Wikipedia:WikiProject Technology History/Quality

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Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Technology History articles by quality statistics

Welcome to the assessment department of the Technology History WikiProject! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's articles about Technology History. 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.

Contents

[edit] Frequently asked questions

How can I get my article rated? 
Please list it in the section for assessment requests below.
Who can assess articles? 
Any member of the Technology History WikiProject is free to add—or change—the rating of an article.
What if I don't agree with a rating? 
You can list it in the section for assessment requests below, and someone will take a look at it. Alternately, you can ask any member of the project to rate the article again.
Aren't the ratings subjective? 
Yes, they are, 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.

[edit] Instructions

An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{WikiProject Technology History}} project banner on its talk page:

{{WikiProject Technology History
|class=
|attention=
|collaboration-candidate=
|past-collaboration=
|peer-review= 
|old-peer-review=
|needs-infobox=
}}

The following values may be used for the class parameter:

Articles for which a valid class is not provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Technology History articles. The class should be assigned according to the quality scale below.

[edit] Quality scale

Article progress grading scheme [  v • d • e  ]
Label Criterion Reader's experience Editor's experience Example
Featured article 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)
Featured list 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)
Good article 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 Technology History.

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.

Status Template Meaning of Status
Top {{Top-Class}} This article is of the utmost importance to this project, as it forms the basis of all information.
High {{High-Class}} This article is fairly important to this project, as it covers a general area of knowledge.
Mid {{Mid-Class}} This article is relatively important to this project, as it fills in some more specific knowledge of certain areas.
Low {{Low-Class}} This article is of little importance to this project, but it covers a highly specific area of knowledge or an obscure piece of trivia.
None None This article is of unknown importance to this project. It remains to be analyzed.

[edit] Requesting an 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.