Hey, all, we've been talking about a change to the wording on Template:WPBannerMeta that would affect all of the WikiProject banners on talk pages.

What?

The change would use the word priority instead of importance, like this:

−

This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

+

This article has been rated as Mid-priority on the project's priority scale.

The goal is just to change the text displayed on the talk page banners. The change would be automatic and not require any effort or action on your part.

We're not prepared to consider renaming categories (e.g., Category:Unknown-importance medicine articles → Category:Unknown-priority medicine articles) at this time. We're also not interested in flooding people's watchlists by sending a bot around to change the wikitext (e.g., to change {{WikiProject Tulips |importance=Mid}} → {{WikiProject Tulips |priority=Mid}}). Both of those steps would require updates to bots and tools. The intention is that you can keep typing the same wikitext as you/your favorite rating script always have; the only difference is that the displayed wording will be a little different.

Why?

The original idea was that groups were telling the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team which articles were most important to include in offline releases. That has had the unintended effect that some editors are unhappy when a group rates an article as |importance=Low. They feel like their work or interest areas are being labeled unimportant. Also, some groups use these ratings to prioritize articles for improvement, such as a goal of having all "Top" rated articles be improved to a certain level.

Some groups, especially Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography and Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history, do not rate articles for importance/priority, and would not be affected by this change.

When?

Possibly during the next month or so, depending on what people say.

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:45, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing I think you meant to link to Module_talk:WikiProject_banner#Importance_and_priority. Feel free to remove this message after you've added/fixed the link. Polygnotus (talk) 07:41, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Grammatically, I think it would be better to say something like "medium priority". (I'm undecided so far on the general concept.) isaacl (talk) 18:03, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I prefer the priority wording to the importance wording. I know mass changes (in categories) are controversial, but I would like a consistent system to reduce confusion for newer editors. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:44, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

If I may be so blunt, I think this is a waste of time. Yes, new editors are occasionally discouraged to see the article they created marked as "low importance", but this is only because they haven't figured out that importance and class ratings don't actually matter. Once this is explained to them, it's no longer an issue. Those same people who are confused about importance ratings will also be unhappy about having their article marked as "low priority". Nothing is actually really broken here, so I reckon it's not worth the effort to try to fix it. MediaKyle (talk) 19:49, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

