Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Archive 21

Archive 15

←

Archive 19

Archive 20

Archive 21

VA5 quota now 50,075. Reduce Countries and subdivisions by 50? 1348/1400 to 1348/1350

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Per Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5, VA5 quota is currently 50,075 articles, not 50,000. Countries and subdivisions is currently 1348/1400 articles. Shall we reduce the quota by 50? Making it 1348/1350. starship.paint (RUN) 08:07, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Support

1. Per nom. Makkool (talk) 11:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)
2. As nom. starship.paint (RUN) 09:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)
3. We have too many pointless country subdivisions, so we could and should reduce it even further. Vileplume 🍋‍🟩 (talk) 21:11, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
4. Per nom, rightsizing. Hyperbolick (talk) 08:55, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
5. Even if there would turn out to be demand for more of this category it can be increased again, and for now quota can be taken from under-quota pages.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 08:48, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
6. I agree that this could be reduced even further. Tabu Makiadi (talk) 22:35, 3 May 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

Discuss

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add List

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Super-basic and fundamental topic. List should be under Information, as a list is one of the most common types of/ways to organize information.

Support

1. BD2412 T 01:13, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
2. Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 05:00, 16 April 2024 (UTC)
3. Per nom. Don't think it’s true that these lists are just for improvement. FAs don’t get kicked out. Hyperbolick (talk) 08:53, 17 April 2024 (UTC)
4. We should definitely have List on the list. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:21, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

1. The purpose of the VA project is to identify a list of articles that we should devote more editing resources towards to make them high quality. We don't need that for list: there is no specialized history to them (the article itself mentions that the scholarship on lists is fragmented) and their purpose and existence is straightforward; it's basically a dictionary term. Almost everything on the article seems fairly obvious. It also establishes a dangerous precedent. Where do we stop? Should we add paragraph for example? Aurangzebra (talk) 06:50, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Neutral

Discussion

What is the process from here? We have more than four participants and four support votes (80% support), and the discussion has been open for six weeks, with over a week since the last comment. BD2412 T 22:24, 16 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Level 5 proposals must run for at least 15 days?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Currently, L5 proposals must run for at least 14 days. But, all higher level proposals must run for at least 15 days. Propose to standardise L5 to at least 15 days as well. starship.paint 07:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

Support

1. as nom. starship.paint 07:57, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
2. Vileplume 🍋‍🟩 (talk) 01:40, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
3. LOL-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:30, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
4. Barely makes a difference, but why not. Consistency is good. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:39, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
5. Makes sense to align with Level 1-4. Aszx5000 (talk) 11:08, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

Discuss

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposed new rule: while nominating an article, also list the proposed location in the vital article list

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The purpose of this new rule (to support a nomination, the location to where it should be added it must be listed) is to lighten the burden on closers, who are working without reward. They have to figure out where the article should go, despite not necessarily having any expertise in the topic. The burden of effort should be on the nominator and the supporters, not the closer. Ideally, the nominator should provide the location. If the nominator does not know the best location, they can provide multiple potential locations and the other supporters can chime in on which is the best one. This will apply to all nominations made after this proposal passes. starship.paint (RUN) 01:34, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

Support

1. per nom. starship.paint (RUN) 12:56, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
2. Seems fair. Hyperbolick (talk) 22:14, 12 May 2024 (UTC)
3. I have seen the wave of terror that is User:feminist's proposals in the society section. I don't envy you at all when you close their discussions. SailorGardevoir (talk) 06:52, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
4. Sometimes the nominator does not know (speaking from experience), but most of the time this should be done. Would make closing things that aren't removes much easier. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:41, 16 June 2024 (UTC)
5. Yes, harder, but makes sense. Is this a proposal for all Levels? Aszx5000 (talk) 22:48, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

   @Aszx5000: - higher levels are less of an issue now that we are mandating that nominations must be included at lower levels. Thus there is already a clue on where the nomination should go at higher levels. starship.paint (RUN) 08:51, 6 July 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

Discuss

If you need an example of a nomination where the potential location is not immediately obvious, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Society#Add Self-defense. starship.paint (RUN) 01:36, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

VA template in edit summaries

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I know this has been brought before but surely there is a way for the template to work in edit summaries, because its extremely annoying to not be able to simply click on the proposal; most of the time it doesn't work but I have seen some instances were it did work. The Blue Rider 21:56, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Yes, it’s annoying to me as well. Not sure how to fix this, but willing to get some ideas. Interstellarity (talk) 21:11, 13 March 2024 (UTC)

I have also found this really annoying. Maybe we could try asking at VPT? QuicoleJR (talk) 17:25, 15 March 2024 (UTC)

me too.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:01, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Clarification that early modern period ends in 1815

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

For as long as I can remember, the cutoff between early modern and modern on the vital articles page. However, recently another editor has been moving articles around to split early modern at 1800. The significance to 1815 is the end of the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna that defined the world order for the next 99 years. 1800 is a 00 year but has no additional historical significance. _pbp 21:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Support 1815

1. _pbp 21:35, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

Support 1800

1. Based on our early modern period article, which generally supports a 1500-1800 date. SailorGardevoir (talk) 22:34, 8 April 2024 (UTC)
2. Rounder number. Hyperbolick (talk) 08:54, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

   So? Aside of being a "round number", there's no watershed event that begins or ends that year. _pbp 20:47, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

   Sure you could find something. John Adams elected president, marking the tradition of transition of power in the American democracy. Hyperbolick (talk) 02:32, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

   John Adams was elected in 1796... _pbp 01:00, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

   Election of Jefferson, then, ushering in the principal that an electorally defeated incumbent head of state gracefully leaves office. Hyperbolick (talk) 03:47, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Support something else

Discussion

FWIW, the article (which is trash, BTW) states, "There is no exact date that marks the beginning or end of the period and its timeline may vary depending on the area of history being studied." _pbp 00:10, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

@SailorGardevoir: Without saying "it's what the article says", can you defend why 1800 is a good year for that split? What watershed event occurred in that year? _pbp 00:10, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

It’s a nice round number that’s close to the end of the French Revolution, which is what most people consider the main event that divides the modern era into early and late periods, not the Congress of Vienna. SailorGardevoir (talk) 00:44, 9 April 2024 (UTC)

Another reason for just having 1800 be the starting date for the early modern period is that it downplays the Eurocentricity of dividing time into these specific periods. What's the main divider for the Ancient and Post-classical periods? The Fall of the Western Roman Empire? What's the main divider for Post-classical and Early modern? Either the Fall of the Eastern Roman Empire or the Discovery of the Americas. What's the main divider for Early modern and Late modern? The French Revolution (or apparently the Congress of Vienna). With the exception of the Discovery of the Americas and arguably the French Revolution, these events mostly just affected Europeans. SailorGardevoir (talk) 20:46, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

