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Rating of Importance

Has there been any discussion of which articles are within the scope of WikiProject University of Oxford and how to rate them on the project's importance scale? If so please could somebody link me to it? Are the importance ratings used by the project or are they too subjective to be useful? The article statistics show 54% of articles are unrated (5,550 out of 10,191). I have read the general guidance at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Release_Version_Criteria#Importance_of_topic.81.86.211.166 (talk) 11:36, 10 September 2018 (UTC)

I don't remember anything formal. Some of the informal principles I have intuited from practice are (1) for institutions Top level for all colleges and high profile institutions (e.g. Bodleian), High level for departments, Mid level for sub-departments, institutes, and sub-pages of colleges; (2) for people Top level for almost nobody except perhaps Chancellor and VC, High level for major internal figures and really major alumni, Mid level for most internal figures and major alumni, Low level for other internal figures and general alumni. A lot of articles are rated too high (I have just taken a couple down but it would take ages to do all of them). Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:29, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
Oh and your recent edits mostly look about right, except that Fergus Millar should be Mid as a living holder of a highly prestigious statutory chair. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 15:34, 10 September 2018 (UTC)
@Jonathan A Jones:, Thank you for your advice. I have some further questions and a comment, let me know if you are not the best person to ask, (or just too busy).
1) A lot of the Unrated articles were tagged by a bot as in scope with Importance=Unrated in December 2009. Would it be possible to message the project community to rerate any unrated articles that should be Mid and above and then get a bot to rate the remainder as Low?
2) What did you mean by a highly prestigious statutory chair? I see the Camden chair is 17th century, but all oxford chairs are prestigious. Is there a way to tell if a professor is statutory or not? Some departmental websites seem to have this information, while others do not.
3) I have been defaulting to Low for unrated internal figures and alumni, but will take on board any suggestions. It would be an interesting exercise to compile lists of High and Mid level internal figures and alumni and update the project flags accordingly, but at present the selection is somewhat random. I have made a spreadsheet of the project articles as at 11 September and High importance contains around 10 internal figures and 11 alumni and Mid contains around 133 internal figures and 107 alumni. I have not analysed the Low and unrated articles for obvious reasons.81.86.211.166 (talk) 08:57, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
As you can see the project is very quiet at the moment (it has been much more active in the past) so hoping for much to get done by other members seems a little optimisitic. I'll try to answer your specific questions though. (1) Trying to tell the nature of a Chair is a bit tricky these days unless you have good local knowledge. Compared with ten years ago the number of Professors has vastly increased because of (a) the introduction of Titles of Distinction, which meant that many University Lecturers became Titular Professors, (b) the change of the main academic grade at Oxford from University Lecturer to Associate Professor, with Titular Professors now becoming Titular Full Professors, and (c) the recent appointment of large numbers of researchers on the RS4 grade, which are in effect Personal Full Professorships. As a consequence almost all the permanent staff are some sort of Professor these days. The Statutory Chairs are much rarer (about 200of them) but it can be hard to tell them from the more common positions. The most prestigious ones are likely to have their own articles such as the Camden Professor of Ancient History, but there's also a list at List of professorships at the University of Oxford which seems to be taken from [1].
It's not easy to come up with rules for High/Mid/Low but as a start I would suggest that for alumni anyone listed on the main page at University of Oxford#Notable alumni should normally be Mid or High, while for current staff any holder of a Regius Chair or any chair with its own article, plus any Head of House, should be normally be Mid. Ordinary staff members should just be low, as should other alumni. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 14:19, 16 September 2018 (UTC)
@Jonathan A Jones:, As the project is quiet I would prefer to rate articles in line with the existing rated articles, to keep the priciples simple and classify most articles as Low.
Your principles (1) for institutions seem to have largely been followed, but in practice the levels for people are (2) High level for exceptional internal figures and alumni, Mid level for really major internal figures and really major alumni, Low level for other internal figures and alumni. Rating all Heads of House and all prominent chairs as Mid would be a change from what has been done so far and require more maintenance to keep up to date when heads and professors retire.81.86.211.166 (talk) 15:14, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
  • Before embarking on a lot of work you should ask yourselves if ratings are really worth the trouble at all. They are really only useful if they tie in to a grid by importance and quality, and people then go through them to improve high importance but low quality ones. Generally I'd suggest only up to 50 at Top & maybe 150 at High rating. Below that it hardly matters. Otherwise the whole system is just a distraction from actually improving articles. Having "Air Chief Marshal Sir Christopher Neil Foxley-Norris" at Mid is fairly ridiculous, but so what? Johnbod (talk) 15:34, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
Basically agree: I get far more worried about Top and High than about Mid and Low. The sugested article counts also sounds about right. I need to take another look at the The Encyclopaedia of Oxford, which provides a useful physical example of an admittedly personal assessment. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:28, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
@Jonathan A Jones: and @Johnbod:, that suggests that the answer to one of my original questions "Are the importance ratings used by the project" might be "not much". My initial thought was that the grid would look tidier if a bot could rate all the 5,000 unrated articles as Low, but even that would be a low priority if the grid is little used.81.86.211.166 (talk) 16:13, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I would imagine its not very relevant to the vast majority of articles, which are alumni bios. But it might be useful for articles directly about the Uni, if anyone uses a grid as a tool for giving editing priorities. That wouldn't be me, but might be someone. Johnbod (talk) 16:25, 20 September 2018 (UTC)
I can imagine using the Top/High ratings to guide me to articles that need work; indeed I have even done that once or twice in the past when I really had nothing better to do. But not below that. And there's no need to ping me every time you say something: I watch this page so will know what is going on. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 16:31, 20 September 2018 (UTC)

