Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/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. |
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 obviously 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}}.
[edit] Grades
| Label | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editor's experience | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 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. | Tourette Syndrome (as of July 2007) |
| 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. | FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitives (as of January 2008) |
| 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. | Durian (as of March 2007) |
 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. | International Space Station (as of February 2007) |
| 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. | Jammu and Kashmir (as of October 2007) has a lot of helpful material but needs more prose content and references. |
| 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:
|
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. | Real analysis (as of November 2006) |
| 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. | Coffee table book (as of July 2005) |
Grades lower than this should not be used for articles in the Core topics project or the Work via WikiProjects project.
[edit] Non-standard Grades
Some WikiProjects use additional grades not listed above, such as Cat, Dab (for Disambiguation), Future, Image, List, Needed, and Template. See relevant Assessment page for the WikiProject, at Category:WikiProject assessments.
