Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Assessment/Archive 1

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Article importance grading scheme

As of right now it says that articles that are rated of top performance:

Subject is a must-have for a print encyclopedia. High probability that non-Historians would look this up. Limited to the top 150 biographies. Must have had a large impact outside of their main discipline, across several generations, and in the majority of the world. For instance, Einstein, brilliant physicist, but his theories have affected people outside of physics and in many other countries besides his nation of origin and several generations. His ideas have changed the way people think. No member should give this rating to any biography without first getting Project approval from the other members.

I don't really understand the "limited to the top 150 biographies" part. Who chose 150, and why? As of right now there are 226 articles rated of top importance, so something needs to be changed. Also, I don't see a spot for discussion of adding people into this category. VegaDark 01:22, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

The number 150 was chosen by the group at toward the bottom of this discussion. The list is being developed at Wikipedia talk:Core biographies. I don't know what to tell you about the tags. Maurreen 01:56, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that this is totally odd. Among other things, it utterly conflicts with the previous statement that these are people who are "must-haves for a print encyclopedia." Any print encyclopedia worth its salt will have well more than 150 biographical articles. Just for a start, any decent print encyclopedia would include articles on 1) all kings and queens of England/Great Britain/UK (41 since the Norman Conquest); 2) all Kings and Emperors of France (37 since Hugh Capet); 3) all Holy Roman Emperors, Austrian Emperors, German Emperors (49 since Otto the Great); 4) all Kings of Spain (14 since Charles V, not included since he's also in the previous category); 5) all Tsars of Russia (26 since Ivan the Great); 6) all Popes (115 or so since Leo IX), and so forth. There we already have 282 people who really ought to be "must-haves for a print encyclopedia," without having gone beyond the confines of "European monarchs." It wouldn't necessary have lengthy articles on each of these people (some of them it would be impossible to have lengthy articles on - Francis II of France certainly didn't do very much); but it would have a worthwhile article of some sort giving the basic facts. It'd have articles on all major writers of the English language, on all the great classical writers, on all but the most ephemeral Roman emperors, on all American presidents and British prime ministers, on leading generals of the Civil War, the English Civil War, the Thirty Years War, the Franco-Prussian War, World War II, etc. I'm not sure, but I'd guess that most major print encyclopedias have several thousand biographical articles. I think that both a) the terms for who should be included should be limited; and b) the number should be expanded. 500 or even 1000, I think, would be an appropriate number, and it should be for people for whom detailed articles are "must-haves" in a print encyclopedia. john k 03:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I wonder whether you've looked at the talk page linked to above; here for example we read that till recently the only figure for film was Hitchcock (the addition of Kurosawa and Disney was proposed and agreed to). The omission of Griffith, Vertov, Eisenstein, Bergman, Dryer, Ford, Truffaut, Godard, Welles, Hawks, [insert your favorite names here] etc. is dreadful, of course. But who is going to rustle up the few dozen conscientious, level-headed, literate people whose sustained input would be needed to create the list of, oh, let's say five thousand (the easy part) and then to make sure that all the people on it have articles of GA level or above? (Meanwhile, I'm more interested in the criteria used within this enigmatic list.) -- Hoary 04:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I think you guys are missing the point, or points. One point being that this is a working list and we invite you to participate. Another one is that this is supposed to be a finite, small, workable list for our project to conceivably be able to work on and get to FA status. Another point is that the names you mention above in film may have been vastly important to the film industry, but perhaps not outside of the film industry and to a significant portion of the world. That is what we have determined is the criteria in order to keep this list small. It is for projects like Film, to determine who or what are the Top articles for FILM, and for the Novels project to determine what are the Top articles for NOVELS, etc. plange 04:11, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Oh dear, I must be really bad at expressing myself: your second point is one I was trying to make. (As for your first point, I'm considering it; meanwhile, thank you for the invitation.) -- Hoary 04:35, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
LOL! Just reread it and see what you mean now! I misread it as a knock against our attempt. Sorry :-) plange 04:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
Plange, my point was not so much about the way the project actually works, but the way the criteria are written. Perhaps I've missed the point, but I think that you have as well. I do think the list should probably be larger, because that helps to avoid silly arguments, but beyond that it is asking for trouble to include the "must-haves for a print encyclopedia" phrasing. Thousands of people are must-haves for a print encyclopedia. Would anyone take serious a print encyclopedia that didn't have articles on all of Charles IX of France, John Keats, Aeschylus, Claude Monet, Marlon Brando, William Pitt the Elder, Francisco Pizzaro, George Frideric Handel, and Pope Alexander VI? I certainly would be pretty dubious about such a thing. I'm don't really think any of these people would qualify among the 250 most important people that ever lived, but they'd certainly all qualify as "people who would be in any self-respecting print encyclopedia." I would add that referring to a "main discipline" makes it very awkward to apply this standard to any political figures. What exactly was Louis XIV's "discipline"? What does it mean for a political leader to have an impact "in the majority of the world"? These criteria would exclude all but a tiny percentage of political leaders from counting in this project - only Hitler and Stalin, of current figures, probably qualify as having a major impact "in the majority of the world." I think the criteria badly need to be rewritten. john k 11:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
For one thing, that first sentence or two is no longer in our definition. Please see the Core biographies page for the latest phrasing. I will update it here, but have been very busy. Second, my invitation still stands. We asked for feedback on the definition on the Core biographies talk page and this is what came out. I invite you to join the discussion on that page. That is where these things are getting hashed out, not here. plange 15:37, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
I have done some discussion over there. Good to hear that that particular business has been ironed out. I think it ought to be made more clear that "core biographies" and "top priority" biographies are the same thing, assuming they are. john k 16:14, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Explanatory template for Comments subpages

First, my congratulations to the creators of the template plonked on the talk page of every assessed article. It's a masterpiece. I can't claim to understand its every detail, but I get the impression that fiddling with it -- e.g. changing "{{FULLPAGENAME}}/Comments" to "{{FULLPAGENAME}}/WPBiography_comments" -- would be disastrous. I therefore don't propose to ask for any change to it at all (and I'm certainly not going to fiddle with it myself). Even though I'd rather like to, as it seems a bit odd for a subpage titled as broadly as "Comments" to be reserved for this purpose.

So instead: Mightn't it be a good idea for the Comments subpage to start off with a template reminding the reader that here are comments directly related to the WPBiography evaluation? -- Hoary 05:59, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! hmm, hadn't thought of the problem of other projects eventually doing the same thing... Renaming the page is a good idea, though not sure at this stage if it's feasible since we'd lose all the ones we have created. Let me think on this.... On putting a disclaimer at top, would be rather difficult if not impossible to do, and if we did, the disclaimer would show up here for every article.plange 06:03, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Just thought of another wrinkle. The comments are picked up by mathbot, and I think it's only programmed to grab /Comments pages.... This commenting thing was developed over at WP:1.0, we're just implementing it :-) plange 06:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
I realize that a change from /Comments to, say, /WPBiography_comments would be very tough, so I'm not proposing it. But if each /Comments page were to start with "{{WPBio_comments_head}}" (adjust the template name to taste, of course), couldn't the relevant bots be programmed to skip this particular string (and any number of linebreaks immediately following it)? -- Hoary 11:02, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
Could the template conditionally use /WPBiography_comments (when it exists, or when it doesn't and there's no /Comments) or /Comments? Then we'd still have a cleanup project, but it could be "at our leisure", and we'd avoid long-term entanglements with other projects. I'm new enough around here that I have no concept of feasability on that though... I suppose another alternative would be stanardized sections within the page, but I don't see how that gets either enforced or even encouraged... studerby 16:37, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

This would be better discussed at Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index, where the folks most involved in the technical issues can, erm, comment. (or /comment). It's important that WikiProjects learn to work together and keep abreast of what other Projects are up to. To that end, see also: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council. --kingboyk 14:31, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Is Siegenthaler the example you want here?

