Wikipedia talk:Content assessment

Remove A-class?

I am proposing to remove A-class from the global assessment scale. The problem is that there is no Wikipedia-wide process for assessing articles as A-class, such as the GA and FA processes. However there is also an historical precedent that a lone editor cannot/should not assess articles as A-class. Therefore it is effectively impossible for most articles to ever be assessed as A-class.

A very small number of WikiProjects (e.g. MILHIST have an active A-class review process, but this will only apply to articles within their scope. There are quite a few projects which claim to assess A-class articles, but have not done so for many years. Most projects have never assessed A-class articles.

My proposal is to drop this from the global assessment scale, and allow projects such as MilHist to continue assessing articles within their scope. There is no real need for a quality class between GA and FA anyway. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:03, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

At the very least, A-class should be reformed if not removed entirely. It serves very little purpose in the global assessment scale except to confuse the process. This might get more responses if the Village Pump is notified, assuming it hasn't already been. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:57, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

I'll let Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Project-independent quality assessments be resolved first I think, but perhaps later it would be a good proposal — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:03, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I concur that without a global system and only 1 (?) active WikiProject system, putting A-Class in with the rest of the grades is confusing, and it should probably be moved down to the non-standard grades section. I understand the desire for a middleground between GA (being decent, meeting all the standards) and FA (being exemplar), however, without major reform (a global system or at the very least more WikiProject adoption), the only thing this does is confuse people who might think this just another individual assessment (like B and C). ^Clyde!_Franklin! 04:54, 7 February 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that there is no Wikipedia-wide process for assessing articles as A-class, such as the GA and FA processes Would it be worth it to create one? The nice thing about A-class is that it's less intimidating than FA-class, while being pretty darn close (with only writing & style improvements left to do), so it helps reduce the "gap" between GA and FA. On the other hand, FA-class being "intimidating" may not be a real problem, in practice.

I'd like to hear what the MILHIST people find useful about A-class. User:Hawkeye7, any thoughts? Does it help incentivize article expansion? DFlhb (talk) 13:04, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

My opinion is that we do not need a level between GA and FA. A common confusion is that editors do not know the difference between A and GA/FA. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 13:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

I completly agree with nom, little more to say Starship 24 (talk) 14:48, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose A higher grade than GA is very much needed, because GA is a very low bar; basically B class with a review by a single editor, although most GA articles are of higher quality than the minimum required. GA is just another individual assessment like B and C. MilHist articles are normally run through A class (but not GA) before attempting FA, resulting in a much higher success rate. It definitely incentives both article expansion and the creation of higher quality articles. This has become a hallmark of the MilHist project. The high quality of MilHist articles has been noted outside Wikipedia, as has the presence of robust peer review processes. A class requires review by at least three editors, plus source and image reviews, which eliminates many of the issues with GA. It is not a middle ground between GA and FA; it is almost identical to FA in its requirements, but more structured. Unfortunately, FA is of no real value as an incentive to article improvement because it has highly restrictive nomination rules that prevent most articles from ever even being nominated! If A-class were abolished, our highest classification would be GA. I think that would set both MilHist and Wikipedia back a long way. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:19, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Hawkeye, we are talking about the global quality scale here, not the MilHist one. We can't retain a class if there is no process to assess it! If MilHist project were prepared to share their experience and set up a Wikipedia-wide A-class assessment process, then that would be definitely worth consideration. But in the absence of an assessment process, the class will be never be used, so I can't see any benefit in it. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:47, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

A class will be used under a global system ; articles that currently have the rating will retain it. MilHist is not the only project that uses it; WP:WikiProject US Roads is another big user, and there are others. (eg WP:WikiProject Australia) Also several projects that do not have their own A-class assessment process already accept A class ratings issued by other projects. (eg WP:WikiProject Aviation, WP:WikiProject Ships) Under the proposed global classification scheme, all projects opting in will accept an A-class rating issued by one of the projects which does have a process, just as they will accept the lower ratings. Having a classification higher than GA is a sine qua non for MilHist though. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

all projects opting in will accept an A-class rating issued by one of the projects It's my understanding that under the proposal, A-class ratings would remain project-specific, so a bot would need to enforce this class inheritance. Or am I misunderstanding your comment?

