Template talk:Maths rating

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Mathematics articles rated according to the Wikipedia 1.0 Assesment Scale.

This page is part of WikiProject Mathematics.

1 Usage notes for this template
2 Grading scheme
3 Small parameter setting
4 Adding comments
5 Hide the comment field
6 Style changes
7 field=image and field=list
8 Links and categories
9 Recent updates
10 Template basing-off question
11 frequentlyviewed=?
12 Adding rating to templates
13 What happened to the "field" parameter?
14 Some problems
15 "Comments" field
16 Meta Banner

[edit] Usage notes for this template

Use this template to rate mathematics articles by quality and importance. Include the following on the article's talk page.

Quality

Importance

See Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0 for a sub project working on rating mathematics pages for the Wikipedia stable version.

[edit] Grading scheme

The above quality labels refer to the WikiPedia 1.0 {{Grading scheme}} together with the additional Bplus class for mathematics articles. Their meaning is summarized in the following table:

[edit table]

Quality	Criteria	Reader's experience	Examples
Quality	Criteria	Editor's experience	Examples
FA `{{FA-Class}}`	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received featured article status after peer review, and meet the current criteria for featured articles.	Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information.	Monty Hall problem (Oct 25, 2008) Leonhard Euler (Mar 2, 2007)
FA `{{FA-Class}}`		No further editing is necessary unless new published information has come to light; but further improvements to the text are often possible.
A `{{A-Class}}`	Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in "How to write a great article". It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, from text-books or peer-reviewed papers, rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status; corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard.	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-mathematician would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points.	Golden ratio (Oct 25, 2008) Albert Einstein (Oct 25, 2008) Manifold (Mar 2, 2007)
A `{{A-Class}}`		Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage.
GA `{{GA-Class}}`	This class is for articles of B⁺ quality which have also passed through the good article nomination process and meet the good article standards. Note that the good article designation is not a requirement for A-Class. A-Class articles which meet good article standards should be considered for featured article status.	As good as a B⁺ article, but may also have more polished presentation, more illustrations, more detailed history, and more references.	Homotopy groups of spheres (Oct 25, 2008) Ordinal number (Mar 2, 2007) Znám's problem (Oct 25, 2008)
GA `{{GA-Class}}`		Further editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience.
A-BB+ `{{Bplus-Class}}`	The article has most of the elements described in "start" and may be regarded as a complete article. It is broad in its coverage, while staying focused on the topic; it is factually accurate, verifiable and neutral; and it is well presented, both in terms of grammar, and adherence to some of the main points in the manual of style. The article is well-referenced, and is illustrated, where appropriate, by an image or images which comply with copyright guidelines. It has the potential to become a good article. Among mathematics articles these are some of the best; however, Wikipedia 1.0 does not currently have a B⁺-Class.	Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject which attempts to be as accessible as possible, with a minimum of jargon. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information.	René Descartes (Mar 2, 2007) Introduction to general relativity (Mar 2, 2007)
A-BB+ `{{Bplus-Class}}`		May be improved by input from experts to assess where coverage is still missing, and also by illustrations, historical background and further references. Consider peer review or nominating for good article status. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time.
B `{{B-Class}}`	The article has several of the elements described in "start", and usually a majority of the material needed for a complete article. Nonetheless, it has significant gaps or missing elements or references, needs substantial editing for English language usage and/or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, neutral point of view (NPOV) or no original research (NOR). With NPOV a well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard. Articles that are close to GA status but don't meet the good article criteria should be B- or B⁺-Class articles.	Useful to many, but not all, readers. An interested reader flipping through the article may feel that they generally understood the topic. However, it may not be as accessible as as it could be, or it may be inadequate for a serious student or researcher trying to use the material, who might have trouble or risk error using the article in derivative work.	Set (Mar 2, 2007) Limit (mathematics) (Mar 2, 2007) Vector space (Mar 2, 2007)
B `{{B-Class}}`		Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with.
Start `{{Start-Class}}`	The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element such as a standard infobox. For example an article on groups might cover the theory well, but be weak on history and motivation. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following: a particularly useful picture or graphic multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article	Useful to some, provides a moderate amount of information, but many readers will need to find additional sources of information. The article clearly needs to be expanded.	Hypergraph (Mar 2, 2007) Esther Szekeres (Mar 2, 2007) Theorem (Mar 2, 2007)
Start `{{Start-Class}}`		Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage.
Stub `{{Stub-Class}}`	The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.	Possibly useful to a mathematician who has no idea what the term meant. May be useless to a non-mathematician, or a reader only passingly familiar with the term. Ideally it is at least a brief, informed definition.	Selig Brodetsky (Mar 2, 2007) Parallel curve (Mar 2, 2007) Algebraic number theory (Mar 2, 2007)
Stub `{{Stub-Class}}`		Any editing or additional material can be helpful.
Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Examples
Label	Criteria	Editor's experience	Examples