I was looking at your article importance, and was thrown by your example of someone of mid-importance. I would reckon that a successful movie star (Morena Baccarin) is probably better known on the whole than Seigenthaler, whose notability to us seems, at this point, largely bound up in his conflict with us. Nor do I think Baccarin qualifies as "possibly trivial." I would figure that both people are probably in the mid category, and that Siegenthaler is probably a bad example because of his past involvement with Wikipedia. Perhaps a better low category example would be someone like Cyrus Farivar? Phil Sandifer 15:43, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Actually, we decided to use only the top importance category. But there is probably some previous rating that need to be changed, and we need to make that more clear. Maybe we should just delete the examples of anyone not in the top group. Maurreen 15:54, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Yep, we need to add an explanation that only the Top is being used and that people are welcome to use the others for sorting priority, but it's not needed, etc. This is the kind of thing we want to avoid. For instance, someone else put Morena as low, and I allowed it because I'm a huge Firefly fan and so couldn't be objective about it. She's hardly a household name unless you are a Firefly fan. plange 16:04, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Maybe anything other than "Top" should be done by other relevant projects, and we say so on the project page? Maurreen 16:08, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Not sure what you mean? plange 17:23, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

On second thought, I've reconsidered that. I now think it might be best to delete references on the project page to the other importance levels, or maybe just say that we are not using them. Maurreen 17:37, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking the latter too. We can just say something like, "work groups may want to use the other ratings to help sort articles by priority but they do not carry any instrinsic value outside of this use" or something like that? plange 17:47, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
Sure, works for me. Maurreen 17:57, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
So, should we remove the people listed as examples for each, other than Einstein? Maurreen 20:19, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
Seems to me that an example of someone who is "high" but not "top" is useful to help in figuring out what exactly "top" means. john k 04:02, 13 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, people like Frank Sinatra, Paul McCartney, Miguel de Cervantes and Jean-Paul Sartre are rated as high but not top. I think listing a few like these really makes it clear. It also avoids ending up with people nominating the likes of Ayrton Senna, Billy the Kid or Roger Bannister in the top category... I think we might also want to keep a special watch on additions to the top category because as has been mentionned many times before it is meant to stay really small in the near future. Pascal.Tesson 16:19, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

I think the rating system should take into account not for all people reputable sources are available on all aspects of their lives, but that the biography can still be excellent that is it cannot become better because of lack of reputable sources. In other words, a biographic article can be excellent and still be very incomplete. Andries 20:33, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Names for levels

We don't have to use the same names as everyone else. I'd like to suggest considering names that are more clear and hopefully of greater use to the uninitiated.

Some ideas:

  • Adequate
  • Basic, or meets basic standards
  • Better
  • C class, and maybe the like
  • Fair
  • Needs improvement
  • Usable
Maurreen 08:25, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
Don't have to use the same names no, but they really ought to map to the classifications the other Projects are doing. If there's no standardisation then we've been wasting a lot of time. --kingboyk 14:29, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

"We have decided for the time being to mark importance for only the top 250 biographies."

Then get rid of the importance= tag. A decision really needs to be taken on this, one way or the other. I think there's a case for quietly dropping that parameter if it's not going to be used; or just use it for the Workgroups. (NB That would mean only one workgroup per article, which I think is a fair compromise anyway). --kingboyk 14:40, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't want to drop this. I would like to keep it in case we ever get caught up enough to use the others, plus people are using it to help rank priority. The statement just means that as a Project, we're not going to worry about marking the others, but people are free to use them. plange 15:19, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Inclusion

Does the biography project include gods and goddesses? I ask this because I encoutered lots of half-gods doing the Greek people but didn't tag them with the WPBio tag ... should I have done so? Ex : Menelaus, all the names in King of Athens. As for the gods themselves, take a look at List of Norse gods and let me know if they should be tagged too. Lincher 22:14, 18 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm thinking no.... It's tempting, but I think we're drawing the line on historical figures only... Thanks for checking! plange 22:58, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
Can you point me to any historical figures so I don't tag them when I encounter them ... not so sure which one they are. Lincher 00:52, 19 August 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I meant we wanted to limit ourselves to only historical people, meaning ones who we can verify existed (mostly). I think Jesus is about as on the edge of that line as we want to go (since some claim he wasn't real), but most claim he did (though perhaps not divine). Moses, no. So, since gods and goddesses can't be verified as having actually lived they wouldn't be included.... plange 03:29, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

Change to A-class definition

What do we think of this change? I understand where it's coming from, and sort of agree. On the other hand, AFAIC an A-Class article is better than GA and is a Featured Article in waiting. It should quite simply be first rate. (Which reminds me - again AFAIC, no article should ever be assessed as A if it doesn't have the GA badge). Thoughts, comments? --kingboyk 12:21, 27 August 2006 (UTC)

When there are no reputable sources anymore to complete a biography then the article is from Wikipedia perspective good and finished, regardless whether it is still very incomplete. I had discussed it already on the talk page, but received no comments. Cleary the article Jesus will always be very incomplete, but it is wrong to say that it can never become a featured article. Andries 12:25, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
For having participated in the GA process, reviewing and all this stuff, GA is as picky as FA and perennial minimal changes will always be asked in both projects and especially on GA so in my opinion, if an article isn't of GA class, it can definitely be an A-Class unless the GA process becomes a consensus-driven initiative that promotes the bettering of articles with thoroughly analysed comments. So I say no to the idea that an article should be GA befor being A. Lincher 15:27, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
As per the change mentioned, I agree that if reputable sources can't be found, it is left to the assessors decision to decide of what quality the article is. Lincher 15:29, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
But the theory goes that A is better than GA (I argued that GA should be better than A, and lost). If the article doesn't have the GA badge it surely ought to be an article that could pass if reviewed fairly? Otherwise, it's not up to GA standard and is a B. --kingboyk 20:17, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Comment on "Featured article" rating

The rating system says that for featured articles: "No further editing necessary, unless new published information has come to light." In my expereience, most featured articles, while being excellent, often do need further editing and addition of more material. I appreciate that work needs to be done on less good articles, but it is exactly this sort of "finished" comment that stalls work on an article and goes against the wiki-way. No article should really ever be labelled with "no further editing needed". Carcharoth 07:01, 28 August 2006 (UTC)

We picked up that language straight from WP1.0, but it is misleading, because there are a lot of old FAs that were passed before inline citations were required and so need to be FAR'ed. plange 14:46, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
Yes, we had this discussion at WP:BEATLES. The Beatles was an FA but clearly below par (it's since been defeatured) and we didn't know whether to grade it as an A or FA. I think what has to be done is retain the wording, grade all Featured Articles as FA, but if you find any which are below the modern standards send them straight to WP:FAR. --kingboyk 10:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Help, please.

Lots of people have told me that I need to improve my sources for Zaib-un-Nissa Hamidullah, and use footnotes or some such. I don't know how to do all this; could someone please explan it to me, or help me somehow?

--Le Grey Intellectual 09:44, 7 September 2006 (UTC)

Clarity

In the start section of class, there are 4 things listed there, one of which the article must have to be start-class. To get to B-class, it has to have several. Can we clarify what several means? I think it should be 3. Any objections? I'll give this 5 days before I clarify it. Green caterpillar 20:14, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Disagree. See post below. KittenKlub 09:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It's best to look at these things in steps. A B-class article is one above Start and one below GA. Therefore it ought to be in a state that it wouldn't take a huge amount of work to get it to GA. 'Several' would certainly mean 3+ I think. OTOH, I don't know if it needs to be clarified or left to reviewer discretion. --kingboyk 10:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Please don't use automatic tools for assessment

I noticed that pages are being assessed automatically without even reading the document. Please remember that start and stub are NEGATIVE ratings meaning that the article is terrible. If you assess an article the least you could do is read it and not use an automated tool based on a flawed program. There is no need to rate reasonable articles Start especially if the definition of start clearly stated that the article is terrible and is even marked Red indicating that it's horrible.

