Template talk:Vgood/doc

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Contents 1 Redlinks 2 References/Template messages 3 Redlinks again 4 References revisited

[change] Redlinks

I disagree with point 5. If I come along afterwards and add a sentence containing a red link, will the article be demoted automatically? One or two red links should be fine. Add-on to point 4: categorisation. ...Aurora... 03:29, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If you can add a sentence with a redlink, then it is probably little trouble to make a stub-like definition for the subject covered in the redlink; or to point it to Wiktionary... --Eptalon 08:45, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

I can do that, can the newbies do that? Will they even know they should do that? ...Aurora... 11:14, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

At the point where you know how to add a sentence, you have found out how to edit articles; Making neophytes aware that a very good article is the result of a lengthy process is another thing. Which brings up the fundamental need to say that revision .... of this article was a very good one. If this solution is not good, then very good articles need to be (semi-)protected, so that only the users that have been around longer can edit them. How do other WPs solve the problem that a "very good article" can lose its status through one edit? - Personally I am not in favor of restricting the ability to change an article. --Eptalon 11:38, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

Easy, by not having a very strict and rigid rule, for example, en-wp does not have a redlink criterion: see FA & GA. ...Aurora... 10:47, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think once we are through this discussion here, we need to make a page like those you cited on here. This page should point out what makes a very good article. In the very good article template we should mention that article, and that whoever changes it should be aware of the criteria that were applied at first. Getting an article to very good status takes a long time. We should protect against its losing this status easily, by perhaps one inadvertently done edit. I think the no redlinks criterion is a good one, easy to automatically check (the properly labelled images, for example is harder to automatically check), so personally, I think that we should stick to it. As pointed out, semi-protection for featured articles is not an option.--Eptalon 15:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

I think I covered Categorisation with gone through a few revisons, or no templates left that point. I think the minimal requirement is one iw link, and (if applicable) one categories (Articles needing a category ;) ) --Eptalon 08:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

[change] References/Template messages

I finally figured out why I've been so hesitant to keep the current very good articles as very good--they are missing reference sections. Therefore, I propose that we add the following criteria:

1. The article should have a reference section or somehow cite its sources.

· Tygartl1^·talk· 13:49, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

That is certainly a good criterion, I will add it. --Eptalon 13:58, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

There is one item, I think needs discussion: There should be no templates pointing to the fact that the article needs improvement. These templates include {{complex}}, {{cleanup}}, {{stub}}, and {{wikify}}.

I fully agree there, except for the {{stub}}. An article can always be improved by adding more information, supposing it is well-sources (etc). Also, this statement is ambiguous, it can be read as

1. The article can not (or no longer) be improved. Therefore there should be no such templates. (This can certainly never be the case)
2. The article is at a general level, where further improvement is unlikely to come from simply adding more (sourced) information, by unqualified writers. If this is the case (which in my opinion is the case), it needs to be expressed differently.

In other words, the valid tags for such articles are {{mergefrom}},{{expert}}, and {{stub}} As to the citations, where do we draw the line? IMO, info that is (uncited) in other Wikipedias does not need citation in simple. Cited material in other wikipedias can also be too much for the SimpleWP user to understand. The level of complexity of the language fo academic publications tends to be quite high. --Eptalon 17:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC) --Eptalon 17:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

What is {{expert}}? I just tried it and it was a faulty template. As to using the {{stub}} criteria: yes, "stub" is a relative term. What one person thinks is a stub, another may not. The point I am trying to get across with the criteria that it not be marked as a stub is that (most) everyone should be able to agree that the article is "long enough"--that is to say, the article provides thorough information and is not lacking something obvious. If an article is marked as "stub", that means that someone thinks it is not long enough or is missing something. Essentially, someone is saying that they don't think the article is very good. I think that if an article is marked as a stub, that it should not be considered a very good article. If that criteria needs to be reworded to better get that point across, that's fine by me. But I believe the essence of the statement should remain. · Tygartl1^·talk· 20:15, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

There was this template: "This article or section needs the input from an expert..", used to be {{expert}}.In enWp, it can be found (but is deprecated) as en:Template:Expert. I am unsure now if we have it here. If not, it would probably be a good addition. As of "stub", I think a stub can be a very good article. This is again the argument, that something (which you possibly do not know), could be missing. In other words, the meaning of "stub" should be: This article is fine as it is, but it would be better if more material was added., and not This article needs more material added. Another comment; the two other merge templates ({{mergeto}} and merge) are of course also valid in a very good article; though merging a very good article into another (possibly normal) article, will probably be the exception. Also, remember, I have a robot for propositions for very good articles in the back of my mind. This would be much easier to write, if the grammar for the selection could be context-free, that is, not require knowledge about the subject.--Eptalon 15:39, April 15, 2007