I'll note that I'd strongly support making A-class article-wide, not project-specific, even if we don't start a Wikipedia-wide A-class review process. Those pages went through a review by multiple independent editors, so their rating has some weight. DFlhb (talk) 23:15, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

This is basically how I feel we should go about implementing a global A-Class — if it passes one project's A-Class review, then accept that review globally (i.e. on the banner shell once that transition is rolled out). I assume WikiProjects' A-Class criteria are reasonably consistent. —pythoncoder (talk | contribs) 02:06, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

With Hawkeye's arguments, I'm more solidly in favor of turning A-class into a Wikipedia-wide thing. This might actually help reduce the WP:FAR backlog too. DFlhb (talk) 21:35, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Well, we already did this for WP:Peer review. I think it is a good idea in its own right. Like Peer Review, it would require someone to administer it, and Bot and template work would be required to set it up. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:59, 9 February 2023 (UTC)

Just chiming in with my 2¢, I've always kind of seen A-Class as the top class a project can give an article. Whereas FA is a community rating. –Fredddie™ 01:03, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that was the situation in the past. There is now a move to make quality assessments independent of projects (see Template talk:WikiProject banner shell#Recap of approved proposal for background). It would be fantastic if A-class reviews could become a community process. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:13, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Alternatively since A-class is always higher than GA. We could pass A-class globally, with the projects that support it categorising it into their own A-class categories; with those that do not support it defaulting it to their GA category. The question is do we want A-class support as the default or the opt-in. As far as I understand, Hawkeye supports the former while Martin & DFlhb support the latter. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 17:24, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

To clarify, I very much support it as the default, i.e. if an article is rated A-class by one project, the article's global class should be A-class, and it should be inherited by all protects that haven't opted out of the standard grades. That already happens sometimes, though it's not universal, and I don't know how common it is. My reasoning is that A-class is both thorough and independent (relying on multiple editors), and that it would not be helpful to categorise articles as GA-class if they met more stringent criteria.

However, I believe User:Red-tailed hawk also previously sided with A-class being "opt-in" at WP:VPR.

I additionally support A-class reviews being formalised outside of WikiProjects, though I don't stake anything else on the outcome of that proposal. A-class being a global class, with A-class reviews remaining (temporarily?) project-specific, is a minor incoherence, but not a major issue. DFlhb (talk) 19:21, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think you could say for certain that every A-class article has passed a Good article nomination. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 20:00, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I can say for certain that not every one has. There are two reasons for submitting an article to GA: (1) so it can become part of a Good Topic or Featured Topic or (2) so it can be run at DYK. The situation CX Zoom describes is the status quo: where an article possesses both ratings, it is graded as A on projects that have A class and GA on the others. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:54, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Oppose removal - the MILHIST A-Class assessment policy has been a great success for the project. And, like Hawkeye notes, for the value of MILHIST A-Class, compare the pass rates at FAC of articles that have gone through A-Class review vs. those MILHIST ones that haven't. I'm also generally opposed to making this a community-wide assessment. Much of the value of it lies in getting specialist attention to articles, while if it were made a community assessment process, that would largely turn it into peer review with a shiny ribbon at the end or a FAC-lite. Hog Farm _Talk 13:42, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

It seems that MilHist does A-class very well but most projects do not deal well with it. Options are: build on MilHist's success and experience to make a process which will work for other projects, or remove A-class from the project-wide scale and let these projects go their own way with assessments. To me, the former is preferable. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:06, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't think changing how the process works is going to magically make things work for other projects - the MILHIST example has been around for years, open for emulation. I think there's been a A-Class process for some road task forces and maybe tropical cyclones, but nothing widespread. The larger problem is that the majority of WikiProjects are dead, with many of the still semi-active ones not really doing much organized content work. I just don't see how dicking around with A-Class and possibly breaking things for MILHIST where it actually works is somehow going to motivate moribund projects to do content assessment work that they haven't done in years. Hog Farm _Talk 14:31, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

I would like there to be a recognised process for articles in other topic areas to become A-class. For example, an editor who writes an excellent article about an opera should be able to request an A-class review, but Wikipedia:WikiProject Opera is moribund, so what can they do? Peer reviews successfully made the transition to be a community process - could we not do something similar for A-class? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:20, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

IMO, that is missing the main point of A-class reviews: an A-class review is conducted by a fellow topic editor- which means that, unlike at GAN where reviewers frequently have no prior knowledge/understanding of the topic area, an A-class reviewer has the background knowledge to check and comprehend any fiddly details and notice if something is off.