+1 to MediaKyle above - this seems a bit unnecessary and doesn't seem to solve the underlying issue. Plus, it would desynchronize the categories with the actual wording on the template, so it won't be a good idea unless the categories are renamed too. HurricaneZeta^C 19:56, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose HurricaneZeta^C 20:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Re on the project's priority scale, do all the projects that would display this actually have priority scales, indicating which articles need work first? When editors have evaluated articles' relative importance, has it been meant as an indication of what to prioritise? NebY (talk) 19:59, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose Even if swapped to "Low-priority", it's going to be insulting to some. "What do you mean my favorite article is low-priority"? Therefore, I don't feel there is a large enough effect to justify a sweeping change. Either we get rid of importance statistics entirely, or accept that people will be insulted. Of course, I don't believe that such things should be entirely removed to appease a small few. There really are some articles about more significant topics than others. This also seems to be based on hearsay, as no examples are provided of editors finding "Low-importance" to be rage-worthy. "Some editors" is extremely vague. "Citation needed". ᴢxᴄᴠʙɴᴍ (ᴛ) 20:05, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Lean oppose WP:NOTBROKEN, and importance actually conveys the idea better than priority. (t · c) buIdhe 20:09, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strong Oppose BAD IDEA, significantly diffrent meanings, oppose per other opposes, and NOT BROKEN. MisawaSakura (talk) 21:29, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment — how much work would this entail? I do see a benefit, however I agree with other editors that it might well be marginal (from the perspective of a newbie getting this rating), so if this will take more than a marginal amount of effort. I'm sceptical. No objections in principle though. JustARandomSquid (talk) 20:10, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  About ten minutes of coding time, I think. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Comment. I was brought here from an announcement on WT:WPM but the mathematics project templates already use "priority", not "importance". —David Eppstein (talk) 20:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment – While I lean towards support, has anyone considered removing the importance/priority rating scale altogether? Do they actually serve a useful function? —Quondum 20:30, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I can only speak for my work in WikiProjects, and I attest they do serve a useful function, which is for prioritizing what articles get the most attention for improvement, from the perspective of the WikiProject's subject area. It's just basic project management. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 20:33, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Doing this on a Wikiproject subpage might be a better way to do it, or to make it invisible in the template, or at least invisible-by-default (using some custom CSS class). Best, KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:36, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd rather keep the current approach as it's already in place and works well. Using a subpage throws away all the advantages of categories and the wiki database to organize and report by importance/priority. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 20:55, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  That might not need custom CSS. So far as I can tell, each project's template (e.g. {{WikiProject Mathematics}}, {{WikiProject Numbers}}, {{WikiProject Spoken Wikipedia}}) selects the wording by setting |importance= to {{{importance|}}} or {{{priority|}}}, and I think (don't trust me on this) can omit the parameter to omit banner display of either. That's how Talk:Pi shows Mathematics Top-priority but Numbers Top-importance. I suspect a lot of Wikiproject participants don't know this. Some might opt to switch to priority and start using it for project management, some might prefer to make it invisible - if they knew. NebY (talk) 21:06, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Yes. It can be useful to see "oh! We have three high-importance articles that are stubs!" and statistics like that. It isn't perfect, but it can help direct labour. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 22:53, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  They do have a good function imo. Personally, I often go to low-importance articles in smaller wikiprojects (Like WP Dubai or UAE) to give often neglected pages a better treatment, since in my view, the top importance ones have the most eyes on them. However, the bigger the project, the more useless it is as a function. On the converse, it's somehow also difficult to manage with smaller projects as many articles are unrated, or have ratings that don't make sense. I remember a really important royal here was rated as 'low importance'. And there's the fact that things are very subjective... many American pop culture events may be huge there and thus of high-importance, but have hardly any relevance internationally. It's... an eh feature. jolielover♥talk 15:20, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It has been helpful to me when looking for a article to edit on. I am not extremely active as I have limited time, but I enjoy editing and looking at the importance levels on the Wikiprojects I follow helps me find where I want to edit next.KittyHawkFlyer (talk) 16:10, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I think this is fine. Presumably we can have bots do the bulk of the changes, so there's no huge cost? Another thing that could be done in the same vein would be to just drop the note of how anything is low, and just leave it as the unwritten default. --Joy (talk) 20:25, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Agreed on both counts. KevinL (aka L235 · t · c) 20:32, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose = describing an article as high-priority could be mistaken for meaning it urgently needs updating rather than it's actual meaning. Also WP:NOTBROKEN as aleready stated above. — Voice of Clam (talk) 21:30, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment - do you have some examples of people getting annoyed over their articles being called low importance? GarethBaloney (talk) 21:58, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @GarethBaloney, if you were unhappy with something like this, would you want to be singled out as an example, in a discussion where other editors have dismissed you and your concerns as merely another "fragile" editor and said that Wikipedia is "better off without" you?