I haven't read thoroughly on the topic, but I have for a while, in and out of Wikipedia presumed or believed that 1815 was the cut off transition year for the modern period, just like A.D. 467 is the cut off from Ancient to Post Classic. In general, we use worded titled eras on the vital project from level 2 and down, with Ancient, Post-Classic, Late and Early modern at lev2, followed by Stone, Medieval, Iron, Bronze, Renaisance, Pre-Columbian at lev3 and more at lev4. We list the worded eras and list other things under them, we do not list numbered centuries and/or decades until level 5, the majority of the project uses eras not centuries. Eras are marked by significant events or technologies not coincidental arbitrary calendar round numbers, otherwise we would end up with odd cut offs like splitting Ancient Rome into before and after A.D. 1 or something, which would make little sense.  Carlwev  13:07, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

User:DannyS712/DiscussionCloser is useful for closing discussions

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Thanks Hanif Al Husaini, I followed your example in using this, and it is helpful! All can try it out! starship.paint (RUN) 12:43, 26 April 2024 (UTC)

Is it just me or the "Close" button doesn't show up anymore. Already tried to install and uninstall multiple times and no success. The Blue Rider 17:34, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

Often happens to me. I don't have a fix other than to keep reloading. J947 ‡ ^edits 09:46, 22 July 2024 (UTC)

@J947 @The Blue Rider @Starship.paint uninstalling the script and installing User:DaxServer/DiscussionCloser.js fixed the problem for me. Hope this helps. feminist🩸 (talk) 06:48, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

@Feminist: - thank you! I think I already did that :) starship.paint (RUN) 12:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

I just copied DaxServer's discussion closer.js and made my own adjustments. Thanks. The Blue Rider 20:17, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Shutting off automatic archiving

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Can someone please disable automatic archiving? Unclosed discussions with a clear consensus are getting auto-archived, and this is bad. QuicoleJR (talk) 21:16, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

+1. J947 ‡ ^edits 23:50, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

We need more prompt closures. Perhaps there should be some form of a qui pro quo requirement that to nominate something you must close something. Plus we need to do everything we can to make closures easier, that chiefly includes telling everyone from the start of the nomination where you want the nominated page to be added to. We should not be making closers do extra work on figuring out where things have to go. The nominators or supporters should figure that out. starship.paint (RUN) 03:06, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I think there is a reason removals get closed before additions. However, I still think we should turn off automatic archiving and just archive things manually after closing them. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I'm fine with turning off automatic archiving. starship.paint (RUN) 14:49, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

I am not sure how to turn it off without retaining the ability to automatically create new archive pages once the current archive page is too big. I've set the automatic archive to a year in the meantime. starship.paint (RUN) 01:39, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

That should work. Thanks! QuicoleJR (talk) 22:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Too much of a focus on U.S. removals?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

In cities, there's been at least 30 removals or proposed removals... ...when the U.S. is NOT the most overrepresented (looking at cities per million of urban population, most of Oceania, Europe and the Caribbean, and more than a few countries elsewhere have more VA articles than the U.S. does).

In politicians, there's been a whole of of removals or proposed removals... ...when the U.S. is NOT the most overrepresented there either

What's also ironic is that entertainment personalities is one of the areas where the U.S. is most OVERrepresented and it hasn't received as much attention as cities and politicians. _pbp 19:16, 23 May 2024 (UTC)

A few editors have begun working to trim down that section. I agree Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 01:13, 4 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Premature closures

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I noticed and reverted two discussions were closed with a nominator support and a single oppose vote based on time (see [1] and [2]). Although the time indicates that the nomination is not a subject of high interest, time does not seem to indicate a consensus having been achieved. Is there an interest in adding a rule to close based on time without a consensus regarding vitality.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:06, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

If there's less than four votes after 60 days, it seems fine by me to close as "no consensus" _pbp 05:37, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

I see lots of subject that just do not get attention of our discussants that still need active consideration rather than people who can not be bothered by a subject. We do not even require 4 voters. 4 discussants is a very low threshold. We have lower thresholds than level 1-4. If we are going to time things out it should not be until 90 days since last comment. However, I don't think we should do that.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:20, 5 June 2024 (UTC)

90 days sounds about right, but I agree with TonyTheTiger that I wouldn't like see votings closed en masse just because they didn't find enough attention in time. The pages get very long, and stuff in the middle isn't seen by everyone. Too early closings before enough people have considered would mean that subjects that get less interest would not improve and stay the way they are. It would be better if we closed and archived the votings that are ready in due time. That would move the ones waiting for votes higher on the page, where they would get noticed by more editors. Makkool (talk) 13:27, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I would also agree with 90 days; these pages are very long, and I don't think it is helpful to have discussions open for more than 90-days. The Level 1-4 have a time limt for a no-consensus, so Level 5 should have too. I would suggest that this is proposed at the VA main page for decision? Aszx5000 (talk) 11:07, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Notification

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I was going to post this notice a few days ago when I found out, but better late than never.

Hanif Al Husaini, a major contributor to the VA5 project, passed away on May 27, 2024. There is a section on his talk page for comments of remembrance. May he rest in peace. QuicoleJR (talk) 20:00, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. May he rest among the stars in peace. The Blue Rider 13:20, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Bad bot edits by @Cewbot:

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hello,

I just noticed that Cewbot recently removed all the Level 4 tags from Level 5. This means that, on the vital article template on article talk pages, Level 4 articles are instead listed as level 5 articles. _pbp 15:53, 25 July 2024 (UTC)

I don't know if it's the same set of issues, or it just runs less often, but looks like Cewbot has been on holiday for a couple weeks now. I have other things to do first, but I can check if Kanashimi is OK, and maybe help with this eventually. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Redirect this talk page to the new VA landing page talk page

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Shouldn't this talk page be redirected to the new VA landing page talk page? It feels that we are having discussions about Level 5 processes and procedures that would be best hosted at the overall VA talk page level (which used to be one the Level 3 talk page), and not outside of that. Better to have one single page for making such suggestions at VA? thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 11:03, 20 June 2024 (UTC)

I'd actually keep this one separate, at least for now. The regulars here can probably tell you I'm a broken record on this, but I think Level 5 will always need to work differently from at least Levels 1-3, purely because of scaling issues. I'm usually very for consolidating pages, but VA5 is sort of an exception. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal: Splitting the society subpage

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The society subpage is way too long and was thinking that it should be split into multiple subpages. Not sure how to split the subpages, but was hoping to get some input on how we should split it. Interstellarity (talk) 12:27, 27 June 2024 (UTC)

After closing and archiving a lot of proposals, the society page isn't particulary bloated; less than 200k bytes - the People subsection has more as of now. The Blue Rider 17:41, 19 July 2024 (UTC)

For some context, with our first-year anniversary of the separate proposal pages coming up, XTools now reports the following (approximate) sizes:

Proposal page sizes

Subsection	Size, end of 2023 (kB)	Current size (kB)
People	195	150
Hist & Geo	305	130
Society	580	210
STEM	165	180

So while Society is still the largest, it was relatively massive in the beginning and has trended down in size the most. STEM on the other hand is the only one to trend up. So if we do decide to split Society, which I personally support, we should also discuss splitting Math & Science from Tech (which dominates the discussion page). -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Just to update, the STEM page included a lot of very stale proposals. Tech still dominates the page, but now that the cruft is closed out, it's at a much more manageable ~135 kB. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Improve a random Level X article

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The button seems to not work. Pressing it will either just reolad the page or take to some category like which is clearly not random and makes the editor choose. ExclusiveEditor _{Notify Me!} 07:29, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Good find, it kicks me to the maintenance category for VA articles by quality rating. I'm already building up a decent backlog of projects here, but if nobody else gets to it, maybe I can look into making it a genuine "I feel lucky" button. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:39, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I just looked into it, and it was a simple fix. The service on Toolforge only needs URL parameters, but the catch is it's not smart enough to descend through a container category. You have to feed it individual ones from the bottom of the category tree.