I noticed that somebody was automatically rating articles at 3-4 articles per minutes which means that there was no way that he even got an impression of the content of the pages. Yet all ratings were negatives like Stub and Start. I find this is very bad idea and highly disturbing.

Maybe it's time to create a rating system which keeps the authors in mind instead of slagging them off, because I notice that some are doing exactly that. So stub is only for very short articles. Start for articles which are clearly below standard and B-Class is the norm. KittenKlub 09:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

"I noticed that pages are being assessed automatically without even reading the document." No, you didn't notice that, unless I misunderstand what Lincher is doing. You've also double posted this to the user's page and here.
Stub and Start are not negative. They're honest assessments of short articles lacking comprehensiveness, sources or other problems. They're a world away from a Featured Article (world class, comprehensive, cited, brilliantly written) but they're a start, sometimes a very good start. --kingboyk 10:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Currently 13,000 pages have been assessed. Yet 11,000 received a negative rating. That is not true and should never be the purpose unless you are a critic who loves to talk down to people. If this is the method of assessment then I can assure you that many will be upset by the rating they've received, because most pages are reasonable.KittenKlub 09:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Sigh. Some of those articles are Stub class because they have a stub template on. Also, most articles on Wikipedia are Stub or Start class at best. It's a simple fact. We have 1.3 million articles. 1000 of them are Featured. The vast majority are stubs or starts. If you have any disagreement with the rating system here isn't the place to rant about it. We didn't invent the system. The people who invented it are the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. --kingboyk 10:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
They ratings are negative. Just read your own definition. They are not perfect, but most are not terrible and that is exactly what you are doing here. And I've seen the speed of his tool. He never read the pages, so I consider those assessments INVALID. Most pages are not brilliant nor is that needed. Indeed most pages are marked stub because they have a stub template, yet most of those stubs aren't really stubs. So that's exactly what is wrong with these automatic system, because what was needed was the removal of the stub tag which is on many pages even though it should be. Once again I fully disagree with what you are doing here. KittenKlub 10:05, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
And please don't give me the line of go somewhere else to complain, because it was this team which en masse marks pages Start which are reasonable. Reasonable means that you acknowledge that the author did a good job and in most cases they did. Start in the current context is NEGATIVE. KittenKlub 10:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Why don't you tell us which rating(s) you disagree with and why you think the rating is incorrect? Or ask for a second opinion at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Requesting_an_assessment? --kingboyk 10:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I just checked his AUTOMATIC markings and clearly many pages weren't stubs anymore and quite a number of pages were good enough. And I'm not going to ask for a second opinion. I get the impression that negative assessment are being given without reading pages or accurately assessing them. In this case it is the reviewers who aren't doing their jobs properly. KittenKlub 10:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I am asking for this team to halt their automatic system and think about what it is they are doing with their current implementation, because 80% of the articles aren't negative. KittenKlub 10:13, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Just show me some pages please so I can understand exactly what you're talking about. Otherwise I'll just assume you're on a rant and walk away. If you're talking about Lincher I still maintain that he reads the articles. Anyway, this will be moot soon enough as I'm writing an AWB plugin which will allow fast manual assessments - load the article, read it, autoload talk page and autoadd the assessment. --kingboyk 10:19, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Just look at Lincher's contributions. ALL assessments are negative and you CANNOT assess a page in 10 seconds and that is exactly what he did. Louis Jacobs was upgraded to B-Class after the original user complained about his rating. I noticed that André Hazes received a start rating, however in his case a full biography isn't needed and therefore the current page is sufficient. And I saw many, many more marked as stub which were beyond stub. This is actually something which you see on so many pages, because stub isn't used for its intented purposes and remains on the pages for faaaar too long. KittenKlub 10:23, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Another example which I discovered on Lincher's talk page. Frank Middlemass. That article is reasonable, so B-Class is a good assessment to begin with and maybe a comment will make it even better, however there is absolutely nothing wrong with the current document. The thing which was wrong were those 10 seconds glance assessments and need to rate everything in negative terms. KittenKlub 11:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
OK, I'm sure he'll take your comments on board - but please remember he's just an editor like you trying to do the best he can.
When he gave Louis Jacobs a Start-class it looked like this[1]. Perhaps a low B but I don't think Start is terribly unfair. Frank Middlemass is Start class AFAIC - no photo, no infobox, no sources, and very short for a guy who had a career of 50 years. --kingboyk 12:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
They were all good enough. Just read the definition of Start. It says that pages are "not useless, ... for most" which implies "they are useless for most". That is categorically NOT true with those pages. I'm sure that people who knew Frank Middlemass who recently died as well are happy to see this page and do not consider it a useless page. Once again I am fully and totally against your current system. Especially since no due process is performed in assessing them as well nor is any comment left on the pages to help people. B-Class should be default for reasonable pages given the negative definition of both Start and Stub. You can't say that most pages are failed, because school also give a passing grade to the fast majority. KittenKlub 12:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
And the no photo problem is due to the copyright paranoia at Wikipedia which means that many pictures who perfectly qualify for fair use cannot be used. So don't mark it Start because it has no picture, because it's the too strict implementation of a very loose fair use law which has lead to too few pictures. Because you can use a lot more without any problems. KittenKlub 12:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Copied from my talk page. Let's keep the discussion here.

Let's take a step back and remember that we're all editors here trying to help WP, so please assume good faith. The sheer volume of articles that is in our scope necessitates we use a semi-bot (AWB) to help with tagging and assessing. Lincher is actually the only one I know of who does this manually. 10 seconds is plenty of time to scan an article and see that it is Stub, Start or B. However, my understanding of Lincher's process is that he reads them all first and gives them a grade that he inputs into a spreadsheet; he then loads this into AWB and does a quick 10-second check to make sure his original assessment is still valid and then hits save. Others, myself included, will tag any article with a Stub template as Stub, but with this template {{Stubclass}} tag to alert editors as to why this happened and how they can change it (which includes instructions on taking the stub template off, which is a good thing). Hopefully our tagging will only increase the numbers of editors helping to assess and improve. Already our system has greatly energized lots of articles and ushered them from Stub or Start to B or even GA! This is awesome! I never interpreted stubs or starts as negative, even when I first started and wrote my first article for WP:MILHIST and got it assessed at Start-- on the contrary, it helped me see what was needed to get it to B. No grade is negative, all articles have to "start" somewhere and this grading scheme helps us see what needs improving. I have added this clarification to the assessment definition in case others interpret this the way you have. Also, the color isn't red but variations of orange for start and stub. Let's try and refrain from attacking fellow editors who are giving of their time to a project and helping it tremendously. As it says on our assessment page, if you disagree with a rating, any editor is free to change it. Lincher's just helping to get the dialog started for these articles. Also, the manual assessment request on the Assessment page is done manually by several editors including myself. If you'd like more constructive feedback on an article than a quick assessment, consider adding it to the Peer Review request page. Hope this helps! --plange 16:29, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The issue with start once again

"Not useless. Some readers will find what they are looking for, but most will not. Most articles in this category have the look of an article "under construction" and a reader genuinely interested in the topic is likely to seek additional information elsewhere."

"Substantial/ major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article usually isn't even good enough for a cleanup tag: it still needs to be built."

That is a negative assessment. That is called slagging people off. I mean you can talk about Assume Good Faith, but if the majority of articles will be assessed according to those words, then you would have insulted the majority of authors on Wikipedia. Especially since most pages aren't that bad at all. KittenKlub 16:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Still don't see that as negative, it's a statement of fact. We're here to help articles get improved and we can't do that easily if all articles are lumped in B to spare feelings. Again, if you think an article has been incorrectly rated, you are free to change it. --plange 16:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I agree that the wording might not be the best and what, if you continue to go about and not changing it, it wont change itself. Suggest something, we can then have a consensus on that. Lincher 16:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree... --plange 16:47, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
How about:

"Not useless. Many readers will find what they are looking for, but some will not. The articles can appear to be "under construction" or are still reasonably small and a reader genuinely interested in the topic is likely to seek additional information elsewhere."