[edit] Small parameter setting

The small setting is looking awkward on Talk:Srinivasa Ramanujan. Can someone please take a look? Regards, Ganeshk (talk) 21:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Ok, that should be sorted now. I also implemented better support for the "field" element, although it doesn't do much at present. (Unless no field is given, in which case it ends up in Category:Unassessed-field mathematics articles)Tompw 23:25, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks! -- Ganeshk (talk) 23:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I've now realised there are two versions (now identical)... one is at {{maths rating/Small}}, the other is what you get if you use {{maths rating}} with "small=yes". (Talk:Srinivasa Ramanujan uses the latter)... one shouydl clearly go. I personally think the sub-page should be a sophistictaed re-direct to the "small=yes" version, but putting something like this (without line breaks):

{{maths rating|
 class={{{class}}}|
 importance={{{importance}}}|
 field={{{field}}}|
 vital={{{vital}}}|
 comment={{{commment}}}|
 small=yes}}

(Does this include all parameters?) However, this does make formatting the small version trickier, but it is perfectly do-able (as is currently demostrated). Tompw 00:05, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The sub-page one, {{maths rating/Small}} was created for demonstration purposes. No pages link to it. That should go. The consensus was to use the small=yes so that a single version can be maintained. -- Ganeshk (talk) 00:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding comments

Currently, there are two ways of adding comments. One is by the "comment" parameter; the other is by placing the comment in the "/Comments" subpage (capital C, plural) of the relevant talkpage. The main problem with this is that only comments at the sub-page are listed at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Mathematics articles by quality. The sub-page comments can also be transcluded at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0 (e.g. Algebra page).

So, I propose that if there is no comment on the sub-page (and thus it is empty), a link to it appears in the template. Any comments via the "comments" field should be migrated over to the sub-page.

Any comments? Tompw 17:15, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems reasonable enough. Requires slightly more work for adding the comment. --Salix alba (talk) 17:43, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

The "comment" or "comments" parameter is now deprecated. Geometry guy 12:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Hide the comment field

Could you please, please, please add the ability to hide the comments section like template:physics does (with hidden being the default)? Witness the disaster at Talk:String theory that can result if you don't. -- Fropuff 05:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

That example bordered on vandalism (I removed it with the comment that such material belong on the actual talk page)... what I could do is set things up so that if the comment field in the template have been used, the subpage commments don't get used. How does that sound? Tompw (talk) 13:02, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

That could work. Although some people might be confused as to why their comments don't appear (if they use the subpage field). In any case, it would be nice to hide the comments in the event they get somewhat long winded. I don't know how hard it is. The physics template looked rather complicated. I haven't had a chance to grok it. -- Fropuff 16:38, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's possible to impose a cut-off.... I'll spend some time in my sandbox and see what I can do. Tompw (talk) 20:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Style changes

I have made some stylistic changes to the math rating template in my sandbox. this page shows the new version, and the code is here. Unless there are serious objections, I'll migrate these over to the template itself.

