Today we had a young editor quit the assessment drive on principle that the assessment in no way added to the quality of the drive. He opined his time was better spent on the Wikify drive for March. That is a perfectly sensible decision which he is entitled to make and I have nothing to say about this editor or his decision any more.
However, it does bring an important point to notice. Why bother to assess articles? Why bother to allocate importance?
I'm sure this must be an issue which many people may not be completely clear about.
Understanding the need for assessment comes from looking at Wikipedia articles and their quality/importance from a perspective. That is the perspective of improving a body of information on Wikipedia.
Let us consider articles on Medicine as an example. No one can deny the importance of this set of articles to the people of the world. I think it axiomatic that the best way for Wikipedia to serve the interests of the heath of the people is to improve the articles on medicine, health and lifestyle. The better the information and the more the information available, the greater the likelihood of a healthier world.
But if we had no system of assessment how would one answer the following questions?
* What is the state of a <particular article> on Wikipedia? How do we rate it or compare it to others? * How do I find the articles on Medicine which need improvement the most? * Of all the articles on Wikipedia on Medicine, how many articles are satisfactory in quality and how many are of really high quality? * Of all the articles in a body of knowledge, how do we know which is most important and which should get more attention than the other? * How do I best use my limited effort to improve the articles on Medicine?
Such questions can only be answered by having in place a system of assessment.
Historically on Wikipedia, it appears that assessment was associated with WikiProjects. Articles are not assessed at the overall level of Wikipedia but at the level of WikiProjects. You already know that WikiProjects use banner templates on article talk pages of topics pertaining to that WikiProject. In these templates, by adding parameters in the Wikitext of the banner template, an article can easily be classified and allocated importance and earmarked into a Task Force/daughter WikiProject. Based on these parameters, these banners suitably categorise the articles into various categories of articles of the WikiProject.
An example:
{{WikiProject India|importance=top|quality=B|kerala=yes}}
Placing the above parameters in the WikiProject India template will result in the addition of the following four additional categories to the talk page:
* Category:B-Class Kerala articles * Category:B-Class Kerala articles of Top-importance * Category:Top-importance Kerala articles * Category:WikiProject Kerala articles
In this way, should we take the trouble to assess all the articles in a WikiProject, then they will all be neatly arranged in categories which are extremely helpful for editors.
In a small WikiProject of 200 articles or less, elaborate assessment can be done away with but in WikiProject India, with over 96,000 articles how is it possible for WikiProject Members to even come to grips with these articles?
It is here that assessment renders the WikiProject manageable - it enables members to be able to take small chunks of the 96,000 articles and work with them much more easily and conveniently than if there had been no assessment at all.
Without assessment, it is virtually impossible to handle the WikiProject articles and decide the best way to spend our limited effort and time.
It is for this reason that more than 30 editors have done more than 11,000 article assessments to date in the Tag & Assess 2012 - knowing that unless the backlog of articles are not assessed, it will not be able to manage the WikiProject properly and improve their quality.
AshLin
Point well taken but on Wikipedia the practice of simply tagging articles are not generally well encouraged. It is much better (and in some cases even rewarding) to expand articles. It has been my experience in the Wikify campaign and while I was working on new articles that your efforts are better appreciated if you addressed the shortcomings of an article by adding references, expanding the lead and expanding the article rather than adding the {{wikify}} tag or as in this case tagging an article as A, B, C, Stub class etc.
I can understand that this campaign will allow task-forces to work better with certain articles but it has again been my experience that good articles with high notability tend to get worked on faster with contributions of all kinds of editors on Wikipedia - even those outside a task-force, while those with lower notability (as it happens with local sports events) tend to get abandoned. If you go through the list of un-assessed articles you will find that most of these articles don't have anything to be added to and so will never make it to higher levels of quality. You can try spending your time on them. Best of Luck! from my end
Finally, we are all volunteers who take time out of our schedules to work on Wikipedia. Won't you feel better to adopt one article, expand it and work on it to make it more notable and better quality and some day see it get nominated for a FA or good article category, rather than tag 3000 articles and win a so-and-so barnstar?
