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Archive 5←Archive 7Archive 8Archive 9

Pages rated as Disambig-class which are not disambiguation pages

The logic in Template:Class mask was recently changed to automatically rate non-articles and ignore the |class= parameter. An unanticipated consequence of this, is that a lot of pages which were previously rated as Disambig-class are now appearing as unassessed. In most cases, this is because the page is not actually a disambiguation page. It may be a set index article (which is a slightly different concept). In the words of User:Ipigott these page have "been OK for years and now suddenly need attention". So we could discuss how to deal with these pages.

  1. Recode Template:Class mask to recognise |class=disambig again. This would rate them all as Disambig-class again, but would ignore the issue that they are not actually disambiguation pages.
  2. Decide to treat set index articles the same as disambiguation pages and automatically rate them as Disambig-class.
  3. Automatically identify set index articles and treat them as List-class. This is more in line with current behaviour as |class=SIA is an alias for List-class.
  4. Any other options?

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:43, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

I do not agree that these are "because the page is not actually a disambiguation page". The vast majority of those I have came across clearly are. Until some reliable way has been found to decide which are not strictly speaking disambiguation pages, I strongly suggest we should maintain disambig, disamb, etc., as valid BS classes which will not be rejected in assessments.--Ipigott (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Most of the examples you gave on my talk page are set index articles. When you use {{surname}} it automatically adds the hidden category Category:All set index articles. I don't really understand why we make the distinction, because in many cases, they look the same. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:45, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The thing about this that bugs me is that when I'm re-assessing SIAs that were previously classed as disambiguation they show up as unknown importance instead of NA importance (since list class uses importance: i could manually give them NA importance but this is the worst of both worlds). I kinda wish SIAs were either entirely their own thing or an alias for Disambiguation instead of list because having to give them importance assessments when they have virtually no content is weird. I don't mind reassessing them though. PARAKANYAA (talk) 13:42, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Reading this again I think 2 is the best option. PARAKANYAA (talk) 13:49, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
According to WP:SIA, a set index article (or SIA) lists things only of one type, and is meant to provide not only navigation, but information as well. Looking at the information on that page, it is clear that an SIA is supposed to be a list article rather than a dab page. Perhaps a lot of these SIAs should actually be disambiguation pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I agree with that in theory but what is a "proper" SIA supposed to look like? Are there any? If there are, what percentage of the 100,000 existing SIA articles are actual SIAs? I don't think it's very many. I think I reassessed 10 or so and all of them looked identical to Disamb pages. Not a large sample size but not a great start. PARAKANYAA (talk) 13:56, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
The examples quoted are Dodge Charger, List of peaks named Signal and List of ships of the United States Navy named Enterprise. I think they would all comfortably fit under List-class, and an importance would be relevant too — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:01, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Ah, okay. So it's just... a full fleshed out list article of things that have similar names and are about a similar concept. If it's not functionally a list article then it's still a disambiguation, which is I think where people got confused. Well then I guess quite a lot of SIA articles need to be reclassed as disambiguation then. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:06, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I totally agree. I think you can just change |type=sia to |type=disambig on the template, and then this should automatically sort itself out — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:14, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
@MSGJ I like the idea of automated assessment of disambiguation pages and that Set Index Articles are being distinguished from them. If a page is a disambiguation page then the applicable disambiguation template should be used on it. But if that template is changes to a SIA one, then the page needs reassessment. Perhaps automate the assessment as a list, as you suggest in option 3, above, but with unassessed importance. I have encountered three articles so far and left messages on their talk pages noting that they are not disambiguation pages. Unfortunately, I don't fully understand the SIA concept, and I wonder if the issue is that other editors are not using them appropriately in some cases. However, I can see that these articles are needed and that they are easily confused with being disambiguation pages. I have put discussion notes on the tak pages in the hope that this might provoke a discussion around the page being considered a SIA or a disambiguation page on a case by case basis. - Cameron Dewe (talk) 21:55, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks Cameron, I largely agree with your comments. Disambiguation pages are already classified automatically as Disambig-class. Set index articles, should get an assessment and I think List-class is the most appropriate for them. It might be possible to automate that too, if people agree. It seems to me that SIAs currently fall into two groups: ones which should actually be classified as disambiguation pages, and ones which are list articles. I do not really see the benefit of having a separate classification for SIAs, and the term "set index" seems to be used only on Wikipedia. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:15, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
What do you think about Sharon? It has a bit of article and a bit of dab. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:19, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
I'm unsure if you're responding to me or Ipigott (given you mentioned surnames to them) but that is a grey area for sure. It has article content more so and it doesn't seem to be attempting to be a comprehensive disambiguation so I'd lean article. PARAKANYAA (talk) 14:32, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
  • I would have liked to associate several of the more active new page reviewers with this discussion but as Xtools is not responding, I cannot identify those who most frequently use class Disambig. I have therefore posted an item on the talk page of WP Disambiguation. I am sorry to hear this might take a few more days to sort out but I look forward to further reactions. I must say that the concept of SIA is completely new to me and I have difficulty in seeing how it differs from Disambig. I see that SIA is defined as "A set index article (SIA) is a list article about a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name." whereas "Disambiguation in Wikipedia is the process of resolving conflicts that arise when a potential article title is ambiguous, most often because it refers to more than one subject covered by Wikipedia, either as the main topic of an article, or as a subtopic covered by an article in addition to the article's main topic." In my opinion, these can seldom be clearly distinguished as problems, for example, with a given surname frequently lead to more exhaustive listings of all those associated with the same name. We may start with Wagner but then we soon proceed to Wagner (disambiguation). It certainly seems to be disambiguation but falls into the definition of SIA.--Ipigott (talk) 15:38, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    There has historically been confusion about the distinction. My take is that SIAs exist to allow greater flexibility with regards to the inclusion of redlinks, references, external links, and other details that would typically be considered extraneous on a disambiguation page. As such, a set index page does not always easily equate to a disambiguation page. However, there are some editors who arbitrarily convert disambiguation pages to set indexes without any reason that I can see, so there are also many set indexes that are indistinguishable from disambiguation pages. As far as assessment goes, I know virtually nothing about its whys and wherefores. I've no idea why there is any need to have any assessment at all disambiguation pages. I'm not sure about SIAs -- some projects such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Ships might make some use of such assessments, but I couldn't say. older ≠ wiser 15:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Bkonad: There is no need for assessment of disambiguation pages. Until now they were simply disambig with importance=NA. But now they are being listed as unassessed and we are being told to assess them as List.--Ipigott (talk) 16:29, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    What was the basis for that change? I don't see how that change in assessments should lead to a significant alteration in the distinction between disambiguation and set indexes. older ≠ wiser 17:04, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    Well, set index articles are articles which need a quality and possible an importance assessment. Disambiguation pages are not articles and do not require a rating. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:30, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    And how does this justify changing set index articles to be treated the same as disambiguation pages? older ≠ wiser 17:51, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    That's now what I'm saying. Real SIAs need to be treated differently and should be assessed (probably with List-class). But there seem to be many many SIAs which are dab pages in all but name, and these should be reclassified appropriately. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 22:18, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    OK, but there is no easy way to identify these. older ≠ wiser 22:28, 1 December 2023 (UTC)
    Well let's try and reach some agreement on what features would identify an SIA compared with a dab page. The main thing I would be looking for prose: I would expect a decent lede, and at least a few sentences for the description of each item. I might also expect some structure (sections, subsections), and some references to reliable sources. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:48, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    I meant there is no easy way to automatically differentiate them to alleviate the issue related to assessment. Beyond that, this page here is not the right forum to make any sort of binding determinations about what is or is not a set index, disambiguation page, or list article. I would not expect there to be agreement that a surname list is a disambiguation page regardless of whether it contains any prose or references. If the prose and references are absent, that only means that list article is unreferenced and is at best a stub class article. As for other types of set index articles, I'd have to review examples to better understand why they exist (in many cases, I'd agree that they would be better off as disambiguation pages, but I know that other editors would likely have different opinions). older ≠ wiser 14:40, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    Well if you can't easily differentiate them, then I don't know how we can expect other, less experienced, editors to. It is something that confuses many editors, so we should endeavour to clarify the distinction. And if we are not able to, then we might question whether there should be a distinction at all. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:44, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    Perhaps you missed the 'automatically' qualifier. We can yammer away all we want here and perhaps come to some agreement. But that makes little difference in that the majority of the pages that do not have a disambiguation template will need some sort of manual assessment to determine whether they might perhaps be a disambiguation rather than a set index. And whatever agreement we might come to here could well later be questioned by the projects with set indexes that have no interest monitoring in this backwater page. older ≠ wiser 19:43, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    This is the central page for Wikipedia article assessments, with 495 editors watching. Hardly a backwater — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:16, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    Perhaps not a backwater, but apparently not a lot that know much of anything about disambiguation or set indexes. older ≠ wiser 21:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
    Further -- I mean, if you want to discuss how to assess these things -- sure, this is the right place. But if you want to discuss what makes something a disambiguation or set index or something else and perhaps make changes to how these are categorized that may have other downstream ramifications beyond assessments -- then this is not the right place for that. older ≠ wiser 01:10, 3 December 2023 (UTC)