It would be easy for me to add the "Comments hidden" option at the same time, if there is still desire for it. CMummert · talk 18:26, 7 February 2007 (UTC)

I implemented the changes this morning. CMummert · talk 15:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] field=image and field=list

I think that we should add another field for images, or (better) make a different template for math images, since the rating doesn't work for them. In the same way, the rating system doesn't apply well to lists. CMummert · talk 15:06, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm half with you... lists have a quality and a field, but not really an importance; Images have a field, but not really an importance or a quality. So, I think it should be a case of having importance=list and importance=image as options. Further, this could (sort of) bedone with no changes to the template, due to the existence of {{Image-Class}} and {{List-Class}} (See examples below) Tompw (talk) 20:26, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I suppose that the alternate "importance" tags are good enough to allow for automated sorting of images and lists away from articles. If nobody objects, I would like to rewrite the instructions for the template to be more clear and to include some things like thee importances that are not documented. CMummert · talk 21:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a good plan to me. (Btw, I've put in an edit request for {{Image-Class}} and {{List-Class}} to make the colours more distinct). Tompw (talk) 21:21, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Links and categories

I've made some minor changes to the template, so that the class and importance link to the relevant mathematics categories. I hope I did it right. I've also moved the category assignments to the <includeonly> part for clarity. I am still puzzled by the way the Class, and then the Field appear to be on a slightly higher level. Geometry guy 19:02, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I see the same behavior from the field cell, but I don't know what causes it. CMummert · talk 00:51, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

I fixed it by removing the unicode carriage returns. I've no idea what they were for. I'll check out a few talk pages to make sure everything is okay now. Geometry guy 10:14, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

Now comments do not seem to work in concert with vital articles. Anyone know what it wrong? Geometry guy 23:24, 21 April 2007 (UTC)

The wikitable syntax does not ignore whitespace, and the template was adding an extra newline in a poor location. I think I have fixed it now. Tracking down these errors is quite difficult; I plan to rewrite this template someday using HTML table syntax instead of wikitable syntax, which will make it much easier to debug. CMummert · talk 01:48, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, debugging this is a pain, as fixing one thing causes another to go wrong. The main problem is to introduce an extra newline if a test is true, but not if it is false. I've finally managed to do this using unicode newlines (I think this is the only way, because wiki-syntax seems to ignore whitespace after tags, pipes and links). I've tested almost every possible combination of conditions, and the template seems to be okay now. Geometry guy 12:46, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Recent updates

There have been a few changes to this template recently.

The term "importance" has been partially replaced by "priority". The intention is essentially that "importance" should correspond to "quality", and "priority" should correspond to "class", but the match is not yet exact.
Bplus has been enhanced and so is now folded in with GA for WP 1.0, not B.
There is a show/hide facility for comments. Since there is only one /Comments page, it has to be shared by all WikiProjects, and for some articles it can become quite long. Some editors have complained that this makes the ratings templates too long.
A remark has been added to clarify that all editors should feel free to update ratings which are inaccurate.

I hope these changes are helpful. Geometry guy 00:32, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template basing-off question

How do you make it so that the inclusion of the template automatically takes care of putting in the appropriate category? (I ask because at WP:NUM we tried basing Template:Numbers rating off this template and the importance categories are completely empty despite template inclusion, e.g., Talk:10 (number)). PrimeFan 22:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Have a look at the end of this template


{{#switch:{{#if:{{{priority|}}}|{{{priority}}}|{{{importance}}}}}
 |Top|top=[[Category:Top-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |High|high=[[Category:High-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Mid|mid=[[Category:Mid-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |Low|low=[[Category:Low-Priority mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
 |NA|na=
 |[[Category:Unassessed importance mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]][[Category:Unassessed mathematics articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]
}}

there is similar code for class as well. The importance parapeter is are used twice, once to display in the message box and one to place it in the appropriate category. --Salix alba (talk) 22:56, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] frequentlyviewed=?

I noticed that Talk:Quasiperfect number‎ recently acquired this template with the designation "frequentlyviewed=no", and the included box now shows "One of the 500 most frequently viewed mathematics articles."

