Wikipedia talk:Version 0.5 Nominations/Archive 1

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Contents

Historical note

Earlier discussion about this was at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team, [1] and [2]. Maurreen 02:47, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Failures because of importance

The page says: "Articles deemed by the team to fail on the criterion of "importance" will also be archived, though these may qualify for nomination at Wikipedia 1.0."

Can we delete the second part of that sentence: "though these may qualify for nomination at Wikipedia 1.0."? Or did we misunderstand each other the other day? Maurreen 17:58, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't mind removing this, because I think it will arise only rarely. This reflects the fact that WP1.0 will be wider in scope than 0.5, so (for example) you might want to include on WP1.0 an FA like Ann Arbor, Michigan which was rejected for WP:0.5 as not important enough (we might only manage to cover major cities).
Thanks. Maurreen 02:40, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Eligible for nominations

You might also want to include BozMo's list of 2,000 articles he used. But I don't have the link handy at the moment. Maurreen 02:44, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

[3] or User:BozMo/version 1 list although I am intending to rebuild using a tag of {{WPCD}} which perhaps cuts across and needs incorporating into this. Are you planning to have a list of section excludes like User:BozMo/tidy#Remove_Sections_.28updated_list.29and User:BozMo/tidy#Delete_sections:for the 0.5 version? I strongly recommend it as otherwise things get fragmented and the articles look messy. --BozMo talk 13:48, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
Thank you for raising that. I had looked at those pages before, but hadn't yet thought about including that in V0.5, but we should. I see V0.5 as an adult version, but I think we will still want to clean up or omit some sections of some articles for a variety of reasons. I think we should also make it "clean" enough for a teen audience, as high schoolers will be a major audience. Probably less critical when it is a test version full of disclaimers, but we should probably also test out our abilities at vetting articles. Good idea. Thanks, Walkerma 15:38, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Instructions too complicated

Looking at the general overview, it seems that this will follow the early-GA model of a single reviewer approving (or not) each nomination. If this is the case:

  • Why would nominators "be expected to make a good-faith effort to address objections that are raised, if they are actionable"? Presumably any significant objections would cause the nomination to be failed; or, if it is approved, there would be no place for objections to be made.
  • Why create per-article nomination subpages at all if there's not going to be any substantial discussion there. We could get away with just providing a link to the article and waiting for a reviewer to do something with it.

It seems to me that much of the material here was written with a more FAC-like process in mind. Kirill Lokshin 23:03, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for looking over this page - just looked over this as I was away much of the weekend. As you found, it's still a work in progress. I'd missed the "good-faith effort" part (now removed), which as you guessed was left over from earlier when I was copying material from the FAC page. I took FAC/WP:V1.0N and GAN, combined them, then rewrote things to fit what was needed. I hadn't done the rewrite on the "nominations" section, that's why it didn't make sense (it also had 1.0 links, not 0.5). I'm sorry if this wasted some of your time.
Could I ask you to look over the rewritten version of the procedure to see if this addresses your concerns? I'm very keen to get an outsider's view of this process - Tito, Maurreen and myself can end up getting too close to the project, so your insights are valuable. Many thanks, Walkerma 02:54, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Much better! A few further comments:
  • Am I missing something, or is the "Nominations" section a copy of the "Nomination procedure" section?
  • I'm not sure that having people put a template on the article talk page when they nominate is a good idea. Many of the core articles are (at least mildly) contentious; since there seems to be no barrier to signing up as a reviewer, this might cause people who disagree with something in a particular article to sign up just so they can fail the nomination. (Which would probably be a valid point in terms of 1.0 generally; but allowing this here might impact the timetable quite heavily.)
Other than that, looks good. Kirill Lokshin 03:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
No, you weren't missing anything, I'm just very tired! I fixed the duplication - I think the nominations section was actually meant to be the area for adding the articles. Regarding the template comment, I don't have strong views on this but I think it would be helpful for people to see that an article has been nominated (that also helps to advertise the project!). I am planning to upload any "pre-qualified" articles, which would mean all of the core topics listings (unless we opt to hold back on Stubs & Starts until we can improve them). Note, I'm planning on revisiting the core topics list before adding it, to consider Vir's and Silence's comments. I'd also like to list any FAs or A-Class articles that are on important topics - if these are obvious articles to include, we can save a lot of time at the start by just adding them. In other words, we would start with a base of perhaps 300 major articles already in place. If we do that, will that circumvent the problem you envisage?
If we get a few reviewers that way, that's great - though I plan to include in the criteria a section on being a reviewer, and this will try to stop reviewers from simply reviewing one article then going dormant. I think the "importance" factor is such that we need reviewers with the perspective of this project, not simply the perspective of what is important in their (perhaps narrow) area of interest.
Finally, I have just put in place the listing page, called Wikipedia:Version 0.5. I made all the mistakes, and Tito made it much better and made it look pretty. Please can you give us more of your helpful remarks? I apologise in advance for more silly errors from fatigue - I almost uploaded two "Law" sections just now! Thanks, Walkerma 04:05, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Well, about adding all the Core Topics: I would hold on that, if they're not FA/A-Class articles. GAs and B-Class articles need to be determined on a per-article basis, and Start/Stub articles should not be added, but rather failed on quality and be allowed to be resumbitted if fixed. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:09, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
OK, I can go along with that. We need to check on POV disputes and the like. Cheers, Walkerma 04:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)
Looks very nice. There seem to be a few unusual choices on the hierarchy, though:
  • Archaeology together with the arts; history might be a better parent, but that's probably just a question of preference.
  • Psychology together with philosophy and religion; this is an edit war just waiting to happen. Maybe a "Psychology and sociology" section might be better?
  • "Royalty, nobility, and heraldry" under "Everyday life"; wouldn't "History" be more appropriate?
Overall, though, it's quite well laid-out. Kirill Lokshin 11:37, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Listings categories

