Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Films/Assessment

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[edit] Examples

Wouldn't it be better to have assessment examples that represent the strongest of that class. I mean that for a stub rather than an article that is clearly a stub, have an article that has an infobox, partial plot, and cast. For a start have one that has a full plot, infobox, reception, and the beginnings of a production section.

I think this would be better because the current example for a stub is so obvious as to be unnecessary, but a more expanded stub (like Gentleman's Agreement without the cast section) would help to resolve doubts. Anyone else think this is worthwhile?--Supernumerary 03:32, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

I think that that is a fantastic idea. But I wouldn't want to be the one to draw the line on borderline articles for the whole project. But classes like start and stub are going to be close anyway... Cbrown1023 03:44, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
A firm borderline doesn't have to be drawn. Examples are very useful, especially if they are given along with the points that differentiate them from stub, start or B. The point is to help new assessing members get an idea, so we don't end up with way too big differences. Some argue that since a film is not important, even a stub-like size can be considered "start", since there is very little to say. It would be good to clear out such points in a general way. Hoverfish 13:31, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Top debates

Well, should I list here some films I think should be Top importance? (Not more than 10-20) Hoverfish 23:11, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea... Cbrown1023 23:19, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Really, I don't mind what you grade as top-importance. It is totally subjective and POV-oriented anyway. I use the Top/High Assessments for what articles I work on. I mostly do the stubs and starts of those areas... so, you really don't need to post it here, you can just do it. However, if you feel like getting feedback or opinions on what you think, you can post it here. Cbrown1023 06:00, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Ok. It says it is subjective. I've also heard "it's not democratic". I guess what comes in Version 1.0 is not my concern. Mostly I care that we give Top and High as a motivation of developing some articles from the stub-pile. Someone even marked Monty Python and the Holy Grail as Top and thinks it should stay Top. I love it, but I wouldn't spend any time trying to make it GA. I feel a bit like Ed Wood in this assessment thing, but we should come up with something better than Plan 9 From Outer Space. I mean, there are some encyclopedic criteria for important films. Critics/industry award winners, even international film festival winners should qualify for Top. Then, Top grossing (if possible worldwide) is another Top importance. Now if scifi, monty python or other cultists want their gospels Top, good... democracy, POV or whatever, it will mix in (hopefully to a logical point). But at least we should secure Top for some objective criteria. Hoverfish 13:18, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

My sentiments exactly articulated better than I could have. Cbrown1023 15:38, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
As a fan of all Monty Python's work I would suggest that their films are unlikely in the long run to need priority to get them lots of attention, and the priority stuff is most useful in getting attention to articles that are important, but are unlikely to attract many edits from the bulk of users (in any reasonable timeframe). --86.144.20.95 (talk) 05:53, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Start class requirements

Don't you think that it is too much to require two additional (other than cast and plot) sections for the article to be in the start class? I think that intro, infobox, picture, plot, cast, and categories are enough requirements for the Start class. If any two additional sections are added, then the article may become a B class article.--Crzycheetah 20:04, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Where does it require those? It only requires the article to cover the history and culture of Africa... (I really think this example should be changed into something that has more to do with films!) --ZeroOne (talk | @) 09:08, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
He means the suggestion box that appears over the film banner on stub-class articles. There is a discrepancy between them and the requirement on this page. Doctor Sunshine talk 03:44, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] A Girl Like Me (documentary)

I'm not at all familiar with wikiprojects, not least of which this one, so if this is the wrong place to post this please move it what contact me.

Why is A Girl Like Me (documentary) rated LOW on the priority scale? a student documentary that made national news (TV) (in fact it has appeared on international news programs - otherwise I would have never heard of it) is certain quite remarkable, especially considering the topic, which relates to racism. I think it should be rated higher on the priority scale because it certainly has a lot written about it outside of wikipedia.

If I am out of line posting this here then say so, but I did want to bring this up for consideration.