Set-index articles should be |class=List. And "disambiguation" is not really an assement class (there is no content in them that needs assessment and they do not fit into the assment scale by their very nature of being non-articles). The tools using assesment classes need a means to exclude pages that are not articles, instead of including every mainspace page within a category, but that means is probably not a |class= tag, unless we just have a |class=NA one that means "ignore this page for assessment purposes". But even that is probably not the best way to do it, since it's dependent on everyone understand that such a parameter exists and using it properly. And there is no content-quality assessment purpose is distinguishing not-applicable pages into subclassifications of not-applicable like "disambiguation", "redirect", "category", etc.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:26, 2 December 2023 (UTC)

Agree with most of that. (Had trouble parsing your last sentence.) We have made some progress recently in eliminating the need for |class= for non-article pages, as all non-articles are now rated automatically. Disambiguation pages are the hardest to detect automatically, and that is what prompted the discussion above. We have lots of pages which look like disambiguation pages but are not currently classed as disambiguation pages. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:57, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
I keep coming across more and more articles which look to me more like disambiguation pages than lists and which are therefore now considered to be unassessed. I'm also worried about having removed class=disamb from quite a number of articles and assessing them in banner shell as list. If disamb cannot be used for banner shell ratings, then it may be useful to restore it in individual wikiproject ratings but I'm not sure whether this would be considered acceptable. Maybe it's possible to draw up a list of all disamb-type articles (whether strictly disamb or not) in order to try to work out a sensible solution.--Ipigott (talk) 11:34, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
MSGJ: Until recently I have been able to assess all the articles on projects such as WP:Italy. You can see that the large majority of the 104 unassessed articles have been triggered by the disamb problem. If it is not sorted out soon, I will not longer be in a position to carry out further article assessments.--Ipigott (talk) 14:59, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for your patience with this. I've added back the functionality to add |class=disambig since it is now clear that there is no quick solution to this problem. (However the banner shell will not accept this - it has always been a quality only assessment, so this is not a long-term solution.) In my opinion, the only solution is to reclassify these pages as the disambiguation pages they rightly are. As this has proven difficult, I am planning to open an RfC to gauge opinion shortly. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:36, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
Before I consider posting any comments, a question to those struggling with the distinction between dab pages and SIAs – do you have enabled, in your user Preferences, the gadget to "display an assessment of an article's quality in its page header"? I don't so much struggle with the distinction between the two types of pages, but I have long had the gadget enabled. It helps me, but I wonder whether some of you don't have it enabled. Nurg (talk) 10:38, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes I do. That will display the current classification of the page, which is what we are questioning. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:21, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
MSGJ: The two of us seem to at least be reaching a degree of agreement on this matter. I don't really understand what you meant when you said you had "added back the functionality of |class=disambig" but it has had no effect on the listing of unassessed articles. The first two items on the WP Italy list mentioned above are Di Menna and Erminio. Neither has a banner shell intro and the individual wikiprojects in each have class=disamb but both are still listed as unassessed. It would be helpful if articles like these could be considered assessed until such time as we have made further progress on the matter. It is tiresome and unproductive to be confronted with more and more of these every day.--Ipigott (talk) 11:34, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
They are both showing as Disambig-class to me. You might need to purge the page? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:39, 4 December 2023 (UTC)
Yes, I realize they both show Disambig but the problem is that they still show up as unassessed, for example on this Xtools page or on Category:Unassessed Italy articles. This makes it difficult to see which articles on this or similar wikiprojects actually need assessing. As the moment, there appear to be 56 articles on this wikiproject alone which require assessment as a result of problems related to digambiguation. I hope we can soon reestablish a situation under which it will be possible to ensure all articles in a given wikiproject have an acceptable class assessment. There does not seem to be much interest here in furthering discussion. Is there another forum where it could be addressed or are we likely to have to cope with the problem indefinitely?--Ipigott (talk) 11:49, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
It should be resolved by the job queue in due course, or a null edit will immediately refresh the category. I'm still planning to start an RFC. I think this page is a suitable forum, as it is directly related to how pages are assessed on Wikipedia. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:51, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
I check this and other wikiprojects each day to see if there have been any significant changes. Let's hope there's something to show over the next day or two. Don't know what you mean by "a null edit will immediately refresh the category". I hope you mean by this that the disambig articles will no longer appear in Category:Unassessed Italy articles?--Ipigott (talk) 13:08, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

Need for improving explanations of disambiguation pages

In connection with all this and the increasing confusion between disambiguation and set index articles, it seems to me to be increasingly important to update explanations of disambiguation, in particular in the For multiple meanings: Disambiguation section of Wikipedia: The Missing Manual, as well as in help pages related to disambiguation and set index.--Ipigott (talk) 11:52, 6 December 2023 (UTC)