Hi, a few thoughts, some minor:

  1. Some of these seem more or less developed than I would expect, or in comparison with other. For example, the music subcategories seem more detailed than those for art.
  2. I would think train-related items would only need one subcategory, instead of three.
  3. "Water transport" might be broader than "Maritime transport".
  4. The "Media" section, now under "Society", might be better split between "Arts" and "Language, Literature and Communication."
  5. I would take "tribunals" out of "Military camps, tribunals and facilities." If you want a section designated for tribunals, I would put them under "Legal issues and treaties."
  6. It might be worthwhile to broaden "Sports and games" to include recreation.
  7. I would switch around "Engineering, applied sciences, and technology" so that "technology" is at the front. That is the word people are most likely to look for.
  8. "Cryptography" is broader than "Computing."

Maurreen 03:48, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

The categories are a direct copy of the GA categories, so feel free to add any relevant ones. However, some of the points you bring up should be done at WP:GA so they can adjust accordingly too. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Same thing as WP:GA

Couldn't this be done in collaboration with WP:GA since it has almost the same goal in mind. Lincher 19:28, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

There is a bit of overlap with GA, but since the end result is not the same, GA is not entirely adequate for our purposes. GAs are seen as benchmarks of articles that need "a bit more", while in a static version, one does not have the priviledge of doing that. The articles that qualify for GA may not be adequate for the release, and since the same issue is true for FAs, it has to be a separate process. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 20:12, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
We will be collaborating with GA somewhat, also with FA, but our goal is very different - it is to produce a CD of the most important articles on Wikipedia. GA is not interested in making a CD, and is also not concerned about the importance of the topic, so many GAs will not be included in this release. Do we need to clarify this more? Thanks, Walkerma 22:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it helps me understand this process. Since I'm working on bringing EB1911 incorporated articles to a better standard and would for sure be included in the CD, should I then nominate here instead of WP:GA? Lincher 15:24, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
Yes, please nominate here, we should be accepting noms in a week or so (I think!). Getting approved as GA simply gives it a tag that says "This is a GA," and nothing more happens (though I still think that is useful). Getting it approved for V0.5 means (a) it will be included on a CD and/or paper release in the fall, and (b) it will be automatically nominated for future versions of the CD such as for Version 1.0 (c) it will in effect become part of the "canon" of "important articles on Wikipedia" (IMHO). Walkerma 15:58, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Buttons

The buttons are nifty. Good work. Maurreen 04:17, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Opening up to accept nominations