I've currently set it only to return Stub, Start, and C class articles, along with Lists (Lv5 still has about 110 and we've never officially discouraged them). My thinking is the lower-quality articles are easiest to improve quickly.

Also, I didn't make changes to the button on any of the sublists. Those already worked since the "Vital ... by <topic>" categories are leaves in the category tree. Those buttons don't filter at all on quality though and may return even FAs. AFAICT the service on Toolforge only allows adding categories (i.e. union / whitelist), whereas it would need parameters for intersections or complements (i.e. blacklist) to filter on topic & quality simultaneously. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 15:31, 24 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Batch move: specific facilities, tech -> geography

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I've been thinking, how about we move all of the articles for specific facilities and infrastructure projects to Geography? They could be allocated to Region or City based on scale: e.g. an airport goes by the city it serves, while an out-of-the-way facility or something regional (like a road network) goes to the region / country.

Some other arguments for:

• We have some topics (like urban transit authorities) that otherwise fall into a gray area: they use transport technology like buses and solve logistical problems, but they're really organizations and their technical artifacts alone aren't that noteworthy.
• Even if they have a technical orientation, geography is how we primarily differentiate them on the Tech page anyway
• It will arguably be easier to balance and track them this way
• As individual projects, they're bound up with their surrounding history and culture
• While Tech is over quota, all the Geography sections are currently just below or more than 2% under.

On the quotas specifically, I'm completely neutral on whether they should change to reflect this move or not.

Support

1. Support as nom. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 21:39, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

Neutral

1. Case by case basis I'd support or oppose this. Geography is currently missing a lot of the core geographic/cartographic theory pages, and has kinda just become a place to dump places/regions. While that is certainly a component of geography, there are many topics like Central place theory  5, sub-fields like Time geography  5 or Spatial analysis  5, and concepts like Activity space  5 I'd rather see included in that 2%. Tech can and should be trimmed, I'd rather see us make the painful choice to cut away a lot of these facilities and transit authorities rather then push them into another category. As a professional geographer, less then 1% of my coursework has involved place name memorization but that is the vast majority of the category. It's one of the areas I'd like to see improved, but need to write up large explanations for why these are vital, as the average person might not know about them dispite interacting with numerous technologies that are based on them daily. In 1,000 years, the concepts are likely to still be vital, a particular cities transportation authority is less so. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:58, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

   That's not a bad point at all; if you're trying to add theory on the Geography talk page, maybe I should swing by. My first thought is that we should definitely add the topics you mentioned, but we may be able to include both. If the Geo sections start going way over quota, then we can evaluate whether they deserve slots from somewhere else, or whether specific sites should be cut.

   I just posted a tweaked version of this proposal to the main talk page and will probably close this one out as "superseded" in a couple days. If you want to add your thoughts there too, we'll see how people that work at Lv 4 feel about it. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:21, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

Discuss

• This doesn't involve only articles from level 5. Some bridges and observatories are level 4. Should we discuss this move on the general talk page instead? Makkool (talk) 17:19, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

If it touches on Level 4 too, I guess we should. I can post a modified proposal there before closing out this one. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:32, 8 December 2024 (UTC)

@GeogSage: I was thinking some about the technical geography topics you mentioned. It may actually be worth doing some reorganization around those too. If you think there are enough articles, we could do a "Basics & Methods" section under Geography (similar to what we do for Science). After looking over the Central place theory article though, I realized another possibility for now is to propose some topics under Science (for empirical methods) or Applied Math (for formal models), but that does scatter things a bit. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 20:13, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply. I had worked on the Geography topics template a while ago (while working on the main page for geography)and think that it can give some ideas for how we could organize stuff. I've been trying to put some thought into how to approach this here, and with Winter break might be able to help more (although I have several publications that need my attention at the moment as well, so not just endless free time). Specifically, there are many topics that are vital in my opinion, but most people have been using geography to mean places, and broad topics aren't as interesting to them. My view of what geography is vs what the average person thinks of is likely to be vastly different, and it is honestly hard to look at the state of Wikipedia or hold discussions sometimes on the matter, which is why I'm trying to be cautious and think about how to approach this problem. I've organized my thoughts below, please pardon the length:

To demonstrate, first start with the geography topics at VA level 2 which has 11 articles. This is where I believe the problem starts. Vital articles level 2 lists City  2, Country  2, Sea  2, Land  2, as well as Africa  2, Asia  2, Europe  2, North America  2, Oceania  2, South America  2. To be blunt, as a geographer, this looks like it was compiled by people with a (Western) 5th graders understanding of geography and confirms that it is mostly a place to put Location  5s and Place identity  5, two topics that are not included as vital articles at all. Continents are a really bad way to organize information, especially if we are going to push the weird notion that Europe is somehow a continent by any definition of the word. Country  2 is so ambiguous as a term that it is essentially meaningless, but less useful then Territory  5 which is broader and crosses species. Also, not that people know the difference between a Nation  4, Sovereign state  5, or Nation state  4, but at least those are defined in some literature fairly clearly. I'd drop this completely in favor of place. City  2 is another one I'd flay someone on, and would suggest Human settlement  5 as a replacement. To many people think Cities are the be all, end all of human civilization.

Now look at the geography topics template (below). Quantitative geography  5, Qualitative geography  5, Time geography  5, Philosophy of geography  5, Geodesign, Geoinformatics, Geographic information science  5, Statistical geography  5, Spatial analysis  5 are all major "fields" that aren't included but probably should be. Techniques like Geostatistics  5, Geovisualization  5, Computer cartography  5 (and Web mapping), forms of Geographic information system  5 (such as Distributed GIS, Internet GIS, and Web GIS) are all missing. Heck, while Remote sensing  4 is thankfully inlcuded, Photogrammetry isn't.

Note, that there is almost zero overlap between the template and the way vital articles are organized. The discrepancy between how I believe geography should be organized and how it is approached by how much is missing is daunting and disappointing. Trying to discuss this with editors is discouraging, but it seems that geography is only being considered vital in the sense that it is useful to organize peoples home towns, at which point we should just name the section Toponomy. The glacial process of VA articles is annoying, but honestly I'm not sure if there is a way to salvage the organization of geography that is in line with any literature, which is even more daunting as I find people are highly defensive of the status quo.

