Wikipedia talk:Vital articles

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Introduction

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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:

Support votes shouldn't delay the closure of the discussion

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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)[reply]

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)[reply]
To clarify: I propose that the one week rule should only apply to votes necessary to close as passed or failed (respectively) and votes contrary to the outcome. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 15:14, 17 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Zar2gar1. Though I also would like to bring the attention that a lot of proposals are moot (for many months) but don't have 4 participants; I am closing these following the WP:BRD logic. The Blue Rider 11:21, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why? They're not moot, they're two votes away from a result. Now they're five votes away from a result. There's good reason why such discussions aren't being closed – it's pointless! Closing unopposed discussions on unpopular topics because of lack of participation is (a) unproductive due to the previous and (b) reinforces our bias towards changes on popular parts of the list while unpopular parts get left behind. Especially when talk pages aren't overflowing. J947 ‡ edits 12:06, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Should those proposals (on the STEM page) be reopened? 96.95.142.29 (talk) 19:35, 20 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The page has over 200k bytes, which I think is over the top. Also, not closing proposals which have been stale for many months isn't productive because it makes other more relevant proposals less visible. The Blue Rider 09:35, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vital articles that might fit in multiple lists

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I was looking at Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Geography/Countries#Malaysia and superficially there are two obvious omissions. Firstly, the territory of Kuala Lumpur is not listed there. Secondly, Peninsular Malaysia is not included despite the inclusion of East Malaysia. However, these are both covered elsewhere: Kuala Lumpur is in Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Geography/Cities, while Peninsular Malaysia is somewhat redundant to Malay Peninsula  4. Is there some way to insert these items into the Geography/Countries subpage in a way that won't inflate the article count but will make it clear to someone looking at Geography/Countries? This is not a unique situation, for example, Berlin  4 is an obvious omission at Geography/Countries, but it is at Geography/Cities. CMD (talk) 12:05, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would like such a solution too. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 21:13, 20 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How vital are Level 5 articles in practice?

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The first part of the mission statement of the vital articles is "to give direction to the prioritization of improvements of English Wikipedia articles." In the archives of the Core Contest, there are examples of good improvements being made to articles of Level 2, 3 and some at 4. But, there probably isn't enough labor on the VA project to get 5% of the 50000 Level 5 articles substantially improved in a reasonable amount of time. It seems like when you get to that level, more work is getting spent on revising the list than actually revising the articles. I should note that the project's mission statement also mentions providing a "measurement of quality" of the Wikipedia and "to serve as a centralized watchlist", which are goals that are served very well by the scale of the Level 5 list, so I'm definitely not suggesting to cut the level entirely (I also find the list intrinsically interesting). But it does seem that Level 5 articles don't get much benefit from being listed as vital. ALittleClass (talk) 22:10, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The range of VA5 is (in its current iterations) pretty big, going from narrow VA4 rejects to filler. I hope as the level matures, a larger proportion of the listings is evidently essential and the level better justifies itself. One day we might even reach a state where it is almost as difficult to make additions and removals as on the higher levels (and more focus can be had on actually improving the articles), but vitality being a moving target ensures some changes to the list will always be required. One benefit of VA5 is, organisationally, acting as a buffer between VA4 and non-VA; the jump between a typical VA4 and non-VA subject in importance is quite drastic and VA5 smoothens that, having to (nowadays) pass VA5 before entering VA4 adds the latter more prestige, and it makes it easier to come up with additions to VA4 since one can examine VA5 for ideas rather than the whole of English Wikipedia. Also, many wikiprojects have decreased in activity or outright become fully inactive over the years, and VA5 acts as a contingency plan for the most important pages for topic areas.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 06:26, 19 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bot should report articles missing from lower levels

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I just boldly fixed the absence of Computer program  4 on level 5. Cewbot maintains a list of some caught issues such as duplicates at Wikipedia:Database reports/Vital articles update report, but not this type apparently.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 09:59, 31 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Moratorium on new proposals if any VA discussion pages are over 300K