Please can someone document how this parameter should be used? Hv (talk) 14:38, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I can add that. The short story is: it shouldn't be added by individual editors, it will be added by a bot based on a list of article hitcounts. But the template code here should be fixed so that if they do put "frequentlyviewed=no", nothing will happen. — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:41, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Adding rating to templates

I added the math rating template to a template (Template_talk:Groups) and set the "class" to "Template", and the "importance" to "NA" as described in the instructions for the Maths rating template, but I don't think it worked properly. Specifically, it added the template to Unassessed quality mathematics articles, and Unassessed importance mathematics articles. Did I do something wrong, or should something be fixed? RobHar (talk) 00:24, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The Math project doesn't use this template on anything except articles. This is different than some other projects. You can use {{maths banner}} on templates if you like, or just not tag them at all. — Carl (CBM · talk) 02:10, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I see. Then shouldn't the description of this template not refer to this? And is there a specific reason not to use it? RobHar (talk) 04:07, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out the documentation error, I fixed that. The only purpose of the template is to track articles for WP 1.0, which is why it hasn't ever supported the non-article "class" ratings. — Carl (CBM · talk) 04:32, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

There may be an influx of math templates, so that it might be useful to have the template categories. On the other hand, I think those templates will have categories that indicate their relation to mathematics clearly enough. Do we have a nicely laid out category tree for math? The categorytree tag doesn't quite work out because of all of the directed cycles in our "tree" and the extremely un-balanced nature of the tree. JackSchmidt (talk) 14:17, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

The better way to deal with templates would be to add a category, such as Category:Mathematics article templates, directly to the templates. The talk page tag tends to be somewhat redundant, because it requires the template creator to make both a template and a talk page.

I haven't looked at the entire math category tree, but I have been through Category:Mathematical logic in detail. In general, I don't see the benefit of tagging a category as related to mathematics. What purpose does that serve? — Carl (CBM · talk) 15:27, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

I think we agree. Category:Mathematics article templates sounds like a good idea. I wasn't trying to suggest tagging categories, but rather was asking if we actually know what categories we have, somewhat like List of mathematics articles. I think List of mathematics categories omits quite a few categories (especially non-article categories) and is alphabetical, rather than hierarchical. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:38, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Just in case you didn't men tagging in some technical sense, but just meant you didn't see the point of gathering the mathematics categories together: this is just a fundamental principle in cataloging. You cannot expect good categorization if your catalogers do not have easy, hierarchical access to the tree. Having some sort of inventory of what we have is a first step. For instance, see the stub sorting project and its nice gathering and maintenance of its categories and templates. JackSchmidt (talk) 15:41, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I think that a hierarchical list of all mathematics related categories would be a great thing to have. When I use the word "tag" I am referring only to the use of a template on corresponding the category_talk: page. We could gather categories by directly adding them to something like Category:Wikipedia mathematics related categories. That's a more direct way to go. — Carl (CBM · talk) 17:21, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

[edit] What happened to the "field" parameter?

The new template doesn't seem to do anything with the "field" parameter. Is this a bug? --Trovatore (talk) 02:16, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

It looks like the field shows up if you click on the "show" more information. I don't like it... RobHar (talk) 03:49, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Some problems

Hi. The template currently shows articles rated B+ as being Good articles (e.g. Talk:Pell_number). Also, on the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/Wikipedia_1.0/Number_theory page, two of the entries are messed up (Hilbert–Pólya conjecture, and Practical number). I don't know if this is related to the recent changes to this template, but perhaps someone here knows how to fix this. Thanks. RobHar (talk) 05:42, 23 November 2008 (UTC)

[edit] "Comments" field

Should the "comments" field still be part of this template? It is clearly obsolete (regular talk pages are now used for discussions of math articles) and pretty confusing. Nsk92 (talk) 15:00, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

No, comments are not obsolete. I believe they are used by a large number of projects. A lot of articles have comments; Category:Mathematics articles with no comments contains the ones which don't. Martin 15:48, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