A "Basics & methods" section would be a start, but it is still original research when it comes to organization. If the organization is actually about geography, an not just places, then I'd go with the three branch model at level 2, with categories Human geography  4, Physical geography  4, and Technical geography  5. I'd swap city with Human settlement, and country with Territory  5, and put them under human geography, and I'd drop all the nonsense continents (seriously, including Europe as a continent should be viewed as backwards as all the other racist Eurocentric nonsense that polluted early science. If Europe is a continent, so is Florida, and model is completely useless for anything but explaining the racist European view of the worlds organization. There isn't an argument that includes Europe but doesn't add several other locations, like India). Plate tectonics  3 at level 3 is fine, and we can put them at level 4 under there...maybe. Technical geography could start with just quantitative and qualitative geography, which would satisfy the "basics and methods" section. I'd keep "basics" under the broad heading of geography, or use "key concepts" which is used in the outside literature. Methods is just technical geography, broken into quantitative and qualitative geography.

So my ideal 11 articles for VA 2 would be:

• Geography
  • location
  • Scale (Geographic)
  • Human geography
    • Human settlement
  • Physical geography
    • Land
    • Sea
  • Technical geography
    • Quantitative geography
    • Qualitative geography

I think we could use that organization at VA level 2 to fix all the other issues in the organization of the discipline. Due to the size of this issue, I'm struggling to think of where to even start. It's actually hard to even look at how bad the current organization is. BTW, Those blue links are all VA link templates, so if they're missing a number it is because they aren't listed as vital... Core concepts listed on the main geography page like Scale (geography)  5 are ignored.

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 19:10, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Note: Moved this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Vital articles#Broad reorganization of geography GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 21:19, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

I'll go ahead and add any other thoughts I have over there. I think we can consider this discussion at Lv 5 closed out. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 23:34, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Swap Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi with Senusiyya

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'm bringing it here rather than the people talk page since the Senusiyya will be placed under history if they get added. If anyone has seen my proposals lately, I have been pushing for the removal of articles that I personally feel are never going to escape stub-class. I will admit, that kind of the reason I want to get rid of al-Sanusi, although now I'm starting to think that his article can improve after all if we transplant some of the info from the Senusiyya article to him. However, even if we can improve his article, we have also been removing people who are chiefly known for finding a royal dynasty without actually being rulers, and I ultimately think that's why he's here. Instead, we should swap him out for the order he belongs to. Although only one of them end up ruling Libya, they still seem to play a big role in resisting Italian colonial rule.

Support

1. SailorGardevoir (talk) 07:32, 14 May 2024 (UTC)
2. Hanif Al Husaini (talk) 02:55, 21 May 2024 (UTC)
3. Support adding Senusiyya to History. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Oppose removing Muhammad ibn Ali al-Sanusi from People. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

Discuss

• All of the relevant sections (whether you put the man under Religious figures or Rebels) are technically still under their quotas so I say why not have both for now? A personal theme of mine at Level 5 is that it's arguably even more useful for stimulating mergers / splits than improving single articles in isolation. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:08, 16 November 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

vote recount needed

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Please check Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/STEM#Remove_{{VA_link|_Bowie_knife}},_or_swap_with_{{VA_link|Fighting_knife}} which was closed by User:Makkool.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:24, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I think it all checks out: the proposal was open > 15 days, > 7 days since the last vote, and the numbers seem right when swapping and removing are each considered distinctly.

While my vote was primarily to swap, I said I would also prefer removing over keeping if that choice was on the edge of passing. The one strict oppose vote also counted in both options. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:14, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

I had misread your vote as not including the remove vote too (only a swap), and tallied the total wrong. It's fixed now. Makkool (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Propose quota change: Culture +100 Biological and health sciences -100

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

There's clearly work remaining, but I don't think there are that many easy cuts in the Culture section (Universities? Museums?), which is almost 200 entries over quota. On the other hand, Biology has taken too long to fulfill (nearly 400 under quota), and a similar proposal was made for Level 4 months ago. This one would be:

• Culture 1750 ---> 1850 (currently has 1946 entries).
• Biology 5815 ----> 5715 (currently has 5412 entries).

1. Biology, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology 1200 ---> 1150 (currently has 1062 entries).
2. Plants, fungi, and other organisms 1075 ---> 1050 (currently has 968 entries).
3. Health, medicine, and disease 1140 ----> 1115 (currently has 1005 entries).

Support

1. As nominator. Tabu Makiadi (talk) 16:37, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
2. Support, other cuts could definitely be made to Television articles for example Makkool (talk) 14:29, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

   Support, although I have been trying to improve the Health section. The problem is that nobody votes on the more technical proposals. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:20, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

3. Questions? four Olifanofmrtennant (she/her) 15:39, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
4. Regardless of current potential cuts (and this increase wouldn't even take Culture under quota as it stands), "Culture" is extremely broad, and there are some areas such as ethnic groups that are still lacking. Iostn (talk) 00:21, 23 November 2024 (UTC)
5. Support. Some comments: 1. I also the think the television section is a little too big. 2. We genuinely do need to add more biology articles instead of only shrinking the biology quota. If this takes a while, so be it. Mathwriter2718 (talk) 15:19, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

   @Mathwriter2718: Your comment seems to support not making this change. Why did you support this proposal? QuicoleJR (talk) 23:49, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

   @QuicoleJR I support the proposal. I think the quota for culture is a bit too low and the quota for bio is a bit too high. These comments are additional remarks I wanted to say. Maybe it would have been clearer for me to put them in the discussion. Mathwriter2718 (talk) 02:38, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

6. I rarely weigh in on quotas, but this just makes us look better by reallocating overages.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:19, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

1. oppose. I think we could likely trim plenty from both sections, and we should emphasize reducing the list rather than shuffling stuff around. For example, while I love academic journals, I think half could probably be cut from the list. We could likely cut half the magazines, TV, and Radio articles while we're at it. I struggle to believe WWE Raw is one of the most important articles on Wikipedia, and while King of the Hill might be among the greatest animes of all time, I think it probably could be cut as well. While an argument could be made that Sports Illustrated is impactful, I don't know if Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue needs to be included as well. Biology and health sciences probably could be expanded tremendously, but I'm sure there are cuts to be found there as well. I look through Public health topics, and pages like Infant mortality and Birth defect are not included. In short, I believe that Wikipedians have been a bit overzealous about getting their favorite TV show or publication listed while slacking a bit on Biological and health sciences topics.GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:20, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
2. Strong oppose, on a few counts. I'll be slowly coming back from a hiatus & doing some other things (like a mark-1 vitality estimator) before proposals here. I'm against removing slots from the biology section for now though because: 1. I don't think its current size reflects the subject, just a bias in the interest level by proposers. I'm not a botanist, but I have 45 plant nominations alone that I didn't get around to earlier this year. So we could probably exceed the current quota with more participation. 2. I know it's not an agreed convention for now, but I think we should also move away from overly-tuned quotas with more than 1 or 2 significant digits. 3. If any of the Society sections gets a quota bump, I would actually like to see it go to Religion & Philosophy. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 11:58, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
3. After thinking about it for a bit, oppose per Zar2gar1. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:00, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
4. After looking closer, biology is only 331 under quota, and I think it is missing a lot of articles. Mathwriter2718 (talk) 14:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Discuss

