Wikipedia talk:Vital articles#rfc 4199F26

{{Pin message|}}{{User:ClueBot III/DoNotArchiveUntil|2034462388}}

The purpose of this talk page is for discussions on over-arching matters regarding vital articles, including making proposals or asking questions about procedures, policies, quotas, or other broad changes to any or all of the five levels. This page is not for proposing whether an article should be added or removed from any vital article lists, and such proposals should be posted on the following pages:

• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 1 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/1
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 2 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/2
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 3 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/3
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 4 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 5 vital article, see the relevant sub-pages of Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5

As this reorganization effects multiple levels, 24 articles, and crosses categories, I thought I'd bring it up for discussion here.

Technology is over quota and needs some breathing room, and geography has some room. I'd suggest swapping in some or all of the navigation articles in the technology section to geography. We already list cartography and map making technologies in geography, so navigation concepts and technology make some sense. In the navigation section, we have articles like {{VA link| North}}, {{VA link| South}}, {{VA link| East}}, {{VA link| West}} that I think can be moved without a second thought. We also have {{VA link|Remote sensing}} technologies like {{VA link|Radar}} and {{VA link|Lidar}} under navigation, while remote sensing is under geography already. Finally, we have stuff like {{VA link| Satellite navigation}} and related technologies, {{VA link|Compass}} that might be more questionable, although I believe with remote sensing and {{VA link|Cartography}} in the geography section, these inclusions aren't problematic.

I think this might help take pressure off of the technology section, and help group spatial topics together instead of scattering them between sections.

(Note: This proposal is part of a broader concept I have for a reorganization of the geography section. I'm proposing this part now because technology needs the space, but had this in mind already. Please see discussion "Broad reorganization of geography" if you're interested in that.)

;Support

1. As nom GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

;Oppose some

;Oppose all

;Neutral

;Discuss

While it would free up a little space in Tech, I personally think most of these things belong more in Tech. Besides most of the subject depth being technological, they have many applications that are really only spatial in a very abstract way: military targeting, collision avoidance, meteorology, etc. If anything, I'd say {{VA link|Remote sensing}} probably belongs in Tech too. That said, I've always particularly disliked us listing social conventions under Tech so I would totally support moving {{VA link|Cardinal direction}} and the 4 directions to Geography. Since the parent article is at Lv4 though (and so is {{VA link|Remote sensing}}), those should probably be proposed on the Lv4 page. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 17:11, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

:I guess this is really three proposals, with the cardinal directions being one (Easiest to include), remote sensing tech being another, and navigation technology like GPS and compass being the third. Some that I proposed in terms of wayfinding and land navigation could also go into a "Navigation" section within geography. Depending on how this goes I think some of the time keeping tech might fit into the history section, especially the type of calendars, months, and days of the week.

:Remote sensing is the one that bugs me the most in terms of organization. I teach remote sensing in a geography department and we use both Radar and Lidar, so it isn't unheard of for the discipline to include it. {{VA link|Cartography}}, {{VA link|Geographic information system}}, are also straddling the gap between tech and geography. Both the definitions of cartography and remote sensing, depending on source, start with "Art, science, and technology." I want to add {{VA link|Satellite imagery}} somewhere, but {{VA link|Radar}} and {{VA link|Lidar}} muddy the waters with where that should be. The problem is that geography includes physical and human sciences, and these bits are the "STEM" part of geography. Something I JUST found to further muddy this is that {{VA link|Map}} is listed as technology at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/3#Navigation_and_timekeeping level 3], but geography at [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vital_articles/Level/5/Geography/Physical level 5]. Moving all the maps level 5 articles from geography to tech would add a lot to tech. {{VA link|Geodetic datum}} is definitely a technology that geographers/cartographers widely employee, and {{VA link|Geoid}} is as well. {{VA link|Surveying}} being under geography would start a fight at some schools, and {{VA link|Geodesy}} is under the Physical sciences section.

:As noted in my above proposal, I want to make a section for technical geography separate from physical, and human (cities and countries/regions). It could be called something like "Basics and technical" if needed and absorb a lot of this mess. Similarly, it could have a navigation section. I'd hope such a section could descramble our spatial articles a bit. This mess is why acting on the proposal you closed is a bit challenging, I've been trying to untangle this situation. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:24, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

::Yeah, the issue found with {{VA link|Map}} is one of several little organizational quirks we still haven't ironed out. I think it's largely a result of topics subdividing and re-parenting each other as we go down levels; I actually have detecting those as a minor item on my VA bot to-do list.

::For {{VA link|Remote sensing}}, after I looked at the article further, I think the ambiguity may be in the article itself (and even some of the citations), not just where we sort it. It's part WP:Broad-concept article (which would almost definitely belong in Tech), part Earth-observation-specific (which almost definitely belongs in Geography).

::Funny enough, situations like that are the main thing I believe justifies Lv5; it's very good at bringing out structural issues between topics. Unfortunately, there's still so much churn that I don't think we take the time to actually resolve things on the articles. I've been keeping a to-do list of ideas on my user-page, but I keep finding other things to do myself, and I don't think my "Lv5 is for refactoring" view has caught on. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:53, 31 January 2025 (UTC)

I've had this turning over a bit in my mind, and I realized that my ideal way to resolve this ties to a longer-term proposal I've had in my notes. Unfortunately, I don't think we have the bandwidth for it right now (if anything, we should prioritize the Life Sciences). Until then, I think it will be simpler to leave most navigation articles (as techniques for solving a problem) with Tech, but anything more general & scientific like cartography probably makes more sense in Geography. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:07, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

;Proposal signature

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 05:48, 30 January 2025 (UTC)

The article states that “after 60 days it [a level 1-3 vote] may be closed as NO CONSENSUS if the proposal has (a) less than 5 supports, AND (b) less than two-thirds support.” I wonder whether this should be read as “It can be closed if (a) AND (b) both apply simultaneously,” or as “It can be closed if (a), AND it can be closed if (b).” Could someone please clarify? BlazingBlast (talk) 16:01, 7 February 2025 (UTC)

:That's a really good catch (I mainly participate at Level 5 nowadays), and I suspect it's actually a mistake. I'm pretty sure they're just meant to negate the Passing conditions, but if so, No Consensus conditions should be phrased "(a) OR (b)" (see De Morgan's Laws for the deets).

