500 projects or teams involved in the assessment scheme. We now have another big milestone reached - half a million articles assessed (see April 19th statistics). When you remember that these assessments are not done by the bot, but by the sweat of human toil, that represents a truly great accomplishment. We also need to say a huge THANK YOU to all of the people who have put in thousands of person hours of time. From our side, we need to make sure that we make good use of the metadata productively in our next release. Martinp23 tells me that the toolserver should be fixed very soon (that's what he was told, anyway!) and then he will be able to get this new bot work underway (please give us input & ideas). I believe this next step will really demonstrate the huge power of the metadata we now have at our fingertips, and provide us with a scalable way to assemble large releases quickly and on an ongoing basis.

As if that wasn't exciting enough, our fairly low key announcement of our test CD, Version 0.5, did generate some media attention. This is excellent news for the 1.0 project - I think the first time we have made it into a major news network - and I hope that it will bring in more interested people to help us for the next releases. By the way, they did rather exaggerate my academic standing, IM(H?)O, please laugh when you read it! Walkerma 15:17, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

That's great! Oh and regarding mention on the BBC... just as I expected. ;) Mahanga^Talk 23:25, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I read that this team reviewed the Ghengis Khan article... why didn't they edit it? It reads like it was written by fourth graders. Really, are they the reason Wikipedia is such a joke? That the writings of adolescents are making the cut, and wikipedia teams don't have the knowledge to improve it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.166.83.175 (talk • contribs)

I believe it was the importance of the article and not the quality of the article that got it included in the 0.5 release. Also keep in mind this is a test release; we're working on not getting comments like this from people. JoeSmack ^Talk 12:37, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

The article is also well referenced and pretty comprehensive, and it only needs copyediting in places - that's why it's a B, not an FA. Please can you improve the English, 75.166.83.175, so we have a better version for our next release? Walkerma 13:12, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi, congratulations for your very efficient assessment team ! About the CD, I would ask if someone can post a news on Slashdot, which is the most famous tech~. news site in english ? Best regards Kelson 14:27, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Slashdot link Wow, I'm surprised they accepted my submission. I'm even more surprised no one had submitted the story until I did it. I'm glad it's led to more coverage in the news and I hope we can take make use of their feedback. Mahanga^Talk 02:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

It's also made most of the newspapers in the US and a few places elasewhere, and some online places too:

• New York Times
• Washington Post
• San Francisco Chronicle
• USA Today
• Taipei Times
• Sydney Morning Herald

• Yahoo
• MSNBC
• CNet
• Fox
• tech.co.uk
• tech.co.uk
• WebPro News (this one's quite amusing!)

Now the onus is on us to continue to deliver! Walkerma 05:53, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

robust class statisitcs

Is it possible to add rows for Category:Disambig-Class_Chicago_articles, Category:Category-Class Chicago articles and Category: Template-Class Chicago articles to the template output? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:29, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

How do I get the bot to generate statistics?

Will Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Bus transport articles by quality statistics be created automatically now that WikiProject buses exists? Or do I need to add it somewhere? --NE2 18:37, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

As long as all of the categories are in place, this page (and the log) should appear automatically once the bot does its cycle. One or two things need a couple of cycles, it seems, and the bot now has so many articles to trawl through it takes a couple of days to do one cycle. But you should see it appear soon! If this stays red, I'll take a look into the problem for you. Thanks for using the bot! Walkerma 02:55, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you, or whoever is pesponsible, for making the bot! --NE2 06:38, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

your logo

Since you are useing it on wikipedia pages a version without the globe is needed since the globe is not free.Geni 21:25, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain exactly what you're referring to? If you mean the CD (Version 0.5), the browser has the logo, but the articles don't, and the browser has a GPL licence. The articles themselves don't carry the globe logo. Linterweb has signed an agreement for the legal use of the globe logo within these Wikipedia releases. You can download this from wikipediaondvd.com for free, or obtain it via BitTorrent. Is there something else you're concerned about? Please let us know, Walkerma 02:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I mean Image:WP1 0 Icon.png that appears on a bunch of talk page headers.Geni 03:19, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

I think we checked into this last year - you can see the "discussion" by scrolling down in the image file to see all of the details listed there. I'll check that we're all above board, I think we did get permission to use it online, but I'll make sure. Thanks, Walkerma 04:06, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Apparently, some people are under the impression that the Wikipedia globe can't be used on Wikipedia, because it's not a freely licensed image... ;-) Kirill Lokshin 11:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

That would be corrct yes. Certianly it's use should be kept to an absolute minium thus a globe free logo is required. If you have any ideas I may be able to help with them although my GIMP-fu isn't brilliant.Geni 14:40, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

The licence for Wikimedia logos is anyone, anywhere is allowed to use them if it is for the purposes of promoting Wikimedia projects, AFAIK. So it's not a problem. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 06:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

yes that is a problem since that a)doesn't allow derives and b) doesn't allow for other uses. Both are a required part of a lisence being considered free. The globe is non free and should non be used on wikipedia in this context.Geni 18:18, 6 May 2007 (UTC)

Changing terms from importance to priority

I was wondering what it would take to change a WikiProject's assessment term categories from Importance to Priority. Several members of WP:PUR were suggesting changing the term to Priority because it emphasizes the nature of the assessment project, and is less confused with the "importance" of a certain subject outside of WP:1.0. I know we would have to change Category names and such, but what about the template and the articles which have already received an importance assessment? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated. - Mtmelendez ^{(Talk|UB|Home)} 02:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Several other projects do this, and I think the term "priority" is a good one. The Biography WikiProject seems to use priority, and a smaller project using it is Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cheshire/Assessment. The only thing you can't change is the way the bot is written - it uses the word "importance" in the stats tables etc, and in the top level categories. I think what you CAN change are:

• The template wording - just change the word importance to priority throughout.
• If you do that, you will see the categories generated will have names like "Top priority Puerto Rico articles" instead of Category:Top-importance Puerto Rico articles. That should be fine, I don't think the bot cares. See Category:Top-priority Cheshire articles as an example.
• Once you've created those categories, be sure to put them into the relevant general categories - these will need to use the word importance for the bot to read them, for example the above would go into Category:Top-importance articles and Category:Puerto Rico articles by priority.
• Place Category:Puerto Rico articles by priority into Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments and it should work.

Once the template has been changed, the old importance categories will become empty and can be deleted. Good luck! Walkerma 03:15, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Excellent! I'll try to get started soon. Thanks for the help. - Mtmelendez ^{(Talk|UB|Home)} 03:45, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, as far as the bot is concerned, you could as well call them even "Top-XXX articles" (no, here XXX is not a placeholder, but the real thing :) The bot ignores everything beyond the "Top" word. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:59, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Contributors?

Isn't distributing a CD or DVD of Wikipedia without providing a list of contributors a violation of the GFDL? Just asking. —Chowbok ☠ 22:39, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Just as well there's a list of contributors then, isn't it. :) Speaking of which I have no idea how I ended up so high on it, I don't typically edit Core articles... Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 06:56, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Ah, thanks, I didn't see that before. Still, that's a pretty awful way of doing it. I have two complaints, one simple to fix, one less so. First, using spaces as delimiters is confusing, since Wikipedia allows usernames with spaces in them. If "Joe Schmoe" has contributed, how do you know it's not just two users, Joe & Schmoe? In future releases, can we at least have bullets in between usernames?

More importantly, shouldn't the names be linked to the articles they contributed to? Isn't the spirit of the GFDL, at least, that people be credited specifically for their work? Having it in a big gob like this seems to go contrary to that. And what if people want to copy articles from the DVD? The GFDL says they have to credit the contributors. If all they have is the DVD, won't that mean that they have to reprint that entire huge page of names even if all they're using is the entry on Moles?

If there's a better place I should be asking these questions, please let me know. Since some of my contributions (no clue which ones) were used on the 0.5 CD, I think I have some standing to ask this. —Chowbok ☠ 16:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

For Version 0.7 we expect to have a better way of doing this. That's why this version was just a small volume test release - we have to how to do all these sorts of things. If you're experienced with script-writing, we'd love to recruit you to help us work on this! We'll definitely incorporate your suggestion on spaces, a very good point. Walkerma 04:21, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Reporting bugs in 0.5 CD

This is a great project, and I wish I could contribute in a major way, but I really only have time to report bugs that I happen across. Is there a place where bug reports can be dropped off? Thanks! Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 05:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

We'd love to have you report bugs - so I started a new page for doing this. Let's hope it doesn't get too long... Thanks a lot! Walkerma 06:06, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! I only have a couple to report now, and it was in one article I quickly reviewed. Stevie is the man! ^{Talk • Work} 17:25, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

You people are a joke. You reviewed Dostoevsky, but didn't notice the claim his name is derived from Dostojewsky? You people should all be fired, you're a disgrace to knowledge, fuck you all, you're a bunch of idiots.

Thank you for trolling. Have a nice day. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 17:54, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

sales stats

Will we ever find out how many DVDs are sold through [[1]]? -Ravedave 03:37, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Eventually, I think we will, yes, but probably not any time soon. Walkerma 04:14, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious, did the press release ever come to be? Link? Mahanga^Talk 07:49, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I thought people here had all seen the press release! I apologize if I didn't made it clear. It was this press release that led to the surge of media interest a couple of weeks back. Before that went out, there was nothing beyond a couple of blog posts. It indicates the importance of working with the Foundation! Apologies, Walkerma 03:06, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Foo articles by quality

Is there some guideline that suggests foo should be a non-controversial term? -- Cat ^chi? 00:11, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Foo should simply be the name of the responsible WikiProject; there's not supposed to be any additional alteration involved. Kirill Lokshin 00:29, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

The use of iTar random access compression

I made a very good random access compression, and a system for viewing such files and very fast (almost instant fuzzy search) it's very fast (in C and Python)

I think, we can use it, see www.thwab.net/index-en.html see the Screenshots

English documents are in the src file found on downloads thwab-lib.tar.bz2

contact me on alsadi on google mail you know AT what DOT what —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Errormsg (talk • contribs) 11:36, 8 May 2007 (UTC).