"Substantial editing is needed, and the article needs to be greatly extended."

Rationale: Get rid off the "most" part and especially that cleanup insult, because that should never have been put in there.

KittenKlub 17:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and did you take a look at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects which is the ensemble of the projects that assess articles. You can also ask them, why do we have mostly Start & Stub articles. You can also look at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment where the B-class article needs to be way better than the examples you've showed us. You are the first one to raise a brow about the way the assessment is being done and that started about close to a year ago. Lincher 16:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
For some reason I recently noticed the tags placed everywhere. So the large scale assessment is just starting, because the bots adding the talk page tags recently started as well. In fact Andre Hazes is the first page I have on watch which was assessed and I didn't like it. I didn't like it that I noticed that they all received negative assessments. With the current wording, the default has to be B. KittenKlub 17:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
It's just starting for bios, but Military history and many other projects have been using it alot for awhile now. Military history was my first exposure to the process as those were the first articles I was working on. On the proposed change: What's the difference then, between "Not useless. Many readers will find what they are looking for, but some will not" (your new definition for start) and "Useful to many, but not all, readers" (the current line in B-class). There has to be a distinction between B and Start. Also, I've added the disclaimer that this is not negative to have a start or stub rating to the Assessment page, as I think your view that it somehow is is the crux of this issue. Does this make it better? We also state on that page that it is subjective, but it's the best method devised to date to try and categorize what works needs to be done. I also don't view cleanup tags as negative - it's a tag that alerts other editors that the article is ready to sink their teeth into it to start making it better. I'm sorry you've taken it this way (that it's negative), but it's truly not and was not intended to be that way. We're just trying to do good works :-) I'm open to re-wording but only if it clarifies the distinctions between B, Start and Stub and not where it automatically makes most articles B. --plange 19:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I will add my voice to yours, plange. The current assessment is not the best thing but we have gone from not having any assessment at all to wanting to have one for over 3 years and now that we have one (I know it is not the best) it is already disliked. As for the assessment there are basically 4 classes : Stub, Start, B & A (for GA is a project that doesn't have solid criteria & FA that is for A-class articles that needs to have every nit-picks perfectly). So in this regard, Stub articles are newly created articles, that don't have sources and are beginning. Start class articles are articles that have all (and I mean all) the basic requirements but are too succint. B-class articles are articles that need to be polished, more pics, more coveraged, brilliant prose and throughly copyedited to be mint perfect for A-class. Finally, you got the A-class article that is by itself a great article/easy to read and people will definitely find what they are looking for. That was an brief exposé of what is stated on the assessment page and that is what we use to assess our articles for the Biography project. If some user doesn't like the classification or the wording or the way these assessment are done, for the first two it is not up to us anymore but if the assessment isn't to the editors liking, then up to them to request another review. Lincher 20:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Assessment

For one ... I read all the articles I have assessed. When the WP:WPBIO started assessing, I was working in collecting all biographical articles and I was also working with the GA process (which is doing much better thanks to my little interventions). As for the assessments, I read the articles twice, and then rate the article, I read the first list ... then add a rating in excel (done offweb) afterwards, I re-read the articles to give a better assessment.

As for the articles that are not well rated, please state them, make a list on my talk page and I will GLADLY and OBJECTIVELY (to my best) try to give comments and extensive comments for that matter. As for the Louis Jacobs article, please see Talk:Louis Jacobs/Comments for the comments I have added. It greatly help the editor for that matter.

On the matter of assessing articles and giving grades higher than B, I cannot without giving comments or something like that because there is a process that goes behind GAs and FAs (not A-classes but I seldomly give A-class). The process I'm also doing is one where we can collect all the biography articles (I estimate at around 150k that haven't been picked up by the bot (kingbotk)). In doing this it is possible to then re-assess these articles by requests or by manually go through the list.

