Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result of the discussion was: keep the page per WP:SNOW, with several editors noting MFD is the wrong venue to discuss a change to A-class. Levivich^[block] 23:51, 20 June 2022 (UTC) (non-admin closure) (non-admin closure) Levivich^[block] 23:51, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Content assessment/A-Class criteria[edit]

The usefulness of A-class has been debated for years and years, yet mostly gone nowhere. To wit:

As early as 2009, editors were stating that they didn't know the difference between A-class and GA.
Another user questioned it in 2015 and asked how it differed from GA.
A third asked in 2020.
A long discussion questioned the usefulness of A-class as well. This discussion went around the horn a few times but fizzled out.

The 2017 MFD raised concerns to keep that I'm questioning even further:

the class is used, and this describes what to do if projects want to use it. If projects don't want to use it, that's fine too. -- This makes no sense. Why would an entire article ranking schematic be optional? GA, FA, C-class, etc. aren't optional.
Since it's being used, there's no real reason to delete it. If there is a strong demand to reconfigure WP:ASSESS to indicate that A-class is rarely used, or should not be considered a "standard" grade, that's a different discussion, and it would seem a lot more reasonable than complete deletion. No such discussion has ever been initiated, and there is no precedent of having a "nonstandard" rating as far as I can tell. It's not like Disambiguation-class or Redirect-class, where the content being assessed isn't even an article.

A perusal of Category:A-Class_articles showed that out of 1,894 subcategories, 1,434 are empty. If my math is right, that's about 75%. And the other 25% mostly have only one or two articles. Most of the only ones with more than one or two articles are war and military related. The 2017 MFD indicated that some of the road and highway sectors use it too, but this seems to have been phased out. What sense does it make to have a rating scale that's only used by a very tiny fraction of articles? This would be like if we suddenly decided that all WP:MUSIC articles get a 🎵 ranking if they're of particularly high quality.

If it's supposed to be a parallel to Good Article, then why isn't there a centralized, formal promotion/demotion process in the vein of WP:GAN/WP:GAR? So far, no one has brought forth any proposals to get more activity, despite having had nearly 15 years to do so. Even the criteria are unclear: An A-Class article should approach the standards for a Featured article (FA), but will typically fall short because of minor style issues. The article may need minor copyedits, but it should be comprehensive, accurate, well-sourced, and well-written. This to me seems unnecessarily granular. It seems that if an article is "better" than GA, then it shouldn't take much more legwork to address the "minor style issues" that would otherwise keep it from FA. Take a look at one of the articles I recently got promoted, The Mavericks. It's obviously GA-class, but would it be A-class? Would it be 🎵-class?

It's clear that there is a massive lack of internal support outside a few niche corners of Wikipedia. The B and C classes aren't nearly this thinly spread or underused. Any discussion about the matter seems to die on the vine every time, which to me indicates a clear lack of interest in sustaining it for any other reason than "the military articles use it" or "we have B and C, so we have to have A". It is this constant lack of momentum to any discussion that drove me to bring it here. For a quality scale to be completely unused by over 75% of the project is utterly nonsensical. If any other category schematic had over a thousand empty categories, it'd be G6'd on sight.

tl;dr: Given the evidence above, which shows a clear lack of support for the A-class schematic as a whole combined with severe neglect of the process, I think that A-class should be archived or deprecated. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 21:51, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification The difference between A-Class and GA-Class is simple. A-Class is purely based on content quality, as judged by a WikiProject. It is used by a WikiProject to indicate that it contains all of the significant content and rigor that the subject matter experts believe should be there, as well as any other internal rules that might be used by the WikiProject. Meanwhile, a Good Article and a Featured Article both have other external things, besides subject matter content, that the WikiProject don't care about. Thus there are two routes to get an article to FA status: B -> GA -> A, and B -> A -> FA. The GA might look pretty but lack some key content; an A-Class has all the content but won't look so pretty.

In terms of usefulness, I would argue that if any WikiProjects at all are still using it, and find it useful, then why not keep it? We have a lot of "class" levels that some projects use and others don't such as Draft-Class, etc. When we set up the bot, we accommodated the different needs that different projects might have, even if it were just a couple of projects asking for a particular class level. I see no reason to change that. If we reach a point where zero WikiProjects are using it, only then should it be deleted. Walkerma (talk) 22:06, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I still think the difference between GA and A-class is far too granular. As I said, it's an unnecessary extra step with no formal way to tell if it's met or not, unlike FA and GA. And I still think <25% usage is a shockingly low usage rate for any point on the grading scale. If <25% of articles were using GA-class and 75% were skipping it entirely, would that not also be concerning? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 22:19, 17 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm writing an essay about A-Class in my homewiki, and I noticed this discussion. In my opinion, GAs equivalent to Bplus-Class articles, while A-Class articles can be recognized as Pre-FAs. That is to say, we shall not compare GAs to ACAs, but ACAs to FAs.

