Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States/Assessment/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

How to start

Hi and thanks, Badbilltucker for setting up the assessment scale-great job! I have added GA class to a couple of GAs (even though my Household income in the United States IMHO is A-class ;-)). I'll list a couple of more article in the "requests" box so there'll be some "food" for this departement. Anyways, this departement looks great. Signature^brendelHAPPY HOLIDAYS 02:45, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Assessment of Categories?

How should categories be handled, as opposed to articles? Шизомби (talk) 23:10, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

George Soros

George Soros, owner of Wikimedia non-US national, and the Obama administration have labeled ordinary citizens who are Patriot, as domestic terrorists. This Patriot Movement article displays the anti-American citizen sentiment within the current (0bama) regime. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.67.132.35 (talk) 20:01, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Top and High Importance

We said we were going to take a long, hard look at what's Top Importance and what's high. There are 54ish articles now, and someone mentioned up to 200 earlier, so we can expand the list significantly. First off, here's what's Top right now:

1. American Civil War
2. American Old West
3. American Revolutionary War
4. Articles of Confederation
5. Arts and entertainment in the United States
6. Baltimore–Washington Metropolitan Area
7. Cuisine of the United States
8. Demographics of the United States
9. Economy of the United States
10. Environment of the United States
11. Federal government of the United States
12. First Amendment to the United States Constitution
13. Flag of the United States
14. Founding Fathers of the United States

1. General officers in the Confederate States Army
2. Geography of the United States
3. Health care in the United States
4. History of the United States
5. Thomas Jefferson
6. Martin Luther King, Jr.
7. Robert E. Lee
8. Abraham Lincoln
9. Louisiana Purchase
10. Marbury v. Madison
11. Music of the United States
12. New York City
13. Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution
14. Barack Obama

1. Politics of the United States
2. President of the United States
3. Religion in the United States
4. Slavery in the United States
5. Smithsonian Institution
6. Social Security (United States)
7. Society of the United States
8. Supreme Court of the United States
9. Twenty-first Amendment to the United States Constitution
10. Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
11. U.S. state
12. Uncle Sam

1. United States
2. United States Army
3. United States Bill of Rights
4. United States Constitution
5. United States Declaration of Independence
6. United States Senate
7. United States national motto
8. Visual arts of the United States
9. Wall Street Crash of 1929
10. Washington, D.C.
11. George Washington
12. Watergate scandal
13. White House
14. World War II

Milestone Documents

The Constitution, Bill of Rights, Declaration of Indy, and Articles of Confed. Sorry, individual amendments, but you're daughter articles and should be dropped to high. I would extend the possiblity that List of amendments to the United States Constitution be top, as it is the mother article to the Amendments.

I am not so sure. Although not all amendments are equal so to speak and most of the amendments could probably be bumped down I think there are a couple that are Top importance and I do not think we shoudl think of it as the constitution is more important. They are part of the constitution. --Kumioko (talk) 17:15, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

History of the United States

Clearly History of the United States should be Top. I also propose that articles following the form "History of the United States (DATE-DATE)" be high; as that is where much of the real content is.

I agree on the over arching one but not the yearly ones. I think they should by high or mid IMO. --Kumioko (talk) 17:16, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

My bad, I wasn't very clear. I was referring to articles like History of the United States (1789-1849), which are daughters of History of the United States. Should they be High (as I suggested above) or Mid? Purplebackpack89 18:52, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

IMO History of the United States should probably be top with the others as High. --Kumioko (talk) 18:57, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

States, cities and counties

I propose the following about them:

• States are automatically assessed as High
• NYC and Washington are Top; LA, Chicago and a few other big ones are High
• Counties probably should not be assessed, as most of them are not national in scope

Well for the top 2 I agree. For the bottom one I believe most should be low with maybe a couple such as Orange County, California in the Mid range.

