Wikipedia talk:Vital articles

General Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4 Level 5

Level 5 Subpages

People History Geography Arts and everyday life Religion, philosophy, mythology and culture Society Science and mathematics Technology

Creative and cultural figures Thinkers and researchers Authorities and leadership figures

Introduction

The purpose of this talk page is for discussions on over-arching matters regarding vital articles, including making proposals or asking questions about procedures, policies, quotas, or other broad changes to any or all of the five levels. This page is not for proposing whether an article should be added or removed from any vital article lists, and such proposals should be posted on the following pages:

• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 1 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/1
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 2 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/2
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 3 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/3
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 4 vital article, see Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/4
• For proposals regarding a specific individual Level 5 vital article, see the relevant sub-pages of Wikipedia talk:Vital articles/Level/5

Proposal: Remove WP:VANOSKIP

I don't know how to submit a general proposal for voting, so I'll just try to do it here? I think this rule is an appendix of an antiquated era of the VA project where mass expansion was occurring and many, many articles were being added at a time. We are at quota on all levels now, though, and I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone speak of this rule positively. We aren't really in a "Wild West" of VA anymore and if someone proposes something as drastic as articles skipping levels, editors can use discretion to determine whether or not it's a good idea. No need to shackle ourselves with this mostly arbitrary rule.

Support

1. As nom. Dess Dedalus (talk) 05:36, 29 January 2026 (UTC)
2. Support, strongly. We have a lot of articles which easy maybe candidate for the level 4 or 3 despite not being on the level 5 yet. For example Flag of Europe  or Human impact on the environment ◎ 5, Pandemic ◎ 4, Amphitheatre ◎ 5. Covid years ago was added to the level 4 as wp:snow without even bothering about the level 5. Also, logically/mathematically this rule makes as much sense as hypothetical rule that article can not be demoted from.the level 3 to.the level 5 if someone will.not make nomination to demote from the level.3 to the level.4 first. Of course someone can make nomination to demote Walking ◎ 4 from the level.3 to the level 5, and explain thst it is not anymore important than Sitting  or Skidmarks  per user:Maunus/Vitality . Dawid2009 (talk) 20:35, 30 January 2026 (UTC)
3. Strong support. This rule makes it so simple proposals for reorganization at the upper levels must filter through lower levels, which takes months and is fairly disruptive. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:47, 31 January 2026 (UTC)
4. Strong support per above. KhaiDo (talk) 07:33, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
5. Support per above. ChaoticV (converse, contribs) 21:21, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

Oppose

Space is limited for a reason. If something is in the top 1,000 or 10,000 topics, it must be in the top 50,000 topics as well. I don't like the idea of a few people making drastic changes in the list without getting approval at each level first, such as saying people are less important than any musical concepts, so we should swap Johann Sebastian Bach ◎ 3, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ◎ 3, and Ludwig van Beethoven ◎ 3 with Key signature ◎ 5, Time signature ◎ 5 and Tempo ◎ 5 in a single step. The 1,000 and 10,000 article lists are meant to be "complete" in themselves (I don't see the point in the 10 and 100 lists). Melozone crissalis (talk) 21:21, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

The 10 and 100 lists are really just more for intellectual play than anything. "If you had to list the 10 most important things, how would you do it?" is a car-ride level activity. Level 3 is really where the list becomes actually useful as a tool to direct improvements towards the encyclopedia, but at this point there is great debate and disagreement about what to include vs what not to include based off of everyone's extremely different conceptions of what "vital" means. Level 4 is the most useful, imo, as it's the refined central "core" of a small variety of the most important articles in every field, but not bloated with random nonsense we still have to remove like Level 5 is. Maybe Level 5 will someday be as useful. Dess Dedalus (talk) 21:38, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

1. Oppose. While continually revisiting the lists is very important, we need to be careful that the community here is small and that everything needs to get properly considered. NOSKIP is very helpful in that regard, and allows a topic fuller discussion and debate as it progresses through the levels. It protects against several issues in WP:NOT like recentism and arbitraty deadlins. Aszx5000 (talk) 10:29, 31 January 2026 (UTC)
2. OpposeIt's good to discuss things multiple time to see more consensus. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:54, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

