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How we are doing compared to other web resources?

With all the hub bub about Google knol, I began to wonder how Wikipedia's wine coverage stacks up against the other prominent web-based (user generated) wine resources like Helium.com, Vinismo, Encylowine and Citizendium in relation to our Top-Importance articles. After just a cursory review, I was pleasantly surprised at how well situated we are. While we are not in a competition in a sporting or financial sense, we are nonetheless trying to position Wikipedia as the web destination of choice for wine related resources. To that regard, we are clearly ahead. Now there are some very specialized websites in different regional categories, that have more depth on a particular subject but for broad wine related coverage we seem to be in good shape. In relation to the 4 sites I mentioned above, Helium and Citizendium are the only ones that seem to offer any real alternative for original content. Vinismo seems to be more of a "wine guide" with more indepth listing on wineries than on actual wine or wine regions and Encyclowine just copies everything from us and is essentially a mirror. What are your guys thoughts? And as a side, what about linking to some of the Helium articles as external links in our main articles? AgneCheese/Wine 06:51, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

On Helium articles as ELs, I think it's problematic. I haven't read many of them, but the impression is that the quality varies, and by design they are written in a fairly subjective manner. As non-RS, they can't be used for sourcing, are unlikely to be among the "most meritable" articles on the subject, and I understand there is author payment determined by traffic, so I'd think there are a few issues with WP:EL#Links normally to be avoided. Since featuring ELs is no 'must', the threshold needs to be high. MURGH disc. 02:10, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Good points. There is certainly a wide disparity in the quality of the articles. ELs are certainly not a high priority but it is good to get some thoughts on it. AgneCheese/Wine 13:54, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Encyclowine

Hey guys. The more I looked at Encyclowine and noticed it layout with Google Ads, maps and pictures created by Wine Project members, etc-the more it bothered me that they were not giving proper attribution to Wikipedia in accordance with the WP:GFDL license. At the very least there should be a link back to the original article like Carmnere/Carmenere, Fermentation/Fermentation (wine) and images (Walla Walla Ave Map/Image:Walla Walla AVA map.JPG) so that people can see the article history and original contributor. While other sites don't owe us royalties for our work, I do think our basic copyright of getting credit and attribution still applies. So I sent an email to the webmaster of the site and will see where it goes from there. Looking at the Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks and Wikipedia:GFDL Compliance pages, it seems that in order for them to become compliant they need to have a link at the end of each article or image they use that takes the reader back to the original Wikipedia page. It is something to keep an eye on. AgneCheese/Wine 17:24, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Just curious - did they answer your email? Tomas e (talk) 23:17, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes and No. I got a reply back but the webmaster seemed to think that they weren't in violation of the GFDL because it is not an "exact" reproduction of our content because they fix typos, grammar issues, remove foot notes and non-wine related wiki links. I pointed her to the Wikipedia:Copyrights which explains Wikipedia's copyright use pretty well and offered to create an account on Encyclowine to help with linking the articles for GFDL content. That was a couple days ago. I'll give her a few more days before I send a follow up email. AgneCheese/Wine 13:08, 3 January 2008 (UTC)
Update I've got a reply back from the Webmaster and I think we've worked out a solution. At the bottom of articles or images that were original on wikipedia, there will be a header Source with a link back to the Wikipedia article. I'll create an account there to help tag some of the articles. If anyone else is interested in helping, by all means. :) AgneCheese/Wine 19:40, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
To be honest, I wouldn't even worry about it. I glanced through their recent changes log and they've had less than 50 edits in the past month, most by a single person. I then ran a Google search on a few topics ("Zinfandel" was one) and while our page turn up at #1 or on the first page of results, theirs didn't turn up in the first 10 pages (I quit checking after that). Even the Croatian Wikipedia turned up before theirs. If we chased down every "wanna-be" website that pilfered our content, we'd never get anything else done. Cheers Manning (talk) 01:24, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Good point but I didn't come across this via google searches. Several well respected wine blogs and podcasts made frequent mention of this site as a go-to web resource for wine information instead of Wikipedia. So I was quite surprise when I went to check it out and saw that it was mostly our content! AgneCheese/Wine 07:28, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Category sorting

As you can see from my Jan. 19, 2008 contributions, I've gone on a bold categorization spree of French wine articles. Most of my work involved creating and populating the categories Category:Bordeaux wine, Category:Bordeaux wine producers and Category:Champagne (wine). I also expanded Category:Champagne producers and depopulated a great deal of redundant categories. I hope this effort was of some modest benefit to the project.

Here's my issue: I'm only just begun populating Category:Bordeaux wine producers. Most of those wineries still reside in Category:Wineries of France. Nearly all of the Bordeaux winery articles contain the template {{DEFAULTSORT:Chateau xyz}}. Shouldn't we alphabetizing by the proper name and not by the word "Château"? Can someone from project wine please advise before I can proceed?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 20:47, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

It does make sense to defaultsort the actual names (although some RS like Hugh Johnson list it all under Chateau prefix) so a consensus ought to decide. About this new bold category move, I'm not sure I agree on eliminating a category of wine names in cases where it is the same as the producer estate name. MURGH disc. 03:45, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
Murgh, I don't understand your last sentence; could you clarify your concern?--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 13:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
There might be a reasonably good cause for sorting Chx under their non-Ch name. However, if all entries are called "Château XYZ" they should end up in alphabetical order by the XYZ part anyway. Unless, of course, some names use a circumflex and some not. This functionality would be most important for categories where Château and non-Château names (Domaine,...) are mixed. But if this is to be done, I'm not sure if a DEFAULTSORT {{Surname, Château}} command is the appropriate way of doing this. Some Chx should also be included in other categories, and there they should reasonably appear under C. As an example, Château Mouton Rothschild is included in Category:Rothschild family, and sorting it under M rather than C would in my opinion be wrong. So I would recommend doing something like [[Category:Bordeaux wine producers|Mouton Rothschild, Château]] rather than DEFAULTSORT {{Mouton Rothschild, Château}} if you're planning on embarking on this. Tomas e (talk) 17:46, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
I think Tomas' suggestion is probably the best way to go. I personally don't mind them all being titled "Chateau..." but I can see a benefit in sorting them by the proper name. AgneCheese/Wine 13:23, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
Sounds good. I'll finish moving those wineries from [[Category:Wineries of France to Category:Bordeaux wine producers within a few days, and I'll alphabetize them per Tomas' suggestion.--The Fat Man Who Never Came Back (talk) 13:46, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Would you like some jargon with that Sauternes?

Howdy! I recently got around to tackling our Sauternes article and User:Wetman lent a much appreciated hand in tidying up the article. On the talk page he has expressed a concern about the use of jargon in the article and tagged the phrases "drinking well" and chaptalization as phrases that needed additional clarification. He also gives the impression that there might be more in the article. While I disagree with characterizing chaptalization as jargon (and explain on the talk page why), I can see where he might think that phrases like "drinking well" would be but I'm at a lost as to an alternative way to phrase. It is definitely a case of being "too close" to the subject matter that my eyes have lost several shades of objectivity to see how the "average reader" would look at it. A fresh set of eyes and perspective would be of great help to see if there are things that could be "de-wine geekified". Thanks! AgneCheese/Wine 07:14, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I just read through the Sauternes article (once) and it seemed alright to me. I don't think there's any excessive jargon in there. Then again, like Agne, I am also possibly a bit too "close" to the wine world to be objective about that!
I did spot a possible typo though: where it says "In years when the noble rot does develop, Sauternes producers will often make dry white wines under the generic Bordeaux AOC." Is there not a "not" missing between 'does' and 'develop'? doesn't make sense otherwise, no? --BodegasAmbite (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2008 (UTC)

Wine Portal

I am really busy at the moment and honestly getting a little frustrated with the Featured Portal nomination for the Portal:Wine. If someone has some time to look at the nomination and the people's comments and could take a couple minutes to help me out, it would be appreciated.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 19:18, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

It looks like you've done a lot of work. Great job. Looking at the nomination, Wikipedia:Featured_portal_candidates#Portal:Wine, it's not immediately apparent how to best help out. Unless this is already being done, I can address the "More articles in Main topics section would be appericiated"-request. MURGH disc. 21:15, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
That would be some help, if you could find some "Selected wineries" that are better than stub class and if they are a start class has some decent citations. I haven't addressed any of the issues from the new comments added yet. Thanks for the help.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 21:57, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
A little out of my element on how to do it, but I lined up a year's worth of world-mixed winery articles "of a certain length". Hope it helps. MURGH disc. 01:19, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

Hey congratulatons with the achievement- very well done. MURGH disc. 10:11, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, someone had removed the "Selected Winery" heading, but I put it back. I may add a heading for a "Selected Grape" as well, so hopefully we get some better grape articles going that we can feature.--Chef Christopher Allen Tanner, CCC (talk) 12:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
GREAT WORK! That is so awesome. A "selected grape" section would be a nice addition. Overall, our grape articles are not that bad. As I think Tomas once noted, in many cases they are better shape than our wine region articles. AgneCheese/Wine 00:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

Guidelines for Vineyard/Winery notability?