:Honestly though, even that approach doesn't account for the Failing conditions and it's arguably unnecessary anyways. We could probably replace it with a much simpler, plain-English statement like "After 60 days, it may be closed NO CONSENSUS if it doesn't meet passing or failing conditions". Of course, others would need to verify I'm interpreting the spirit of the rule correctly. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 02:51, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

:I believe it's meant to be “It can be closed if (a) AND (b) both apply simultaneously”. J947 ‡ ^edits 22:10, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

::I guess it's good BlazingBlast brought this up; nobody else is weighing in and we came to different conclusions. I don't have any personal issue with an "(a) AND (b) simultaneously" interpretation, but what does that mean for proposals where only one of (a) or (b) is true? They wouldn't be able to pass or fail, but we wouldn't be able to close them as No Consensus either. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of a rule for closing after 60 days? -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:13, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

{{atopg

| status = done

| result = Both points now addressed; will finish filling out new quota data shortly (it will only track the quotas for now, but with automation, can eventually become the source for all tables et al.) -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:31, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

}}

Hi everyone, I'm trying to wrap up some process discussions or changes, this time with the quotas. These should be short & sweet; I don't think they'll even need a vote. Since they technically affect Lv 4 & 5, I just wanted to check if here if anyone opposed.

First point: would anyone mind if I created a JSON subpage (similar to our "data/" subpages) and encoded our quotas there too? For now, it's just a prototype, but this would ultimately be the single source of truth for bots to work from when updating the Lv 4 & 5 tables.

• Not sure what a JSON does, but we need a source of current counts. Anything is better than looking at most recent manual updates.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 20:20, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

:It's just a data format for listing objects: easy for a human to read or edit, but also easy to import for most programming languages nowadays. Apparently it takes an admin to set a page officially to a JSON model though.

:{{ping|MSGJ}} I'm not sure we've every interacted, but I've seen you swing by VA as an admin several times. Would you be willing to create a new JSON page through ChangeContentModel at Wikipedia:Vital articles/quotas.json? I can fill it out myself, but if you see any issues or want to place it somewhere else (like the data/ subdirectory), we can tweak our plans. Thank you in advance. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:29, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

::Yes, no problem. That sounds like a good idea. Perhaps better as a subpage of Wikipedia:Vital articles/data so that all the json pages are in one place? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 08:57, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

:::I was thinking of that, and while it makes sense from a human perspective, I don't know for sure how carefully Cewbot grabs all those pages. It's possible a new .json in the folder might confuse the bot or other workflows we may not be aware of.

:::I'm definitely not opposed to putting it in another (lower-case named) subdirectory though; maybe something like "controls" (in the managerial sense)? -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 13:39, 10 February 2025 (UTC)

Second point: can we affirm that the 2% cushions at these levels are just to add slack to the process? And by process, I don't just mean proposals, but also things like updating the summary tables. In other words, they're not an unofficial quota to target, and we shouldn't wait until we hit those guardrails to trim or fill in a section (unless an agreed change programme is in effect). I don't want to update any guidelines or anything, or worry about anything retroactively. I just want to see if we can get on the same page going forward. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 16:03, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

{{abot}}

On each level of the vital articles, there is a random article button on each level as well as each category. Originally, the random article button was for the top-level categories beginning with :Category:Wikipedia level-1 vital articles, but the articles are now sorted by article quality and category. I put a temporary solution in to combine multiple categories into one, but I am hoping for a solution that randomizes the vital articles better. I particularly like this feature of vital article for two reasons. Obviously, one is to improve the articles, but I also find it a neat way to read random articles as a reader. Any ideas on how I can do this? Interstellarity (talk) 00:44, 12 February 2025 (UTC)

:Since nobody else has replied yet, I was just wondering what you were picturing more precisely? You mentioned wanting to randomize things better, but I'm guessing you really meant you want to filter on categories more easily? Or do you mean it doesn't actually seem to be fully randomizing things? -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 18:20, 15 February 2025 (UTC)

::{{ping|Zar2gar1}} When the random articles were created, they were created to randomize categories like these: :Category:Wikipedia_level-2_vital_articles. However, when those articles got removed from the category, they are in categories like topics and article quality. I did a temporary solution doing multiple categories at once. I'm currently exploring a tool called WP:PetScan, but I'm not sure how to create a button like the ones we have. How do you feel about removing the buttons for now until we resolve the random article buttons? Interstellarity (talk) 01:18, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

:::I don't use the buttons much myself so if you want to cut them for now, I'm OK with that. You may just want to wait a few days in case anyone else would be opposed. I actually only tweaked one of them a few months ago when someone mentioned that it was acting buggy. Beyond that, I personally haven't been focused on them. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:02, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

User:MSGJ and User:Kammerer55, I have two suggestions for improvement:

1. Could we make the template accept multiple (say 20) links separated by pipes with a single deployment for greater efficiency of use.
2. Is it possible to make it present mouseover options for all levels on which it appears rather than just the highest.

I don't know what others think about these suggestions, but I presume they would be as helpful to others as they would be to me.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:42, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

:Something to signify non-listed articles as such, like a red X after the VA symbol, would be nice for easily differentiating them from normal wikilinks.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 18:48, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

:I can't speak for either of the original template authors, and I agree it would be nice to have something like these at some point. But I think we need to be careful before trying to roll it into the VA link template immediately.

:Your first feature probably wouldn't be too hard, but we already have unintended consequences with the existing template. We should probably fix those before adding to it. There are also accessibility issues with the current way we do things (like the icons), even if they don't directly affect me or most editors.

:As for the mouse-over feature, that would be helpful too, but I'm pretty sure that would require a separate JS user-script. The template could maybe help preprocess some data for it; then you have to be careful not to clutter up things for those without custom scripts though. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 19:20, 23 February 2025 (UTC)

{{atopg

| status = done

| result = Timeline page created at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Figures timeline, also with its own discussion page. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 11:36, 24 March 2025 (UTC)

}}

This subject has been previously discussed at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)/Archive 62#Timeline of significant figures.

As @Chaotic Enby pointed out: the timeline {{tq|could make it a pretty useful reference for articles about famous figures needing improvement, without claiming that these are necessarily the most significant ever.}}

If you're worried about the eras being too eurocentric, then I made a guideline for different regions to help combat this. You can find it here: User:Wikieditor662/sandbox#Guidelines. You may ignore the rest of that article though, it's similar but not the one I'm proposing here.

The proposed timeline can look something like this: User:Wikieditor662/Vital sandbox, and can be a WikiProject subpage, as @Folly Mox suggested.

What do you all think?

Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:58, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

:Thanks for the ping! Instead of coloring based on periods, I'm wondering if it could be feasible to make it so the color automatically matches the article's quality class (with a class icon for colorblind people), to help highlight which articles are in need of improvement. Either way, it can definitely be a pretty neat way to visualize our biographical vital articles! Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 22:07, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

::I'm glad you like the idea! And perhaps we could have it both colored based on time period AND a class icon for the article's quality class. Wikieditor662 (talk) 22:42, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

:I'd be willing to assist _pbp 16:39, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

::Great to hear! Do we need more approval first, or are we able to implement it now? Wikieditor662 (talk) 21:33, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:::{{Ping|Wikieditor662}} Do it! Post a link on my talk page when you do! _pbp 17:17, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

::::@Purplebackpack89 I added it, thanks! You can find it here: Wikipedia:Vital articles/Figures timeline. Wikieditor662 (talk) 20:16, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

:::::I mentioned it in your talk page too. Wikieditor662 (talk) 01:47, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

:I have no problem with it as long as it and especially any discussions are on their own subpage. The only issue I could see is to make sure it's actually adding to Wikipedia and not just diverting effort from existing timelines, as articles or wikiprojects. I think the VA project already loses sight of its purpose way too much (at least at the larger levels) and sometimes actively discourages improving the articles we do list. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:31, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

{{abot}}

1. They do NOT mimic the scope of paper encyclopedias (a multivolume paper encyclopedia has a number of topics more commensurate with Lv 4 than Lvs 1 or 2)
2. It is impossible to distill all knowledge into just 10 topics
3. And nearly impossible to distill it into 100 topics
4. With only 100 slots, there are lots and lots of things missing (not a single biography, not a single nation, none of the other planets of the Solar System, music itself but no genres or instruments, religion itself but no examples of religion)
5. And many of the Lv 1 and Lv 2 topics, while obviously important, are so impossibly broad that getting them to FA or GA is unlikely. (How do you distill {{VA link|Human history}} or {{VA link|Music}} or {{VA link|Earth}} into a single reasonably-sized article?)
6. If it WAS possible to get all 10 articles at VA1 to GA or FA, it could be done relatively quickly and we could move on to something else

_pbp 16:53, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:The purpose of the VA project is: "The five nested vital article levels are meant to give direction to the prioritization of improvements of English Wikipedia articles (e.g. which articles to bring to WP:GA and WP:FA status), to provide a measurement of quality of overall English Wikipedia (e.g. what proportion of the most important articles are at GA and FA status), and to serve as a centralized watchlist of English Wikipedia's most important articles."

:Vital 1 and 2 address this goal better then the others. We are not trying to mimic the scope of paper encyclopedias, and not trying to distill knowledge. While it might be difficult to get them to FA or GA status, that would be a good goal and if we could do it quickly we should. That said, the project serves as a Watchlist, so maintaining certain key articles against vandalism. The vital articles are essentially a priority list for attention from editors, articles that the project should focus on improving and maintaining. This is based on the Vital Article criteria, and criteria 1, 2, and 3 are going to be largely why biographies and countries are not included. The list is human and Earth centric, information about the smaller moons of Saturn is not really that important to the other articles on Wikipedia.

:The vital article criteria:

:# Coverage: Vital articles at higher levels tend to "cover" more topics and be broader in their scope. For example, {{VA link|Science}} is a Vital-1 article, while {{VA link|Scientific method}} is a lower level of vitality. Determining which articles are vital at lower levels often involves looking at the articles at higher levels. For example, since {{VA link|History}} is of high vitality, {{VA link|World War II}} is also a vital article, just at a lower level.

:# Essential to Wikipedia's other articles: While {{VA link|Scientific method}} may be less vital than {{VA link|Science}}, since it is such a critical topic regarding science, covering many science-related topics in Wikipedia, it is undoubtedly a vital article.

:# Notability: Individuals within the People section represent the pinnacles of their field with a material impact on the course of humanity, such as {{VA link|Albert Einstein}} in "Inventors and scientists", {{VA link|William Shakespeare}} in "Authors", and {{VA link|Genghis Khan}} on "Leaders".

:# No (Western) bias: While the vitals list is for English Wikipedia, the focus is on the world. For example, the current consensus for Level 3 is to list two cities in China (Hong Kong, Beijing) and India (Delhi, Mumbai), but only one in the United States.

:# Pageviews: The number of views a page receives should be considered (i.e. it is a proxy on its importance to Wikipedia's structure), however, pageviews should be treated with caution as they can be driven by WP:RECENTISM, which is a particular concern at Levels 1-4.

:GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 17:35, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:Yeah, to be completely honest I never understood V1 and V2. It is somewhat reasonable to come up with a list of the 1,000, 10,000, and 50,000 (maybe 100,000) most important topics to an encyclopedia, even if the vital articles process as a whole can turn into a popularity contest amongst editors. But only 10 and 100 articles just feels like unnecessary categorization that solely exists to give us a smooth number evolution (if that's the right word?). But even then, that ends with V5 (going from 10,000 to 50,000), so eh.

:I also have several questions regarding what even makes a topic vital at those levels. We list the {{VA link|Moon}} at V2; if humanity reaches {{VA link|Mars}} at some point and starts inhabiting it, would we upgrade it to V2 or even V1 to be alongside {{VA link|Earth}}? I doubt it, but that kind of reflects the issue of only being able to list 10 or 100 topics at one level. There's also the concern about maintaining these articles, which is another big factor of vital articles that most people seem to forget about (myself included). I completely agree with pbp's stance on that.

:And the idea that the vital articles process isn't meant to replicate a traditional encyclopedia is wrong, as I believe the vital articles process stems from Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Core topics (plus the "supplements"), which was a selection of Wikipedia articles that were meant to be printed onto traditional book encyclopedias or burned onto CDs. So at its core, yes, vital articles I believe are meant to replicate the scope of a traditional encyclopedia. λ NegativeMP1 17:50, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

::I will say I like the "Elite Nine" better then the 10 at vital 1, if for rather obvious and self serving reasons. While that might be where it stems from (I'm not sure of the history on this), the project page doesn't discuss this goal as far as I can tell. If that IS a goal, we need to state it. If that was the case, the proposal I would have to meet it would likely not be popular, i.e., the top 10 would be the "Volumes," level 2 would be the section headings within those volumes, and each layer would be nested categories within the one above it. This is not really what we're doing here. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:05, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:Just a note that we have (a generous we, I had nothing to do with it) distilled both Human History and Earth into a single article, the first is a GA, the second a FA. CMD (talk) 17:53, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