   At this point, it is just formalized Wikipedia:Status quo stonewalling. It can literally take years at levels 2 and 3, and because of the comings and goings of editors, discussions about reorganization that are approved can then fail when things finally get lined up years later by editors who were not involved in the original discussion, or care to actually read any of it. Honestly, at this point it is a case of Wikipedia:Ignore all rules, regardless of if this passes or not, anyone who wants to skip at this point I'll support, and consider the nomination without this nonsense. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:13, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

   @GeogSage I see your point, but I fear this will increase the volume of discussions at the VA4+. That said, consider my oppose a "weak" one. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 04:22, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

   I think it would have the opposite effect. I spent a large portion of 2025 trying to reorganize some articles in geography at levels 2 and 3. To make changes to level 2, I had to first propose it at level 4, then level 3. I had to make arguments for swaps at those levels in many cases that were unnecessary to the end goal of getting the articles changed at level 2. The proposal for broad change had support, but I had to go through the process of votes at each level, and then it got blocked by editors completely uninvolved with the original discussion without actually addressing the arguments, previous posts, or anything other then gut reaction. I literally wasted a year on this project in large part because of the no skip rule preventing an immediate vote, and then requiring multiple subsequent discussions to either pass/fail. Trying to stay on top of a broad proposal like that for an extended amount of time is not really something we can reliably count on editors doing, so it really locks the list into its current (flawed) form created years ago when things were much easier to change. In geography, we essentially have a placeholder list at level 2 that was created almost as soon as the list existed, with little thought, or discussion, but nothing is so permanent as a temporary solution. I imagine the same is true in other sections. Eliminating a firm rule that requires articles to go through these levels would avoid such unpleasant discussions at levels where the articles are only "passing through." It really feels like editors involved for a long time have continuously placed rules to make changing things more difficult for editors arriving to the party late, in some cases likely because they were not even born at the time the list was first started. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:35, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

   User:GeogSage. I see you have given this much more thought than me, and practice>theory (my thoughts were mainly just musings). I am withdrawing my oppose. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:06, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

   I agree with GeogSage: if we experience frivolous additions (like the one to add 'dancing plague' to V4) it's very easy to just vote them down, but it saves a lot of time for those suggestions which are not frivolous. Dess Dedalus (talk) 05:15, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

3. Too many things are slipping through, IMO. I think we need a process that enables us to take our time.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 05:40, 2 February 2026 (UTC)
4. This will only make maintaining the VA project much more troublesome, and make collaboration between the VA3, VA4, and VA5 lists much more difficult.飞车过大关 (talk) 17:36, 28 April 2026 (UTC)
5. To every supporter of this proposal, you are aware that we have problems in the past of Level 4 articles not appearing in the Level 5 list, right? For example, the Amazons ◎ 4 were not listed at Level 5 until last year. And right now, we have nothing to tell us about this issue beyond one of us stumbling on it. (Note that I still will be opposing this even if we did fix this problem.) Bluevestman (talk) 19:21, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

   @Melozone crissalis, @Piotrus: I think you guys are making a big mistake canceling your votes. Bluevestman (talk) 19:24, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

   Also, what happens when a proposal fails? Let's say someone nominates an article for Level 3, and the end tally is two in favor, four who think it's only level 4 worthy, six who only support it at Level 5, and four who don't think it's vital at all. How does one calculate this? Bluevestman (talk) 22:14, 28 April 2026 (UTC)

6. Per Bluevestman and Aszx. How do we maintain a project if we allow articles to just skip the line? I can see an argument for skipping V5 if absolutely necessary, given how fragmented its discussions are, but not for the lower, much more vital levels. Frank_{(has DemoCracy DeprivaTion)} 09:44, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
7. I think higher barriers for the more vital levels is good; in rare cases WP:IAR can be invoked but I don't see those being common enough to abolish the rule. Plus skipping would require people to figure out where an article would go simultaneously on multiple levels.--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 09:58, 7 May 2026 (UTC)
8. Although I concede that I find the slow pace of WP:VA discussions to be frustrating at times, I believe that the importance of each Wikipedia subject gradually accumulates over time. Namely, for biographical subjects, progressing from WP:VA5 to WP:VA3 could take a lifetime. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 19:41, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Discuss

Stats for Category Size By Level

These are the stats for how many articles each category has in each level, and how much larger it gets at each level. We would expect categories to increase by 10x from 3 to 4 and 5x from 4 to 5 if they were perfectly proportional.