I'm sitting here with my Halliday's Australian Wine Companion and a bunch of other resources, and there are a pile of Australian wineries which don't have articles yet (and which I feel well equipped to write about). Before I dive in however, has a consensus ever been established about what constitutes a "notable" winery? I'm familiar with WP:COMPANY of course, but they are only general guidelines and I'd like to fit within established "Wikiproject - Wine" guidelines if they exist. Cheers Manning (talk) 01:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

I haven't seen a wine-specific notability-guideline, but to my mind, if you have article subjects substantially covered by several reliable sources there is every reason to expect it passes WP:N, and you have what is needed to dive in. MURGH disc. 01:33, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, as much as we've tried, it's been hard to hammer out consensus view on it. (My own view is in the essay WP:WINEGUIDE) But if it's going to pass an AfD with reliable sources (as Murg noted), then don't let us stop you. :) Though if you would add the project banner to the talk page, it would be greatly appreciated. AgneCheese/Wine 01:50, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Agne is too modest. It's true there's no "official" line on notability, but the WP:NOTWINE essay is the closest we have to a consensus position; its talk page has a few meteor impacts but the essay is testament to the complexity of the issue. In general, I like the Restaurant Test analogy a lot and would use that in conjunction with what you might call an internationally newsworthy criterion for any prospective article. I'd suggest making an extra effort to keep a "professional distance" from the subjects: I know from experience that writing articles about stuff I'm personally (ie geographically) familiar with means I have to be extra-careful to avoid little WP:OR and even WP:COI snippets from creeping in ;o) --mikaultalk 19:39, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
Excellent advice and thanks for the link to WP:NOTWINE. I'll be using a few industry benchmarks such as Halliday's "Top Wineries" and the Langton's index as a starting point - there is plenty of virgin material just in that. Manning (talk) 12:37, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
As I've written before somewhere (could it have been the WP WINE survey?), unless someone is planning to write about very small and obscure wineries, I'm in general more worried about POV issues than notability for winery articles. POV is a general problem with many wine-related articles, and probably no subcategory is worse than wineries, where many are written like commercials. So as long as you write your articles respecting NPOV and using reliable references, I'll probably lend a hand if you run into overzealous AfD nominations.Tomas e (talk) 17:21, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
We've had a previous discussion about this - it's easier to establish notability than non-notability, but if they're cropping up in the pages of international specialist mags like [www.decanter.com|Decanter] or the Wine Spectator, then they're definitely in. Decanter's usually my first port of call, just because it is least likely to suffer "home" bias ;-/ On the other hand, wineries (particularly in the US) do tend to attract coverage in local media that don't really count but get used by those with WP:COI to justify inclusion. Tricky balance. OTOH, from memory the Aussie regional articles are not in particularly great shape, if you've local knowledge then tackling area articles would give more bang for your buck. FlagSteward (talk) 18:52, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

California wine appellations progress

I've been working on some of the American Viticultural Area articles for California wine lately. We now have at least a stub, with a wine region infobox, for every AVA within the six-county North Coast AVA. I would encourage others to expand some of these stubs and maybe find one or two worth promotion through WP:DYK. Also, I've been working on fixing a few article problems related to county appellations versus AVAs, and as a result there are now four county appellation articles:

I don't know if we need or want an article for every county in California, but I propose that for counties with significant production where the county appellation regularly appears on bottlings, it makes sense to have articles like these. These are mostly stub or start quality, and could use more information on history, production levels, industry sales and workforce, etc.--Kharker (talk) 23:55, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

This may be inviting a difficult discussion, but why do you (and a lot of other people) refer to them as "appellations" at all when we're trying to write the world's best encyclopedia rather than e.g. trying to sell wine at upmarket prices? Referring to an American Viticultural Area as an "appellation" is in my mind a very un-encyclopedic use of the term, since the requirements for AVAs (and all other New World official or semi-official classifications I know of) are so much different, and generally much less restrictive than Appellation d'origine contrôlée rules (as well as Italian DOC(G) and Spanish DO(Ca/Q) regulations), as to make them totally different beasts altogether. As an example, have a look at the AOC rules for Margaux (en français, I'm afraid) which include e.g.:
  • Article 1 - only red wines from delimited areas in specified communes may use the appellation Margaux
  • Article 2 - six varieties of grape are allowed and no other (and that's 100% and not 75% folks!)
  • Article 3 - required maturity of grapes at harvest
  • Article 4 - allowed yield
  • Article 5 - allowed vine training systems and required planting density
  • Artcile 6 - some regulations on winemaking practices
  • Article 8 - and as a final nice touch, letting you know that if you're advertising or selling wines as "Margaux" without following all the rules, you can expect criminal prosecution for fraud as well as hefty fines.
  • ...while not forgetting that the wines are also subject to all general rules for French AOC and EU VQPRD wines with regard to harvesting conditions, winemaking practices, labelling and so on.
Equating these two worlds of regulations when using the terms in an encyclopedia is just "dumbing down" what an appellation is and the fascinating subject of how classification of wine is implemented quite differently around the globe, and for that reason the appellation article has made me grind my teeth for quite some time. But I haven't done anything about it because I wanted to work my way to that article from classification of wine and discussing the issue here first, which I haven't gotten around to. But when the use of appellations in a U.S. setting appears here, I have some problems in not protesting. Mind you, I'm not trying to say that a wine made under a straightjacket of AOC regulations is in any way automatically "superior" to an AVA wine, but they are quite differently regulated. I think that a U.S. AVA should be referred to as an AVA, an American Viticultural Area or a Viticultural Area or possibly an area, but not an appellation. BTW, I don't mind separate articles for all existing AVAs. Tomas e (talk) 19:45, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
I don't think this will develop into a difficult conversation. But what we do have here is a classic conflict between the common usage of a term in the New World/Old World. The ultimate solution will be, as you alluded to, in developing the appellation article to where it explains and reflects both usages. In the New World, the usage of appellation is almost generic and in the case of the US counties is actually a step down from AVAs which are (in theory) unique terroirs. County appellations are just political entities grandfathered into the American wine labeling laws. You really can't avoid references to American or New World "appellations" because the usage is so common. We just have to make sure that the article that it is wiki-linked to is able to adequately explain the usage and context across the world of wine. AgneCheese/Wine 20:07, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Sort of like Syrah versus Shiraz, you'll probably never get universal agreement on this :-) If American Viticultural Areas and Australian Geographical Indications (why isn't there an article for that, BTW?) should not be referred to as appellations, then what would you call them? An appellation is a system of wine designation/classification, and if a particular country chooses not to designate/classify based on grape varietal or historical reputations, it is still a designation/classification system nonetheless, is it not?--Kharker (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Also, the United States Department of the Treasury Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau refers to AVAs as "Wine Appellations of Origin": [1]--Kharker (talk) 20:51, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

In other news on this topic, I've edited the American Viticultural Area article itself to break out the California AVAs into five broad regions, following the example in the California wine article. I think that makes more sense than a single list of 200+ wikilinks to AVAs most people have never heard of.--Kharker (talk) 20:11, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

LOL. Speaking of which, I've been thinking about asking on here what the general consensus was about Syrah's naming. I've been pondering it for a year and I keep coming back to Syrah being a more common use for the grape and Shiraz being used almost like a "wine style". Oh, nice work with the Cali AVAs. The categorizing split is a good idea. AgneCheese/Wine 20:16, 22 January 2008 (UTC)
Just passing through quickly, but while both have strong claims, I must admit that I have quite a strong preference for Syrah, if only because of its lack of ambiguity. Far better than having to muck about with brackets in article names. But also in general I prefer to use 'native' names for things unless there's an overwhleming failure of the 'supermarket test'. Bonarda is probably the clearest example of that, Zinfandel just about makes it (although I am seeing a lot more Primitivo than I used to, I know to only pick arguments I have some hope of winning ;-/) but I'm not sure that Shiraz overwhelms Syrah sufficiently to justify the ambiguity - as you say, if nothing else Syrah tends to get used in viticulture. I have seen my first French Shiraz (they changed the labelling rules recently), but I have seen more New World Syrahs.... FlagSteward (talk) 18:40, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I'd also like to see a rounding up of consensus since this naming seems at a strange place. There are many complex aspects, but to me this doesn't feel right. Unless some discussion with firm trumping arguments (which I can't find) has laid it to rest for a long while? MURGH disc. 12:32, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Resveratrol

I am a bit concern with the recent furry of editing on the Resveratrol article. While it is certainly an importantly wine-related topic, it is also a very scientific and technical article-one that I, personally, don't feel that I have the background expertise to evaluate well. If anyone on the project with more of a scientific background (Bduke perhaps?) gets a chance, please take a look at this article. I am most concern with some of the contribution histories of the editors who have recently contributed to the page. They seem to be single purpose or singularly focused on this one topic with what appears to be competing agendas. I see that the article also falls under the Pharmacology and Chemistry Wikiprojects so I'm going to drop a note there as well. AgneCheese/Wine 00:28, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

I've just read the Resveratrol article, and yes it is very technical-chemical based. As far is its relationship to wine is concerned I think it has the same level of importance/relevance as any other chemical compound found in wine (of which there are hundreds!).
However, resveratrol has special significance as far as organic wine (and organic grape-growing) is concerned. This is due to the current debate in the organic food/drink world about health and the 'alleged' benefits of organic food on human health. Although it's intuitive and 'common-sence' that traces of artificial chemicals in food cannot be beneficial (even if they are within legal limits) there is surprising little 'hard' 'scientific' evidence to support this intuitive claim.
And this is where Resveratrol comes into the picture. It seems that there is more Resveratrol present in organically grown foods (including grapes - and therefore wine) than in conventionally (industrially, chemically) produced ones.
The importance of this debate lies in the legal consequences. At present, legislation forbids organic producers to state on their labels that their products are better for human health than conventional products. So if the Resveratrol debate is eventually resolved it would allow organic producers state this fact directly on their labels and advertising.
I'm afraid I dont have any references for all the above handy, but if anyone's interested, I could look them out. --BodegasAmbite (talk) 09:53, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
Hey BA! Good to see your sig around. :) Hope things are going well at the winery. As to the above, things are still a little hairy on the Resveratrol article. I see one editor from the chemicals project doing a little so we'll see how that goes. That is pretty interested about the Organic wine angle. (boy that article needs some loving!) From a wine angle, I think the Resveratrol info you are talking about would be better served in the Organic wine article than in the Chemical article. AgneCheese/Wine 21:18, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

What does Pliny the Elder, Ausonius, Louis Pasteur and Francis Ford Coppola have in common?