This is interesting, but we are not anywhere near publishing Version 0.7. Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 16:24, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to post here, but I did point out this proposal to our developers; I'm not sure if they contacted you or not. Thanks for the pointers. Walkerma 04:04, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Scope for Version 0.7

I have initiated a discussion on the scope of Version 0.7 here, please leave your comments on that page. Walkerma 03:03, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

IRC meeting to discuss Version 0.7

Now that the dust is beginning to settle after Version 0.5, we need to discuss direction and new developments for Version 0.7. All team members are welcome to participate. The French developers & publishers will be there.

Date

Sunday, 27th May

Time

1700h UTC (1pm US Eastern time, 1900h CET, 1800h British Summer Time)

Channel

#wikipedia-1.0

Help?

If you need help getting set up on IRC contact User talk:Walkerma or other team members.

Proposed agenda

1. Approx timeline to release
2. Upgrades to Kiwix
3. The new Linterweb search engine
4. MartinBotII and reviewing for V0.7.
5. Navigation pages - can we write them with a script or bot crawling through categories?
6. Quick update on the French Version 0.5 (if time)
7. Scripts we need to write or refine (if we have time)
8. Advertising & distribution (if we have time)
9. Scope for v0.7
10. (add more if you wish)

Attending

• Walkerma 17:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
• Kelson 12:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
• Nytux 16:44, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Pmartin76 17:23, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Martinp23 18:36, 22 May 2007 (UTC)
• Nominaladversary 00:01, 23 May 2007 (UTC) -- Start without me if I am not present.
• JoeSmack ^Talk 03:38, 23 May 2007 (UTC)
• Ozgod
• Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 03:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)
• Doc Strange 13:41, 25 May 2007 (UTC) -- I may not have access to a computer at 1:00 exactly, start without me if i'm not present.
• Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:42, 27 May 2007 (UTC) - I'll try to wake up (10am, local hour), but start without me if not present.

Good Articles again

The discussion on how, and whether it is posssible, to fix GA has restarted. Please come help at Wikipedia talk:Good articles. The discussion has revealed widely different views of where GA's threshold should lie, ranging from a merger with FA to a mark of minimally acceptable articles. Such a varying standard should not be part of the grading scheme. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:41, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Is it possible to merge A and GA class? DrKiernan 09:42, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Anything is possible. Unfortunately, in general usage, the two grades have different criteria for inclusion, so it would probably be some time before any such merger would take place. I know some projects are trying to create a separate, directly project-given "A" class rating, like WikiProject Biography and WikiProject Military history, and there is some talk about basically removing the GA class altogether in some circles. But, again, I wouldn't expect anything to develop along these fronts anytime soon. John Carter 15:10, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, finally I may be somewhere where suggestion may be taken for real.
Since you are here to produce something, and are largely dependent on the quality of the product, that being articles, then why is there no article for Article Structure?
This lack of article structure creates by far the most problems in Wikipedia because it does not focus editors who often have only fragmentary knowledge of their contribution on the actual discrete part of the articles.
Then lack of structure also means that conflicting contributions create editing wars which sap the strength of the editors and administrators alike.

What I'd like to propose is that rather then have articles created in free-hand or freehand(?), the article should be created from start with a template that requires the editor to assess their own ability to contribute by presenting them with the options of creating:
a) an introductory section which covers the subject in general terms,
b) an advanced or more sophisticated section which expands on the general terms and adds general detail, and
c) a third section which requires expert knowledge contributions with hard facts.
Each section can be given a quality tolerance rating. In addition the expert section can not contain any unreferenced sentences, and only contributors to this section can participate in writing an article conclusion or summary (fourth section). Other templates may be created for specific field of knowledge articles that assist in structuring content. Its really just like in urban planning, architecture and building. If people are allowed to build anywhere and without consideration for the safety of designs and materials used, invariably you will find yourself in the middle of a shanty town which is neither good for Wikipedia nor for the editing expereince.
Of course "Rome was not built in one day" either, and also started with a fight :) --Mrg3105 (talk) 12:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Importance (or priority) ratings

Together with others at WikiProject Mathematics, I have been trying to refine the notion of importance or priority for rating articles. In doing so, I have noticed a few problems with the descriptors at Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic. The main problem is that importance is described in different ways at the different levels.

• Top priority describes how important it is for an encyclopedia to have an article on the topic (although I'm not quite sure what a "must-have for a print encyclopedia" means).
• High and Mid priority describe how important the topic is in terms of its contribution to knowledge (in its field, presumably)
• Low priority is described in terms of the impact of the topic beyond its speciality (very little in this case).

The second issue is that the Low importance description is slightly dismissive, while the Mid importance criterion is not sufficiently robust. In combination, these two difficulties tend to encourage too many articles to be assessed as Mid importance, and not enough as Low importance. This is exacerbated by the use of the term "importance" instead of "priority" (which I know has been discussed previously here): no one wants to rate an article in their favourite field as "Low importance".

At Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance, an attempt is being made to clarify these issues. In our importance table, we have separated out the three ways of describing importance, and also beefed up the Mid importance description a little bit. I thought people here might find this interesting, or would like to comment. For related discussions, see also the project talk page. Geometry guy 10:16, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Flagged revisions

The flagged revisions proposal is currently being discussed - I urge members of our team to review this and leave comments if you feel you can contribute to the debate. This is a new variant of the stable versions idea that were announced by Jimmy Wales (for the German Wikipedia, at least) in August 2006 at Wikimania. It involves a change in the Wikimedia software to allow for a particular version of an article to be "flagged" as unvandalised and in reasonable shape.

This change, if implemented, would have profound implications for our project. For Version 0.5, when we performed the final dump of articles for a release we had to (a) try to locate a reliable version of each article (usually the last version by an established registered editor), (b) run a series of script to try and find problems such as profanities. I had to personally check 2400 examples of possible profanities/shoutouts found in 2000 articles, this took quite a while. Our next release is supposed to be 30,000 - I will probably be swearing at my children by the time I reach the end, if I have to do it all! This system would release us from doing much of this - work which is helpful for the online version as well, IMHO. Critics are mainly concerned that it would discourage anonymous edits, and possibly lead to elitism. There is also some debate about how much would be simple vandalism checking and how much would be a more thorough quality assessment.

One thing this change offers us - if it is trustworthy - is the possibility of updatable (is that a word?) releases, in two senses of the "word". This could mean (for example) that if the Tropical Cyclones project works with us to release a collection of articles on tropical cyclones, we/they could easily update it every year (including any major new storms) and make it an annual new release. The second meaning would be a dynamic release, whereby we could do regular (monthly?), ongoing updates of our releases, and someone who had bought or downloaded Version 0.7 could go to the internet and get an update to that set of articles. Currently such updates would be a lot of work - checking 30,000 articles ourselves every month would be a nightmare.

Please take a look at this. Thanks, Walkerma 02:54, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Update did not occur

Can you tell me why the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality log and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality statistics have not updated in 4 days. They usually go 2 days at most. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:25, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

This may be due to a bug in query.php which is currently being investigated, but I only know this from this discussion. Geometry guy 19:42, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Saints's totals haven't been updated since the 4th. Any ideas of how to proceeed? John Carter 00:13, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I suggest patience. I believe the bug with query.php has now been fixed: at least the math tables are now back to normal. WP 1.0 bot does not run so often, and may need time to catch up. Geometry guy 01:10, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The Chicago articles are not updating again. TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 15:14, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

On June 16 Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality log without updating the table Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality statistics. TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

These days the Wikipedia server behaved badly, maybe that's the cause. The bot has some protection against that, but not if the server is down for a while. You can always rerun the bot using the online tool.

If this issue happens often, it may need closer investigation. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:05, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

It happened again. It has not updated since July 4th.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:32, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

That is discussed at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Work_via_Wikiprojects#LGBT_Log_page_not_updating.3F. It is a recent bug which I fixed in the meantime. The log is updating now. Thanks for noticing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:21, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments subpages

People here, who I believe use the comments subpages a fair amount, may want to comment at Template_talk:WPBiography#Proposed_template_change and WP:BOTREQ#WikiProject_Biography_Comment_Moving where the comments subpage code and category code was removed from the WPBiography template and a botrequest (later denied because other wikiprojects use the comments pages) was made to copy the comments subpage to the talk pages and delete the comments subpages. What is probably needed is to make that bit of the coding optional. If anyone here knows who originally wrote that coding, I'd be grateful, as the removal of the code may have had some unexpected side effects. I personally don't support the changes, especially not done so quickly without more discussion. The background seems to be that the assessment drive led to some requests for comments, so removing the comments page removes the need to leave comments. I think a more graceful solution is needed rather than simply removing the system altogether (at least for WPBiography). Any advice or ideas? Carcharoth 10:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't see the problem people have with leaving comments. It isn't compulsory, but surely it is a good idea to at least sign and date a new or updated project rating. I have commented further at Template_talk:WPBiography#Proposed_template_change, but editors more generally might like to know that at WikiProject Mathematics we now use /Comments pages to automatically generate many lists of articles and comments to help editors to find articles needing their input. Follow the navigation bar at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 if you'd like to see the results. Geometry guy 11:42, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

The comments pages are also trancsluded onto the bot maintained lists for other projects as well, though not many have extended it like the Mathematics project has. That looks good! Carcharoth 13:17, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I think quite a few projects use the comments sporadically (not as well as Math - but maybe that idea can spread); for example, chemistry often has comments on articles being "worked on." If people start deleting these comments, it could affect up to ~600 projects, I doubt they would want to see their work changed by an outsider. On this 1.0 project, we see the comments for all articles we plan to include on the DVD. I believe User:Kingboyk created this system originally, see here. Walkerma 19:34, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Category:Articles by quality COMMENT

Class with background
Portal
List
File
Disambig
Disambig
Category
Category
Template
Category:Classification templates

I've noticed some non-article pages (such as images, lists, disambigs...) are named for example Category:List-Class articles, IMO all these types should be moved to eg:Category:List-Class pages and acroos all wikiprojects, let's discuss --Andersmusician $ 02:03, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

See our improvement of such actions at Category:Non-article Peru pages --Andersmusician $ 02:03, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

CfD

Editors here may wish to comment at Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_June_14#Category:Good_articles_by_quality. Geometry guy 10:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Texas A&M

I am running the bot though are brand new wikiproject. it seems like the bot is unable to create an "&" symbol. it creates a page called "Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Texas A" I was wondering if you guys could take a look at our wikiproject to see what we are doing wrong. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:TAMU

I suspect that it may be the amphersand, it looks like everything else is OK. The bot can handle parentheses, but I seem to recall a similar problem to yours with a project name that had a / in it. Try changing the category names to have "and" in them, and see if that solves the problem. If you want technical input from Oleg (who wrote, runs and maintains the bot), post a message at Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0 Editorial Team/Index. Thanks for using the bot. Walkerma 03:56, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

I noticed this problem for a while. There is a bug in the package I use to upload things on Wikipedia (so the bug is not in my bot). I'll try to see if I can fix it in the next few days. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:57, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Oldag07 04:34, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Bob Dylan possible Vital Article?