People

• VA3: 103
• VA4: 1943 (18.86x)
• VA5: 14741 (7.59x VA4, 143.12x VA3)

Writers & Journalists:

• VA3: 10
• VA4: 262 (26.2x)
• VA5: 1929 (7.36x VA4, 192.9x VA3)

Visual Artists:

• VA3: 7
• VA4: 122 (17.43x)
• VA5: 722 (5.92x VA3, 103.14x VA4)

Musicians & Composers:

• VA3: 6
• VA4: 152 (25.3x)
• VA5: 1414 (9.3x VA4, 235.67x VA3)

Entertainers, Directors, etc.:

• VA3: 2
• VA4: 135 (67.5x)
• VA5: 2113 (15.65x VA4, 1056.5x VA3)

Philosophers, social scientists, etc.:

• VA3: 16
• VA4: 162 (10.13x)
• VA5: 1366 (8.43x VA4, 85.375x VA3)

Religious Figures:

• VA3: 6
• VA4: 123 (20.5x)
• VA5: 497 (4.04x VA4, 82.83x VA3)

Leaders & Politicians:

• VA3: 25
• VA4: 496 (19.84x)
• VA5: 2389 (4.82x VA4, 95.56x VA3)

Military Personnel, Revolutionaries, and Activists:

• VA3: 2
• VA4: 102 (51x)
• VA5: 875 (8.58x VA4, 437.5x VA3)

Scientists & Inventors:

• VA3: 18
• VA4: 214 (11.89x)
• VA5: 1192 (5.57x VA4, 66.22x VA3)

Mathematicians:

• VA3: 8
• VA4: 44 (5.5x)
• VA5: 184 (4.18x VA4, 23x VA3)

Sports Figures:

• VA3: 0
• VA4: 68
• VA5: 1075 (15.8x)

Miscellaneous:

• VA3: 4
• VA4: 64 (16x)
• VA5: 1017 (15.89x VA4, 254.25x VA3)

History

• VA3: 79
• VA4: 694 (8.78x)
• VA5: 3307 (4.77x VA4, 41.86x VA3)

Geography

• VA3: 107
• VA4: 1204 (11.25x)
• VA5: 5181 (4.3x VA4, 48.42x VA3)

Arts

• VA3: 39
• VA4: 694 (17.8x)
• VA5: 3800 (5.48x VA4, 97.44x VA3)

Philosophy & Religion

• VA3: 56
• VA4: 437 (7.8x)
• VA5: 1483 (3.39x VA4, 26.48x VA3)

Everyday life

• VA3: 60
• VA4: 473 (7.88x)
• VA5: 2458 (5.2x VA4, 40.97x VA3)

Society and social sciences

• VA3: 148
• VA4: 924 (6.243x)
• VA5: 4252 (4.602x VA4, 28.73x VA3)

Biology and health sciences

• VA3: 127
• VA4: 1488 (11.717x)
• VA5: 5655 (3.8x VA4, 44.528x VA3)

Physical sciences

• VA3: 137
• VA4: 1107 (x8.08)
• VA5: 4752 (x4.29 VA4, x34.69 VA3)

Technology

• VA3: 96
• VA4: 726 (x7.56)
• VA5: 3225 (x4.44 VA4, x33.59 VA3)

Mathematics

• VA3: 42
• VA4: 298 (5.67x)
• VA5: 1207 (4.05x VA4, 28.74x VA3)

Obviously, arts and many types of people take up *far* more of the list proportionally at VA5 than VA3, while philosophy, social science, and non-bio STEM take up far less. This isn't meant for any recommendations on my part, I just think it's interesting what's more/less represented at each level. Dess Dedalus (talk) 19:52, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I wrote a code that can tabulate this fairly easily with minor modifications. Did you script it or do it manually? GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:18, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

I did this manually yesterday. Dess Dedalus (talk) 20:31, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Do you know any Python? GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 20:55, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, but I don’t use it much because R is more important for my work. Dess Dedalus (talk) 20:58, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

This is the outcome of Level 5's large number of participants having long placed excessive emphasis on arts (especially pop music) while neglecting social sciences and humanities. 飞车过大关 (talk) 12:41, 27 March 2026 (UTC)