Thanks, Bob Hu --I 11:28, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

It's rated low possibly because another editor considered the film to not be as notable as other larger films and may not know about the resources that you are aware of. The main thing to focus on, however, is that the priority scale is entirely subjective, so you should take it with a grain of salt. The main issue is the quality of the article which is currently a stub. If you want to continue to improve the article, it can continue to increase in quality. Even if it is at low class or a higher class, it doesn't mean the article will be worked on more often. So, just continue to focus on which articles you want, that are your priority. That's how our film articles improve. --Nehrams2020 20:35, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dirty Dancing

The 20-year anniversary of the release of Dirty Dancing will be on August 21, 2007, and I'd like to see if we can get the article to FA status by then. Right now it's in expansion/cleanup mode, and then we'll be submitting it for a formal assessment. If anyone would like to help, please feel free! --Elonka 20:59, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template tinkering

Just to give a heads up that the template has been upgraded, but we're still resolving some kinks in the system, which may result in skewed statistics data for the next day or two. Hopefully it won't be too inconvenient! :) Girolamo Savonarola 04:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Importance assessment

The criteria for importance assessment are pretty unclear. Also, it's hard to gauge how important a film is right after it's released. Maybe a certin amount of time should pass before films are assigned importance ratings. --YellowTapedR 05:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

It's something that I largely agree with you about. The importance ratings, wiki-wide, have always been somewhat amorphous and unclear. And when the topic is something less subjective, like creative media, it may in fact be impossible to draw up consistent and easily-verified criteria. I've brought the matter up previously on the main project talk page, wrt possibly abandoning the parameter entirely, or perhaps reserving it for a smaller subsection of articles the project decides to collectively focus on as "top priority" - essentially akin to a collection of articles under temporary Collaboration-like focus until they all reach (FA? A? GA?)-class. That's my idea, anyway, in a nutshell. Girolamo Savonarola 06:07, 17 October 2007 (UTC)
Oh yeah, what ever happened to that list of core/top articles we were going to develop? Do you remember where that conversation was, I can't seem to find it. --Nehrams2020 07:06, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. I would say a certain number of years should pass before a film is considered a top priority. The Cider House Rules, for example, was important years ago, but now it's all but forgotten. The basis for rating some of top importance should be its impact, not necessarily its quality. For instance, I would argue that Plan 9 from Outer Space belongs in it just because of how much it penetrated pop culture. --YellowTapedR 18:10, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

My original idea involved a sort of meta-list composed from several diverse sources, so as to include a wide variety of time periods, countries, genres, and include both popular favorites (as determined by receipts) and critical ones (as determined from critics' polls). The details which would need to be worked out would be how many we should contain within this and which sources should be included; I assume these can be determined through discussion and informal polling if need be. Girolamo Savonarola 18:31, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Academy Award articles

Now all the articles have been transfered we have a backlog of unassessed articles. I was just wondering what to assess them as. As far as I can tell there are three types of article:

  1. Listing a particular years awards ceremony (eg 1st Academy Awards)
  2. A second with a list of winners and nominees per year (eg 1st Academy Awards nominees and winners)
  3. A third for each actual award (eg Academy Award for Animated Short Film)

The majority of these are a single paragraph followed by a list of people. My quesiton is the best class to apply. I was thinking Stub for the 1st type, and possible List for 2 and 3, obviously judging each article individually as some have more content than others. Anyone any feelings on this. Cheers. RWardy 12:51, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

Frankly, I'd tag them all as List unless section text is a majority of the article. In other words, apply non-list classes as necessary, but base it more on the article and less on the type. Girolamo Savonarola 13:10, 29 October 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment and systemic bias

Yeah, I know, assessment is not a judgment and it's all relative, etc. Still, I think it's interesting to point out the systemic bias in the assessment of the film-related biographies. There's a definite bias towards living or at least very modern directors, as well as a bias towards American and English speaking people. On one hand, you have Coppola, Bruckheimer, Cassavetes, Altman and the Coen brothers rated as "high-priority" (not that I have any quibble with that), while central figures of European cinema like Carné, Fassbinder(!), Murnau(!!), Bertolucci, Wenders, Depardieu (not a director though, but still) are rated as "mid importance", Leos Carax and Nikita Mikhalkov rated as low-priority, etc. No it's not a big deal and it's not like the gross injustice will do anyone any harm. On the other hand, more people will work on articles of higher priority so this tends to increase the already existing bias towards the expansion of articles on actors and directors that are best-known in the English-speaking world, whereas biographies of people who have had or are having an impact on film making remain under-developed. Pichpich (talk) 23:22, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

