Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Schools/Assessment/Archive 3
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Article and importance ratings
Following recent discussions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Schools it has been suggested that we provide more explicit guidelines to show how the articles are assessed. I have prepared a draft which can be found here User:Dahliarose/Sandbox 2. Dahliarose 11:34, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- I wish to join the assessment team. Can i immediately join the assessment team as an expert, or would you like for me to join as an apprentice first? Twenty Years 15:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- Welcome. I'm still new to the team, though I've been monitoring the process for some time. I suggest you wait and see what the others think. I found it useful to start with a non-English speaking country category. This gives you a good idea of the range of schools within a country. Also some of the articles had already been assessed by other editors so it provides a useful guide to your assessment standards. Dahliarose 20:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- Joining the team. The process is set out on this page. What we need is some trust. Try assessing ten, twenty or thirty articles and set them out as the others are. Someone will look over them. You'll make mistakes and finally we'll have mutual trust in each other. When I say "we" then I mean your fellow team members. You could choose to help with schools that begin with B or choose a country that youve never heard of and try to do all of them Victuallers 22:39, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- Added my name to assess D, E & F Schools. Ive been assessing some WP:WA articles, alot of my experience is with schools. I have major issues with school articles that are full of schoolcruft. Ive assessed about 5 articles, so if you want to look at the assessments, theyre at the bottom of the talk pages of the article (just view my contribs). Cheers. Twenty Years 04:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have had a look through your assessments - quite good. I would suggest you list your assessments on WP:SCH/A for now so everyone can see them easily. In particular you should always list assessments which give High / Top importance and/or B quality - I notice you have given one article High importance. The only assessment I in particular disagree with is Damascus College. This has a picture, a info-box and several sections - I think it is well established enough for Start class. Some of the importance ratings given might be debatable as well - but we will see what the others think. Your assessment comments are reasonably fair - though with some articles it is hard, try and keep criticism constructive - we want to encourage people to improve the articles. I have created new shortcuts (WP:SCH#WNTI,WP:SCH#GT, WP:SCH#S) which might be helpful when making assessments. Camaron1 | Chris 09:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
- I've had a look at the assessments which are generally fine. As Camaron has suggested your comments need to be transferred to the main page. Note that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of very old UK schools going back to something like the sixth century. Dame Alice Harpur School and Dallam School are both quite young in English terms and don't seem to be particularly noteworthy and perhaps should be low rather than mid. It would help if you could change the infobox parameter to no if the schools already have an infobox. It would also help if you could remind the school if they are not using the appropriate infobox for their particular country (there is now a standard infobox for all UK schools for example). Damai Secondary School has a long way to go before it could qualify as a B and needs a complete rewrite. The issue here is the copyright status of the school song. Perhaps a general comment about the trivial nature of the content might be more appropriate. I appreciate you are on a campaign to eliminate schoolcruft but we need to provide constructive and helpful criticism, especially for schools in non-English-speaking countries. Don't forget too that many people will not know what you mean by cruft so words such as trivial and non-encyclopedic would be better used instead. Also schoolcruft is only a personal essay not a guideline. You need to be careful that you are only recommending official policy and guidelines rather than your personal opinion. There is a useful section on the main WPSchools page entitled "What not to include".Dahliarose 12:30, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
- For the record, Camaron has already suggested that User:Twenty Years should place his assessments on the list on the main page to start with. I put a request on Twenty Years' talk page yesterday to suggest that he should list his current assessments on the main page before making any further assessments. I have however noticed from his contribution history that a number of further assessments have been been done today and no assessment summaries have yet been posted. (There is at least one high in his assessments.) Dahliarose 12:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- I am going to paste all assessments to the assessment page if they are high/top importance or are B-Class or better. Pasting all of them there is just a waste of time/edits, purely because most of them are stub and low. If you have a problem with this, contact my talk page. Twenty Years 14:08, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- For the record, Camaron has already suggested that User:Twenty Years should place his assessments on the list on the main page to start with. I put a request on Twenty Years' talk page yesterday to suggest that he should list his current assessments on the main page before making any further assessments. I have however noticed from his contribution history that a number of further assessments have been been done today and no assessment summaries have yet been posted. (There is at least one high in his assessments.) Dahliarose 12:13, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- I've had a look at the assessments which are generally fine. As Camaron has