Oh, BTW, I am the editor who dropped out.
Regards, Shagnik Saraswati, Mob: +918802424179
________________________________ From: Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.com To: WikiProject India mailing list wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 2:07 AM Subject: [Wikimedia-in-en] The Need for Assessment of Articles
Today we had a young editor quit the assessment drive on principle that the assessment in no way added to the quality of the drive. He opined his time was better spent on the Wikify drive for March. That is a perfectly sensible decision which he is entitled to make and I have nothing to say about this editor or his decision any more.
However, it does bring an important point to notice. Why bother to assess articles? Why bother to allocate importance?
I'm sure this must be an issue which many people may not be completely clear about.
Understanding the need for assessment comes from looking at Wikipedia articles and their quality/importance from a perspective. That is the perspective of improving a body of information on Wikipedia.
Let us consider articles on Medicine as an example. No one can deny the importance of this set of articles to the people of the world. I think it axiomatic that the best way for Wikipedia to serve the interests of the heath of the people is to improve the articles on medicine, health and lifestyle. The better the information and the more the information available, the greater the likelihood of a healthier world.
But if we had no system of assessment how would one answer the following questions?
* What is the state of a <particular article> on Wikipedia? How do we rate it or compare it to others? * How do I find the articles on Medicine which need improvement the most? * Of all the articles on Wikipedia on Medicine, how many articles are satisfactory in quality and how many are of really high quality? * Of all the articles in a body of knowledge, how do we know which is most important and which should get more attention than the other? * How do I best use my limited effort to improve the articles on Medicine?
Such questions can only be answered by having in place a system of assessment.
Historically on Wikipedia, it appears that assessment was associated with WikiProjects. Articles are not assessed at the overall level of Wikipedia but at the level of WikiProjects. You already know that WikiProjects use banner templates on article talk pages of topics pertaining to that WikiProject. In these templates, by adding parameters in the Wikitext of the banner template, an article can easily be classified and allocated importance and earmarked into a Task Force/daughter WikiProject. Based on these parameters, these banners suitably categorise the articles into various categories of articles of the WikiProject.
An example:
{{WikiProject India|importance=top|quality=B|kerala=yes}}
Placing the above parameters in the WikiProject India template will result in the addition of the following four additional categories to the talk page:
* Category:B-Class Kerala articles * Category:B-Class Kerala articles of Top-importance * Category:Top-importance Kerala articles * Category:WikiProject Kerala articles
In this way, should we take the trouble to assess all the articles in a WikiProject, then they will all be neatly arranged in categories which are extremely helpful for editors.
In a small WikiProject of 200 articles or less, elaborate assessment can be done away with but in WikiProject India, with over 96,000 articles how is it possible for WikiProject Members to even come to grips with these articles?
It is here that assessment renders the WikiProject manageable - it enables members to be able to take small chunks of the 96,000 articles and work with them much more easily and conveniently than if there had been no assessment at all.
Without assessment, it is virtually impossible to handle the WikiProject articles and decide the best way to spend our limited effort and time.
It is for this reason that more than 30 editors have done more than 11,000 article assessments to date in the Tag & Assess 2012 - knowing that unless the backlog of articles are not assessed, it will not be able to manage the WikiProject properly and improve their quality.
AshLin
_______________________________________________ Wikimedia-in-en mailing list Wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-in-en
2012/3/15 Shagnik Saraswati saraswatishagnik@yahoo.com wrote:
*''Finally, we are all volunteers who take time out of our schedules to work on Wikipedia. Won't you feel better to adopt one article, expand it and work on it to make it more notable and better quality and some day see it get nominated for a FA or good article category, rather than tag 3000 articles and win a so-and-so barnstar? '' *---- Shagnik,
This is the old struggle in human nature - should one do what one likes or do what's needed for the common good?
You may choose to do what you like and we respect your choice. As you said that we are all volunteers.
But if you feel that we should be doing our own thing than helping out the community in collective necessary tasks - then you are mistaken, my friend.