My view is that we have covered all of the bases, and I think we're about ready to open this page up on Thursday (May 25). Any objections to this? Any problems? We still have a few jobs to do like getting the "held nominations" page up, and there's a lot of work needed over at Core Topics so we can bring articles in from there, but none of these should (IMHO) prevent us from getting things started over here. Any comments? Volunteers for article reviewing? Walkerma 03:06, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I modified the link of reviewers to point to WP:1.0's member list, but I'd like to know if it is a good idea to allow everyone in there to review articles. What do you think? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
As things are written right now, the only requirement for reviewers is that they sign up as team members. I'm wondering if maybe we need to get a separate reviewers page going, where people would specifically sign up to review for V0.5. This is not because I think the team members couldn't do it, but simply:
  • Many folks sign up for WP1.0 just because they're interested in some aspect of it, which may or may not include reviewing for WP0.5. Conversely we may get people interested in reviewing who may not want to sign up for the main team.
  • I'd like to put in writing somewhere something along the lines of "If you only sign up to review one or two articles as a one-off favour for your friend who nominated them, we may treat your review as suspect. We want people who are committed to the project as a whole." However I need a more diplomatic way of saying that, because we need all the help we can get and I don't want people to get put off helping. I think the vast majority of people signing up will do so for the right reason, even if they end up only reviewing one or two.
  • We may want a forum for people to discuss reviewing issues separate from the noms page, somewhere where people can say things like, "I found this problem in this article I'm reviewing, should this prevent it being accepted? Have other reviewers seen this kind of thing before?" Any thoughts? Walkerma 03:36, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
    • Hmm... makes sense. I'm trying to think of a diplomatic way to say it (perhaps "reviews by new members are subject to further review") and I'm not sure what wording would work. Where should that list be located? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:48, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
I think the key thing is to emphasize the positive - which would be the main thrust anyway (thanks a lot for helping us!), and let folks fill in the blanks for themselves. As for a location, how about Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Reviewers or Wikipedia:Version 0.5 Review Team? Walkerma 04:07, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Nomination categories

Do you think these would be better in alphabetical order? Maurreen 04:21, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I kinda like it as is. Math, Technology, and Science are together, Arts, Language, and Philosophy are together, and Society, Geography, and History are together. Nifboy 06:35, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

A Little Less Conversation...

"...and a little more action, please". I've submitted the first review for inclusion into a static version, so this process has now started. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:03, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Given the above, I went ahead and nominated all the VAs that were also FAs. Nifboy 06:32, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Added Canada, also VA/FA. -- Samir धर्म 03:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Agreed. That said, some of them are currently on FARC; I'd like someone to pass an article before we start failing others. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:40, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
And, of course, I screw up and forget to mark the talk pages appropriately. Oops. Nifboy 22:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, is it intended that {{V0.5}} link to a nomination subpage? The instructions for that were removed from the process. Kirill Lokshin 12:28, 24 May 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for spotting that! Yes, we abandoned that for V0.5, though I think we are planning on having separate nomination pages for V1.0. I simply deleted it - but if there is a useful link we can put in its place, then that should be added in. I think it'll work OK as it is, though. Walkerma 12:50, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Reviewing

It says, "We are looking to include the following in this test release:", and then lists Core Topics, Continents and etc.., and Vital Articles. Do these articles have automatic inclusion. If so, do we really need them here at the noms page. It just seems like based on the criteria, Vital Articles get in right away. And as a side-note (as mentioned before), a forum to ask other reviewers questions would be a good idea. Chuck(척뉴넘) 03:47, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, because there are two criteria: importance and quality. A core topic that's just simply bad won't be included, so we want to make sure we do review everything. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 03:51, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright, that's what I thought. Another quick question. If something's already VA and FA, doesn't it already pass the imprortance and quality? So are those good (all the ones that Nifboy added). Thanks for the help, I want to get started on reviewing the articles. Chuck(척뉴넘) 04:01, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Not really. Some FAs may be in the process of FARCing, and should be failed on quality if they are indeed bad, after an editor's review. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:03, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright, cool...thanks. Chuck(척뉴넘) 04:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Should we fail an article based on references? Specifically, should we fail articles that don't contain inline citations, but rather just a reference section at the end? I was looking at the article Diego Velázquez that has been nominated and this has scattered references (certainly not comprehensive) in text (in parentheses) and a short reference section. It is a FA, but I was gonna fail it for quality, due to the references, especially since importance doens't seem that great. I wanted to get an opinion here first. Thanks, Chuck(척뉴넘) 06:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that you should point that out on the talk page first, and if no one objects, ask back here. Lack of inline citations is not a FARCing reason, so it may be still considered high quality. Inline citations are a fairly new development... I don't know, what does everyone else think? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:27, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Tito here - inline refs are to be preferred, but shouldn't be a requirement. I notice that our WP1.0 sister project (FA's First) did one of their extensive FA reviews in November and concluded that it was a good FA, I would go with that (assuming the article hasn't declined since then). As for notability, I'm not very knowledgable about art, but I have heard of this artist as one of the top Spanish artists. I don't consider him to be in the top ten, but he is probably in the top fifty - is that high enough? I'd probably support inclusion, because I'm pretty optimistic that we'll get 0.5 big enough to include a lot more than ten artists. What do others think? Walkerma 06:41, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Discussing