suggested your comments need to be transferred to the main page. Note that there are literally hundreds if not thousands of very old UK schools going back to something like the sixth century. Dame Alice Harpur School and Dallam School are both quite young in English terms and don't seem to be particularly noteworthy and perhaps should be low rather than mid. It would help if you could change the infobox parameter to no if the schools already have an infobox. It would also help if you could remind the school if they are not using the appropriate infobox for their particular country (there is now a standard infobox for all UK schools for example). Damai Secondary School has a long way to go before it could qualify as a B and needs a complete rewrite. The issue here is the copyright status of the school song. Perhaps a general comment about the trivial nature of the content might be more appropriate. I appreciate you are on a campaign to eliminate schoolcruft but we need to provide constructive and helpful criticism, especially for schools in non-English-speaking countries. Don't forget too that many people will not know what you mean by cruft so words such as trivial and non-encyclopedic would be better used instead. Also schoolcruft is only a personal essay not a guideline. You need to be careful that you are only recommending official policy and guidelines rather than your personal opinion. There is a useful section on the main WPSchools page entitled "What not to include".Dahliarose 12:30, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have had a look through your assessments - quite good. I would suggest you list your assessments on WP:SCH/A for now so everyone can see them easily. In particular you should always list assessments which give High / Top importance and/or B quality - I notice you have given one article High importance. The only assessment I in particular disagree with is Damascus College. This has a picture, a info-box and several sections - I think it is well established enough for Start class. Some of the importance ratings given might be debatable as well - but we will see what the others think. Your assessment comments are reasonably fair - though with some articles it is hard, try and keep criticism constructive - we want to encourage people to improve the articles. I have created new shortcuts (WP:SCH#WNTI,WP:SCH#GT, WP:SCH#S) which might be helpful when making assessments. Camaron1 | Chris 09:59, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
- Added my name to assess D, E & F Schools. Ive been assessing some WP:WA articles, alot of my experience is with schools. I have major issues with school articles that are full of schoolcruft. Ive assessed about 5 articles, so if you want to look at the assessments, theyre at the bottom of the talk pages of the article (just view my contribs). Cheers. Twenty Years 04:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
Well if you don't want to list all your assessments on the list - don't, but it would be helpful if you did. I can not honestly say I am confident yet you are ready to be added to the experienced assessors group. You are getting through articles quickly - perhaps to quickly. Most of the assessment comments cover little more than notability, some comments on improvements in getting to the next rating would be good. Camaron1 | Chris 15:02, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- I think its just a case of being realistic, am i going to make a mistake between a stub and start class assessment, probably not, so why bother? I might make one with a B-Class one, so i will post it. High/Top notability is the same, i dont know how notable every school is, but im going to give it my best shot. Comments on improvements, that could work. I think that leaving the comment on the talk is best, where everyone can see them. I will focus on that improvements thing, Cheers. Twenty Years 15:10, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- Its important that we have consensus. I would regret not noting here that we are changing what we have agreed.... without discussion. Are we saying that everyone must put their assessments on the page unless they don't want to? I haven't looked at Twenty Years assessments in detail, but surely the decision is "experienced" or not? The only real meaning of this phrase is whether we ask people to put all their assessments on the page. This feels like a fudge. Victuallers 16:33, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- I understand that Twenty sees himself as experienced but I think he should still be required to post ALL Assessments just as we all did until this new system was worked out, I think it's important because underrating articles is as bad as overrating them. We have to see the assessments or we can't judge whether they are valid, it's as simple as that. Adam McCormick 19:22, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ok, well ill post them to you guys on the assessment page, we have a discussion, see whether im good enough then you can decide if i am an expert or not. Twenty Years 08:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- I note that despite Adam's warning you are still continuing to complete
assessments and that we are still waiting to see the appearance of your assessments on the project page. You are not giving us much confidence at present in your 'expert' abilities. Dahliarose 08:38, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- (reduce indent)I have been posting them to my sandbox, and will add them to the schools assessment page when i get small bundle (10-20). Dont want to waste edits. Posting them one by one is not only tedious, its pointless. Possibly you should look at users contribs (and edit summaries), and you will note what i have been doing. Cheers. Twenty Years 15:16, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have done but it is very difficult to keep monitor changes via someone's contribution history. There are points for discussion which the whole team of assessors needs to be involved with and it is very difficult without a central discussion point. There only four active assessors on this project and three out of those four assessors have suggested/asked that you post your assessments to this page. When the assessment process