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There is no deadline. There IS the problem that when the pages are big, people tend to get overwhelmed and not vote. There's also the problem that sone browsers can't load it properly when the page is that large. I propose a template/tag saying: "This page is over 300KB. Editors are discouraged from making new proposals until it's under 300KB, and are instead encouraged to vote on existing proposals". It would be placed at the top AND bottom of every VA talk page that's over 300KB, and removed when the page gets back under 300KB pbp 18:08, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support
  1. pbp 18:08, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Weak support, in some form from a technical perspective something needs to happen. Splitting the talk pages even further will make it harder to get people to see the various votes, as it requires more pages to patrol. That said, we can probably workshop this a bit. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:45, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 18:23, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
  1. As I've previously said I think this is counterproductive, but I have come around to the idea that the talk pages are too large as they are. A potential alternative solution is giving each sublist at VA4 and VA5 its own talk page (e.g. Wikipedia talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/People/Philosophers,_historians,_political_and_social_scientists), and transcluding those talk pages into the current talk page system. That way people can choose between navigating via a heftier, broader page or a smaller, more focussed page. A side benefit of this system is that similar proposals are grouped together, but a downside is that old proposals that need votes are less easy to spot. This arrangement is very helpful at the likes of RfD, TfD, CfD, and FfD. J947 ‡ edits 01:10, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Why do you think it's counterproductive, @J947? What's the harm in putting off proposals until the page is smaller? pbp 20:39, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think this would reduce participation at VA, particularly for new users. If I come across an article that looks like it should or shouldn't be at VA, then I want to propose it now rather than check every day until the page gets back under 300KB, remember my proposal, and rush in before someone else pushes it back over 300KB. It will spur some extra input into old discussions, especially in the short-term. But a cap on the amount of text on VA pages is also eminently gamable and subject to rules lawyering. It also encourages closing discussions as soon as they can be closed, even if productive discussion or debate is ongoing. Ultimately, since so much activity is spurred by new proposals, I think this proposal would curtail the productivity of VA5.
    What do you think about my proposal? J947 ‡ edits 21:20, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not entirely sure it's a good idea to build our entire philosophy around people who randomly nominate something for VA. Usually when that happens it's somebody's favorite band or album, or some other topic that is obviously NOT VA pbp 23:04, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Everyone starts somewhere on Wikipedia. I've found a relatively weird phenomena where lots of people seem to dive immediately into proposing and adding to the vital articles (Check user says that they aren't socks, just several people whose first edit was on VA and who almost exclusively contribute to VA), but that is not exactly what I'd normally expect the process of onboarding to look like. If we make the process too difficult for the average person to nominate their favorite band or some other topic, then there is no way for them to learn what IS obviously a VA. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:52, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The problem with splitting the pages further is that returning members have to follow many different pages to keep up with all the proposals. pbp 23:04, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "People who randomly nominate something for VA" are the project's lifeblood. Newbies to this project are obviously massively welcomed.
    Surely the latter isn't a serious problem. It only takes a couple of minutes to watchlist all the talk pages. If you don't want to do that, you can instead follow along via the five VA5 talk pages that are already in place and will remain in place. J947 ‡ edits 05:43, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2. A non-starter-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:06, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @TonyTheTiger Your rationale here is a bit of a non-starter itself pbp 20:16, 12 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @TonyTheTiger Still waiting for some actual rationale or explanation 🕦🕦🕦🕦 ⏰️⏰️⏰️⏰️ pbp 20:38, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    We should figure out how to split the talk pages rather than curtail free speech regarding prioritizing articles.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:04, 20 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Also oppose per user J947. If the talk pages are too large, that should be an indicator that we need to split subcategories up more, especially at the 5 level. GauchoDude (talk) 21:31, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Discussion
  1. I've seen this bounced around, but my question is always instruction creep. Wikipedia is dense, and a template won't stop people because people won't read it, unfortunatly. It also might discourage new members who show up to nominate some article they are interested in and find a bogged down list. In Peer review or Good Article Nominations, they have a system in place where after a certain number of nominations, you have to review before you can nominate again. Could we implement such a system here, so that a new person could nominate 2-5 things before we start hitting them with the rules? GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:13, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Implementing that seems as much or more instruction creep as the above proposal, to say nothing of how many more rules your proposal would create. I would note there's no penalty or anything linked to my template. pbp 18:27, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Fair, I'm generally against "rules" that are not enforceable in any way as it tends to just lead to uncivil bickering. The main issue would be with regulars spamming (guilty) without also voting. Would mostly want to avoid forcing new members to obey the draconian rules and then gently nudge towards voting if they hang out for a while. Above there is a proposal template, we could try to use that to make some thing like what is seen at Good Article reviews. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 19:24, 10 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  1. Looking at some examples, I think the template on the Wikipedia:Good article nominations page that states "This page has a backlog that requires the attention of willing reviewers. You can help!" would be the best bet. I think we could use some of the Wikipedia:Good article nominations/templates to help with our templates, per the above discussion. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 02:14, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support @J947's split-and-transclude option above, assuming that it would address the current page performance issues (I don't know much about how transclusion works technically) YFB ¿ 23:17, 18 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are probably a lot of noms on WT:Vital articles/Level/5/Society that can be closed already. Many currently closed ones should be archived at least.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 05:31, 11 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Unclear process

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Hi all, new to VA (I came here via some changes made by Cewbot to an article I watchlist) and I must admit I've found the setup for nominations / proposals quite confusing. Unless there are some clearer instructions somewhere that I've missed, the details on nominations don't seem to specify where to create proposals or vote on existing ones. I was interested to find out how some of the listed articles under Plants were decided, and couldn't find them in the archive search so it appears some were added without discussion? I'm not sure if that's just a historical thing or something that happens routinely, maybe due to confusion over 'Any editor can make a proposal at Level 5'. There is bold-text wording on the main Level 5 page saying "Any addition to or removal from these lists should ONLY BE MADE after a discussion on the relevant Level 5 sub talk pages", but that wording doesn't seem to be repeated on the subpages themselves.