::{{Question}} Do you mean one article that distills human history AND Earth that I'm not aware of, or two separate articles for Human history and Earth? GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:07, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:::Separate. In fact, six of our 10 level 1 articles are GAs or FAs! This is by far the highest average quality out of the vital article levels, and if I recall some of the nominations correctly, this is directly due to their positioning as level 1 articles. CMD (talk) 18:11, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

::::Thanks for the clarification, looking at your original comment I should have been able to figure it out but wasn't reading closely enough. Just a note, while I can't remember the exact dates or timeline, I started to vote on vital articles after contributing on Wikipedia:Articles for improvement/Articles. The reason I mention is that on Articles for Improvement, I and others occasionally used an articles vital article status as part of the nomination. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:20, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

::::If six of ten are already GA or FA, that means we could probably get the other four to GA in 2025. If we can't, probably no one can. _pbp 19:52, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:::::An admirable goal! My focus is on the page Geography, and I've had an open request for [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Peer_review/Geography/archive1 Peer review] for a bit more then a month to get further direction, and I'm currently working on finalizing a GA [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Technical_geography/GA2] nomination for {{VA link|Technical geography}}, after going through a [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Peer_review/Technical_geography/archive1 peer review] for it. The process is a lot of work, and requires expert knowledge on the subject in my opinion. If you want to start work on one of the top 10, I'd recommend starting by checking it yourself, then nominating it for peer review. After you address the peer review response, GA is a bit easier. The process is time intensive though, and I've been working on geography for well over a year without feeling like I'm close to nominating it. If you pick one out and want eyes on it, I can try and help. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:18, 28 February 2025 (UTC)

:All of your points are valid, but my impression was always that Lv 1 and 2 exist for slightly different reasons. I think they're essentially supposed to be watchlists for first- and second-level categories of the entire encyclopedia. So the focus is more on maintenance and organization than improvements. IDK for sure but Lv1 may have even been picked to approximate the Dewey Decimal System.

:While I know it's not how we officially think of vitality, it makes a little more sense to me if you think of the different levels as grade-appropriate topics in a classroom. Levels 1 and 2 would be the sort of thing a primary school or basic remedial teacher may ask someone to read about. And by the time you get to Level 5, the depth & breadth should probably be the sort of things an undergraduate university student might encounter.

:Beyond all that though, I don't have any issue with the top 2 levels. I don't think they do any harm, regardless of whether they're useful or not, and they're by far the lowest maintenance part of the project. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 03:31, 2 March 2025 (UTC)

According to the guidelines on closing discussions on level 5, discussions may not be closed until 7 days after the last vote. That means that support votes couant against closing discussions as passed, and oppose votes count against closing as failed. I think this is unreasonable. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 20:34, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

:If you apply the rule rigidly, yes, it could string along proposals that are obviously passing / failing. We often just invoke WP:AVALANCHE or WP:SNOW though to close things early once the margin is overwhelming. There's not a hard guideline, but I usually do it at +5 for support (e.g. 6-1) or +3 for oppose (e.g. 1-4). Once you factor that in, the rule really only kicks in on closer votes, where closing too soon after a vote could be seen as pushing on the scale. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

• Agree with headline assertion _pbp 16:18, 7 April 2025 (UTC)

I am proposing that include an upper level called Level 0 that includes just one article that is the most important article on Wikipedia. I’m not sure if this will get a consensus or whether we will a consensus on which article belongs on level 0, but my first thought would be Human or Earth with a slight preference for human. What do you think?

;Support

1. Interstellarity (talk) 22:24, 3 March 2025 (UTC)

;Oppose

1. Oppose unless a solid case for utility is made. I don't see how this would be very useful based on the projects goals GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 22:27, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
2. As if the concerns behind the subjectivity and editorial bias across the entire vital articles process wasn't apparent enough. How do you select one article that represents everything that Level 1 lists. How. I don't even think there's an article on Wikipedia that covers Mathematics, Arts, Human, Human History, Earth, and more. And any one of the ten articles at V1 being listed as the #1 most important on the site would raise so many problems and subjectivity concerns it'd be hard to list them all. Hell, there is currently a still open debate about whether or not Level 1 and 2 were useful at all, and you want an even higher level than that? I mean no offense here, but I can't understand the idea behind this at all. Infact, I nearly replied to this with just "...What?" and would've left it at that, since that was literally the only thing going through my mind for a good five minutes upon seeing this, before realizing I should probably explain why I oppose this idea. λ NegativeMP1 22:36, 3 March 2025 (UTC)
3. :The closest article I could find that covers everything is Everything, which theoretically should be level 1, but it probably won’t be anytime soon. Interstellarity (talk) 16:46, 5 March 2025 (UTC)
4. Somewhat feels like April Fool's came a few weeks early. As Negative notes, I have concerns about Level 1; I think picking a single most important article is rather absurd. _pbp 03:48, 4 March 2025 (UTC)
5. Clear diminishing returns as other have indicated.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 09:22, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

;Neutral

• The most important thing on Wikipedia is You, the editor who makes it happen or the reader who is learning. CMD (talk) 02:39, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

;Discuss

• {{Comment}} If we can agree that {{VA link|42 (number)}} should be the article that sums up {{VA link|Life}}, the {{VA link|Universe}}, and {{VA link|Everything}}, I'll change my vote. It could be a fun April Fools day prank. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:53, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

It's a fun, little thought experiment (and would actually be a really good satire for April Fools, like GeogSage suggested). As an actual policy though, I think this would be losing sight of the entire reason for the VA project. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

When I have proposed moving entries between different subpages, I have often been told that I don't need as many support votes as for a proposal to add or remove entries, but I don't want to close discussions or carry out the proposed moves without support from the formal guidelines, and I rarely get enough votes. Thus I propose the following guideline for closing move proposals:

• A move proposal may be closed by any editor when the following criteria applies:
• The discussion must have run for at least 7 days.
• To close as passed, it must have at least two support votes and more support votes than oppose votes.
• To close as failed, it must have at least two oppose votes and at least as many oppose votes as support votes.

;Support as proposed

1. As nom. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 20:15, 4 March 2025 (UTC)

;Less stringent criteria

1. I've mentioned elsewhere that I really don't like the idea of multiple, parallel vote procedures (piggy-backing off the existing ones is less of an issue). That said, I think we should state the current practice for moves, and organization in general, clearly somewhere. I would encourage people to be a little bold with moves though; our current practice for organization in general has been close to WP:BRD. A talk-page notice is probably good if you're unsure or think it could be controversial, and taking some votes doesn't hurt for batch moves. Even if you do take votes though, I view organization as more fluid than article proposals and don't think you need to hit the full quorum, especially if there's no opposition (tacit consent). -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

;More stringent criteria

;Don't introduce criteria for move proposals

;Discussion

{{ping|Zar2gar1}} I intended to propose that WP:BRD should apply to moving entries within the same page, but I forgot to write it. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 17:55, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

:The main level pages say that changes must not be made without discussion. We should clarify that this only applies to replacing, adding and removing entries. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lophotrochozoa (talk • contribs) 21:05, 10 March 2025 (UTC)

Does no one other than me and Zar2gar1 care about the organization of the lists? Or do most people not read this talk page? Or do people think that the rules as written shouldn't match practice? Lophotrochozoa (talk) 11:08, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

:If no one objects, I'm going to change the rules. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 20:34, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

::Yeah, I object. Sometimes, failure to attract support is the actual feedback. Jclemens (talk) 20:59, 3 April 2025 (UTC)

The top two sections at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/2 total 100 articles. However, :Category:Wikipedia level-2 vital articles by topic and :Category:Level-2 vital articles by quality total 90. How can this be?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 08:08, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

:The categories do not contain the level 1 articles. CMD (talk) 09:09, 5 March 2025 (UTC)

::Is this something that we should fix. Should articles appear in all lof the categories for the levels below their most vital level?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:41, 6 March 2025 (UTC)

:::I could be wrong since I don't fiddle with categories much, but I think that would require making each higher level a subcategory of the lower. I'm pretty sure Wikipedia treats categories like strict types instead of tags you can mix-and-match. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 04:50, 9 March 2025 (UTC)

I thought WP:SYSTEMICBIAS was a norm all across the project (as in, we have it but we strive to reduce it). Yet so far all four people who commented at Wikipedia_talk%3AVital_articles%2FLevel%2F3#Remove_English_literature_3 pretty much say, well, I'll just quote two primary arguments there: "Vital in a list tailored to the English Wikipedia." and "The Vital Articles project is explicitly geared towards English Wikipedia"... Is this indeed something that is written in the VA definition or is it the consensus now? Which is puzzling b/c just last year or so I recall being involved in numerous proposals in which we were removing many US-centric topics, and similar (Canada-centric, UK-centric, etc.). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 00:44, 27 March 2025 (UTC)

• "From VA, "Unlike the list of articles every Wikipedia should have, they are tailored to the English Wikipedia and are actively maintained by the dedicated WikiProject Vital Articles." Right now, the debate seems to be HOW tailored to English it is... _pbp 02:50, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
• :This needs further debate. My reading of it, based on my experiences here, until that particular discussion, is that this simply means we don't use interlanguage links to link to articles on other Wikipedias which do not exist here yet (i.e. we don't include red links). The wording is unfortunate in its lack of clarity and I'd support removing that entire sentence, as it promotes SYSTEMICBIAS in our coverage. English Wikipedia is an international project in English, and IMHO Vital articles are a list of topics vital to the entire world, not just to English-speakers. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:13, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
• ::VA also contains the wording: "No (Western) bias: While the vitals list is for English Wikipedia, the focus is on the world." _pbp 08:00, 27 March 2025 (UTC)
• :::Yet in reality, based on the now-closed discussion, this does not seem to be the case. That means I am going to withdraw from being active here, as my activity has been focused on trying to ensure the vital list is not affected by sysbias, which it seems is not desired anymore. Cheers, _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 03:57, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::::It is supposed to be more general, but it is mostly a popularity contest. People aren't voting based on the VA criteria, they vote based on what they feel is more important to them. We need more people who actually read the rules/criteria and think to be involved. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 15:45, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::::@Piotrus TBH, I wish you'd stay awhile instead of withdrawing _pbp 16:16, 7 April 2025 (UTC)
• :::::Do clarify, please. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:17, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::::::@Piotrus: I wish you'd continue to participate at the Vital articles project _pbp 13:46, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• :::::::@Purplebackpack89 Ok. Sulking is not my style, but I was really surprised by that particular discussion... but yes, in the end, ensuring neutrality has to be done through active participation, right? _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:21, 10 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::::I rarely participate in VA 1-3; although I did skim-read the discussion earlier, had I noticed at the time that {{VA link|English literature}} is the ONLY language-specific literature listing at that level I would've voted in support of removal.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 14:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• Isn't our task to determine the most important articles for improvement on ENWP?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 04:40, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• :We are trying "to give direction to the prioritization of improvements of English Wikipedia articles," "provide a measurement of quality of overall English Wikipedia," and create "a centralized watchlist of English Wikipedia's most important articles." There are five criteria listed for inclusion:
• :#Coverage
• :#Essential to Wikipedia's other articles
• :#Notability
• :#No (Western) bias:
• :#Pageviews
• :Bias towards English language, such as an emphasis on {{VA link| English literature}}, would be western bias and violate criteria 4. For example, {{VA link|Chinese literature}} and {{VA link|Spanish literature}} are level 4 despite, being more widely spoken then English. Of course, people people aren't voting based on the VA criteria, they vote based on what they feel is more important to them, and most people here are going to feel English literature is more important then Chinese. This is their western bias. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:53, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::English is definitely more widely spoken than Chinese, and Spanish is also "Western". I wouldn't off the top of my head consider any particular language corpus as more vital, but there's probably more going on than latent western bias. CMD (talk) 05:27, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• :::There may be an argument to replace English literature with a broader concept of {{VA link|Western canon}} (which currently is not even VA5? Sigh). That could be reasonable. But English literature is too narrow of a concept to be at V3, IMHO. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:13, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• :::PS. English has fewer native speakers than Chinese or Spanish, but more total speakers if you consider ESLs and such. English literature is reasonably global, due to popularity of translations. But, see my comment just above. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:15, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• And on that note, don’t other language wikis have their own native language lists different from ours? We’re not making a list for the whole of the project interlingually. Hyperbolick (talk) 04:53, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• :English Wikipedia is de facto global Wikipedia, it just happen to be written in English. See WP:SYSTEMICBIAS. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:15, 8 April 2025 (UTC)
• ::Every language version of Wikipedia is intended to be global (the WMF is exploring a global NPOV policy). If there is something special about en.wiki, that is a reflection of the English language, not of any difference between en.wiki and es.wiki. CMD (talk) 23:47, 8 April 2025 (UTC)