For instance, I have little to no knowledge of military tactics, weaponry, etc. If I reviewed a MILHIST article at GAN, I wouldn't notice if a paragraph said something that is technically impossible (a wrong pairing of ammunition and gun, for instance), so long as it is grammatically correct and formatted properly. Likewise, I don't believe a MILHIST reviewer would necessarily notice during a GAN if a fossil genus of, say, silesaurid (a group of dinosaurs, essentially) was stated to be a sister-genus to Cotylorhynchus- this is patently impossible, as Cotylorhynchus is not a dinosaur at all! But so long as it is cited, grammatically correct, and formatted properly, if the reviewer doesn't happen to check that exact reference for accuracy, it won't be caught. A fellow paleontologist, however, is going to look at that sentence and ask what the hell you were thinking.

Conversely, that industrious MILHIST editor might not notice during an A-class review that a military article is a tad too technical, and that the common reader needs some things explained in smaller words. I, as someone whose knowledge of military history comes primarily from high school classes and Sabaton lyrics, am going to notice that during a GAN. SilverTiger12 (talk) 15:06, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

Silvertiger, I think you are referring to the second method per Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria, Formal WikiProject review. Martin comment is more regarding the Basic method, where wikiprojects without review criteria simply make the proposal in the article's talk page.

Although I have to point out that according to my understanding there is already a basic criteria, some of it is listed and specifically is Featured Article criteria except the style requirement and minor issues. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 22:21, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I also oppose the removal of A-class, despite being from a nearly inactive wikiproject, because I see the value in both A-class (a specialist peer review) and GA-class (a general policy-compliance & accessibility) reviews. So removing or changing A-class would just be a net loss to Wikipedia. SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:07, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Difference between A-class and GA?

Moved from Wikipedia talk:Content assessment/A-Class criteria

It's not clear which is a higher designation or what the differences are from this page; I'd suggest addressing that. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:51, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

They're sort-of parallel. Their criteria are different, but both are a superset of B-Class and both are a subset of FA-Class. A-Class is normally decided by a WikiProject, but GA-class is decided by an individual from WP:GAN. A-Class requires peer review; GA does not. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 09:16, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

To put it another way, they both need a hell of a lot of work to become featured articles. ——Serial ^# 10:07, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

I agree it is very confusing. I suggested A-class could be removed Wikipedia talk:Content assessment#Remove A-class? but there were other ideas in that thread — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I suggest making A-class articles above B-class but below GA. The current position is highly confusing. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 00:19, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

It would make intutive sense that the ranking system should go C-B-A-GA-FA rather than C-B-GA-A-FA, but to the extent that A-class is currently recognised it is a more stringent process than GA demanding both a higher standard of article and a more thorough review, and I can't see that there's any need or desire for any more fine gradations of article assessment between B and GA classes. Meanwhile there is a fairly major leap in standards from GA to FA, and even though most projects don't do A-class assessment there seems to be a more obvious quality gap there for another assessment process to sit. The other alternative would be to rebrand GA as A-class and vice versa, but that would confuse everyone who is already involved in the system for no real tangible benefit. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:44, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

My understanding is that A-class reviews are conducted by fellows in the same WikiProject- that is, reviewed by people with preexisting knowledge of the general subject. A-class reviews by MILHIST editors, for instance, are conducted by people who already have extensive knowledge of military topics. So more of a review by fellow "experts", in a sense.

Whereas GA reviews are conducted by a stranger, someone with possibly no preexisting knowledge of the subject. I've half-noticed that many GA reviews tend to focus more on general requirements (sourcing, formatting, grammar, images) and accessibility. Whereas A-class reviews tend to be much more topic-focused and technical.

My conclusion, therefore, is that both A-class and GA-class reviews are good and needful. A-class for checking whether all the details are technically correct, GA for checking whether it is still accessible and comprehensible to the average reader. SilverTiger12 (talk) 16:00, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I think that A-class reviews need to remain, and remain as a higher standard than GA, breaching the massive gap between a GA-quality article and an FA-quality article. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 16:44, 17 April 2023 (UTC)

As brainstorming, what about changing the name from A-class to CHA (Choice Article) or something less prone to confusion? As it is, its rating seems to also be less formal than GA. Therefore, such rating needs more formality as well, as I find the GA system more formal and established, even though supposedly it is a rung below. From the Category:A-Class articles I am having a hard time finding the icon  A in the pages, unlike the ubiquitous GA icon in relevant pages. In fact, many have the GA icon and others no icon at all. What a mess. Thinker78 (talk) 05:01, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