Answer They all have some relation to the world of wine. However two of the above are labeled with the Wine project's banner as falling under our scope and two are not . And there is this guy who is listed on List of wine personalities but also doesn't have the banner as well as the other Roman writers in Ancient Rome and wine. The follow up question to this is--should they? Any of them? I mean, we try to tag articles that as a project, we have an active interest in maintaining. How far does that extend to bio articles where "wine" is only a partial component? AgneCheese/Wine 21:13, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

It's a good idea to make up a consensus of where the line should be drawn. To me, the people WP-defined as "wine personalities" should be people who are frequent subjects of the wine-related RS we apply to our encyclopedia gathering. Usually it will be given, but in the case of crossovers it becomes an issue and as for the "silent partner investor"-type I don't think it's worthwhile for WP:WINE to pursue it as the notability would lie elsewhere. While I would think Pasteur fundamentally important to the history of wine, I'm not sure how close ancient philosophers and poets (whatever profound statements they may have made about wine) are to the project's focus, and modern winery owners such as Coppola and the Tool guy ought to be deemed by their activity in the field. Is Coppola primarily a dedicated winemaker now? MURGH disc. 02:00, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

"World of the world"  ;^)

LOL, fixed that "world of the world" part. That's what I get for doing wiki while drinking. :p Back to your comment. I don't think Coppola makes the wine at all. He is sort of like Greg Norman in that he "guides the process" by telling the winemakers what style he likes and may do some tasting during the blending process. AgneCheese/Wine 02:06, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
Well, like Coppola, Norman doesn't spring the "wine personality" association for me, but I guess it's like always up to the sources. Owning a winery doesn't make a wine personality by default, so for instance the sparse mention of winemaking in the Maynard James Keenan article doesn't suggest he should be in this list, while David Peppercorn, François Audouze, Henri Enjalbert and many others (Hardy Rodenstock surely :P) might belong.. MURGH disc. 12:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
My feeling that they get tagged if they are either most notable for their contributions to the world or wine, or if they are such big figures that even a small fraction of their output still represents a globally significant contribution to the world of wine. So I'd put Pliny and Pasteur in that second category, on the grounds that you could easily write a dedicated article on their contributions to oenology/viticulture (along with people like Columella). Keenan, Coppola and Norman don't do it for me - their work in other fields overwhelm their work in this one, and just owning vineyards doesn't really cut it. Ausonius is a tricky one, in theory he's not much more winey than Coppola or Keenan as an 'artist' who dabbled in winemaking, but somehow he just about scrambles over the line for me - first (??) recorded viticulture in Bordeaux, the link to Ausone and so on. FlagSteward (talk) 18:41, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

The French wiki rose article

While our Rosé article is not in bad shape, I just noticed how detailed and well illustrated the fr:Vin rosé article is. It would be a wonderful addition if any Project member, well versed in French, would be willing to translate and incorporate some of the info into our english article. On our main page User:Mroconnell list himself as a volunteer but he hasn't been active recently. If anyone else knows of someway, pass this note along. AgneCheese/Wine 05:29, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Anomalous article sizes

I've been having a fling with a sultry Italian Project, she seduced me over a bottle of Enfer d'Arvier - don't worry I'll soon get rid of her and be back with you guys soon enough. :-)) But one of the things I've been working on which hopefully will be useful for a lot of the Country Projects we interact with, such as France and Spain, is ways of semi-automating the assessment of articles. And one of the things that involves is grabbing the sizes of articles. So you can compare the article's current assessment against it's current size. A small project like this one is great for testing :-), but here's some that crossed my radar. The following are Starts that are anything from 10kb to >30kb (!) - people might want to have a look at them and see what if anything needs doing to them to get them up to B standard. Could well be that they're either there or just need a bit of copyediting, a bit of referencing, or an image or two - these should be "quick wins" for the Project and a bit of a change of scene for those who've been slaving away on a load of obscure appellations ;-/ :

The ordering might seem eccentric, but it's from smallest to biggest within a category, so you should probably work backwards ;-/. 10kb is a bit light for a B for many articles, but by the time you get up to 15kb you can be looking at a B for all but the most general articles. That latter will include many of the Top ones, but I'd guess the Highs in particular must be pretty close. Conversely the Mids seem to include big general articles where the Wine angle is only a minor one, and we may want to think about extracting the wine information and moving our Project affiliation from the big general article about say Mainz to a more specialist article devoted to the wine of the area (and surely we have a Rhineland-Pfalz wine article?). Likewise for the Stubs over 4500 bytes :

Like I say, I'm not saying these are all automatic B/Starts's, some obviously aren't, but they're good candidates for some attention and possible promotion. I've not looked at any of them yet. And get on with it :-))) - I'll have some other fun stats coming soon.... FlagSteward (talk) 01:38, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Interesting stuff, and as a case in point I can give some input into why things are the way they are for a few articles. German wine is not just 30 kb, it's 35,758 b of which I'm guilty of a couple of kb :-). The reason it's still "Start" is because it has a maintenance tag related to big chunks of it being unreferenced, including two long lists of released grape varietes (where I neither know the source nor which year they were up to date, since I'm not the author). I didn't feel that it would be correct to reclassify it to B under these circumstances - I agree that length is not lacking :-). Rhineland-Palatinate is another interesting example. I rather recently made sure we have wine-specific articles on Germany's all 13 wine regions; in many cases there were already a few lines of "the wine from this region is very famous and good blablabla" in the general articles on the corresponding regions. Those article to not, and should not have WP:WINE tags. The article on the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate (there is a Pfalz wine region, which used to be called Rheinpfalz, but no Rheinland-Pfalz wine region - an important distiction) is the exception; it's the only federal state included in the project. Home to 2/3 of Germany's wine production and the probably the only state where the wine industry is really economically important, this federal state article warrants enough wine material for us to keep an eye on, but not more than Low in importance. But on the other hand, since Rhineland-Palatinate is not part of the official classification system, we actually don't have, and I my opinion don't need a Rhineland-Palatinate wine article. (I just realise I should write an assessment comment to explain this.) I've removed the WP:WINE tag fom Mainz (situated in Rhineland-Palatinate BTW) - it's IMHO a typical article where wine is mentioned in passing without really being relevant to the project. Tomas e (talk) 07:15, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
All fair stuff - German wine was a good example of a really general subject which would be hard to get above Start in 20kb, at least. Like I say, the above is just what the bot spewed out, there will be many cases where there's a good reason why it's only a Wine Start - but the grape articles are probably good examples of ones that should be B-able fairly easily. Perhaps if people could each take some of the above articles under their wing, with Agne and anyone who's bored making an effort to go for the ones such as Oz/NZ where we don't really have any local specialists? I've knocked off Alba Iulia - no real wine content, apart from a meeting of AREV there - so I started an article on AREV instead. We could probably do with more coverage of EU policy stuff like COM Wine - it's just so much less interesting than writing about stuff you can drink. ;-/ FlagSteward (talk) 12:34, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
Hey Flag! Great to see your name back on this page. :) As for the list, I agree that these would be a priority to knock up but I'm not sure if they will be a simple, task to easily brush up to be-despite the size. Looking at Assessment standard for B articles (and the sample Jammu and Kashmir), I've always gotten the impression that B's are near GA without the polishing. Like French wine is a good size article but right now it wine region section is essentially a list when it should include a summary paragraph. (Same with American wine). As for the grape articles, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Viognier, ideally we would to get them up to Zinfandel and Chardonnay level before we start think B. If an article has a punch or one or two line paragraphs or is missing a significant section (like History, Winemaking, Viticulture, etc), then it would probably be a start. This list, like Kharker's "AVA to-do" list below is a great idea and we should avoid having these be archived. AgneCheese/Wine 22:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
I've just begun investing time in the Wine-project but I'm not very proficient in wiki'ing or whatever it's called. This means I have problems identifying the subtleties of the good article, a-class, b-class and featured articles. I know a stub when I see one (I'm a naughty boy), but it gets increasingly difficult the more complete the picture gets. My present key interest is the french Châteaux and while browsing through them they all read "Start" on the assessment-scale. Now, can anyone show me a GA or better château-article so I know what to go look for and write about in the other articles? Sort of a lighthouse or recipie for making good articles on wine-producers (especially châteaux)?--Nwinther (talk) 15:03, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I suppose that you've seen the assessment log in matrix format on the project page? At Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Wine articles by quality (the bottom link of three under the matrix), you can find links to the lists of the "raw" assessment data article by article - it's spread out over 5 pages, I assume just because of the number of articles. The data is ordered by class and then impoprtance, so all our GA articles are found on the first page. No article on an individual wine producer has been assessed GA (which requires going through a formal process), but there are at least some B ones of individual producers, notably Château d'Yquem and Bollinger. I feel that the standards required for a B article has been raised somewhat, so Start covers a fairly large range in terms of article size and "immediate impression". As you can see from the matrix, our humble project doesn't have a single FA... If you're new and your fingers are itching, I think it would be a good idea to write a number of "Start"-level articles on individual Châteaux, to get a feel for a suitable structure and layout of such articles, and the work involved in finding sources and so on, before you try to bring any one of them up to B class. Good luck! Tomas e (talk) 15:21, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
I hear you Tomas. But can you tell me, what is the key difference between the article on chateau Lafite as compared to d'Yquem? What makes Lafite a Start and not a B?--Nwinther (talk) 16:46, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
If you ask me, Lafite needs more work to be a B. As far as being referenced, those two are quite similar. MURGH disc. 17:28, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Well, I notice both article's ratings were done by Agne in March 2007, so they were probably assessed in a consistent way back then, although I wash my hands of any of these ratings. :-) They don't differ that much in content and quality, but to give Lafite a B, I think that at least a little more should be added about the specifics of production (rather than just variety %), and perhaps something about the wine's style (although this is difficult land given Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a wine guide) - either in itself or in comparison to other First Growths or Pauillac wine. Tomas e (talk) 17:45, 14 February 2008 (UTC)
Ugh. Yeah I've downgraded quite a few that I originally assess as B before I really delved into the assessment scale standards. In all honesty, I think it was a subconscious "grading on a curve" since those articles were--at the time--the best articles in the project and the closest to GA level. As our overall article quality has improved, it is easier to see which article are more consistent B's-Zinfandel, Fermentation (wine) and Louis Pasteur and which are farther away. Unfortunately we really don't have a stellar B examples in the Chateau range, though Tomas' recommendations on how to get Lafite up to B are certainly the way to go. Glancing at the category, there are probably more that should be downgraded to start and I encourage anyone to BOLDly do so if they think an article is below standards. Ratings can always be discussed in more detail on the talk page if there is a disagreement. I do think it is important to have high, but consistent, standards for B since seeing an important article at "start" level gives more of a motivation to improve it than having it at "B" would. Plus, whenever we get active about going for GAs again, they will be easier fixes and polishings to get it up to GA standard. AgneCheese/Wine 02:37, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

American Viticultural Areas

All of the AVAs now have at least a stub-class article with a wine region infobox and a few references. The American Viticultural Area article itself could use some work, if anyone is interested. Of the individual AVA stubs, several rather important AVAs cry out for more content, especially history information and any data about numbers of wineries, crop yields, economic impact, important wineries, wine tourism, etc. They could all use improving, but my Top 12 stubs to improve ASAP would include:

