Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment
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< Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team (Redirected from Wikipedia:QUALITY)
For a more general overview of assessment at Wikipedia, see Wikipedia:Assessment.
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This page documents an English Wikipedia guideline. It is a generally accepted standard that editors should follow, though it should be treated with common sense and the occasional exception. When editing this page, please ensure that your revision reflects consensus. When in doubt, discuss your idea on the talk page. |
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The following system is used by the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team for assessing how close we are to a distribution-quality article on a particular topic. The system is based on a letter scheme which reflects principally how complete the article is, though the content and language quality are also factors. Once an article reaches the A-Class, it is considered "complete", although edits will continue to be made.
The quality assessments are mainly performed by members of WikiProjects, who tag talk pages of articles. These tags are then collected by a bot, which then generates output such as a table, log and statistics. For more information see Using the bot. The WP:1.0 team is now setting up to use a second bot to select articles, based on the assessments performed by WikiProjects.
Two levels, GA and FA, are not assessments that can be assigned simply by a project member. These refer to external judgments of article quality made at WP:GA and WP:FA. If these tags are desired, and the article meets the criteria (for GA or FA), it must be nominated (for GA or FA) and await comments.
It is vital that people not take these assessments personally. It is understood that we all have different priorities and different opinions about what makes a perfect article. Generally an active project will develop a consensus, though be aware that different projects may use their own variation of the criteria more tuned for the subject area, such as this. Many projects have an assessment team. If you contribute a lot of content to an article you may request an independent assessment.
At present this assessment system is in use in the Wikipedia 1.0 project, and in several hundred WikiProjects on the English Wikipedia. As of November 16, 2007, over 900,000 articles have been assessed. Other languages are now beginning to use the system also.
There is a separate scale for rating articles for importance or priority, which is unrelated to the quality scale outlined here. Unlike the quality scale, the priority scale varies based on the project scope. See also a proposed template at {{Importance Scheme}}.
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[edit] Grades
| Label | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editing suggestions | Example | ||
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 FA{{FA-Class}} |
The article has attained Featured article status.
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Professional, outstanding, and thorough; a definitive source for encyclopedic information. | No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible. | Tourette Syndrome (as of June 2008) |
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| FL {{FL-Class}} |
The article has attained Featured list status.
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FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives (as of January 2008) |
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 A{{A-Class}} |
The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere.
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Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. | Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style issues may need addressing. Peer-review may help. | Durian (as of March 2007) |
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 GA{{GA-Class}} |
The article has attained Good article status.
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Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia. | Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existing featured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing. | International Space Station (as of February 2007) |
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| B {{B-Class}} |
The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach Good Article standards. B-Class articles should meet the six B-Class criteria.
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No reader should be left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher. | A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed, and expert knowledge is increasingly needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the manual of style and related style guidelines. | Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007) |
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| C {{C-Class}} |
The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantial cleanup.
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Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study. | Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and address cleanup issues. | Exeter Cathedral (as of June 2008) |
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| Start {{Start-Class}} |
An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.
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Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more. | Provision of references to reliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation. | Real analysis (as of November 2006) |
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| Stub {{Stub-Class}} |
A very basic description of the topic.
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Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition | Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. | Coffee table book (as of July 2005) |
[edit] Non-standard grades
There are a few other assessments used in the mainspace that are done by WikiProjects but do not fit into the scale. Some of these are not used by all WikiProjects. Of these, only List-Class is tracked by the bot. In no particular order:
| Label | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editor's experience | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| List {{List-Class}} |
An article that meets the definition of a Stand-alone List. It should contain many wikilinks, with descriptions. | There is no one way to make a list, but it should be logical and useful to the reader. | Lists can be anything from a stub to a Featured List. | List of aikidoka (as of June 2007) |
| Disambig {{Disambig-Class}} |
Any disambiguation page falls under this class. | The page directs the reader to other pages of the same title. | Additions should be made as new articles of that name are created. | Aa River (as of June 2008) |
| Needed {{Needed-Class}} |
An article page that should exist, but does not. | The page does not exist or is a redirect. | An appropriate article should be created on the subject. | Lake effect (as of April 2007) |
| NA {{NA-Class}} |
Any non-article page that does not fit into any other category. | The page does not have article content. | May or may not apply, depending on the type of page. | Square knot (as of November 2006) |
Some WikiProjects use additional grades not listed above, such as those used at WP:Comics. Most common are Cat, Dab (for Disambiguation), Future, Image, List, Needed, and Template. See relevant Assessment page for the WikiProject, at Category:WikiProject assessments.
[edit] Evolution of an article – an example
This clickable imagemap, using the article "Atom" as an example, demonstrates the typical profile for an article's development through the levels. Hold the mouse over a number to see key events, and click on a number to see that version of the article.
[edit] See also
- Wikipedia:Article assessment, the previous version superseded by this version.
- User:Pyrospirit/metadata, a script (and gadget) that finds articles' assessment information from the talk page and puts it in the article's header.