started everyone posted every assessment regardless of how trivial to this page. It is the only way to establish consistency. Dahliarose 15:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you for allowing me to continue my method of assessment posting. Twenty Years 15:45, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have not allowed you to continue your current method of assessment posting. You have been asked to make no further assessments until you have posted all the assessments which you have currently done to this page. There are not that many and it surely cannot be too difficult. Dahliarose 15:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- It matters little what you allow me to do. Ive posted 5. I am going to continue to do what i am doing to save time. Twenty Years 16:02, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have not allowed you to continue your current method of assessment posting. You have been asked to make no further assessments until you have posted all the assessments which you have currently done to this page. There are not that many and it surely cannot be too difficult. Dahliarose 15:47, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you for allowing me to continue my method of assessment posting. Twenty Years 15:45, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- I have done but it is very difficult to keep monitor changes via someone's contribution history. There are points for discussion which the whole team of assessors needs to be involved with and it is very difficult without a central discussion point. There only four active assessors on this project and three out of those four assessors have suggested/asked that you post your assessments to this page. When the assessment process started everyone posted every assessment regardless of how trivial to this page. It is the only way to establish consistency. Dahliarose 15:43, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
- Since you refuse to abide by the established process, I will be requesting comment, it is clear to me that you have no intention of following prior consensus and as you have already stated that you will continue to defy the process, this is our only choice. I will repost when my request has been posted. Adam McCormick 01:07, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
- (reduce indent) By continuing what im doing i mean that i will be adding my assessments to my sandbox, and adding them to the assessment page at the end of my session on here. I fail to see how a delay of ~3 hours is going to affect anything majorly. A RfC is quite extreme, and i think you have midunderstood what i have said i will be doing.Twenty Years 08:28, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
- I think you have misunderstood what has been said. We had asked for all of your existing assessments to be posted to the list not just a sample selection of five. I appreciate that you are now posting new assessments to the list but you were explicity asked not to do any new assessments until all your old asssessments had been listed. We need to establish in the first instance that your assessments are consistent with those of the other assessors. It is easier for everyone concerned if the assessments are published on the same page for future reference. It is not easy trying to keep up with an individual user's contribution trail. Dahliarose 11:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
- Ive added my early assessments to the list. Twenty Years 13:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
- I think you have misunderstood what has been said. We had asked for all of your existing assessments to be posted to the list not just a sample selection of five. I appreciate that you are now posting new assessments to the list but you were explicity asked not to do any new assessments until all your old asssessments had been listed. We need to establish in the first instance that your assessments are consistent with those of the other assessors. It is easier for everyone concerned if the assessments are published on the same page for future reference. It is not easy trying to keep up with an individual user's contribution trail. Dahliarose 11:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
- Thank you, I've looked over all of the posted assessments and the only discrepancy seems to be a slight difference in the Start/Stub thresholds the we use, otherwise, the assessments seem consistent with my experience on this project. My only minor concern is the profusion of the word "cruft" which I don't think distracts overly from the assessments. I believe that you have shown enough willingness to abide by our policies, however grudgingly, that I support promotion to Experienced Assessor. Adam McCormick 22:30, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not sure that we've had quite all the assessments posted here. I've found a couple more which I've added to the list just for the record. Perhaps Twenty could just sort out his signature. The other missing assessments will only be minor stubs/lows and don't really need bringing to attention. I'm happy with all the posted assessments and I support the promotion. I would suggest that in future, to save time, it's unnecessary to provide comments on the talk pages for articles which are trivial stubs. I'm personally finding it difficult to distinguish the boundary between stub and start, and it's perhaps possibly best for everyone to post borderline assessments here. I share the concern about the overuse/misuse of the word cruft. We need to try to provide constructive criticism. Dahliarose 23:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
- (reduce indent) Thank you for your show of faith. Twenty Years 03:25, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