Pamela Sue Anderson

The present Wikipedia entry on PSA has the warning that it is too basic and, if nobody expands it, it will soon be erased. I believe that, from 2001 to 2017, when PSA was an Oxford academic she was quite representative of the teaching and research staff of the university. Furthermore several remarks on the Oxford academic life (for example, whether female students are at a disadvantage when compared with their male colleagues) are found in interviews and documents left behind by PSA. I have no experience nor time for drafting a presentation more substantial than the present version of PSA's entry. All I could do is put together a number of URLs that can be utilized by someone wishing to do the job. Those URLs are stored in a section of the talk page of PSA's page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Hdjf3 (talk • contribs) 01:42, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

Roger Bannister images

Hi - could if somebody is around Oxford and able to take some quality pictures of the Roger Bannister running track on Iffley Road and the collection of his trophies in Pembroke that would be very appreciated! Currently working on Roger Bannister at User:Ostrichyearning3/rb if anyone has any suggestions. cheers, Ostrichyearning3 (talk) 13:48, 20 October 2018 (UTC)

Hdjf3 (talk) 02:13, 27 November 2018 (UTC)== Entry on the late Pamela Sue Anderson (PSA for short) ==

Requested move

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Oriental Institute, Oxford that may need your input. Please come and help. Thank you in advance! Paine Ellsworth, ed.  put'r there  19:46, 4 December 2018 (UTC)

Category:Fellows of former colleges and halls of the University of Oxford

I have started a discussion on merging Category:Fellows_of_former_colleges_and_halls_of_the_University_of_Oxford into Category:Former_colleges_and_halls_of_the_University_of_Oxford. Please contribute if you are interested.TSventon (talk) 10:10, 25 June 2019 (UTC)

On a related topic, I have requested a move from New Inn Hall to New Inn Hall, Oxford, see Requesting technical moves#Uncontroversial_technical_requests. TSventon (talk) 11:18, 26 June 2019 (UTC)

Request for information on WP1.0 web tool

Hello and greetings from the maintainers of the WP 1.0 Bot! As you may or may not know, we are currently involved in an overhaul of the bot, in order to make it more modern and maintainable. As part of this process, we will be rewriting the web tool that is part of the project. You might have noticed this tool if you click through the links on the project assessment summary tables.

We'd like to collect information on how the current tool is used by....you! How do you yourself and the other maintainers of your project use the web tool? Which of its features do you need? How frequently do you use these features? And what features is the tool missing that would be useful to you? We have collected all of these questions at this Google form where you can leave your response. Walkerma (talk) 04:25, 27 October 2019 (UTC)

RFC at Oscar Wilde

There's an RFC underway at Talk:Oscar Wilde:

Your participation would be welcome! BastunĖġáḍβáś₮ŭŃ! 17:57, 27 April 2020 (UTC)

Mention of common rooms on college pages

I am inviting members of this WikiProject to give their view on the external links to the common room's websites in external links sections on Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard#Common rooms in colleges. --Dirk Beetstra T C 11:19, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Documenting the Lamb & Flag for posterity

Three and a half years ago I put a request on the Lamb & Flag article for photos of the interior of the pub, and secondarily for the alley that runs down the side of it. Now I learn the pub has closed, does anyone have suitable photos they would be willing to freely license to more fully illustrate the article? And if you're looking for other photographic projects please check in occasionally with Category:Wikipedia requested photographs in Oxfordshire, where such requests accumulate. Beorhtwulf (talk) 18:08, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

FAR notice

I have nominated John Brooke-Little for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Hog Farm Talk 01:55, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

Featured article review needed (Oriel College, Oxford)

See Talk:Oriel College, Oxford#Featured article review needed posted on 18 January 2021. "This is a 2007 Featured article that has not been maintained to WP:WIAFA standards. There is considerable uncited text, overquoting, short choppy sections, and citation formatting needs cleanup. Unless someone is able to restore this article to FA standards, it should be submitted to Featured article review." TSventon (talk) 10:51, 10 March 2021 (UTC)

Template:University of Oxford

If anyone else would like to join the discussion at Template talk:University of Oxford#Deletion that would be most welcome, as it currently doesn't seem to be going anywhere productive. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 19:56, 15 March 2021 (UTC)

Recent citation needed tags

The above IP account editor has tagged all the Oxford college and hall articles (and many other Oxford articles) with citation needed, as far as I can see tagging any paragraph that does not end with a citation. I don't think the citation needed tags are constructive as it creates an indiscriminate list of uncited paragraphs. What do other editors think? TSventon (talk) 00:43, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Jonathan A Jones, this may be the same user you were talking about in the previous section. TSventon (talk) 01:31, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

It's clearly the same user, and there has also been a group of PRODs and AFDs which trace back to the same IP. Some of these tags are sensible but many are not. Jonathan A Jones (talk) 06:57, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Is an Admin involved already? --Anneyh (talk) 10:04, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Anneyh not yet, it was quite late when I put 2 and 2 together. There are another 5 IP codes to add as well. TSventon (talk) 10:25, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
7 more IP addresses added to complete list. TSventon (talk) 10:57, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
Reached out on admins noticeboard. --Anneyh (talk) 12:47, 19 March 2021 (UTC)
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