Please bear with us as this process is long and tedious and takes lots of my time. I hopefully have convinced you that I try to do a neutral/objective job, though it is tough to being a human. Lincher 12:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The current system of assessment is completely unfair. Start is NEGATIVE and so is stub. Just look at the definition. Also I am NOT convinced that you read those pages because they were edited 3 to even 5 per minute. There is significant doubt about the validity of your assessments especially since there were many pages who are CLEARLY not stubs and needed their stub removed. KittenKlub 12:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The major concern is that ALL pages received a negative grade. That is not a fair system and is not the way we deal with one-another. If you think that that is objective and fair then you are clearly mistaken. KittenKlub 12:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Listen. You seem to have 2 complaints. One is that Lincher doesn't read the articles. He says he does. We don't get (m)any complaints so I believe him and so should you - assume good faith.
Your second complaint is that the grading system is "unfair". We didn't invent it. The way that Wikipedia works is that some Wikipedians decide to be bold, and then the community accepts their idea, rejects it, or helps to improve it. This scheme has gone way beyond the point where rejection is an option, but it can always be modified. It can only be modified if people come up with constructive suggestions, and it can only be modified centrally by the Wikipedia 1.0 team. Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team are that way and I'm sure will listen to any calmly, politely ignored suggestions. Rants will likely go to dev/null. ---->>> --kingboyk 12:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
PS The system is not objective and fair. It's subjective and editorial. That's why it happens on talk pages. --kingboyk 12:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Please don't start that "Go Somewhere Else" reply, because that's a way to stiffle critism and this team started hunderds of negative assessments which are in doubt. The majority of pages should receive a passing grade. The current way of assessing clearly does not do that. The system was designed that B-Class is the lowest passing grade, however that should imply that all pages where the main authors took time to create a reasonable page should be qualified as B-Class and certainly not as Start, because Start is once again a negative failing rating. That is the meaning of subjective. Most pages aren't that long with lots of info. Most pages are simple and that does not mean that they are failed pages, they are actually reasonable hence B-Class. KittenKlub 12:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
For the last time: B-Class is an article which is nearly at GA standard. Start-class is not a "bad" rating. The gradings were invented by Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team, any suggestions about changes should be taken there. If you disagree with an assessment (and the 2 of Lincher's you've shown me look correct to me) list them for review. --kingboyk 13:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
My last reply as well: I'm not playing the trick of complain somewhere else, because you started this. Start is negative. Just look at the definition. So B-Class is the first passing grade and should not be considered nearly "Good Article". It should be fine, good enough, reasonable, fair. Because the alternative is a failing grade which is even marked in red. And I'm not finding and listing stuff for review, I'm simply going to overrule you when I see any more assessments which I considered wrong and unfair. KittenKlub 13:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
PLEASE LIST THEM (The articles needing re-review) AND I WILL AGREE WITH YOU THEN, else I just can counter-argument for nothing. And just for the sake of it, try a run at assessing articles for the GA or the FA process before trying to tell me how to assess articles, I, for one, have lend a hand in trying to help them and the quality of the articles needs to be top notch or else it doesn't pass. Lincher 12:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
And so you know, when 60% of the material on WP is of Start class, then it isn't negative, it is the average. Lincher 12:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I assess articles according to the ratings given in the assessment scale, but I am a bit more strict for references since WP can't cope with having articles that don't cite their source (These will get stubbed, you want it or not). Lincher 13:11, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Oh, yeah and just for the point, the Military Project is even more strict than me but Kiril Lokshin didn't get bad comments for the only reason that he doesn't help himself of AWB to the the assessing. Lincher 13:13, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Okay I will list them, but the current problem is the definition of start, so you cannot have 60% is start, because that automatically implies that 60% failed. So the average has to be between B-Class and Start otherwise you are judging them too strictly. I am not talking about GA + FA articles. I am talking about the fast majority of articles which will never get to GA or FA status and I consider that correct, but it is not correct to have the fast majority with a negative rating. I actually tried to keep one major page at a high quality, but the amount of unreferenced anonymous entries and vandalism was such that it was literally impossible to keep that page clean since it was a high profile page, so I had to learn the hard way that there are plenty of pages which cannot even get to that stage. KittenKlub 13:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with you that the criteria are too strict but I don't understand the failed-pass concept you argue about. There is no pass or fail idea in wikipedia. There are articles that need just minor adjustments to go from Start-class to B-class but since nobody fathers (watch them) articles then they wont get better and stay at a stagnant stage. The minor adjustments needed to get to B-class from the Start-class that I request are as follows : have a source section/reference section (use reliable ones), seperate the article into sections, have a clearly defined lead (that has all the required elements) & have a picture if available (with the fair use concept, all articles can have pictures). Lincher 14:53, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The current definition of start is very negative and I personally consider pages in that category failed pages, because that is what the definition implies and to add to the insult it is marked red which is a psychologically wrong colour.
The problems you identify are mainly basic problems of Wikipedia. Nobody except for long time editors references anything (which is a serious problem) and the fast majority of pages are not fathered. So requiring references means that only those pages which are maintained by long time users will qualify and thus scare away all new / beginning users. The whole reference system is so complex that most don't even understand it.
Also pictures are an immense problem. Contrary to popular belief, there are people who suffer from copyright paranoia and often delete perfectly acceptable fair use images. I'm sure that you cannot find any pictures for Frank Middlemass except for DVD covers which implies that the DVD has to be listed as well and you have to hope that the copyright paranoid don't delete it.
Recently All Saints have started again and they have released a new promotional image which is all over the internet already, however they forgot to mark it as promotional and therefore you have to explain to people that it cannot be used which they don't understand and which doesn't make any sense either, because the record label created it specifically to be spread far and wide. Things like that have to be considered especially if you want to give a negative rating.
So basically sections, a decently sized story and a lead will be the minimum requirement. References are more a (serious) problem of the current WP design, because I never saw any new/beginning user put in a reference ever. KittenKlub 15:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I also have a number of older pages on watch which are not referenced, however I know that the information is correct on those pages, so the only thing which is lacking that I am too lazy to search for references. That's also a common theme for older pages. The best example is Precious (band) because the official myspace borrowed the Wikipedia biography (without attribution of course). That does mean that the band itself is happy with that page. KittenKlub 15:44, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If I am to change the way I assess, the leap and I mean leap from having a Start class article to becoming a GA article will be so big and huge that the editors of the article will not like to put in the job that it requires and I'm not even talking about the FA process which is almost unattainable (except with 100hours of work on an article). I try to rate articles in a way that allows normal progression of articles. A stub class is an article like Anthony Rizzo or Ally MacLeod (no references), a start is like Andy Seminick or Gordon Manning, a B looks like André Hazes and so on. Lincher 16:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem with the scale is indeed that it is designed around GA/FA and that is the dilemma. The current wording of Start is still negative. So either that "not useless to most" implication has to go or B is a very wide category. In your schedule Precious would be a Start and it's clear that at least some of the original members wanted some form of official site even though the album has long been out of print and opened a myspace, copied the wikipedia biography, added the youtube videos and viola a nice place for happy memories. So I think that that page is qualified despite lacking references since it was created a year ago.
Personally I consider Anthony Rizzo a stub (very short). Ally MacLeod start, because it is far too large and only has very few edits from just a couple of people which means that the information most likely is reliable (because the rule of thumb is that the more people edited it, the less reliable it tends to become). Andy Seminick is a chaotic page so maybe a Start will be correct, however once again few edits and therefore probably still reliable. And I think Gordon Manning is a B as well. As long as the definition of Start is the current definition it has the implication that it is not good enough. So the alternative is a wide B-class ranging from long, slightly chaotic pages to pages which are very close to featured article and filled with references. KittenKlub 16:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with some re-assessment that is if we change the B-class to the quality ranging from being a well-organized few sections paragraph or a chaotic article to an almost FA article. Well, for us, the chaotic article will not help the readers and neither the few sectioned-article. What it needs is a solid ground to grow from so Start-class will be deserved to articles that are starting to develop with the primary necessity of articles. As the WP grows, the percentage of GA will diminish if we see it the same way it is intended in your post but if we show the way toward a GA or an FA then people will start doing what the older editors did. Remember, we are going for quality, not quantity anymore. PS : Don't revert the assessments as it is only disruptive. Lincher 16:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The point remains the definition of the assessment. Getting a negative assessment is not nice and should be reserved for poor pages. This is in fact the same problem with the Cleanup tags which are being overused. Once an article is assessed it tends to remain assessed for a long time in some cases years, so you can't give out negative ratings unless it is necessary. Because there are authors and I saw 100s of pages getting negative reviews and that should not happen. The system is such that many starting users are already scared away, because this place tends to be highly unpleasent at times with lots of acronyms and rules which are hard to find.
Assessing the majority of articles negatively will only make that worse. And this place is about quantity and not quality. In fact on high profile pages it is impossible to maintain quality and you can just watch them slip into lower standards. If you want to make a quality article then you're better off starting it here and then after it has received enough feedback, move it to a website where nobody can touch it. And I've seen that happen a lot as well. KittenKlub 16:51, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I've assessed my own articles as Stub and Start (in fact, I think I've assessed at least one article I've worked on with every grade from Stub to FA). I don't see any of the clases as negative. Perhaps that's where we disagree.
I'm sure though that most articles on Wikipedia are not up to the standard we should be aiming for to be taken seriously as an encyclopedia (which is B through to FA in my opinion). --kingboyk 20:04, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Since my name seems to have come up here, I thought I'd (briefly) comment. "Getting a negative assessment is not nice and should be reserved for poor pages" is a completely correct statement; but the sad truth of the matter is that we have a great many poor pages. Overwhelmingly many poor pages, in fact—an enormous number of which can only be described as barely-coherent notes or glorified dictionary entries. "Good enough" simply isn't, at this point; articles that fail to meet basic content policies—of which the need to cite our sources is a prominent example—deserve all the negative assessments they get. (Did you know there have been more-or-less serious proposals made about introducing a new speedy deletion criterion for unreferenced articles?)
To sum up: we're writing a serious encyclopedia here; there is nothing wrong with marking articles which are significantly deficient in quality—and this unfortunately includes the vast majority of Wikipedia's articles—as such. Kirill Lokshin 20:37, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Kirill (coz the indention always goes off page)