- Re the boundary - at WP:AUS we decided that anything with no development was a stub and anything where development had commenced was a start. Development can mean different things to different people - I consider a filled in infobox as still being preliminaries if the article itself is still barely beyond a sentence or two. Note that at least one project which sometimes cross-assesses with WP:AUS has an entirely different idea that a start class has to meet certain listed minimum requirements, so what passes for a Start on ours might still be a stub on theirs. In order to free up assessors we also decided a long time ago that Stub/Low could be self-assessed on a new article - this of course is a problem if the article is neither Stub nor Low, but means that new stubs being created on minor topics - most of ours are suburbs or small towns, for example - don't take up an assessor's time. As there's a mix of ratings here, this may not work here, but I thought I'd share anyway. Also makes an assumption that Start will cover most states of development between Stub and GA except for the very top end. Orderinchaos 18:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
- The official guidelines state that a start class article must have "a meaningful amount of good content" and "at least one serious element of gathered materials" so it's really a question as to how this is interpreted. In the general scheme of things it doesn't really matter if a few starts are classified as stubs or the other way round. The importance ratings are more difficult. I don't have a problem with rating all schools from English-speaking countries with no content as stub/low. The problem arises with the schools from non-English-speaking countries and none of us have a clue about the education systems in these countries. These articles often have very little content but can sometimes have just sufficient information to tell you that they are that little bit special. We need to find some way of bringing schools like the Shishi Middle School in China (apparently c. 700 years older than the King's School, Canterbury which currently claims to be the oldest school in the world) to everyone's attention. Bear in mind too that many countries like China actively censor internet usage and even ban access to Wikipedia so even getting the article written is an achievement in itself. Dahliarose 00:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
- My general thoughts for a start class article is that it breifly covers a few (about 4) topics with an avg lead, inofboxes arent nescessary for a start IMO, but it makes it easier to get it.Twenty Years 03:54, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
- The official guidelines state that a start class article must have "a meaningful amount of good content" and "at least one serious element of gathered materials" so it's really a question as to how this is interpreted. In the general scheme of things it doesn't really matter if a few starts are classified as stubs or the other way round. The importance ratings are more difficult. I don't have a problem with rating all schools from English-speaking countries with no content as stub/low. The problem arises with the schools from non-English-speaking countries and none of us have a clue about the education systems in these countries. These articles often have very little content but can sometimes have just sufficient information to tell you that they are that little bit special. We need to find some way of bringing schools like the Shishi Middle School in China (apparently c. 700 years older than the King's School, Canterbury which currently claims to be the oldest school in the world) to everyone's attention. Bear in mind too that many countries like China actively censor internet usage and even ban access to Wikipedia so even getting the article written is an achievement in itself. Dahliarose 00:17, 9 September 2007 (UTC)
- Re the boundary - at WP:AUS we decided that anything with no development was a stub and anything where development had commenced was a start. Development can mean different things to different people - I consider a filled in infobox as still being preliminaries if the article itself is still barely beyond a sentence or two. Note that at least one project which sometimes cross-assesses with WP:AUS has an entirely different idea that a start class has to meet certain listed minimum requirements, so what passes for a Start on ours might still be a stub on theirs. In order to free up assessors we also decided a long time ago that Stub/Low could be self-assessed on a new article - this of course is a problem if the article is neither Stub nor Low, but means that new stubs being created on minor topics - most of ours are suburbs or small towns, for example - don't take up an assessor's time. As there's a mix of ratings here, this may not work here, but I thought I'd share anyway. Also makes an assumption that Start will cover most states of development between Stub and GA except for the very top end. Orderinchaos 18:19, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Top importance articles
I've now added a list of top importance school articles to the main school project page. In the process I discovered that Manchester Grammar School has been assessed as B/top by an editor who is a former pupil of the school. The article is clearly a B. It needs some re-organisation, and many more references. There is also some trivia (a long section about discipline) which is somewhat unencyclopaedic and should probably be removed. I'm not sure about the top importance. It has no former prime ministers like Eton and Harrow, though it does have a Nobel prize winner. It is one of a number of high-achieving independent selective English schools and probably merits no more than a high. What do the rest of the team think? I've excluded Manchester from the list, pending further discussion here. Dahliarose 20:08, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- Added some thoughts on the MGS page - basically B (just) and High. Victuallers 22:50, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
- I think the importance labelling is among the most subjective classifications possible and should be discontinued (all over wikipedia). However especially in this article the rating is even more subjective. Just to show about the only way I would attribute importance: Obviously all schools and universities I myself have attended are top important, and all that are not Dutch (my country) or English/US (wiki countries) cannot be more than mid-class. Trying to be more objective I would say that only schools that have turned out more than 10 internationally leading people (scientists, politicians, etc) can be top important. How this should be checked, I have no idea...