There is discussion at the Talk:Bob Dylan page wondering about whether the article should be counted a vital article or not. Someone who knows more about the procedure for selection might want to leave a comment at Talk:Bob Dylan#Vital article?. Thank you. John Carter 13:48, 19 June 2007 (UTC)

I didn't know who Dylan was until I heard he won Asturias prize --Andersmusician $ 21:41, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Are there prizes for ignorance here, amazing to behold! :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 16:15, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

No, it's just people here come from many different cultures, social backgrounds and generations. Bob may not have had much impact in Peru. I see this in reviews here at 1.0, what one person regards as a major topic may be regarded as unimportant to someone else, that's why such things are vetted by several people. I agree that Bob is a household name in many households, particularly in the US and the UK, but not in all households in all countries. I might argue that Robert Burns Woodward, the greatest organic chemist (most organic chemists would agree) has had a greater impact on the world than Bob Dylan, but have you even heard of him? These things are very hard to judge. Cheers, Walkerma 16:54, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Keep in mind this is the english Wikipedia. I dare say there are probably articles that meet notability on en.wikipedia that don't in other languages, and vise versa. Anyways, i'm surprised he isn't listed as vital, I'll peek in. JoeSmack ^Talk 02:31, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Statistics bot for U2 project assessments...

I'm trying to set up the assessment department for the new Wikiproject U2. It's going OK except I am unsure about my progress in setting up the bot to update our statistics table. I have created this page and a table appears. However, I took this from the Indonesia project, and the numbers in the table still represent the stats for the Indonesia project. Am I on the right track? Do I have to wait for the bot to 'come past' or do i need to register somewhere?

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Merbabu 03:18, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Seems to be all set now. For future reference, you don't have to create the statistics page. You can use a bot to generate the categories and statistics page. It requires admin privileges, so you'll have to ask someone here to do it for you. Mahanga^Talk 04:41, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

But now that you did everything by hand, you can use this script to update the lists. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:14, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Many thanks - yeah, it seems to be fine now. Merbabu 05:23, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Philosophy articles selected for V0.7?

User:Atfyfe seems to have nominated and selected a large number of philosophy articles for inclusion in the release version here, stating that all 28 articles included in the {{Philosophy topics}} template, should be included. I'm not sure if that's really acceptable by procedure, though. Anyone who knows more about the nomination process is more than welcome to look into whether this was done in the approved manner. John Carter 17:28, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

What I'd like to do is to make that into a set nomination, since it clearly fits that definition. I'll try & do that soon, but my laptop is dead right now so my contributions are more limited right now. Walkerma 17:27, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Done. John Carter 18:24, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Polar Sun Synchronous Orbit

Just checking before deleting, but is this article not referring to the same thing as sun-synchronous orbit? Maury 16:00, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

assessment script hosting

Some time ago I developed this script to make user interaction with the assessment system simpler. I no longer wish to host this script under my user-space, and am looking for different ideas. user:kingboyk suggested to me, "Perhaps a better alternative might be to move it into Wikipedia: space or to "donate" it to the WP1.0 team?" Is the WP1.0 team interested in hosting it? I'm not sure of the logistics, but it seems to me that a javascript must be fully protected if it is going to sit in non-user space. (I am not sure if javascripts outside user space are "allowed" either.) Your thoughts are welcome. –Outriggr § 09:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, we would be happy to host it. I consider your Javascript tool one of the "highlights of 2007" for us, it's been a real boon for this project and for the WikiProjects. It'd be great if you could be available in case technical questions or suggestions arise. We'd need an admin to advise on the technical side, but I think the answer is yes, and thanks once more for your contribution. Walkerma 16:32, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

If it move, we could definitely full-protect it instantly. You probably could leave a redirect in place in your old userspace, just to not break things, though. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 00:56, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks--I'll let you know later in the month what I decide to do. –Outriggr § 04:25, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

The demand on maintaining this script has fallen off, so I think I'll leave it sitting where it is for now. –Outriggr § 07:55, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Links to categories on importance templates

To keep consistent between the quality and importance rankings, I think it would be nice to have the importance templates ({{Top-Class}}, {{High-Class}}, {{Mid-Class}}, {{Low-Class}}, and {{No-Class}}) link to their respective categories - like the quality templates. For example, {{A-Class}} displays A (note the link to Category:A-Class articles). Could someone with access please add these links for the importance templates (ie Top for {{Top-Class}})? Thanks. --Scott Alter 04:59, 9 July 2007 (UTC)

Glitch

Why didn't this edit show up anywhere at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality log?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:47, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Because the log generation was broken for a few days. That was discussed somewhere above, and is fixed now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:03, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Gerald Gardner included in a release?

I see on the Talk:Gerald Gardner page that the article has been reviewed by us, but it gives no indication of whether it is included in a release or not. Can anyone verify if it is or isn't. Thank you. John Carter 21:01, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

JohnManuel just added it today. He probably just forgot to do the other half of the process, adding it to the list. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:45, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

Good enough. Thanks for the quick response. John Carter 22:57, 16 July 2007 (UTC)

bot

Note I am not a member of WP:1.0

I proposed on Bot requests that a bot be able to do a certain thing, involving assessments. They suggested noting you here. The discussion is on the bot requests page is here.Wikipedia:Bot requests#WikiProject assessing.

Any response?

I have this page watched, if you reply here.

Sorry, forgot to sign SpecialWindler talk 07:05, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for getting in touch. Yes, the assessment scheme was created by this group, and the bot was set up by us. We "harvest" global information from it, and we hope to start using a second bot soon to process these data.

Your proposal seems a good one. Do you have the support of the people from WP:BIO who are working on the assessment drive? That would carry a lot of weight. I would also contact a few of the other big projects to sound out their opinions - perhaps WP:MILHIST and WPINDIA? You may find that some projects don't want people or bots from outside adding assessments to their templates - on the other hand, they may be grateful for the help! If there are objections, it may be possible to limit the bot just to adding assessments to the WP:BIO template, which involves enough work to warrant a bot, and where the knowledge of the "outside" project may be most welcome (WP:MATH will probably know more about a mathematician than people from WP:BIO do). It would be CRITICAL to ensure that if project X rates an article as Start, but project Y assesses it as B-Class, the bot leaves the assessments alone. It should only intervene when project Y has not assessed the article. Although in theory everyone uses the same criteria, there are some minor variations; MILHIST (and a few other projects) requires thorough verifiability (citations) to achieve B-Class, but the generic scheme doesn't require such a high standard. Thus I have been known to tag an article for WP:1.0 as B-Class despite a MILHIST tag indicating Start-Class, though such cases are fairly rare. Walkerma 08:46, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I can go around and ask some of the major WikiProjects you've mentioned, but to be fair every Project would have to be told and given the right of say. But I'm not going on every WikiProject to do that. For the few Projects I have/will ask, I have asked them to reply in the sub heading underneath so it dosen't interupt this discussion.

But is this the right place to request such a bot and will it go ahead here (if given support) SpecialWindler talk 09:53, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

{{Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Statistics}}

There are quite a few unassessed articles. And seeing that on this template, there are 1/4 of the articles unassessed. SpecialWindler talk 10:18, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

True, but from what I understand your bot proposal to be, it is to select articles that have been already assessed by one WikiProject, and translate that assessment to a project that hasn't assessed the same article. That won't have an effect on the general statistics table, as each article is counted only once, with the highest assessment granted on its talk page. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:12, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering if it did that? Thanks for telling me. But for each individual project there would be still more unassessed articles then. SpecialWindler talk 21:15, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing that out, I striked it out because it is really useless to this discussion. SpecialWindler talk 06:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

You may want to read some of my reply's to WikiProject comments below. SpecialWindler talk 06:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Comments from WikiProjects

From the Saints project, the Oriental Orthodoxy project, and a few others I can't specifically remember right now I can agree to the proposal. I would however maybe suggest that you contact one of the projects which engages in active A-Class assessments, like WP:WPBIO and/or WP:MILHIST, to see if it could be done such that those groups, which have the stricter A-Class parameters and in some cases B-Class parameters, be the ones copied into other projects' templates. Doing so would probably be the most generally acceptable way to go. Granted, of course, that the Biography project gets a few more people involved in the A-Class review than they/we have now. John Carter 21:29, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure a bot could only do it for Stub/Start/B. But I stated above, every WikiProject would have to be contacted before this happens. I suppose you could make a list (like the one for the assessment table of the WikiProjects who would participate, which would give them the option of "if they want assessments made by other WikiProjects to be on their own" and then they could narrow it down to much smaller assessments eg "Only Stub, Start can be assessed from other WikiProjects" That would help solve WP:MILHIST who have a very strict B and A assessment classes. SpecialWindler talk 06:45, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

