Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Psychology/Assessment

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Contents 1 Customized importance scale 2 Criteria for importance 2.1 Current criteria 2.2 Explanation of how criteria should work 2.3 Closing the gap

[edit] Customized importance scale

The new revisions look good! Where possible, I also would suggest placing types of articles in each rating category, e.g., like at Wikipedia:WikiProject Indiana/Assessment, in addition to example articles. Rfrisbie^talk 23:12, 2 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criteria for importance

[edit] Current criteria

• Top-importance – Subject is a must-have for Category:Psychology and is considered a core topic. The article is a likely target for encyclopedic research. Psychologists and other experts in psychology will generally be well-versed on the topic, and many non-psychologists will likely have some familiarity with it. Example: Intelligence
• High-importance – Subject contributes a depth of knowledge to the field of psychology. Most experts in psychology will be familiar with the topic. The subject can be found in most academic studies of psychology, and a significant amount of published research exists for it. Example: Schizophrenia
• Mid-importance – Subject fills in more minor details but is still important to the field of psychology. Many psychologists are knowledgeable of the topic. Published research from a variety of sources exists for the subject. Example: Big Five personality traits
• Low-importance – Subject is peripheral knowledge to the field of psychology and possibly trivial but still notable. There may be limited research on the topic, or most professionals in psychology have not yet taken note of it. Example: Liberation psychology

[edit] Explanation of how criteria should work

• Top-importance is for core topics that are so vital that an encyclopedia could not even be considered for printing without it. These tend to be broad, general areas that are critical to any further studies of psychology.
• High-importance articles are foundational topics that would probably be covered in your average undergraduate-level Psychology 101 class, so anyone with a basic knowlege of psychology would have heard about it.
• Mid-importance articles probably would not be covered in an introductory class, but they probably would be covered in other undergraduate classes. It would be considered basic knowledge for most people with an undergraduate degree in psychology but probably not for the average person.
• Low-importance articles deal with issues that probably would only be known to people who have performed detailed studies of a topic and may deal with issues that even most pscyhologists would not know about unless they have chosen to specifically study that topic. I think that this would include topics that would not be covered until one reaches a Master's level education or higher, unless you had a special interest in that topic. These articles are probably too obscure for a printed general-interest encyclopedia, although they might be found in a printed encyclopedia of psychology.

—Cswrye 20:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Closing the gap

It seems to me that these two lists of criteria are not saying quite the same thing so shall we work on closing the gap?

One problem with the existing criteria is that each criterion has two elements that can conflict:

• The scope of the article with regard to the field of psychology
• The degree of recognition which the subject of the article has received.

For example there are plenty of topics that are peripheral and trivial to the field of psychology and yet have tremendous recognition which would place them "low" in terms of scope, and "high" in terms of recognition, so where do they belong?

It seems to me that this could be resolved by treating the two criteria as an "either/or" situation, or by defining a single criterion.--Zeraeph 19:36, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I'll start out by giving a little background. This assessment system is based on the one used by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, which is requesting WikiProjects to do more of the assessment work as part of the Work via Wikiprojects sub-project. Rfrisbie set up the infrastructure of the system for WikiProject Psychology and did most of the inital evaluations. I tagged many articles for this project, but I was reluctant to assess any of them. A few weeks ago, as a result of the dispute on the NPA personality theory article, I customized the importance scale for this project.

The first sentence of each description is more or less the same used by the Version 1.0 generic template except that I added "to the field of psychology" to the end of it. Since that description was rather vague, everthing following that was intended to aid in objectively determining that. Every article is important to someone, so my intention was to emphasize that we must look at what the external research says about the topic.

In the context of Wikipedia (and more directly, in the context of the Version 1.0 Editorial Team), the importance of an article is generally defined in terms of education. In other words, what topics are people most likely to research? Also, what are the most important topics for a person to study if that person were to gain an understanding of psychology? Although they are academic in nature, the explanation of the criteria that was listed above provides a pretty good method to determine this. If a person were studying psychology, the topics covered in a basic psychology course are probably the most important towards understanding the field. Detailed topics that are unknown even to most psychologists would be the least important topics to cover. This isn't a perfect method, but it can be a good rule of thumb. We are not required to use the same assessment scale or criteria as the Version 1.0 Editorial Team, but most WikiProjects do, and I think it simplifies things if we do keep this consistent.

Here is a quote by Zeraeph that was made on the NPA personality theory discussion: "...what I mean by 'scope' is the fact that the scope of the article's topic is defining the *overview* of human personality, if that makes sense? That kind of scope is on par with Freud's id, ego and superego, in the sense that if the theory is recognised and proven beyond doubt it must be a foundation of all human psychology." I think that I understand his opinion now, and I do respect it, but I don't think that it is a good basis for determining an article's importance in the context of Wikipedia. 1) It give too much weight to obscure topics. There are many, many theories about personality, intelligence, mental illness, and so on that could "be the foundation of human all human psychology" if they were true, but most of them don't attract any attention. I don't think we need to give weight to fringe theories just because they might be true. 2) It is speculatory in nature. We really do not have any way of knowing if any topic will provide the foundation of all human psychology, and we should not try to make predictions about it because Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. 3) Any attempt to determine if a topic is really that revolutionary would be original research, so we have to rely on material from reliable sources to determine if a topic's scope is that great. The best way to do that is to see what kind of additional recognition it has received from published material.

