Wikipedia:WikiProject Debating/Assessment

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Welcome to the assessment department of the Debating WikiProject! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Michigan articles. While much of the work is done in conjunction with the WP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.

The ratings are done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the {{WikiProject Debating}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:Debating articles by quality, Category:Debating articles by importance, and Category:Debating articles needing attention. The quality and importance ratings serve as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist. There is also Category:Non-article Debating pages) for things like redirect pages, templates, categories, images, etc.

Contents 1 Frequently asked questions 2 Instructions 2.1 Quality scale 2.2 Importance scale 2.3 Requesting an assessment or re-assessment

[edit] Frequently asked questions

How can I get my article rated? 

As a member of the Debating WikiProject, you can do it yourself. If you're unsure, list it in the requesting an assessment section below.

Who can assess articles? 

Any member of Debating WikiProject is free to add—or change—the rating of an article, but please follow the guidelines.

Why didn't the reviewer leave any comments? 

Unfortunately, due to the volume of articles that need to be assessed, we are unable to leave detailed comments in most cases. If you have particular questions, you might ask the person who assessed the article; they will usually be happy to provide you with their reasoning.

Where can I get more comments about my article? 

Contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Debating who will handle it or assign the issue to someone. You may also list it for a Peer review.

What if I don't agree with a rating? 

Relist it as a request or contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Debating who will handle it or assign the issue to someone.

Aren't the ratings subjective? 

Yes, they are (see, in particular, the disclaimers on the importance scale), but it's the best system we've been able to devise; if you have a better idea, please don't hesitate to let us know!

If you have any other questions not listed here, please feel free to ask them on the discussion page for this department, or to contact the Wikipedia:WikiProject Debating directly.

[edit] Instructions

An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{WikiProject Debating}} project banner on its talk page. You can learn the syntax by looking at the talk pages in edit mode and by reading the info below.

This is the rating syntax (ratings and dates are samples, change to what applies to the article in question):

{{WikiProject Debating}}

• displays the default banner only.

{{WikiProject Debating|class=FA|importance=Top}}

• all assessed articles should have quality and importance filled in. Leaving the other parameters off does not hurt anything.

{{WikiProject Debating|class=Start|importance=Mid|attention=yes}}

• if an article needs immediate attention, add the attention tag and please leave talk notes as to why. "yes" is the only valid parameter here. If it doesn't need attention, leave the parameter off.

The following values may be used for the class parameter:

• FA - The article has reached Featured article status.
• A - Could be submitted as a Featured article candidate; probably could use some small updates to make it Featured quality.
• GA - The article has reached Good article status.
• B - Could be submitted as a Good article nominee; probably could use some updates or may lack some features from the Good article criteria, but it presents a good overview of the subject.
• Start - The article is more than a stub, but may lack some important aspects of the topic's discussion.
• Stub - The article is a stub.
• List - The article is a list.
• NA - The page is not an article and should not be rated; it could be a template, image or category, for example.

Articles for which a valid class and/or importance is not provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Debating articles. The class should be assigned according to the quality scale below.

The following values may be used for the importance parameter:

• Top (adds articles to Category:Top-importance Debating articles)
• High (adds articles to Category:High-importance Debating articles)
• Mid (adds articles to Category:Mid-importance Debating articles)
• Low (adds articles to Category:Low-importance Debating articles)

The parameter is not used if an article's class is set to NA, and may be omitted in those cases. The importance should be assigned according to the importance scale below.

[edit] Quality scale

Note: A B-class article should have at least one reference.

Article progress grading scheme [  v • d • e  ]

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: 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.	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)

[edit] Importance scale

The criteria used for rating article importance are not meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it). Thus, subjects with greater popular notability may be rated higher than topics which are arguably more "important" but which are of interest primarily to students of hagiography. Importance does not equate to quality; a featured article could rate 'mid' on importance.

Note that general notability need not be from the perspective of editor demographics; generally notable topics should be rated similarly regardless of the country or region in which they hold said notability. Thus, topics which may seem obscure to a Western audience—but which are of high notability in other places—should still be highly rated. Rate international region/country-specific articles from the prespective of someone from that region.

Article importance grading scheme

Label	Criteria	Examples
Top	Subject is a "core" or "key" topic for debating, or is generally notable to people other than students of debating. They define and determine the subject of the Debating WikiProject.	Debate
High	Subject is notable in a significant and important way within the field of debating, but not necessarily outside it.
Mid	Subject contributes to the total subject of the Debating WikiProject. Subject may not necessarily be famous.
Low	Subject is not particularly notable or significant within the field of debating, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic.

[edit] Requesting an assessment or re-assessment

If you have made significant changes to an article and would like an outside opinion on a new rating for it, please feel free to list it below. If you are interested in more extensive comments on an article, please use the peer review department instead.

1. Add articles here! Newest requests on the BOTTOM
2. Example (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (and put "(re-)assessment request" in your edit summary of this assessment page), leave reasons if a reassessment.