• Ratings given by large projects with a heterogenous subject matter should not be copied to the templates of projects that are more focused. Wikiproject Biography, in particular, encourages editors to go through biographies alphabetically by name and assign ratings, even to articles about people the assessor has never heard of. Copying this sort of assessment to the project tag of a specialized project (like, say, Wikiproject Classical Music) would not only spread the problem, but lend the assessments a spurious air of authority. If this is to be done at all, it should be strictly opt-in: let projects ask to import the ratings of specific other projects if they think that is appropriate. —Celithemis 23:40, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Please note that I was only specifically referring to the A-Class articles, or other articles which have to undergo a specific, formal review like Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review. I would agree that Stub, Start, and B might not be handled that way. And, clearly, anything would probably have to be done by an opt-in method. However, a lot of newer or undermanned projects would probably welcome any help they could get. John Carter 23:58, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
    • As I said above (under John Carter's original message) it would have to be optional, but it would be benifitial (as well for newer and undermanned) for big projects like WPP:BIO to have this. Although John Carter has pointed out that the WikiProject Biography wouldn't want A-class from other projects rated, I'm sure a bot could by pass this. With the Biography WikiProject currently needing 70,000+ (which was at one point about 130,000) articles to assess, I'm sure they wouldn't mind, getting a bot to assess stub, start and B from other projects onto theirs. Maybe not A class. I'm presuming that GA and FA would have been done by their GA/FA reviewers but still that could be the case. SpecialWindler talk 06:53, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

test

Is this bot proposal going any further? If you need a test project, WP:RL would be allright. SpecialWindler talk 12:01, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

More than one million articles tracked so far

Yay!!! Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 04:07, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Yes, and the toolserver has been upgraded - hopefully soon we can start USING those data to compile our collections! Walkerma 04:21, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Aleister Crowley

The banner added to the talk page of the above article doesn't indicate which version the article waas selected for, if any. John Carter 23:32, 23 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Jehovah's Witnesses assessments

This project's "statistics" page shows no content. I think there might be a mistake somewhere. John Carter 20:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Category:Jehovah's Witnesses articles by quality was not placed in Category: Wikipedia 1.0 assessments. I now fixed this and ran the bot. The stats are OK now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 20:53, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick response! John Carter 20:55, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Argentine football

Hi,

I recently launched WikiProject Argentine football could someone please give me a hand setting up the Statistics table, I have created the neccessary categories, Category:WikiProject Football in Argentina articles but can't go any further as I am not an admin and know nothing about bots. Could someone put a copy of the table on the Project page for me please? Cheers,King of the North East 21:01, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

Everything seems to be working nicely, and you already have >200 articles listed in there! Fortunately you don't need to be an admin or a bot expert (I'm neither) to use the bot. Walkerma 16:01, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

News article on Version 0.5

[2] Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 03:53, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for spotting that; I hope it was OK! It's nice and thorough because it goes more in-depth than most stories on this, and it is based on three interviews. I'm really glad Emmanuel was interviewed! Thanks, Walkerma 15:52, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Assessment logs (comments pages and version links)

I've been looking at the assessment logs for WPBiography - see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Biography articles by quality/1 for example - and it struck me that the comments page looks silly once it is out-of-date. Sometimes the article has moved on a great deal since the comment was left, but no-one has bothered to update the Comments page. Should the comments page be blanked or otherwise archived (probably pasted over to the main talk page) once the concerns have been addressed, leaving the slate clear for new comments? Also, there are dangers that the Comments page will be treated like a talk page, which should probably similarly be addressed by moving/archiving to the main talk page if a lengthy discussion starts. I was also struck by how out-of-date the version link can be - some of the FAs there have improved markedly since they became FAs, particularly those that went through a review and got inline citations added. Unfortunately, the version link remains the same - pointing (I think) to the point when the class parameter was filled in for the assessment template. Is there any way to fix this so the version link points to the article at the point when it was re-assessed? ie. have a parameter to fill in to force an update of the version link? Carcharoth 01:39, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Good points, thanks for raising these issues. I think the idea was that if the assessment was revised (hopefully upward!), the bot would record the version on the day the re-assessment occurred. If that's not the case, then we need to get that fixed. Regarding the comments pages, I think the policy should be to remove out-of-date comments. These are not talk pages, these are very brief comments that summarize the main issues for the table, so you can scan through the table and see quickly what needs to be done with what. The archive is in the page history in a case like this. What do others think? Walkerma 02:15, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I assumed that when re-assessment took place, the version link was updated. This could easily be checked by looking at the page histories of the logs. My concern was more about FAs that go through FAR, or just improve in general, and indeed any article that improves in general. Someone could, for example, leave a comment saying "this is a borderline B-class and needs improving" followed by a "article is much improved, this is safe B-class". At that point, or say after a FAR closes with much change having taken place, or any case where a lot of change takes place but the class stays the same, how do you update the assessment date? I think the solution is to have date and user parameters that tell us who did the assessment and what date it took place. Have a look at User talk:Psychless/WPBiography for an example of this in action.

About the comments page - I agree with blanking, though that might run up against stupid bot-human teams that find empty pages and delete them without looking. If that happened, the comments page could be recreated, but some of the history would be less accessible as it would be in a previous, deleted version. Maybe blank and leave a minimum of a note requesting new comments? Carcharoth 02:31, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think comment pages should be completely blanked, but rather be updated - even if only with a couple of words. The idea of tagging with date and assessor goes back to the very first manual assessments, where this idea was proposed but seen as too much work for a manual system. I think it's an excellent idea if it can be done automatically - ideally through the template rather than involving the bot. If it's possible to read the edit information (user, date) it would be very nice, and I think it would spread virally through the projects. Walkerma 03:11, 1 August 2007 (UTC)

Non tracked articles

Hi, I want to direct articles to their relevant wikiproject, but I've found no way to acess a list of "articles with no project associated". Is there a way to do that?--SidiLemine 13:55, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

There is a subproject, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects, which is working on that problem. Currently we don't have a way to locate articles that have no project associated. If we assess an article ourselves for the 1.0 project, we can tag it as an "orphan article", by using the "orphan=yes" parameter in {{WP1.0}}; see [Talk:Toleration]] for an example (and click on "show" in the template). At present, that parameter doesn't do anything, but we could set it to generate a category or to be read by a bot - but my guess is that there are less than 50 articles of this type. If you have some ideas on how to work on this, please post them here. Cheers, Walkerma 04:39, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Well, maybe we could have a bot memorize all the project templates, and port a message on the talk pages where he doesn't see any? That might be long, but a one-time thing, and probably worth it. Another problem I've found is that the project templates all have different formats: WikiProject blahblah, blah WikiProject, WPBlah, Classical Greece and Rome, and all kinds of abbreviations. Couldn't there be a simple way to standardize that?--SidiLemine 10:23, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

That has a good chance of working, but you need to get approval (it will affect a lot of articles) and a person who is willing to code the bot. The bot would probably be quite simple, so you can try to have another person code it if the original person doesn't/can't (for this project, Martinp23 was making an article selection bot, but then his computer was disconnected from the Internet (line knocked down) and the toolserver was down). By the way (for other people), is the toolserver working? If so, is the bot ready to run? Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 05:26, 8 August 2007 (UTC)

Yes, the toolserver was fixed about a month ago. Martin told me recently that he's still had internet connection problems (more of an issue when he's working with the toolserver), but he was switching ISPs. He told me he'd started work on expanding the code for MartinBotII. I don't think the purpose described here would be suitable for MartinBotII, though, since that is going through only articles that have been tagged.

This is a good idea, though; what a bot could do is find an article with no project tag, then read the category off the article page and try to match it to a project. It may be rough - perhaps putting an article into Music rather than (say) the Beatles WikiProject - but that would get it on the map. It could generate a list of articles by topic, and then we could got to (say) WP:Chemistry with a list of perhaps 2000 chemistry articles to consider, and with an offer to autotag them. My only questions are (a) Should we wait for the manual addition of articles to slow down first, and (b) Who would write the code for the bot? Thanks, Walkerma 05:42, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I forgot to mention, any such bot would need to handle WikiProject tags that don't generate WikiProject talk page categories. There aren't many of these, but it would need to spot these. Walkerma 05:43, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I would rather support a simple "Wikiproject??" tag than auto tagging. This would help anyone looking to attribute articles without creating much confusion. About project tags not generating categories, the problem of the ever-different tags for each and every project should really be adressed. --SidiLemine 17:10, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

What's the point?

While the folks at the Wikipedia Foundation will disagree, the whole idea of porting Wikipedia into print and other non-online media is nonsensical!

Wikipedia has established itself as an online encyclopedia, whether that was the intended final objective or not. To claim that "Oh no, the finished 1.0 version is supposed to be a print/non-online encyclopedia" is dumb. Even if that is accomplished, by then anyone who will have heard of Wikipedia is just going to say "Wikipedia? Yeah that's that online encyclopedia." If you tell them that it is now available in print/DVD format they're not going to say "Oh yeah, whereas now I can use the convenient online version of Wikipedia without any hassle and cost, from here on out I am going to pay money to use either the unwieldy, large, heavy book version or the DVD version that I first need to insert into the disk tray. Oh yeah, this is going to be soooo much better!"

This whole Wikipedia 1.0 vision is pointless. Wikipedia competes with the traditional print/DVD/for pay encyclopedias (Britannica, Encarta, etc.) What would stop the current online version of Wikipedia from competing with a print/DVD version of Wikipedia? Hmmm?

Just a little food-for-thought for the zealots over at Wikipedia HQ. tildetildetildetilde

(sigh) Someone has to reply to this.

