Article progress grading scheme
| Label |
Criteria |
Reader's experience |
Editor's experience |
Examples |
 FA
{{FA-Class}} |
Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured article" status, and meet the current criteria for featured articles. |
Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information. |
No further additions are necessary unless new published information has come to light, but further improvements to the text are often possible. |
|
FL
{{FL-Class}} |
Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured lists" status, and meet the current criteria for featured lists. |
Definitive. Outstanding, thorough list; a great source for encyclopedic information. |
No further additions are necessary unless new published information has come to light, but further improvements to the text are often possible. |
List of Smallville episodes |
A
{{A-Class}} |
Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (peer-reviewed where appropriate). Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard. |
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points. |
Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage. |
*Then:Comics Now:Comics |
 GA
{{GA-Class}} |
The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and been granted GA status, meeting the good article standards. This should be used for articles that still need some work to reach featured article standards, but that are otherwise acceptable. Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but having completed the Good article designation process is not a requirement for A-Class. |
Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject. No obvious problems, gaps, or excessive information. Adequate for most purposes, but other encyclopedias could do a better job. |
Some editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time. |
|
B
{{B-Class}} |
Commonly the highest article grade that is assigned outside a more formal review process. Has several of the elements described in "start", 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). With NPOV a well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard. Articles that are close to GA status but don't meet the Good article criteria should be B- or Start-class articles. |
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. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with. |
|
Start
{{Start-Class}} |
The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element. For example an article on Africa might cover the geography well, but be weak on history and culture. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following:
- a particularly useful picture or graphic
- multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic
- a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic
- multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article
|
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. |
Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage. |
|
Stub
{{Stub-Class}} |
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible. |
Possibly useful to someone who has no idea what the term meant. May be useless to a reader only passingly familiar with the term. At best a brief, informed dictionary definition. |
Any editing or additional material can be helpful. |
|
List
{{List-Class}} |
Meets the criteria of a Stand-alone List, which is a page that contains primarily a list. |
There is no set format for a list, but its organization should be logical and useful to the reader. |
Lists should be lists of live links to Wikipedia articles, appropriately named and organized. |
List of comic books |
Redirect
{{Redirect-Class}} |
Any redirect in the article namespace. |
A redirect takes reader to another article relevant to the article they wanted. |
Ensure article is still redirect, otherwise re-assess. |
Rock (comics) |
Disambig
{{Disambig-Class}} |
Is any disambiguation page. |
Serves to distinguish article titles that occur when a single term can be associated with more than one topic. |
Pay particular attention to the proper naming of disambiguation articles, they often do not need "(disambiguation)" appended to the title. |
America's Best Comics (disambiguation) |
Category
{{Cat-Class}} |
Is any category. |
Categories (along with other features like cross-references, lists, and infoboxes) help users find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called. |
Be aware not to over-categorise and to be careful of maintaining a neutral point of view when creating or filling categories. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles. |
Category:Comics stubs |
Template
{{Template-Class}} |
Is any type of template. The most common types of template used in the WikiProject are infoboxes and navboxes. |
Serves different purposes depending upon the type of template. Infoboxes go at the upper right of a page and are a way of providing easy access to important pieces of introductory infomation about the subject. Navboxes normally go across the very bottom of a page, and are for the purpose of uniting a group of related articles into an easily accessible format for inclusion on every page listed in the navbox. |
Beware of too many different templates, as well as templates that give either too little, too much, or too specialized information. |
{{Comicsproj}} |
Portal
{{Portal-Class}} |
Tagged page is a portal or a sub-page of a portal. |
The idea of a portal is to help readers and/or editors navigate their way through Wikipedia topic areas through pages similar to the Main Page. In essence, portals are useful entry-points to Wikipedia content. |
Editors need to ensure the portal is kept updated and displays properly, updating news sections and looking out for red links. |
Portal:Comics |
NA
{{NA-Class}} |
Is not an article, and fits no other classification. |
Probably not useful to any casual reader, these are typically only WikiProject pages. |
Look out for mis-classified articles. Currently many NA-class articles need to be re-classified. |
WP:COMICS |