- In other words, I would suggest to discontinue the importance rating in this project. Arnoutf 14:20, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
- Giving importance ratings to articles as far as I am aware is related to the Wikipedia:Wikipedia 1.0 project, so it will need to be taken to a wider forum to be abolished. Although the current system is subjective, it is helpful in a number of ways to group articles by their importance to the project. With WikiProject Schools importance rating are given by consensus as much as possible, and always in controversial cases. Camaron1 | Chris 19:29, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
Concerning "Lather, Rinse, Repeat"
Pardon my facetious comment from back when I reformatted the page (six months ago, wow). I'm surprised it lasted this long as I'd forgotten it. Thanks for cleaning up after me. Adam McCormick 07:37, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
New Assessor
There's a new assessor making assessments without posting them. I have greeted him/her and asked him/her to post assessments here for our review. In the mean time, please have a look at Special:Contributions/Nikki311. Thanks Adam McCormick 16:10, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
- Welcome to the project Nikki. I see that you've been very busy and have done lots of assessments. Well done. I've only been through a few of the assessments so far and I'm happy with your assessments of the quality of the articles. I think however you need to make some adjustments to the importance ratings as you seem to have assessed everything as low importance so far whereas some of these schools are clearly quite significant. I've put a few examples on the assessment page to show which ones need changing. It might be an idea for you to read some of the previous assessments so that you can get an idea of the criteria we use for the importance ratings. We tend to be more lenient with the importance ratings for schools from non-English-speaking countries as they are currently very poorly represented. Dahliarose 17:19, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks. Sorry for not writing down my contributions at first, I wasn't aware that I had to, but I will now. I tend to be harsher with the importance ratings because that's how we do it in the other assessment projects I am in, but I'll do my best to modify that for you all. I read through the assessments you changed and I think I see the pattern: if they are from non-English-speaking countries, are on an important national list of best schools, or are several hundred years old, then the importance may be higher that low. Anything else I should look for when doing importance ratings? Nikki311 17:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Don't worry. I think each project works in a different way. The other thing we've been using to identify the more interesting schools are the alumni lists. It's probably best to err on the side of caution if the article is only very short or if the school's claims to fame and importance aren't backed up by references. It's a somewhat subjective system at the best of times. There is a draft of the policy on importance ratings here if it's of any help. I don't think you need to add straightforward low/stub/starts to the page now that you understand the system. User:Dahliarose/Sandbox 2. Dahliarose 19:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- I'll second that, as none of the assessments I saw were at all out of line. But before we list you among the expert assessors I'd like to hear from a couple of the others. Adam McCormick 23:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Do we assume from the silence that everyone is happy for Nikki to be promoted to a qualified assessor? Dahliarose 09:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
- Yeah, I am happy for her to be marked as experienced, I have seen no real issues with her assessments. Camaron1 | Chris 16:43, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
- Do we assume from the silence that everyone is happy for Nikki to be promoted to a qualified assessor? Dahliarose 09:54, 9 October 2007 (UTC)
- I'll second that, as none of the assessments I saw were at all out of line. But before we list you among the expert assessors I'd like to hear from a couple of the others. Adam McCormick 23:12, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Don't worry. I think each project works in a different way. The other thing we've been using to identify the more interesting schools are the alumni lists. It's probably best to err on the side of caution if the article is only very short or if the school's claims to fame and importance aren't backed up by references. It's a somewhat subjective system at the best of times. There is a draft of the policy on importance ratings here if it's of any help. I don't think you need to add straightforward low/stub/starts to the page now that you understand the system. User:Dahliarose/Sandbox 2. Dahliarose 19:46, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