(half-joking) What about renaming it to Exceptional Article? Then it'd go C-B-GA-EA-FA, which is even more intuitive! SilverTiger12 (talk) 14:29, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I think Exceptional Article would be above Featured Article though. Cheers! Thinker78 (talk) 22:10, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

@SilverTiger12 maybe you are right. I support moving A-class to below GA and the current criteria for A-class being changed to Exceptional Article, above GA and below FA. I do think that the intuitive order should be C, B, A, GA and not as currently C, B, GA, A. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 18:18, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I went with Exceptional Article because then it would go GA-EA-FA, which is also alphabetical, since so many people here are saying that the current order of C-B-GA-A-FA is un-intuitive. SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:59, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

GA-EA-FA is not alphabetical. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 20:58, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I disagree about A-class being a "mess"; there's no A-class topicon simply because it's a WikiProject specific process, and thus treated as a project-class, not as an article-class, unlike GA or FA. You are in essence proposing we rename A-class to "Exceptional", and that we create a new criteria between B and GA that takes the "A-class" name; I don't see a benefit in either change. DFlhb (talk) 19:50, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Interim solution

There's a preliminary proposal to generalize A-class to a Wikipedia-wide process. But here's a more practical interim proposal: clarify on this page that if an article has been reviewed as A-class by one project, A-class should be used in the WPBannerShell as the article class.

This is a minor change (in fact, this is current practice on a significant portion of A-class articles, though not all). Almost all projects should support this, since A-class is one of the default classes in Template:Class mask (i.e., non-FQS). DFlhb (talk) 22:51, 20 April 2023 (UTC)

@DFlhb If it's going to be a wider process, I think it should be moved to below GA, as per my 18:18, 24 April reply to SilverTiger12. My main point is for A-class to be more intuitive and cause less confusion. It did cause me some confusion. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 18:22, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I have always seen A as parallel to GA, neither above it nor below it. The respective reviews consider different aspects, some overlapping. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 18:47, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

I've replied in the subsection above — DFlhb (talk) 19:47, 24 April 2023 (UTC)

Retain or remove A-class?

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

---

Trying to move this forward ... I feel we have a basic choice to make: retain A-class on the standard scale and turn it into a community process rather than a specific WikiProject process, or remove it from the standard scale and projects that wish to continue using it can opt-out. I will try and summarise the ramifications of each below.

• Retain A-class on the standard scale.
  • An A-class rating from any WikiProject will be extended to all projects and used as the project-independent quality rating.
  • Develop some kind of light-weight community process for an article of any topic to get an A-class review. This will complement (not replace) any existing processes used by WikiProjects. Consider some kind of quid pro quo system where an editor who wants an A-class review is encouraged/required to help with another A-class review.
  • Improve wording to clarify where A-class fits within other grades on the grading scheme.
• Remove A-class from the standard scale.
  • WikiProjects currently using A-class will continue doing so.
  • These projects will opt out of the project-independent quality rating system.
  • The project-independent assessment of articles currently rated as A-class will be listed as GA-class (if they are good articles) or B-class (if they are not).

I feel that consensus is headed towards the former option, but it would be helpful if editors could confirm their opinion below. Once this question has been resolved, we can make better progress on the next steps — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 07:06, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd rather keep A-class on the standard scale and in the hands of the WikiProjects. SilverTiger12 (talk) 13:53, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

Sorry but I just can't see how that will work. There are only a few projects that do A-class reviews and it is not acceptable to have a grade on the standard scale that will be inaccessible to most articles. And of course we just had a proposal that was unanimously supported by the community for quality assessments which are independent of WikiProjects — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:09, 25 April 2023 (UTC)

• I support the former. I think if an article passes the A-class criteria, all WPs should show it as A, and a community process should be added. CLYDE ^{TALK TO ME}/_{STUFF DONE} 14:09, 26 April 2023 (UTC)

I support retaining A-class on the standard scale but either renaming it to keep its criteria as almost Featured Article, or modifying its criteria to be above B-class but below Good Article, in order to have an intuitive scale of C, B, A, Good Article, Featured Article, as opposed to C, B, Good Article, A, Featured Article. Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 21:35, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

• I like A. To me, we're already almost there, since the global A-class page already outlines a way to get any page to A-class regardless of WikiProject. If we keep A-class global, we need global criteria (we have none currently), so I suggest just adopting MILHIST's A-class criteria & FAQ. We'll need a centralised place to put A-class reviews (complement, not replacement as you say). And we'd need to incorporate support for basic A-class features into Meta and the Shell (because most projects don't use the A-class hook; but the shell and individual project templates still need to automatically generate the review link if |A-class=current is passed in, process cats, etc.) DFlhb (talk) 22:23, 28 April 2023 (UTC)

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

Where should A-class fit with other assessments?