  I will tell you instead that I've seen this, and that another editor above says that he's seen it. It's real but not common. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose we shouldn't give the impression that certain articles within a project's scope always need more attention/edits than others, and if anything, I'd be more inclined to go with the idea Quondum mentioned where we just get rid of importance/priority ratings altogether. Those provide little to no benefit. SNUGGUMS (talk / edits) 22:01, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Per your last sentence, since this is a project management tool, I would say they have significant benefit to projects interested in such management (for organizing work priorities), and little/no to those who don't. If a project wants to opt out, that's perfectly fine by me, but we shouldn't want to take away a tool that many projects continue to use. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 22:07, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have four project pages on my watch list, and I don't see any of them paying attention to importance rankings, except to complain that such-and-such article is not given a high enough ranking. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:37, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I have three on my watchlist consistently, and I don't recall seeing any complaints like that. People usually just change the setting if they think it's too low. But let's realize that over 1,100 WikiProjects participate in assessments, so we can't pretend to speak for them all. Also, I do actually use these settings in my WikiProject work, and tend to spend more time in articles that are more central/pertinent to the WikiProject's subject area. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 02:55, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose There's a big difference between priority and importance. Priority implies work is needed, whereas important means how critical the article is to the project. Noah, BSBA^Talk 22:24, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree with this explanation. This function isn't about how important an article itself is but if its important to the overall project. Priority does give it a feeling or urgency that is not needed. KittyHawkFlyer (talk) 16:17, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. Another make-work project that will light up my watchlist for no reason. If there are any fragile "contributors" who think the importance ranking of an article by a project is a personal affront to them, then we are much better off without them. I have not found importance rankings helpful in any case. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:27, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  @Ssilvers, the proposed change will be completely invisible to your watchlist. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:29, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Thank you. That's a relief. But I don't think the change would be helpful, and, indeed, I agree that "priority" is even worse. So, let's just remove the very subjective and unhelpful "importance" parameter. -- Ssilvers (talk) 22:41, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  What wording would you use instead? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:43, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Just remove the mention of low importance from the talk page banners. --Joy (talk) 02:36, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Projects typically have standards for deciding the importance (usually, the proximity to their subject area and thus work priority). It is helpful to projects that use it for their project management. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 22:57, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. The current banner isn’t a problem; although importance/priority is a useless feature in my opinion. I would support removing the option altogether as nobody seems to really use it in any meaningful way in the wikiprojects I am active in.4meter4 (talk) 22:38, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine is organizing a project right now that's focused on Category:Top-importance medicine articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm sure there are a few exceptions to the rule. In general the high importance tag is placed on articles with high visibility in a subject area (ie lots of page hits) or that is part of a core concept within a WikiProject's scope. These aren't necessarily articles in bad shape needing editing, so I don't necessarily think "importance" ratings help target editing in many cases. I note too that the banners as used right now aren't assessing priority which is not the same thing as importance. Swapping them out isn't just a matter of word choice, it's changing what is fundamentally being measured. This would require reassessing every article. This seems ill advised.4meter4 (talk) 23:23, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• I disagree with the sentiment that the word change is too dissimilar to the original and that's why it is disqualifying. I'd argue the change aligns better with how the rating system is used; as a project management tool for organizing and tracking effort. Regardless, I think it is a bad idea to have the banner wording be different from the wording used in the tracking categories. If we're being considerate to new editors it is this kind of disconnect we should be avoiding. That stuff is confusing. ⇌ Synpath 22:40, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Support - it's a small but symbolic change. I write about tropical cyclone articles, and in theory, Wikipedia should cover every tropical cyclone, since they're an object of science research, and any single one could become a destructive force of nature. The standard has been to have articles for each season of storms in the body of water that they form in ("2025 Atlantic hurricane season" for example). Some seasons don't have any bad storms, so it's would be listed as low importance. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't have an article on it. It's easy to see "low-importance" as "trivia", but that's not the case. It's just a lower priority compared to a season with a lot of destructive storms. An article being labeled "top priority" does sound even more important than one saying "top importance", which doesn't have a good ring to it. Even "Mid priority" and "High priority" are both linguistic improvements over "mid/high importance". ♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 23:04, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Both importance and priority are in the eye of the beholder. Editors contribute according to their interests and the sources available to them. Kerry (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment. Point of clarity: No matter what term we use ('importance' or 'priority'), what I think we're talking about is an article subject's proximity to a WikiProject's subject area, in the range from bulls-eye (Top) down to peripheral (Low). This setting is not to tell any single editor how important an article is to them. This setting is for project management - that is, a group of editors deciding what articles, by way of proximity to their subject area, should get higher priority for development by their group. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 23:17, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Exactly. It's an attempt by one group of people (or sometimes just one person) to try to tell other people what to work on. I don't think that's a terribly successful approach to take to active Wikipedians, who are inherently highly self-motivated. Kerry (talk) 23:26, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  It's not telling. It is suggesting. Editors are free to work on anything they choose to work on. But from the standpoint of any particular subject area, there are bulls-eye topics and there are peripheral topics. And some editors have a motivation to work on bulls-eye (or close to bulls-eye) topics more than others, so assigning importance/priority will be for their work. Everyone is free to follow their own personal motivation. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 23:31, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I'll always say that if a person finds an issue with a word, the problem is not the word. Now, regarding disappearing the parameter as mentioned by another person, each WikiProject can discuss it on their own, but we should seriously start encouraging WikiProjects to refrain using them if they are not really using its purpose. In an ideal organized WP, the importance would look like this: Category:Unknown-importance Madonna articles. That WP is relatively small, so it is easy to organize. Then, for example, you have Category:Unknown-importance United States articles listing 95,614 articles as of this comment (a number that increases daily). Is this project seriously taking "importance" as a parameter for something? I can even assert that at least 85,000 to 90,000 of these articles will fall into the Low-importance category and I highly doubt that any of them would be rated Top. WPUS already lists 220 top-priority articles, wouldn't it be better for them to create Wikipedia:WikiProject United States/Core like Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography/Core biographies or Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Core and update their vital-to-the-project articles rather than having four other categories listing 525,456 no-that-vital-to-the-project articles? This of course in the case of that WP, but many projects look the same, as if the importance status was simply inherited from the 1.0 and not integrated into the project's working areas. In my view, we should ask projects whether or not they use importance parameters at all as many other projects don't even use importances and others have ceased their use. Tbhotch^™ (CC BY-SA 4.0) 23:21, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I agree. I think we should ditch the notion of "importance", "priority", "proximity" etc. An article is within the topic space of a project or itisn't; I don't think it needs a scale for that purpose. And I would suggest that projects might like to consider having automated ORES quality ratings. I already use the Rater tool for that purpose. I figure whether it is right or wrong with its assessment, it is at least impartial (some editors seem to think everything they work on is high quality!). Kerry (talk) 23:38, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I would be much more enthused about updating "unknown importance" article categories to "unspecified importance" than changing "importance" to "priority" TBH. VanIsaac, GHTV ^contr_about 00:09, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Good idea, although currently we show nothing in the banner if it's 'unknown'. So, we're just potentially upsetting talk-page banner editors or those who look at WikiProject categories with the current practice. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 00:23, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think there's a compromise possible here, too - in the condensed banner shell view, we could just drop the light pink "Low-importance" label, and in the expanded view we could remove the bolding on "Low" and "Low-importance". It's just not a piece of information that requires any sort of emphasis. --Joy (talk) 02:40, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  For that matter, maybe just make "Low" or "Low-importance" invisible. Only display if it's Mid or above. Would this work as well for you? Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 02:52, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think it's okay to show it in the expanded view, as long as it's not emphasized. But removing it from that view, and have it be visible only through categories, is also fine. --Joy (talk) 11:42, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Hmmm... maybe something like what we're discussing might work as an alternative proposal. Thank you for your thoughts! Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 02:58, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Some WikiProjects are too big for importance to be of any use. US is one of them. I think such WikiProjects should consider ditching it altogether, like how LGBTQ+ & Biography have. jolielover♥talk 15:22, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose. I worry that the amount of experienced editor time it would take to properly transition to the new system, especially if category renamings are involved, is more expensive than the benefit of changing the wording. –Novem Linguae (talk) 23:51, 6 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose like what @Hurricane Noah stated, importance != priority. A topic may be important to the project but it may not be a priority. I.e. the founding fathers of a nation. These articles are important but are likely developed to the point where it is no longer a priority of the project to continue active content development and structuring in the foreseeable future. These are two separate measures, albeit subjective, and if implemented would require editors to reassess every single article there. I may have no qualms with it being an additional measure, but this as an alternative is not being discussed here. – robertsky (talk) 00:32, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Strongly oppose. I do not like the idea of getting rid of the importance tag at all, as it would be have a major impact on WikiProjects that use that feature to organize, and the people who don't use WikiProjects largely don't even know what the feature was/is used for in the first place. I am very active in WikiProject Toys and WikiProject Museums, both of which use the Importance scale. WP:NOTBROKEN as well. ✝ barbieapologist (talk) 00:46, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  To be clear, the proposal is not about getting rid of 'importance' but simply renaming it. There is another suggested proposal in comments about chucking it all, but that's not what we're deciding for this proposal. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 00:52, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I am also aware and just didn't articulate this very well, my apologies. When I said I didn't want it gotten "rid of," what I mean to say that in any capacity I don't want it changed at all; not removed or changed. I also agree with the idea others in the thread have said that the word Importance is more clear than priority, but that does not actually matter to me as much as just having it be left alone. It being changed in any way just seems like a waste of time and manpower to implement this or any of the other proposed ideas from the comment thread when WP:NOTBROKEN. ✝ barbieapologist (talk) 01:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose: There is no need to worry about such semantic perceived issues. Some WikiProjects use "priority" whereas others use "importance" for tagging, but both effectively convey the same point. This proposed change would not yield the intended changes that OP thinks it would. It is not our duty to adjust to misconceptions about technical aspects. The goal is to monitor and track articles with these tags. Let's not get carried away with essentially minute changes. — Trailblazer¹⁰¹🔥 ^{(discuss · contribs)} 00:51, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. This reminds me a bit of discussion about AFC "decline" debate a little while back: in both cases the occasional bruised feelings come from the underlying assessment (draft deemed not ready for mainspace, or article as not central to a WikiProject) than from the specific word choice. I don’t think we can nomenclature our way out of the potential for perfectly valid disappointment. And fwiw, I’ve seen (minor) conflict about class (below GA level) but never any about importance. Zzz plant (talk) 00:58, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak Oppose: Based on pre-discussion, this discussion, and my own project experience, I do understand it would be helpful to have a term that is more clear (not just for some users' feelings but for clarity itself), but for a couple reasons, I don't think 'priority' is it. For one, there are projects, including one I'm involved in, that already use 'priority' (in addition to 'importance') to mean something else. Secondly, neither term convey what is meant in apparently most cases – proximity to the WikiProject's subject area. But to use a different term would require more technical work to implement, and I begin to wonder more about cost vs. benefit. Perhaps the ultimate solution should be to hide the importance setting altogether in the banner, and have the importance categories be hidden on the talk page (so only users wanting to see hidden categories will see them). But to do even that would require significant technical surgery. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 01:09, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I forgot the third reason I had in mind why 'priority' is not the best term, and I brought this up in pre-discussion (and I see others have brought it up here)... 'low-priority' doesn't seem to be a term that would salve the feelings of someone upset over the use of 'low-importance'. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 01:55, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't mean to supplant the proposal, but I just went through the exercise of searching for better terms, I come up with 'pertinence' and 'relevance'. Would "Low-pertinence" or "Low-relevance" be any less potentially upsetting than "Low-importance"? Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 02:45, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The term that came to my mind is significance (of the topic). In wikispeak perhaps notability. (How much does WP-notability differ from generic notability?) One could distinguish between core and peripheral topics for a project - but I'm not coming up with a 3-word ranking. But weak oppose on grounds of WP:NOTBROKEN.