In principle, the distinction is simple. Disambiguation pages distinguish between topics that could have the same article title (note that this does not necessarily mean they have a standalone article -- but it does require that there is an existing article that has some relevant information about the ambiguously named topic). Set indexes are lists of topics of the same type that have the same or similar names. Historically, set indexes arose because some projects were attempting to have complete lists for certain types of topics; for example, mountains or ships -- regardless of whether each had any existing article that supported the usage and they often want to include additional information such as references and coordinates. These points put them into conflict with disambiguation pages (where the singular purpose is navigation to existing articles). Thus set indexes were a sort of compromise and over time a complex dynamic has developed. In some cases, items in a set index that have an existing article are also included on a disambiguation page along with a link to the set index for any additional non-article information. This is usually the case when the potentially ambiguous title is an exact match. In other cases, all that appears on the disambiguation page is a link to the set index. This is usually the case where the ambiguity is a partial match, such as with surname lists or ship indexes or lists of storms. But there are exceptions to both. And complicating matters, some editors have a tendency to convert disambiguation pages to a set index simply because the topics are all of the same type (for example, films or novels that have the same title). These are indistinguishable from disambiguation pages and in my opinion would be better off as disambiguation pages. I'd argue that if a set index article has no potential to be further developed into a list-type article, in most cases it should be a disambiguation page rather than a set index. older ≠ wiser 13:31, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
The problem is that you seem to have a rather unique definition which is not backed up by the guideline Wikipedia:Set index articles. For example, that page says "being a set of a specific type means that the members of the set have some characteristic in common, in addition to their similarity of name". But what else do people called Mondino have in common apart from the similarity of their name? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:22, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Erm, perhaps I made a slight paraphrase, but WP:SETINDEX defines them as "a set of items of a specific type that also share the same (or similar) name" -- what do you see as significantly different in what I described? Lists of people with the same surname have been distinct from disambiguation pages for a very long time. They might even pre-date set indexes. I don't recall. People with a surname, unless they are commonly known by the surname alone (e.g., Einstein, Churchill, Obama) are partial title matches. Per WP:NAMELIST and MOS:DABNAME these are can be included on a disambiguation page where there are only a few, but are otherwise put over to a separate name list. older ≠ wiser 15:40, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Adding on, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Anthroponymy/Standards for more on name articles and name lists vs. disambiguation pages. older ≠ wiser 15:50, 6 December 2023 (UTC)
Point 1, the characteristic that the articles at Mondino have in common (in addition to their similarity of name) is that they are people, and not, for example, ships – if there was a ship called Pierre Mondino, it would not be included in the Mondino SIA for people. Point 2, none of the articles listed at Mondino need disambiguating, because each article title includes a unique forename or surname. Point 3, many, many dab pages are malformed, in that they are not compliant with Wikipedia:Disambiguation. E.g., entries with partial title matches are quite commonly included when they shouldn't be. And many pages do not comply with MOS:DABSHORT, as their entries have a description when "the title of the article alone will be sufficient", or have a verbose description, whereas the description should be kept to a minimum. I suspect that part of the reason why some struggle with the distinction between dab pages and SIAs is that they are used to seeing malformed dab pages, which SIAs resemble more than they resemble guideline-compliant dab pages. Nurg (talk) 09:01, 7 December 2023 (UTC)
  • Thanks for these explanations. What I am still rather confused about is the validity of using Disambig as a class rating. I can see it clearly applies to Mary Jones as several different people have the same name, but how about Jones (currently classed Disamb)? Unlike Mondino, it includes people, places and organizations. My preference would be to continue to call it a disambiguation page as that is no doubt how it originated. I don't think we can expect the average editor to understand the fine distinctions described above. For me, the current explanation of Disambiguation in Wikipedia: The Missing Manual provides a straightforward explanation of how editors should cope with names which occur in two or more articles. What happens to their pages thereafter should not lead to reassessment requiring List rather than Disambig as a result of wider coverage. The discussion here reminds me of the disagreements between linguists on whether we should prioritize the functionality or formality of language. If we go for functionality, the best solution for the new banner shell may be to accept the common understanding of disambiguation, whatever the formalists believe would be the correct approach.--Ipigott (talk) 16:27, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
    Yes, sort of. Set indexes and some lists do provide a disambiguation-like function, though they also provide other article-like functions as well. Disambiguation pages are singularly non-articles that provide navigation to content in existing articles. They aren't directories and there is no expectation of 'completeness' with regards to non-Wikipedia content (e.g., a disambiguation page Matveyevsky has no pretense of being a listing of every rural locality with the name; similarly, Jones at present is absolutely a disambiguation page and is not a list of people with surname Jones). In terms of assessment, the list of people with the surname Jones is pretty straightforward, so long as it is limited to people with existing articles. However, IMO a list article like Matveyevsky (rural locality) is slightly problematic in that it is completely unreferenced. How do we know that there actually is a locality named Matveyevskaya, Kholmogorsky District, Arkhangelsk Oblast in Kekhotsky Selsoviet of Kholmogorsky District? Or have we been trolled by someone making sh*t up? older ≠ wiser 17:38, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Can the soft redirect templates also make a page automatically assess as a redirect?

See Talk:'Cause and Talk:'Murica. I think it would be nice if that was the case like it is with the way disambs work, because as is I can't assess these as anything. Or maybe they should have something else done with them. Whatever people think is the best. PARAKANYAA (talk) 16:49, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Yes that makes sense. That would require a change to Module:Class mask — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 18:27, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Safeguards against drive-by A-class tagging?

I just removed A class from well over 100 articles where someone decided to tag the article as A Class without doing the required formal review. It's too easy for this stuff to go unnoticed and its very time consuming to track down. Should there be some sort of edit filter that flags such edits for further review? Schierbecker (talk) 03:46, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

We could maintain a central list of A-class articles, and the template would only accept the rating if it's on that list. Then editors can watchlist that page or we can add some protection to it. This is similar to how vital articles work now. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:01, 18 January 2024 (UTC)
Could we copy whatever we do to check GA and FA tagging? GA tags do appear occasionally on articles which seem to have had no review, perhaps because someone starts an article by copy-pasting from a GA on a similar topic and reducing to boilerplate without remembering to remove the GA tag. I assume someone or something spots them and makes them go away. Certes (talk) 20:04, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
I tagged a random page, "Talk:Zandspruit," as a GA. Maybe whoever reverts can kindly share their process please and thank you? Schierbecker (talk) 23:04, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
GA and FA are tracked in three separate areas: the article page categories, the talkpage categories, and central listings. If there is a discrepancy between these three areas, the article will appear at eg. Wikipedia:Good articles/mismatches. A-class articles are currently only tracked through talkpage categories. CMD (talk) 08:27, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
Per Wikipedia:Good articles/mismatches#In a subcategory Category:GA-Class articles but not a good article, a misplaced |class=GA would show up on that page. They don't currently track subcategories of Category:GA-Class articles? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:55, 21 January 2024 (UTC)
That's a point, the relevant category is produced by the GA tag/article history template, not the Wikiproject template. CMD (talk) 09:14, 21 January 2024 (UTC)

Request for comment

Should Hermann (name), Bellver and Zinc silicate be classified as disambiguation pages on Wikipedia? These randomly chosen examples are currently classified as "set index articles". More generally, what is the distinction between SIAs, dab pages and stand-alone list articles on Wikipedia, and is the concept of a set index article useful to the project? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:47, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