You may want to check out WP:FILMCORE and its talk page; I think what you're bringing up would be pretty appropriate there. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 23:30, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
First of all, the Core discussion is precisely about scrapping the importance parameter entirely. Second, the biography articles are not (currently) under the scope of this project. You'd have to see Wikipedia:WikiProject Actors and Filmmakers to address those specific concerns. I would also probably disabuse you of the notion that higher priority assessment somehow correlates with editorial activity - if anything, our list of FAs should show that there is no evidence to that fact. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 23:40, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
Ah yes, how naive of me! :-) In the end, I guess the core proposal makes more sense: why rate articles if, precisely, these ratings don't end up correlating with editorial activity? But maybe it's also naive to think that identifying a core of articles to seriously work on... will motivate people to work seriously on them. Ah the joys of the wiki. Pichpich (talk) 02:29, 29 February 2008 (UTC)
Hehe, yes indeed. But we may have a few tricks up our sleeves to aid in motivation... :) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 02:47, 29 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Assessment scale - featured lists

As the person who maintains the Assessment Dept. of WikiProject India, I am in the process of updating the assessment scale there, so I've started looking through other projects assessment departments (such as the one at this project). I noticed that this project doesn't appear to recognise "featured lists" (even though it does recognise lists)? Was this deliberate, or does the assessment scale still need to be updated here? I think, particularly in the case of the latter, it would probably be better to list this 'FL' grade on the scale, even in the case there is no example of a featured list within the project. Ncmvocalist (talk) 05:51, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

We don't do FL-Class because (to my knowledge), the 1.0 bot still doesn't recognize it as an official class. This means that assessing it as FL will actually cause it to be removed from the logs and the statistics as a non-assessing class. I know there's been some discussion about changing this, though. Currently, list articles are assessed at List-Class unless they pass an FLC, in which case we assess them as FA-Class. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 08:09, 24 March 2008 (UTC)
It is an official class, which is why I brought it up. I don't really bother with unofficial classes for the same reasons as you've stated. Ncmvocalist (talk) 03:31, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I didn't say it wasn't an official class - I said that the bot doesn't recognize it. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 06:32, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Ah. But featured lists have a different criteria to the FA criteria, so wouldn't this still need to be shown on the assessment scale for anyone who gets interested in developing lists related to the Film project? And when the bot recognizes the class, which it probably will at some point (as long as it is an official class), then would WP Films Project add it to the scale? Or would it continue with the old system? (Please don't mind my curiosity - just looking at the minor differences between other WikiProject assessment departments). Ncmvocalist (talk) 12:55, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, I would imagine it would be fine to start using it once the bot is sufficiently revised. I personally have no problem with the FL-Class - if anything, the record shows that I pushed for both FL Class and List Class being formalized - but unfortunately the current bot operations actually create more trouble tracking certain "odd" classes, so we try to minimize them. Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 22:13, 25 March 2008 (UTC)
I see that this has in fact been added to the bot. My apologies for thinking otherwise. In that case, assessment as FL-Class should be fine. Thanks! Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 06:12, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New examples for quality scale

2006 was two years ago, so could I possibly get permission to use new examples? If you ask me, we should keep up to date with these things. MwNNrules (talk) 16:16, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we could revise the examples for GA-class, A-class, and FA-class, since standards may have been a little higher since. Below these assessments, though, I don't know if we really need fresh examples. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 16:23, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Okay. I've only suggested this because the articles may have changed since then, and it might look a bit strange examples from then years from now. Surely some of those articles have gone through improvements since them. A quick look through media related FAs showed some good examples. Personally, I'd choose Star Wars or Blade Runner for the new example. Both are generally regarded to be classics, and have stood the test of time. It would be easy for people to relate to them. MwNNrules (talk) 16:28, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure about Blade Runner. It went through a FAR process, and there were concerns that were never really addressed (it was kept as a default). I think there could be a fresher example used. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 16:35, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
The current A class article is now a good article, and the current good article is now one of my choices for FA. On the subject of Blade Runner: well that's bad. I never really thought of choosing by freshness, I was going by popularity. I'll check Star Wars to see if it's a worthy FA. MwNNrules (talk) 16:40, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Checked Star Wars. It's still my choice if this is ever going to happen. I've made this chart to represent what can be changed:
Film '06 '08
Jaws (film) FA FA
LOTR movies A GA
Star Wars: A New Hope GA FA
Back to the Future B B
Beethoven Start Start
A Bullet for the General Stub Stub