A lot of people don't have internet connexions in the world today. Some even have no computers (I swear!). And the idea is not exactly to sell the hard copys if I understand. Furthermore, A collection of good quality articles in hard copies would be a valuable asset for schools and others, guaranteeing that all facts have been thoroughly checked before being assembled. Anyway, it's a good and valuable project.--SidiLemine 17:24, 9 August 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/FAQs, or this recent magazine article. You appear to be part of the wealthy/privileged 3% (my guess, based on this) of the world with broadband, but you may still want to download Wikipedia to for free to run on your laptop while on the road. Walkerma 06:00, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure Britannica et al are already providing that service. I know my school has copies of those, and my laptop runs Encarta just fine while on the road. tildetildetildetilde

lol Wikipedia tildetildetildetilde

You can also access Britannica and Encarta on the internet. Does this mean there is no point providing Wikipedia on the internet? I don't see why competing with other encyclopaedias is any more or less pointless in print than online. You are also falling into the trap of assuming that everyone is as fortunate as you. Static copies of Wikipedia can be provided at virtually no cost (for example with the One Laptop per Child project) to people who can't afford copies of traditional encyclopaedias. --Cherry blossom tree 20:54, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

New class needed

I'm posting here to suggest new a general article assessment on wikipedia. Currently, across every wikiproject I've come across, there is account taken of topics of high notability but for which little information can ever be available. I speak directly of historical topics in relation to the early middle ages. So for instance, Alpín I of the Picts is labelled "stub" on the talk page assessment, but it simply is not a stub according to any of the definitions given on various wikiprojects. The article could maybe get a few sentences bigger by adding general context, but it's already pretty much as big as it is ever going to be. As it happens, I went around assessing these articles as B-Class, but that too is counter-intuitive and I have given up doing that. But on other articles, such as those on other early kings and medieval counts, bishops, etc, people are going around labelling comprehensive articles stubs or starts when they are not. I could cites scores of examples, but let me just note here Edward of Aberdeen, Teudebur of Alt Clut, Gregoir of Dunkeld, all labelled stubs when in fact they cannot and probably should not be extensively expanded (making clear the extend of our actual knowledge of such people is probably the most useful thing to mention about these articles). These types of articles are not useless because their topic is badly documented, but should not be labelled with a tag that implies significant length increase is possible. Either a new tag is needed, or the current tags need some additional wordings. Regards, Deacon of Pndapetzim (Talk) 19:23, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

The problem here is with our "one size fits all" assessment scheme - it has the value of simplicity (necessary with thousands of different people assessing) but it can't really be tailored to fit situations like this. The scheme rolls together quality and completeness into one rough assessment; I don't think we can change the grades, but maybe we can find a way to handle this. There are a few comments I would make:

• Some of these could easily be Start-Class IMHO.
• We often find that more narrow topics can be a B-Class when quite short - though not as short as your examples - whereas a more general topic like History of Scotland could never be. It's also true that for biographies of ancient people there may be little known beyond where they lived and their one notable action. Barring any "Dead Sea Scrolls" type discovery, we're unlikely ever to expand our knowledge of Alpin I, for example. This is where a more specific WikiProject can help. The Biographies WikiProject has people assessing articles like these, and they will be given Stub/Start without the assessor knowing the topic, because that project has several hundred thousand articles. A History of Scotland project will give much better assessments.
• You may be surprised at how big an article can get, even on an obscure topic, if all of the books on that topic are consulted.
• If there are articles like Kings of the Picts, these broader articles can more easily become FAs, GAs or A-Class, and can also more easily make it into our releases (Scotland in the High Middle Ages and Picts were both on our first CD release).
• As we refine the system, I shall certainly bear this thought in mind. It may be that we can get our bot to differentiate between a stub that needs a lot of expansion and one that is essentially complete - would a parameter like "complete = yes" help? The problem with that is that it might be abused, and it might cause more argument than it's worth. But we're open to suggestions.

Thanks a lot, good point! Ideas welcome. Walkerma 05:28, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

I can see having a parameter like "complete" added. I do however think that in some cases, where there is very little actually known about the subject, there may be insufficient cause for that subject to necessarily have a separate article. And I can include a lot of my own work in this grouping. So far as I can tell right now, many of the biographies of saints I've made which basically "story is lost" could and should be merged into another article. The only reason I haven't yet is because I'm not sure that what I've found is all that's known. But, certainly, if that is all that's known, I myself intend to try to merge them into a larger article, probably also including others about whom very little is known. That might be the best way to go in general with these topics. John Carter 14:05, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Merging certainly comes to mind; althought, when there is no reasonable merging scheme, it should be noted that there is absolutely nothing preventing these articles from going straight to GA. --SidiLemine 16:55, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Chicago Log

Can somebody set the WP:CHICAGO log for {{WikiProject Chicago}} tagged articles to run. It has not updated in 6 days and it usually does so every 2 or 3 days.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:24, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

The bot did not run three days ago since the machine it was running on got brutally shut down. :) The bot is running now, and hopefully will get to Chicago later today. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 15:06, 13 August 2007 (UTC)

Slashdot article (Wikipedia reader)

[3] Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 14:20, 14 August 2007 (UTC)

Bot Update

How often does the bot update the page with the project's statistics on it? our page (for WikiProject UK Trams) hasn't been updated in a while - there are loads more articles rated and tagged. Bluegoblin7 11:01, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Maryland statistics not being updated

The assessment stats for WikiProject Maryland haven't been updated in six days, but the last time they were updated before that was three days before. Is there something wrong with the bot or does it just sometimes take this long?-Jeff ^(talk) 18:20, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Qatar hasn't been updated even once yet, so I think this problem is with more than just the one project. John Carter 18:22, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

I think this must be the case aswell: please read the above. Bluegoblin7 18:24, 31 August 2007 (UTC)

Chicago Quality Log

The Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Chicago articles by quality log has been updating like clockwork every third day. It skipped yesterday (UTC). Can someone manually set it to run?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot is running now. Let's hope it does not stop. I don't know what the problem is yet. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 02:33, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It failed to run on the 3rd. Please run it for us.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:38, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

You can run it yourself, per the instructions. The bot is now at "B", it should get to Chicago in half a day or less. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:20, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

O.K. I am trying to run it myself for the first time at this moment.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 14:13, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

What if

How would the logs react to a talk page with

Category:Start-Class Chicago articles

Category:Low-importance Chicago articles

What about if it came across <!--{{ChicagoWikiProject|class=Start|importance=low|nested=yes}}-->--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 00:39, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I am not sure I understand completely your question. But you can try your "what if" scenario and then run the bot by hand (see the appropriate link in the instructions), and see what would happen. Then you could revert if that would not be what you wanted. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:57, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Bot stalled again?

It looks like maybe the assessment bot has stalled again? John Carter 17:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot is still running. The last edit was two hours ago. Maybe it is just having a heavy load. Let's see if it turns out OK in a few hours. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:11, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Now it resumed editing again. A break of several hours (or even half a day) is OK, the bot spends a lot of time actually collecting information, not just editing. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 18:17, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Good. :) Sorry for bothering you like this. John Carter 18:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

I fixed a silly bug in the code I introduced recently when trying to make the code more robust. The bug was making the bot very slow. I'll have to restart the bot now. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 19:58, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Paris Conference

For those who speak French, you may be interested in this conference in Paris next month. http://colloque.wikimedia.fr/2007/ It's the first French language Wikipedia conference, and the goal of the conference is very relevant to our project. This is a BabelFish translation:

"This conference aims at exploring concrete problems : how to attract the specialists guaranteeing in the quality of many articles ? How to sensitize the users, in particular youngest, to control the reliability of its information ? How to solicit and s’appuyer on a network d’experts ? Opened with all, the conference wishes to accomodate scientists, teachers, experts like contributors moved by the project. Researchers of various specialities will bring complementary lightings to us."

I will be talking about our 1.0 projects on the English language Wikipedia, and our assessment scheme, bots, etc. Please come! Walkerma 09:09, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi. As you know, the Wikipedia in French imported, 6 months ago, the WP1 concept. The way it works now, is analog to the original one. I think that it is a success, more than 100 different wikiprojects have assessed more than 80.000 articles. We have started a selection process too and have a bit more than 300 selected articles. We experience, more or less, the same problems like the english speaking community. In fact we are fewer and the average articles quality is not as good as yours. For this reason, it is still complicated to keep the selection process moving on, without giving up on the quality side. In fact, it seems to me that we are facing now the same challenges. That why, it's really great to welcome Walkerma (and everybody else from en: WP1) in Paris to speak openly about them. Best regards Kelson 14:55, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Template:WP1.0

Does the template above have a option for indicating that an article is included in the 2007 Wikipedia for Schools release? John Carter 15:12, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, the wpcd parameter is used for both 2006 and 2007, I've never seen anything else being used. Although the template says 2006, the category is actually Category:Wikipedia CD Selection, which covers the latest release. Walkerma 01:30, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Other classes

I posted this message up in the assessment area and didn't get a response, so I am going to post it here also if people don't mind:

I know this prolly has been asked a lot, but I was wondering that with a project, is there a way to add our other classes such as List, Image, etc to our assessment. I work with the Illinois Project, and on our Assessment Page we have that list off to the right. Is there a way currently for us to add the other classes to this list so that we can keep track of them better and know what we have. If there isn't, is this something that could be created? I am sure there are other projects that would be interested in knowing this, so any help in this matter would be much appreciated. Thank you!--Kranar drogin 22:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot can add extra classes, as long as people agree on the need for them and on what specific classes to add. My only concern as the bot maintainer is that there be no features for specific projects, as that kind of thing is hard to maintain (given the hundreds of projects now enrolled). So, if people agree on what else to add to FA-Class, Top-Class, and the other existing ones, I can implement it. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 22:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, there are two that come to mind right away with Illinois that we use alot which is List and Image. I know a lot of projects don't tag images, but it is an easy way for us to keep track of our images that we have. That is minor, but would be something that I would like to see. We also tag our categories, so that way we can have a bot run something for us on our categories, rather than making and maintaining a list (and us NA for others, but we shouldn't use that one). So, I guess there is really three I would like to see, but two aren't a neccessity. So List should be, with Category and Image being a prolly as long as no one really have a problem with it.--Kranar drogin 23:09, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects assess lists as if they were articles, so I'm that sure that {{List-Class}} should be employed. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 23:13, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

