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Template-ified

I made this into a template so that it can be included in different places. In the "what links here" you can see I've added it in a couple different places. Jdorje 16:54, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

A cool idea

It would be cool, for the example articles of each grade, to show the progress of one article through the grades (ie "in July 2005, ___ was at stub quality" "in September 2005, ___ was at start quality" ... "in March 2006, ___ was at FA quality"). That would show a real comparison between the grade. Any ideas of which article to use? Otherwise I might be bold and just pick one. Batmanand | Talk 11:07, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

OK so here is the idea. I would use the article Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima. The stages would be:
I think it is a very good idea, although perhaps the template could be 'jazzed' up a bit. I mean it is not the best looking thing at the moment, and would it not be an idea to try and incorporate the current star for a FA, and perhaps look to symbolism as opposed to colours to represent aritcle grades. But as a general idea:very good. --Wisden17 22:38, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
I like the idea a lot. Especially the small number of proposed grades(5). I'd be against adding any further grades (eg C-standard, D-standard, etc...). --Quiddity 19:11, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Where do "Good Articles" fit in?

Where would good articles fit into this scale? Would this replace the "good articles" designation? Kaldari 22:51, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

That is an interesting point. Maybe A-grade becomes Good Article? 82.153.113.13 22:56, 17 April 2006 (UTC) Sorry this is me; accidently logged out. Not trying to sockpuppet my way out of the discussion... Batmanand | Talk 22:58, 17 April 2006 (UTC)
maybe transfer "B-Class" to "C-class". Create another entry for B-Class stating its a good article that could use a tiny bit more work. – Tutmøsis (Talk) 00:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually, I think that GA is an intermediate level between A-Class and B-Class. I've compared the Good Article Criteria and our Assessment Criteria and here's a side-by-side comparision:
Good articles A-Class articles
"It is well written" "The article provides a well-written, reasonably clear ... description of the topic"
It is factually accurate and verifiable "It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from the "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites."
It is broad in its coverage "...complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a great article."
It adheres to the neutral point of view policy: "With NPOV a well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard."
It is stable Not explicitly included, but need to satisfy featured article guidelines
It contains images to illustrate it, where possible: "It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems."
Additionally, as A-Class articles "should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. [The A-Class article] should be at the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, and corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard", they have tougher criteria, so they should be above {{GA-Class}} articles. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:06, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
As of now, however, not many of the listed A-Class articles are Good Articles. Clicking on a number of titles randomly, I couldn't find any. bcasterline t 01:08, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
Basically, because they have not been nominated. I'm not sure that being a GA should be a requirement for an A-Class article, but rather additional peer review. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
The example A-class article, Ammonia, is a Good Article. Kaldari 02:08, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
While it doesn't use this exact grading scheme, The CVG Worklist puts GAs roughly on the same level as A-class, but has its own rank since it's easy to slap the GA image on it and GAs have seen at least one other editor who agrees. Nifboy 03:10, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Do you think it would be safe to say that any Good Articles are at least a B-Class and are probably A-Class? Kaldari 02:12, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nifboy it would be simpiler allround just to use FA-GA-B-Start-Stub. That way a lot of the work in grading articles is already done by the good article system. Is there any particular reason why we need to introduce another grade? --Salix alba (talk) 23:43, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
By the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good articles, it seems that they are considering adding another grade to the GA proposal, so A-Class would be that. Also, again, A-Class articles have already more stringent standards, and GAs are not required. That said, any A-Class should easily pass GA, and if it doesn't, then it shouldn't be an A-Class article. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
This is interesting. For short articles (articles which are never likely to be of Featured length) I consider GA to be the peak. I consider it a little bizarre to "promote" an article from GA-class to A-class (I've been looking at it the other way, current GA nominees I have as "A", and I will "promote" then to GA when they're passed). A short article should peak at GA. Any article better than GA should be Featured, it's as simple as that. Our very best articles should have some kind of peer review. "A-class" is "A" because someone close to the article - quite possibly it's primary author - says so. FA and GA are rated by one or more independent editors. I know which I value more highly, and it's not A. --kingboyk 07:59, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I would go the other way, actually; but this could be a consequence of the different topics we work with ;-)
GA status—being tied to a more-or-less public page—will often be assigned by non-members of the WikiProject. Sometimes, the "independent" reviewer is, shall we say, not exacty a subject expert. Sometimes this leads to obvious garbage getting a GA tag ;-) Conversely, since nobody but a project member is likely to use the other grading classes, they're a better representation of the actual WikiProject rating of the article, rather than the opinion of some random passerby. Kirill Lokshin 13:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Maybe we need a "Featured short articles" system? :) --kingboyk 15:09, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Is the regular FAC really that bad? I've certainly seen short(er) articles become FAs; how short are you trying to make these? ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:16, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
I wouldn't say this one is quite there yet, and please pardon the bad language, but something like this: Fuck the Millennium. Same goes for this one, again not of a Featured standard yet but we could it get there (and it's currently GA). Doctorin' the Tardis. Both of those I consider to be "short" but pretty comprehensive. Comments? --kingboyk 15:22, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Short?! The first one is 20K! ;-)
I don't think either of those would have length-related problems on FAC; it's mostly when you drop below 10K that people start having concerns about comprehensiveness. Kirill Lokshin 15:27, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