- Thanks. Sorry for not writing down my contributions at first, I wasn't aware that I had to, but I will now. I tend to be harsher with the importance ratings because that's how we do it in the other assessment projects I am in, but I'll do my best to modify that for you all. I read through the assessments you changed and I think I see the pattern: if they are from non-English-speaking countries, are on an important national list of best schools, or are several hundred years old, then the importance may be higher that low. Anything else I should look for when doing importance ratings? Nikki311 17:44, 27 September 2007 (UTC)
Cleanup tags
Something I noticed while looking through some of the articles is that assessors have been tagging the articles with {{cleanup-school}} on the talk page. This tag goes in the article itself, not on the talk page. If it is on the talk page, the bots cannot properly date it, so it doesn't go into the correct monthly cleanup categories. Nikki311 23:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
- I've just spotted one of these changes for Stroud High School on my watch list. In this instance tt seems that the clean up tag was added by a bot User:Reedy Bot at the same time as the WPProject tag was added. Perhaps the Bot user needs to make some adjustments. Dahliarose 23:37, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Missing importance tags
I've just been looking at the latest assessment log and it would appear that a large number of articles have recently been assessed for article class but not importance. I've only looked at a few and I think it's TwentyYears who's done most of the assessments. Twenty are you planning to go back and give these articles importance ratings? It's much more helpful to do both at the same time. For the letters which you've completed have you actually done the importance ratings as well as the article class ratings? Dahliarose 21:27, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
- This is one of the most personally frustrating things that goes on in this project and I specifically editted BoxCrawler to record all such pages. I'll be running him again soon so that we have a complete list. I don't believe that leaving the importance of an article blank is at all acceptable. Adam McCormick 22:45, 7 November 2007 (UTC)
- Didnt think it to be an issue. I will go back and fix up my assessments, it was letters A-F. Twenty Years 00:25, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
- Many thanks. I've now discovered in fact that there is something called User:BetacommandBot which is automatically assessing lots of our school articles. A whole load have gone through on the last log for virtually every letter of the alphabet. The bot only seems to be assessing starts and stubs. If we are doing our own assessments then it certainly makes sense to do both importance and quality at once. I'm not sure whether the bot is a help or a hindrance. What do people think? Dahliarose 11:57, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
- I think the bot is doing a fine job. Why assess what the bot is already doing well enough. I think the bot may be just copying what other projects have assessed articles as? certainly my experience, alot of the articles ive assessed for EiA have been copied by the bot. Twenty Years 12:30, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
- I think that a bot if fine for class rating, but importance necessarily varies from project to project. However it is usually difficult to detirmine the importance of a stub or start article, so I'm not so worried about those. Adam McCormick 22:40, 13 November 2007 (UTC)
Importance Ratings
- The importance assessments have always been subjective to a certain extent.
- Fort Street High School has been assessed as having Mid importance within schools.
- Newington College has been assessed as having High importance withing schools.
- Fort Street High School was the first government secondary school in Australia.
- Newington College was a founding member of the Athletic Association of the Great Public Schools of New South Wales.
It would appear to me, even with my bias in this case (I attend Fort Street High) that the assessment for one or both of these schools have been misjudged. The assessor on Newington College appears to have been influenced by comments on the talk page, which indicates the Notability of a great number of the school's headmasters. However, if one examines those pages, you will find that most or all of them are not notable in their own sense, but rather only because they have served as headmasters/presidents at Newington College. These pages contain a brief biography of their life, and little explanation reference to notability. Being a headmaster of a secondary school does not automatically give notability. Notability is NOT inherited. This therefore almost completely invalidates the basis of giving the school high importance.
And one last query: IF the history section at Fort Street High School was improved to high standards, would that be grounds for reassessing importance?