  (I think that the importance scale is compounding two axes - the relevance to a field, and a generic/specific distinction. Articles on genera are more important than articles on species, but they're equally relevant - similarly articles on higher taxa at principle ranks are more important than either; but with complications for economic or cultural significance, so an article on rice is more important than an article on a liverwort family.) Lavateraguy (talk) 09:56, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think "pertinence" seems to best capture the intent, combining a sense of relevance and significance. isaacl (talk) 19:26, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  The term is growing on me as well, and I think it's now my most favored choice, if we end up changing the term. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 21:55, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose per Hurricane Noah, "priority" and "importance" have different meanings and marking a high-quality article as Top-Priority would falsely imply that it was sorely in need of improvement. QuicoleJR (talk) 01:18, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Mild support, but it doesn't seem this is going to be accepted. All projects should use the same term, whichever it is. Johnbod (talk) 02:09, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose: WP:NOTBROKEN. This is a big confusion for the normal readers who doesn't edit here or to newcomers. Is anything big difference to 'Importance' and 'Priority'? And what does it mean to 'Priority' of the assessment of an article? I also suggest if this is wanting to use this 'Priority' assessment, it should be at least relevant to the WikiProject. As a member of Tambayan Philippines, I don't think we need this. ROY is WAR Talk! 03:44, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Please also note that this is good idea of 'Priority' assessment, but I think it should be discussed this more and where should put that assessment. ROY is WAR Talk! 03:49, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose as per WP:NOTBROKEN and Trailblazer101's thoughts on the matter. sjones23 (talk - contributions) 04:45, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• This is a bit of bike shedding but I'm vaguely in support of it. The very few times I can recall these rankings ever being looked at, I would say priority fit what they were being used for a bit better than importance. CMD (talk) 04:59, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Comment: I personally don't care about the wording, but I will oppose creating a mismatch between the wording and the parameter and category. I won't support partial work. Gonnym (talk) 09:03, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Weak support. The "importance" scale is very useful for WikiProjects, but I don't like the term "importance". Many deadly events are marked "low importance". I can understand why that wouldn't sit right with people. I also agree, though, that "priority" doesn't exactly capture what we're going for, as that implies judgement on the current state of the article. Maybe "relevance" is better? That emphasizes that different WikiProjects can have different ratings for the same article. Toadspike [Talk] 10:47, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Good thinking, I like relevance better than importance. Although, we might still want to avoid making it sound like a value judgement on the article and/or its topic. Thinking about how likely it is someone might react with: "What do you mean this article isn't relevant in this field?!"