What about topics that only need a small article?

My big concern is that this system is aimed only at articles on topics which merit thousands of words and only those will ever be given kudos. There are plenty of topics where two or three paragraphs are all that is needed, but you never see one of them as a featured article. Britannica, Americana and the World Book have loads of short articles, in fact most of their articles are short and that is actually a good thing. How is this system going to give kudos to short articles on small topics and reward people who work on them? What I don't want to see is a situation where either those articles are ignored, or people pad things out with three thousand boring words of over the top detail (albeit well written and fully referenced etc etc) as that is the only way to get an article upgraded. Golfcam 20:16, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

That's not the case. The FA criteria do not include article size as a requirement, and we only ask for a "complete description of the topic" to be A-Class. If an article is complete with just a few paragraphs, then it is complete with just a few paragraphs and it gets A-Class, as simple as that. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 21:37, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
walkerma and I have just gone around the mullbery bush on this one (through edit descriptions and a brief exchange on my talk page) and now the A-Class description talks about article length in a manner that seems fine to me. Sj had added this question to the "Start" category of articles and I removed the question because questions like that should be discussed as talk rather than in the articles themselves. It seems that article length is a factor for some of the grades in some respects, and a specific non-factor for others. May I suggest that the following things are true:
  • An article that is short -- but complete for the subject -- is probably B-Class or better, GA, A-Class or FA
  • An article that is considerably too short for the subject is probably a stub or a start
  • An article that is a bit too short for the subject is probably B-Class or GA
  • An article that is too long for the subject is probably B-Class or GA and not A-Class or FA
  • An article that is mostly extraneous material is probably start or stub, depending on the amount of useful content.
  • Article length is never a deciding factor, but just one of several criteria for grading purposes.
If people agree with these as a general rule, we ought to be able to flip them around and discuss them in the grades section (as we now have for A-Class and Stub). Thesmothete 16:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I agree with part of it. If the article is short, but it treats a narrowly-defined topic in a comprehensive manner, it shouldn't be disqualified from GA-Class, A-Class, FA-Class, etc. However, I'm not sure an article can be too long for the subject and still be comprehensive, as required in FA standards. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 17:32, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
I don't think what you said is in contraction with what I proposed. See if the clarifications offered above are helpful. Thesmothete 22:10, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Stubs, Starts, B-Class and the reader's perspective

To me it's not readily apparent what the difference is between a "start" and a B-Class article. From the literal description, they seem similar, although the examples show it better. I'd suggest and alternative progression among the first three stages -- with particular emphasis given to the reader's experience.