A few suggestions (if I was more confident that I knew how things were supposed to work, I'd make some of these changes myself...):

  1. Nominations/proposals section on the main Vital Articles page should more clearly direct users to the relevant talk pages to raise proposals
  2. That section could be more helpfully structured as a step-by-step process, rather than a series of rules without the full context
  3. All sublevel pages should have the same wording about not making changes without talk page discussion
  4. The template used on article talk pages that says "This level-5 vital article ..." should maybe link to the discussion whereby the article was listed as vital, and pages previously listed as vital but later delisted, should have a template linking to the delist proposal (similar to GAs) - this would make it easier to avoid repeat nominations

YFB ¿ 11:20, 15 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Level 5 talk pages

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I've noticed that level 5 talk pages do not correspond very closely to their subject pages. This is related to the discussion above (#Moratorium on new proposals if any VA discussion pages are over 300K) because some of these talk pages would benefit from being split up. Please see table below. I think it would make sense if every topic page had its own talk page.

Content page Current talk page Proposed talk page
/History /History and geography /History
/Geography /Geography
/Arts /Arts and everyday life /Arts  Done
/Everyday life /Society /Everyday life
/Philosophy and religion /Philosophy and religion
/Society and social sciences /Society and social sciences
/Biology and health sciences /STEM /Biology and health sciences
/Physical sciences /Physical sciences
/Technology /Technology
/Mathematics /Mathematics
/People /People No change

— Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:39, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have moved the arts page, because everyday life does not even redirect to that talk page — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:55, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I was trying to move discussions about the everyday life and sports lists, and because of your revert I lost probably an hour of work. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 13:19, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, you can just revert me back. I didn't know you were working on this. But why not put them on Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/Everyday life? Is there much link between arts and everyday life ... ? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:58, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Other people in Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5#Is it time to split the V5 talk pages into more subpages? are opposed to splitting into many more talk pages than we already have. I have discussed this split elsewhere (see also the discussion above the target of my link) Lophotrochozoa (talk) 15:13, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please revert me if you are sure that what you are doing has consensus — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 15:18, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Dataset with statistics for the full project

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So I've been working on getting the API calls set up to get us a good view of the Vital Articles statistics and think I've made some good progress. For the full table/dataset, see this link to my GitHub repository. I'm working on cleaning up the scripts I used to get access to the API, but for now we have a snapshot of the data. My hope is that this dataset can guide research on the vital articles and help us with quantifiably comparing articles, ultimately with the goal of creating a "Vitality Index" for each article to help in discussion. Updating this will likely not be sustainable, so we would need to figure out a bot that can calculate this once we have the index and calculate things as we go.

From what I can see, the most interesting variables are pageviews, total watchers, total editors, total revisions, links in, site links, and language links. It is important to note that site links is inclusive of the language links, but also includes OTHER Wikipedia affiliated projects like Wikiquotes. I know language links has gotten a lot of attention, but I think site links overall is a better metric for several reasons. Perhaps these can be combined somehow into one weight for an index. Pageviews is a VERY odd metric though, as level 3 has a higher average then level 2. I believe this is because several everyday life topics like biographies and countries begin at this level.

Some caveats:

  1. The data list was captured on June 16th 2025. Changes to the list since this are not represented.
  2. To get the data, it takes approximately 3 seconds to capture data for each article, and due to the API limits this has to be done one at a time. This means the code takes about 41 hours to run in a perfect world. Therefore, the dataset does not capture every article at the same moment in time.
  3. There were 17 errors that interrupted the run. These errors varied, and I'm still working on error handling in the script, so they required me to reset each time. The script exports the data every 100 articles, which avoids losing to much when an error occurs. Some of the errors were due to vital articles being redirected during the run, others appeared to be due to characters in the name of the article. For example COVID-19 Pandemic was the first error, and I think the "-" is the reason. However not every article with a dash had issues. For each of the errors I manually got the data and filled out the sheet, and I have noted these in the column "Error" and given notes to why I think some might have caused an issue. Because these were manually entered, there is an increased possibility of human error on them.

Pinging @Zar2gar1, @QuicoleJR, @LaukkuTheGreit, @Purplebackpack89 @1ctinus, @GauchoDudeas I know they've been involved in discussions involving wanting a dataset like this in the past. If I missed someone who is heavily involved, please feel free to ping them.

Variables:

Variable Description
Article Name of the article
Vital_Level Vital Articles level the article is on.
Vital_Category The level 5 Vital article sub-field the article is in.
Level_Quota The quota of the Level 5 category
SubPage_Quota The quota of the level 5 sub-field
watchers The number of pagewatchers
pageviews The number of pageviews over the last 30 days
pageviews_offset The number of days pageviews are calculated for.
revisions The number of edits the article has had.
editors The number of editors that have edited the article.
created_at The date the article was created.
links_ext External links to the page.
links_out Outbound links from the page.
links_in Inbound links to the page.
redirects Number of redirects
Site_links Number of Wikidata entries for topic (Includes other language projects, Wikiquote, Wiktionary, etc. )
Language_Links Number of other languages topic exists in
Qid Wikidata Unique ID
Error Page caused error during run (Yes/No)
Notes Notes on run.


Example table, values for the ten articles at level 1.