I respectfully disagree. I see your point, and in theory your definition of a stub is correct. However, in practice, people use "stub" to mean: This article needs more material added. If we use (your) theoretical definition, every article could be defined as a "stub". And I think we can both agree that we should not mark every article as a stub. · Tygartl1^·talk· 14:23, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, that is true. In my opinion, an article becomes a possible candidate for a very good article once the editing behaviour (and patterns) change. From that point on, the focus no longer is on adding more content, but to improve what is there. Looking at the edit log, this the point can be seen when the edits become smaller. Or to take a current example, compare Fencing with Equinox.Then look at Chopstick. All articles are similar in size. All are nominated for very good pages, yet the quality of chopstick is much better than the other two. Perhaps we should also make a difference between needing more content (i.e. stub), and making existing content better (cleanup, used far too little). --Eptalon 22:07, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree that pages should be free to the complex, clean up, wikify, and stub tags. As far as references go, I don't know. From a scholarly standpoint, yes, the articles should be sourced. However, a vast majority do not have references. English wikipedia is probably the most often used source. I think this opens a debate as to the purpose of this wiki. If the purpose of this is to be a scholarly encyclopedia (albeit simplified) that can be used as a legitimate reference work, than sources are needed. However, I would claim that the education community is never going to accept any wiki as scholarly or trustworthy and adding them becomes burdensome to the community. Sources still could and should be asked for and put in external links section or included in the edit summary if there some fact or statement made that is controversial. Or a big disclaimer could be put on the main page about "for sources see the article on English wikipedia"... I don't know where I'm going with this anymore... -  BrownE34  talk  contribs  18:47, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

As to sources, I think this can be put simpler:

• If enWP (or frWP, or whateverLanguageWP) has a source (as in <ref>..</ref>..<references />), then this source can also be taken (possibly noting that this may be unsimple)
• If it does not, then it is assumed that the source of the comment is another language wikipedia, or that this is a result of a translation. --Eptalon 21:24, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

When I suggested referencing/sourcing/citing, I basically was saying the articles should either:

1. have a general reference section (i.e. I gathered my information from reading these sources but I am not specifically giving credit to any of them for a particular idea) or
2. have direct quotes that are cited, which as Eptalon mentioned could have English that is too complex for some readers (in most cases, this would not be the best choice) or
3. have statistics and/or citations that have been re-worded to be simple, but can be directly attributed to a single source

Hopefully, I make sense. I can try to re-explain myself if I'm too confusing. · Tygartl1^·talk· 21:39, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

This could perhaps be worded:

The article should have a reference section or cite its sources within the text. The article does not have an {{unreferenced}} tag and does not need one.

· Tygartl1^·talk· 18:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Added a respectice section (currently item 9 in the list) --Eptalon 11:41, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

[change] Redlinks again

It has already been discussed that having redlinks should not be an exclusion criteria for an article from the Very Good Article status. What haven't been discussed is this: Suppose that article A is labeled a Very Good Article on 30 May 2007. The article has a link to article B which is a stub, and many links to other existing articles, so there are no redlinks. Later on, on 1 July 2007, article B is deleted as a result of an RfD, or because it turns out to be a violation of copyright. Now article A has a redlink, even if it has not been edited since it was labeled as a Very Good Article.

I think the criterion is not appropriate. I believe three well established editors will not vote for an article to be labeled a Very Good Article, if the number of redlinks in that article is not small enough; Consequently, item 10 indirectly answers the rationale behind item 6. Even if it doesn't satisfy you to remove item 6 from the set, I think it should be reworded to something like "Only a small proportion of internal links in an article may be redlinks. The majority of internal links must direct to existing pages." — This unsigned comment was added by Huji (talk • changes).

I never said the list of criteria was non-exclusive, or minimal. Finding a minimal, non-excusive list is another (non-trivial, btw) problem. As to the red-links, I think creating stubs for them can be done with relatively minor effort. Please note that the redlink-criterion is not transitive; a transitive redlink criterion (the stubs may not contain redlinks) would probably kill the process. --Eptalon 20:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

[change] References revisited

I belive an inline citation of references (i.e. by means of <ref> tags) should be encouraged. — This unsigned comment was added by Huji (talk • changes).

Of course, but given some publications, finding the exact locations might be near impossible, esp. if the idea is summarised or simplified. --Eptalon 20:53, 12 June 2007 (UTC)