  • "Stub" is little more than a placeholder, with perhaps a simple definition, a link or two, and a few sentences. Not in any way a serious treatment of the topic. As likely to be useless to a reader passingly familiar with the term as it is to be useful.
  • "Start" has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following:
    • a particularly useful picture or graphic
    • multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic
    • a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic
    • multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article
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.
  • "B-Class" has several of the elements described in "start", usually a majority of the material that would be needed for a completed article. Nonetheless, it has significant gaps or missing elements, needs substanial editing, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, NPOV or NOR. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derrivative work.

(Also, I suppose, For A-Class and Featured status, the articles are eminently useful, the major distinction being whether they have been fully "scrubbed" for more minor errors and policy problems.)

These definitions are not intended to contradict those suggested in the original template proposal, but I wonder if people think they would be any more helpful if they were substituted. Thesmothete 17:59, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Simply having a set of external links is not enough to keep an article from being a stub. (Though I agree, the criteria should be more refined and your set is decent.) — jdorje (talk) 22:51, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
My two cents - I agree that it's not clear where the delineation between the classes lies. Moreover, the criteria listed for "B" class articles actually suggest an article that's in worse shape than a "start" class article to me. I commented on this a bit in the talk page for the Feng shou article, where I said:
I think the scale itself needs work. I classified this article as a "B" based on the descriptions in the Quality scale, not based on its position on the quality scale list. "B" is listed above "Start," but its criteria describes an article that needs more work than a "Start" article. From the beginning: "Has several of the elements described in 'start'," - it doesn't need to have all of the elements of a "start" article, only several of them. The description goes on to say that "B" articles may have language issues, NPOV issues, or violate the NOR policy. None of these issues are listed as criteria for a "start" article. By that measure, this article is a "B," not a "start," and a "B" actually needs more work than a "start."
Simply, I didn't think this article was even up to the standards laid out in the "start" criteria, but the "B" criteria, actually being less stringent, seemed to describe this article aptly.
-Erik Harris 19:10, 31 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the point

I don't see the point in making it more complicated. This will cause more time to be spent looking over and grading articles instead of actually improving articles. I see the point that it will be looked over more, and there is less chance of a sub-par article gaining featured picture candidacy, but it also takes time away from actually improving articles.

I don't like the featured article process. I like the idea, I like creating articles as best I can and I like the gratification of finally getting an article featured, but the actual FAC process is not fun. This will dissuade people from trying to improve an article because it is more regulated. Some people like to be left alone to write an article, and get the points to fix it at the end (during PR or FAC). For those who like help all the way along, they can recruit people to try and help, or put it through the peer review process. I have had both help during and after I was writing an article. Peer review is not just for an almost complete article, it can help to kill off writers block. I have had many times where I just cannot think of anything else to add to an article, and it turns out there are blatantly obvious sections missing that someone will point out.

I don't think this will be used to the full of its potential. Most people who are writing an article to get it to featured article will skip stages. If they know it is not featured article worthy, then putting it through some process to get a new grade is time wasted they could spend on the article. What is the use in grading an article? If an article is brilliant it can become featured. If it is not brilliant, fix it up. If you don't know why it is not brilliant, review it. All the stages required to create a featured article are already there, this seems redundant. --liquidGhoul 14:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

In the Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones, we have made good use of the grading scheme. We use Category:Tropical cyclone articles by quality to organize every tropical cyclone article by its class. It does add a little but of overhead, but the savings it provides is well worth it. Our policy is that anyone can change an article's grade between Stub/Start/B, and we have a little discussion before upgrading an article to A. One can then look through the category to find a weak article that needs to be improved, or to find a good article that's ready for an FAC. — jdorje (talk) 18:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
OK, so it is more for collaboration of WikiProjects to see where they are in relation to the articles in their field. I guess that makes sense, but it still won't be used by a lot of people, but if it is useful to someone it is useful to Wikipedia :) Thanks for the explanation. --liquidGhoul 22:25, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd worry a bit that people would start to dispute whether an article is in one class or another. I would suggest that if there is a dispute over the grade for an article that both grades should be allowed to be used. (I now have another proposal; see below Thesmothete 03:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)) However, I do think that the main proposal could be useful for editors, as there are some who like to work on articles at one or another stage (for example, I most enjoy making minor edits to nearly-complete articles and creating stubs). Such a grading system could make it easier to find articles at the stage I find most interesting to edit. I accept that there are other editors who like to take an article all the way from nothing (or nearly nothing) and create a finished piece of it. I don't think this system interferes with that. Another way this grading system could be useful is to help quantify the quality of the million+ articles on wikipedia. It would be great to know, for example, that on July 1, 2006 we had 500 featured articles, 5000 A-level articles, 50,000 B-level articles, 500,000 starts and 500,000 stubs; and then on January 1, 2007 learn how those numbers had improved. Thesmothete 17:38, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