I thought we squashed the issue of "National scope" in that we were going to concentrate efforts on the higher National articles but that doesn't mean IMO that we should toss out the rest with the trash. As I stated before I agree that we should focus on the important ones but there is no reason why we should include the others with the project, particularly in the cases of an Inactive project like US counties where there is still utility in classifying the articles or projects such as DC, super funds, LOC or others. If we are now determining that we are not going to assess them then that also indicates that we are going to drop them from the project and to this I do not agree. --Kumioko (talk) 17:21, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I'll acquise to your proposal of counties being part of the project, but rated low unless they have populations of a million or more Purplebackpack89 18:50, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

The million or more seems like a reasonable benchmark. I'm not sure how many that will be and we may need to bump the total up to reduce the number but lets see what others think. I just believe that some of the more Famous and larger ones like San Diego and Orange Counties in Cali, King county in Washington and Dade county in Florida probably should be mid. These should all meet the million mark as you suggested as well. --Kumioko (talk) 19:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I think it's between 50 and 100, maybe a little more than that According to List of the most populous counties in the United States, 41 Purplebackpack89 19:12, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Oh well thats not bad then I don't think. --Kumioko (talk) 19:32, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree that some states will be TOP priorities. I think we need to seriously consider whether some state history articles should also be TOP rated. American History as taught throughout grades 1-12 always starts with Virginia (Jamestown)and Massachusetts (Plymouth Rock) history. Maryland, Pennsylvania and New York are also featured prominently in this era. As the nation expands California (Manifest Destiny, Gold Rush) and Texas (Mexican War) are featured.

In looking over other projects I noted that there are no Regional United States Projects (i.e. Southern United States) although there are regional articles. These regional articles should be TOP priority. Yes, they are "daughter" articles of the main United States articles, but they have great significance on their own. With Southern United States as a TOP article, Confederate States of America would fall naturally as a HIGH article. History of the Southern United States could be rated as either TOP or HIGH. Louisiana Purchase seems like a natural TOP article. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:22, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Your argument seems to be making the case for Plymouth Rock and Jamestown to be Top articles themselves. I am perfectly fine with Southern United States (and probably also New England, Western United States and some other regions); and am perfectly fine with the assessment of state or topical histories as High. I am somewhat worried that making some states and some state's histories could lead editors who don't understand why we did what we did to classify all the states Top importance. Purplebackpack89 01:07, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Biographies

I had proposed that we have up to 20 Top Biographies. Right now, we have Jefferson, King, Lee, Lincoln, Obama, and Washington. Above, I had proposed adding FDR, Teddy, Franklin, and Edison...there is a general consensus for that, no? Now, to get the whole 20:

• Possible demotion: Lee
• Proposed additions: Susan B. Anthony, Alexander Hamilton, John Marshall, John D. Rockefeller, Mark Twain
• Fight for the remaining five-six spots: Disney, Douglass, Eisenhower, Emerson, Ford, Grant, Jackson, Lee, Madison, Presley, Robinson, Wright Brothers

Remember in my earlier proposal, I had mentioned that the most important people in each field should be Top or High; which is why the top representatives of sports and entertainment are under consideration. I've also started a list of proposed High and Mid biographies at User:Purplebackpack89/WPUSRatings. Thoughts on these?

Again I don't like the idea of setting a limit. Whether we have 5, 50 or 500 shouldn't matter if the article meets the criteria for Top, high or whatever. We are just going to end up causing big fights and arguments of symantics of why who or who should not be top. IMO its too subjective and its not worth fighting over if someone insists that Kim Kardashian should be a top priority article because she gets over 200, 000 hits (or whatever) every month. I agree with the Demotion and the promotion points though but again IMO there is no need for a notability death match to see who's going to get the coveted top seat. --Kumioko (talk) 17:25, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess we don't need a hard-and-fast number, but we do need a certain degree of exclusivity to our top articles; and some degree of consensus about them. I don't care for your Kardashian example; maybe that's because I don't car for what people like Kardashian and Snooki Purplebackpack89 19:31, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I admit I don't think much of her as an individual and could in the grand scheme of things personally care less about the article. With that said She is 4th on the list of Popular viewed articles for WPUS with a hit count of about 200, 000 per month and is pretty consistant. So a lot of someones somewhere cares and I think we are doing ourselves as a project a disservice if we ignore that fact and don't take advantage of that high hit count in our own favor. IF we improve the article people are going to notice and likewise take more notice of the project. That likewise should draw more interest in the project and thereby increase or members and the more contributing members we have the more improvements we can make to our articles (of course it also draws more vandals but its a viscious cycle). Kimmy K is currently a start class article so even improving it to B or GA would IMO increase eyes on the project by them thinking wow these folks are making some improvements. That particular article aside we should focus at least some efforts on the top 5 or 10 (possibly more later) articles in the popular list regardless of our personal feelings about the article itself. Many of these BTW are already rated in the Top and high category's so there is a fair bit of overlap anyway. --Kumioko (talk) 19:41, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Proposals for additions and deletions