The problem is that nobody cites sources and it isn't clear either. We also have many pages with were made a long time ago and we have translated pages from other wikis were still no sourcing at all is done. That results in many pages without references. It is wrong with marking good efforts negative. If you assess the fast majority of pages negatively then the project has completely failed, because an assessment does not make a page better. Cleanup is also a complete and total failure since nobody bothers about those tags. That vandalism of this project page took almost an hour to revert. I've seen vandalism on pages for weeks. KittenKlub 20:45, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The answer is obviously to work harder at improving quality, not to simply throw up our hands in defeat and settle for "Wikipedia, the pretty crummy encyclopedia that anyone can deface". Kirill Lokshin 21:02, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
We shouldn't set the minimum too high, because it is already far too high for most users. Vandalism is a very serious problem, because pages which are not watched (and most aren't) have a serious problem with both vandalism and false data. Pages which are watched are usually clean. That means that we need more people who want to keep pages on watch. The only way to achieve that is to keep the threshold not too high. The current Start description which is negative will only put that description too high.
An example which was just created a couple of days ago: Stargate (production team). Nobody welcomed or explained anything to the new user, but he had potential, however the first thing which happens is that tags are slapped on the page and the user is not seen or heard of again. That happens over and over again. KittenKlub 21:06, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The more likely explanation, of course, is that the new user simply has nothing more they wish to add at the moment. Statistics show that the vast majority of Wikipedia's editors edit only occasionally.
As for your main point: utter nonsense. We should set the minimum as high as we need to in order to produce a good encyclopedia; there's absolutely no point in artificially inflating our assessments merely to coddle the unusually thin-skinned when we know the articles are subpar. Our only hope for achieving a respectable level of quality is to insist on well-written articles as the standard; so long as we fail to make it clear that poorly-written articles are not something we want to see, people won't work on improving them, since they'll think they're "good enough." Kirill Lokshin 21:15, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I call that utter nonsense. The Wikipedia quality level is never close to serious encyclopedias. That cannot be achieved and that has been proven over and over again. The power is quantity. Once a page goes to a certain level, it is about maintaining that level. A select group of articles will be excellent, but the majority will not and in many cannot. Especially articles with less than 50 edits are more or less at the best level they'll ever get, because that's the truth. They will not approve or grow much bigger and giving them a Start rating is utter nonsense. KittenKlub 21:21, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The vast majority of Wikipedia's contributors don't share your unnecessarily pessimistic view of things. In time, Wikipedia's quality level will match—and exceed—that of "serious" encyclopedias. If you aren't here to take part in our mission—to create the best encyclopedia in the world—that's your business; but please don't get in the way of those that see the project in a more serious light than you seem to. Kirill Lokshin 21:27, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Did my words hurt your feelings? At least I don't pretend that this is a serious encyclopedia, because it isn't and never has been and never will. It was a very bad name though. So I'm basically maintaining I like. The quality level has gone down in the year that I've seen the site. It's gone down consiberably. I also did the Dutch wikipedia last year and vandalism was under control there (~100,000 articles). It's out of control on that wikipedia nowadays (~250,000 articles) as well. That took one year and the vandals won, so the English wikipedia will only get worse and it's clear that it is slipping to lower quality. KittenKlub 21:34, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Re: Kingboyk

The problem is that WIkipedia has grown out of hand in many ways. The biggest issue is vandalism. The second biggest issue that it is totally unclear for beginning users. I've seen so many talk pages of beginning users with nothing but complaints. If you also start to rate their pages negatively, you'll only make it worse and it is still worded negatively. I think that you overrate the minimum quality which is not high and will never be high. Even GA is very high. I edited Louis Armstrong a couple of weeks ago and that was a featured article and I doubt whether it still belongs in the A group, because the quality is too low. So the FA rating was too high for that article since it does not have one or more editors who are monitoring the edits. KittenKlub 20:31, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Take me for example. Since I am not a native English speaker I can never produce the prose required for GA, so that's not an option, but the articles which I have on watch have increased to a high enough level. It doesn't mean that they've failed, because if I compare them to a year ago, they have been enhanced greatly. KittenKlub 20:35, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Rashid Khalidi

I'm just curious as to the rationale for the rating given to this article. Is the rater around here? Palmiro | Talk 20:47, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Short, sparse, but complete articles

What is the appropriate rating for an article which is totally comprehensive about a figure, but is extremely short because of the lack of information which survives about someone. I am thinking about figures such as:

Zaninus (or Çaninus) de Padua, flourished mid-to-late fourteenth century. Composer, possibly of Perugian descent [fn], of a single ballata, Se le lagrime antique which survives in a single source (Stresa 14) of Paduan origin. A nobleman with a same name dies in Padua in 1374[fn]. The composer of a set of Passions in Cividale in 1440 may be his son[fn].

This article is not a stub or a start--it's everything that is known about the composer of this important piece of fourteenth century music (and the last line is even a self-citation of my own article, so maybe it couldn't be there). He's certainly notable, appearing in all major music dictionaries. This is clearly not FA material, and probably not even GA. But it does not have any of the flaws that a B or start article should have. Just curious. --Myke Cuthbert 03:47, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, I don't know-- anyone else? On your self-citation - where was it published? That will make the difference of whether it can be used... --plange 04:38, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

what happened in july/august 2006? why are there so many more articles in the biography section?

Comments subpages

I just wasted some time putting a /Comments subpage up for deletion, not realizing that it was created on purpose for a reason. I notice some of you were talking about it up there. Did you give up? Could you resume working on the problem? Please? -Freekee 05:35, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Stub? I don't think so

Could someone check out Oei Tiong Ham? It's rated stub, but it sure doesn't look like a stub to me. And then find a new stub example to use in the chart at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Assessment#Quality scale. ;-) -Freekee 07:00, 1 January 2007 (UTC) Then change it to start. But yeah, I'd say it's definitely not a stub anymore. --Wizardman 04:35, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Importance or Priority?

Has a consensus been reached on using "priority=" instead of importance in the wpbio boxes? I think it has, but I want to make ausr before I change any more.--Wizardman 04:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

A-Class assessment

Shoudn't this project have a proceedure for A-Class assessments similar to WP:MILHIST. A-Class is above GA, and I do not think that the current procedure, which is more informal and collective than GAC is the appropriate one. I think MILHIST's A-Class reviews show us the way. What do you think? Is there anybody active in this section, because, as I mentioned in the main page talk, there seem to be some functional problems in this project.--Yannismarou 19:26, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with you and have recently downgraded to 'B' a small number of articles that were elevated to 'A' which don't meet the requirements. As a general rule, I've not been assessing articles myself as 'A' unless they had already passed 'GA'. I think more structure, ala MILHIST, might not be a bad thing and would improve the quality of the 'A' articles overall. JRP 19:32, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
How can we initiate such a decision? Starting a poll? I don't know how such things are decided in big projects like this one!--Yannismarou 14:53, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
I still think it should be a single person decision, we have enough ratings processes. GA's normally take a month now anyways. The assessment indicates that it must be a GA as A is higher than GA though, so any A rated articles that aren't GA's should be put up for GA review and if they fail be demoted to B class. Quadzilla99 10:36, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
I disagree about it being a single person decision. A is the second highest level of recognition on the scale - there has to be more than one set of eyes taking a look. That has to be true of anything above B. It's the same reason that multiple readers rate AP essays in US schools - because multiple pairs of eyes gets the score much closer to some form of objectivity than just one pair of eyes. Mocko13 00:47, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Assessment Drive?

So I've been digging through the unassessed biography articles, and I've made so much tremendous progress that I've gotten up to the Adams. And I'm thinking - there's gotta be a way to clear up some of that backlog (which is up to 134,000 articles). So here's my idea - why not designate the first of every month as wp:bio Assessment Day and ask project members to spend some time on that day rating articles? Mocko13 00:53, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps. Granted I've done my part, at least 1,000 articles (Q, U, and X). But yeah, that's not a bad idea.--Wizardman 13:40, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I have been devoting all of my wiki time to this. 138,000+ unassessed articles almost count for 1/10th of all articles on wikipedia. I am trying to knock out on average 200 assessments a day. --Ozgod 21:17, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
95% are priority=low|class=stub. Maybe a bot should auto apply that to all the unassessed ones Quite a number of bios are not designated WPBiography at all. Maybe a bot could go through every article which has a birth date and wpbio it- Kittybrewster (talk) 14:06, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Category:Living people has been done (up to March 07), but not with any classification (just an empty {{WPBiography}}). I'm gonna do some dead people category tagging at some stage too. --kingboyk 14:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Bot tagging of {{WPBiography}}

I've been doing a run of my bot, Thadius856AWB, to add the project banner to articles which do not have the banner already. While there have been a few mis-tagged articles (roughly 1%), there's been relatively no trouble. However, I received a message on my bot's talk page today with regards to a few parameters, namely priority, class and living. I've halted the run until I can get some feedback on this issue from this project.

  • Firstly, one user is concerned that I have not been creating the comment pages for each assessment. Since I've only been adding the template with all parameters listed and empty, I don't see exactly what I could list there. Creating the redlink with a blank page would be useless, as it would fall under one of the Criteria for Speedy Deletion.
  • Second, I was asked to not tag any WP:CUE biographical articles, even though the project page says that they should be listed. I'm quite confused by this, as it seems counter-intuitive not to list any biographical pages with WP BIO. Can somebody clarify?
  • Third, it was asked of my that I fill in the living, class and priority parameters. This isn't possible in en mass fashion with AWB without using Kingboyk's addons. I know that templates without the class parameter go into an unassessed category, so I don't think locating them would be a problem at all. I don't see a category for when the living parameter is null, but that wouldn't be too hard to implement.