  Maybe a better word could be "focus"? That might convey the intent better, that it's more about the way the article is understood from the perspective of the WikiProject.

  I imagine there would be far fewer people who would think "What do you mean this article isn't in the focus of this field?!", compared to the situation with 'importance' or 'relevance' or 'priority'. --Joy (talk) 11:52, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  "Centrality"?

  That concept might not make sense for non-subject-area groups (such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Copyediting or Wikipedia:WikiProject AI Cleanup), but they might not be rating articles anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:40, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I like centrality a lot. The most important articles for a topic are also the most central; there are no unimportant articles, just more peripheral ones; subjects that have less influence and aren't core tenets or influential events or [insert topic-appropriate thing here]. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 23:47, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I came across 'proximity' when looking at alternative words, but 'centrality' seems better than that. The only issue I see with using either is with geographic WikiProjects. For example, WikiProject Louisville covers the metropolitan area, but a high-importance subject in the area, Fort Knox, isn't exactly central, spatially speaking. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 05:13, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I suppose that's also fine, but it does seem like a bit of a niche word in comparison. I checked a Flesch-Kincaid calculator, and centrality has a grade level of 32, as does proximity, while relevance and importance have 20, and focus has 8. --Joy (talk) 16:54, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Which is to say: centrality and proximity have four syllables each, relevance and importance have three, and focus has two. That's all that calculator was counting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:10, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I sense you're not impressed by that poor man's measure :) regardless, it's still reasonable to ponder whether we're using too specialized a term, given that the reason we're here is a risk of people not understanding something. --Joy (talk) 21:28, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'd rather a precise term that most people will understand than an imprecise term that anyone can misunderstand. Cremastra (talk · contribs) 21:33, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  Well, that's exactly the problem - we don't really know that most people would understand what we mean by it, especially in phrases like 'top centrality' or 'mid centrality'. --Joy (talk) 00:18, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  See also Wikipedia:Readability tools. :-D WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:49, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  As the discussion has gone on, I think my current favorite is 'pertinence' (3 syllables) but we could decide to shorten that to a 2-syllable 'pertain', and have settings like 'top-pertain' -> 'low-pertain'. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 22:02, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  From a grammar perspective, I don't agree with using something like "low-pertain". I think it's confusing to use a verb in this way. isaacl (talk) 23:23, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I don't think I completed my thought. The setting would be something like "pertain=low" (less typing, easier to spell) but show as "Low Pertinence". Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 23:27, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I still think it's confusing, even if only for those reading the source using the template (it doesn't make sense to assign a rating to a verb). If someone needs to save keystrokes, they can use the keyboard macro/shortcut abilities provided by their operating system, or copy from a reference file. isaacl (talk) 23:34, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I think most rating is done with a script, so key strokes aren't very relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:50, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  I'm fine as well with "pertinence=Low" but I was just trying to make it more editor-friendly. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 23:57, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Support. Importance is handled by WP:VITAL. :_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:53, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose not broken as per others, so doesn't need this "fix". Joseph2302 (talk) 14:49, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. "Priority" implies that it indicates how immediate of attention an article needs, while "importance" is dependent on the project (like how American Motors Corporation is High-importance for WikiProject Automobiles, but Mid-importance for WikiProject Wisconsin, as it looms larger in the former topic area than the latter). --Sable232 (talk) 15:32, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose Per several comments above, priority is not the same as importance. George Washington is top-importance, but it is not high-priority as it is already at FA. Scolaire (talk) 15:56, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose per other opposes. NOTBROKEN, different meaning, may lead to confusion. 'Low-priority' sounds as negative as 'Low-importance' to me, aside from the meaning. Electorus (talk) 16:51, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose. Priority != importance, and far from being a quiet change that wouldn't flood watchlists, this would trigger much confusion and editing, as editors first went to correct the newly displayed priority but found only an |importance= parameter, then worked it out and edited the rating on large numbers of articles. NebY (talk) 17:16, 7 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Extremely strong support. Calling it "importance" was wrong from the beginning. We should not be making value judgments in Wikivoice. --Trovatore (talk) 01:32, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  WP:WIKIVOICE applies to content within an article, not the talk page or a subpage within a WikiProject. Besides, changing the term to "priority" wouldn't extinguish that concern. -- GoneIn60 (talk) 15:37, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  You two might be interested in Wikipedia:Notability and due weight, in which @Aquillion proposes that editors could sometimes be just a little less pedantic about which words/links are used to wave at a general concept. (Naturally, I have not agreed with them, but more reasonable editors might appreciate what they've written.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:56, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose as importance and priority are two different things. Priority would apply if the page was linked from the main page, or it was a current event or there was some urgent need to edit the page. Vital ratings would have looked at importance values to help determine what to include. It is not independent. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 08:54, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Lean Oppose – Like someone mentioned above, priority could change how the current system is utilized. Once an article reaches a particular state (e.g. Featured Article), a WP member might determine that it's priority needs to be lowered. But in the current system, its importance wouldn't change. Now is that a good thing? Perhaps, which is why I'm only leaning against. I think it needs to be understood that the intended functionality is likely to change before !voting to change it. --GoneIn60 (talk) 15:24, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