:I agree that Anglocentric bias should be avoided, and I would have voted to remove if I had seen that discussion in time. Unfortunately, the VA project can be a bit of a popularity contest at times, although VA1 and VA2 are pretty good at avoiding that. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:06, 10 April 2025 (UTC)

Happy April Fools day, my dudes! _pbp 14:23, 1 April 2025 (UTC)

:Should rename it into a subpage of Wikipedia:April Fools/April Fools' Day 2025 now that it's no longer April Fools day? Lophotrochozoa (talk) 11:15, 2 April 2025 (UTC)

The Core Contest—Wikipedia's most exciting contest{{cn}}—returns again this year from April 15 to May 31. The goal: to improve vital or other core articles, with a focus on those in the worst state of disrepair. Editing can be done individually, but in the past groups have also successfully competed. Winners are those who provide "best additive encyclopedic value", judged by the amount of improvement and 'coreness' of articles. Signups are open now. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:24, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Hi, this is an invitation to discuss which articles to remove from level 4 since this is over quota, since we need to figure out which articles to discuss removal of since there aren't much removal nominations as of now. Thanks. PrimalMustelid (talk) 22:37, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Since the buttoned links for levels 4 and 5 on the vital article pages appear to be redirects unlike with the other levels (they have slashes in the end), can someone fix that if possible? Thanks. PrimalMustelid (talk) 22:40, 6 April 2025 (UTC)

Well, that's what I'm proposing. I know interwikis ain't perfect, but...

1. If pageviews can be considered, interwikis should be as well
2. Interwikis are a reasonable metric for comparing two similar topics
3. Interwikis are about as good a measure of international notoriety as anything we have
4. Every VA article, at every level, should have at least one
5. Articles at VA4 and higher should have several

_pbp 20:35, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:It's certainly not perfect, but it helps to paint the picture. I'm not in love with page views as it's very WP:RECENTISM, but interwikis can help provide a larger, non-en.wiki viewpoint of things that are important for balance. GauchoDude (talk) 20:58, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:Yes, mentioning often-used stats but not necessarily limiting to those, with wording something along the lines of "The other vitality criteria should be balanced against fame, indicated by statistics such as amount of pageviews and interwiki links, although these should be treated with caution as they can be influenced WP:RECENTISM and other problems".--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 21:09, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:Just want to note, I proposed something similar a while ago [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Archive_28#Amend_the_criteria_for_what_makes_an_article_vital_to_include_the_number_of_%22Wikilinks%22? Amend the criteria for what makes an article vital to include the number of "Wikilinks"?]. Closed 8 February 2025 (UTC). We needed a clean proposal, but that hasn't happened yet. Should probably inform this content. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 21:17, 19 April 2025 (UTC)

:I would support explicitly mentioning interwikis as a useful statistic for determining vitality, alongside pageviews. I personally find interwikis more useful than pageviews, as the latter tend to be affected by recentism. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:05, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

:So I've been looking at this a bit for the past few months, and think we should avoid narrow inclusion criteria like "interwiki" and "page views" and instead try to include multiple variables. I had discussed this a bit on @Zar2gar1's talk page, but put it on a backburner before coming back to it and restarting the closed discussion linked above in this thread. Just some notes if anyone wants to help. So far, I have a rough python script and a CSV you can see [https://github.com/GeogSage/Wiki_Vital here] that takes us to level 3. It is rough, and I hope to improve it over time. I have not collected data for level 4 yet as I want to first get some numbers at levels 1, 2, and 3. If anyone wants to look at the CSV or play with the script, please do.

:I'm looking at creating an Index (statistics) or something over the summer (work has been in the way of stuff like this) but there are several statistics I think we should include in addition to links. Once we have a good set of variables for a vitality estimate, we can weight it to better fit the different levels of the project. For example:

:$V\; =\; \backslash frac\{\; \{S*\}\; l\}\{q\}$

:Where:

:V is the "Vitality estimation"

:S is the raw score we calculate using the aggregated indicators (This is obviously going to be it's own equation, but I'm hoping to include page views, page watchers, and some combination of the different types of links)

:l is the (current) vitality level of the article. Calculated in a way where Level 1 might be 1, level 2 might be 0.8, level 3 might be 0.6, level 4 might be 0.5, level 5 might be 0.4, and non vital articles 0.3.

:q is the quota of the section the article is in at level 5

:This would also make it almost impossible to skip levels, and might facilitate comparison between categories. Of course, I need to figure out the "raw score" first, so I'm kind of getting ahead of things by thinking of weights and normalizations. This is where I am in terms of looking at VA levels 1-3. The analysis to create such an index would be textbook I think, not really ground breaking methodology. I think that some of the qualitative aspects can be accounted for though by playing with how we include the section quotas and vitality levels.

:If we look at the xtools for a page like geography [https://xtools.wmcloud.org/articleinfo/en.wikipedia.org/Geography], we can see several stats that are useful/meaningful. The variable I'm most interested in is "Page Watchers" as I suspect that value will be highly correlated with how the community views the article. When it comes to how we view vitality though, it is important to note the multiple functions of the vital article list, specifically "to serve as a centralized watchlist of English Wikipedia's most important articles." Articles with a lot of page views are going to be subject to vandalism and well intentioned but inappropriate edits more often then articles without a lot of views. Furthermore, articles that have a lot of views are articles society is finding use in, therefore they are "vital" to the function of the encyclopedia. Approaching these use cases one at a time can help inform our criteria if we restructure them. For articles like athletes, the only real reason to include most of them in my opinion is for this "watch page" function, as most athletes do not have lasting material impacts on their sport or society at large, but may be popular enough that we want to watch their page to keep them looking nice. I think at level 5 and regarding biographies, views are important metrics to consider. I think number of edits, specifically the number of IP and reverted edits, might be another important thing to consider.