Article Vital_Level Vital_Category Level_Quota SubPage_Quota watchers pageviews pageviews_offset revisions editors created_at links_ext links_out links_in redirects Site_links Language_Links Qid Error Notes
The arts 1 Arts 3700 3700 583 21756 30 2418 1167 2002-02-25T15:43:11Z 182 537 3265 11 57 55 Q2018526 No
Human history 1 History 3300 3300 1280 40964 30 8233 1962 2004-01-19T05:51:28Z 444 1167 1358 26 99 96 Q200325 No
Life 1 Biology, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology 5600 1100 1256 63311 30 5321 2274 2001-11-02T16:18:09Z 413 1530 3995 15 227 168 Q3 No
Society 1 Social studies 4000 500 784 33541 30 3079 1609 2002-02-01T05:48:43Z 255 620 4576 7 228 169 Q8425 No
Technology 1 Technology 3200 3200 1282 47692 30 4626 1881 2001-11-08T19:05:33Z 354 958 26163 18 228 189 Q11016 No
Human 1 Animals 5600 2400 2723 195499 30 13719 5074 2001-10-03T18:14:31Z 1121 1155 9897 52 270 225 Q5 No
Philosophy 1 Philosophy and religion 1400 1400 3523 145004 30 10901 3749 2001-10-31T05:49:04Z 495 715 43339 39 307 238 Q5891 No
Science 1 Basics and measurement 4800 300 2324 125614 30 9009 3210 2001-10-15T17:23:57Z 416 888 40021 21 319 244 Q336 No
Mathematics 1 Mathematics 1200 1200 2897 107716 30 7931 3129 2001-11-08T15:31:38Z 539 766 56639 42 328 254 Q395 No
Earth 1 Astronomy 4800 900 2995 258757 30 14733 5406 2001-11-06T03:00:43Z 691 1211 25072 54 362 312 Q2 No

Table showing the average value for each variable by level 5 Sub-class:

Level 5 Sub-Class Average of pageviews Average of watchers Average of revisions Average of editors Average of links_ext Average of links_out Average of links_in Average of redirects Average of Site_links Average of Language_Links
Animals 15952.06756 145.4537726 1134.716847 555.1592994 96.21851543 313.7326939 1779.461635 9.55087573 50.40075063 47.24770642
Artists, musicians, and composers 36271.473 254.4375332 2449.640055 1035.701431 138.2653438 396.3585602 1197.793724 9.416243655 50.51176742 45.59483156
Arts 24473.75374 246.324806 2062.631565 958.8127891 83.60027211 426.0432653 2376.617415 13.52435374 44.56598639 40.36136054
Astronomy 10437.72667 228.9730392 1053.75 479.9611111 112.7344444 362.2766667 1309.947778 12.40222222 54.48111111 51.71555556
Basics and measurement 10211.1976 228.13 964.9431138 486.9760479 47.71556886 202.0239521 1676.266467 17.55389222 50.78742515 47.83832335
Biology, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology 14188.2694 273.2917821 1425.531668 729.9482605 129.073149 358.3434434 3533.519179 17.27386262 61.54861731 58.03657449
Chemistry 10428.70992 182.3395486 1034.695505 533.3070399 77.03138253 328.5597964 1067.135708 12.91942324 53.95419847 51.51314673
Cities 21954.63155 188.651464 2315.793851 971.1572581 141.6885081 616.640121 4775.967238 16.66582661 97.86844758 86.85887097
Countries and subdivisions 51955.83884 351.3090164 3359.930818 1388.457547 175.2413522 608.1399371 16902.55503 20.78930818 130.2987421 112.4944969
Culture 21216.36471 303.6987261 2196.46935 989.3826625 116.3318885 530.6668731 5584.586997 27.5244582 64.25263158 59.09907121
Earth science 9332.547059 177.3443902 1065.051261 524.3176471 87.27563025 296.6252101 1639.377311 9.587394958 47.30168067 44.40672269
Entertainers, directors, producers, and screenwriters 59653.56506 251.2201223 2176.108271 1014.322955 133.098513 445.3703532 853.883829 6.400092937 48.09618959 43.26301115
Everyday life 19307.96311 218.4959016 1774.733909 917.7982732 73.69387755 471.755102 1746.574568 14.73312402 50.65384615 45.37990581
Health, medicine, and disease 25385.88692 307.3944604 2103.072897 960.5383178 197.082243 476.4747664 1505.236449 23.11869159 55.71214953 52.09906542
History 25500.17354 273.4237396 2147.439017 869.6556432 113.0288228 699.2906553 1948.382888 15.03822816 42.57979369 40.14896845
Mathematics 11540.36318 261.1965665 942.6686192 455.7740586 37.06610879 235.7790795 705.7539749 15.21841004 42.16569038 39.55732218
Military personnel, revolutionaries, and activists 17044.94218 162.1068702 1356.233405 590.0107066 64.88650964 340.4817987 565.6038544 10.14989293 40.56102784 35.66809422
Miscellaneous 32591.3371 211.6358087 1616.973067 754.3518679 86.02867072 267.4344049 473.1476977 7.791485665 33.71676803 29.81407472
Philosophers, historians, and social scientists 9037.554982 206.568873 982.5335793 466.3335793 91.17490775 425.3298893 749.2162362 7.318081181 47.96236162 38.55793358
Philosophy and religion 25143.71006 466.8438375 2362.358127 1028.5427 85.83471074 694.2603306 2325.819559 18.67630854 61.04476584 55.02410468
Physical geography 14585 167.7325103 972.596519 487.8238397 66.26424051 344.8549578 2370.771097 10.56487342 59.24472574 54.94620253
Physics 10391.46304 257.9637168 1057.46729 523.3831776 55.03738318 226.7434155 821.5683942 11.65335599 45.16652506 42.58963466
Plants, fungi, and other organisms 16378.32819 159.9117998 1040.266461 548.5123457 101.6090535 354.9146091 2490.12963 13.18106996 59.34259259 55.60185185
Politicians and leaders 32130.1608 225.8926366 1990.128885 836.2287609 107.5470369 512.1877331 1165.782014 15.2063821 63.40571902 56.4488189
Politics and economics 24847.90682 364.3700624 2321.187373 1092.486253 133.0947047 565.3416497 4387.528513 20.66089613 54.77800407 49.66751527
Religious figures 21618.61741 246.5364238 1972.218623 814.8987854 89.548583 581.6639676 1370.593117 17.31376518 55.09109312 46.50404858
Scientists, inventors, and mathematicians 9371.04 185.6334975 1074.698039 523.4298039 90.78196078 350.5898039 608.2517647 7.241568627 57.73098039 51.51372549
Social studies 17442.71992 425.1067194 2179.526627 1036.17357 150.408284 563.1400394 2201.885602 18.01775148 58.93885602 49.69230769
Sports figures 38359.0656 157.5982801 2100.796986 876.4326241 151.2180851 699.7925532 1216.524823 5.481382979 38.21099291 34.31205674
Sports, games and recreation 30747.15582 228.6524501 2758.431507 1221.190925 113.8142123 466.2559932 5928.130137 19.12071918 44.4494863 40.72945205
Technology 19237.99721 285.2974039 1790.424186 870.8424806 94.84806202 373.0257364 2642.47969 18.30821705 50.58697674 47.10852713
Writers and journalists 13835.77982 194.7584541 1163.062624 553.4115308 89.7112326 304.1998012 658.8454274 7.26640159 51.8638171 40.33697813
Project verage 23397.98551 249.7303966 1791.74712 814.2076883 105.258721 445.7424108 2479.189337 13.91943894 54.96170015 49.6614657