I leave it to the community here at WP:SCHOOLS to decide whether my case is valid. Jame§ugrono 09:17, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
- That seems an odd assessment of the careers of the headmasters and presidents when you consider that this is a list of some of the other posistions they held:-
- Founding Principal Wesley College, Auckland
- President Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Church
- Founding Headmaster Tupou College
- Founding Headmaster Wesleyan Ladies College
- Founding Headmaster Galt Grammar School
- Professor of Classics University of Toronto
- Founding Headmaster Sydney Boys' High School
- Professor of Classics & English Literature University of Tasmania
- Headmaster Sydney Grammar School
- Professor of Mathematics University of Tasmania
- Professor of Classics and Ancient History University of Western Australia
- Dean of Graduate Studies University of Melbourne
- Professor of Mathematics Rutgers University
I wonder sometimes when I read such comments if people exactly read articles. Waterdanks (talk) 06:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
- The importance ratings are somewhat subjective and it can be very difficult to assess an article if you have no knowledge of the schools in the country in question. Assessments are based on the content of the existing article, and some schools are probably under-rated simply because they haven't made their importance clear. If people disagree with the assessment then they can come back and ask for a second opinion. I've looked at the articles on both these schools. I know there's been a lot of discussion about the importance rating of Newington College. I don't think the headmasters came into the equation. The very impressive and lengthy alumni list was probably the most decisive factor for the high importance rating, and I think this rating is justified. In my view Fort Street High School should also be high importance. It is not only the first government school in Australia but it also has a long list of important alumni including the first prime minister of Australia. I would be quite happy to upgrade it. What do others think? Dahliarose 10:21, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
- I would have said somewhere between High and Top. High is fine by me. Must admit I had never heard of the school before wiki, and im from Australia, admittedly the other third of the country. Twenty Years 10:45, 14 November 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not going to push the point with Newington - after review of it's alumni, it's clear that I was biased enough not to consider them. I regret my hastiness, and have decided to be more careful in the future. Thanks for taking the time to reconsider it - I simply felt that putting it through the assessment process again might not give me a chance to present my case. Jame§ugrono 05:59, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Please feel free to come back any time and ask for a re-assessment. All comments are welcome. In the meantime I shall upgrade Fort Street to high importance. Dahliarose 08:44, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Though they are linked, importance is not a direct assessment of notability, WP:NOTINHERITED is for AFD and is not that relevant, and it is far from the case that I gave a "High" importance rating purely on the existence of headmasters articles. Also, in theory the content of a article is irrelevant of its importance assessment, though when you are unfamiliar with a country you have to look at as much as you can. It appears there is nothing wrong with my assessment of the Newington College, instead it was the assessment of Fort Street High School that needed reviewing, so I agree with the re-assessment by Dahliarose. Camaron1 | Chris 19:01, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- Fully endorse the above. Both are now correct. Twenty Years 00:23, 16 November 2007 (UTC)
- Again, I apologise for the rash comments above — that is just how it appeared to me from comments on the talk page. Once again, thank you for having a second look at this, as well as pointing out the consequences of poorly-reasoned arguments. Jame§ugrono 22:14, 17 November 2007 (UTC)
National Register of Historic Places
I've come across Edison Park Elementary School which is on the National Register of Historic Places, which made me wonder: is there a minimum importance rating for schools on this list? Are they all rated at least as Mid of even as High? I rated this one a Mid because it was on the list but there wasn't much else there, but if most are rated as High, I'd be more than happy to change it. Mostly, I just want to follow the precedent (if there is one). Nikki311 21:21, 15 November 2007 (UTC)
- I'm not an expert on the matter, but because there are many schools on the National Register of Historic Places rated as low importance, I'd have to say that the fact that a school is historic shouldn't be enough to rate a school as mid or high importance. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:14, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- I agree, it's not a big consideration as they don't necessarily have any importance to the schools project. Adam McCormick (talk) 05:19, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Rating school articles
Must a user be a member of WikiProject Schools to rate school articles? GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 00:09, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- We would rather you were because they are the project's ratings. It also gives us a degree of oversight as to your ratings. The process of joining isn't difficult it just requires that for the first few weeks you post all of your assessments here so we can look them over. Adam McCormick (talk) 05:17, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- We are trying to ensure that ratings are consistent within the project which is why there is a need for an initial review period. Perhaps you might like to add your name to the list of apprentice assessors and then post a few sample assessments. Non-controversial stubs/lows can probably be assessed by anyone. Any school which is assessed as high or top importance has to be posted on the list here. Dahliarose (talk) 10:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- I'm going to rate the Lely High School article as a stub because it has very little information. GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:42, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- Okay GO-PCHS-NJROTC (talk) 19:24, 26 January 2008 (UTC)