- stats for 2017. Dawid2009 (talk) 22:53, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Can also use a category tree — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 12:44, 8 May 2026 (UTC)

Add short description annotation to the links of the lists

Looking at the list, I think annotation could help ensure a user knows the topic an article refers to. The short descriptions largely exist for distinguishing between pages with similar names, and I think our list has many such pages. An example, level 1 would look like:

* The arts – Creative human and cultural expression
* Earth – Third planet from the Sun
* Human – Species of hominid in the genus Homo
* Human history – Records of Earth's people
* Life – Matter with biological processes
* Mathematics – Field of knowledge
* Philosophy – Study of general and fundamental questions
* Science – Systematic endeavour to gain knowledge
* Society – Connected group of individuals
* Technology – Use of knowledge for practical goals

This would be more useful at levels 4 and 5, where we have a lot of articles that are less easily recognizable.

Support

1. As nom. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

Oppose

1. I think all Wikipedia readers should learn to click hyperlinks.飞车过大关 (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
2. In addition to what 飞车过大关 said, this would make the WP:VA lists, especially at the higher-numbered levels, even wordier and harder to load. Moreover, I find that choosing relevant information to highlight on the VA talk pages is more effective for proposals. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 19:34, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Discuss

GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 01:46, 8 April 2026 (UTC)

I'd oppose this for levels 1 and 2 at least where the short description itself is somewhat controversial due to the breadth of many of these. Sesquilinear (talk) 23:03, 13 June 2026 (UTC)

Bot should not show "former FA" if also current FA

Abraham Lincoln is a level 3 vital article. The bot that generates the level 3 list WP:Vital_articles/Level_3#Leaders_and_politicians shows two icons for the article: current FA (correct) and former FA. I realize that showing "former FA" icon is useful for articles that were demoted to A,B,GA, etc. But there is no reason to show "former FA" if the article regained FA status. Can't take more than 1 or 2 lines of code to fix that issue in the bot, no? Noleander (talk) 20:29, 9 April 2026 (UTC)

Idea

How about we add a new level, which editors can add to other important articles that aren’t or shouldn’t be level 5? This would be within reason, not a random city in Poland. Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 02:45, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Do you mean level 6? I think this has been discussed and rejected previously. And what's wrong with cities in Poland? — Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:36, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Okay, thanks! (When I hit random article, I joke that it’s always one of the smallest towns in Poland, machine generated, no sources save census, and around 50 kb of data in the article; I doubt that anyone would consider that important enough). Wikipedian12512 (Talking is fine | contribs) 11:21, 22 May 2026 (UTC)

Potentially huge bias on the list

To a list like this, where we consider some articles to be vital, it's important to avoid bias. In practice however, I looked the list for level-5 writers and journalists, and one thing I could notice was a significant Western (especially Anglophone/American) bias in the list, which runs afoul of one of the criteria for vital articles (No (Western) Bias). The number of people from the US and Europe outnumber that of other regions (I made a calculation of the number of people from the US, Canada and Europe on the modern prose writers section, and they represent nearly 79% of all writers), and the number of African people on the list is small in comparison to that. An important discussion is whether such phenomenon applies to the entirety of the lists.

Much of this that I notice is anecdotal on my end, but if there is such bias, then the list needs a complete overhaul and we need to be much stricter with what we allow on the list. This may as well remove a large number of articles from the list, replace them with other articles, and even create a large number of articles. We need to discuss the topic, assess potential biases and clean-up the lists where needed. ZeroJaguar (talk) ZeroJaguar (talk) 19:23, 25 May 2026 (UTC)

Several of us are aware of this, there has been an analysis/breakdown of VA-listed people by nationality here. --LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 14:46, 7 June 2026 (UTC)

Yeah, this is one of the many problems with listing so many biographies. Project members are overwhelmingly western, so they are going to vote overwhelmingly to add westerners, if only because they are recognizable to them. I've seen a lot of people vote oppose with justifications along the lines of "I've never heard of __________." This makes it difficult to add non-westerners who most people in the west have not heard of. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 08:20, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

This is also one of the key reasons why our current voting system proves itself not to be appropriate. What kind of system should replace voting is an entirely different discussion, but it is fair to say that the immediate action should be to drop it altogether and re-review all articles currently on the list. If polling is not a substitute for discussion, how are we supposed to keep a voting system on such an important list like Vital Articles?