If you'd like to help improve ones of these AVAs, go for it!--Kharker (talk) 19:22, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh you are totally awesome! Yeah, those are some biggie there. Compiling that list is a great idea. I've got a few other articles lined up, but I'll see where I can lend a hand. AgneCheese/Wine 21:59, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Bordeaux classification

I just noticed that the First Growth article doesn't just talk about First Growth Bordeaux, strangely enough it also lists the chx of the Graves Classification and the Saint-Émilion Classification, but not the 2nd-5th Médoc or 2nd Sauternes. There are even two subheadings on "Other Classification Schemes in France" and "Burgundy"! In my eyes, all of this seems very inappropriate to the title of the article, given the existence of the articles Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, Classification of Saint-Émilion wine, Classification of Graves wine, Cru Bourgeois and Classification of wine, and definitely confusing to the reader. This is a case where I have some problems in seeing any benefit in this duplication of material - I think this article should be significantly pruned, and I could even live with it becoming a redirect to 1855 article! Tomas e (talk) 13:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure you're right that all there is found elsewhere. A redirect might be right, unless there is something to disambiguate. MURGH disc. 14:17, 16 February 2008 (UTC)
The problem is that "first growth" in English has a meaning of its own (so an 1855 redirect is not appropriate). In some cases the French phrase "premier cru" translates into English as "first growth", and sometimes it translates as "premier cru" - Bordeaux and Burgundy are obvious examples of the two meanings, let alone once you get into unofficial usage elsewhere. Even in Bordeaux, Yquem gets considered as a "first growth" even though it's not literally one, and if you want to talk Bordeaux first growths (as opposed to Médoc-and-Pessac-Léognan first growths), many people will throw in Cheval Blanc and perhaps Ausone. I say keep it, although it could do with some heavy editing away from a literal translation of premier cru and more about the English meaning of "first growth". FlagSteward (talk) 16:57, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Nice pair of legs photos

Some more photos to look at. One of those cases where you're taking a photo of one thing, and then realise afterwards that you've captured something completely different - in this case a rather neat example of tears of wine in some Caluso Passito. Any opinions on which is best? I'm torn between the tight crop which has no distractions, and the wide shot that gives "context" - there's scope for an 'in between' crop which cuts out the bottle and some of the glass, but given the text of the article I think it's quite useful to have the context (with % alcohol etc). As an aside - another one for the collection of "wines I have drunk where neither grape nor appellation has a Wiki article" - I've quite a few of those. :-))) - and really quite nice. Actually, that would be a great idea for WBW - bloggers have to either review a wine that's not on Wikipedia, or "pay" for reviewing one that's a stub by upgrading the article. FlagSteward (talk) 23:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

If you wish to illustrate "tears of wine" I think that the colourful label of the bottle draws too much attention. A "medium crop" would probably be better. Tomas e (talk) 23:39, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
BTW, are you sure it's not Ricky's Hand? Tomas e (talk) 23:43, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
I was thinking more of The Addams Family Christmas party... :-) FlagSteward (talk) 23:53, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, like you say, the 'in between' that gives context but with clear emphasis on the detail seems the best choice to me. Not only is the hand eerie, but I find the "forehead ghost in the glass" pretty freaky too, explained in the picture in full. MURGH disc. 00:05, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I've added an intermediate crop, which seems to work quite well - just a shame to lose the identity of the wine. FlagSteward (talk) 01:36, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Wanted: trained viticulturist with a sharp eye

When I was expanding the history section of the German wine, I started to browse through some pictures I took in September when I visited Kloster Eberbach in Rheingau. Next to this place, I discovered an area where various grape varieties and vine training systems were on display. In order to remember what was what (this was after all just after several hours of wine tasting...) I also took a photo of each sign. I was sure I had photographed something that was supposed to be an old vine training system, and thought I'd include this picture as an illustration for this article. One of the displays was labelled Alter pfälz. Kammerbau (old Palatinate Kammerbau), which OCW mentions as being of Roman origin, so I naturally chose this. Here's the image, by the way. But then I realised - it just doesn't look right! It uses steel wires, for a start, and in comparison to the OCW illustration, it's higher, it only includes one row of vines and there is nothing about it that brings a "Kammer" (roughly "chamber") into mind. To be quite honest, in OCW it looks very much like this. However, this latter exhibit was labelled as something completely different and much more modern. Since I expect people who take the trouble of producing an exhibit like this to know what they're doing, it seems strange if things would have been so seriously mixed up. However, it would be far from impossible for someone to switch the signs by just uprooting their poles, so I was starting to think that some prankster may have switched (at least) two signs. Because of this, I wonder if we have a viticulturalist on board who actually can recognise different "Germanic" vine training systems from photos? If so, in order not to influence that person, I'm not going to tell with which system the second image (which I suspect is the Kammerbau) was actually labelled. Tomas e (talk) 20:25, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Not an expert on German vine training, but it does look a bit similar to the system you see in a lot of the Italian high-altitude vineyards. What you have to imagine is not just one vine, but a whole series of them, in lines anything up to 5 metres apart but more normally 2m or so, with trunks going up 2m and then going out flat to form a "roof" of vines above head height. I guess you could regard the space underneath 2 rows of 5 vines as being equivalent to a "chamber", but I don't know for sure. I imagine that while wire would be a 17th-18th century "innovation", the original form could have used a framework of wood or thin rope, I don't know for sure though. opposite p744 ("vine pull schemes") of the UK 3rd edition of the OCW shows a full=page pic of vines in Morgex trained like I'm thinking of, with wooden cross pieces, although the picture doesn't convey the sense of the height of the vines, which is above head height. FlagSteward (talk) 00:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Sorry, I left out the specific OCW reference, which perhaps wasn't obvious. It's the first illustration of "German history", p. 304 in the OCW 3rd Ed. The p. 745 (a "canopy") is a bit similar to my picture #1, but it seems to have a "flat top" wooden lattice rather than steel wire, and therefore more "low tech". Tomas e (talk) 00:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Personally I'd say the shape (and in particular height) matters more than the material used to make the thin crossmembers, so whether it's wire or thin wood is not very important. It's the size of the "box" that is, and to me Kammerbau implies something you can walk under - or even get a small tractor under. But like I say, I'm happy to bow to someone who knows what they're talking about - perhaps you could email Eberbach? FlagSteward (talk) 01:35, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Yes, I had been thinking about that option. Although it would of course be more fun to know the right answer beforehand and then email them and ask if their signs are really right. :-) Tomas e (talk) 09:11, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes

Another list thrown up by my bot, of Wine articles (B's and High Starts) lacking infoboxes. As a Project I feel we're a bit short on infoboxes, and this might throw up some inspiration for new ones, as well as highlighting underuse of existing ones :

One obvious thing to do would be a big box with links to all the main Burgundy villages and areas, but I feel we could do more to present the "essential" numbers on regionsbetter, current production, that kind of thing, a regional equivalent of the appellation box. FlagSteward (talk) 01:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

About those infoboxes, I was wondering if anyone was up for a revamp of the French chateau boxes. I put up some suggestions here Template talk:Infobox French Winery for comments. MURGH disc. 17:01, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Possible GAs

On the other hand, a few B's get thrown up by my bot as GA candidates based on certain statistics - again I must emphasise I haven't looked at these myself, and am definitely not saying that GA won't take a lot of work in some cases, but what do people think about :

I suspect Wine will need more work than most - but wouldn't that be a terrific article to get GA'd? FlagSteward (talk) 01:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Here's my thoughts on those as possible GA candidates. If you want more detail on any of them, I'd be happy to provide it.
  • Wine -- Needs some cleanup (is Film and television really appropriate?), a little citation work, History seems to stop at the 10th century. In all, what's there is of GA quality, but definitely seems some major work done.
  • Chaptalization -- Definitely a good candidate. A more process-specific image (i.e. of chaptalization, if possible) would be really helpful.
  • Zinfandel -- again, you gotta resolve and remove the big nasty cleanup banner in USA, or you're dead in the water, otherwise it looks good.
  • Red Mountain AVA -- Needs a little MOS work, cleanup and verification, especially the winery list. I have a sneaky feeling there is more history there too, but in general it looks to be a passable candidate.
  • Pinot gris -- Well-cited, but some of the regional sections are thin; a little expansion of the viticulture would be good too.
  • Beaujolais wine -- Separate controversy (or in this case, "Scandal") sections are never good. It could use some more specific citing and merging in to History. It could also use a good copyedit and review for minor MOS things such as the use of quotations.
  • Oak (wine) -- The article seems to lean too heavily towards content on barrel alternatives and barrel construction, rather than the core topic of how the traditional use of oak affects wine.
  • Châteauneuf-du-Pape AOC Needs some section order work per MOS, but otherwise a good candidate.
  • Provence wine -- Needs work, mostly in citing specific numerical amounts (i.e. statisitics and percentages), more readable section ordering, and the formatting of the references.
  • Mosel wine -- Needs a little MOS formatting work, but a good candidate for the most part.
  • Louis Pasteur -- My opinion is that the work this article needs is outside the purview of the Wine project. Not bad, but certainly needs work before it could be GA.
  • Chardonnay -- Needs some major work. The Synonyms section is very troubling in its current state. Some of the regional sections are out of balance (why is Australia and New Zealand, and Champagne, so much larger than California?).
  • Chilean wine -- A solid article, just needs some formatting work and a little copyediting. A good candidate.
  • Loire Valley (wine) -- A strong candidate for GA, very little work needed before it would be passable.
  • Shiraz (grape) -- Another strong candidate, but the references need better formatting.
In general, I would say that the best candidates as we speak are Chaptalization, Loire Valley (wine), Chilean wine, and Pinot gris. VanTucky 20:45, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the feedback! Though a couple things jump out. With Oak (wine), how oak affects wine is merely a single sub topic of the multi-faceted subject of oak in wine--not the core focus. The article would lack comprehensiveness in regards to this diverse subject matter if it focused merely on that one single sub topic. In Provence wine all stats and percentages are sourced, maybe not with a footnote next to each line but certainly within the paragraph that it is included. But again, thanks for taking the time to give some great constructive pointers. Much appreciated! :) AgneCheese/Wine 20:54, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I wasn't suggesting content should be removed from the Oak (wine) article, I just think it's very important to have strong content on oak in wine, rather than just the use of oak in viticulture. Otherwise, it feels like the article is talking about just another piece of wine making equipment, rather than something that can have a powerful affect on the final product. In other words, stressing oak in wine most clearly asserts the importance of all the other aspects. But that's just my initial impression. As for Provence, I did mean providing direct in-line cites, not that it was actually unverified. Direct cites for stats and percentages is a good idea if you're looking to pass GA. VanTucky 21:04, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Well there are inline cites in Provence that can be attributed to every fact, every line and every number. I never add anything to an article without a footnote source. :) It just happens that in some circumstances the line or two after the appearance of a stat or percentage is also sourced by the same reference. It seems redundant to have the same footnote appear on three consecutive lines when all three statements are sourced by the same footnote. It is probably more of a style issue that I would be glad to work with any GA reviewer on. As for Oak, there is a healthy 4 paragraphs worth dedicated to just the chemical process and affect on wine (which undoubtedly is important), however understanding how those processes happen and the differences with winemaking decisions (French vs American, toast level, barrel vs alt, etc) that determine exactly how oak effect wine is vital to understanding the broader topic. To an extent, the article actually is about another piece of winemaking equipment, albeit a very unique one. :) AgneCheese/Wine 21:17, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks VT - I think we've already established that the Zin cleanup thing should be readily resolved. On a more ambitious note, how do you feel about going for FA with Zin? I've just got very little feel for what's expected. On the Chardonnay synonyms point, what do you think is the problem? If you follow up the VIVC reference, it covers everything up to that point, my personal reffing style with synonyms is to reference a block of names with one ref tag. The VIVC is pretty authoritative and comprehensive though. But more generally I tend to ref every subclause, because I've seen with Zin how easy it is for other editors to insert text that doesn't come from a reference, and it then appears to be referenced - particularly unobvious if it's a paper reference that can't be readily checked by most editors. The "tighter" the ref tags are, the harder it is for that to happen. FlagSteward (talk) 18:40, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