  • Yes, these three pages (and most other pages which transclude {{given name}} and {{surname}}) should be classified as disambiguation pages, because their purpose is purely to disambiguate between different terms of the same name. These pages are not articles in any way, for example they have no content nor references. The description and examples given at Wikipedia:Set index articles make it clear that SIAs should have some actual content, in much the same way as standalone-lists. It is not really clear to me why we need a separate type of article for SIA because "list" seems to cover it nicely. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 17:51, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    MSGJ, the RFC question contains three questions. "Yes" is not a valid answer to the second one. Maybe this RFC should be treated as a request for actual comments, and not yes/no votes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    Sure - all comments will be welcome. I just thought a direct question would be helpful initially. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I'm not sure what the implication of this question really is. Human naming practices naturally resolve ambiguity so there is an inherent disambiguation quality to anthroponymy lists. We also know from statistics that these lists are frequented by readers, and we know that biographies they link to often have magnitudes more traffic than lists and/or etymologies themselves, so it's logical to treat them as part of the navigation system of the encyclopedia. If we say we don't want set indices, and instead want either disambiguation lists or stand-alone lists, what's the practical difference? --Joy (talk) 19:43, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    Dodge Charger is the canonical example of a SIA. It's a list, but it's a list made of sections and paragraphs rather than bulleted list items, so it doesn't look like a list in the same way that the examples at the top of this section look like lists. I have wondered whether Floods in California could also become a SIA.
    I'm not sure that the SIA designation is super helpful. We could perhaps just eliminate the designation, and then adjust various other systems to include former SIA-designated pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    It seems like the definitions don't matter here as such, rather the real question is do we want to prefer formatting things in a concise manner or not at the base title? IOW we could have a guideline that says that the current Dodge Charger article content goes to a title like Index of Dodge Charger cars or List of cars marketed as Dodge Charger while the former title gets a much more concise disambiguation list, which also links to the longer article. --Joy (talk) 22:29, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    There are many possible implications. For example, when you press Special:Random you will be taken to a random article. This may include lists and SIAs but should not include disambiguation pages (because they are not articles). If we don't classify these pages properly then there will be dab pages incorrectly classified as articles. Another example is our content assessment system. {{WPBS}} is designed to automatically detect disambiguation pages; however it will not detect the pages above because they are classified incorrectly (in my opinion). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 21:03, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    Wait, why wouldn't you want Random to send readers to disambiguation pages? I honestly never would have guessed that it avoids some types of pages over others, after decades of occasional use. Also, what does the banner shell do differently about disambiguation pages again? I suppose I must have seen that effect before but I can't remember what it is. Automatic type=disambig is there, but automatic type=list isn't? --Joy (talk) 22:35, 1 January 2024 (UTC)
    As the practical effects of these implications seem to be a matter of a dozen lines of Lua and/or PHP code to accommodate either way, this appears to be fairly inconsequential. --Joy (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Include me in the list (or set?) of people who don’t understand why those examples aren’t dab pages, or what the point of labelling some articles as set index articles is. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 22:41, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Explanation of Set Index Articles --- I was part of the discussion in 2007 that set up the SIA concept. The idea came out of a tension between two good impulses:

  1. Disambiguation pages should have as little formatting as possible to make it easier for readers to find the correct page, and
  2. Some WikiProjects wanted to create list articles about topics with the same name, including comparative data (e.g., Goat's head has images, or List of peaks named Signal has coordinates).

The problem in 2007 was that editors who are fanatic about (1) prevent any development of lists in (2), because deviation from MOS:DAB was reverted very quickly. As a compromise, we came to consensus on the idea of a Set Index Article, which were allowed to be list articles that could also serve a disambiguation function. SIAs do not have to obey MOS:DAB, but can develop into list articles naturally.

I believe that SIAs still serve that purpose today. Even back in 2007, there was some discussion about requiring "List of" in the title. The way the guideline developed is that if there is a DAB and a SIA with overlapping names, then the SIA must begin with "List of".

Hope this helps explain the background of SIAs. — hike395 (talk) 00:44, 2 January 2024 (UTC)

In addition to what hike395 says, some projects use set indices to compile complete lists of a type, regardless of whether an article extends (that is, they are not only for navigation to existing articles like dabs). older ≠ wiser 05:43, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
Thank you both for the explanation. It does still feel like a simplification should be possible. Barnards.tar.gz (talk) 10:59, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
  • No. This hammers a variety of square pegs into a single round hole. Anthroponymy pages are not disambiguation pages. Hermann (name) should contain cited content on the origins and incidence of the name. Obviously not everyone named Hermann is known solely as "Hermann" in the literature of their field. Compare John (given name) — do we really want to turn that into a disambiguation page, and remove all the information about the name itself? The same for surnames like Andrews (surname). As for chemical terms like Zinc silicate, these again are a class of things, and can properly be referred to and discussed as a class. BD2412 T 17:35, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
    Obviously I agree that John (given name) is an article with encyclopedic content. But I think it is wrong to classify Herman (name) in the same way just because someone might in the future come along and write an article about the name Herman. The current page does not contain content and its purpose is to disambiguate between different articles, so we should classify it as a dab page accordingly.
    The problem is that Herman (name), like all such articles, uses {{given name}} which is categorised as a "set index article template", so it is impossible to reclassify any of them without changing this template. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:30, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
@Hike395 thank you for the background. Do you think the SIA classification is helpful on the three examples I provided initially? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Lists collect entries with a specified common property, such as List of English monarchs. Disambiguation pages (dabs) collect entries with a common name, such as Mercury. Set index articles (SIA) collect entries with both a common property and a common name, such as people sharing a surname. Many SIAs could equally be dabs; they are simple lists which happen to obey MOS:DAB or could easily be modified to do so without significant loss of content or usability. Other SIAs would not be suited to the dab format, for example a surname page containing a detailed etymology with references and a navbox of similar names, such as Smith translated into many languages. A third group of SIAs such as Ayers, Corvin and Naughton seem to have morphed into dabs by acquiring significant numbers of entries which do not share the common property (of being people, in this case). They should be converted to dabs if conforming to MOS:DAB would lose nothing much, or be split if we need to keep the existing format. I'm picking on surnames here because examples, good or bad, are easy to search for, but the points apply equally to other types of SIA. Certes (talk) 18:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