If Biology is 400 below and Culture is 200 above, who are we not just shifting 200 from Biology to Culture? BD2412 T 15:40, 8 October 2024 (UTC)

1. I may propose something similar if this one passes, but I think there's a decent amount of cuts for an outright +200 increase. Tabu Makiadi (talk) 16:37, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

I don't support that, since I think there are certainly enough additions to get at least the Health section to the quota. I also think enough cuts can be made to get Culture down to the new quota. QuicoleJR (talk) 14:23, 20 October 2024 (UTC)

What are your more technical proposals? GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:26, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

• This proposal is close enough that one oppose vote would put it in jeaopardy. It is now overlapping with another proposal below. This proposal no doubt got a lot of support because the sciences had spaces to spare. Below we eliminate those spaces. I think if both of them pass it might not be clear that the voters support the outcome of any science sections being put in an over quota situation.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:41, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

General quota proposal: larger denominations

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Hi everyone, how about one quick process proposal? It's a simple one: from here on out, let's restrict all Lv5 quotas and quota proposals to rounder numbers, specifically multiples of at least 200 (or 300, 400, etc.)

If this passes, we can round the current quotas to the nearest multiple, and if those wind up summing to less than 50,000, we'll add extra slots to the most over-quota sections (or subtract from the most under-quota if wind up over 50k). This won't supersede the active quota proposal above either; if that one passes, we'll apply the 100 slot change, then round the updated sections appropriately.

We've actually discussed this before, but I've never brought it for a formal !vote. I can think of several various reasons to make our quotas chunkier though:

• We already use soft quotas at Lv 5 so smaller changes take up energy without much benefit
• Round numbers are much easier to subdivide (especially if we ever re-introduce header-level quotas within lists)
• Round numbers make it easier to read and audit our tables & data reports
• Round numbers make things easier to swap when we do have quota proposals

Perhaps my main reason though is that I think we all agree the quotas (even if they're soft) are meant to discipline the lists and proposals, not just reflect the current size and proposal activity. If they become the latter, they're largely an exercise in box-checking and should arguably be done away with completely. By restricting quota changes to significant amounts though, we force ourselves to better justify the quotas, which also improves the list quality.

And as for the exact multiple, we can do multiples of 100 if everyone prefers. I honestly think Lv 5 is large enough for bigger chunks though, plus sections with prime multiples (e.g. 1700) can cause minor hiccups with subdivision. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 13:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

Support

1. Support as nom. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 13:42, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
2. Support multiples of 100 per nom. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:14, 26 November 2024 (UTC)

   I would also support doing away with quotas entirely outside of the main 50K quota. In my opinion, they do more harm than good. Additions and removals should be decided based on how vital something is, not what section the article goes in. QuicoleJR (talk) 23:52, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

3. Support multiples of 100 per nom. (Anything which improves list quality is good.) Makkool (talk) 15:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)
4. Support multiples of 100 per nom. I also agree with Makkool's stance that some of these new slots should go to Arts (if possible, I'd say at least a couple hundred). λ NegativeMP1 19:35, 31 December 2024 (UTC)

Oppose

1. This will restrict us unnecessarily.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:24, 31 December 2024 (UTC)
2. Per Tony _pbp 22:50, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutral

I can't support this when it might put Health over its quota. Consider this a support if moving slots to Culture fails and an Oppose if it passes. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:09, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Hmm, this was what I was trying to avoid, that we'd get bogged down in short-term implementation. I don't normally horse-trade over votes like this, but we're on the undecided margin now, and it unfortunately looks like we're not getting much input.

What if I start up separate proposals to add 100 back to Health and another 100 to Arts? If you're OK with the main goal of the proposal, to stick to round 100s, would you be willing to go back to supporting it? Like the others that want to see slots shifted to Arts? I think I can find a couple sections people will be OK pulling from.

As you know (from the proposal above), I personally don't like seeing the Biology sections cut back at all. I think I've mentioned before that I'd also like to see People cut drastically. Unfortunately, this project has to work effectively by committee, which inevitably means we all wind up disappointed about something. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 16:43, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I am willing to support this proposal as long as Health's quota is not reduced by 100. I agree with the multiples of 100 idea, but I think that reducing the Health section's quota that heavily would be very problematic. QuicoleJR (talk) 16:48, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Consider it done then. There's a specific proposal below to shift 100 from Animals to keep Health at 1,100 (it almost definitely looks like the shift to Culture is going to pass). I also started a proposal to move 100 to Arts since others expressed some interest in that. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:44, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Discuss

• Could we also consider potential gaps, when dividing extra slots to over-quota sections? There's a need for more articles to Arts, because there could be possible vital films still missing that haven't been considered yet. It would be good to leave room to add, in addition to covering over-quotas. Makkool (talk) 15:41, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

I don't see a problem if the slots ultimately wind up with other sections; I just wanted to separate this proposal from any debates over specific sections. Shifting to the most over-quota sections seemed like the least controversial way to handle a potential remainder for now.

I suppose if everyone wanted to, we could hash that out in a sub-proposal here. I was really hoping we could just start up separate quota proposals though, in parallel or after this one is settled. Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:12, 7 December 2024 (UTC)

• User:Zar2gar1, could you present a table with three columns, 1. the current quotas, 2. the rounded quotas you propose, and 3, the rounded quotas, if the currently active reallocation discussion passes.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:41, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
• I noticed Countries and subdivisions quota gets bumped up to 1400. We have purged the section down over the year, and I think there's still many non-vital subdivisions from before in there. Could we instead decrease this section down to 1300 and move the hundred articles elsewhere? I'm not sure where they would be needed though. Could they be necessary for something else in Geography? There hasn't been support for metropolitan areas, but they could be used to fill the space. Or maybe there's enough basic geography topics that GeogSage has been proposing. Makkool (talk) 07:43, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

  Sure, like with the other ones though, I'd just ask that we make it a separate quota proposal. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:06, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Proposal in table format