- We are trying to ensure that ratings are consistent within the project which is why there is a need for an initial review period. Perhaps you might like to add your name to the list of apprentice assessors and then post a few sample assessments. Non-controversial stubs/lows can probably be assessed by anyone. Any school which is assessed as high or top importance has to be posted on the list here. Dahliarose (talk) 10:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
WP:EDUCATION
I have noticed that alot of school articles have been tagged with {{WikiProject Education}} . I would ask that people from the assessment department please remove the Education project tag from the talk page, as the articles are not within the scope of WP:EDUCATION. Thanks. Twenty Years 13:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)
{{WPSchools}}
As some of you may have noticed, there were three changes made to the assessment template which change some parts of its appearance and behavior. I disagree with one of them (the decreasing of the space around the image and assessment block) as it make very little difference in length and makes the template look more cluttered. Please weigh in on the discussion page. Thanks! Adam McCormick (talk) 00:20, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Importance Comment (Moved from project page)
- With regards to the rating of schools in the UK the following section might be helpful in discerning those articles of high and top importance: Independent school (UK)#Differing definitions. The following schools should be upgraded to high importance: Bedford School, Clifton College, Haileybury and Imperial Service College, Malvern College, Radley College, Rossall School, St Paul's School (London) - whilst Winchester College should be upgraded to top importance. Any questions - message me - LennyLeonardson (talk) 23:36, 27 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'm hoping that some of our contributors from the UK can comment on this. Please remember that "importance" in this case has nothing do do with what the UK thinks but what the importance to this project is. Thanks for your patience as we look into this. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
- I suspect some of these ratings do need adjusting. They've been assessed by various people and the ratings might not always have been consistent. Winchester is a very well known school and probably should be top importance. It already has articles in several other Wikipedia languages which testifies to its fame. We tend to have rather a lot of old well-known English schools. Does it matter if we have a disproportionate number of top high-importance English schools compared to other countries? Dahliarose (talk) 23:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'm of the opinion that there are going to be a disproportionate number of top importance English and American schools just because there are so many more of those schools in the project. I don't have any problems with these schools I just don't think one user should dictate importance to the project. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:28, 1 April 2008 (UTC)
- I suspect some of these ratings do need adjusting. They've been assessed by various people and the ratings might not always have been consistent. Winchester is a very well known school and probably should be top importance. It already has articles in several other Wikipedia languages which testifies to its fame. We tend to have rather a lot of old well-known English schools. Does it matter if we have a disproportionate number of top high-importance English schools compared to other countries? Dahliarose (talk) 23:27, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
- I'm hoping that some of our contributors from the UK can comment on this. Please remember that "importance" in this case has nothing do do with what the UK thinks but what the importance to this project is. Thanks for your patience as we look into this. Adam McCormick (talk) 02:07, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
Importance abuse
I was browsing the top-importance articles for schools and I found that some were improperly placed. For example, Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík is the oldest gym in Reykjavík, Iceland, yet it is marked as "top importance" to WP:SCHOOLS. Someone needs to go in there and fix some of those. Jedibob5 (talk) 01:22, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- Why is the "top" marking an issue. I see that you don't agree but why. Adam McCormick (talk) 01:51, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- The importance may need reviewing to perhaps drop it down to High or Mid. The assessment itself however looks to have done appropriately by Dahliarose, I am not sure which part of it is abuse. If you find any assessment you disagree, you can request re-assessment at WP:SCH/A, and it can always be discussed on the article's talk page as has happened in the past. Which reminds me there is a huge backlog there, and I will need need to clear it at some point if nobody beats me. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:15, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- I'm somewhat puzzled by this comment as normally people complain if schools are rated too low not too high! I did explain my reasons for the top importance rating on the school's talk page. I think we are all agreed that we want at least one top importance school from each country. This school is not only the oldest school in Iceland but has also educated most of the country's prime ministers. Does Jedibob know of some other schools in Iceland which are more important than this one? Dahliarose (talk) 19:21, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- After reviewing the article in detail, I endorse top importance for now. I get the impression that Jedibob5 may be confused on what is meant by gymnasium, which means a type of school, not a gym. The school also dates back to the 11th century which is quite rare to find, and as Dahliarose has said, it has a strong alumni history. Camaron | Chris (talk) 19:35, 30 April 2008 (UTC)
- Id happily endore this importance assessment by Dahliarose. Being the oldest school in the country, dating back to the 11th century and a strong alumni section seems to seal the deal for me. Five Years 05:55, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
- Ah. So it's an actual school. Thanks. I'm American, so when I think gymnasium, I think PE class. Sorry about that. 76.107.55.66 (talk) 23:46, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Talk Pages
I have made a proposal here regarding this page. Please discuss it on that page. Not here. Five Years 07:00, 5 May 2008 (UTC)