I think the following need to go:

1. The articles about the Amendments (they should not be on the same level as their mother, the Constitution)
2. Baltimore-Washington Metropolitan Area (we don't need both it and WDC tagged)
3. General officers of the Confederacy (completely inconsistent to be here...if there's any article concerning the Confederacy at Top here, it should be the Confederacy itself).

...and the following need to be added:

1. Statue of Liberty
2. The Star-Spangled Banner (the song)
3. United States Capitol
4. United States House of Representatives
5. United States Navy and United States Air Force (we got the Army, why not the other branches?)
6. United States dollar
7. Literature of the United States
8. Sports in the United States

Thoughts? additional proposals? Purplebackpack89 16:58, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying we should drop these from the project or drop thier level of importance? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kumioko (talk • contribs)

I definetely don't think they should be top priority. Whether or not they are still part of the project is up to others Purplebackpack89 18:44, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. I personally do not think we need to start dropping articles from the project and I agree that some of those articles should be added to the top priority list. 1, 2 and 6 for sure IMO. Possibly 7 and 8 too but they are probably high to me. The others are probably ok at High. In regards to 5 I would say all the services would be High. --Kumioko (talk) 19:01, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Culture of the United States should probably be a TOP rated priority -- it is our number one export. I was surprised that there is not a spinoff from that article to Pop Culture of the United States -- this seems like it might be a HIGH priority article that needs to be written. This would be the place to introduce the Kardashian's of the world and would set the stage for individual current pop icons to start being listed at the MID level. Tom (North Shoreman) (talk) 00:03, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Question about content above GA

I have a question for the masses that relates to this. I had thought a while back that it seemed strange to have articles of GA or better rated as low importance but I wanted to ask for opinions about this. Does anyone have a problem with articles being bumped from low to at least mid if the are GA class or better and IMO articles of A, FA or FL could be high. Being placed in the higher category would allow them to be more easily monitored and I beleive would allow the article a more equal importance with their quality. It seems to me that having an FA class article with low importance is somewhat innappropriate. --Kumioko (talk) 19:05, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I'm not so sure how much the quality rating or number of hits (referencing Kardashian, above) should play into the importance rating. I think that the number one overarching decision for rating something should be how much it jibes with our criteria. Perhaps I would understand more where you are coming at if you gave me a couple examples Purplebackpack89 19:18, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

Certainly. We currently haev 120 FA class articles in the proejct with an Importance of low. Now under normal circumstances most would probably be low but since they are FA's for example I wonder if they shouldn't be at least MID importance due to their quality. A couple examples of this are 7 World Trade Center, Benjamin Harrison and Kent, Ohio. Arguments of scope aside, IMO if we promote a Low class article from GA to A then it seems reasonable to me that we would also increase the importance of the article due to its quality. I personally can't see a Featured article as low importance? Since we only have 3 top, 27 high and 22 mid level once we clean them up initially and stay on top of them it shoudln't be hard to manage IMO. -Kumioko (talk) 19:30, 28 January 2011 (UTC)