Table showing the average value for each variable by level:

Vital Level Average of pageviews Average of watchers Average of revisions Average of editors Average of links_ext Average of links_out Average of links_in Average of redirects Average of Site_links Average of Language_Links
1 103985.4 1964.7 7997 2946.1 491 954.7 21432.5 28.5 242.5 195
2 54173.04396 1111.494505 5726.648352 2574.274725 281.4395604 891.4835165 43217.72527 27 215.9120879 178.4175824
3 77734.34928 960.7741935 6565.539488 2676.528365 252.6340378 938.6529477 24351.03337 32.23692992 170.9321468 147.0433815
4 38252.72648 404.2191289 3129.259553 1411.35162 150.0440223 637.4532961 4879.871285 22.02581006 92.55541899 82.97340782
5 18707.51983 188.1281954 1369.704412 632.0545436 91.26335762 389.9695153 1339.601422 11.6335762 43.39412568 39.57093706
Project average 23397.98551 249.7303966 1791.74712 814.2076883 105.258721 445.7424108 2479.189337 13.91943894 54.96170015 49.6614657
Discuss

So I've done some exploration on these variables and have been playing with weights a bit on variables for an index. I identified a few variables that seem to contain good indicators of "vitalness" based on various factors within the project criteia (Used R and a few different statistics to compare them). I then created bins based on different percentiles to assign scores to articles based on each of these variables, with 10 being 98th percentile, 9 being 90th, 8 being 80th, etc. I then grouped these into four "themes," each weighted the same, which could be added together into a compsite score. The highest possible composite score is 40, which is only possible if an article is in the top 98th percentile across all 7 variables. There are 44 articles that got scores of 40, most of them countries, very high profile people, or other such articles, with the most interesting being Wikipedia in my opinion. I then adjusted the score based on the level the article is at and the level 5 subsection quota for the article to get a "Vital score" that could help with comparison between levels a bit. You can see the raw data here. This made more sense with the list, and 2 of the level 1 articles made it into the top 10. The highest score is Science  1 at 64.1666666666666, which is almost double the second highest value. I think this might help us out a bit more then just looking at language links or page views, but it likely needs more work. I'm still working on getting a sharable version of my code, but with the raw list I provided these numbers took my machine about 1.8 hours to generate. I think this can be improved a bit, but will still be computationally intense to implement.

Where:

V = Vital score

S = Theme 1 + Theme 2 + Theme 3 + Theme 4

Theme 1: ((Percentile Watcher) + (Percentile Editors)) /2
Theme 2: ((Percentile Pageviews) + (Percentile Revisions)) /2
Theme 3: ((Percentile Links in) + (Percentile Project links)) /2
Theme 4: Percentile Language Links

l = level the article is at (Artilces at Level 1 are multiplied by 5, Level 2 by 4, Level 3 by 3, Level 4 by 2, and Level 5 by 1)

sq = Subsection quota for the articles section at level 5.