MwNNrules (talk) 19:19, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

I say go ahead and be bold! :) Girolamo Savonarola (talk) 20:33, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
Thanks. A quick look at the chart showed that B, Start, and Stub aren't worth changing, but they should still be up to date examples, so will keep those articles, but use the '08 versions. I'll find new examples for FA, A, GA. I may even find new examples for everything, but I'm still just planning. MwNNrules (talk) 22:43, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
The following chart is just to keep my mind clear. It will be upadated everytime I get the chance. It will track my choices for the new examples.
Film choice
Star Wars: A New Hope FA
You Only Live Twice GA
2001: a Space Odyssey B
Raging Bull Start
A Bullet for the General Stub

MwNNrules (talk) 01:21, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

I think Beethoven is not a very good choice for a start article. It is barely above stub. Start is the broadest of categories with it ranging from anything to the barely not a stub Beethoven to close to something more middling like Maneater, to some articles which are just on the cusp of being B (no example on hand at the moment). Maybe we should include 2-3 example articles to better illustrate how broad the class is? Also, I think new examples for GA and FA should be selected based not just on popularity, but also on the recentness of being passed. Something passed 2-3 years ago may no longer be GA or FA quality of the kind desired, so I'd suggest looking only at GAs/FAs passed within the last 6 months or within the last year.Collectonian (talk) 02:20, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Probably. Stub really won't have to go anywhere, because those articles really haven't gone anywhere. A Bullet for the General has barely changed since 2006, which makes it a prime choice. Beethoven has shown more improvement, but I see what you mean when you say that there are fresher examples. Perhaps we should get all the potential choices reassessed so that we can be sure of what class it actually is. I couldn't find a problem with Star Wars, but there are others out there. Of course, I can't remember the last featured film article, but I can look. I'll put Star Wars on the wait list for assessment. MwNNrules (talk) 12:40, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

Looking at a list of recent film related GAs, You Only Live Twice seems like a good choice. Haven't actually checked it, though.

I probably won't be doing much on this for a while. Wikipedia's like a hobby for me, and it's a busy one. I'm still trying to concoct a briefer, more effective plot summary for The Devil's Backbone. And I can't find anything for A class. Is that a dead rating or what? MwNNrules (talk) 20:10, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

No, it was recently revised. We had a discussion about it recently. This should fill you in. —Erik (talk • contrib) - 21:56, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Thank you Erik. I apologize to anybody who is still following me for my lack of time for such things. In this case, I'll be looking for one soon enough. Heck I'll start once I'm done finishing this sentence. MwNNrules (talk) 22:36, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
After finishing my sentence and going to Erik's provided link, as well as other sources, I was dismayed to find that there are no As. For the sake of getting a recent example, could somebody update an article to such a class? If not, it's no big deal, but an example for '06'll look strange next to one from '08. In the mean time, I'll use my time to look for a good example of start class. MwNNrules (talk) 22:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Raging Bull is a fairly strong start (but not a strong B class as I was dismayed to find out it was classed as before I was involved. Remember folks, any obections, or better examples may be suggested here, or on my talk page. I generally log in once a day to check on my project/personal effort, and will be able to respond to such. MwNNrules (talk) 23:04, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
Any objections for 2001: a Space Odyssey as B Class? I'll be adding in the new examples tomorrow, unless there are objections. MwNNrules (talk) 01:11, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

I'd gone for the kill tonight, but instead of being a direct page, it led to other pages with many specifications. In other words, it confused me, and whilst I gave it a shot, I don't think I could do it without screwing something up. If anybody else who knows how it works could do it, that'd be nice, but I'm not forcing. MwNNrules (talk) 00:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Non-free images

Hi - I just tagged an article Kiki's Delivery Service as being in violation of our non-free image policies - it contains 16 images, of which ten are in a portrait gallery which is specifically deprecated by the policy. An editor removed the tag, saying that the article had recently passed GA (which it did - on 22 March). Is non-free image use checked on assessment, and if not, should it not be? BKNFCC 02:22, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

It should not have passed. I've removed the large portion of non-free images. Perhaps you can outline this better on the film article's talk page? —Erik (talk • contrib) - 03:01, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
Yes, it is part of the GA and the article should not have passed at all. In addition to the image issue, it has quite a few other issues, including major sourcing problems, and I have delisted it. Collectonian (talk)