I respectfully disagree. The importance of the article is not a GA criteria. Some editors nominate low importance articles for GA because they wrote them and are interested in the subject. No consideration is given to the importance of the article. Wikipedia-wide, there are 10,903 GA articles, and many of them are rated low importance. The work plans of individual editors should not dictate the priorities of the WikiProject as a whole. Racepacket (talk) 12:49, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Although I perfectly understand you reasoning and think that perhaps use GA or maybe even A was a bad example but it seems that if an article is FA then it shouldn't be a lot priority for the project IMO. The fact that an article is FA should make it "important" enough to elevate its status I would think. Perhaps not thats why I thought a discussion on the subject was in order to see how everyone else felt about it. --Kumioko (talk) 15:48, 29 January 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your comment on GA and A. The same reasoning applies to FA. For example, an article on a three-mile long hiking/biking trail is now at FAC, because a local resident wrote an article and took it through the GA and now FAC process. FAC does not question the signficance of the article. There is no logical reason to increase the "importance" of FA articles. As a management tool, the count of high vs low priority FA articles should tell us that people are not doing enough to polish the really important articles. The answer is to ask volunteers to bring high priority articles to FAC, not to automatically raise the ranking of the FA low priority articles. Racepacket (talk) 15:12, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

I think Racepacket reflects how other projects have applied it for example Wikipedia:WikiProject_Psychology/Assessment#Importance_scale or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels/Assessment#Importance_scale, where the importance relates to the relevance to the "core" topics of a given set of scholarly discussion, not to how important they are in relationship to Wikipedia editors or their projects, Sadads (talk) 18:16, 31 January 2011 (UTC)

Format for Amendment Pages

So the Pages in regards to the Amendments are, for the most part, B-class and below, and I'm going to put some resources into fixing them up. The only problem is that there are two GA, the 17th and 25th, however they disagree on issues of formatting (Small issues, yes, but issues). I'd just like to build a consensus on which of those two formats I should be emulating for the other 25. -Achowat (talk) 14:13, 13 December 2011 (UTC)

Which format do you prefer?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 16:39, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

I think 17's unsortable WikiTable is preferable to 25's list. I'd definitely prefer that look. -Achowat (talk) 17:44, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good. Is that what we are going with?--Tomwsulcer (talk) 20:19, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Without objection. (Sorry, but my WP:WPPP ways never die) -Achowat (talk) 18:31, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Old Notes

Ask all your queries about assessment or this competition here or on my talk page. Thank you and Happy assessment! Yasht101

Assessment for WP US

copied from User talk:Agathoclea

I thought that it was a failed project. There have been similar projects in India and Pakistan which were big success. To make this US project successful, we have got to convey the message about the project to members of WP US. Can we make a bot request for it or should we contact a bot operator for it? Regards, Yasht101 08:19, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Well even if you achieve 30% of tagged articles it will be a success. In fact you will never get to 100% I have tried that with WP:Germany - did a big cleanout - but the articles keep on coming. I have awb access, so I can spam members of the project. But the message has to be practical and needs to include links to relevant tools and pages to watchlist. EG if you get people to watchlist the log pages they get a regular reminder about the project tagging. And the more people you have taking a look at the logs the more vandalism on obscure articles gets caught. Start a subpage with the proposed message and I can add some input and we can ask at the main project page for some input before we spam it out. Waiting a day or two will not hurt. Agathoclea (talk) 08:28, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

Could Some People Here Please Take a Look at this Article and Try to Improve it?

List of United States Presidential autobiographies. I created this article, but no one seems to be editing or improving it, which is disappointing considering that this article has a great purpose. Thank you. Futurist110 (talk) 22:52, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

U.S. military response during the September 11 attacks is high importance, in good shape, but still a start class

I think U.S. military response during the September 11 attacks has been in fairly decent shape since the end of 2009. (Before then it was a hive of conspiracy theories and blame, but the Mediation Cabal helped us out.) It's in-depth and pretty well balanced. Maybe not GA, but it's certainly not Start class. Anyone care to give it a review? Thanks! Dcs002 (talk) 03:10, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Looking for Americans renouncing citizenship in records numbers in the assessment table

I added the redirect Americans renouncing citizenship in records numbers to this wikiproj by adding the banner to its talk-page on 18 January 2016‎ . However, I don't see this page in the redirects here? Thanks in advance, Ottawahitech (talk) 20:43, 23 January 2016 (UTC)please ping me