If these concerns are echoed within the project, I don't see any foreseeable way to do all of this in a one-step, automated fashion. I've halted all tagging temporarily, but will stop entirely (for this project) if this is a major concern. thadius856talk|airports|neutrality 00:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

Having had one week passed and no objections or concerns noted here, I'm going to resume tagging. thadius856talk|airports|neutrality 06:11, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I've just left a user talk message, but for the life of me I can't understand why you'd want to do this with vanilla AWB and not my plugin. So many of the potential pitfalls you can encounter doing this job are taken care of by my plugin - identifying bad tags, not double tagging, not tagging a talk page whose article just got deleted, converting reqphoto and blp templates to WPBio parameters, calculating and adding a listas parameter, adding workgroup params etc etc. You're flying in a Cessna when you could be using Concorde, quite honestly. --kingboyk 11:52, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

javascript tool to display an article's rating on the article page

Hello, I've developed a proof-of-concept javascript tool that will display an article's assessed rating on the article page itself. It currently does so by prepending the rating to "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", so it becomes "A B-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." It also changes the color of the article title to roughly match the color scheme of the grades.

To add it to your User:YourUserName/monobook.js file, add this text:

 // Script from [[User:Outriggr/metadata.js]]
 document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' 
             + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Outriggr/metadata.js' 
             + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></s'+'cript>');

Purposes:

  • increase visibility of article ratings; users can more easily determine that an article's rating is way behind the times, for example.
  • gives the user an overall sense of how many articles are rated, and need rating.
  • sets a user's expectation for the article's quality.

This is fairly "simple" right now and I'd welcome any feedback or ideas. Thanks, –Outriggr § 20:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Top Priority

Should top priority always be 200. I would think one might want to make it a percentage like .1% of all bio articles. Thus it could maintain proportionality to the number of biography articles. TonyTheTiger 21:00, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The top priority list is maintained by a specialist team. You'll have to ask (or join) them: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies. --kingboyk 11:58, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Comments from WPBiography box

People doing WikiBiography Project assessments might note that there's a suggestion in the box for assessors to create a comment about what they might suggest for future editors to improve the biography being assessed. I usually do write such a comment -- if there's not already a comment box, writing one leads to the creation of a comment page.

Another editor, well-meaning, thought that I'd made a mistake in putting my comment on a separate page. He moved my comment to the article's main talk page & marked the comment page for speedy deletion, then informed me of his action. I explained the procedure, so now he knows -- but I've also started prefacing my comments on the (usually new) comment page with

WikiBiography Project assessment:

so that other editors running across them won't make the same well-intentioned mistake.

I'm suggesting this as a practice other WPBiography assessors might want to use.

-- Yksin 20:54, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I and another editor came across an editor that had been pasting the template boxes (infobox needed, photo and WPBio box etc) into the comment space rather than talk page, and not leaving comments, so I moved those to the talk page and blanked the comment page. Not sure about deleting them though. RHB Talk - Edits 18:14, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Though what you encountered is a different issue from what happened with me. -- Yksin 00:14, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
I thought it was fairly similar, because I advised the user to speedy delete the /comment subpages that were ununsed - yours must have got mixed up with the rest. RHB Talk - Edits 22:20, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Similar, but still different, in that I put the both the WPBiography box where it was supposed to be (on the talk page) & my comment from it where it was supposed to be (on the comment page), whereas your user placed the WPBiography box in the wrong place (on the comment page). --Yksin 01:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Ailton Almeida

I'm having issues with the Ailton Almeida article. It's been evaluated, although at first, it doesn't look like it. However, if you were to follow the link to the talk page, look at the article, and then jump back to the talk page, the evaluation box is filled. So, how should I (or another, more qualified editor) go about this?

Thanks!Belril 05:59, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

When a review is not a review

When an editor has been heavily involved in an article or series of articles, that editor should not be involved in writing reviews, as it simply asserting that editor's opinion colored by the content disputes that editor has been involved with, rather than providing an objective e4valuation of an article. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

"Script" assessing

Are the project members here aware that at least one user is assessing articles with a "script"? I'm trying hard not to WP:OWN the article, but I have an issue when:

  • The script overwrites the existing assessment, one for which I spent a while reviewing the criteria for the different grade levels and providing an honest assessment.
  • The script leaves a cryptic Talk page message insinuating that the "11 easy steps" have not been followed and thus the rating. Is that actually the case? I Ignored the "tips" that I didn't think applied to the article, but I don't see why that's a reason to downgrade the assessment.

Just pondering. --Mus Musculus 06:01, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

The script doesn't do anything other than facilitate someone to give the assessment. It creates the possibility to enter the assessment directly on the page itself by opening an edit screen for the talk page, with the new assessment (which has to be selected by hand first) already filled in. The comment hasn't been left by the script, but by the user operating the script. Errabee 09:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Turn-around time

I requested a review a couple of days ago and the article was crossed off the request list within a few hours. Since then, no change in designation has been made (I'm expecting an upgrade from "Start-Class). How long does it usually take for the review to be conducted?--Vbd (talk) 21:33, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

If you're referring to the Forest Whitaker article, then it was assessed as being very close to a "B" grade. There are comments linked to from the WPBiography template on the talk page. If you think the assessment was wrong, then please explain why you think so here. - Duribald 22:07, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your response. I was confused because the WPBiography template still says "Start-Class," and I didn't realize you had added new comments. Thanks for the feedback.--Vbd (talk) 23:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
I was going to post a comment on your talk page when I made the comments, but got involved with a speedy deletion debate... -Duribald 01:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)
Please re-review the Forest Whitaker article. Thanks.--Vbd (talk) 11:15, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Persondata

I'd like to suggest that [ Needs-Persondata = yes / no ] be included in the WP:Biography template. --Camptown 09:41, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

That's not a bad idea. MahangaTalk 14:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

B-, start-, stub- and A-class rating criteria

Some controversy has arisen about ratings of articles (again). Perhaps it is time to reevaluate our assessment criteria.

I suggest the following changes:

  • A-class articles should be at least of GA-class quality. I propose that being a GA should be a requirement for A-class articles.
  • I think Ales Hemsky and Joshua Toulmin are poor examples of B-class articles. I would rate them as start.
  • B-class articles should not suffer from too much unsourced statements, and the amount of prose should be substantial. The amount of material in embedded lists should not exceed the amount of prose.
  • Start-class articles should have some references, either in-line or as further reading. It should contain at least two paragraphs with substantial content.

Thoughts, anybody? Errabee 11:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly. - Duribald 06:05, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure if GA should be a requirement for A class (in fact I'd say no) but absolutely 100% agree with the sentiment - if an article wouldn't pass GA it shouldn't be A. See below for a suggestion about setting up an A-class review department. --kingboyk 11:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Musical groups

Do we really include musical groups under the "biography" heading? A biography is a work of literature on the life of a specific person, still many musical groups have WPBio templates and ratings on their pages. The Biography portal doesn't seem to include groups of people? - Duribald 06:04, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

This needs to be a FAQ somewhere I think. Musical groups are part of WP:MUSICIANS which is a child project of ours. If you don't want to assess them just ignore them, but yes they use our template (and that is good - we're leading the way in cooperation and template sharing). --kingboyk 11:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Shocking A-class ratings

I've been checking some A-class rated biographies and the results have been shocking so far: Aart Kemink and Amílcar Cabral are both no better than start-class articles, or take a look at Carl Sassenrath or Anna Svidersky, both obviously no better than B-class.

Still not convinced: Frank Bunker Gilbreth. I rest my case.