Project links in this case are a variable I created by subtracting language links from site links, which returns projects like Wikiquote that an article is a part of while excluding the foreign language projects. This allows that variable to stand alone in Theme 4. Theme 1 represents broad editor "interest" in a page, theme 2 represents how active a page is and how important it might be to keep on watchlists, theme 3 represents how connected the page is to other articles and projects on Wikipedia, and theme 4 determins how many other languages the term exists in to combat western/English bias.

An example of what this looks like for the Level 1 articles.

Article Vital_Level Vital_Category project_links Per_watchers Per_editors Per_PageViews Per_revisions Per_linksIn Per_sitelinks Per_projectLinks Per_langlinks Theme1 Theme2 Theme3 Theme4 IndividualScore VitalScore
Earth 1 Astronomy 49 10 10 10 10 9 10 10 10 10 10 9.5 10 39.5 21.94444444
Human 1 Animals 44 10 10 9 10 9 10 10 10 10 9.5 9.5 10 39 8.125
Science 1 Basics and measurement 74 10 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 9.5 9 10 10 38.5 64.16666667
Mathematics 1 Mathematics 73 10 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 9.5 9 10 10 38.5 16.04166667
Philosophy 1 Philosophy and religion 68 10 9 9 9 10 10 10 10 9.5 9 10 10 38.5 13.75
Life 1 Biology, biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology 58 9 9 9 9 9 9 10 9 9 9 9.5 9 36.5 16.59090909
Society 1 Social studies 58 9 8 8 8 9 9 10 9 8.5 8 9.5 9 35 35
Technology 1 Technology 38 9 8 8 9 9 9 9 9 8.5 8.5 9 9 35 5.46875
Human history 1 History 2 9 8 8 9 7 8 6 9 8.5 8.5 6.5 9 32.5 4.924242424
The arts 1 Arts 1 9 7 7 7 8 6 4 6 8 7 6 6 27 3.648648649
Proposal signature

GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 20:21, 19 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Village pump proposal

[edit]

I recently commented on a proposal to add good and featured articles to the tagline, and I made a comment that this should include vital articles as well. The proposer said that the vital articles use a different method of data management so I am hoping to get opinions on how we can do this. Feel free to comment in the linked discussion above. Interstellarity (talk) 21:37, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging @Kanashimi to get input. Interstellarity (talk) 21:38, 7 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How important are VAs for biographical subject infoboxes

[edit]

I have been looking closely at the distribution of VAs. One thing that I have noticed is that many biographies use the parameter for Notable works with a list of specific works that does not include specific works that we consider to be vital. Surely it is OK for these lists to include items that we do not consider vital, but is it OK for them to exclude items that we do consider vital? Also, if the biography does not use this parameter at all, should I add specific vital works to fill in the parameter.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 02:13, 22 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What specific cases are you talking about? Despite us try to make vital as objectively was possible, it's always going to partially depend on the participant's perspectives/opinions. The Blue Rider 07:05, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:The Blue Rider, it was about 70-75 articles I will try to isolate some sets of diffs because I did it in at least 3 waves.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:47, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:The Blue Rider, here is one wave-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:51, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:The Blue Rider, another wave-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 11:57, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:The Blue Rider, another wave-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:00, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
some related edits to the above wave-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:02, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
this edit may have been the one that put this effort in the back of my mind-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:08, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
and this-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 12:31, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@TonyTheTiger: Just go ahead and boldly add the works. Worst case scenario, you get reverted and go through BRD. QuicoleJR (talk) 12:47, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:QuicoleJR, I eventually did that. I probably added notable works to about 100 pages. I was reverted on a total of 4 pages. Only one of the four resulted in a contentious discussion. Talk:Albrecht Dürer resulted in a suggested compromise, but when I tried to discuss details of the compromise, I got wikilawyered out of the compromise. It was mostly a success, IMO.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"Wikilawyered" as in you didn't find consensus for your changes, but you were so obstinate about it that it became for some people a reason to oppose your GA topic ban appeal at WP:AN? That kind of wikilawyering and "success"? With a discussion that showed that you don't know much about the subject at all, but still want to impose your VA rule against the wishes of the actual editors of these articles, who in general know more about the subject? Anyway, I've reverted a few other ones as well now. VA may be useful as a starting point or an additional point of information, but it is hardly the definitive authority. Fram (talk) 16:37, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
User:Fram, we are not as far apart as I feel you think we are. You stated that ... VA may be useful as a starting point or an additional point of information, but it is hardly the definitive authority. I concur with this. I think you are talking about these 5 reversions. I have edited about 70 or 75 articles with this added content and you have found fewer than 10 to be objectionable. If we are both trying to help guide the content, we may both be doing some good. It seems like you may place little significance to about a dozen VAs, which is less than 5% of all VAs specific works. Even if you are right, I don't think my effort was in vain. I don't necessarily think people in need of direction from a Wikipedia infobox are usually going to be at your level of understanding of art. Many such readers may be closer to my understanding. So we both need to give thought to our contributions in this regard. If 5% of VA specific works of visual art are out of whack, we could use your directional assistance. We could really benefit from your expertise in several active discussions at Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4 and Wikipedia:Vital articles/Level/5/Arts/Audiovisual arts. E.g., Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/4#Add_remove_museums could use some expertise rather than my quick and dirty evaluations based on who hosts a lot of current VAs. Three discussions starting with Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Arts_and_everyday_life#Add_Bedroom_in_Arles, 10 more starting at Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Arts_and_everyday_life#Add_More_Demi_Moore and 5 starting Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/5/Arts_and_everyday_life#VA4_artists_without_any_VA_works could all use the analysis of people who know art rather than VA generalists.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 00:21, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Please don´t take the ones I haven´t reverted as cases where I agree with your changes, but consider them articles where I don´t know enough about to decide pne way or another. Which is what you should do as well. Don´t try to summarize an article without even looking at what´s in the article. Leave this to the editors of the articles. Fram (talk) 04:54, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Please see discussion on L4 talk page about categories

