Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Saints/Archive2

The following discussions are an archived debate. Please do not modify it.

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-Class and good B-Class articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles on saints? Are there any featured articles in this area?. Please post your suggestions here. Cheers, Walkerma 04:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

The following discussions are an archived debate. Please do not modify it.

Wikipedia Assessments within AWB. Click on the image to see it in better resolution

Hi. If you still have work to do tagging talk pages and assessing articles, my AWB plugin might be of interest to you.

The plugin has two main modes of operation:

• Tagging talk pages, great for high-speed tagging
• Assessments mode, for reviewing articles (pictured)

As of the current version, WikiProjects with simple "generic" templates are supported by the plugin without the need for any special programatic support by me. I've had a look at your project's template and you seem to qualify.

For more information see:

• About the plugin
• About support for "generic" WikiProject templates
• User guide
• About AWB (AutoWikiBrowser)

Hope that helps. If you have any questions or find any bugs please let me know on the plugin's talk page. --Kingboyk 14:50, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The following discussions are an archived debate. Please do not modify it.

Hi all! I am working on assessment for all the unassessed saints pages within the project and have run into some difficulty with the "importance" measure, as I've described above. I wanted to check in and let everyone know the criteria I'm working with, so we can keep track of the process. I am currently evaluating "importance" based on the likelihood of someone looking up the article directly, as is briefly suggested in the assessment guidelines. I am therefore sort of ignoring the scale labels, as I feel they lack a great deal of flexibility. They go from "not really important, why's this guy even here?" to "well, could be important, but no one's ever heard about him," to "important, but only within the field of hagiography," to "Jesus Christ, Superstar." There are a lot of saints who are not necessarily "top importance," but who are certainly known outside hagiography (e.g. Clare of Assisi); there are also plenty of little-known, local saints who most certainly belong in the Saints project, though the current "low" assessment states that they are "not particularly notable or significant even within the field of Saints" (e.g. Winefride).

I've remodeled the assessments to be more like this: "Low" importance individuals are largely local saints and early saints about whom we know very little. "Mid" would be for those who are not quite major patrons or hugely popular saints, but who are not totally obscure either. "High" importance individuals are major patrons, saints frequently observed in art history. "Top" would ideally be apostles and major Biblical figures, Doctors of the Church, highly influential Popes, etc. I suspect the difference between all these tiers could get rather political and messy if anyone ever really cared about it (and indeed, one editor over at Columba has already asserted the belief that Columba is of top importance), so we will need to take care with how we view and communicate "ranking" (as ever).

To be perfectly honest, the whole ranking thing feels extremely subjective and potentially sort of unhelpful, which is perhaps why I'm in here every two days asking for validation. I can see why we need a system like this, but... Well, anyway, this is what I'm working with so far. Comments and critique?--TurabianNights 00:58, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

People need to understand that the importance scale is nothing more than a way of prioritizing tasks, not a moral judgment on the saint. We're writing an encyclopedia here, not compiling hagiographies for the faithful. We should therefore pay the most attention to those articles that an encyclopedia user is most likely to want to look up. The articles that should get the most attention are those of the highest importance rating, but with the lower quality ratings.

There's no way of enforcing this of course, but it's a useful guideline. Anyone who wants to help with the project but whose interest isn't focused in any particular direction can simply start with articles of "Top" importance but below "GA" quality. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:07, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

PS -- considered in that way, Columba may well be of Top importance, if the article on him gets very heavy traffic. It's too bad we don't have stats available; it ought to be possible to do this quantitatively. TCC (talk) (contribs) 01:08, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

It really would be a tremendous help to have stats, wouldn't it? I'm currently using a combination of guessing, Googling, and seeing how many Wikipages link to that particular page. Is Augustine more important to the project than Clare of Assisi? According to this astonishing conjectural hagiographic Magic 8 Ball, yes! What's harder is determining the relative importance of non-Western saints. The project says "topics which may seem obscure to a Western audience — but which are of high notability in other places — should still be highly rated," but I find it very difficult to gauge how much these saints would be looked up on English Wikipedia. I try to assign the major patron saint(s) of every country as "high," as well as the "firsts" - first indigeneous South American saint, first Chinese saint, etc. - but in the end it's just difficult to tell.--TurabianNights 04:26, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of stirring up a bees nest, may I suggest using religion as a guideline? Consulting the Calendar of saints for the various denominations can give relative levels of importance. For example, "High" importance could correspond to saints that appear on a general calendar, while commemorations or local celebrations of a saint would rate "Mid" importance. I would not suggest, however, demoting popular saints simply because they do not meet this criteria. As it is now, the skew is towards "Low" importance. That doesn't bode well for this project. Bwpach 20:01, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

• We have yet to have a disagreement on assessment. I think the bigger problem is the number of articles not currently assesed. --evrik 20:15, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Evrik, could you possibly adopt the standard indent style?

I think such disagreement as we have is occuring on individual saints' pages. The original poster mentioned a disagreement in Columba; there may be others that the project as such has no cognizance of.

There are two possible sets of criteria on importance: it may either reflect the status of the saint at large, or it may reflect the importance of a saint within the community where he is venerated. Sometimes these will overlap, as would be the case for Saint Nicholas. (Which, I'm now just noticing, has a horrible intro. Santa Claus and St. Nicholas are distinct figures, whatever the origin of the former.) Sometimes they will not, as with some of the more recent Roman Catholic saints who are not widely known but who may be very important to a broad population of Catholics. Personally, I see no reason why we cannot use both criteria simultaneously -- at least provisionally, until we see if this yields us far too many high importance saints to be practical. TCC (talk) (contribs) 22:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)