An ACA must undergo a rigorous review to ensure it has comprehensive content, though style-like-stuff checking is not the key point now. Due to A-Class review needs a lot of effort, and there is a substantial overlap between ACR and FAC; the GA-to-FA route is practical for the most of projects.

I think most projects could consider that can they afford another FAC-like procedure? If not, deprecating their A-Class is a good way. But for projects have a strong A-Class review team, their ACR are meaningful in article improving.--Lopullinen 14:38, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep - Some projects, including Military History, use it. Robert McClenon (talk) 03:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I get that. I just don't see why we should hvae a rating schematic used by less than 25% of the project. There are no policy based reasons or precedents for it. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 15:54, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
There's no policy-based reason for removing a major project internal assessment process, either. It's not broken, so why are you trying to break it? Hog Farm _Talk 18:28, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

(After edit conflict) You have said above and repeated here that there are no "precedents" but your whole argument is to overturn a classification system that has been used for well over a decade and is in use on hundreds/thousands of articles. A system in use for over half the life of Wikipedia is a significant precedent. From Hill To Shore (talk) 18:32, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Note: The MfD tag placement on the page resulted in a lot of bad category transclusions; I have now added noinclude tags to avoid this. --Paul_012 (talk) 13:57, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Strong keep (as MILHIST coordinator). If even just one or two projects want to use it, why care? I've been quite involved in A-Class for MILHIST and have never seen it cause any sizable problems. I don't see why MFD should dictate internal project processes. Hog Farm _Talk 18:26, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
You don't think "over a thousand empty categories" is a problem? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:24, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the categories aren't harming anything, and can surely be coded out of the template interface and then deleted if they ain't going to be used. Destroying a used process to remove some category bloat is like cutting of your thumb to remove a hangnail. Hog Farm _Talk 20:31, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

You don't think "over a thousand empty categories" is a problem?"

Why would it be a problem? No one is affected by them. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:05, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Can the empty categories be tagged as {{Possibly empty category}}?

