Talk:Grade

Grade as slope

About 6 lines up from bottom, Grade says

• in geography and railroad engineering, a percentage ratio of elevation differential to distance: see grade (geography)

Perhaps grade (geography) used to discuss material, about what grade is in a topographical sense, similar to what appears (now at least) at Slope. (I'm a newbie, so maybe there's a way i haven't found to see what grade (geography) said before it became a redirect to Topography.)

I don't understand enough of the implications of rearranging the links to just go ahead and edit them, but since Topography provides context without discussing topographical grade directly, and Slope has two sentences that do discuss it directly, i'm tempted to replace the grade (geography) link on Grade with a link to Slope. (Note that since Slope and Topography already link to each other, this stretches the path from Grade to Topography only by one link.) I am resisting that temptation until instructed or more experienced.

In any case, i'm going ahead and editing in the term "grade" (and "gradient") on both Slope and Topography, rather than leaving the reader to guess at why the link (either link) from Grade is appropriate.

Jerzy

What a difference a month makes. I'm less clueless and bolder by now, and i'm not sure whether my recent edits of these pages follows those original thots or not. But that work will speak for itself, & this note is just to say that whatever isn't done that i discussed above is no longer under consideration by me. And (of course) i'm sure what i've done is less than definitive; i'm looking forward to seeing someone do it right (or just even better than my better-than-before effort). --Jerzy 20:55, 9 Oct 2003 (UTC)

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Grade as specification of gradations

I can't picture it very well yet, but i think most of the portion of the dab in or subordinate to the first bullet point, namely the portion discussion the senses used in education, sports, and telecommunication, could be refactored into a separate short article with a title like "Specification of gradations". This would discuss:

• ordering the graded people or other items relative to one another as the core purpose
• use of ranges (the range from B+ to B-, for example) to facilitate coarse and fine views of the same grade)
• addition of pseudo-grades, like I for incomplete and W for withdrawn, that violate the principle that every pair of grades can be described as one being "higher" than the other, without inconsistencies resulting.

--Jerzy(t) 21:33, 2004 May 9 (UTC)

I generally agree that a separate article (or articles) could be created from that section. The long paragraph of text doesn't fit in a disambig, and will ultimately either need to be moved to a separate article, or will need to be significantly trimmed down. Also, I'm surprised there isn't an article that covers the whole VF=very fine, VG=very good, P=poor thing, since it's used across several subject areas. --Interiot 21:35, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Grade level

The term grade has numerous meanings. Grade level has at least two very distinct meanings. Grade level currently automatically redirects. That is wrong. Disambiguation is needed. Existing links to [[Grade level] should be corrected to point to the correct page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.247.178.117 (talk) 15:36, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Grade vs rank

Page currently reads in part

• Grade, a title applied to the insignia worn as in a military organization
• Grade, also mistakenly called 'military rank', in the US Army, Air Force, Navy, Coast Guard and/or Civil Air Patrol

and neither of these lines links anywhere, not even to a redlink.

Obviously there's a gap here. Our article on military rank currently uses the term grade no fewer than 28 times, but it doesn't contain a section to which grade (military) could link.

The closest possible definition currently in Wiktionary (to which this DAB of course already links) is A degree or level of something; a position within a scale; a degree of quality... "This fine-grade coin from 1837 is worth a good amount." So the gap is not just in Wikipedia.

Watch this space, and comments of course welcome. Andrewa (talk) 01:42, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Those entries have been removed now, but I'm going to add back a simple link to Military rank: it's obviously a relevant article, and I'd rather leave to others all the worrying around whether "grade" is a synonym for rank, or a term for a particular subtype, or some subtly different but related topic. – Uanfala (talk) 13:43, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Most common uses at the top?

Two of the more common uses of the term (Grading (education) and Grade (slope)) were recently moved to the top of the dab page [1]. The link for grading in education is definitely the one with the most clicks (165 for June [2], out of a total of just under 1,000 total views for the dab [3]). The slope grade is third with 41 clicks, but Educational stage gets more than it, at 82. In that case, we'd need to move that up as well, but this leaves the "education" section with just a single entry remaining. Separating the three education entries is, I think, not a good idea (a reader who sees one may miss the other). In principle, this can also create problems for readers who follow redirects targeted specifically to the edication section (as they won't get to see the most relevant education meanings), but the only such redirect is Gradabaility and should probably not target just this section.

The easisest solution is to do away with the list of most common entries, but move "Education" to the top, which will have more or less the same effect. I think it'll be fine if the slope link (which was followed by less than 5% of the visitors) is just in the "Other uses". Ping to Buidhe. – Uanfala (talk) 14:11, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

I was mostly annoyed that to get to the slope usage I was looking for, I had to scroll through obscure bands and stuff. IDK about clicks but the slope one is something with high relevance to engineering, infrastructure, athletics, etc. (t · c) buidhe 17:21, 20 July 2022 (UTC)

Well, it's impossible to arrange a dab page in such a way that everyone will be able to find what they're looking for without needing to scroll possibly all the way to the end. Educational significance doesn't really enter the picture here: separating common uses at the top of a long page is done just for reader convenience (or, in rare cases, if the entries so "promoted" are somehow relevant to understanding the rest of the page).

For the case of "grade", a separate list (with the top three entries) will be justifiable to the extent that those entries account for about 28% of the visits of the dab. That seems borderline to me, but I'm going to accept it (and tweak the page accordingly), but will raise no objections if someone in the future decides to do away with it. – Uanfala (talk) 12:27, 21 July 2022 (UTC)