WIne case conversion and bottle standards

While commenting the suggested french winery infobox, Tomas e pointed out that by stating a category like "cases per year" ought to be clear to as many as possible. There is a little explanatory line in the infobox now, but keen minds at the Template:Conversion branch are possibly playing with making a convertor from "wine case" -> liter/hectoliter ~ US gallon, at this talk_page. I stated I thought the 750 mL bottle in packed in a 12 case had application to the entire wine world, but I don't feel so confident the standard is absolute, I keep finding anomalies in my resources. Is it so simple that we can state an overwhelming global majority for "wine case" or too diverse to be a good idea? MURGH disc. 11:17, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

After I wrote the comment yesterday, I found that there is a case (goods) article which in passing mentions wine cases as being 12 bottles. OCW states this as a fact, so it's not just hearsay or OR. I.e., wine cases may be different, but the "industry standard" is definitely 12 x 0.75 L and only this kind of case can be referred to as "case" rather than "case of 6 x 0.75 L" or "case of 12 x 0.375 L" or something similar. We might perhaps want a non-redirecting case (wine) article that provides a neater reference from the template? Tomas e (talk) 15:38, 19 February 2008 (UTC)
Must admit, 12-bottle cases are the usual standard, with hectolitres as a secondary unit for wineries; the reverse tends to be true when you're talking on a regional scale. I'm not sure of the extent of usage of US gallons, I suspect that in this area they're used less for volumes than the typical application, so many US wineries seem to use cases. FlagSteward (talk) 18:42, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Carménère

I have made some minor changes to the Carmenere article. I have fixed the references format a bit, as well as added some more info. Can someone please give it a quick copyedit? While you are at it, what do you guys think is needed to make this an FA? Suggestions? --Charleenmerced Talk 01:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)


Since there are so far no FA-grade grape variety articles, or any wine articles for that part, it's not that easy to say, at least not for me. It is going to be looked at with "non-wine nerd eyes" in such a process, which gives one hint: it needs to read well to non-specialists, while still being factually accurate in the eyes of specialists. Some things that immediately strike me for general improvement:
  • The introduction needs to pruned; as an example, I can't see that the final section on Australia belongs in the introduction at all - especially not when it's about three cuttings and one winery's blend!
  • The origin section needs to be restructured and tightened. Differentiate better between what is actually known of the grape's origin (by ampelographers) rather than has been believed or claimed (perhaps by producers for marketing purposes).
  • The "Re-discovering the Carménère grape" section should probably be split into a history section (which could include some parts of the present origins section) and a section on Carmenère in different countries.
  • I vaguely recall that Carmenère is actually allowed for most red Bordeaux-region AOC wines, even though it's hardly grown. That needs to be checked up and included as a fact in the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tomas e (talk • contribs) 10:26, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Distinguishing Carménère and Merlot should probably be moved up, since it belongs initmately with the history section.
  • Have a look at the images, it's not obvious to me that all of them are free from copyright problems.
Other than that, use a good grape book, e.g. Oz Clarke's, and Oxford Companion to Wine to check what's considered essential content for this grape.
Tomas e (talk) 10:22, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
I also notice that OCW uses Carmenère rather than Carménère as their main name form, with Carménère and the accent-free Carmenere as alternatives. A suppose the francophones will have to slug that one out. Tomas e (talk) 10:30, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
INAO seems to spell it Carmenère in their documents though. Tomas e (talk) 14:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
The sources I've come over lately confirm that it's a variety allowed within *quite many~several* Bordeaux AOCs (I wouldn't go with "most", "most Médoc" maybe), and consistently they do spell it Carmenère. MURGH disc. 11:37, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Sure, here INAO pages: [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7].. you get the picture. MURGH disc. 15:46, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
A quick sample through a few AOC rule documents showed Carmenère to be allowed in AOC Bordeaux, Margaux, Péssac-Léognan and St.-Émilion, but not in Pomerol. So it´s not all of them... I remember that Oz Clarke's book has an appendix with allowed grape varieties in all appellations (I don't have it handy), which probably makes it the best source if you wish to avoid referencing a lot of individual AOC documents. Tomas e (talk) 14:43, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Ah, sorry I misunderstood that ;^) I'm not equipped with sources to launch a accent-spelling section, but maybe I can squeeze in an aside mention near the paragraph that deals with Médoc. But on that topic, the sources I do have don't flow neatly in with "It is almost impossible to find Carménère wines in France today". Are the sources used really this adamant? Peppercorn states "It is still found in some Médoc vineyards", but then again this was written early 90s.. MURGH disc. 21:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I have actually been having problems with the structure of the article. The history, wine regions sections need to be differentiated a bit, so that the article flows better and the sections are better structured. I am just having a bit of trouble doing it though. --Charleenmerced Talk 14:41, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Problems with units and unhelpful edits

Dear WikiWinos, we seem to have a problem. There is a User:Lightmouse who seem to have made it his speciality to do various style & format cleanups, including converting various units. I got the impression that he has decided upon eradicating acres and hectares from Wikipedia and replacing them with square kilometers. Since hectares and acres are the only units that (to the best of my knowledge) are ever used in the wine world, I asked him to stop doing this for wine-related articles. But it seems that what units is relevant to wine articles is of little interest to this fellow. As an example, this edit to Alsace wine was my first encounter with this editor. He's also behind the "useful" edit which gave introduced the fact that Château Cantemerle is 0.91 km2. I asked him here not to do such edits. (Btw, this guy has a very strange way of handling his talk page - he archived my question on a page which you can't find from his own talk page and then replied on my talk page!) The way I read his reply he apparently thinks his opinions weighs heavier than reliable sources, and there doesn't seem to be much need to understand the subject of the article you're editing en masse. Sigh! Is that really the way these tools were meant to be used? If anyone else would like to drop this user a line I'd be more than grateful. I just started to wonder why I bother to check up sources for many of the edits I perform, since this obviously isn't professional literature... Tomas e (talk) 22:15, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Yikes! I don't think I've even seen a reliable source refer to vineyard areas in square kilometers. It is always a ha/acre. Looking at his contributions, that is a lot of edits to revert. AgneCheese/Wine 02:31, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I can see the point in "metric-fying" Wikipedia - but ha is a metric standard. Applying square km or miles for that matter seems way off the mark. That's something you do with countries, not single farms/wineriet et. al.--Nwinther (talk) 12:55, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
I tried an approach that went ignored. 3-4 edits per minute suggests that the ABW Rules of use aren't exactly followed prudently. I think augmenting a figure with km² is fine, but not at the cost of removing hectare figures that reflect the (non-U.S./commonwealth) RS. It might be worthwhile to lodge an ABW complaint so that the bot-like mass-edits can be stopped. MURGH disc. 13:51, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I think a large part of his confusion is that he is assuming ha/acre are specialist terms and seems to fail to understand that they aren't. They are the most common and ordinary terms used in everyday usage for any discussion relating to vineyards and wine regions--whether or not you're dealing with someone who knows nothing about wine or a wine specialist. It is just the overwhelmingly dominant and consistent usage across the board, regardless of medium or audience. To not use those terms is a great disservice to the reader since they will lack the context in understanding the information presented in the Wikipedia article with what they are going to encounter in every other information source that they are ever going to encounter involving wine. If the Alsace wine article was modified to say only that "In 2006, vines were grown on 153 sq km" and then in every reading about the qualifications to be an Alsace Grand Cru AOC vineyard they have to produce "65 hectoliter per hectare or less."--how in the world are they going to be able to easily understand that context? What happens when they go to read about a particular wine estate and learn that the estate has 26 hectare]planted-are we going to expect our readers to immediately be able to convert that into sq km to understand how large this estate is in Alsace? It makes absolutely no sense to divert from using the standard, consistent and common usage to something that is completely foreign. I noted the example of how absurd it would be to convert all the figures in the Economy of the United States article from the US Dollar to Euros under the pretense that the USD is a "specialist measurement". I think that situation is very similar to what we have here. AgneCheese/Wine 14:20, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Toscana (wine)