There are two methods of comments which have been used, inline comments which were specified as a template parameter and /Comment sub pages. A couple of days ago I removed the inline comments code from the template as this has been deprecated for some time and no articles use them. The template still checks for sub pages which are used quite a bit. --Salix (talk): 17:36, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Salix alba. Ideally every article talk using this template should have a rating and a /Comments subpage. The maths project doesn't use its project templates simply to say its within our scope, since we have List of mathematics articles, which does that more effectively using a bot. The reason we use /Comments subpages is so that the comments can be listed elsewhere. It is depressing to see that Category:Mathematics articles with no comments now contains 2,382 articles. At the end of June 2007, after some efforts by Cronholm and myself, it was empty! Geometry guy 19:13, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

It's not depressing. It means that we have at least 2382 more mathematics articles since June 2007 :D Martin 19:19, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the positive spin, but that isn't the right statistic. Actually we have about 3300 more mathematics articles since end June 2007. I'm not completely sure when or if the no comments category was cleared, but there were between 2400-2800 rated articles at the time (June-July 2007), which means that most of the new ratings (there are currently 5237) are not signed or dated. It would be nice (albeit very time consuming, even with AWB) to check, sign and date them. Geometry guy 20:35, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

I have to say that I don't understand the need for "comments" subpages in the first place. There is a talk page for every article in Wikipedia and that is where all comments on the article really belong. The "comments" subpage feature seems to me to be an unnecessary way of forking the regular "talk" discussion process. I think most users are not aware of the existence of the "comments" subpages and would rarely look there if at all. If someone does say something interesting and meaningful there, chances are it will not be looked at by anyone for a long time, if ever. So why have them? Nsk92 (talk) 21:14, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps they are misnamed. They are for explanations about the rating (or perhaps only a signature and date) added by the person who last rated the article. For their use, see e.g., WP:WikiProject Mathematics/Wikipedia 1.0/Geometry/Mid. Geometry guy 21:32, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see. I completely misunderstood their purpose. Maybe one could modify the math rating template a bit to make this point more clear. Right now the template says "Please also add comments to suggest improvements to the article". There are probably many people who assign ratings to math articles who do not realize that they are supposed to leave a note in the "comments" subpage when assigning a rating. Nsk92 (talk) 21:52, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment on my talk page, and I agree that we need to clarify this. However, comments on the rating do often contain suggestions (perhaps implicitly) on how to improve the rating. Also the commenter need not be the original assessor. Can we find a form of words which handles this? First try: "Please add comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, as reflected in the rating". Geometry guy 21:04, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

Generally sounds good, but I'd like to see a greater emphasis on the rating/assessment part of the template message. (In fact, I think it is a really good idea to keep track of who assigngs ratings, when, and if possible why. This information is often hard to fish out from the history logs of talk pages, so the comments subpages are useful tools for collecting such information). As a second try how about this (maybe too long, but still): "Please add comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the article, particularly when assigning a rating to it". Nsk92 (talk) 21:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Meta Banner

Now that the {{WPBannerMeta}} supports custom quality classes (and so can handle the Bplus class used in mathematics) I am proposing that we convert this banner. The advantages would be the flexibility and ease of adding functionality to the banner in the future, and the reduction in maintenance generally. It would also make it easier to change the assessment schemes in the future (for example there are currently discussions about whether or not C-class should be used). I have temporarily hijacked Template:WikiProject Mathematics to use it as a trial. The following pages currently contain both so that they may be compared:

I took people's comments into account and took the field out of the collapsed part of the banner. I am not sure what the conclusion was to the discussion above about the comments? Waiting for your thoughts. Martin 15:49, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

I've taken a look, and I still don't find the case for change compelling. The proposed replacement is nearly twice as large, the "rated" links don't work, and the links to WP1.0 scales are redundant. It also isn't particularly attractive, especially with the huge square root x. Geometry guy 18:24, 4 January 2009 (UTC)