Last modified: 2014-01-04 05:55:15 UTC
This new extension will create a new database table for article quality and importance (in the default configuration), and/or whatever other attributes the wiki owner may wish to configure. This will allow RecentChanges and other listings to be filtered by these criteria. It will be possible to set and modify the values of these fields by API or by tabs/dropdowns at the top of the page. The wiki owner can configure the fields to allow any value (presumably implemented by inputbox), or only those values that exist in a list (implemented by dropdown menu.) For rationale, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:VPT#Create_article_quality_and_importance_fields_in_the_database .
It looks like someone created something similar to this. http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Attribute Special:XyAttributeQuery could use some more filters (e.g. by category), but other than that it looks all right. I tried, for instance, inserting tags <attribute quality="High" /><attribute importance="Low" /> and transcluding them through templates. I see no record of any proposal to use this extension on Wikimedia projects, but it seems that if it were installed, we could pretty easily implement the desired functionality by putting attribute tags within existing templates that categorize pages by quality/importance/whatever. The work of changing them could probably be semi-automated, since we have categories like [[Category:WikiProject banners with quality assessment]].
(In reply to comment #1) > It looks like someone created something similar to this. > http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Attribute That extension needs almost as much work as PWD before it'll pass security review. I'm fairly sure the installer doesn't even run. > Special:XyAttributeQuery could use some more filters (e.g. by category), but > other than that it looks all right. I tried, for instance, inserting tags > <attribute quality="High" /><attribute importance="Low" /> and transcluding > them through templates. > > I see no record of any proposal to use this extension on Wikimedia projects, > but it seems that if it were installed, we could pretty easily implement the > desired functionality by putting attribute tags within existing templates that > categorize pages by quality/importance/whatever. The work of changing them > could probably be semi-automated, since we have categories like > [[Category:WikiProject banners with quality assessment]]. You'd only need to edit [[Template:WPBannerMeta]] and the 20 or so banners which don't use it. Overall this extension looks like a messy, cut-down version of SMW, which is just different enough to be incompatible. Reinventing the wheel to give this enough functionality to be useful, wouldn't be my preference for dealing with this.
Is there any reason not to use SMW to implement this? SMW seems like a pretty good extension, from what I've seen so far.
A reasonable implementation of this as an extension would be more difficult than you might think. (1) On enwiki, many articles have more than one quality rating and more than one importance rating. This is because each rating is Wikiproject-specific. Different projects may have different requirements for quality ratings, and importance is always assessed on a per-project basis. New Wikiprojects are formed routinely, so it is not feasible to hard-code a list into the database. (2) A key requirement for ratings is the ability to keep a log of assessment changes. This is done by a bot on enwiki. Replacing the current bot-based system with an extension would require implementing logging as well (there is currently no built-in category membership logging, for example) (3) People are already used to using category-based tools, which would need conversion to a new system.
Might not http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Pyrospirit/metadata be modified to populate the quality field with the appropriate data?
See also Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)/Archive_73#Create_article_quality_and_importance_fields_in_the_database and https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Page_metadata
Correction, URL should have been: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28technical%29/Archive_73#Create_article_quality_and_importance_fields_in_the_database
Maybe this should be closed as INVALID or WONTFIX, given the availability of the page_props table -- unless that table is getting so clogged up with stuff that performance could be becoming an issue.