I just saw this article for the first time and it is in pretty good shape (I have not read it all though, just looked it over). Should we try to get this to GA? It has all the information there, we just need a good copyedit, fix the intro, some more info and sources. We should at least get it to B. --Charleenmerced Talk 07:31, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Well thanks for the nice words. :) I agree about the copy editing (a constant need for any article I touch :p) and there is always room for expansion. One thing I will point out is that there is not a need for more sources, at least in its current pre-expansion state, because every claim right now in the article is sourced to one of the 23 footnotes. AgneCheese/Wine 07:39, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Me and sources! Well, I bet you have all notice my obsession with sourcing every other sentence. There is a reason behind it! I am in law school (and before that, I was a psych major) so all the papers had to be extremely well reference in order to support every single thing. A habit formed! --Charleenmerced Talk 08:09, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
LOL! The law school bit explains a lot. :p But of all the obsessions to have, being concern about sourcing is probably the best. :) AgneCheese/Wine 08:32, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Heh - that's amateur stuff, even not counting my thesis I've done 600+ refs IRL. ;-/ But I'd agree, reffing each subclause is the way to go if you can, as mentioned above it helps clarify what is and isn't reffed after other editors have inserted other stuff into your beautiful prose. :-)) Going back on topic, I'm still not sure about this article. Toscana fails WP:ENGLISH for one thing. FlagSteward (talk) 18:46, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
  • The most I have done is about 300 sources...600 is unimaginable to me! I cannot imagine your sources space when you were writing that! Re Tuscana wine...what do you suggest? Tuscany wine region? Tuscany (wine), wine of Tuscany? Tuscanian wine? --Charleenmerced Talk 15:05, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
  • I'm not here.... :-) Stuff I was doing, anything more than about 5 years old was too out of date to be useful, so you didn't really use books, it was all individual journal papers. Tuscanian wine? Ug. ;-/ By analogy with other articles, we usually use adjectives for country articles and nouns as adjectives for region articles - Italian wine but Bordeaux wine. However there are exceptions (New Zealand wine) and I suspect that this is possibly a case where instead of Tuscany wine, Tuscan wine would be more natural, thanks to the high prominence of "Tuscan" as a word in general culture and the specific wine reference to the Super Tuscan wines. There should be redirects either way, but Tuscan wine just feels better. FlagSteward (talk) 15:15, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
When I created the article, I was just working from the red link. I have no problem with any of the proposed titles. And who is this strange man posting that should be on his holiday? :p AgneCheese/Wine 15:19, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

Something to think about

I saw an interesting post on the Village Pump-Neglected subject area needed for Wikipedia:Academy content drive by novice Wikipedians-about a potential content drive to get a group of students from Columbia University to learn about Wikipedia and create articles for an area where coverage is lacking. I went ahead and boldly nominated the subject of Wine and offered the Project's assistance. Hope you all don't mind. :) I do think this can be a great opportunity to expand some stubs as well as getting some interesting articles created (Like Wine in cooking, History of French wine, Colonial British wine trade, etc) while we continue to focus on getting our Top importance articles up to snuff. But even if the NY Wikipedians decide not to use wine, we may still want to create some of the proposed sub pages for potential benefits for future Wine Project members--like...

So what do you guys think? AgneCheese/Wine 08:34, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Also, folks may want to keep an out for Category:Wine articles needing photos and adjust the banner accordingly. There seems to be some support on to the Project Survey question about posting a bounty on the Wikipedia:Reward board for needed images. Of course the question is what to offer. :p I'm talking with the Mrs. about diverting some personal funds for really important things like wine region maps (Though she has a hard time understanding while I think this Wikipedia-thing is important :p) I know for some regions in the US, a wine.com gift certificate is transferable, which maybe fun. Any ideas for European, Aussie etc users? Of course, as a standby is PayPal. AgneCheese/Wine 10:20, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Ooooh. Just found this nice Category:Wikipedia requested maps that is affiliated with Wikipedia:WikiProject Maps. Maybe there is a cheaper alternative after all. :p AgneCheese/Wine 10:34, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
Yeah, they do have the tit for tat options (and anyone so incline should feel free to make any offers they like) but in looking at the board's activity (which, admittedly, is pretty slim which does diminish its usefulness) it looks like those tit for tat offers have a very low fulfillment rate. AgneCheese/Wine 15:23, 23 February 2008 (UTC)
  • Updates: Its been several days since I posted a personal invitation to assist with the NY projects on the talk page of the user who was initially requesting help. It has been pretty much ignored while the editor has been active and able to reply. I suppose we can take that rather rude response as a lack of interest. So that is that. AgneCheese/Wine 16:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

An interesting chart from the latest Signpost

What jumps out to you about the listing of FAs by types? While I think our current strategy of focusing on getting our Tops/Highs to B/GAs is ideal, I did find this current listing and attached article to be very interesting. AgneCheese/Wine 16:16, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Wow, interesting stats. Thanks for the link, I had never peeked into that vein of WPsociety. So, any other strategies to consider? Call a GAdoctor? :P MURGH disc. 16:35, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Well we do have a GA-liaison and Flag will probably get Zin nominated once he gets back. One other thing I found interesting is that of the 11 Food & Drink FAs, the closest to article to the wine world would be Absinthe. Maybe Cheese :p AgneCheese/Wine 16:52, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
What about Cabernet Sauvignon? It has become a great read (congratulations on that) and several of the articles in the FA list I looked at aren't in that league.. Absinthe and Cheese are pretty good ;^) MURGH disc. 17:20, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the nice words. :) While I am proud of Cabernet Sauvignon, I can also easily pick out it faults. Besides more polishing and copyeditting, I terribly shortchanged the Australian wine region part as well as some of the countries in the "Other Old/New World Producers" and "Other US producer" sections. I can also see the shortness of the "Popularity & Criticism section" as well as "Health implications" section coming up in FACs. I suppose that once all the Tops/Highs are to a point where we can be confident in their ability to be a good resource to our readers, then we can shift focus to chasing those little gold stars. :) AgneCheese/Wine 17:25, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
OK, I suppose this being a fairly mini-population project, things need be done patiently. I agree it is more satisfying to have a broad level of a certain substance, and top-priority-top just might lie with Wine.. But some day we'll be up there. MURGH disc. 17:43, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
My most optimistic outlook has us shifting our priority to to FAs and more GAs by the end of this year. We'll see. :) AgneCheese/Wine 17:47, 27 February 2008 (UTC)
Talking about the Cab article, while Agne thinks there could be some FA issues, it should reasonably achieve GA status, but right now it is actually B. I can't see that it has been nominated for GA so far. Is the reason modesty or that Agne's substantial increase of the article happened too recently for the article to be considered as stable??? Tomas e (talk) 16:53, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
My comments above were more in relation to FA. I would think that it should pass GA without much problem. (But then, I thought the same thing about Chardonnay which Van Tucky noted it "needs a lot of work" before it would pass GA). While I have no problem with any editor nominating these articles and going through the GA process with them, I probably won't be much involved till I'm done working on the Tops/Highs up to B class. AgneCheese/Wine 18:06, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Almost a 100 DYKs for the project!!!

Unless my count is off, I think we are currently at 98 wine related DYKs. What is very awesome about that list is that there have been at least 10 different wine project members contributing to the various articles that have been featured (and a couple like the Great French Wine Blight and Thaddeus Hait Farm coming from outside the project). While we might be lagging in the FA front, having these DYKs help tremendously in getting "front page" exposure for Wikipedia's wine content. Great work everybody! :) AgneCheese/Wine 00:59, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

That is cool. Thank you for all the dilligent shepherding of articles into the system. :^) MURGH disc. 01:21, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

To B or not to B

I thought this was worth breaking out of the #Anomalous article sizes thread above. In particular Agne's comment :

Looking at Assessment standard for B articles (and the sample Jammu and Kashmir), I've always gotten the impression that B's are near GA without the polishing. Like French wine is a good size article but right now it wine region section is essentially a list when it should include a summary paragraph. (Same with American wine). As for the grape articles, like Cabernet Sauvignon and Viognier, ideally we would to get them up to Zinfandel and Chardonnay level before we start think B.

My take is a bit different, and to be honest I think that example is not the most helpful they could have chosen - Kashmir is a massive subject, the closest in US terms might be an article on Virginia, only with more history and wars. The Kashmir example weighs in at just 35kb, Virginia is up around 100kb, which gives you some idea of how deficient the Kashmir article could be considered to be..... Good old WP:CSB :-) So I'm not sure how helpful that example is, I find it more useful to look at wine examples. We can agree that GA articles are better than B articles, so you might want to look at the state Carménère and Tempranillo when they were approved as GAs in April 2007, they were 13-16kb and had 13-17 separate sources, with around 30 refs in total. And that's for GA on grapes that have a bit more history than many, so the B standard must be some way short of that. I think it's misleading (and a bit depressing!) to base the standard off anomalous articles such as Zinfandel which has an unusual amount of history and genetics to write about. "Below the GA standard represented by Tempranillo and Carménère" is more realistic for the typical grape article than trying to judge it off a 58kb article such as Chardonnay. (as an aside Agne, I think it is positively unencyclopaedic to delete the popular culture section on Chardonnay, certainly from a British perspective) I must admit though, I think either Tempranillo was a bit lucky, or the GA standard is lower than I thought. ;-/ Going back to the assessment instructions is also useful IMO. For B :

Has several of the elements described in "start",[ie an image, wikified subheadings, a complete subsection, multiple references] usually a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article. Nonetheless, it has some gaps or missing elements or references, needs editing for language usage or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, Neutral Point Of View (NPOV) or No Original Research (NOR)....Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work....Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors...Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007) has a lot of helpful material but needs more prose content and references.

Now I thought "a majority of" counted as a weasel phrase, :-) but technically you only need 51% of the "material needed for a comprehensive article" to be in the majority, even if realistically you'd be looking at 60-70%. And of course you need to define "a comprehensive article". I guess we have one ready comparison in the Oxford Companion to Wine, obviously we are not forced to be concise by the need to pay for dead trees to print on, but perhaps it might be helpful if we regarded the average Jancis entry as somewhere in the GA to A region and benchmark off that? I still feel that in general that our grape entries need a bit more ampelography, but I'd suggest that aside from that articles such as Zin are more like an A than a B.