{{prod}} replacement?

Maybe we chould merge this and the deletion template - below stub. Davidpk212 21:04, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Those are two completely different beasts. I don't see how that would be beneficial, especially as saying which articles are good in article space has already proven controversial. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 22:57, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Fantastic idea!

This beauty of a grading scheme is that it would give each person a very clear perspective on what needs to be done to move the article to the next level rating, and provide a large impetus to improve. This is nothing foreign, as Wikibooks has their own article rating system. How do we get this moving? Could we do a straw poll? This kind of productive discussion shouldn't just stay here. Judgesurreal777 18:50, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it's a pretty nice set of templates. As I understand it, it's for use in Wikiprojects. Maybe you could advertise it at Wikipedia talk:List of WikiProjects? TheJabberwock 23:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it's being used already, by Work via WikiProjects. The talk page you pointed to isn't very active, and we have already told about 100 WikiProjects about the scale ourselves. You may want to look at Wikipedia talk:Good articles for an ongoing discussion about this scale, though. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 23:40, 21 April 2006 (UTC)
Wow, great, thanks. TheJabberwock 01:29, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Greatidea

I like this idea a lot! A minor word of caution - often times (in life, not necessarily on WP) when there's a scale like this, there's a temptation to color code the scale. Don't do that! No green templates for featured articles, blue for A class, Yellow for B, orange for start, red for stub, or anything along those lines - it becomes laughable like this, not to mention misleading. zafiroblue05 | Talk 06:18, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Um, it has been color-coded since the beginning, but the color codes are secondary to the grade assessments... Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:33, 22 April 2006 (UTC)
For what its worth I changed the colour Template:B-Class reciently from light gray to the yellow used in WikiProject:Computer and video games, mentioning it here as I doubt may people have seen it on their wacthlists.
Could you elaborate on why using colours makes the homeland security scale more laughable. The Red-Yellow-Green colours give a strong visual clue, and have strong cultural clues (traffic lights etc.). --Salix alba (talk) 08:25, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

How to assign grades?

I've been mulling this over for a few days and I think that we must be very, very careful not to let the grading process take up more time an energy than the editing process itself. Extensive disputes over grading will not help any article get better. For example, having things called "stubs" when they are more than a stub is not really a big deal currently.

I note that already Featured Article and Good Article status are the result of pre-existing processes. Those should be kept in place. Stubs are supposed to be assigned by the author, but may be assigned by anyone. I would suggest that we look at something like the following as the various processes for grading:

  • Stub. assigned by anyone, including any author or editor
  • Start. may be summarily assigned by anyone who has never previously edited the article -- also may be nominated by any editor of the article and approved by anyone who has not edited the article
  • B-Class. same as good article procedure, but may be nominated by an editor. Must be reviewed by a non-editor though. AND/OR
also may be summarily upgraded from "start" or "stub" by any "official grader" (to be elected in a manner similar to administrators).
  • Good Article : same as what we have now: one non-editor must nominate, and one non-editor must review favorably
  • A-Class :May be nominated by anyone, including an author. Must receive a majority vote from "official graders" who review have read it. If denied, may not be re-nominated for a specified period (somewhere between one week and one month).
  • Featured Article : must be by nomination and consensus.