:In terms of "links," we have multiple variables we should likely consider. I am personally a fan of "Links to this page" more then the "Languages" value. Looking at {{VA link|Geography}}, it has 259 languages, but 111,099 links to the page. There is going to be a much harder cap on the number of language links, but links to the page could help satisfy the vital article criteria of "Essential to Wikipedia's other articles," by quite literally illustrating how many articles link to it. I this is a more useful variable to look at overall, and that language links are essentially just going to help us with vital article criteria 4, "No (Western) bias." GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 16:51, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

::Interwiki links (the links in the Languages tab) show whether something is important by showing whether other wikis considered it a priority. They aren't perfect, but nothing really is. The problem with "links to this page" is that they are frequently changing and can be messed up by a variety of things, especially MOS:OL. Personally, I don't think using links between pages is a good idea, and I would prefer to use interwikis and pageviews as our two main statistics. Also, I see this project less like a massive watchlist and more like a list of articles to prioritize improving, which is why the Core Contest exists. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:19, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

:::That's fair, but I'm trying not to single down to one of the purposes of the project unless we change the set description. I'm using the project criteria and the description on the main page, specifically here: "The five nested vital article levels are meant to give direction to the prioritization of improvements of English Wikipedia articles (e.g. which articles to bring to WP:GA and WP:FA status), to provide a measurement of quality of overall English Wikipedia (e.g. what proportion of the most important articles are at GA and FA status), and to serve as a centralized watchlist of English Wikipedia's most important articles. Unlike the list of articles every Wikipedia should have, they are tailored to the English Wikipedia and are actively maintained by the dedicated WikiProject Vital Articles." Other Wiki's considering something a priority is really contradictory to the fact it the description specifies this is about English Wikipedia. A better

:::Trying to make an index based on the criteria:

:::* Coverage: This is hard, but categories might be one option to look at. I'm not sure.

:::* Essential to Wikipedia's other articles: This is where "links to this page" links might be useful. A proxy might be the number of watchers.

:::* Notability: Again, not sure how to quantify. A proxy might be the number of watchers.

:::* No (Western) bias: This is where "language links" might be useful.

:::* Pageviews: Obviously pageviews, but likely this could be folded in somewhere else. This is the only quantifiable metric we have listed in the criteria though, so it's hard to ignore when I'm looking at trying some form of consistent analysis.

:::One thing we might consider as well is making it so we only include a certain number of BLPs at level 5, and ban them from level 4 until they've been dead for a set amount of time. This would help with some of the recency bias while maintaining the function of a centralized watchlist. Say, at level 5 1,000 BLP or recently deceased articles are allowed. Hard limits like that might help a bit to avoid the Biography creep we experience. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 18:27, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

::While I'm no professional mathematician, I last proposed a possible estimated vitality formula here, for reference. As a main point, I suggest using rankings-by-metric instead of raw stats, so that they become directly comparable and an article's highest and lowest scoring metrics can be discarded as possible outliers (so e.g. David Woodard ranking #1 by interwikis wouldn't make his article score very high since its other stats are used instead), although this has the side effect of smaller being better for the values used. As for not skipping levels, one implementation I've had in my head is that there would be lists of top non-VA articles & bottom VA5 articles (to aid in getting addition/removal ideas at VA5), top VA5 articles & bottom VA4 articles (for VA4 discussions), and so on - although maybe not for the highest levels since they're small enough to be easily maintained completely manually and I expect on them to be diminishing returns for relying on stats.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 19:43, 20 April 2025 (UTC)

:::Not a mathematician, I do spatial stats but that's about it. I don't know if you've had a time to look at the csv I posted on Github or the code, but it has most of the variables you've discussed. My goal is to get a few more variables included (I'm struggling with the language links because they aren't on xtools I don't think) and then make functions out of it. How we measure/include the variables will be quite a challenge, as I think a quantitative metric like this will be something to inform us on articles, but won't be an absolute rule. We could even have some fun with vote ratios to make it easier/harder to get an article included based on score. I still would prefer a composite index, and am basing my approach on the [https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/place-health/php/svi/index.html CDC Social Vulnerability Index] (I use this extensively in my professional work, so it is the first thing I think of). I would recommend looking through how they handle these various variables, but essentially we could have multiple "themes" that could then feed into an overall index score. That said, if we develop multiple systems for calculating vitality might help inform separate things. My main goal is to get a system in place that can predict which articles are currently in the various levels with a moderate degree of accuracy, so that we have a metric that reflects what already exists that can help with consistency in sorting out level 5. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 00:17, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

:I do it often. I think it is a good practice to list interwikis and page views, but as for requiring them - meh. We should have a bot that would add that information, and replace all links here with VA link template too. We also need a nice tool / gadget to add new listings for discussion. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 01:04, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

::That would be a busy bot. The final "goal" of the project I've been working on is some sort of bot, perhaps we could make a bot for this project. Doing so is outside my current knowledge, but on my roadmap to learn, so I'd like to help (or at least watch) if you're planning to make one. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:08, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

:Your point #2 would actually be my main request, and something I think we should keep in mind for both interwikis and pageviews. As long as we're comparing like to like, I don't expect picking the more popular article to guide us wrong often. My concern is that when those stats are cited between even subsections on a page (e.g. electronics vs. software in Tech), we're asking for wildly uneven coverage.

:Overall, I think it would be good if our official guidance even set aside metrics from the other criteria. While the other criteria are actual big-picture goals, the statistics are more advisory. I'm all for noting both interwikis and pageviews as possible metrics (not exclusive) to consider, again on the condition they're used to compare very similar topics.

:As for points #4 and #5, I agree they make sense most of the time, but a hard rule could kill off VA's ability to stimulate reorganization and new articles. Say someone realized an overarching concept didn't have an article yet or was split across several minor ones (it's uncommon but does happen). A hard rule on interwikis would prevent the new article from floating to its natural spot in the tree of knowledge, at least until someone added translations (possibly bad ones if they're just trying to satisfy the metric). I think we agreed to allow red-links for a very similar reason: a vital concept without an article arguably belongs on the list most of all so we can prioritize it. -- Zar2gar1 (talk) 02:20, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

::Not THAT uncommon imo. It is really easy to find stuff in my narrow domain that is "vital" but still missing an article completely. {{VA link|Technical geography}}, {{VA link|Quantitative geography}}, and {{VA link|Qualitative geography}} were all made by me relatively recently. There are many similar examples across disciplines, and it definitely is a pain to get stuff added here. Glad to see you active again! GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 03:01, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

:::And vice versa. There are some vital concepts that are missing en wiki articles. It's not common but it does happen. A query for topics with many interwikis but no en interwiki would be interesting. For example, {{VA link|weapon}} is V3. I think that https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q4154317 - weapon range - is arguably V5. No en wiki article yet (I reported this to MILHIST a while back). Just saying. Interwikis are a good measure but not perfect. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 13:31, 21 April 2025 (UTC)

We just got a proposal for {{VA link|Pope Francis}} to be moved to level 4, and recently got one to move {{VA link|Jimmy Carter}} after his death, which is what spurred this post.