In case of Ayers, I would actually explicitly advise against pondering a split - adding yet another click to the workflow of readers looking to navigate to all those biographies would make it that much worse for them. The average reader most likely wouldn't care much if e.g. the section on people had an introductory paragraph about the name. For some reason we have a bit of an extremist approach to disambiguation lists, as if there's something holy about keeping them sequestered from set indices, which is not actually proven to be particularly useful AFAICT. There's plenty of content dispute potential already in item selection, captions and ordering of disambiguation lists, so adding a part which would actually be governed by standard content rules is unlikely to create much of an extra maintenance burden. Likewise, the disambiguation itself all too often devolves into huge laundry lists that make quick and easy navigation an illusion anyway, so a bit of extra length is unlikely to cause readers to be any more unhappy about the list length than they already are. --Joy (talk) 22:21, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
I agree that we shouldn't split Ayers but we should redesignate it as a dab. Lists of twelve places and three companies have no place in a surname article. Compliance with MOS:DAB would need only simple changes which won't obstruct the reader's search. Certes (talk) 22:36, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
AFAICT it can already be done. There are no incoming links to it. If a tree falls in the forest... I mean... if we replace a boilerplate template at the very bottom of the list, will anyone actually notice? :) --Joy (talk) 22:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)
Re: we have a bit of an extremist approach to disambiguation lists – there is a fundamental misunderstanding of what disambiguation is. Disambiguation pages are a navigational tool, like a hatnote, but on a separate page because there is too much to put in a hatnote. That is all, nothing more. Nothing should go on a disambiguation page that would not go in a hatnote, if the options were few enough to use that as the navigation device instead. BD2412 T 00:30, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
I'm not sure how this statement is helpful here, as even hatnotes typically have descriptive captions, and they have ordering, and there's differences in opinions between people about what should and shouldn't be in a hatnote. The problem of how to describe ambiguity to the readers isn't automagically resolved by any sort of an appeal to an imagined purity of navigation lists. --Joy (talk) 11:27, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
BTW, amusingly enough, hatnotes themselves are far from a settled matter in the topic of anthroponymy. Apparently we've been having discussions about how to handle foreign naming convention hatnotes and failing to reach consensus since at least 2011, which I last noticed last year in Template talk:Family name hatnote#Extraneous links. --Joy (talk) 11:37, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
  • All three of the examples given by OP are and should be tagged as DAB pages. For the difference, see WP:SIA. And, yes, actual not mistakenly-tagged SIAs are useful to the project.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:56, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
    BTW that would also make more obvious the question - what would be the point of keeping Hermann (name) out of Hermann, if they're exact same type of list? All the while causing https://wikinav.toolforge.org/?language=en&title=Hermann to happen - where most outgoing traffic is to biographies, but one semi-random one happens to be in the first list while the others are relegated to being behind the extra layer of bureaucracy. --Joy (talk) 15:12, 5 January 2024 (UTC)
    Not sure there is a compelling reason. There's a long discussion of this kind of thing at Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation#Should the section on Incomplete Disambiguation be deprecated or revised?; I don't think it's come to a firm resolution yet.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Okay, so the next question is how to do it because the template's categorisation automatically classifies them as SIA. So either we need to change the template or to remove that template from those pages (and any others like them) — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:34, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Some more recent examples of how the set index versus disambiguation list paradigm is probably doing us a disservice are at Talk:Boyle (disambiguation), Talk:Baldwin (name), Talk:Pierre (disambiguation). --Joy (talk) 14:09, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
    A few instances of someone misusing a term/template/category/title to brand something a set-index article when it is really a disambiguation page (or vice versa, and I've run into cases of that) does not mean that "the set index versus disambiguation list paradigm is probably doing us a disservice"; it just means there are a few instances of someone misusing a term/template/category/title to brand something the wrong kind of page. It is never a principle here that some small number of well-meaning (or even otherwise!) people not following rules or documentation means that the system is broken.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    It suggests a disservice because those discussions are evidence of how the distinction between these types of pages are causing editors confusion. A clearer system would mean fewer contentious discussions. How much simpler it would be if we could have one disambiguation page for Baldwin, including people and other uses. I can't see any benefit in having a separate page for people called Baldwin (Baldwin (name)) and other things called Baldwin (Baldwin). — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    @SMcCandlish The problem is that the existing paradigm is formulated in a way that precludes any practical combinations, which causes this whole "You're holding it wrong!!1!" problem to happen. The rules are fine for most cases but haven't actually been updated to match the practical reality of reader navigation in a subset of cases. --Joy (talk) 09:04, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Let's go back to first principles. The problem occurs when we have a term which is a name (with a list of people sharing that name) and the term also has other meanings, often as a placename. In some cases, we can list the people, places, etc. on one page. That page should be a dab rather than a list or SIA, because nothing is common to all of its entries except a shared title. If such a page is currently not a dab, the solution is to convert it, as we did with Ayers. In other cases, a single page would be too long or would break our rules for any possible format – perhaps it has both a referenced etymology making it ineligible as a dab and a list of places etc. making it ineligible as a name SIA. Then we need two (or more) pages, raising the question of which to put at the base name. The name itself is rarely a primary topic by our usual rules. However, there is still a case for putting the name page at the base name for navigational reasons – it leaves the reader who lands naively at the base name just one click away from each person so named and two clicks away from each other meaning, rather than vice versa if the dab were at the base name. However, I don't think we have a policy or guideline that puts that case or advises when it is strong enough to award the unqualified title to a name page. Certes (talk) 15:17, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
    Yes, exactly. If the direction is to collapse the distinctions between disambiguation, set indices, and other superficially similar pages, they shouldn't be called "disambiguation" pages, but something more generic such as "navigation" pages. older ≠ wiser 16:41, 7 January 2024 (UTC)
    Yeah, if we have all these various types, as well as broad concept articles, templates and whatnot, we should be able to define a hybrid type and apply it judiciously. In fact this reminds me of how we sometimes have articles with various tables or navigation templates that have a [show] button next to the caption which then uncollapses that content. I'm pretty sure most readers would be quite happy with making any supplemental information collapsible, be it a name etymology or any kind of a long tail in a long list (like Hermann (crater) or Jacob Herrmann). --Joy (talk) 08:41, 8 January 2024 (UTC)
    MOS:DONTCOLLAPSE. It's fine if the content is collapsible as long as it is not collapsed by default.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    I think you wanted to link to MOS:COLLAPSE. The difference here is that this style guideline refers to "article content". Navigation lists aren't typical article content, their main function is typically different. They're not trying to tell a coherent story and impart deep knowledge, where hidden spoilers would be unhelpful gimmicks; they're mainly trying to accomplish successful navigation, and information overload is a known issue. --Joy (talk) 09:07, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
    I made that shortcut work, too; weird to have MOS:HIDE and MOS:DONTHIDE both working, but not the same for COLLAPSE. Anyway, the guideline doesn't have anything to do with spoilers (which are covered by WP:SPOILER, and the hiding of which was invalidated by community RfC and TfD before the MoS section existed). That section exists because pre-collapsed content is an accesibility and usability problem. Nothing in that guideline can be taken to suggest that sections of the main content of such a page can be auto-collapsed (it says quite the opposite), just because the purpose of the page or section within it is primarily navigational (otherwise "See also" would always be pre-collapsed, and so would the content of all disambiguation pages, and the content of WP:SUMMARYSTYLE short summaries of other "side" articles linked to with {{Main}} in lengthy articles on complex topics that have been split. It's quite clear: "Collapsible templates should not conceal article content by default upon page loading. This includes reference lists, tables and lists of article content ...", the last of these being exactly what we're talking about here. "Other methods of hiding content should not be used". The only mention of navigation anywhere in that section is this: "Auto-collapsing is often a feature of navboxes. ... If information in a list, infobox, or other non-navigational content seems extraneous or trivial enough to inspire pre-collapsing it, consider raising a discussion on the article (or template) talk page about whether it should be included at all." That right there already addresses the "information overload" issue.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  12:38, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
    Exactly, and because we have no systematic way to stop including ambiguous items in disambiguation lists, this just doesn't apply. Where we did apply a method of removing some of the ambiguous items, WP:NAMELIST, we basically screwed up and did it in a way that actively harms navigation. --Joy (talk) 12:41, 15 January 2024 (UTC)
    Much simpler to put all the disambiguation on one page (e.g. Hermann (disambiguation). If in the future, someone writes an article about the etymology of the name, then this could go at Hermann (name) with a hatnote that says something like "This is an etymological article about the name Hermann. For people named Baldwin, please see Hermann (disambiguation)#People" — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:43, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    The problem is that this fundamentally alters what disambiguation means. Very few of the entries at Hermann (name) would ever be expected to have their article titled as simply "Hermann". These are nothing more than partial title matches. The same is true of surname lists, although to a lesser extent as it is somewhat more common to refer to a person by their surname only, especially after context has been established. I could perhaps see creating some sort of superset category of "navigational pages" that included both disambiguation pages and set indices, but I don't think calling them all disambiguation pages is helpful. older ≠ wiser 14:00, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    But that is exactly what they are doing: disambiguating! It's for people who are trying to find an article including the term Hermann. Perhaps they can't remember the other part of the name. If you look on Hermann you will see that most of those entries are not just called "Hermann" either. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    What you describe is navigation, not disambiguation. On the page Hermann, many of the entries could reasonably be expected to be titled as simply "Hermann" in the absence of any other article that might share the same name. From the earliest stages of Wikipedia, disambiguation developed as a means to resolve article titling conflicts. Disambiguation pages and hatnotes are the primary means of providing navigation between such potential conflicting titles. Over time, disambiguation pages have seen an accretion of other aspects, becoming something more like an index or an annotated search function. older ≠ wiser 14:52, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    I would be comfortable in calling all these pages "navigation pages". That might have been a better choice of word from the beginning. But I'm not sure the general community would see enough benefit in changing the title to make it worthwhile. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:16, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
    Disambiguation is a subtype of navigation. I've never liked the D word – it's almost never used outwith Wikipedia, and I doubt that most readers seeing it for the first time will know what it means (though it's easily guessed). However, we do need a term of art for a page which lists different meanings of the same term, which is just one of many ways to navigate Wikipedia. Certes (talk) 11:37, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I don't agree with "If such a page is currently not a dab, the solution is to convert it, as we did with Ayers", as an across-the-board, no-brainer approach. This has to be taken on a case-by-case basis to do what is best for the content and the readers of it. Various surname articles contain considerable encyclopedic information and should not be converted into DAB pages that just provide a list of names and throw away verifiable information on the name's history, etymology, distribution, etc. Nor, when such a page includes that information and also includes a list of notable people by that surname, should they be split into a spearate surname article and surname disambiguation page without a good reason. A good reason might be that the encyclopedic content is quite long impeding the ability of the page to serve a disamgibiguation navigation function, or the list of notables is very long, dwarfing the non-list content of the article; or both. When both the list and the non-list content are are short, then "ain't broke, don't 'fix' it".  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:51, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Articles containing considerable encyclopedic information are not "such a page". My suggested rule of thumb is that if the page already almost obeys MOS:DAB and conversion would be as simple as replacing {{surname}} by {{disambiguation|surname}} and making other minor tweaks (add {{wikt}}, {{TOC right}}, unpipe a few piped links, etc.) then the page is ripe for conversion. If we'd have to throw away useful content, references, etc. to shoehorn the article into MOS:DAB then it's probably unsuitable for replacement by a dab, though splitting may still be a good option. Certes (talk) 11:19, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
  • There has been decent explanation above about what separates Set Index Articles from disambiguation (where appropriate), but less clear is what separates them in essence from other lists (which can and do include contextual information to explain the list) and why this difference is significant enough to merit its own page type. CMD (talk) 14:07, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Exactly. The current set of SIAs fall into two groups: ones without content, which should really be dab pages. And ones with content that could quite easily be called lists. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:37, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    An SIA is a list whose entries have similar names. SIAs and non-SIA lists share other characteristics such as contextual information. Our list of people called Braun is a SIA (although most visitors will be looking for Braun (company)). Our list of US presidents is not a SIA. "Set index article" may not have been the best choice of term: US presidents form a "set", our list of them is an "article", but presumably it's not an "index" because its entries differ in name. Certes (talk) 19:10, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    Why don't we call them all "lists"? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:05, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
    We do. SIA is a subtype of list. Certes (talk) 11:33, 12 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Another point of confusion appears to be Wikipedia:Lists of lists. That page states that Lists of lists are not SIAs (makes sense, they are not items with a shared name), but Lists of lists appear to still be classified as SIAs; for example Lists of English words. (I'm not sure why they are classified as SIA, is it somewhere in Template:List of lists?) CMD (talk) 05:29, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
    I'm coming round to the idea of calling all these pages "navigation pages". They all serve the same purpose and then we don't need to worry about distinguishing between these different terms — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:59, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
    What shows us that Lists of English words is a SIA? If it is, it probably shouldn't be. Certes (talk) 12:06, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
    It is displayed as such by the default Wikipedia:Metadata gadget available in preferences, but as my parenthetical notes I'm not sure what the technical trigger is. CMD (talk) 12:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
    Agree that it shouldn't be. It may be due to Template:List of lists calling {{dmbox}} with parameter 'type = setindex'. older ≠ wiser 16:02, 17 January 2024 (UTC)