For downgrading:

  • Featured Article to ungraded -- same as existing process: consensus
  • A-Class to Good Article -- nominated for demotion by anyone, requires consensus of all editors with suffrage (perhaps 1 month on Wikipedia) (note: this is a way to reverse a decision of the "official graders")
  • Good Article to B-Class -- nominated for demotion by anyone, requires one "support" by an "offical grader", and final action by a different official grader.
  • B-Class to Start -- may be done by an "official grader", either summarily, or upon nomination by anyone
  • Start to Stub -- may be done by anyone --Thesmothete 04:29, April 27 2006
i agree, having a wikipedia wide policy for article class assignment would cut out a lot of arguments. i'm wondering about the criteria for upgrading an article to a-class though. i linked 'peer reviewed' in the template but have just noticed it's refering to external references, but i still think it would be a good idea to recommend that a-class articles go through the existing WP:PR process. --MilkMiruku 12:48, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Your comment is reasonable. I also mulled over a peer-review type process for the upper grades before posting. Let me share some of my thought process for not doing so. We already have standards for FA, GA, and Stub grades. My feeling was that the process for a given grade should never be more burdensome than a higher grade was, i.e. A-class must be easier to process than FA, B-class must be easier to process than GA, and Start should be harder than Stub and easier than B-Class. Articles get FA status by a vote and consensus, so I figured that A-class designation should be a less burdensome process than that, and to me, WP:PR is at least as burdensome, particularly if a vote was taken. Secondly, WP:PR is not a voting process, but a system for optional suggestions to be made, akin to a request for comment only for the whole article. Peer review does not ensure that the suggestions are taken or implemented just that the suggestions have been made, so you'd have to add a vote. Finally, my understanding of Wikiculture is that peer review is not and must not be a criterion for a "finished" article - the nature of Wikipedia is to be an alternative to a peer-reviewed encyclopedia. I remain open to other suggestions. Frankly, I would like to find a way to give more grades without either having to take a vote on the article, or having to rely on "select" graders, but that seemed the best solution so far. Thesmothete 17:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
i agree with what you say. i was meaning that it would be best to recommended that once an article gets to a-class then it would be a good idea to submit it for WP:PR. voting sounds good, but one of the things i was wondering about (but didn't mention) was what kind of voting process? i haven't checked other WikiProjects, but i'm sure there is at least a few with that kind of system already in place (can anyone point me in the right direction? thanks). another thing though; even if there is a voting process for upping an article to a-class via wikiprojects, there would also have to be something setup for articles that eiteher arn't core topics, related to a wikiproject or are related to an inactive wikiproject. while i remember, are there any other established activities for cleaning up/assessing articles not mentioned already that might be an idea to mention somewhere on the scale? --MilkMiruku 18:14, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so as I understand it, only articles that have already achieved A-level status would generally request peer review. That makes sense. Thesmothete 05:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
There is no set procedure to change articles to A-Class. Different WikiProjects differ; WP Cyclones allows any editor to change assessments up to B-Class, and then A-Class articles are discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones/Assessment. However, this may not scale to other WikiProjects, and they're encouraged to create their own methods. I'd say that having a centralized place to discuss assessments, any official procedure to delist or list articles, or to make any official designations for "official reviewers" borders on instruction creep. It would be excessive, and bound to be opposed by most members of the community. Remember: A-Class articles are encouraged to go through Peer review because they're articles that could go through Featured article candidates and have a shot at passing as-is. Otherwise, they are not A-Class articles. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 01:02, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I'm all for avoiding instruction creep. But we do already have a bureaucratic process for GA grades, and a really bureaucratic process for FA status. So I'm not sure why we would have a grade in-between them that nonetheless was easier, procedurally, to get. (I have to say, also that I'm a bit confused to find out that A-Class is already a grade that exists in Wikipedia -- is that right?) In any event, we could just use the same process for B-class and A-class that we do for GA (nominated and approved by two different non-editors). Seems too burdensome for B-Class, and not burdensome enough for A-class, though. The advantage of having a clear, non-negotiable process for assigning grades is to avoid wasting time with grade disputes. For this reason, I think it would be a bad idea to allow grades other than Stub to be assigned by their own editors. I'm specifically also worried about a revert war between someone who thinks an article should be a "start" vs. a "B-Class" article -- who cares. Better to say that only an "official grader" can give something B-class and then hope they're responsible enough not to go to war. Since you're more familiar with A-Class articles, what exactly are you proposing be the means for assigning that grade? And do you still object to the proposed standards for "start" and "B-Class"? Thesmothete 05:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, there's several things that have to be cleared up here:
  • First off, A-Class and the like are assessment categories made by WikiProject Chemistry, and which where then adopted by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. These asssessments are, for now, uniquely for 1.0's use. There's no plans, AFAIK, to make Wikipedia:A-Class article candidacies for now, as this system is a rough assessment of where an article stands and how much it needs to advance before becoming a Featured article, which is every article's goal. If you do want to expand this scale's scope and make it a part of Wikipedia's featured article process, bring it up at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles.
Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful reply. Is the template attached to this talk page proposing a grading system (as I understood it to do)? Or is it simply organizing a pre-existing grading system? Perhaps Jdorje could clarify? Is the designation "A-Class" already available to apply to any article in Wikipedia? Or is this template proposing that this be the case? In answer to your last sentence, I don't think the A-Class designation should be a pre-requisite to candidacy for FA status. The template currently states: "Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but being a good article is not a requirement for A-Class." I was not proposing to change that. In the general sense that all articles "aspire" to be really, really good (perhaps that's the same as "aspiring" to be FA?), I think the grading scheme would be helpful. Thesmothete 05:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • The A-Class designation states that the article has a shot at FAC. If an article is going to spend any time in a grading process, the benefit of the bureaucracy is minimal when compared to the benefit of having the same type of review for FA status. Also, there's several logistics problems with your proposal: who is an official grader? Who determines it? Historically, there has been antipathy to making administrators official graders, as adminship is supposed to not be a big deal. Also, there may be some who object to any idea similar to that on principle, due to Wikipedia's predecessor, Nupedia, failing to produce any results from a hierarchical system of reviewers.
I think what you mean is that A-Class designation should mean that the article has a shot at FA, not FAC, right? Any article can get FAC if just one person proposes it. I wholeheartedly agree that there should not be "the same type of review [for A-Class] as there is for FA status" -- I believe my proposal is much, much simpler than the consensus (plus editing) process needed for FA status ((though I just realized that the word "review" in the initial proposal was ill-chosen -- see my edit aboveThesmothete 05:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC))), but I'm open to additional suggestions. As for who is an official grader, let me say that I did not propose to make administrators into graders -- I agree that's a bad idea. I suggested that official graders would be elected using the same (simple) process as adminstrators. They would, in my proposal, be parallel. As I stated above, the creation of offical graders is my least favorite part of my proposal, but it was the best I could come up with. The main idea here is just to avoid sockpuppetry and vandals becoming official graders -- perhaps there's a process less burdensome even than administrator status? And last, I believe Nupedia was based on graders having some sort of subject-matter expertise -- I'm specifically proposing something less than that -- just a quick read-over to see if there are obvious problems, gaps, policy issues, etc.Thesmothete 05:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • One concern voiced above is that having a review system would distract editors' time from writing the articles to reviewing them on a bureaucracy; that is certainly a valid concern, which I share. I still object to having any sort of bureaucratic system for the other grades, particularly for Start- and B-Class articles. Most of the time, editors know when their articles are stubs, when they are longer and still incomplete (Start-Class), and when they are in much better shape (B-Class). I haven't seen the problem arise, and there have been over 2000 articles assessed using this method. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 06:08, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, I wouldn't want to argue with success! Perhaps in the spirit of Wikipedia, we should start with a system of self-designation, and then if there are revert wars over the grades, we could add a bureaucracy back in. Remember that the point of a grading system such as I propose above is to save the time and effort of editors -- so that they are not distracted by arguing over grades. The rules of football(soccer) go for 17 pages -- and the rules for selecting a World Cup referee run even longer, I imagine, but that doesn't mean that it's hard for players to understand when they've scored a goal or a penalty, or refrain from toting their own whistles. Remember, again, that we already have a bureaucracy for two of these grades. So I don't think I'm daft for proposing one for the grade in-between. Thesmothete 05:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
A few comments. The short version - I think we could tighten up the system, but not too much.
  • It is true that some WikiProjects use this system (see Wikipedia:Worklistfor some examples) and do include some sort of peer review before articles get promoted to A-Class (e.g., here). Such assessment IMHO are very valuable because they are true peer review by subject experts. However, in areas such as WP1.0 core topics we are working as generalists, and there our assessments are much more subjective - but we needed some starting point - so in some cases one person just made the assignment, even at the A-Class level. We only had one or two people doing assessment at the time!
It makes sense to have at least two people agree to an A-Class designation, don't you think? If GA requires two non-editors, why have less for A-Class? Thesmothete 15:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I agree with Titoxd, in general simple is good. If we add more rules, we should try to build these into the infrastructure rather than adding them as more hurdles that might hinder assessment work.
I also agree with this sentiment.Thesmothete 15:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • It's hard to equate GA=B or GA=A, there is quite a variation in GA at present. The GA system should be seen as operating independently of this system.
I'll leave it to others to comment on that. I wonder if, over time, GA would be more useful if it were regularly referenced with the A/B system. I'm still not sure exactly what this template is proposing, in that regard. Thesmothete 15:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I wouldn't want to see A-Class become something like FA that requires a lengthy procedure to achieve it. For our work at WP1.0, we need to be able to look over an article and say "That look like an A-Class" then label it as such. What might be reasonable, though, is to make us require at least a second opinion (some have had that), as you suggest for B-Class. As for B-Class requiring a second opinion, that would hamstring our work at WP1.0, where in a good week I may assign 50-100 articles (outside my area of expertise) as B-Class. The sheer number of articles at the B-Class level would make this hard. "The harvest is plenty, but the labourers are (very) few!"
I think that was my expectation for B-class. Someone like you would just be able to assign the grade with no further process. The only person who could not would be an editor. Hmm. How about that? B-Class can be assigned by *any* non-editor? No other process required. And any editor can nominate, so that non-editors are alerted to the possibility? Thesmothete 15:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Likewise. I'm certainly finding this discussion valuable. In my day job, I'm a law/policy specialist, so I enjoy helping develop efficient rules for any system. Ideally they should be intuitive and practically self-enforcing. Creating them is always a negotiation -- the first idea is hardly ever the best. This has been a good way for me to learn more about Wikiculture, at the same time. Thesmothete 15:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Sub-grades