Numerous editors have suggested that the current scale is confusing, as it is not clear how A-class fits with other assessments. It seems that people want a linear scale so A-class should be strictly between GA and FA (option 1) or between B and GA (option 2). Some notes and ramifications on each below:

1. C-B-GA-A-FA
   • The current criteria mainly supports this order (it is for an article which is very close to being a featured article).
   • It would be logical that GA is a pre-requirement for an article to be considered for A-class. If an article loses its A-class status, then it should be regraded as GA-class.
   • Current A-class articles which are not good articles, will need reviewing/reassessing.
   • Similarly, it would be logical that A-class is a pre-requirement for an article to be considered for FA-class. If an article loses its FA-class status then it should be regraded as A-class.
   • A top-icon for A-class should be considered.
2. C-B-A-GA-FA
   • Proposed by several editors above, but would be a significant change in the current description.
   • A-class articles which are also Good Articles should be regraded as GA-class.
   • It would be logical that A-class is a pre-requirement for an article to be considered for GA-class. If an article loses its GA-class status, then it should be regraded as A-class.

Opinions sought on the options above — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 10:55, 10 May 2023 (UTC)

A-class icon question

Is the A-class icon supposed to be in A-class articles (reportedly one notch above GA) main pages, like the GA icon? Regards, Thinker78 (talk) 22:25, 18 April 2023 (UTC)

No, I don't think we currently have a top-icon for A-class. The other ones are in Category:Top icon content award templates. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 11:09, 19 April 2023 (UTC)

I have always found it weird that we have a GA-icone but not a A-icon. BabbaQ (talk) 08:32, 12 June 2023 (UTC)

Relevant discussion

I don't think an invite was sent here, so just plopping for the record, the proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 198#Project-independent quality assessments passed and will have significant impact on content assessment once implemented. Cheers, {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 05:57, 4 May 2023 (UTC)

Proposal: Reclassification of Current & Future-Classes as time parameter

Wikipedia:Content assessment#Non-standard grades currently allows WikiProjects to use "Current-class" and "Future-class" ratings. Nothing stops an article about 2024 Summer Olympics from C-class and Future-class simultaneously, yet under the current system only one could be assigned. (WP Olympics or any other WP on its talk page do not use Future-class, so all of them classify it as C-class, but you get the point.) "class" ratings are typically based on the quality of article (or the type of page in case of non-articles). These two classes also break this very uniform format of assigning class ratings, and presents a difficulty to enact the consensus to make quality assessments global. Hence, it is my proposal to split these two classes into a new parameter |time=, where WPs can now set |time=Current and |time=Future, while simultaneously being able to set quality-based classes. This will be a gradual change. First, the code will be written out, then a bot will reassign |class=Current to |time=Current, and |class=Future to |time=Future. No manual labour will be required to implement this change, and interested projects will retain the time-based categorisations. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 20:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Survey (Current & Future-Classes)