In that merit, one idea is that an article should only be on the list if it is of global interest to either the general public or the general topic or the target project. Maurício de Sousa and Monica and Friends are of global interest to WP:COMICS, but most U.S. states other than New York or California are not of global interest to the general public.

This is by no means a concrete solution on my end, and I think we should refine it first and decide if that is a good solution or we should look into something else. ZeroJaguar (talk) 12:46, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

One thing to note that the vast majority of the VA5 lists were constructed in an earlier, free-for-all phase where voting was not required.

I've posted some bottom-by-stat lists in this project, such as this bottom-200-by-pageviews one; I think we should attempt to make a bottom list of Americans (perhaps bucketed by era or something, i.e. bottom Americans from 2000-2024, bottom Americans from 1975-1999 and so on, so as to mitigate recentism).--LaukkuTheGreit (Talk•Contribs) 16:31, 14 June 2026 (UTC)

@LaukkuTheGreit So is there any concrete solution to actually solving this deep bias on the list? The community has known this for years, yet no concrete solution is on the list. This means we may have to do a discussion that is beyond the scope of the VA project and we should instead look into ways of solving systemic bias on Wikipedia (not just this version, the English-language version, but the Wikipedia project as a whole). What kind of solution do you think of? And is it best to make a whole RfC, preferably on Meta to allow for discussion of systemic bias across Wikipedias (emphasis on the S)? There is no simple or one-size-fits-all solution to combating systemic bias, especially if it involves all Wikipedias, and we need to make a long-term analysis of systemic bias across the different language versions to determine what solutions work best for each ZeroJaguar (talk) 17:20, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

I agree that this is an issue, albeit one that I have seen mainly in political and royal biographies at WP:VA. However, I do not know what to propose to resolve this. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 19:45, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

Yep, the list is heavily biased in multiple areas. I and others have made attempts to curb this problem, but I don't see it resolving any time soon. Major overhauls of the list make people uneasy, and chipping away at it one or two nominations at a time overwhelms the talk page. Ultimately, any attempt to make structural changes to the list ends up making a mess as some sections of the overhaul will pass, while others do not, often because editors are not voting on both nominations. Result is that you can spend a year doing something that had multiple rounds of discussion where editors broadly blessed the idea, and then it fails because those same editors are no where to be found, and someone who hasn't read any of the past discussions impulsively doesn't find it interesting. Ask me how I know. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 21:57, 21 July 2026 (UTC)

Western civilization is overrepresented because, well, it is what enables Wikipedia to exist. We can study non-Western topics, but the no matter how much we might want them to be vital... they simply aren't. Could they have been in an alternative history? Sure. But we deal with the world as it is, as described by reliable sources. Jclemens (talk) 02:16, 22 July 2026 (UTC)

Does anyone else have an issue with edits taking a long time to save on discussion pages?

I'm trying to edit the discussion page on the level 4 talk page, but the save time is extremely slow. I brought this to the tech pump here and the one of the issues was the page size of the page. I'm bringing this up here because I would like to hear from VA community on whether anyone else has any issues with it. Interstellarity (talk) 23:53, 21 June 2026 (UTC)

I also run into this issue all the time. KhaiDo (talk) 16:00, 10 July 2026 (UTC)

This is normal, as new proposals are constantly being submitted, while existing ones receive no votes and thus cannot be archived, preventing the page size from being reduced. The only way to solve this is to establish a rule to limit the number of proposals.飞车过大关 (talk) 05:14, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

I have also occasionally experienced this issue. Separately, I would support a rule to limit the number of WP:VA proposals at each level. AndrewPeterT (talk) (contribs) 19:29, 20 July 2026 (UTC)

How do people feel about mass nominating things for demotion without even listing them

this nomination seems very sneaky to me. It feels like there is an attempt to demote stuff without people understanding what is being listed.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 03:43, 28 July 2026 (UTC)

I agree that we shouldn't nominate topics for removal (or addition) without listing them. Lophotrochozoa (talk) 10:32, 29 July 2026 (UTC)

User:Lophotrochozoa, it seems you feel the vote to remove in this format should stand though.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:00, 31 July 2026 (UTC)