[edit]

Wikipedia_talk:Vital_articles/Level/4#Reorganizing_the_categories_of_the_level_4_and_level_5_vital_articles. Interstellarity (talk) 00:24, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

OneClickArchiver bug

[edit]

At least on the Arts and everyday life talk page, OneClickArchiver moves the archived discussions on the wrong archive page. I noticed that it started Archive 19, when it should have been only Archive 3. It also didn't add the new archive page number to the talk page header, and you are only able to access the archive page through a link in the edit history. Someone who knows how it works should look into it. Makkool (talk) 13:25, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Makkool That’s because when the arts and everyday life talk page was created, Lophotrochozoa copied the header from the society page, which had "|counter=19". If you want to fix it, simply change the counter to the correct number. 96.95.142.29 (talk) 18:16, 27 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question of IP editors: Should Vital Article talk pages be protected?

[edit]

A while ago I looked into the edit histories of many of our regular and active editors, and found what appeared to be odd behavior related to the vital articles. After getting these checked, most were not identified as socks. That said, there has been some odd activity related to IP editors as well. As the Vital articles are entirely vote based, it invites the possibility of gaming the system with multiple accounts casting votes. Should we request protection on the talk pages to limit votes/proposals to editors with accounts?

Discuss

GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 03:18, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My understanding is that the pages for levels 1-4 are ECP protected (and IPs can't vote!). The only pages that IPs can vote! on are level 5. I would not be against adding ECP to level 5 either as VA is quite a technical area of WP and not one that would / should attract a casual IP? Aszx5000 (talk) 10:30, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"VA is quite a technical area of WP and not one that would / should attract a casual IP"
I agree, however there are some strange things I've observed that contradict this thought. If you read here you'll see a more complete discussion I brought up on this. You can see the first and second sockpuppet investigations (The first one resulted in 11 blocks, two of which were later appealed. The second one resulted in zero blocks.). In the 2nd investigation was a bit more detailed, but no socks were identified. In this one, I found multiple accounts that almost immediately started with working on vital articles, often times becoming extremely active very quickly. Now that the investigation is finished, assuming good faith, and without further evidence, I have to assume there is something that attracts new editors to the VA space. Whatever this something is attracting new editors might be attracting IP editors as well, but I think having an account should be required here as it is a technical area, and a record of editors involvement in past votes is helpful in collaborating on this area of the project.
"levels 1-4 are ECP protected (and IPs can't vote!). The only pages that IPs can vote! on are level 5."
There is at least one IP editor on the talk page for Level 4. Specifically in the discussion section for Swap 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami for 1976 Tangshan earthquake. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 16:58, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Only the actual list pages are ECP protected, not the talk pages. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:23, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
IP editors are human too. Other than the one sockmaster, I haven't seen enough disruption to warrant protection. Some of the IPs have had good ideas, so unless there is evidence of votestacking, I think we should leave the pages unprotected for now. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:23, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From that essay:

On the few occasions when decisions (usually not content-related) on Wikipedia are decided by democracy (e.g. request for adminship, elections to the arbitration committee) unregistered users may not vote; they may participate in the discussions. Rather than being evidence of the untrustworthiness of unregistered users, this is in fact because of the untrustworthiness of registered users. If unregistered users were allowed to vote, disreputable registered users could log out of their accounts to vote twice (or, with use of an anonymizing proxy service, tens or hundreds of times). See also WP:SOCKPUPPET, which is a type of abuse where one human registers more than one username; detecting their underlying IP addresses often reveals such schemes.