Surprising practices when delisting GAs and FAs

I have discovered some strange and surprising practices by editors when articles are delisted as good articles or featured articles.

When a good article is delisted, I would expect it to be given a rating of B-class by default, as it is the next rating down in the scale. But apparently it is common practice to remove the rating altogether and wait for it to be reassessed.

Also, you might expect a delisted featured article to become A-class or GA-class. But WP:GACR says "a good article loses its status when promoted to a featured article. Accordingly, demoted featured articles are not automatically graded as good articles and must be reassessed for quality". Why should losing FA status, also mean it loses GA status? The criteria are different. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:25, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

As I mentioned on my talk page, the relevant discussion is Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 15#RFC about assigning classes to demoted Featured articles. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
I have always thought it was weird that losing GA class does not automatically mean an article loses A class. Schierbecker (talk) 14:51, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
A-class is used infrequently enough that I doubt this oddity has much practical impact. CMD (talk) 16:44, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
The MilHist Project had a problem with articles losing their GA or FA ratings on grounds other than article quality and the project decided that an A-class rating should be retained pending a A-class review by the project. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:59, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
User:Hawkeye7, do you remember where that discussion took place? Schierbecker (talk) 20:41, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
It has been our policy since at least 2009. See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/Archive 19#Academy errors. It has been discussed in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Archive 163#A-class articles delisted from GA in 2021 and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators#Napoleon and A-class status in 2024. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:47, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Start-class designation for exhaustive articles on obscure topics

I’m wondering if articles that exhaustively cover all information available in the relatively few sources should be designated start-class for their length, or higher because they don’t have any gaps or areas needing expansion. Zanahary (talk) 23:01, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Yes. If it covers all information, it's probably higher than start though. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 01:13, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Absolutely it is higher; if it "exhaustively covers all information available" it is very likely to be a B at least. Assessing based on length alone should always be avoided. It is highly unfortunate that most assessors seem to use that as their primary criterion. Johnbod (talk) 21:19, 6 February 2024 (UTC)
Got it. How can I request reassessment? I think some of my Start-designated articles should be rated differently. Zanahary (talk) 18:05, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
Whether it exhaustively covers the subject or not, it cannot be B class unless it is fully referenced. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:28, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Reference correction to Fogarty, Robert, American Utopianism

I'm requesting/suggesting 2 changes to the current Reference.