Sorry to barrage the talk page with questions but...Like is done at Wikipedia:Good articles/Disputes, can/should we start a short discussion of specific nominations below their entry? I don't think using the article talk to discuss it would be the best idea, as most people looking at those pages aren't familiar with the 1.0 and 0.5 system, and aren't reviewers anyway. And also, this talk page would be quite filled up and questions lost with so many questions about different articles. I don't think it's a simple matter of pass or fail for some articles, and specific discussions need to be started somewhere. Thanks, Chuck(척뉴넘) 06:35, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The talk page of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Review Team could do the job, but I'm not sure if it would scale. Good question, though. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:39, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
I was going to suggest the very same place! Chuck, you could be forgiven for not being familiar with this page, it's only been up for an hour or so (PLEASE SIGN UP AS A MEMBER!). Part of the reason for creating that page was so that reviewers could discuss these types of issues away from the nominations page. I'd like to see how things go there, I'm hoping that once we get a team of reviewers who know the ropes, most reviews can go through pretty easily. For WP:V1N, the plan is to have a separate review page for each article, but the idea with 0.5 was to try and keep it simple. I'd say, only if the Review Team talk page proves inadequate do we need to create a more sophisticated system. Walkerma 06:46, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

How could we make wikiprojects to nominate their best articles? If I nominate an article, can I be my own reviewer? I ask it because I nominated about 50 articles and moved at least 20 to Version 0.5 and if there won't be any editor who will move science related articles to V0.5, then my nominations go to waste. :) I hope I was understanable... NCurse work 19:34, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

I will do my best to start reviewing some science articles - though I have been trying also to review subject areas that have not had many reviews. I think on principle the nominator should not be the reviewer, we must always get a second opinion. Also see my talk page answers. Thanks for your work, Walkerma 03:04, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
To address Chuck's point above, after reflection I think it would be nice to have a place to put comments. Should we add comments into the nomination section, such as "fix XYZ and then we'll pass it"? Should we have a page where we can leave comments on our reviews, "I passed it because we need the article, but could do with a couple more pictures, a longer section on the history and a cleanup of the formats in the references section." No article is going to be perfect, this might be helpful. At the same time, I don't think we want to slow down the flow of articles. Comments? Walkerma 03:22, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
For articles that fail, the instructions already call for comments to be left on the talk page; this is probably a better way of communicating with the actual people writing the articles than an obscure project page would be. For articles that pass, I'm not sure that anyone would bother reading further comments anyway.
I'm concerned, however, that we're beginning to second-guess the FA system here. Insofar as 0.5 is set up as a test release with only a single reviewer, we should try to avoid wasting everyone's time by playing silly games with the criteria; failing an FA on quality should involve a problem worthy of WP:FARC, not a minor formatting complaint. Kirill Lokshin 03:41, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
Regarding the Tony Blair article, my reasoning was this. When viewing a static version of the article, whether on DVD or paper, it would be inappopriate to have a reference list that looks like this:
But to have it rather have a description (as someone might not want to take the effort (sometimes with static copies it won't be as simple as clicking a link) to go to a URL if they don't know where it leads. The following should be used (IMO):
I hope this makes sense, and if I'm completely in the wrong, let me know. Chuck(척뉴넘) 04:04, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
As for second-guessing the FA system: there's two types of failures by quality, which should be handled differently:
  • The "quick fix" failure, like the reference system above. If the failures are truly minor, {{sofixit}}; however, otherwise, leave a comment on the talk page and do not fail it unless the comment is not addressed within... let's say, two weeks.
  • The "major deficiency" failure, which is what should involve a FARC. I've failed articles this way, but most of the time, the FARC was already in discussion in the talk page. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 04:40, 29 May 2006 (UTC)
In principle I agree with Kirrill's comment - in general, approving an FA on quality should be a formality. There may be cases with a few unstable FAs like Tony Blair that could give rise to a poor FA (if an edit war breaks out, for example). Chuck has also raised an interesting point about online links - I think we should perhaps be encouraging the sorts of changes he is mentioning. However, this is a test release (and we're finding things out already!), and an offline release, this means that there will be lots of redlinks and other problems we will just have to put up with in these early releases. I assume we can fix the refs problem and renominate poor Tony (he's taken quite a battering recently, hasn't he!). Walkerma 05:03, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

WP:VA

This project seems very similar to Wikipedia:Vital articles in several ways, just more new and less polished in its inclusion scope. Perhaps those pages could be useful for this endeavor, considering that it deals with establishing "core topics" similar to the core topic list, but has a much more expansive and consistent listing, and is also accompanied by FA/GA denotations so you can easily identify topics that are both high-quality and extremely noteworthy. -Silence 23:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we are drawing heavily on the lists from WP:VA (as well as WP:CORE and the supplement), take a look at the nomination comments! However, we want to review every article ourselves, and I expect the scope to be broader than WP:VA. We really appreciate the work you guys have done over there at WP:VA, it is a great help! Walkerma 02:56, 29 May 2006 (UTC)