Why does anyone care about empty categories? Robert McClenon (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment I have notified WP:WikiProject Military history and the Village Pump of this MfD. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 18:56, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep WP:MILHIST produces a large number of FA-class articles and there are frequent attempts to copy what works there and apply it to other projects (with a mixture of success and failure). There have also been attempts over the years to try to restrain the number of FA articles related to the military, as if reducing the amount of effort put into the military articles by volunteers will somehow result in those volunteers gaining an interest in improving other topics that they are not interested in. If A-class assessments by Wikiprojects are part of the process used to produce this high quality content, what benefit is gained by removing it? Other projects that don't use A-class are not affected by the removal but it harms the projects that do use it. There is no need to hold back successful projects to the pace of the less successful ones. From Hill To Shore (talk) 19:01, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (also a MILHIST coord). One would also expect questions on why we would have B and C ratings and no A. There will always be questions about why things are a certain way, and the fact that 3 different individuals asked that question over the last 15+ years the A-class rating has been around is not really evidence that it's unnecessary. That the projects where you participate don't use the A-class review process also isn't a good reason to get rid of it. Here's the bottom line on questions like this one: is the subject up for deletion a net positive or net negative? If the former, it should be kept, if the latter, deleted. I don't think a case can be made that A-class is a net negative. Parsecboy (talk) 19:17, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep' 1) Other projects do use it (such as WP:HWY/ACR), and 2) I don't know that deleting the page would actually remove A-Class, that would require a RFC. --Rs chen 7754 19:26, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep (also a MILHIST coord) A-class is not parallel to GA; B-class is parallel to GA. GA is a review by a single editor, and is pretty much the minimum standard for an encyclopaedia article. MilHist A-class requires review by three editors, along with source and image reviews. Unlike FA, it is always available. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:36, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Procedural keep Surely MFD is not the correct venue for discussing such a significant change into content assessment. An RFC at some other venue (WP:VPP?) would be much more suitable and would gain a lot more attention. -Ljleppan (talk) 19:42, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. Commenting wearing my FAC coordinator hat, I consider there to be a large gap between the standards required of at GAN and those of FAC. ACR makes a fine halfway - or two-thirds - house, especially for those newer to the FAC process. That more projects do not have active ACR processes is a shame and I feel it would benefit Wikipedia as a whole to see more of them, rather than fewer. Or, as suggested, none. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:57, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Why do we need a midpoint though? No one's proved why it's needed for any other reason than "well, one project uses it". Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:24, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
That's a non-argument. We don't need any rating system whatsoever; just as you say no one has proved that we need it, you have equally failed to prove that we don't. What net negative is A-class causing? Parsecboy (talk) 20:32, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment This is all the discussion I didn't see the last 874 times A-class was discussed. What brought you all out of the woodwork? If it is truly being used by the military projects, then could we at least reach a consensus to prune it from all the projects for which it has little to no use? As I said earlier, if any other category schematic had over a thousand empty categories, they'd be G6'd on sight. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 20:46, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
- Yes, it is quite significant in MILHIST. I agree that at a minimum we don't need categories for inactive projects that never used it; the category bloat should be trimmable somehow. Hog Farm _Talk 20:50, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
  A-class articles frequently go on to be featured. When that happens, they are removed from the A-class category. It therefore should not be deleted even when empty. The category can only be trimmed for inactive projects. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:04, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep bunk nomination rational. If you don't know what the category is for, ask, don't MFD it. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:55, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep I am not involved with MILHIST but if it is useful to that project, then that is good enough for me. Cullen328 (talk) 21:13, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Comment (MILHIST coord here) Yes, it is well-known that not many projects have any use for A-class, outside of MILHIST. Wikipedia:WikiProject Conservatism had an A class process in 2018 that died out after one article was processed through it. Wikipedia:WikiProject Tropical cyclones apparently still has a process, though I am unsure of the mechanics of it. TPH is right to criticize the claims that the defining attribute of an A-class article is that it "will typically fall short because of minor style issues." I think the reality is somewhat looser on this, though at MilHist I and quite a few other users will try and demand close to what FA standards would be, with maybe one or two small notes that a source should be replaced or some subject is deserving of slightly more detail. That all said, simply up and removing the option for projects to have an A-class would cause more harm than good. My first ever FA went GA -> A class -> FA class, and it was helpful to have it reviewed by people who knew the right content questions to ask before I brought it to FA. Please do not throw out the baby with the bathwater. I would be fine with creating a restriction, whereby for example if MILHIST determines an article to be A-class only the class rating for the military history project can be change to say "class=A", since I've seen bad low quality articles dubbed A Class by persons from small projects without going through any review process. -Indy beetle (talk) 23:02, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Keep – Per many of the exceptional rationales presented herein, such as arguments presented by HOG FARM, Ljleppan, Gog the Mild and others. In my opinion, the nomination is looking for a solution to a problem that does not exist. North America¹⁰⁰⁰ 23:23, 18 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep If it ain't broke, don't fix it. This whole nom strikes me as bordering on a "foolish consistency".--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 01:09, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep for just about every reason other editors have stated above. No need for this to be removed. DonaldD23 talk to me 02:29, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Farawayman (talk) 03:17, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Delete but allow adaptation of its content by individual WikiProjects.

Several users cited the page's utilty to the MilHist WikiProject. While this is a valid reasoning, we shouldn't have to keep an information page that is chiefly useful for only a few WikiProjects (e.g. MilHist) for the whole Wikipedia. NotReallySoroka (talk) 06:46, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wrong venue. This appears to be a proposal to deprecated A-class assessment, and implementation of such an outcome, were it accepted, would have to involve a wide variety of tasks beyond the deletion of this one page being discussed at MfD, including reworking the WikiProject template system, bots, and categories. In any case, there clearly is the case for deleting the categories for WikiProjects that do not make use of the class, and WikiProjects should be encouraged to review their existing pages. But we may first need to adjust the WikiProject meta templates to avoid the categories showing up as red links and the criterion showing up on project pages where it's irrelevant. --Paul_012 (talk) 11:39, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Agree completely - presenting this as a simple MFD of a single page when it's really "we should make major changes to the general assessment system" is not helpful, regardless of the merits of the proposal. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:38, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Thirded. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:50, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

If I had done it in any other venue, it would have sat unnoticed for years and years, just like literally every other discussion on A-class content ever. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 00:47, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, in use by at least one project. While I think removing A-class from projects without a functioning review process (99% of them) is probably beneficial, I'm not sure such a fairly small change is worth the effort. (I would support a general re-evaluation of the content assessment system). But none of this is for MfD, and I suggest to close this soon and find a more productive venue for the discussion. —Kusma (talk) 22:12, 19 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Wrong venue.

Use Wikipedia talk:Content assessment/A-Class criteria. If no one responds, see Wikipedia:Publicising discussions. If still no one responds, do it. MfD is wrong because deletion is not being sought. --SmokeyJoe (talk) 06:39, 20 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.