Fogarty, Robert. (1972). American Utopianism. Itasca, IL: F. E. Peacock Publishers, Inc.[self-published source?]

No, it is not a self-published source. Also, its an edited work. Some citations indicate he was the editor, some the author. Its a compilation of primary source materials from the history pre 1919 of intentional communities in the US. It was one in a series published by F.E. Peacock, a an established academic press specializing in the social and behaviorial sciences. It was bought out in 2002 by a national corporation, Wadsworth Thompson, that is still operating.

See: https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/2002/10/07/daily4.html "Belmont-based Wadsworth, affiliated with software and information provider The Thomson Corp. (NYSE: TOC), purchased F.E. Peacock Publisher Inc. for an undisclosed sum."

and: https://www.thefreelibrary.com/

thanks! I will get an account shortly. Betsy Morris, Berkeley, CA 135.180.123.159 (talk) 10:59, 8 February 2024 (UTC)

"No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available"

FA class says under "Editing suggestions" for FA articles: No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible.

When has this ever been true?? The example article Cleopatra has had many content additions since it was first featured in 2018. How much more information has become available about Jesus Christ in the last decade since Jesus was featured? Apparently 94 kilobytes worth, or almost double the length from when it was first featured.

Depending on how much free time you have and how granular you want to get, you can always add more to an article.

This goes against WP:FA?, which only says it must neglect "no major facts or details", is a "thorough and representative survey", and "its content does not change significantly from day to day". Recommend removing this line. Schierbecker (talk) 03:36, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Interpretations may hinge around the word "necessary". To become an FA an article theoretically "neglects no major facts or details" and "is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature". If these points are true, then no further additions may be necessary in order for an article to be "a definitive source for encyclopedic information", although they may as mentioned be possible with granular/minor information/details. CMD (talk) 03:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Not sure if my experience is representative, but that's not the way I interpreted that wording when I was a newb in 2009. I distinctly remember holding off on some needed changes to featured articles because I thought featured=complete. In any case, that language is wrong no matter which way it was intended to be interpreted. Content additions are necessary for an article to keep its featured article status (And of course here I'm not just talking about new information becoming available). A featured article when I started would be a B class today. Schierbecker (talk) 04:09, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
I think that this needs to be re-written. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:50, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

RfC about FA completeness

This RFC proposes the removal and replacement of the statement in the Featured Article editing suggestions that reads, "No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible." Schierbecker (talk) 22:12, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Maybe, "Continuous improvement, including both minor and major revisions, is encouraged to ensure articles remain current and comprehensive. While major content additions may focus on significant updates or the emergence of new information, contributors are urged to engage in ongoing refinement to enhance both content and presentation, recognizing that the nature of featured articles implies a commitment to continual relevance." (LLM-assisted content). Schierbecker (talk) 22:34, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Do we need to have anything? If we decide that we can't just leave it blank, then maybe the FA and FL could both say something like "May need to be updated with more recent information". WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:47, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
Simply deleting the Editing suggestions column is an option your thought prompted. What does it add that is not in Criteria and Reader's experience? CMD (talk) 01:36, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
Seconded. Schierbecker (talk) 01:47, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment When has this ever been true?? The example article Cleopatra has had many content additions since it was first featured in 2018. How much more information has become available about Jesus Christ in the last decade since Jesus was featured? Apparently 94 kilobytes worth, or almost double the length from when it was first featured.
    ... and were the additions necessary? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:34, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Comment: As a FAC coordinator and having successfully nominated several articles at FAC the current wording looks like nonsense to me. WP:FAOWN, which is policy, includes "Editors are asked to take particular care when editing a Featured article; it is considerate to discuss significant changes of text or images on the talk page first." Perhaps a version of this could be used? Eg 'Significant changes to featured articles should be made with care and should usually be discussed on the article's talk page first'? Gog the Mild (talk) 17:19, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
    • Would support a change to the effect of what Gog has sketched here. I think there's a kernel of a good idea in the current wording, but as phrase it isn't correct and is potentially quite unhelpful. UndercoverClassicist T·C 17:27, 10 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I think this should be removed or replaced (like Gog the Mild's suggestion). Even FA's comprehensiveness requirement is not a statement that no content additions could improve the article. Indeed the FA process doesn't often ensure this (though many nominators do), as comprehensiveness is rarely checked thoroughly; conversely, uncontroversial prose improvements aren't often possible as this is one of the most heavily scrutinised parts of the FA process. An example of the bike-shed effect. — Bilorv (talk) 23:12, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I would support Gog's proposed change, but not outright removal. Last year a large number of readers and editors descended on Robert Oppenheimer. Readers outnumber writers by a thousand to one. No substantial changes were made. (I disagree about comprehensiveness not being checked thoroughly, but you have to be a subject expert to do so. Military History articles usually get this at A class.) There were a lot of changes that I characterised as barely rising to minor edit status, such as deleting white space and reordering parameters within templates, or adding or removing unused ones. There was a fruitful debate about the subject's name, however, which resulted in some small but satisfying changes. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:45, 14 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Support Gog the Mild's proposed change. The current wording could easily scare a new editor away from making constructive changes to an FA. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:33, 22 January 2024 (UTC)
  • Gog the Mild's version is good. Others already said why.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  09:52, 28 January 2024 (UTC)
  • I also support something along the lines of what Gog is proposing. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:12, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

Conflicting quality ratings

I've got a head-scratcher for you.

Talk:Sam Manekshaw is simultaneously an A-class and GA-class article. It is a GA class in the banner shell, but because it is an A-class biography article, it is categorized as an Article with conflicting quality ratings.

Talk:Germanicus is simultaneously an A-class and GA-class article. It is an A class in the banner shell, but is also a GA-class Classical Greece and Rome article.

Talk:Sukhoi Su-25 is simultaneously an A-class and B-class article. It is an A class in the banner shell, but is also a B-class Russia article (To be fair, this article is more like C class.)

I found 213 other examples of A-class articles with conflicting quality ratings.

There is little consistency as to whether A class should be inherited by the banner shell. Some do - for instance Talk:Boeing B-52 Stratofortress has passed a GA review and is an A class in the banner shell. This one is not categorized as having conflicting quality ratings.