• Support as proposer. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 20:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
• Comment—WP:USRD/et al. use Future-Class for highways not yet open to the public. The projects use a content-based system in assessing articles in addition to looking at other measures of quality. Some of that content is hard to write/source until a highway has been opened, so it doesn't make sense for us to assess articles on unopened highways the same way. The projects have opted out of the common assessments, so as long as this proposal wouldn't prohibit the continuing us of Future-Class, we wouldn't care what the result is. Imzadi 1979 → 22:21, 1 July 2023 (UTC)
• Oppose. We (WP:ESC) use "future class" for events that have not yet happened. It feels weird to assign them a class when they are still experiencing major edits and expansions, sometimes weekly. Any rating like stub or start can quickly become out of date. Having future class is a reminder to go back and check when the event is over and provide the "final" class assessment. This has worked well for us for probably a decade now. Now I understand that |time= could also serve that purpose to some extent, but my take is that these articles are changing too rapidly to be able to ensure accurate or up to date class assessments. Grk1011 (talk) 23:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  As you said, "Future" categorisation will be retained, just split away from class parameter, so it should not break the workflow of your project. Also, does prohibiting class assignment based on "Future" status work? If an article is assigned "Future-time", it will not be categorised under any class. Some projects use a similar approach for B-class assignment, where simply setting B=yes doesn't work, but each of 6 B-class criteria have to be set to yes. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 06:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  I would be interested in having a future label as long as it doesn't allow for a class rating to be set. Maybe that could be WikiProject-specific, but I don't speak for all of the WikiProject. As I described above, I feel uncomfortable assigning a "grade" to something that changes frequently and would prefer to wait until the article is no longer about a "future" event to assign a final class rating. Grk1011 (talk) 14:39, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• An interesting idea and thanks to CX Zoom for bringing this up. To clarify my understanding, you are proposing to add a |time= parameter to certain WikiProject banner templates (e.g. Template:WikiProject Eurovision) which would then allow them to opt-in to the standard quality assessment scale while still tracking the future/current/past status of their articles? This sounds promising. In general I support separating status-type assessments from quality-type assessments. Could we at some point also rename the categories so they are not of the XXX-Class format? Please see also my parallel proposal to rename the non-article classification categories. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:38, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
• Support – I agree that there is no reason that an article shouldn't be able to be, say "C-class", and also "Future-class", at the same time. As to Imzadi 1979's point, I don't see it as a big deal if an article were both "Stub-class" and also "Future-class" (indeed, that would likely be the case most of the time). But I also agree that "Future-class" without C/Start/Stub(/etc.)-class should be an allowed option for some WP's – so long as the system is implemented that way, it's fine. --IJBall (contribs • talk) 15:47, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
• Separating status assessments from quality assessments is a cool idea, but the devil is in the details. Assessment tables (aka "WP1.0 tables") are central to many WikiProject workflows, but those tables have only two dimensions: quality and importance. If we add more dimensions, like "time", or "type" (e.g. List), assessment info can no longer be shown in one table. At best, we would need multiple tables (quality by importance, type by importance, time by importance). I don't think that's worth it unless we figure out a better way. DFlhb (talk) 18:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Discussion (Current & Future-Classes)

• I will notify each of the WikiProjects which use Current and/or Future-Classes to participate in this discussion. Will let you know, when that is done. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 20:30, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  Done. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 07:21, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• This also opens up the issue of what happens regarding the past. Should there be parameter values for other time periods? Noah^Talk 21:02, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  Currently, it does not exist, but if we get the |time= parameter and a WikiProject wants to opt-in for past because it may help in their organisation, they should be able to. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  What I was thinking was different parameters for various past periods. Noah^Talk 21:43, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  I'd assume this is possible, although I'd defer to @MSGJ on that matter because he's the one doing all sorts of technical implementations now. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:46, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

  I think it would be up to each separate wikiproject on what they wish to track. I don't necessarily think it should be within the scope of this page, which is primarily about the quality assessments of articles. — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:40, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

• If adding "future" and "current" options, then I do think "past" should also be implemented for tours that have concluded as it would otherwise feel like an incomplete idea, but am not sure about breaking it down into different time periods in the way Hurricane Noah mentions. Having three different options feels like a simpler thing to work with. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 14:13, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
• I feel we should be cautious about introducing a new field if there is no demand by any WikiProject for its use, independent of flagging that an article is unsuitable for a content assessment rating due to its subject being too far into the future for a stable assessment. I think it may be an ineffective use of time for editors to flag all articles as future, current, and other values when nothing is planned to be done with this information. isaacl (talk) 17:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  While sending mass messages to WikiProjects through lists of Current & Future-Class categories, I have realised that most are inactive, with no discussion at talk pages for over a year or two, their empty or outdated categories also reflect this. But some WPs, mainly the roads & climate related ones are very active with their use of Future & Current classes. So, there needs to be some arrangement for them. —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 17:15, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

  Yes, but since they're not the ones proposing this change, their current needs are met by the current setup. I'm not clear who is going to use an independent time parameter. I appreciate the theoretical desire to have an independent field, but from a practical standpoint, if no one's going to use it independently from the class assessment, I think editor effort may be better spent elsewhere. isaacl (talk) 17:19, 2 July 2023 (UTC)