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This is my first pass guess at what you are actually proposing This table is the future of quotas if the votes pass.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:34, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Sublist	Current	Old Target	This passes	Both Pass	Complete?
People	15,144	15,185	15,300	15,300	Yes
Writers and journalists	2,053	2,000	2,000	2,000	Over quota
Artists, musicians, and composers	2,193	2,175	2,200	2,200	Yes
Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters	2,168	2,175	2,200	2,200	Yes
Philosophers, historians, and social scientists	1,337	1,360	1,400	1,400	Yes
Religious figures	493	500	500	500	Yes
Politicians and leaders	2,390	2,400	2,400	2,400	Yes
Military personnel, revolutionaries, and activists	873	900	900	900	No
Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians	1,270	1,275	1,300	1,300	Yes
Sports figures	1,205	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Miscellaneous	1,162	1,200	1,200	1,200	No
History	3,263	3,300	3,300	3,300	Yes
Geography	5,164	5,250	5,300	5,300	Yes
Physical geography	1,846	1,900	1,900	1,900	No
Countries and subdivisions	1,331	1,350	1,400	1,400	No
Cities	1,987	2,000	2,000	2,000	Yes
Arts	3,359	3,300	3,300	3,300	Yes
Philosophy and religion	1,437	1,400	1,400	1,400	Over quota
Everyday life	2,425	2,400	2,400	2,400	Yes
Everyday life	1,207	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Sports, games and recreation	1,218	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Society and social sciences	4,398	4,100	4,200	4,300	Over quota
Social studies	504	500	500	500	Yes
Politics and economics	1,940	1,850	1,900	1,900	Over quota
Culture	1,954	1,750	1,800	1,900	Over quota
Biology and health sciences	5,484	5,815	5,600	5,500	Yes
Biology, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology	1,068	1,200	1,100	1,100	No
Animals	2,397	2,400	2,400	2,400	Yes
Plants, fungi, and other organisms	974	1,075	1,000	1,000	No
Health, medicine, and disease	1,045	1,140	1,100	1,000	Over quota
Physical sciences	4,789	4,850	4,800	4,800	Yes
Basics and measurement	354	350	300	300	Over quota
Astronomy	898	900	900	900	Yes
Chemistry	1,178	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Earth science	1,187	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Physics	1,172	1,200	1,200	1,200	No
Technology	3,230	3,200	3,200	3,200	Yes
Mathematics	1,208	1,200	1,200	1,200	Yes
Total	49,901	50,000	50,000	50,000	Yes

My question is whether I am interpreting things correctly (especially with the plants, health and measurement sections).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:20, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

@Zar2gar1: Am I interpretting your nomination correctly.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 14:44, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Oh, I appreciate you running the numbers; I wasn't planning on doing it unless the vote passed.

But yes, I get almost the same results running the procedure. I just realized I wasn't super-explicit that we should round first, then check which sections are most over/under quota, but that looks like what you did.

For the math, I got that...

1. The initial rounding creates an extra 300 slots we have to trim
2. The most under-quota sections after rounding, as a % and in order, then become...
   1. Basics & measurement (and full disclosure, I am so glad this one gets cut back)
   2. Plants, fungi, and other organisms
   3. Biology, biochem, etc.
   4. Health, medicine, etc.
   5. Military personnel, etc. (literally just 1 or 2 articles closer to quota than Health)
3. The first 3 sections then each lose 100 slots, and the 4th would too if 100 are shifted to Culture

So the only differences in my results are that

• Biology, biochem, etc. will drop to 1,100 regardless of the other quota proposal
• Health, medicine, etc. will drop to 1,000 to make up for the extra 100 to Culture

Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:46, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Consensus building

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

@TonyTheTiger and Purplebackpack89: And anyone else that's on the fence about this. First off, I apologize if this blew up into a much bigger conversation than planned. I don't want to take up much of anyone's time. Since this is an either/or change, it needs to be a vote, but I was actually hoping to find as much consensus as possible.

Since you both oppose for the same reason currently, I thought I'd get a little more feedback. You mentioned that it would "restrict us unnecessarily", but to clear things up, can you paint me a picture where this becomes an issue? I'm having trouble seeing any situation like that in the foreseeable future, at least until the list has become very stable years from now (if ever). Before then, I don't think we can say the lists are anywhere close to a hypothetical "correct" size, when we could say something like the "75" in a quota of "2,175" represents actual significant digits.

It obviously is a restriction we're placing on ourselves, just like the other rules, and it isn't 100% absolutely necessary either. But I think the self-discipline would be good for us. It will at least put a floor on proposals that scrape off small amounts from other sections, which are well-meaning, but I think if you look closely, almost always one-sided: lots of enthusiasm for the section adding slots but little concern for what's actually in the sections the slots will be pulled from.

Hopefully, this may even let us have fewer, more focused quota debates in general. I know that's not what happened so far, but I think it ironically makes my point. Just trying to reallocate a potential overage in our total triggered so much debate, which if you look closely, is mostly just us arguing over which topics we like most or least. As long as we have quotas, we probably do need more guardrails around setting them. This would be a small step in that direction. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 15:47, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to quotas at all, merely opposed to them being in multiples of 100. 100 is a lot of topics. I think there are enough situations where forcing us to ONLY choose between 200, 100 and 0 would be unwise. _pbp 16:23, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Just to clarify, I wasn't concerned about supporting or opposing quotas absolutely. I only alluded to QuicoleJR's discussion because I am truly sympathetic to anyone that finds them annoying.

But you got right to my point: you mention situations where having to handle quotas in 100s would be unwise, but I honestly can't picture them, at least at level 5. Can you give me an example? The closest I can see is a really small section like we have with Science Basics now, but the fact we even have a rump section like that is arguably more an organizational problem than how much we fine tune the quota. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 16:58, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Look at anything that's 1,000 or less and how significant a change of 100, or even up or down to the nearest 100, is. _pbp 17:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Fair enough, and I don't want to keep bothering you. I see what you mean that if you interpret as a percentage change for the section in isolation, it can be large. That's an inevitable statistical artifact of a smaller population.

I guess I just don't see why percentage change matters much in this context. At the very least, whatever the section size, we definitely don't have a problem coming up with additions or removals once we actually focus on it. I think we're largely just limited by bandwidth and lack of participation around certain topics.

Anyways, thanks again for replying, and we'll see how the vote turns out. If you do think of any informal guideline or spin-off idea that would ease your concerns though, feel free to bring it up. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:49, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Recounts necessary for Dwelling

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Closed as 4-1 pass. Seems to be a 3-2 fail after 5 months, Dwelling:

+:Interstellarity, Kevinishere15, TonyTheTiger

-Zar2gar1, Big Blue Cray(fish) Twins

-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:16, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

My bold formatting may not have been the best, but if you read my vote closely, I actually only opposed adding it to Tech. The article clearly describes a legal concept so I supported adding it to Society -> Law, and Kevinishere15 also mentioned putting it there. Since the other votes were unqualified, I put it there. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 05:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Resolved

-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:40, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should we get rid of the quotas?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This isn't a formal proposal yet, but I want to bring this up for discussion. I don't think that the page quotas are good for the project. Either they limit the number of listings we can have for a topic, potentially barring vital topics from being added, or they get shifted around based on where the listings already are, making them an effectively useless exercise in box-checking. Either way, they are not helpful and should be removed. Any thoughts? QuicoleJR (talk) 23:58, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

I think they are more of a guideline then a rule. They help to keep the project generally organized and well rounded. Without them, it might be challenging to see what areas are over represented, under represented, or whatever at a glance. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:07, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

They are essential in terms of keeping the project well rounded. Without quotas, we would probably restore all US Presidents and half of the politicians we purged last year. They are all more important than half the biographies we include. However, If we try to maintain a broad and diverse set of bios, we have to figure out who is most vital from all professions.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:25, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

i think they're useful for avoiding overrepresentation in certain areas. I think it's a good thing that we can change the quotas later if we realize later that they were off. Mathwriter2718 (talk) 13:09, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

I think we could probably tell which sections are overrepresented without the arbitrary article limits. Removing all of the subquotas didn't change our ability to see which sections within the pages had too many articles, and which didn't have enough. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:12, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The quotas are tedious, bureaucratic, and annoying... but I think they're unfortunately the only thing that keep VA5 disciplined at this point. So if the choice is between keeping or dumping them, I say we keep them.