If an article has been assessed as A-class by one project, should the banner shell say likewise? Schierbecker (talk) 04:57, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

:Ping User:Hawkeye7. Schierbecker (talk) 04:57, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

Since WP:PIQA all project banners should be displaying a consistent rating (with a few exceptions of projects who have opted out). Yes, A-class is accepeted by the banner shell so if A-class is correct, then this should ideally be placed in the banner shell. Then the conflict will be resolved. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 05:04, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
Agreed. A-class should be inherited by the banner shell. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 06:49, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
What about {{ArticleHistory}}? It does not support "| currentstatus = A".
I'm wondering if there needs to be a universal process for demoting obviously bad A-class articles. For example WikiProject Biography halted A-class promotions in 2008, but there are still more than a handful of legacy A-Class biography articles. There is no accepted process to demote these articles. I feel these ratings should not be inherited by the banner shell. I have also boldly removed A-class from a few dozen cyclone articles where the only "review" appears to have been some conversations on IRC. This one got a few public comments in 2006, but still remains rated A-class even after failing a GA review in 2011. Schierbecker (talk) 17:15, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
I just picked some pages at random from Category:A-Class biography articles. All of them had a {{WikiProject Military history}} banner; now, it is (fairly) well known that MILHIST have a formal A-Class review process, so it's likely that any A-Class biogs really are A-Class, and are not there either by accident or by legacy. So I would oppose any demotion that does not involve clearing each article individually with MILHIST. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:48, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
There are a handful of biographical pages that are not under the MILHIST banner. Also more than a handful of A-class articles that don't fall under MILHIST or WP:ROADS. Maybe problematic WP:WPBIO articles that are not under the MILHIST umbrella can be put up for review using the MILHIST ACR process, but I'm not sure how popular this would be with the review team. Schierbecker (talk) 21:06, 21 March 2024 (UTC)
See also: Wikipedia talk:Content assessment/Archive 9 § Pages rated as Disambig-class which are not disambiguation pages

Just following up on this issue, which is still presenting problems. There was a suggestion by User:Bkonrad that we could treat SIAs (with links but no content) and disambiguation pages as one by considering them as "navigation pages". What do people think about introducing this as an umbrella term and classifying accordingly? The rationale is that these types of pages have a common purpose which is to guide readers to the article they are looking for. Real SIAs (with content and references) will be properly treated as Lists, but pages like Hermann (name) would be classified as a navigation page. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:00, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

The core of the issue is that pages like Hermann (name) are not disambiguation pages, despite some superficial similarities. It is a list of people who share a name, not a list of articles that could be titled as "Hermann".
Also how will Real SIAs (with content and references) be distinguished from other similar pages? Is it a manual assessment? If so, what is being gained? older ≠ wiser 10:10, 24 April 2024 (UTC)

Content assessment frequency

How often are articles graded and do they vary between articles? Theobrad (talk) 12:36, 29 April 2024 (UTC)

do they vary between genres/topics/categories Theobrad (talk) 12:39, 29 April 2024 (UTC)
@Theobrad: Articles ought to be assessed for importance either when the WikiProject banner is added, or soon after. Some get left unassessed for years. Once assessed, it should rarely change unless something significant happens - for example, a politician who had been serving at a purely local level might be elected to a national position, following which their importance for politics might be raised from low/mid to mid/high.
Articles are assessed for quality (class) whenever somebody feels like it, provided that the old and new classes are both within the scale unassessed/stub/start/C/B. But for GA/A/FA, you need to make your case for regrading, one person can't do it alone.
Unless the same person carries out all of the assessments, there will be variation (one person's Stub-Class might be another's Start-Class); but the higher up the quality scale you go, the variation should be lessened - this is particularly so of FA-Class, where several people carry out the assessment together. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 08:05, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 Thank you for your response. The reason I ask is that I am a paid Wikipedia editor and I have been working for a while on the 'Smart City' article. My work is nearly done and I am not under any obligation to change the rating of the article. However, from my personal interest in the communication of smart city information to the general public and to see the article be improved, I was wondering when/if an article like this might be reviewed again? Theobrad (talk) 09:28, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
I would say that you should not assess the article yourself, but may request assessment by leaving a request at one or more of: Wikipedia:WikiProject Urban studies and planning/Assessment#Requests for assessment; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Artificial Intelligence; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Systems; Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Computer science. Note that only the first of these has a formal request procedure - for the others you should start a new thread on the talk page that I linked. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 17:54, 30 April 2024 (UTC)
thank you very much! I wasn't considering doing that myself :) Theobrad (talk) 18:02, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

B-class when citations are wrong?

Visa Requirements for US citizens has a B rating, but I keep finding citations completely irrelevant to the detail they claim to be supporting. 伟思礼 (talk) 05:15, 11 May 2024 (UTC)

@伟思礼: There is no such article. In any case, if you feel that an article's rating is inconsistent with its content, you should bring that matter up at the talk page of the article itself. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:56, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
@Redrose64 Visa requirements for United States citizens 48JCL (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
I think that was what the dude above was trying to say. 48JCL (talk) 20:42, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

Chemical structure is incorrect.

In the chemotherapy article there is an incorrect structure for the reaction of a nitrogen mustard compound with guanine. The correct structure is available at A. Polavarpu, et al., "The Mechanism of Guanine Alkylation by Nitrogen Mustards: A Computational Study," Journal of Organic Chemistry, 77 (14), 5914-5921, 2012. 66.111.123.176 (talk) 22:23, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Your comment is off-topic for this page, which is the talk page for discussing improvements to the page Wikipedia:Content assessment. Please express your concerns at the talk page for the specific article concerned. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 22:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Sugarhill Ddot -2024

Pls can someone help in assessing the article Sugarhill Ddot? Thank You. 2RDD (talk) 13:27, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Stub 48JCL (talk) 21:04, 22 May 2024 (UTC)
Thank you 158.62.88.23 (talk) 18:23, 24 June 2024 (UTC)

Redirects with unneeded importance parameters

A redirect page needn't have an importance parameter, but many do. For example, User:WP 1.0 bot/Tables/Project/New Zealand has 2,190 such redirects. Is there an automated tool that can remove importance parameters from all redirect pages for an individual project? Or is there another way to tidy this up, say by programmatically collating them in the NA column without the work of removing the importance parameter? Thanks. Nurg (talk) 08:50, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Yes we could automatically rate these as NA and ignore the specified importance (as long as there was consensus for this). Then there would be no need to remove them all — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:11, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

beged-kefet rating?

The article on the Hebrew concept of Begadkefat seems to fulfil everything required of a B-Class article, except that it's quite short. It seems to be comprehensive within the topic, but I'm not sure if I can put it as B-Class yet. Thoughts? Robynfeather (talk) 17:35, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

That article needs more references in my opinion Protegmatic (talk) 13:00, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

Reclassifying an article?

I wrote the article Great Fires of 1871 and it was originally rated as start class, I have now fixed all the Citation needed and Better source needed requests, can it get a better rating because of this? Bradinator33 (talk) 13:17, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

Sure. Normally you make a request to one of the relevant projects. In the case of WikiProject Military history this is Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Requests. I have re-rated the article as B class. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:22, 29 July 2024 (UTC)

A short article may be appropriate

I get the impression that, in practice, this rating system is biased towards simply measuring the length of an article and making an assessment based on that. Some subjects can be dealt with quite concisely – which is surely what we are trying to achieve with an encyclopaedia article. Quite simply, there may be nothing more that really needs to be added, but we have a complete article that is assessed as "C" or "stub" because it is not very long.

Articles that appear to me to have been mis-rated based on their length include Alfred Holt, Ariel (clipper), Far Eastern Freight Conference, Windermere Jetty: Museum of Boats, Steam and Stories, etc. ThoughtIdRetired TIR 19:30, 18 August 2024 (UTC)

This is a good point and thanks for bringing it up. While the official guidelines do not contain any requirements on length, it is likely that some editors (and even some automated tools) may be using length as a metric to measure quality. Please feel free to update the assessment on any article that you think is mis-classified. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:39, 18 August 2024 (UTC)
I have noticed this as well, so I will second the thank you for bringing it up Monkeywire (talk) 20:55, 3 September 2024 (UTC)
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