I think it is time WPBio implemented an A-class review like WPMILHIST has. In the mean time, every A-class article should be checked if it is really worth that rating. Errabee 04:06, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

I think the main reason we didn't do that before was concern that we wouldn't have enough reviewers. Now that assessment seems to be a popular pastime, that shouldn't be an issue. I recommend setting up a trial A class review department and if it works it can become a permanent fixture. --kingboyk 11:45, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
I'll see what I can do after I return from a short break. Errabee 16:28, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Biographies

Moved from User talk:Kingboyk. --kingboyk 12:17, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you explain what the proper layout of a person's biographical article should look like? Please can you respond to my talkpage. Thanks Dreamweaverjack 23:35, 1 April 2007 (UTC)

Setting up an A-class review department

Is anyone willing to help me setting up an A-class review department? I propose it would be something like the Military History project has.

What's needed in the short and the longer run:

  1. A reasonable number of seasoned reviewers
  2. The biography template needs to be expanded with an A-class parameter which acts in the same way as for WPMILHIST (additional templates may have to be created).
  3. Additional subpages have to be created under the Bio project for explanation of the procedure, and for showing the comments on the nominated articles.
  4. The description of the class parameters have to be changed everywhere on the project pages.
  5. Criteria have to be developed for A-class (but can probably be copied from the FAC criteria, albeit not so severe)

Further actions needed:

  • All current A-class articles have to be checked against the A-class criteria.

Errabee 14:23, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the {{ArticleHistory}} template combined with the current {{WPBiography}} covers most if not all of job 2? {{ArticleHistory}} is the new way of recording article milestones and it already supports WikiProject Class A assessments :) --kingboyk 16:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
That seems to be something we could use. Errabee 21:43, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Glass ceiling?

I've just finished reading Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Biography/Assessment#Assessment and the section preceding that. I disagree with much of what KittenKlub wrote, but it has reminded me of an issue with assessment that I thought of a few weeks ago. The basic idea is that some articles will always be fairly short, and as such people will be reluctant to assess them as B or A class, let alone take them to FA class. Just to clarify - is the aim for: (1) every Wikipedia article to reach FA class; or is it rather (2) for every article to reach either FA or A class; or is it even (3) for every article to reach A or B class, with the bottleneck of FA review restricting the number that can reach FA class? In other words, for some topics and articles, will the B-class be a kind of glass ceiling? Not much more to add, but not really enough there to justify an A-class? Or to put it another way, some topics and subjects have less sources available, so the article on some obscure person who is just notable enough to stay in Wikipedia, will always be shorter than our article on some really famous person, eg Winston Churchill? Would it be right to say that if an article has used all the known available sources, and is in a good state, then is can be signed off as "good", if not really an example of the "best" of Wikipedia's work? Carcharoth 13:41, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I would say that an article which is as you describe - comprehensive, well written, well referenced, but short - should definitely qualify as a GA. "Short articles" was their original remit, after all. I don't think B-class should be a ceiling for such articles, no. Just my 2c. --kingboyk 22:14, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
I didn't know short articles was the original GA remit. Interesting. Thanks for that. So it looks like GA is a possibility for any article, but short (though comprehensive) articles might struggle to make it to FA? Carcharoth 23:36, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
Not necessarily. FA can be a rather more understanding process than people think :) If I may draw on my own experience here in proferring an example, I would consider All You Need Is Love (The JAMs song) to be quite a short article, but it achieved FA with barely a glitch. I think this raises an interesting point, actually, that FAC is a scary process, but in my experience it's also a fair and useful one, probably one of the best (and certainly the most important) on the wiki. --kingboyk 22:55, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Finished assessments

When you have made an assessment - please cross over the assessed articles in the list of assessment requests. - Duribald 18:56, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Please complete comments section of evaluation

Thread moved from Template_talk:WPBiography#Please_complete_comments_section_of_evaluation --kingboyk 11:20, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Evaluations are worthless without some written guidance. A lot of folks I see get kudos for completing massive evaluations per second. 99.9% of the evaluations do not complete the REQUIRED text saying specifically what's missing from an article. You should be mindful that an article is often written after several hours of research. Dismissals of this effort as stubs rather than starts (which OFTEN is incorrectly reported) is VERY discouraging. These evaluations are worthless without some sort of written statement of criteria (i am very tempted to create a template on the order of "EVALUATOR HAS NOT GIVEN SPECIFICS ON EVALUATION" -- that's the p.c. name for this behavior). If you think you can grade you sure as #*! better be able to give your reasons. Americasroof 00:53, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

1. Did not read the article (but rather counted paragraphs)

Nothing is required. These grades are given arbritrarily and are just used for broad pruposes. GAC, FAC, and peer reviews are where you should go for those types of things. If you did some research instead of just complaining, you would see that we have a quaity scale that outlines exactly why those classes are given. Please review that and post me on my talk page or the WikiProject Biography main talk page if you have any further questions or concerns. Cbrown1023 talk 02:24, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

criteria for A-class

As you may know, I have been reviewing A-class biography articles recently. While reviewing I have developed the following criteria, which I offer to this project for review:

  • at least 1 picture; no copyright issues; fair use should be explained for use on that specific page
  • an infobox
  • a lead section of at least two paragraphs
  • the article should be structured in such a way that at least a ToC appears, and no section is a stub
  • all statements should be referenced using in-line references
  • it should be well written (but the rules are not as strict as for FA)

Errabee 08:28, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I'd say this shouldn't play a role in assessing the article, because persondata is not visible to normal users. It is of course important to have persondata in articles. Errabee 08:43, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
But equally, your average user reading wikipedia wont care that every single sentence is refernced and has been throughly vetted, or at all really about copyright issues. There are scripts that show persondata in articles and another that grabs information from infoboxes, so they're not especially hard to do. RHB Talk - Edits 10:16, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I would agree with setting up an A-class department (probably better discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Biography, though I only realised you were reassessing articles when I checked article I'd assessed as A during the assessment drive to find that you'd downgraded some to B for relatively trivial reasons. I think there were around 120 or more - do you have a list of articles you assessed beforehand, without meaning to seem rude. Thanks, RHB Talk - Edits 23:30, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
Sure I'll work on it. It'll appear here shortly. Errabee 22:35, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
Here's the list, and I disagree that these are trivial reasons. In fact, most of them are quick-failed criteria from the GA-process. So most of them wouldn't even pass GA.
Downgraded to GA-class
Downgraded to B-class
  • Disagree with the rationale somewhat, as it seems the poor young lady was notable for her death: she was never notable in life. There may not be sources to expand on her life story. --kingboyk 11:39, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
Downgraded to Start-class
Downgraded to Stub-class
And I've also downgraded some B-class articles to Start-class or Stub-class:
Sorry if I appear to be cynical. It's just that after so many obvious no-go's (in particular the stub and start class ones), I sometimes think that it's going to be impossible to be taken seriously if A-class ratings are given so easily. Errabee 00:17, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm happy to see that the project decides to adopt A-Class review. I strongly support such a decision, and I declare from now that I'll be a dedicated reviewer! Maybe instead of downgrading A-Class articles, you should leave them as they are, and review them first of all, before new nominations, after the A-Class review is set. In this way, the downgrading will be an official review decision.--Yannismarou 11:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
As far as the criteria are concerned, I think they are already set by the WP:MILHIST. I'm afraid we don't have much to add here!--Yannismarou 11:41, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
Copying from MILHIST would be an excellent idea in this instance. They have all the infrastructure in place, we should just copy the lot I think. --kingboyk 11:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I've made a start at Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/A-class review. Will work on it later. Errabee 08:29, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

I've created {{WPBio A-class review}} (thanks to User:Michkalas), adapted the instructions for requesting a review, and I have created the category Category:WikiProject Biography A-class reviews, which should contain all current requests for A-class reviews. Errabee 09:30, 20 April 2007 (UTC)