The assessment of categories and articles - May 2007
A start is made with the assement of categories and articles in the field of Systems. From this information a bot every day updates the article statistic shown on the WikiProject Systems page.
The rating of quality and importance
The rating of quality are made according to general assesment rules. The importance rating however is made from the WikiProject Systems point of view. So this important rating is relative. It tells about the importance the article has in the field of Systems. This rating in fact tells about the place the article or category has in the global structure in Systems, Systems theories and Systems scientists.
The importance rate of this article ((chaos theory)) for the WikiProject Systems has been uprated from high to top allready two weeks ago on 10 June 2007. I could have referted it because importance rates are set by the WikiProjects themselves and these rates have a particular objective meaning: The importance rate is not about the objective importance of the article, but of the relative difference from the article to the hart of the WikiProject. Now formaly the hart of the WikiProject Systems is in a way the category:systems. The items in this category get a top-importance, the items in the first subcategories are of high-importance.
Instead of referting this I kept wondering about the relation between chaos theory and systems and systems theory. Is or isn't chaos theory in the first place about chaos and not about systems. And aren't systems in the first place about organization and not about chaos? I know a bit more about systems theory, a little about chaos theory but even less about the role of systems and systems theory in chaos theory. Can somebody explain this to me? - Mdd19:41, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
I can't really answer the question, and would encourage others to do so, because it is an interesting and important question, but I should make some comments about changing the ratings.
First of all, I shouldn't have changed the systems theory importance rating, because this is the importance of the article for WikiProject Systems, and I don't know how that project assigns these ratings. Please change it back to "High" if you think it is appropriate: different projects can of course have different ratings for the same article.
Second, some background. At the Mathematics WikiProject, we are finding that too many articles are getting Mid and High importance ratings compared to Top and Low. In particular, this makes it harder to prioritise which Stub and Start-Class articles at the top end most need expansion. So we have been trying to improve the situation, and have developed more detailed importance criteria to help us.
Third, my changes here. I uprated the Mathematics importance from High to Top (by the above reasoning). Now, WikiProject physics is rather inactive right now, and I figured this article is at least as important in physics as maths, so uprated the physics importance too. Then I went a bit far by thinking "Well, if it is top for maths and physics, it probably is for systems too"!
Fourth, a comment. From what you have said, I understand that WikiProject Systems assesses importance in an absolute sense, i.e., only the main items in Category:Systems can hope to be top priority and so on. We discussed this quite a lot at the mathematics project, and have come to the conclusion that:
it is more helpful to assess the importance of an article within context rather than in absolute terms
Now I am very impressed that your response to my mistake was not to revert it, but to think about it and raise such interesting questions. Maybe you might want to take some of the maths project thoughts on importance ratings back to WikiProject Systems and initiate a debate. All the best, anyway. Geometry guy20:19, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
More about assessment of articles
I moved the above discussion here, because it offers some interesting thoughts about the assessment of articles. First of all thanks Geometry guy for your explaination and some explaination of how the WikiProject Mathematics works. I can imagine that those problems are much bigger at Mathematics, not at the least because the WikiProject Mathematics holds about is ten times more article then our WikiProject. And I can image that this brings the needs a more detailled assement. I however also experienced some things you mentioned about little top and low priority articles. To be through... I've been very carefull with the top-priority articles. And I avoid assessing articles to a low priority, because I think that the name low priority is demotivating. I wish they think of a better name for it.
I also experienced, that rating articles is not as easy as it seems. You need a clear set of rules to make it make any sence. I made an announcements about it on 1 may 2007, see [1]. Here I explained the rating of importance a little different then above:
The rating of importance is an other story. You can rate the articles from None, Low, Mid, High to Top. This rating is however made from a WikiProject Systems point of view. So this important rating is relative. It tells about the importance the article has in the field of Systems. In fact, this rating tells about the place the article or category has in the global structure in field of Systems, Systems theories and Systems scientists.
For the moment this works for me... This is however not a rule, but more a kind of guideline. With the WikiProject just starting, assessment remains interesting but is also one of the least of our problems. The reason I started this talk in the first place was the opportunity the small incindent gave to look at these things in an other perspective. - Mdd22:59, 25 June 2007 (UTC)
A few further comments from me.