After seeing the question down below about NA, it might just be best to make a large implementation of the common ratings. This might be something to request an expanded discussion on with the projects of the Wikipedia. I know with Illinois, we also use NA, so it would not bother us I think to also have that one, but as it has been stated already it is what most agree on.--Kranar drogin 16:50, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Editability

Just a suggestion, but I think that each individual Wikipedia 1.0 should be editable. Who knows? Maybe some people who would be vandalizing wikipedia would end up vandalizing Wikipedia 1.0 instead. It's worth a shot. --Use the force ^{(Talk * Contribs)} 21:52, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that's a fun idea! I'm not sure how easy it is, but I'll ask the developer when I see him next month. I can see it - you could rewrite the article on the US President to include your own picture, etc. Just as long as they don't start releasing it on DVD....! On a more serious note, we do hope eventually to make the releases updatable if you go online. Walkerma 03:14, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Astronomical Objects articles by quality statistics

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Astronomical Objects articles by quality statistics and similar bot maintained lists, don't seem to list how many articles are "NA-class"... Is this possible? 70.55.87.147 16:13, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot does not recognize the NA-class, for now. I think there should be a big discussion somewhere about increasing the number of classes beyond the existing ones (the List-Class above is another candidate). Once people agree on what to do and what is needed, the bot can implement that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:36, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

If you could find this discussion I would be most interested to read and/or join in. IvoShandor 22:30, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

The bot...

Is it anywhere near ready? I haven't heard anything about it in a long time. Also, this project is nearly inactive. What happened a bit more than a year ago that revitalized this project? Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 18:42, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

I meant Martinp's bot. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eyu100 (talk • contribs) 19:58, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to remove the main biography project from the bot run

The biography project is far and away the largest project, with around 440,000 assessed articles (stats). It is further subdivided into specific subprojects, like

• Biography (science and academia) articles by quality
• Biography (core) articles by quality
• etc, 11 subprojects in total

I will argue that while having WP 1.0 bot create lists and stats for the individual subprojects is of course something that has to be done, it is of little value to also do this for the main biography project, because

• There is a tremendous repetition between the main project and its subprojects
• Most biography articles are (or should be) already covered in the subprojects
• The main biography project takes a tremendous amount of server and bot resources, the bot would be running in a little more (or little less) than two days instead of more than three days without the main biography project

So here's a suggestion. How about removing the main biography project from the bot assessment? By now the individual subprojects are well-developed that few articles would fall through the cracks without the main project. Comments? Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 16:02, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. Just ensure the Biography project people know to make sure all their articles are also in a subproject.Rlevse 16:08, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

IMHO, it makes sense so long as WPBIO is given sufficient time to sweep through their articles to ensure full subproject coverage of all articles. Girolamo Savonarola 16:10, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree. If the biography project still wants a bot, then we should clone WP 1.0 bot, and have the new bot (BioBot?) handle the biography project work while WP 1.0 bot handles the rest. (We/WP:BIO can debate whether or not BioBot is needed, and if it should handle the subprojects too.)

From the perspective of the 1.0 team, we still plan to have a new bot - which may or may not be MartinBotII - in place to select articles directly from the worklists. As far as I know, it doesn't matter if those worklists are generated manually, by WP 1.0 bot or by some new bot, as long as they are formatted in a common way. Walkerma 16:16, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I posted a message at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography asking interested people to comment here. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 17:11, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Right now, I would oppose removin the Biography project as a project from assessment completely doing so. The various work groups have still got a long way to go in tagging their articles, and I think it isn't real likely that they will be done anytime soon. Also, several of the proposed work groups, like lawyers, haven't been added to the banner yet, and many articles for these work groups won't fall directly within the scope of any of the other work groups. I'm not saying that it might not be a goal we would like to achieve, but I think it would be extremely premature to implement this change immediately. John Carter 17:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

List-class

When I enter class=list it is showing up as removed on the quality log. Is it counting as unassessed or as an article outside of the project.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:41, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

It is counted as unassessed, as List-Class is not a bot-recognized assessment level. Since we are having lots of these questions, we should begin a discussion about what classes to add to the listing, if any.

OK, so what do we add?

There are several proposals to add different classes to the listing of bot-recognized assessment levels. Personally, I would object to {{List-Class}}, as lists can and should be assessed according to the same (or similar) criteria of quality assessment. However, I can see that other projects would rather lump them together, but we can't just add a class and make it more confusing for everyone. So, let's decide what to do here. What should be added, if anything? Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 18:03, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I feel that rating something as "list class" is totally counterproductive. So a stub list and a featured list would both be given the same assessment? Can't WikiProjects just use categories to group lists, like Category:Video game lists for WikiProject Video games? I must be missing something because this proposal seems rather nonsensical to me. JACOPLANE • 2007-09-27 18:43

I think it would help if we specified what the classes under consideration were. My own feelings are as follows:

• Category-Class I would favor, although if possible without any attribution of Importance, as that might confuse people
• Template-Class might be nice, but isn't really required, and probably doesn't involve many "articles" anyway
• List-Class could be useful, although the question of Featured List and other lists might indicate breakdown into two or more subgroups, which could be problematic
• A few ideas, anyway.John Carter 19:06, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Take a look at Category:Articles by quality for non-standard classes that are already in use. They include:

• Category-Class
• Disamb/Disambig/Dab/Disamiguation-Class
• Image-Class
• List-Class
• NA/Non-article-Class
• Needed-Class
• Portal-Class
• Template-Class

Most projects categorize every page into a classification, so I believe all of these are useful. Since lists can be graded/featured, this class might not be necessary. It would be up to the individual projects to decide if they want to grade their lists, but if an individual project wants to use the list-class, I think the bot should recognize it. Why not have the bot recognize all of these classes? It would give the projects the statistics on their pages, based on their own classification system. --Scott Alter 20:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Why do the projects need numbers stats on these non-critical items? The actual numbers don't indicate anything positive or negative about the projects. Some banners, such as WPMILHIST or Film, will automatically categorize certain namespaces to appropriate project categories such as "WikiProject X templates" and the like. That's certainly crucial, since it's important to be able to have a central place to locate and organize project elements such as these. But I don't see where statistics become vital for them.

As for lists, I would agree that formalizing the assessment grade in this case is necessary, since they are articles, and not project support items. But I'd also argue to keep it simple: List-Class and FL-Class (featured list). There's no need to create several intermediaries as even the ideal lists are intended to be basic in structure and content, with relatively little prose. Girolamo Savonarola 21:22, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

On principle, I'd like to see these added (including FL-Class) to the bot, and let the projects themselves decide if they "need" them or not. I opposed this sort of thing in the old days on the basis that they were often used by only one project - but these various classes are now becoming fairly standard. I think we should add all of the above, as long as

• Oleg doesn't mind adding them
• The bot won't mind them being added
• We make it VERY clear that these aren't part of the assessment scale. We don't want endless debates on where they come in the scale, like we've had with GA.....! Walkerma 21:27, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps the easiest way to avoid those debates is to emphasize that there are two types of classes: assessment classes and identifier classes. The latter only serves to group common types of pages, while the former is used for article grading. Girolamo Savonarola 21:30, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I would be very hesitant to add {{List-Class}}, as lists can be indeed graded by quality. But what we probably need is some sort of criteria for lists, just like we have criteria for articles. What constitutes a {{B-Class}} list? A {{Start-Class}} list?

Along those lines, I would be akin to renaming {{FA-Class}} to {{Featured-Class}}, to combine both the FA and the FL designations, and remove the need for a {{FL-Class}} template. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:55, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Just because we can doesn't mean we should. We can also grade images for quality. Why should we? Many of the lists, such as awards, are essentially complete data dumps neatly presented with references. And that's really all that you need for a featured list. Some certainly do a lot more, but it's by no means prerequisite. Assuming you have all information at hand from good source material, it shouldn't be difficult to create (or revise) a list that is FLC-worthy in one go. Which generally is not the case for articles. Girolamo Savonarola 05:07, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Here's the global stats. If any of the extra classes are adopted, they'll make their way in the global stats too, as a row. Also, if an article is list-class, it won't be any other class, so no FA-class, etc. If people are fine with that, then the extra fields can be easily added to the stats. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 21:36, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I guess then the question would be where they would be listed in the statistics chart. I think it would make sense to keep most of the new grades, maybe excepting lists, below the "real" articles, even "unassessed". That might help indicate that they aren't really "articles", just relevant internal management tools. And I guess in some cases it might make sense to maybe allow for some importance rankings with these too. Category:Star Trek series, for instance, might be ranked Top-importance to the Star Trek project, based on the fact that the articles in that category might all fall within that grade, for instance. It would be redundant, but it might also help some projects figure in figuring out how to assign importance rankings to individual articles. If they do that anyway. John Carter 21:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't understand how global stats work, because an individual could be a top priority for one project and a low priority for another. However, with respect to list-class, WP:CHICAGO uses only FA or list as list parameters. So all lists that are not WP:FLs are grouped in together.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

If an article is encountered twice, the importance info in the global stats is from the first occurrence. That makes the global stats a bit inexact, but there's not much that can be done about that. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 00:25, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, I wouldn't mind seeing these all included, and should be below Stub with the exception of two ratings. Feature Image and Feature List. I think FI and FL should be considered assessments and be placed under Feature Article. That was with those two you would have either an Image or a Feature Image and a List and a Feature List. We are going to be rating our categories for importance, and expand a bit of information in them rather than just the standard here are the cats (since I seem to use them a lot, well, thats me anyways). I will continue to monitor this conversation, since this is something I would really like to see.--Kranar drogin 23:38, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

How exactly can one propose a rubric for category importance? Girolamo Savonarola 23:45, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Its not something HAS to be there, but as listed above, Category:Illinois is VERY important to us at the Illinois project. In all honesty though, this is something that is VERY minor to me when compared to getting the other classes listed.--Kranar drogin 23:48, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

So what do we do? I am not sure I see an agreement on list-class, and there was very little discussion about the other ones. What was agreed, as far as I saw, is that if list-class is included, it should be after the stubs in the stats.

Any particularly strong opinions one way or another? :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:07, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

While there isn't an absolute agreement on list class, I think it's probably fair to state two generalities which seem to be in agreement. One, that featured lists need a class designating this, whether it's FL-Class or a combined Featured-Class which would include FAs and FLs (and possibly other featured types). Two, that lists should appear on the stats tables in some form, although whether or not they need several assessment levels has been questioned. Girolamo Savonarola 04:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Don't really think it matters when, but if possible all the types used should be added, if possible. You know, so that a proper count is given. Bluegoblin7 22:18, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

My opinion is that lists should be treated as articles - they certainly shouldn't be treated as data dumps. To my mind, data dumps need annotation added to turn them into a list. As for how to handle talk page tagging of categories, templates, and suchlike, one approach is to create custom-made templates for each type, rather than integrate stuff into the article talk page template. For an example of such a set-up see the four templates at Category:WikiProject Middle-earth talk page templates. These populate the following categories: Category:WikiProject Middle-earth templates (actually double populated, once by the template for a listing, and then manually into the right subcategory); Category:WikiProject Middle-earth disambiguation pages; and Category:Tolkien categories (split by pipe-sorting into admin categories and article categories). The articles end up somewhere in Category:WikiProject Middle-earth assessments. That is not the end of the administrative stuff though. Have a look at Category:WikiProject Middle-earth. Other subcategories of page types include: Category:Middle-earth redirects (a well-developed redirects categorisation system); and Category:WikiProject Middle-earth article maintenance. The thing that is not really covered properly yet, and where I think a talk page template would help, is tagging the project pages. At the moment the pages are added manually to categories such as Category:Middle-earth Portal and Category:Non-article Tolkien pages and Category:WikiProject Middle-earth subpages. One thing not covered at all is archive pages, and in particular, the archive pages of talk pages. I've sometimes thought that it would be good to develop WikiProject specific templates to put on talk page archives to help WikiProjects keep track of them. All this can be done manually, and many WikiProjects have systems that are better developed than this. The only advantages I see of putting this sort of thing in the main template is for stats, and most WikiProjects are small enough that this is not really needed. Better to manually sort them and "get to know" the pages. Carcharoth 01:09, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

To my mind, data dumps need annotation added to turn them into a list. Yes, well, a list with full annotation essentially qualifies for FL status on those grounds. (Yes, there are other minor requirements, but that's all the heavy lifting done.) So it's either an incomplete or unannotated "data dump" (aka List) or it's in shape for FLC (hopefully to be aka FL). We really don't need any more classes for lists, given those factors. Girolamo Savonarola 03:05, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, this discussion has kinda stalled, so should we put this to a vote? I like the new addition of FL as a class now, that is going to help out a lot. I still think that FP (Feature Picture should be done also, but eh), and I would like to see the Image class used since the Illinois project at least uses that tag a lot (and I am sure there are others out there that also use it). So if we do a vote, should we make it all inclusive to include all classes? I think that would be the safest bet.--Kranar drogin 03:11, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

No. If there is a vote, split it into one for each class. There is no way that the consensus for FL-Class, for example, would be the same as for Image-Class. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:30, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

I started this section and it went in a different direction. I started a new section (2 sections down) and got sent back here. My highest priority would be to get FL-Class and List-Class added to the summaries. After that Template-Class, Category-Class, FP-Class/Image-Class, Disamb/Disambig/Dab/Disamiguation-Class, and FPO-Class/Portal-Class. Then, NA/Non-article-Class and Needed-Class. Note that in each case where a featured content type exists two classes should be added.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 18:09, 9 October 2007 (UTC)

Stats table

What happened to the combined statistics table? On both Firefox and IE I'm just seeing the main headings round a collapsed form of the table. Walkerma 02:41, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, that thing is broken. I had too little time this week to look into it. I'll fix it the first thing tomorrow morning. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 04:39, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

FL-class and List-class showing as unassessed

Is it possible to fix the code so that List-class and FL-class articles appear as assessed? Can you possibly add two lines to the articles by quality output tables?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 19:03, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

That's being discussed two sections above. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 19:04, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

The debate got bogged down with all the other namespaces. How do I get a response for just article space from someone who knows what is going on?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 21:55, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

It is not about who knows what is going on. There is no agreement to add the above two classes, and given that, the bot does not recognize them. Apparently there are as many views as there are people on what to do. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:35, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Here's the bigger problem (IMHO) - when unassessed tags are given a list class, the 1.0 logs show the article as being "removed". This creates oversight problems, because if the tag is then stripped from the talk page for any reason, the logs will not notate that actual removal. So whatever is decided, something has to be added (or changed) in the script. Girolamo Savonarola 21:10, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Given that there is no agreement on addling the extra classes, the best you could do perhaps is tag those articles in existing classes in addition to the list classes.

Perhaps somebody should put forward a specific proposal for what classes to add and put it to a vote. :) Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 03:32, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Selection bot update

It looks as if MartinBotII will not be used as our bot for selecting articles after all, because Martin is too busy to develop this. However, User:CBM (who looks after User:Veblenbot) is going to step into the breach and write a bot for us! This is very good news, because it will mean that we will be able to select perhaps 20-30,000 articles for Version 0.7 using this bot. Those of you who have been reviewing, please watch this space, as we will want help during the testing phase. Walkerma 02:37, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Great! Reviewing has nearly stopped now, so this might motivate people to come and review the articles selected by the bot. I haven't been very active because I cannot use Wikipedia very often now. I also thought not much was getting reviewed, but after looking at the history page, I might start reviewing if I can use Wikipedia. Eyu100^{(t|fr|Version 1.0 Editorial Team)} 21:24, 14 October 2007 (UTC)

Please take a look at my proposals for option B (an additive algorithm) and feel free to make appropriate changes. I have put in a selection of articles - please peruse this table, and make your comments here. Remember, any changes to formulae must also result in changes to the article scores as given in the table. Remember, this bot may well pick out next 30,000 articles, so we need to get it right. Thanks! Walkerma 04:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

NEW FL debate

Above you see much continued banter which resulted in nothing. I would like to start a discussion about how the quality logs handle article space only. I think we could probably all agree that the quality logs would be improved by adding to more classes (FL-class and List-class) to handle articlespace contributions. This conversation would avoid all the likely pitfalls of numerous arguments about how to handle all the other spaces. Please contribute to a discussion which will hopefully lead to something being done. Can we agree to simply add these two classes to the reports.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:11, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

This is a reasonable suggestion, IMHO, I just think that many of the people involved with this scheme have been pretty tied up lately. I've copied the post over to here, where such things are usually debated. See my reply there. Walkerma 04:00, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

A-class review

I have seen Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team A-class reviews on Chicago. It has recently been demoted to B-class. However, I am wondering if there is any interest in doing A-class reviews for Category:GA-Class Chicago articles. We don't currently have A-class reviews set up within WP:CHICAGO or WP:ILLINOIS.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 23:57, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

That's really more of a WikiProject question. Where projects don't reserve the class for review, it can be assessed as such at whim. Girolamo Savonarola 00:44, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

I do not understand your response.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 16:41, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

People can just go ahead and give an article an A-class rating if there is no A-class process within a wikiproject. FunPika 22:49, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

It's happening again...

The stats for WikiProject Maryland haven't been updated since Oct. 14.-Jeff ^(talk) 02:42, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Ditto Wikipedia:WikiProject Scottish Islands. Ben MacDui (Talk) 18:27, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Go here] and run it yourself.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 17:24, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Assessment table

I've only started putting assessment settings into this template. What do I do next? And how do I get the chart like this for WP:FF? You can tell me in my talk page if you want. Thanks. — Blue。 06:11, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Wait, I think I got it. — Blue。 06:36, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Date not working

The date for the Chicago articles by quality log is not working correctly. It ran on the 30th and claimed to run on the 28th. I think the same is true of the run dated the 24th.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/tcfkaWCDbwincowtchatlotpsoplrttaDCLaM) 22:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

That is because the bot take three days to run, and the date is calculated only at the beginning. I changed now, the date will be refreshed for each project. This may still not be perfect since the biography project takes more than 24 hours, and besides, the date is calculated in GMT while your local date may be different. Still, this change will make the bot more accurate in dating. Thanks for pointing this out. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 14:52, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

WP 1.0 topics/categories

The top-level WP 1.0 topics/categories (Arts; Language and literature; Philosophy and religion; Everyday life; Society and social sciences; Geography; History; Engineering, applied sciences and technology; Mathematics; Natural sciences) are now used quite widely across Wikipedia. However, usage in different places is not consistent. In particular, the subtopics used here and at WP:GA have diverged somewhat. I'm interested in standardizing the subtopics (only at the next level) and ironing out some glitches and inconsistencies. At the boundaries between topics, some compromises have to be made, but it would be good if they would be made in the same way throughout Wikipedia.

While thinking about this, I noticed a couple of issues with the WP 1.0 classification.

• Geology and geophysics are listed under "Geography", but atmospheric science is listed under "Natural sciences". I think that a decision needs to be made about how inclusive "Natural science" should be. If it is very inclusive, then "Geography" reduces to "Geography and places", and geology etc. is as much a natural science as atmospheric physics. Alternatively, "Geography" could be renamed to "Geography, geology and atmospheric science", and the "Natural science" topic (perhaps renamed to "Pure science"?) would be much less inclusive. The subtopic of "Biology and medicine" is also awkward, because it combines science with health. Is there a better way to do this?
• What is the distinction between "Arts" and "Language and literature"? I would say that the difference is that anything in "Language and literature" is primarily about the written word. So "Theatre, film, and television" do not belong there, as they are art forms which are not, primarily, communicated by reading plays or scripts.