I guess that's all a long-winded way of saying just to cut the B's some slack, the standard isn't quite as high as you might think. :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by FlagSteward (talk • contribs) 16:50, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

  • Well the long and short end of my view is that comprehensiveness is far more important of a consideration than article size (in terms of kilobytes). To some degree, kb size is almost irrelevant to the discussion. For some topics, there is simply less ground to cover and therefore easier for an subject like Carmenere to be a B class article at a smaller kilobyte size than Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot would be to similarly considered. From my impression of the assessment of the B assessment ratings, a B class article should be a fully functioning article that once the reader is done with, they are left with a solid understanding of the subject-not a piecemeal collection of facts and figures which is what the majority of start articles are currently. If there is one that you feel, right now, is a B, by all means post it here with your assessment and maybe a discussion on the matter will bring more understanding of where both sides are coming from.
  • As for Chardonnay, the "in pop culture section" wasn't deleted. It was merged into the "Popularity and backlash" section. The only thing that was deleted was unreferenced trivia or off topic matters. AgneCheese/Wine 17:56, 17 February 2008 (UTC)
Also going back to Chardonnay for a moment, to highlight my personal opinion on a B. At one point, Chardonnay was considered a B at this stage. I think comparing it to where it stands now makes it more clear the difference between a B and a start. Even if you diminish some of the comprehensiveness of today's article and just look at the section headers and the "areas" covered-important wine regions, winemaking and viticultural techniques, etc, you can see what was clearly missing from the previous "B version" of the article. For me, personally, the topic of B-standards is important because once an article hits a B, it gets very little editorial activity till someone decides to get it ready for GA. If it is a sub-standard B then it becomes even more daunting (and discouraging) of a task to ready it for GA. In the meantime we are left with an article that is not doing our readers the type of service it should. (Again, example is Chardonnay-B before and Chardonnay-B today). At least with the article at start, someone is more motivated to give it a real go and get the article up to something, as a project, we should feel proud to call a B and put out there for folks to read. AgneCheese/Wine 18:07, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh absolutely it's about comprehensiveness rather than absolute size, I'm sorry if I left the impression otherwise, that's why I was emphasising that B-criterion of "majority of material needed for a comprehensive article". I only mentioned the size thing because it's just not very easy to judge "comprehensiveness" for the "average" article against a potentially massive article like Chardonnay or Zin. Even the "perfect", comprehensive article for Tempranillo will be a lot bigger than "perfection" for the vast majority of grapes, so all I'm saying is that the independently-verified Tempranillo GA is a better benchmark than Chardonnay. Which personally I think must be pretty darn close to an A ("A fairly complete treatment of the subject....May miss a few relevant points") rather than a minimum-standard-B - great work, I'd not looked at it recently (and the pop culture thing I noticed ages ago, so it may have been between edits). Must be worth a shot at FA?
I guess the difference is I'm arguing that "majority of material" covers (say) 60-90% of "perfection" (as measured by FA), with Starts covering say 20-60% and A 90-99%; I sense you're working on Starts covering say 20%-80%, B is 80-95% and A is 95-99% - we're debating those 60-to-80%-of-a-FA cases. I guess we could just compromise at 70%? :-))

a B class article should be a fully functioning article that once the reader is done with, they are left with a solid understanding of the subject

I feel you're slighly over interpreting here. All the B criteria say is that "Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work. To my mind "a casual reader feeling that they generally understood the topic" is a lower standard of proof than "any" reader having a "solid understanding of the subject". That's closer to the GA requirement of "A good treatment of the subject. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information. Adequate for most purposes, but other encyclopedias could do a better job." Again the GA criterion seems to suggest that a GA is not as good as Jancis.

For me, personally, the topic of B-standards is important because once an article hits a B, it gets very little editorial activity till someone decides to get it ready for GA. If it is a sub-standard B then it becomes even more daunting (and discouraging) of a task to ready it for GA. In the meantime we are left with an article that is not doing our readers the type of service it should.

Whereas I see things differently. Let's just take the Tops for a moment. If we've got an article up to the standard where it is "Useful to many, but not all, readers." and there are Top articles that are only "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." - then too right the Project would benefit more from additional work going on the article providing "a moderate amount of information" than on the article that is already "Useful to many, but not all, readers." OK, an individual editor may want to take it further, particularly once they are "into" a subject, but that's a bit different - personally my style is more of a "get to 'useful' and then move on to the next", Zin was a bit of an aberration. :-) Talking of which, did Amatulic do whatever we were waiting for him/her to do on that? Or should I just get on with GA? I'm not sure that Zin really proves your point though.... Anyway, you could say that any non-FA article is "not doing our readers the type of service it should", I'd just say that the Top Starts are more deserving of our efforts, that's all. FlagSteward (talk) 23:24, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Though here is the big thing. What benefit is it to anyone, to have a lower or sub standard B article? Does it really benefit the project or more importantly the reader to have the Zinfandel at its "early B" state before your rewrite when I reassessed it to start or the Zin article that we have today thanks to your tremendous rewrite? The same with my Chardonnay example before. It benefits no one seeing our number of "B" class articles (Top importance or otherwise) go up if they are truly not good, quality articles; if they are truly starts rather than something we would want to polish up to GA. As for Zin, I do think we gave plenty of time and good faith to his objections. I would remove the tag and go ahead with the nom. AgneCheese/Wine 23:32, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

What benefit is it to anyone, to have a lower or sub standard B article? Does it really benefit the project or more importantly the reader to have the Zinfandel at its "early B" state
Well as far as the reader is concerned, they don't care what we call it... But if you're asking me who benefits from work stopping on say the Zin article when it gets to the "Useful to many, but not all, readers" stage - then I would reply it's the readers of "a moderate amount of information" about Sangiovese or Vitis vinifera, who get to see something done on getting their article made better. Like I say, I think this is partly about editing style, some people like to polish away at an article, I enjoy flitting from subject to subject. And as I say, in one sense it doesn't matter a fig what we as a Project assess an article at, it is just a tool to help us decide priorities. At the moment, our overwhelming priority as a Project must be those 13 Top Starts - all of them. FlagSteward (talk) 00:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
You're right. Those Top starts should be a priority. I agree, what we call it doesn't really matter but what we present to the readers, does matter. I'm not sure of the far reaching goals of other project members, but I would like to see Wikipedia become widely recognize as go-to online resource--not because of the favorable google ranking but because of the quality of our articles. I would love to someday see that recognized by Wine Spectator, Decanter, etc. Whether conscious or not, there is an impression that a "B-class" article is pretty complete and only needs a little polishing and shine. If all that is missing is a few references, some structure and prose format, and some better context than that is not much of a problem. But if major sections and details are missing or if references are dreadfully scarce, then that is not really an article we should feel proud of presenting to the readers as a "nearly done" article. It is a start and having it correctly labeled gives more motivation to improve that article to a true B. AgneCheese/Wine 02:06, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have more discussion on the talk pages?

After seeing my snuffu with originally rating Château d'Yquem & Château Lafite Rothschild as B, I went through and looks at our B class articles. Some were pretty obvious in lacking in MAJOR areas (beyond just lack of referencing which, overall, is our most common problem). I was WP:BOLD in reassessing those as start. In others it was more a borderline case, not so cut & dry, and I would like to encourage more discussion on the talk page. More opinions are certainly valuable and I think overall a better understanding of everyone's view will come out if we work on a particular example. AgneCheese/Wine 00:40, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh man, this is a bad time for me to get into this - I'm going away in a few days and had kinda promised my limited Wikitime before then to the Italy project..... Well I guess the first debate is why Chardonnay should not be an A. :-) Since I've not really time to look round in detail, here's a few candidates thrown out by my bot from either side of the line :
I've not looked at most of those yet (although I know the Parker article is a bit of a NPOV mess and is definitely a Start unless someone's really fixed it recently :-)) - I'll emphasise this is purely done by bot, but at least it throws up a variety of articles. Be interesting to talk about them as a whole here, rather than go off to individual talk pages and adjusting things before a consensus has emerged. FlagSteward (talk) 01:24, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
A bot? That's interesting. Didn't know you were the programing type. :p Admittedly I'm am a bit ambivalent about the "A" class. It seems kind of a useless stop gap between GA & FA and I really not sure what we would want to use it for. (A failed FAC candidate, perhaps?) Those are interest candidates. I've shared my assessment thoughts on some and will try to get to the others so we can hopefully start a dialog. I can see the benefit of getting a rough consensus but it is hard to pigeon or sterotype an article since every subject has some unique aspect. What would be comprehensive for a Champagne in popular culture article would be far different than Limoux wine, Pinotage or Twisted Oak Winery. While I would think its best to avoid adding bureaucracy, I do think conversation on the merits of a particular article is healthy on the talk page if there are disagreements about assessment levels. AgneCheese/Wine 01:57, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
I think that's mebbe part of the problem, you view the top of the "quantity" scale as B, when in fact articles that have 90+% of the facts should be assessed as A. Remember, for an A you "only" need "a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic... A fairly complete treatment of the subject....May miss a few relevant points". I think Zin and Chardonnay are good candidates for A - articles that have had a lot of work done on them which has taken them past the fact content for a GA, without stopping to be assessed for GA. There may well be more, it's not such a useless category, although I admit it does sit a bit awkwardly between the two 'quality' classifications. Thanks for the stats URL - that could be the target of another bot in time.... I definitely think that's a good way of setting priorities, giving our audience what the biggest number want to know about. You have to combine that with the 80/20 rule of course, that beyond GA there's a lot of work for diminishing returns, but it's worth thinking about for any future WID priorities. FlagSteward (talk) 18:33, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Actually, FA is my view as the top of the quality scale. :) What is really a larger influence of my view is a more literal interpretation of start class. I view as a "start" an article that is FAR away from GA status (and obviously farther from FA). If it is missing significant sections and almost elementary details, then it is certainly a starting point on the subject but it is below the type of baseline knowledge that would leave a reader competently informed on the subject. More serious, detailed and "expertly" information would bring the article higher to FA status. I would also probably add the consideration that an article devoid of references or inline citations as probably a being a start as well. Without knowing which claims are sourced by which (if any) source, you are essentially starting at square one--almost needing to rewrite the article from scratch with reliable sources. I suppose to you could say Zin & Chardonnay are "A class" (Though according to the GA assessment below, Chardonnay needs alot of work) but I think there are valid reasons why articles like sparkling wine, Cabernet Sauvignon and South African wine are currently starts and not B's. They are simple missing too much important stuff to be anything more than a starting point. To be true "B" they need to go a little beyond a starting point. AgneCheese/Wine 18:45, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Well yes, there's this tension between GA and FA as primarily quality measures, and Stub, Start, B, A as primarily quantity measures, although both have elements of the other. The assessment instructions explicitly say that having completed the Good article designation process is not a requirement for A-Class, so Chardonnay could have the quantity of facts needed for A whilst still being insufficient quality for GA.
I view as a "start" an article that is FAR away from GA status...If it is missing significant sections and almost elementary details, then it is certainly a starting point on the subject but it is below the type of baseline knowledge that would leave a reader competently informed on the subject
Playing devil's advocate, you're inventing your own assessment here, based on what you think the categories "ought" to mean, rather than looking at what the instructions say. ;-/ Even a B has "usually a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article. Nonetheless, it has some gaps or missing elements or references...Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic....Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps". Thus a B doesn't necessarily even have to have "a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article", and still has gaps. A Start only has to have " meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element....Useful to some, provides a moderate amount of information, but many readers will need to find additional sources of information....most material for a complete article needs to be added." Without getting into details on the articles you mention - I'm literally about to go on holiday ;-/ - I've certainly got a lot hotter on expecting (at least some) inline refs for B's. Even if B's do only have to be "Useful to many, but not all, readers". FlagSteward (talk) 19:12, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
No, not making anything up but rather I do think I am taking a more literal interpretation--especially in regards to start articles being starting points. I don't think the phrase some gaps is equivalent to major gaps in content which is a distinguishing trademark of start class articles. For example South African wine is a clear start because it is missing significant content-the wine region section is essentially just a list and there is an absence of discussion on climate, geography, viticulture & winemaking, etc. It is far from having "usually a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article." And it is similar far from being "Useful to many, but not all, readers". It is currently serving as a starting point for the topic providing a "meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas" but, like other start articles, "many readers will need to find additional sources of information." in order to achieve B-class level where "A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic". But don't fret, this discussion will still be available when you return. Enjoy your holiday. :) AgneCheese/Wine 19:17, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
"I do think I am taking a more literal interpretation" - well I think that's kinda the crux of what I'm saying, just asking you to look more at what the instructions actually say rather than imposing your own interpretation of what the "label" (Stub, Start, B, A) "should" mean. That's all they are, just labels. FWIW, I thought South Africa was at best a weak B at the time, I just felt I'd put a lot of work into that regions list, which nowadays I would put into a separate List article like the AOC one, and once that's gone what's left is clearly a Start. So no argument there :-) - it was more some of the grape ones I thought you were being a bit harsh on. Anyway, no matter. FlagSteward (talk) 12:35, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Flag is right