In summary, I don't think that "scope" and "degree of recognition" should be regarded different criteria on Wikipedia since we can only determine a topic's scope through its recognition from a variety of sources. (In case there is any confusion, I don't think that "degree of recognition" is based entirely on the quantity of research about the topic, although that may be one aspect to consider. It is also based on whether that research considers it an important element of psychology. For example, a topic could be widely researched, but that research might not establish the topic as being a key element of psychology.) Instead, I believe the basis for an importance assessment is this: "If a person were researching psychology, what priority would this topic have in that research?" and "How familiar should a person knowledgeable of psychology be with this topic?" The most important topics would be those that should be covered first. —Cswrye 22:33, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

I would add a few points. First, don't forget the introductory statements.

"DRAFT" WikiProject Psychology importance scale: The article's importance, regardless of its quality, particularly in terms of psychology's history, principles, scope, and methods.

Rate articles on overall importance. Use the basic descriptions, guided by the general examples when available. Always give the highest rating suggested by general examples at different levels.

Article's always will be judged on multiple criteria. In this case, the draft guidelines suggest paying the most attention to four dimensions – history, principles, scope and methods. To keep it simple, the recommended "tiebreaker" if an article plays out differently for different criteria is just go with the highest rating.

Second, this is Wikipedia. Tho top rating already is predefined for articles designated as a core topic. The bottom rating says, This ia a fringe topic, at best!" That leaves two for most everything else. Pick one. If someone else doesn't like it, well...this is Wikipedia. Work it out.

Third, specific examples are good. Types of articles help even more. I'll repeat my suggestion at the top of this dicussion. Where possible, also place types of articles in each rating category, like at Wikipedia:WikiProject Indiana/Assessment. For example, go through the top-level subcategories at Category:Psychology and decide if groups of articles (in a subcat) fit a particular importance rating. For example, in Category:Branches of psychology, would the overview articles for the "major" (whatever that means) branches be at least of "high" importance? In any event, it's a good way to develop rules of thumb.

Fourth, take a look at the actual assessments so far at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Psychology articles by quality. These ratings constitute the operational definitions of quality and importance. Look for examples and patterns to help guide your definitions and ratings. They're all relative anyway, so just give it your best shot and move on. Oddballs always can be adjusted later (and by this I mean outlier article ratings ;-) Rfrisbie^talk 02:24, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

This is all find as far as it goes, but it doesn't solve the problem.

It's perfectly ok to base "Importance" soley on the degree of recognition a topic has obtained, as long as you explain that. However the current explanations of criteria state that the degree of importance will be based on the scope of the article and the degree of recognition.

The problem is that only a very few articles on psychology will actually meet any one of the four pairs of criteria (though all will meet at least one or two individual criteria of the eight), the rest can only be rated at all by bending the criteria which rather defeats the object as well as being a tad unfair.

I hope I'm making sense in the way I am putting this...it's very late here, so I think I'll save the big discussion for tomorrow before I fall over sideways without signing --Zeraeph 03:00, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

It's always possible to construct unambiguous ratings from multiple criteria using decision trees, but frankly, I think that would be overkill in this case. What I recommend you do is either edit the existing draft or write an alternative in a sandbox and link it here for review. That way, we can just pound away at something until we're all reasonably satisfied. Rfrisbie^talk 03:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

I brought this up at WP:1.0 and got a few responses. You can see the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index#Intended meaning of importance. —Cswrye 15:15, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I think I should point out that I honestly do not mind how importance is rated AS LONG AS the way it is rated is explained clearly and unambiguously on the relevant pages. A rating system is only a form of communication and to communicate effectively it must be defined clearly. If there is a consensus to rate importance primarily on degree of recognition that is fine as long as the criteria clearly state that importance is rated primarily on degree of recognition and all articles are re-graded to reflect that. Scope and degree of recognition are two criteria that are irrelevant to each other and will conflict too often for any rating based on both to be an effective communication tool..."this article is rated *high importance*, but guess whether that applies to degree of recognition or scope" doesn't work too well :o)

The more I think about it, the more certain I feel that there really is a case for rating articles by quality, recognition and scope seperately (if you think about it *importance* is a VERY POV word, *scope* and *recognition* are just measureable quantities). It would communicate so much more of the kind of information people need when they browse an indexing system, so much more effectively.--Zeraeph 16:24, 27 October 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry to say but i don't think the overall quality of wiki psychology articles is impressive. Typically they are go-with-the-flow articles that severely seem to lack respect or originality and independance of the person and personality. To give an example, i will no way agree that 3 % of male and 1% of female is sociopath, moreso because apparently reknown usian researchers try to separate the term from the very well known complex factors of youth and background (wich i do consider respectfull sources. Long sentence short i would like to relate quality in a psychology article to neutrality. Long way to go because apparently the usian justice system thinks that individuality and psychopathy are on par, unless it is for economic purposes. Another aspect that criminal psychology absolutely blunders in is the stubborn refusal to regognise pathological traits (wars, soldiership, police etc.) of society as causal and subliminally causal. (comp nr. of veterans involved in crime/ weaponesque profiling of highschool murder type events etc.)ofcourse locking up antagonists is an old and succesfull weapon, labelling them a synonym of sociopath is just as old.80.57.242.54 00:35, 5 November 2006 (UTC)