All the 42 editors who chose to participate, (yes, its 42 today) are not looking at that pile of awards/barnstars but at that huge mountain of unassessed articles that prevent our WikiProject from progressing much further. Do remember that all the 42 editors are also volunteers and it is their conscious voluntary choice to be part of this. They could have also spent time doing what they like but they saw something that needs doing, which is hard work and not so much fun, and they are doing it.
An assessment award is a hard-won award. They are awarded for very hard work done and as a symbol of effort put in, not as cutesy Wikilove. They are very valuable to the people who earned them by giving hours of effort of their time.
I respect your choice to spend time Wikifying articles. That is also another important task on Wikipedia akin to assessment. And one that some people may view as being more onerous than assessment. ;)
We have a humungous backlog of those in our WikiProject too. Perhaps If you would like to help the WikiProject India at this time, you could wikify WikiProject India articles. At the same time, you could help us by assessing these articles in case they have not been assessed.
Use this as of now to find cleanup/wikify articles of your interest.:
http://toolserver.org/~svick/CleanupListing/CleanupListingByCat.php?project=...
All the best for now & we hope to see you join us when we get around to WikiProject India Cleanup.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
I guess under a different state of mind I would have come back with some logical arguments but the point is mute. I guess we are all entitled to our views about how we can contribute to Wikipedia and Project India. I do salute the efforts of these 42 editors and my edit was in no way meant to discourage them. I am sorry if my edit has misguided or discouraged people in any way.
Today morning in reaction to a news article I saw on TV I went ahead and expanded the Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baby_Falak. This article was nominated for deletion and I think I have added enough content to justify notability. I guess it was my way of paying homage to a victim of our failure as a people to protect the sanctity of life. I am not sure if I have been completely neutral and objective in my presentation so any help in that regard would be highly appreciated.
Lets close this argument as I am sure that their is enough room in Wikipedia Project India for all of us (with our intellectual and opinion baggage). Let's get together and make Project India as successful as Project Star Wars.
Regards Shagnik Saraswati, Mob: +918802424179
________________________________ From: Ashwin Baindur ashwin.baindur@gmail.com To: Shagnik Saraswati saraswatishagnik@yahoo.com; Wikimedians working on India related content on English Wikipedia & related projects. wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Thursday, March 15, 2012 8:32 PM Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-in-en] The Need for Assessment of Articles
2012/3/15 Shagnik Saraswati saraswatishagnik@yahoo.com wrote:
''Finally, we are all volunteers who take time out of our schedules to work on Wikipedia. Won't you feel better to adopt one article, expand it and work on it to make it more notable and better quality and some day see it get nominated for a FA or good article category, rather than tag 3000 articles and win a so-and-so barnstar? '' ---- Shagnik,
This is the old struggle in human nature - should one do what one likes or do what's needed for the common good?
You may choose to do what you like and we respect your choice. As you said that we are all volunteers.
But if you feel that we should be doing our own thing than helping out the community in collective necessary tasks - then you are mistaken, my friend.
All the 42 editors who chose to participate, (yes, its 42 today) are not looking at that pile of awards/barnstars but at that huge mountain of unassessed articles that prevent our WikiProject from progressing much further. Do remember that all the 42 editors are also volunteers and it is their conscious voluntary choice to be part of this. They could have also spent time doing what they like but they saw something that needs doing, which is hard work and not so much fun, and they are doing it.
An assessment award is a hard-won award. They are awarded for very hard work done and as a symbol of effort put in, not as cutesy Wikilove. They are very valuable to the people who earned them by giving hours of effort of their time.
I respect your choice to spend time Wikifying articles. That is also another important task on Wikipedia akin to assessment. And one that some people may view as being more onerous than assessment. ;)
We have a humungous backlog of those in our WikiProject too. Perhaps If you would like to help the WikiProject India at this time, you could wikify WikiProject India articles. At the same time, you could help us by assessing these articles in case they have not been assessed.
Use this as of now to find cleanup/wikify articles of your interest.:
http://toolserver.org/~svick/CleanupListing/CleanupListingByCat.php?project=...
All the best for now & we hope to see you join us when we get around to WikiProject India Cleanup.
Warm regards,
Ashwin Baindur ------------------------------------------------------
wikimedia-in-en@lists.wikimedia.org