You have made a good start! One of the best ways to assess articles is to compare them with other assessed articles, so starting up is the most difficult bit. It is quite good that one person has rated the first batch, because this means there should be some consistency: the "precedent" has been set.
I can see that there are very few low importance articles at the moment. I would not worry too much about this to start with, because of selection bias (i.e., the most important articles get rated first).
Assessing importance within the whole systems category is also fine to start with, but as the project grows, discrimination is lost between articles in more specialized subcategories.
At mathematics, we've tried to make it easier to rate articles as "low" in a couple of ways: first we have switched from using "low importance" to "low priority"; second, we've modified slightly the WP 1.0 importance criteria, so that the description of "low" is a bit more encouraging, and the description of "mid" is a bit stronger.
I am not sure that systems and systems theory can be said to have a role in chaos theory. I think it is rather the other way around; chaos theory has a role in systems and systems theory (from chaos emerges order and/or a system). In economics, notably, this is exposed through the concept of spontaneous order. See also Complex system#Complexity and chaos theory which has some info, although probably not perfect. --Childhood's End13:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
@Geometry guy. It's interesting what you say about switching from using "low importance" to "low priority". But I don't understand it. If I use the low-rate in the WikiProject Systems-template, for example Talk:Manufacturing Execution System: the template show low-importance and not low-priority. Now I found an example of what you mean at Talk:Infinite monkey theorem. This looks kind of nicer. Do you know if there is an easy way to change our template as well? - Mdd14:49, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
This discussion is tempory proceeding on the WikiProject Systems talk page
Further Assessment of Systems science articles - May 2008
Jiuguang Wang has recently brought a lot of articles in the field of control theory under the scope of this WikiProject, by tagging them with the {{WikiProject Systems}} tag on the articles talkpage. In response I assessed these about 100 articles and made some wikification here and there.
Now I think some further assessment of Systems science articles is possible of:
All articles within the different fields of systems science.
The first option means a few hunderd articles, the second a few thousand. I will begin with the first option and will leave the second option for the moment. -- Mdd (talk) 13:08, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I started some reassessment here and there to check if the new assessment system works. More structured assessment have been done in the following items:
Updating the {{WikiProject Systems}} to a {{sys rating}} with fields - May 2008
{{WikiProject Systems}}
The current WikiProject Systems Assessment doens't make a difference in fields. Now I think this assessment can be updated with an extra "Field dimension", similair as the assessment in the WikiProject Mathematics, see here.
This change will require an update of the whole WikiProject assessment structure. As a start a created the Template:WP SYS 1.0 from the Template:WP MATH 1.0 as example.
Each of these pages, except for the Mathematicians page, has /Top, /High, /Mid, /Low and /Unassessed subpages which list the articles in that field with the given importance (or priority) rating.
Neural network related articles in WikiProject Systems - May 2008
The beginning here is copied from the User talk:Mdd page
Hi Marcel - I was reading artificial neural network and I noticed that none of the neural network related articles belong in a WikiProject - do you think it is appropriate to add them to WikiProject Systems? They would fall into intelligent control, naturally, but a lot of the topics under neural networks isn't particularly control-related (like the mathematics based optimization articles). --Jiuguang Wang (talk) 00:48, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
There is a general problem here where to draw the line or boundaries of the WikiProject Systems, the field of Systems science and all particulair fields of systems science, like control theory and cybernetics. Now there are a few guidelines:
The WikiProject Systems have to consider all related articles and categories.
The most effective way is to consider the categories one at the time, instead of articles.
When categories are not assessed yet, there are three things that can be done:
Bring them (partly) under the WikiProject Systems
Bring them (partly) under an other related WikiProject.
Initiated a WikiProject for that particulair field.
Now the third option is for the long run. What we can do is look at the related categories in the field of control theory, because you are (here) the expert in that field.
Now in the field of control theory there are a few categories to consider:
Now you have asked me if the artificial neural network related articles should be assessed to the WikiProject Systems? My answer is that we should consider the whole category. In return I want to ask you, if you think the above 5 categories should be assessed in the field of control theory of the WikiProject Systems or maybe in some other WikiProjects? -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 12:41, 20 May 2008 (UTC)
P.S. You must have noticed I reassessed a lot of articles in the field of control theory. As a result I raised the importance of almost all articles with one step, because of the introduction of the field of control theory!?
Category:Non-linear systems: will be assessed under the field of Dynamical systems, because not all non-lineair systems are chaotic.