There are also issues with the GA classification. It shares some of the above problems, but also has some unique issues of its own.

• Films are listed under "Social sciences and society", which seems to be an even worse choice than "Language and literature" to me. There is also a subtopic "Television and journalism" which conflates the arts role of television with its journalistic role. It would seem to me to be better to have a "journalism" subtopic of "Social sciences and society" (cf. the "mass media" section here), and a "television" subtopic of "Arts".
• There is an "Agriculture and aquaculture" subtopic of "Natural sciences". This seems to me to be a very inclusive interpretation of "natural science". GA also includes geology under natural science, but the problem with such an inclusive interpretation is that the natural science category becomes very large at the expense of other topics. I would prefer a less inclusive natural science category.

I'm posting here because I think this may be where there is the best chance to reach a consensus on the above issues. We can then see if GA is willing to make the changes to match. Geometry guy 23:51, 2 November 2007 (UTC)

Thanks a lot! Many of these subtopics were originally copied over from GA, but a few changes were made (mostly by me, so I have only myself to blame!). All of the issues you raise about the 1.0 subtopics are "right on the money" - they are in my mind the most difficult ones.

• Geology is a real tricky one. If you're talking about metamorphic rock you want it under natural sciences; but on Version 0.5 we had things like the Geology of the Grand Canyon, and a lot of Geography-related topics like glacier which fitted nicely there. However, I think Natsci may be a better home for this topic.
• Theatre, film and TV is a tricky one, but I agree that Arts is the right home for these. Nearly all of our nominations in these areas get placed under Arts, and I confess that I have started putting category=Arts in the talk page templates in anticipation of a change. I planned to raise this very issue soon. To explain the rationale (and I should explain that I'm British!), you can definitely regard theatre as Langlit - doesn't Shakespeare belong there? Many authors such as Oscar Wilde are also known as playwrights. Then, if you consider film and TV as being derived from theatre, it makes sense to place these all together. However, then you find you have to put Opera and Musicals in the same area, and it's all getting a long way from Langlit, because Mozart operas belong more with music in Arts than in Langlit. I did contact the Films WikiProject and a majority did support putting films and actors under Langlit, and that was what convinced me. But based on what I've seen, we should move all of these over to Arts. (Not Socsci, PLEASE!).
• We put agriculture in with Everydaylife, which puts it next to food. I agree that there are scientific aspects to this subject, but I like where we have it.
• Another difficult area of overlap is between science and technology.

One thing we have on 1.0 pages is a lot of cross listing. We're not obliged to list things only once, so it makes sense to list Leonardo da Vinci under both artists and inventors, for example. We also have pointers in different subject areas - so if you look under music, it tells you where to find opera. At GA, if cross posting is forbidden I think we could at least include unlinked pointers such as "Leonardo da Vinci - see Inventors, under Engineering and Technology." It sames crazy to me that if you look on the GA page under "Artists" for the guy who painted the Mona Lisa, Leonardo is not even mentioned! Walkerma 03:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

We should try to standardise - that was a large reason for voting on a standard set of top-level categories in the first place. Thanks for raising this important topic. Walkerma 03:35, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Theatre is a tricky one, as you say, and I can see the argument for placing it under literature, though I think the solution is to place writers like Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde under "writers" rather than "playwrights", and that is indeed what the release version does. Anyway, we seem to be agreed on almost every point, except possibly the geography/geology split. I'd prefer to rename "Geography" as "Geography and geoscience" both for the reasons you mention, and because a large portion of the atmospheric sciences subtopic is about places and meteorological events rather than the science of the atmosphere. Also WP:GA has articles such as Peak oil under geology: this clearly involves geography (in the broadest sense), not just the science of geology.

I agree that the overlap between science and technology is another tricky one, but I think WP1.0 does this quite well. The main problem I've noticed here is inconsistent naming of "Engineering, applied sciences and technology": in some places it is "Applied sciences and technology", in other places there is an unhelpful serial comma, and the abbreviation suggests that the topic should be called "Engineering and technology". I've made some small attempts to standardize in the direction of "Engineering, applied sciences and technology", but I'm not wedded to this choice: there is some redundancy in this name.

As for cross-listing at GA, my point of view is that (unlike the release versions) GA is primarily for editors, not readers, and the break-down is a convenience rather than a necessity. The GA process is already too time consuming for editors: I'd like to see it simplified, with more aspects of the process automated. Geometry guy 11:08, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

It is quiet at Wikipedia 1.0! Anyway, I've started a subpage where we can try to hammer out an improved version of the WP 1.0 hierarchy. Meanwhile GA has split off a separate "Films" subtopic. It now makes even more sense to combine that with theatre as a subtopic of Arts. Reaching agreement on what to do with television may be harder. Geometry guy 19:10, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have linked to the project subpage rather than its talk page — that was lazy of me! The project subpage provides a list of all the subtopics used by both Good Articles and the Wikipedia Release versions. I hope this makes it easier to decide what changes need to be made to harmonize the two lists. The idea is to make such changes on the project subpage and use the talk page to discuss proposed changes, track the changes, and discuss what needs to be done to implement them. Although this is not article space, I think it would be helpful to operate this subpage with a certain amount of boldness, i.e., trying out proposed changes on the project subpage, and going to talk where disagreements arise. If this subpage idea proves to be productive, I'll make an announcement at WP:WGA. Geometry guy 12:38, 11 November 2007 (UTC)

Don't apologise, I should have looked a little more, I was trying to dash off a quick response while I had a few minutes. Things are pretty quiet here at the moment, because we're in limbo awaiting the new bot, but a lot of people do watch this page (try posting something with a header like "New restrictions on edits" (or, "Date announced for DVD release") and you'll be amazed how many people will come out of the woodwork! Anyway, the new page looks really nice, and will allow us to keep GA/RV in synch. Thanks a lot for taking the initiative on this, Walkerma 02:40, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

quality log not working

The quality log update did not show two known GA promotions and only had a fraction of the number of usual class updates.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:LOTD) 02:55, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Yesterday the server on which the bot was running got brutally rebooted (the server is in France, the French are on strike, you got the connection :)

If the bot gets interrupted in the middle of a project, it will resume that project when restarted. Unfortunately, if it gets interrupted half-way in the editing phase, the logs will be wrong, since it compares what is on Wikipedia before the current edit on the page and after the current edit.

My best guess is that this is what happened. If, however, this happened for more than a project, then something else must be wrong. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:59, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

PS The bot keeps a log of what it is doing, but that reboot wiped the temporary directory the logs were stored into. I now moved the logs to a permanent location, and hopefully next time something odd happens I will have the logs to trace the problem. Oleg Alexandrov (talk) 05:59, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Maybe I am getting confused by the fact that it is predating the output and I am having trouble keeping track of real time changes against the log.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:LOTD) 15:09, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

OK. Let me know if the problem shows up again. BTW, for bot-specific issues, a better talk page is WT:1.0/I, here people mainly (should) discuss organizatorial non-bot stuff. 17:49, 17 November 2007 (UTC)

Assessments outside Mainspace (again)

On its talk page, WP:MED has been discussing tagging of non-articles, and I notice some inconsistent labels on the article stats tables and navboxes. Eg, unassessed conflated with no, which are not the same thing. Also, I want to be able to tag pages NA (non-article, not applicable) for both class and importance. I think Mainspace pages such as lists, disambig pages, and redirects all should be tagged NA. Tagging lists as "list" IMO does not belong on the class/importance table; that represents a third axis, kind. Kinds include: article, list, disambig, redirect, template, category, talk, ...
--Una Smith (talk) 15:24, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

The thing is that virtually all Lists are articles, albeit a specialized case. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 18:19, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

However, if you do want to tag images, redirects, whatever as NA, it should be possible to adjust the banner to make those changes. John Carter (talk) 18:21, 27 November 2007 (UTC)

I see the point here, though the case was made recently that lists are in mainspace, but can't be assessed using the same criteria as most mainspace pages (i.e., articles). The bot was very recently changed so it can now read "List-Class" - see the discussion here (on the "Index" page, this is where changes to the actual code are usually discussed). There was less consensus for adding a new Featured List class to the bot, since FA-Class can include Featured Lists as well.

We try to be flexible - some projects like to have list-class, others perhaps do not. Some have all sorts of XYZ-Class that they find useful, but which the bot can't read, and that's fine too. I would say that the decision should be a consensus for each WikiProject; however, if lists are not picked up by the bot at all they stand more chance of being missed for DVD releases. That's not an issue for things like templates or disambig pages, since we don't assess them separately. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 17:57, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

You are (of course) right about "unassessed" vs NA, but I think this is something that should be just pointed out to the person on the assessment team who is making the error. Walkerma (talk) 18:07, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Paper on automation of quality assessment

This paper was apparently presented at Wikimania 2007. I have my doubts, but it's certainly interesting reading for 1.0 folks! Walkerma (talk) 03:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Being sold or not?

Is this going to be a commercial product, or available for free, or subsidized, or what? 66.28.71.162 14:52, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Assessing as a "child" project

Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/California road transport articles by quality statistics shows that nothing has any importance, but they are tagged with importance within WikiProject U.S. Roads. Is there any way to make the bot use these without creating the redundant categories? Thank you. --NE2 18:58, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Johnny Cash - V1 template error

Hi there, I removed the V 1.0 template from Talk:Johnny Cash since it was transcluding five sections on your Wikiproject to the top of the talk page. (see old version). Is this a problem with the template or just a problem with how it was placed? Tim Vickers (talk) 19:04, 13 December 2007 (UTC)