Our biographies are a bit bloated at level 5, and I think we might be able to reign this in a bit with some minor tweaks. I think we have a lot of recency bias, particularly at level 4 and 5, when it comes to BLPs. One tweak we could make to address this, and my primary proposal, is limiting BLPs to level 5 until a set amount of time (5, 10, or 20 years) after the person is deceased. The purpose of the vital articles includes "to serve as a centralized watchlist of English Wikipedia's most important articles," and I think this is the main reason to include Biographies and BLPs, as in some cases a particular important Biography might be subject to a lot of vandalism, so worth watching. Keeping BLPs at level 5 can facilitate this function while avoiding the popularity contest involved with bumping them up to a higher level. This could also help with a cool down to avoid the urge to add someone who is in the news because of a recent death.

This is just my first idea for a solution, but want to get a discussion going as this is an ongoing problem. We could also insist on a "super majority" of 8 or more support and 80% support for moving a level 5 BLP or recently deceased to level 4.

;Support

1. As nom. I support 10 year cool down, but could go for 5 or 20. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:59, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

;Oppose

1. Wow, another proposal I saw coming... Look, I get that caution and scrutiny should be exercised with the living and recently deceased, but there are too many cases where this rule is unnecessary and harmful. See my list below _pbp 03:06, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
2. Agreed, this is a bad take. While I understand the rationale of wanting to reduce recency bias, there seem to be very few who participate in this process anyhow. With an overwhelming list of examples I could list in addition to Purplebackpack89 below, I think we've done a fairly good job at this organizational project recently. From what I understand, it sounds like a fair few topics/people got added early on that may or may not have discussions and we're currently combing through, but to put limits on when someone is able to propose a topic for inclusion/upgrade is only going to further limit participation. If the topic/person isn't notable, I have full faith the process will vote against and vice versa for notable topics/people without putting these limiters on. GauchoDude (talk) 11:28, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
3. There are some people who simply are already Level 4 vital, and making us wait to add them would be problematic. I will note that Level 3 does already do this, and it makes sense there, but it doesn't work for Level 4 IMO. QuicoleJR (talk) 13:03, 22 April 2025 (UTC)
4. :Honestly, would like to see level 3 biographies mostly brought to level 4, level 4 brought to level 5, and level 5 mostly removed. We have far to many individuals listed on a list that is supposed to be the most "vital" articles of all time. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 22:54, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

;Neutral

;Discussion/Counter proposals

Consider this:

1. Mark Spitz won 7 gold medals in Munich 53 years ago. He is still alive
2. In 2002, Elizabeth II had been queen for 50 years and had already probably done enough for VA4. She would reign for another 20 years
3. Anyone who is vital for being the first to do something...Barack Obama, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Armstrong...they are vital the minute they've done that thing
4. Same with "most". Michael Phelps turns 40 this year. He's been VA4 vital since he broke Spitz's record for golds.
5. Jimmy Carter had a post-presidency of 43 years. Bill Clinton has a post-presidency of 24 years and counting
6. Many actors and musicians live decades beyond their most famous roles or compositions. Bob Dylan's most famous music came out in the 1960s. Should he be excluded from VA4 because he's still alive?
7. Conversely, Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy died in office. If you have a 5-year-since death rule, in 1968 or 1870, it's 5 years since their death, but only 7-9 years since the START of their presidencies

_pbp 03:06, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

:# I don't consider winning a lot of awards to be a mark of being vital. This isn't the greatest hits or top ten list. {{VA link|Mei-Po Kwan}} has [https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=vd-iK1cp0AIC&hl=en 46762 citations, and an i-10 index of 351], has been awarded the highest honor the American Association of Geographers gives, but she didn't warrant inclusion. Sports medals are not something that make a material impact on society, they are tidbits of trivia for lists.

:# A super majority over ride clause could account for that kind of thing. Still would want to wait on it, we exclude ALOT of monarchs from history at level 4. {{VA link|Leonnatus}}, {{VA link|Perdiccas}}, and {{VA link|Antipater}} were all generals involved in the division of the empire created under {{VA link|Alexander the Great}}, but we have mostly placed them as footnotes in history. In 2,000 years, do you really think {{VA link|Elizabeth II}} will be considered one of the top 10,000 most vital humans ever? The fact we have 21st century athletes, actors, and authors included but fail to include people like Alexander's generals, or scholars like {{VA link|Diodorus Siculus}} and {{VA link|Demades}}, kind of shows why this recency bias is a huge problem.

:# Things that seem "vital" in the moment might not be as vital in hindsight. Again, we could build in a "super majority" clause for this.

:# I don't consider winning sports awards to be a mark of being vital. This isn't the greatest hits or top ten list. We don't include many Roman Gladiators like {{VA link|Crixus}} or {{VA link|Flamma}} despite Flamma being described as "one of the most famous and successful of his time." Roman emperor {{VA link|Commodus}} is only level 5, and he had some scandalous time playing gladiator. Recency bias makes our current athletes look more important then they are, in 2,000 years, will Phelps be among the top 10,000 most important topics of all time, or be more like Flamma linked above?

:# I don't think {{VA link|Bill Clinton}} or {{VA link| Jimmy Carter}} should be level 4.

:# I consider {{VA link|Bob Dylan}}'s work more "vital" then his biography. But again, "super majority" clause.

:# Yep. Five or so years after their death, things would be a bit less "hot" in the media and we could see if they are "vital" with a bit of hindsight benefit. But again, "super majority" clause could be built in.

:GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:35, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

:: What will be more replaceable by advanced AI in 2,000 years (and thus all human bios then will become irrelevant historically as AI will always outclass them), Michael Phelps (humans swimming competitively) or geography and cartography? In the obvious case then, how are unknown, niche people like Mei-Po Kwan (article created in 2022, main editor being you) expected to be remembered in 2,000 years? Are we Nostradamus? Why should a modern day popular encyclopedia be built for the interest of people in 2,000 years? Should we not have a well written article on Elizabeth II, a 20th century popular historic figure, just because her fame could dwindle by year 4,000? GuzzyG (talk) 15:48, 22 April 2025 (UTC)

:::The methods that we are using for GIS can be employed by an AI, but Kwan's work will be the theoretical foundation that it is built upon. If you have spatial data and humans that need to use that data, we will need geography/cartography to do it. I don't really know how "vital" a person is for swimming good now. Vitality is not something that should fade with time, a contemporary figure should be as vital as historic ones. If we don't include Alexander the Great's generals, we should not include people who had less of an impact then them, at least at level 4. Level 5 is a great place for putting those BLPs and contemporary articles though, which is my main point. Ultimately, I think we have FAR to many biographies at levels 3, 4, and 5, and think we should cut them all dramatically. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 22:53, 22 April 2025 (UTC)