Category:Self-organization: will be assessed under the field of systems theory, because this concernes a general basic issue which is will be gathered under systems theory.
Multiple articles in the category cybernetics are also categorised in the systems theory and control theory categories. Of those articles I will assessed the more general articles in thw field of systems theory, and the more technical and mathematical articles in field of control theory.
Now I am not so sure about the other subcategories.
Some 286 articles in the field of control theory have been tagged.
The category filter theory offers an other 116 articles
The category automation offers some 110 and more articles.
The question here is how far I should go. Now I have to take into consideration that the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team wants to tag all articles. Since the category filter theory and category automation are in no other WikiProject three things can be done.
Bring them (partly) under the WikiProject Systems
Bring them (partly) under an other WikiProject, for example WikiProject Robotics
The interdiscplinairy scope of dynamical systems between systems sciences and natural sciences
About 6 categories to assess: Dynamical systems, Bifurcation theory, Ergodic theory, Limit sets, Non-linear systems, Random dynamical systems & Stability theory
In total about 248 articles to assess in the field of dynamical systems.
As you may have heard, we at the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial Team recently made some changes to the assessment scale, including the addition of a new level. The new description is available at WP:ASSESS.
The new C-Class represents articles that are beyond the basic Start-Class, but which need additional references or cleanup to meet the standards for B-Class.
The criteria for B-Class have been tightened up with the addition of a rubric, and are now more in line with the stricter standards already used at some projects.
A-Class article reviews will now need more than one person, as described here.
Each WikiProject should already have a new C-Class category at Category:C-Class_articles. If your project elects not to use the new level, you can simply delete your WikiProject's C-Class category and clarify any amendments on your project's assessment/discussion pages. The bot is already finding and listing C-Class articles.
Please leave a message with us if you have any queries regarding the introduction of the revised scheme. This scheme should allow the team to start producing offline selections for your project and the wider community within the next year. Thanks for using the Wikipedia 1.0 scheme! For the 1.0 Editorial Team, §hepBot (Disable)21:23, 4 July 2008 (UTC)
Is this project also about systems engineering? What is the distinction between systems engineering and systems science?
Many of the members of this project present themselves as into systems engineering. Should that subject be included in the project?
A find the two templates reflecting these two areas strange. In my world, systems engineering was developed within the electrical engineering tradition, while systems science has its origin in a more academic tradition, closer to social sciences and computer science. A large portion of the content mentioned in the "Systems and systems science" template is about what I would call systems engineering topics, such as signal processing, control systems and cybernetics. These are rather applied electrical engineering topics, but they are presented as "theoretical topics" in the template. On the other hand, they are missing in the Systems engineering template. Systems engineering is to my understanding also highly related to communication systems engineering, electronic system level design and computer engineering topics such as computer architecture. These are also missing, while non-engineering topics (business and management topics), which I would consider closer to systems science, are included.
Is it me or the templates that are confusing things?
Yes. Systems engineering is included in this project. Almost two years ago after starting this project we also tried to start a Wikipedia:WikiProject Systems Engineering Initiative, but this stayed an initiative. We did rewrite the System engineering article.
Now I don't share your concern that a large portion of the "Systems and systems science" is about systems engineering. The template lists about 70-80 items. I don't think that many really relate to systems engineering.
I also don't share your concern about the items missing in the systems engineering template:
I am also not sure systems engineering and systems science have two different roots. If you for example read A. Wayne Wymore's Autobiographical Retrospectives, he is telling about the excitement about systems thinking end 1950s. In my perception the excitement about systems thinking and the General Systems movement triggered many of the development of the systems sciences. Systems engineering was be further developed within the electrical engineering tradition, but I don't think it developed independently. But if you have other sources about the history of both I would love to hear that. -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 22:17, 14 April 2009 (UTC)
Overview of the field of Systems science - April 2008
The problem here is, that there aren't any overview articles here (yet).
-- 20:03, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
WP 1.0 bot announcement
This message is being sent to each WikiProject that participates in the WP 1.0 assessment system. On Saturday, January 23, 2010, the WP 1.0 bot will be upgraded. Your project does not need to take any action, but the appearance of your project's summary table will change. The upgrade will make many new, optional features available to all WikiProjects. Additional information is available at the WP 1.0 project homepage. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:59, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