Now, if anyone has any better ideas of how to regulate the separate sections, I might support replacing them. Even then though, you'd want to factor in some of the advantages the quotas do have:

1. They allow the lists to evolve independently for the most part. Without them, arguments over balance will likely devolve to comparing individual items across sections.
2. They add a little protection to sections with less participation. Not much, but at least now, people have to create a proposal to shift slots based on sectional arguments, not just articles. Without them, I expect what will happen is the popular sections will just steamroll ahead, and people may even start brigading removals in the unpopular ones.
3. As numbers, they're simple to work with and some tasks can be automated. We may not be there yet, but I plan to work up a bot myself that will do some of that.

To your first point about them barring vital topics from being added, I'd actually disagree with that. If a topic is presumably vital and an item that isn't vital is on the same list, the quotas don't prevent swaps. If such a swap fails, that's on us as participants. And if the problem is that one section has a higher standard of vitality than another, the quotas actually make it easier for us to rectify that with a single proposal. If that fails and one section is tolerated at a lower standard, again, that's on us as participants.

To your point about box-checking if we just shift them where the articles already are though, I agree with you 100%. And yes, my above proposal does that in the short-term as a practical measure. My hope though is that if we lock in some general rules for the quotas, we can start holding quota proposals to a stronger standard, which should rebalance things for the best in the long-run. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:15, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quota proposal: move 100 from Animals -> Health

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This is mainly to decouple concerns about individual sections from the above proposal to round all quotas.

I actually agree with QuicoleJR above that we've been cannibalizing most of the Biology sections for a while now. Health in particular is almost definitely incomplete; we just recently added Birth defect  5 and off the top of my head, we still don't even list Skin condition. Participation on health topics has actually been decent in the past few months too so we can definitely hit the new quota.

As for why we would cut from Animals, it's clearly over-represented: more than double any other Biology section, despite only representing one kingdom of life. Many of the items there are just taxonomic place-holders too that I think we added almost mechanically, which is fine for initial brainstorming. But now we could probably cull the section a bit.

There are non-Biology sections I'd personally suggest cutting even more, but when possible, I think shifting quotas within a category is simpler and steps on fewer toes. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Support

1. As nom. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
2. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:17, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Weak Oppose. Can we see which of the earlier proposals pass first.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

   Sure thing, both will be open for at least another week, though I think the shift of 100 slots to Culture will almost definitely pass at this point. I saw your comment there too, which is considerate. From my experience trying to work on the Science lists though, I doubt the Biology section shrinking more (I hope only temporarily) from the rounding will change many minds. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:26, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutral

Discuss

Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:29, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quota proposal: move 100 from Military personnel -> Arts

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This is mainly to decouple concerns about individual sections from the above proposal to round all quotas.

Multiple participants in the above proposal were interested in shifting slots to Arts. I'll let them provide detailed arguments if needed.

As for where to take the 100 slots from, I'd definitely suggest People / Military personnel, etc. In the general quota proposal, we calculated it's actually the most under-quota non-science section. I've also been trying to fill it out on the People talk page myself and can personally attest that:

• There isn't much interest in the section, so even if it should ideally be larger, it won't happen anytime soon
• Even some of my proposals were a bit borderline and more what you would see in an initial brainstorming

Support

1. As nom. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:39, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
2. Per nom. And to offer my own rationale, I personally believe Arts is at the point where I don't know how many articles could be removed, despite my best efforts of trying to find stuff like movies or musical works to get rid of. However, I can definitely think of ones that should be added. This proposal would give us room to allow for the ones we already have that I think should be kept, and 41 more. λ NegativeMP1 19:33, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
3. per NegativeMP1. QuicoleJR (talk) 19:46, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
4. Support, and not only for adding new works to movies or music. There's surely still some basic articles that are missing from the Literature section for example. Currently, it feels less broad than the Music section when it comes to general topics. Makkool (talk) 19:58, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose

1. I think relevant Wikiprojects could/should be notified and brought in for comment. That said, from a historic perspective, military leaders are often extremely influential on the course of world affairs. Vasily Arkhipov  5 personally decided to not launch nuclear weapons against the United States during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and likely a nuclear war, for example. Looking at the guidelines for vitality, it says it should not have a western bias, and that "Individuals within the People section represent the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity, such as Albert Einstein 3 in "Inventors and scientists", William Shakespeare 3 in "Authors", and Genghis Khan 3 on "Leaders." Based on this, I think we could remove all articles related to American Football and football players if you need broad room for "Arts," as the emphasis on American Football is definitly a "Western Bias," and virtually no athltete has a material impact on the course of humanity.GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:04, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

   Actually, I agree with you completely in the long-run. If you look on the People talk-page, I probably have over 30 active suggestions for Military personnel or Rebels to add. Unfortunately, there just doesn't seem to be as much interest in the section.

   Plus I've accepted that Lv5, if you'll pardon a military metaphor (without the connotation of conflict), is somewhat a "war of maneuver". Maybe it's for the best if we give everyone that works on the Arts list a bit more breathing room for now, let them refine their own system for ranking things. And to be fair, the Military & Rebels section probably could use some pruning: ~1/8 of the entire section is still American activists, and I'm really not sure how notable some of the other non-American ones are. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:49, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

   When the United States has 330 million people, some representation of the most popular sport in the country is warranted. The real Western bias is that India and China don't get the same treatment. QuicoleJR (talk) 15:51, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

   I'd much rather see American athletes get the same treatment as Chinese and Indian athletes. Very few athletes actually fit the projects requirements to be deemed "vital" in my opinion. They are popular, but that is not the same thing as vital. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:31, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

2. Weak Oppose. Can we see which of the earlier proposals pass first.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:18, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
3. Military personnel is actually the military personnell rebels, and activists section, which was already cut a while ago from 1000 > 900 and saw a lot of removals (this is when subquotas where still a thing and the cut was actually for specifically the US activists section, so that's where everything that was removed was from). Since I was waiting for my proposal to go through on moving bandita and pirates etc to Misc > Criminals, I was planning on afterwards adding more primarily non-US activists and revolutionaries that have been overlooked. Iostn (talk) 00:18, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

   Not looking to change your mind, and I actually hope to see this section bumped back up in the medium-term. Just to clarify, you don't have to drop any of your addition proposals even if this passes. We'd just need to give the list a more critical once-over and propose removals to balance it out. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:52, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutral

Discuss

Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:39, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reopened Add Atlantic hurricane

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

The reason we went back to the queue system was so that all nominations could get 4 voters. If it is open a year, then we can close it. Otherwise let it sit until it either gets a 2nd oppose + 7 days of no votes or 4 supports. TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:25, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

If you want to reopen it, that's fine, but we talked about it on the main page: WP:VA#Level 5 closes

Nobody wanted to make it an official rule, but the other 4 levels officially time out proposals, and almost everyone seems to agree that if the talk-page starts getting too large, we don't have to wait forever to retire the proposals that don't get enough interest.