Our Top importance article should be more of a priority than what they currently seem to be. I'll raise my hand and note that I will get easily distracted with things like stub killing and hunting for DYKs. But these top importance articles are the ones that get the highest page views and are most likely the introduction for a lot of folks to the quality and resourcefulness of Wikipedia's wine articles. Having those article in great shape will go along way towards making Wikipedia be the kind of online tool that I'm sure we would all like to see. To one extent, this does reinforce my belief that we should be diligent in cases like our B-class standards particularly for these important articles but I feel compelled to put my money where my mouth is. I will heed Flag's plea and recommit to getting these Top importance article up to B class. Outside life permitting, my optimistic goal will be to work on one a week. I like grape and wine region articles so those will probably be the ones I focus on the most (and of course any help will always be appreciated). I think I'll start with Cabernet Sauvignon. I promise to try not to get too distracted with new articles, stubs & DYKs. :P AgneCheese/Wine 08:49, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Hehheh, that sounds suspiciously like a weekly WID. :-))) Good point about the page views, I suppose really we should let our readers tell us what is important, and prioritise by page views, so that a given amount of effort has the most benefit. That page view tool sounded interesting, I never looked into it - what's the link again? Sounds like the ideal way to prioritise, and I would guess that there's some "surprises" in there in terms of say Mid articles or even High articles that are a lot more popular than we might think they "ought to be". Oh, and good work on the Cantemerle article people, would be nice to get a chateau GA. I've added the infobox, and done a few additions/fixes to the French winery infobox template - the instructions had been left behind by what was actually in the template. FlagSteward (talk) 13:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)
Possibly :) Though hopefully less bureaucratic. The link for the tool is here. AgneCheese/Wine 17:37, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Gary Vaynerchuk

Hey guys! Just to let you know that I've been chatting with Gary Vaynerchuk of the WLTV vblog. He is certainly a prominent figure in the wine world (at least from an internet focus) with his audience overlaping quite a bit with the type of wine drinker that would use Wikipedia as a online wine resource. In fact, as mentioned in our last newsletter, Gary points to Wikipedia as one of the "best online resources" for wine. Plus, his very active WLTV forums includes many instances of "Vayniacs" turning to Wikipedia for wine info. He has graciously agreed to be the topic of an upcoming "Wiki Winos" segment. So stay tune for that. One item that came up in the conversation was the appropriateness of including some WLTV video links in Wikipedia articles--not linking for the sake of linking but using any links that can offer some value to the article. I talked to him a little about the WP:EL policy and that Wikipedia is not a wine guide so the episodes that are almost entirely just "wine reviews" wouldn't be appropriate but episodes that do go into some large detail about the wine grape/style/region would be viable as a potential link. An example of an episode that I, personally, would consider appropriate is this episode on Sherry--namely because I think it compliments the article's description of the different styles of Sherries and goes into some detail about the characteristics of those different styles. But not every episode of WLTV is like this and I think it probably would be best to take the links on a case by case basis with a discussion on the talk page about the links. What do you guys think? AgneCheese/Wine 03:41, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

From what I've seen of him, I don't know if I'd characterise him as "Mr.RS", but there's no harm in case by case discussions of his more educational content. I should be careful with comparisons but linking Croc Hunter snippets to WP zoology articles wouldn't be appropriate too often, but I'm sure there are exceptions. Something cool may well come out of it, and I'll be looking forward to his Wino-segment. I thought the last one with EvanProdromou was very interesting BTW, good job hunting down subjects! MURGH disc. 00:12, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
Well part of his charm and success is that he approaches wine from the view of the regular drinker--not the wine snobs or even wine geeks like a few us who sleep with our OCW :p Rarely will a day go by when I don't have at least one customer come in or call about a wine that is featured on his show. To some extent, it is kinda exciting especially when he talks about new varietals and styles like Petit Verdot, Viognier, Albarino and Mourvedre---the type of wine that these customers would never even THINK about trying unless it had a 90+ score from Parker or Spectator. Similarly, these are the same people that probably would never think about looking up these varietals and reading more about them or Sherry or other regions before they were introduced to them by his show. Coming back to the links, as I mention before, not every episode is like the Sherry one. His Thanksgiving Zinfandel episode is more typical. He talks a little about the grape but not enough that I would think it merits inclusion in the Zinfandel article. While I don't think he is going to "mess with success" and change the format of his show away from reviews to more education/encyclopedic, if he does go that route in any future episodes I do think it would be worthwhile to evaluate the links on a case by case basis. As I mention with the Sherry link, there is a bit of complementary content in that episode that I think fulfills some of the expectations and recommendations of WP:EL. AgneCheese/Wine 00:32, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Categories

Feel free to add and fiddle with that list at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wine/Bot_Category_List as required, I've roughly sorted it but may well have missed things - the MW's almost got buried for instance. Looking at it you can see that we could do with standardising our category names, particularly for wineries - the standard Wiki format is "Something of Somewhere", but I think it's certainly OK to break that convention where WP:ENGLISH requires something more natural such as "German wine" or "New Zealand wine". The Yadkin Valley cat in particular stands out. I've removed the four "Wine in Piedmont" format Italian regional cats, as they just seemed to get in the way of the hierarchy between Italian wines and eg Wines of Piedmont. I also have a feeling that "Wine Grapes of..." should become "Grape varieties of ..." but don't have strong views either way, it just needs synchronising. FlagSteward (talk) 12:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Meant to mention, if you're moving Categories around, you need to use {{categoryredirect|xxxxxx}} - see Category:Wine in Piedmont for an example. Apparently a bot will come and sweep up any articles that fall in such categories. Oh, and you can see the full category hierarchy here, although it seems reluctant to expand it all at once. FlagSteward (talk) 13:12, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Automatic banners, assessments

I feel it be useful to get SatyrBot working for the Project? It can do a couple of things :

  • generate an automated todo list by scanning Project pages for wikify, cleanup, notenglish etc templates.
  • set class=Stub on the Talk page of any Unassessed article with a Stub template on the main page
  • Create a list of, or add the Project banner to any articles that aren't yet in the Project but are in categories of our choice (typically the appropriate stub categories, but can be others)

Seems to me that these would all be useful things to do. I've made a list of categories over at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wine/Bot_Category_List (with a handy shortcut of WP:WINECATS to bring it up when you're writing articles). The idea is that any article in those cats would get tagged with the Project banner, so we need to be quite "conservative" about what goes in the list. I've removed the following from the list :

as I feel that stuff like sangria and Martini are best covered by the Mixed Drinks Project, despite their wine base - but are there any more that should be removed? Satyrbot can be a bit controversial, but the problems seem to arise when either the cats don't match the Project goals or the Project isn't active enough to keep an eye on the results. Neither apply in this case. I'll ask him to do a trial run if that's possible, otherwise if there's no objections within a week I'll set it up "permanently".FlagSteward (talk) 12:57, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

On reflection, I thought it safer to remove :
as they are potentially outside the Project - and will probably get caught by the wine-grape-stub category in any case. But might be worth a quick check to see what's what. FlagSteward (talk) 15:08, 8 March 2008 (UTC)
As a test run, I let SatyrBot run last night on the "to do list" function. This function runs directly on articles that have the template, so it's not yet using the category list above. For results, it created Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/To do list short‎ as well as a set of pages that I've put together in Wikipedia:WikiProject Wine/To do list full. The short list is designed to be transcluded into to the project's page or any user that wants it, as it gets updated with a random set of the "to do" items. The "deletion" items are the full set every time (not a random subset). Let me know how it works for you and if there's anything I should change. It's currently set to run every Sunday morning, but I can change that to daily if you want, or a couple times a week, or whatever. Thanks! -- SatyrTN (talk / contribs) 15:30, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
Great, cheers, that looks the ticket. Looks like we've got some work to do. :-))) I was going to say running once a week would be fine - except for those pesky 5-day deletion periods. So it really needs to be twice a week to catch the deletions - how about Monday and Thursday? I've removed the delete on Australian and New Zealand Wine Industry Journal as it's obviously notable, but it still needs referencing properly. FlagSteward (talk) 16:07, 9 March 2008 (UTC)
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