Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Assessment

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[edit] Class: List-type articles

I have been tagging articles that are little more than lists of biography links with a header reminiscent of a disambiguation page with the Project Banner and the parameter class=list:

{{WikiProject Anthroponymy | class = list | importance =  }}

This places the article talk page into the category Category:List-Class Anthroponymy articles. It is my feeling that these constitute the 'sub-stub' state of an anthroponymy-scope article. Ideally, these should be immediately moved into a stub state, but practically, these do add value to Wikipedia. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:13, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

I noticed a lot of 'list-class' articles that are in fact of the sub-stub class. There were also a few actual lists that will always be just lists. I think we should change all 'sub-stub' articles into stubs and assess all 'actual list' articles on the usual stub-FA scale because the fact the they are lists is covered by other indications. Yury Petrachenko (talk) 01:26, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Class: Stub-type articles

The working definition of articles in the stub-class (from the main page) is an "article (that) is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible."

In the context of the Anthroponymy Project, I would propose this alternative definition: "An article that a) contains at least one referenced origin statement for a surname or given name and b) contains at least one ethnic, national, or geographical categorization arising from the origin statement." --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 02:18, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

Support. Yury Petrachenko (talk) 01:18, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Importance scale: Surname articles

The Importance scale currently reads as:

  • Top: Scope-definitive articles, "must-have"s for Wikipedia:Version 1.0.
  • High: All "X names", very common personal/family names
  • Mid: Personal/family names that may be relevant to a general English-speaking reader
  • Low: Rare names, other articles that are not likely to be of general interest

I would suggest some revisions to this and a differential between non-name articles, surnames and given names.

  • Top (surname)
    • Surname accounts for >1% of a defined population at any time in history (e.g. Smith, 1.006%, United States, 1990 Census (link)
    • Surname is stated in a reliable source as being "the most common" surname in a population
  • High (surname)
    • Surname accounts for >0.5% of a defined population at any time in history (e.g. Brown, 0.621%, United States, 1990 Census (link)
    • Surname is stated in a reliable source as being "in the top 10" or "among the most common" in a population
  • Mid (surname)
    • Surname accounts for >0.1% of a defined population at any time in history (e.g. King, 0.19%, United States, 1990 Census (link)
    • Surname is stated in a reliable source as being "common" in a population
    • Surname is associated with a ruling or dynastic family across 3 or more contiguous generations
    • Surname is associated with a family whose members across 3 or more contiguous generations have distinguished themselves as historically important (e.g. notable)
  • Low (surname)
    • Surname accounts for <0.1% of a defined population and is not know to have accounted for >0.1% of that population at any time in history (i.e. not Top, High or Mid)
    • Surname is stated in a reliable source as being "uncommon" or "rare" in a population
initially proposed --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 14:22, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

  • Support. This proposed scoring tool incorporates objective criteria paired with criteria-based buzzwords ("the most common", "among the most common", "common", and "uncommon"/"rare") that match often-found citation buzzwords. —Rosiestephenson (talk) 09:38, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I think the criteria needs more work. We need to be careful. With the proposed criteria we can easily end up with thousands of last names in the Top-Importance category that used to be represented by over 1% of some obscure population in some ancient time and not even recognized as a last name by English public (they will never develop further stubs and will be always under risk to be deleted). I still think that 'top something' is a good criterion when we incorporate the relevance of the prospective culture. I think there is no criteria right now even to decide if we need WP needs an article for a given surname, this makes it so much more difficult to rank the relevant articles. I like the idea of having different sets of criteria for different classes of articles. Yury Petrachenko (talk) 01:02, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Importance scale: Given name articles

The Importance scale currently reads as:

  • Top: Scope-definitive articles, "must-have"s for Wikipedia:Version 1.0.
  • High: All "X names", very common personal/family names
  • Mid: Personal/family names that may be relevant to a general English-speaking reader
  • Low: Rare names, other articles that are not likely to be of general interest

As noted in the Surname section above, I favor different criteria for given name vs. surname articles.

  • Top (given name)
    • The given name has been the most popular name found in birth records for a particular demographic group (e.g. national, ethnic) for any given year. (for instance, Emma was the top baby name for Northern Ireland for 2003, but was preceded and followed in 2002 and 2004 by different given names).

more later

--User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 01:56, 14 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Discussion

I think it's a good idea to try to approximately match the overall statistics on all projects. Well, it does not apply to given names (because there are just too few of them) but it general it's good to keep in mind that of all assessed articles there are about 2% that fall into Top, 7.5% into High, 26% into Mid and 64.5% are ruled Low. I think that we should incorporate the relevance of the population and the period into our scale, and it's not a mechanical procedure. Yury Petrachenko (talk) 01:13, 4 June 2008 (UTC)