  This is a great example. This change could indeed change the the functionality of this tool to those that don't know the history/purpose. Priority gives a sense of urgency, so an important article to a project could very well be lowered for loosing urgency on the article. KittyHawkFlyer (talk) 16:23, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - While I understand and support the criticism of "Low Importance", I do not support the use of "Low Priority". It makes it sound like it is a "priority" of Wikipedia, and not an assessment of the topic's centrality to the greater nexus of ideas it fits into. (oh, what jargon I've got today!) - Tim1965 (talk) 16:04, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, as per Hurricane Noah. -- Gyrofrog (talk) 18:27, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose, as others have said, Importance and Priority have different meanings.--DavidCane (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2025 (UTC)--DavidCane (talk) 23:20, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• On the one hand, I appreciate the advantage of aligning terminology, so experience gained with one wikiproject can be useful when participating in another. On the other hand, English Wikipedia has a long tradition of letting wikiprojects manage their own internal matters themselves. Thus I think wikiprojects should be able to use the nomenclature they prefer. If they choose to use a different word, more power to them! isaacl (talk) 23:30, 8 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
• Oppose not a very significant change. Priority doesn't sound any less 'negative' than importance. I think any problems with this importance system comes not from the wording of it, but the system itself being useless when a WikiProject is too large. jolielover♥talk 15:26, 9 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose this is a solution, but to what problem? I don't think many people will be offended by working on articles labelled low-importance, most people that I've met don't. User:Easternsahara_{review this} 02:44, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support this could really help bring new editors along and is a much more [[WP:Precise]] term than ‘importance' ~2025-39521-77 (talk) 18:31, 10 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose After reading through this discussion I am opposed to this change. On surface level I thought it was a good idea, but the change in vocabulary could create a change in the overall function of the tool. This change is proposed to help editors that don't understand this tool, if editors that don't understand the reason for this tool and go off or priority level, they could see it as a ranking for how urgently an article needs help rather than the intended importance level of an article to an overall project. For those that understand the use of this tool it wouldn't make much a difference, but those that don't understand it could be more confused. KittyHawkFlyer (talk) 16:35, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Support. I think that priority works better than importance--low priority sounds more relative, while low importance is meant to be relative but doesn't convey that as clearly. But I do think that the categories should be changed as well if we implement this change. SomeoneDreaming (talk) 21:27, 15 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

• Oppose - Not enough of an improvement to make up for the potential confusion having both terms in circulation would create. ~Kvng (talk) 16:05, 16 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the City of Bradford, Leeds, Sheffield, York, Doncaster, Wakefield, and Salford districts’ pages, it states that they consist of their namesake cities and other places, when actually those places became part of the namesake cities when the districts were formed, just like when Greater London was formed, many areas outside London became part of it. Because of this, I believe it would be a good idea to make these districts coextensive with their namesake cities. HamzaTheGreat2007 (talk) 21:13, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]

Is this about WikiProject coverage for these districts? WikiProjects is what we discuss here. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 22:22, 22 January 2026 (UTC)[reply]