It's not something we've really discussed much, but most of the talk pages are way past what's normally recommended: WP:TALKSIZE. They may still be trending down overall since we started them, but they definitely still haven't reached an equilibrium. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 06:07, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

The 90-day statement seemed more appropriate when we had a few more voters and almost things weren't hanging around so long without 4 votes. Too many subjects would not achieve quorum with 90 day closes. I'll probably try to reopen almost anything that has not gotten 4 supports or 2 opposes unless there is another reason other than 90 days. Something like a rehashing of a previous consensus might mean people are tired of debating a topic. However, if it has not been discussed in over a year, I am not sure what else could waive giving the nominator and subject a chance to get at least three feedbacks. Possibly something like a page merge/split/move could also give reason or a page being more of a dab than a specific subject. I'm just likely to try to give a subject a full hearing if it still has a chance. The irregular regs who come by every few months or during certain seasons, may get around to something that has been listed for months. Also, the queue will increase the prominence of the subjects most in need of discussants. This subject will be the very top discussion when an archiving update happens. It'll probably get votes in the next few months at the top.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

No worries, I agree with you 100% that a lot of us come and ago over several months. I'll keep in mind that we discussed this and dial back on closing proposals as stalled for now (that's the nice thing about the informal guidelines).

That said, while I don't think now would be a good time (let's let all the quota stuff settle out first), we probably should discuss the talk-page sizes at some point. While more participation would help, I wouldn't be surprised if the people already here vote less and slower sometimes because we don't have the mental bandwidth for all the proposals. I know that's true of me. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 14:38, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Trying to improve the nav bar in level 5

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I'm trying to improve the nav bar at level 5 to make navigating through lists a lot easier. The link is at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Nav bar/5. Because this list is broken down into many sublists that are difficult to navigate, I'm trying to figure out the best way to organize this navbar. The level 4 navbar seems to be OK, so I am looking for some advice on how I can improve navigation with the navbar. Right now, it is a bit of a mess so any advice and editor improvements to it are welcome. Interstellarity (talk) 23:55, 9 June 2024 (UTC)

It the table on Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5 useful in this regard. I think the table is trying to break up into equivalent sized sections? Aszx5000 (talk) 22:52, 22 June 2024 (UTC)

Let's bump this discussion a bit longer because the nav bar is cluttered for sure, especially when you get into sublists. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:55, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Add a button that makes it easier to nominate vital articles according to the new rules

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

I think it would be helpful to have a button in each of the subpages that makes the nomination process for adding and removing articles a lot easier. I was thinking a template could look something like this. The format proposed is commented in the edit source screen. Please let me know your thoughts on this. That way, we can have more nominations that are rule-binding. Interstellarity (talk) 21:10, 6 August 2024 (UTC)

• I like it, if you can make it, sure. starship.paint (RUN) 14:29, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Quota proposal: move 100 from Countries and subdivisions -> Technology

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This is another tweak to individual sections in the above proposal of rounding the quotas.

Like I mentioned above, we have been culling the Countries and subdivisions section over the last year and we could bring it down even more significantly, as there are still articles of non-vital provinces and states. I suggest that instead of increasing the section quota up to 1400 we would move 100 articles to Technology.

There is a lot of interest in adding articles to Technology on the STEM talk page, and this quota increase would serve that purpose. I agree with the idea expressed in this discussion that getting support for removal proposals in hard, and if we increase the quota we wouldn't have to find stuff to get rid off (and we wouldn't need to consider pausing tech additions).

Support

1. As nom. Makkool (talk) 19:39, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Oppose

1. There are othersections we can remove from. Culling the countries and subdivision section makes room for more subdivisions. There are other sections that we could cull and move around if needed. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:27, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

   If you think we can find other country subdivisions to replace the ones that would be need to be cut, then that's a good optimal solution. But this section is going to get 50 articles more, when the quota is will be rounded up. I wonder if we can find that many more, and that's the rationale for this suggestion. Makkool (talk) 08:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

2. Very strongly oppose adding to Tech, but support moving to Arts. While I'm ambivalent on cuts to Countries, the Tech section is extremely imbalanced and lacking in depth right now, on top of other issues. I won't get into ranting about examples unless people want me to. We can let the current Tech addition proposals wrap up, but I really think we need to hold at the current quota, rethink what we're trying to do there, then prune & reorganize the section. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 05:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Neutral

Discuss

@Makkool: I don't know how much support there is for cutting the Countries section you mentioned, but I was surprised how much push-back cutting Military Personnel & Rebels got. I mainly started the proposal as a courtesy since I know you & someone else expressed interest in moving slots to Arts, on top of the other concerns about Health. Truth be told, I was really hoping we could avoid haggling around the round 100s proposal, then re-evaluate the quotas on their own terms later on. Anyways, I'll probably withdraw the Military -> Arts proposal for now, but I'm not opposed to moving 100 to Arts from here or several other places (including Math actually, I think it could handle the pruning). I just feel very strongly that we need to start keeping Tech on a short leash for a while. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 05:46, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

Yeah, I noticed military personnel has had push-back. If the community feels that it can be worked on without a decrease in quota, a move of 100 articles from Countries and subdivisions to Arts would be a doable compromise. Makkool (talk) 08:20, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

@Makkool: Hi there, I was just thinking about this proposal. It seems to have withered on the vine for now, but I had an idea. Things seem to be pretty non-contentious at History & Geography for now, and there already seems to be a consistent push to trim cities. Do you think we could just start trimming marginal Countries/Subdivisions too? If we manage to get Cities down to ~1,900 and/or Countries to ~1,300, then we could just vote on the subpage to unilaterally donate slots to the unallocated pool. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:53, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

We definitely could, there's room on the talk page space, yes. I wouldn't be able to take part too deeply at the moment, but go ahead and look around the subdivisions list. Makkool (talk) 14:52, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

I hear you, I'll probably be pulling back from Wikipedia before March starts myself. I'll try and get around to pruning that section in Geography, and in the meantime, if you want to withdraw this proposal, I can close & archive it. Then we can start a fresh one on the sub-page. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:50, 26 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Reopened John Sentamu

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

This was closed as "not added" by original nominator at 3-1 with original nominator stating a weakened support. I was the oppose. If original nominator wishes to change to oppose, that would make this eligible for a close after 7 days. Otherwise, I think it should stay open until it has 2 opposes or 4 supports. 3-1 is not really a verdict.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:13, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

I won't change to oppose as for the moment, and keep it as weak support. I got a bit impatient with the closing. I agree that 3-1 is an unsatisfying way for a proposal to end. I didn't think I could suggest a rules change, but I'm glad you did so. Makkool (talk) 21:13, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Removal of List of rice dishes from Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Everyday life

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Removal of List of rice dishes from Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Everyday life was complicated because it parented and grandparented many articles while Rice is level 3 at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Biology and health sciences/Plants. Although I unlinked it, I left it in its parenting position.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:12, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I was thinking Cooked rice  5 could become the new parent articles instead of the list. I boldly switched it around, but I'm open to some other solution too. Makkool (talk) 20:57, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.