The vital article votes are all democracy, so my understanding of this is that while IP editors could participate in discussion, their votes would not count, including on proposals they created. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:08, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just to let you know that RfA's are not page protected. They simply move to the discussion section/don't count IP votes. The Blue Rider 18:26, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I get that, shouldn't we implement the same policy and not count IP votes then? GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:28, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In my view, socking isn't invasive enough at WP:VA—I have seen way more constructive proposals of IP editors than disruption by them. Also, there are plenty of users here, me included, that started early in their wikipedia's career editing WP:VA; page protecting would hinder activity of the project, as we already have little participation in my view. I think the best course of action is to do like you and create sock puppet investigations if something is suspicious. The Blue Rider 18:29, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't be to sure about cocking not being a problem. I've seen some anomalies in the votes, but no hard proof. Could mean nothing, could mean really good VPNs, but I smell Calimari. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 02:06, 6 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
On the front page "Nominating or removing a vital article" of VA it says: All Wikipedia extended confirmed editors are welcome to propose an article that should be added, removed, or demoted from one of the Level 1-4 vital article lists (which are ECP-protected from here), and/or !vote or comment on any existing proposal. Any editor can make a proposal at Level 5.. IPs not meant to be proposing or !voting on Level 1-4 VAs? Personally, I am a strong supporter of IP editing on WP (they are a key support in WP Climbing which I work a lot on), however, I do think that IPs in VA is probably a bit iffy imho. Aszx5000 (talk) 18:34, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
To clarify my understanding of the disucssion:
  1. Should Vital Article talk pages be protected?: Based on existing policy/precedent, no.
  2. Question of IP editors: Based on existing policy/precedent, they can make proposals on level 5, and can discuss at any level, however votes from IP editors are not counted, even on their own proposals. For example, the last two proposals on Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5/History and geography would require the closer to move the IP editors support to a discussion section, or at least discount the vote when closing.
GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:43, 31 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would only support page protection if there is persistent disruption by IP editors on this page. I can't recall any disruption on this page that would warrant it. Interstellarity (talk) 22:55, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Vote

[edit]

Pursuant to this discussion, I think this should be put to a poll. If this proposal succeeds, we can think about barring other inexperienced editors too. Incidentally, if no one objects I think this should be evaluated by consensus rather than as a straight vote, given that there's three options. J947 ‡ edits 21:47, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for organizing this J947, which I think is right to check. Aszx5000 (talk) 22:10, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question: should IP editors be allowed to (a) vote or (b) comment on VA talk pages?

Yes, vote and comment
  1. There have been several very productive IP editors here and I think not allowing them to vote removes a valuable constituency. Most people have better things to do with their life than logged-out socking at VA. (Even RfA, where the stakes are rather a lot higher, allows IP editors to comment – I don't rate protection for that reason.) J947 ‡ edits 21:47, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2. If an IP editor wants to vote, but is content without an account, I have no issues with that. If socking becomes an issue, we can consider implementing more restrictions. Interstellarity (talk) 22:48, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Comment, but not vote
  1. I believe this is the option in line with broader Wikipedia policy. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 22:06, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You say, referring to an essay. J947 ‡ edits 22:27, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    As opposed to pulling it out of the Luminiferous aether. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 22:32, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This is a discussion to determine said consensus. What on Earth do you want me to do? J947 ‡ edits 22:48, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Because there is no discretion in VA for closers (i.e. unlike WP:AfD) and it is a straight !vote, then I think we can't have IP's voting on Levels 1-4. I'm not even sure that we should have them on Level 5. In addition, VA is an unusual part of WP, and not somewhere that a casual IP would stumble across - I have seen some unusual IP activity in VA but always ignored it knowing (maybe incorrectly) that their !vote doesn't count in closing. I don't mind IPs commenting, but they should also not propose changes on Levels 1-4 (which was also my understanding). thanks. Aszx5000 (talk) 22:08, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    When it comes to odd activity in the VA space, we can't work under the assumption that a casual user would not stumble across them. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Rjrya395/Archive and Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/SameOldSameOldSameOld/Archive have some of the evidence I documented. The gist is, as far as we can tell from these investigations, some users almost immediately become very active in the Vital Article space. The advice given by the closer was "You might consider reviewing where VAs are linked today, and I think it's good to note the nature of how VA selection currently functions today makes them easy for someone to "jump in", as it were. (You might consider proposing adjusting who has eligibility to !vote in those discussions, or how the !votes operate, if you believe that this is causing negative end states.)"
    I've been taking some notes to study this and see if there is a broader pattern or need for further investigation, but nothing concrete yet to add to those two investigations. IP editors make this task exceptionally difficult, however. When looking at their edit histories, such as those for IP 96.95.142.29 that was recently active, several jump into the project and focus almost entirely on votes/proposals. It is difficult to keep track of one IP editor from another, especially as IP addresses change, and a single editors contributions will not be kept in the same place. The phenomena of editors diving right into the vital article project is worth looking into. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 22:23, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "VA is an unusual part of WP, and not somewhere that a casual IP would stumble across": I think this is wrong. Many people are interested in VA but not other areas of the site – and that's reasonable, because they're so different. It's difficult to track IPs, but here are some examples of very active VA editors who edited VA in some of their first 50 edits: 1 2 3 4 5. Three or four of them would probably never have been able to contribute with a 500-edit restriction. That's pretty damning. J947 ‡ edits 22:46, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    If you look at the sockpuppet investigations linked above, you can find a lot of links to editors who started with the vital article space in their first few edits. I'm not sure if it is damning or not, something strange is definitely happening though. It is a strange thing to start with. Asking for a person voting to at least have an account to vote doesn't seem unreasonable. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 01:35, 8 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Not vote nor comment
Discussion

Reduce the protection of the vital articles pages to semi-protection

[edit]

In the previous discussion regarding implement ECP, the protection was done when there hasn't been any recent disruption to the page. I believe that it is warranted to go back to semi-protection since it wasn't done to prevent disruption to the page. If there is disruption on that page (like vandalism or socking), we can consider bringing back ECP. This is how most pages in project space are protected.

Support
  1. Interstellarity (talk) 22:53, 11 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose