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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Pkortge (talk | contribs) at 05:03, 2 April 2007 (→Some Advice about assessing "The School"). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Dedicated assessors.

We need some dedicated assessors who will grade requested articles for assessment. Maybe we can make a section with the names of the dedicated assessors. --EvaGears 03:10, 6 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree and have added the section Adam McCormick 05:35, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Importance grading of school articles

As a matter of curiosity could someone please advise on the criteria used for assessing the importance of school articles. I note that Reading School has been assessed as being of low importance despite being the tenth oldest school in England and one of the best-known grammar schools in the country. It also has no fewer than four listed buildings so is of architectural importance too. I can only think that all schools are considered of low importance in encylopaedic terms. Do any schools get rated with a higher level? If so, on what grounds? Dahliarose 00:36, 14 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Further to my comments above I am still puzzled about the importance assessments of school articles. I note that the Pinkerton Academy in America has been assessed as of medium importance and is the only school so far assessed which has received this importance rating. Is there a pro-American bias amongst the assessors? What criteria are being used? I see nothing in the article which suggests why this American school founded in 1793 should be more important than for instance Reading School in England which was founded in 1125 and has a long and distinguished history. It also has many notable alumni, far more than the Pinkerton Academy, which seems to have been graded "medium" on the strength of its alumni, most of whom are unknown outside the U.S. Dahliarose 11:55, 25 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Thanks. That's a great help. At least we now have something to work on. It's interesting to compare the different articles. I can see that it is very difficult to make an objective assessment about a school's importance but it does seem to me at the moment that there is a distinctly pro-American bias and that American articles or those with an American interest are assessed as more important than those elsewhere. I will raise the issue on the main project page. Dahliarose 11:46, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Creation of new category of assessed school articles

I note that the Architecture Project categorise all their articles according to quality. I think it might be useful if we could do the same thing for school articles but I'm not sure how we got about doing it. The architecture articles seem to automatically go into a category once they've been assessed. See:

Category:Architecture articles by quality

Dahliarose 22:45, 1 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Our {{WPSchools}} project banner automatically places everything into the proper categories. It's just previously been a little tricky getting to the category pages. I added some links to the assessment and main project page that should help, but feel free to change how the page looks. --Jh12 05:54, 8 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A Little Clarification

I'd like to help out by assessing some of the Colorado school articles but I'm not sure how to go about it. Do I need to sign up somewhere, or do I just start ranking? And How do I use the assessment levels? Adam McCormick 16:31, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I have assumed that we just add our names to the lists, get edit/assessing and wait for a Barnstar when the grown-ups get back. I'm not sure if we have to add every assessment to the "March" list - I have done alot but didnt add them to the list presuming that the automatic tools will find the assessment. Victuallers 17:27, 5 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Assessment Template

Ok, so I'm doing a lot of assessments right now and I'm use this template-ish thing, and ideas on making it official?

Click show to display plain text version of assessment
== [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Assessment|Assessment]] as of March 2007 ==

Hello all, and thank you for contributing to this school site. I'm part of the [[Wikipedia:WikiProject_Schools/Assessment]] team, and I'm reviewing this page. I'm currently giving it a grade of Start on the [[Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment|Wikipedia 1.0 Assessment Scale]] and an importance of Mid on [[Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic|this importance scale]].

My reasoning is as follows:

And then I just add my comments and sign. I'm wondering if one of the coding wizkids out there might know how to maybe automate this into a template, maybe something that would add the reasoning bit to the assessed articles list? Well I can dream...Cheers! Adam McCormick 07:11, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shiny Template

Well, I got bored and kind of hacked my own but it looks shiny if I do say so myself:

have a look at it here {{WPSchoolsAssessment}}

And tell me what you think. It works just like the main banner but you can add either info=<assessment> or assess=no to concatenate my assessment template. Schould make life easier (no more cut and paste text). Adam McCormick 07:39, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update, this doesn't work so well, I'm trying to fix it, I'll post an update when it works correctly
So I had to ditch the autodate and signature bit. If anyone has any idea how to make a template automatically sign and date from it's original use I'd love to hear it, maybe a second layer of templating? Oh well, works fine but now you have to sign in the info string. Adam McCormick 02:43, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

School articles in other encylopaedias

I thought it might be helpful as a reference point to include here a list of school articles from other encyclopaedias. Presumably all these schools should be considered as of top importance for Wikipedia.

Microsoft Encarta 2004 edition

All of these now have ratings with High importance Adam McCormick 01:15, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Encyclopaedia Britannica Concise CD-Rom edition

I'm not familiar with the submission process for articles in encarta, but I'm not particularly sure that it should dictate the importance to this project. This should still be very useful though. Thanks! Adam McCormick 19:14, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
There is a Wiki policy that this pedia should contain at least a super set of all other pedias, sorry lost the place where I read it. So I think this is why these are seen as top priority. Victuallers 22:46, 26 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know about top, but in light of that fact, high priority. I'll ignore K for a bit and get to work. Adam McCormick 05:32, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The relevant page is Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles. There is also a list of missing schools articles Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/High schools though it seems somewhat dubious (it was compiled by journalists at facebook.com) and is probably not a helpful guideline. Dahliarose 22:38, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm pretty sure that it's the UK edition of the encyclopedia...Adam McCormick 00:51, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Article Completions

I thought maybe we could list some broad categories of article completions just so people don't have to read all of our assessments so here goes:

Asessment Summaries

I recently changed the subheadings for the last few days of assessment summaries in March 2007. I can think of reasons for listing work on specific days, but don't the signature timestamps sort of do that anyways? I don't mind keeping the monthly summaries -its good to be able to compare work done over that length of time on a monthly basis. Any thoughts or comments? SkipperClipper 03:47, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hide old assessments feature

I have noticed that some of the hidden assessments are not showing correctly when displayed (look at March 19th). I have not been able to fix this, can anyone else help? Camaron1 | Chris 10:58, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Woking on it Adam McCormick 16:41, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Some Advice about assessing "The School"

One of the tasks I set myself was to try and work on schools that began with "The". One reason for this was that I saw that some schools that began with "The" ... say "The King's School" would sometimes appear under K and othertimes would appear under "T". Given the way that directories and the functionality of Wikipedia I have sorted all the schools called "The King's School" (yes there are many) under "K".

I had a note today where unbeknown to me I have got into an edit skirmish (too well mannered to be a war). With the prime editor of two pages that both begin with "The". We need some advice/ suggested policy or we someone needs to find the existing advice.

I have quoted Pkortge's note below in order that we can discuss

On 26th March, you changed all external links for The Springfield College from "T" to "S" and for the The Lakes College from "T" to "L".

On the same day I changed them back, only to have you on the 31st March again change (only) The Springfield College - and I've again reverted your change today (1st April).

Please be advised that the correct (and full Registered) name of the schools are The Springfield College and The Lakes College.

You've also done similar sorting changes to some (but not all) other schools that have "The" as part of their name - with some you've been correct, with others I think you've been wrong, and with some - like The King's School, Canterbury which you've decided should come under "K" - I'm not sure what is correct ;-). On their website, in general text they refer to themselves colloquially as "Kings", but for their full name, they formally show The King's School.

PS: I am aware (and agree) that in certain contexts (e.g. cataloguing books in libraries), very common words (such as articles) at the beginning of a sequence of words are not considered for ordering, or are moved to the end, but this should not be the case for legal entities (as it is with these two private schools).

I've also read Wikipedia:Categorization and believe these to be an exception.

Advice please. Sub problem "University of Aardvark" .... is that under "U" or "A" Victuallers 13:27, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmmm...This is a conundrum, but one that is not unique to Wikipedia. Take a look at school lisitings (using college guides, etc) and they tend to have no uniformity of style. My thought is to go with the rule used by libraries and bookstores: The Hardy Boys becomes 'Hardy Boys, The. I'm not proposing we change the names of the schools with this. It would simply seem to make sense to treat "The" as if it weren't there, as Adam has basically suggested. I'd also suggest the same course of action for "University of." To clarify those searching for schools, could we not put a note or disclaimer indicating how schools are categorized. SkipperClipper 16:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I think that the "The" should not be used to index as most of the (english speaking) world ignores it anyway and tries to index by the second word. I think if those editors are so up in arms, they could concievably cross-categorize the school, but it should be categorized under the second word anyway. As far as universities go (Even though that isn't under this project) I think it's a bit more touchy. University of Colorado at Boulder, for example, is usually called "CU" so Most would say C is the correct category, but a school like The University of Michigan is "U of M" so U is still viable but so is M. I think that the best solution for universities os to let the name stand and to cross-categorize into other applicable letters. Adam McCormick 16:34, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is very "murky" indeed - Back in the "old" days of manual "Card Indexes", librarians solved their problem by ignoring the "The", and when they "computerised" they continued this, thus setting the "trend". Aside from books, there are two distinct issues, which can be seen in the following examples ... 1/. A suburb in Queensland is called "The Gap" and is listed in Australia Post's official booklet "An Alphabetical List of Postcodes throughout Australia" under "T" (along with over a dozen other suburbs with "The" in the name - BTW they also list "The University of Adelaide" and "The University of Sydney" under "T"). In my mind, any entity (School, University) that starts with a Town/City/Suburb name containing "The" should be sorted under "T". 2/. Legal entities that commence with "The" (like The Springfield College, The University of Sydney etc.) have made the point of incorporating the "The" into their names. If they are legally to be referred to as such, why should they be categorised incorrectly ? Pkortge 05:03, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Clearing Assessment Requests

I'm going to go delete MOST of the completed Assessment Requests from this page. I'll leave some so folks can see progress is made on the list is added. However, I see no reason for keeping the full list. If people want to see the assessments that have been done, there are other venues, including on this page. I don't really see the need to archive this work either. If you feel I am in serious error here, please revert.SkipperClipper 16:02, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just go ahead, it's a bit overdue. Adam McCormick 16:39, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
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