I had a go at grading some mathematics articles at Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 and found the A-B-C limiting. There was a wide range of articles which fell under B grade, with vastly different qualities, some being just shy of A-class and others being only a little better than C. Whilst doing this I felt a need to introduce A-, B+, B- and C+ grades to properly rate the articles. This may not be appropriate for the 1.0 project, but a finer grading system can be useful outside of that. --Salix alba (talk) 01:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)
The flip side, of course, is that introducing a finer gradation of ratings makes them less consistent; where two users could agree on marking an article as "B-Class", they may disagree on whether it qualifies as "B+" or "B" or "B-". Kirill Lokshin 01:50, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Names for the grades

Ok, while I'm at it, I'd like to throw out there that I'm not entirely comfortable with the names of the "B-class" and "A-class" articles. I think it's a little too much like school, and may place too much emphasis on the effort of the editors, rather than the quality of the result. "Stub" "Start" and "Featured" are more self-evidently descriptive. "Good Article" is already out there, so options like "Great Article" and "OK Article" are obvious choices, but I don't like them either because of the value-laden, 4th grade nature of them. How about the following? "Stub", "Start", "Useful", "Good", "Complete", and "Featured"? Thesmothete 17:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, since the grading scale is so simple and has no fancy labels attached, I prefer A-Class and B-Class, for those, again, due to their simplicity. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 00:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Respectfully, I'm confused as to how "A-Class", as a term, is more simple than "Complete" and how "B-Class", as a term, is more simple than "Useful" -- it's virtually the same number of characters. Why not just use "C-Class" instead of "Start" and "D-Class" instead of "stub"? B-Class does not seem to have an established meaning extrinsic to this system. Using real words makes it seem less bureaucratic to me. Thesmothete 05:44, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Another reason for keeping things as they are - these names are now pretty well established, with a couple of thousand articles already assessed with them. I think at least a dozen worklists use it. The names actually evolved through discussion at WP:Chem about a year ago, and seem to have stuck. The system may or may not be named in the ideal way, but it seems to be working. Any name change is largely cosmetic yet also disruptive. We could debate this endlessly, but I think there are other more useful things to focus on. Walkerma 06:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
Just to weigh in, I should point out that Wikipedia has over 1.1 million articles. If a "couple of thousand" articles have ratings, that's equivalent to "almost none" - definitely a good opportunity to change the rating names. I do find the combination of words "stub", "featured" etc and letters "A", "B" undesirable. It's not obvious whether a "good" article or an "A" or "B" article is better. Nor whether "A" or "featured" articles are better. But "featured" is clearly better than "complete", and "A" is clearly better than "B". So a consistent scheme would be better. Stevage 06:57, 28 May 2006 (UTC)
Since it's brought up now -- In my opinion, these names aren't clear. When Martin first asked me about it was during a period in which I was participating little in WP and I responded little or not at all on the topic. By the time I was more active again, these were more established within the 1.0 team.
But as far as I know (correct me if I'm wrong), the current classes are only suggestions for others to use. Any wikiproject or the like can use whatever system it deems fit.
So that's my idea of a compromise. Maurreen 17:37, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not just use "C-Class" instead of "Start" and "D-Class" instead of "stub"? You know that’s actualy a good idea, it would add to the uniformity of the article, and eliminate the vage meanings and conotations asigned to Stub and Start.--Freepsbane 01:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate the appeal of consistency, but I think that drifts even farther away from terms that have intuitive connontations. "Stub" is the most well-established grade on Wikipedia, and even the newest users have a grip on what it means. I worry that if we went around labeling new articles as "D-Class" it would potentially offend and discourage new editors -- in other words, there are places in the English-speaking world where giving something a grade of "D" is considered insulting. As noted above, I personally would go in the other direction: "stub, start, useful, good, complete, featured", but I capitulate to the fact that the grades on this template are already being used by a lot of projects. Thesmothete 14:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Websites

The wording for A-Class (regarding refs) states: "..preferably from the "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites." When I originally composed this (over a year ago) I was thinking of the many dubious sources out there (before Wikipedia, that is!) - I think I was a bit loose in my wording. At WP:1.0 we debated websiite refs and agreed that authoritative sites were OK, such as government sites and sites of professional organisations like the American Chemical Society. I think I'd like to reword this slightly, does anyone have any objections or comments? Thanks, Walkerma 00:46, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps naming it reputable sources would work? Titoxd(?!? - help us) 00:55, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

That looks good to me! Thanks, Walkerma 01:49, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Template changes

I hope no one minds, but I took it upon myself to CSS-ify all of the templates used for this grading scheme. I also changed some of the colors, based on those we used to used at The Beatles WikiProject prior to switching to these templates. [1] As for the A-Class vs. GA-Class colors, I originally had them at lightgreen (as it already was) vs. palegreen, but I swapped the colors based on our priority list. It seems, however, that you consider the priority of the two reversed. If you continue to maintain this view, I would suggest swapping the colors back. (Maybe we should swap our priorities to match yours.) Anyway, this was just a heads-up about the color changes, so that no one freaks out. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 05:14, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, originally we switched FA to blue because we were having too many colors on the green side, and we tried to maintain a rainbow-like spectrum... I did keep your CSS changes, though. Titoxd(?!? - help us) 05:22, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Alright, whatever works. The only grievance I have with the blue is that we use blue for our merge-related templates. I had a little three-round fight with the stub template, too, just now, but I lost all three times. I suppose the remaining discussion lies with our project team over what we want to do with the new (for us) templates. —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 05:24, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
Hmm... I just had a bonus round with the stub template. How does "tomato" look? —Gordon P. Hemsley→✉ 05:26, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
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