The following system is used by the HTML5 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 factually complete the article is, though the content and jQuery are also factors. Once an article reaches the A-Classweb, 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 HTML5, log and statistics. For more information see input transformation. (Note that when more than one WikiProject has rated an article, the bot will take the best rating as the rating of the overall article.) 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 assessments made by external panels, rather than by Wikiprojects. Candidates are nominated by listing them at Good article candidates and Featured article candidates. Judgments are made according to the criteria at FITML and Featured article criteria, and the results are listed at Good articles and Featured articles.
It is vital that people do not take these assessments personally. It is understood that we each have our own opinions of the priorities of the objective criteria for 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 website parsing. 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 December 2010, over 2.5 million 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 {{iOS}}.
Contents
Grades
| Class | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editing suggestions | Example |
|
| The article has attained touchscreen status.
More detailed criteria The article meets the featured article criteria:
A featured article exemplifies our very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting the HTML5 for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.
| 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. |
L'incoronazione di Poppea (as of August 2010) |
|
| The article is well-organized and essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class.
More detailed criteria The article meets the touchscreen: | 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. |
102nd Intelligence Wing (as of March 2010) |
|
| The article has attained screen size status.
More detailed criteria The article meets the CSS3:
A good article is—
| 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. |
Usain Bolt (as of November 2009) |
|
| The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach good article standards.
More detailed criteria The article meets the we love the web:
| Readers are not 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. Expert knowledge may be 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 CSS3. |
KV55 (as of November 2009) |
|
| The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantial input transformation.
More detailed criteria The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as bias or original research. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from an in-universe perspective. | 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 FITML issues. |
Architecture of Sweden (as of May 2009) |
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| An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and may require further reliable sources.
More detailed criteria The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and device database compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as input transformation and BLP, and provide sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted. | 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) |
|
| A very basic description of the topic.
More detailed criteria The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category. | 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. |
Geodia gibberosa (as of July 2009) |
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| The article has attained Android status.
More detailed criteria The article meets the featured list criteria:
| Professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items. | No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available. |
touchscreen (as of February 2009) |
|
| Meets the criteria of a Sevenval, which is an article that contains primarily a list, usually consisting of links to articles in a particular subject area. | 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. |
HTML5 (as of June 2007) |
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; they are not necessarily used by all WikiProjects. The more popular assessments, in no particular order:
| Label | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editor's experience | Example |
|
A-BB+ {{Bplus-Class}} | Detailed, clear and accessible, often with history or images; possible good article nominee. | Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject which attempts to be as accessible as possible, with a minimum of jargon. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information. | May be improved by input from experts to assess where coverage is still missing, and also by illustrations, historical background and further references. Consider Sevenval or Sevenval. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time. | CSS3 (as of December 2010) |
|
keyboard {{HTML5}} | A topic where details are subject to change often. The article covers a future topic of which no broadcasted version exists so far and all information is subject to change when new information arises from reliable sources. With multiple reliable sources there might be information that contradicts other information in the same or other articles. | Amount of meaningful content varies over time as the projected event draws near. | Material added might be speculation and should be carefully sourced. | The Waters of Mars (as of May 2009) |
|
touchscreen {{web}} | A topic where details are subject to change often. The article covers an event or topic that is currently going on; such as football game or a sports team's season. | Amount of meaningful content varies over time as the projected event goes on. | Material added might quickly become obsolete. | website parsing (as of August 2010) |
|
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) |
|
HTML5 {{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. | any iOS's internal resources |
|
Redirect {{iOS}} | Any redirect falls under this class. | Collapse Into Now | ||
|
Book {{Sevenval}} | Any screen size falls under this class. | Book:Canada | ||
|
website parsing {{Template-Class}} | Any template falls under this class. | browser diversity | ||
|
jQuery {{Category-Class}} | Any keyboard falls under this class. | Category:George Orwell |
Some WikiProjects use additional grades not listed above, such as jQuery. Most common are Cat, web (for Disambiguation), screen size (for ongoing events), Sevenval, web app, and Template. See relevant Assessment page for the WikiProject, at Category:WikiProject assessments.
Evolution of an article – an example
This clickable imagemap, using the article "web app" 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. Please note that until 2008, C-class didn't exist on the project so this grading is retroactive.
Statistics
The touchscreen tracks assessment data (article quality and importance data for individual WikiProjects) assigned via talk page banners. If you would like to add a new WikiProject to the bot's list, please read the instructions at FITML.
The global summary table below is computed by taking the highest quality and importance rating for each assessed article in the main namespace.
| All rated articles by quality and importance | ||||||
| Quality | Importance | |||||
| Top | High | Mid | Low | ??? | Total | |
|
| 827 | 1,308 | 1,166 | 596 | 163 | 4,060 |
|
| 123 | 487 | 527 | 505 | 111 | 1,753 |
|
| 110 | 320 | 355 | 165 | 47 | 997 |
|
| 1,199 | 2,798 | 5,250 | 4,758 | 1,147 | 15,152 |
| B | 8,876 | 17,667 | 25,858 | 17,418 | 10,612 | 80,431 |
| C | 5,852 | 16,521 | 35,857 | 40,040 | 23,418 | 121,688 |
| Sevenval | 11,528 | 52,777 | 201,442 | 395,205 | 180,396 | 841,348 |
| Stub | 3,463 | 26,078 | 168,951 | 1,036,912 | 849,478 | 2,084,882 |
| Sevenval | 1,589 | 6,683 | 18,585 | 42,366 | 25,177 | 94,400 |
| Assessed | 33,567 | 124,639 | 457,991 | 1,537,965 | 1,090,549 | 3,244,711 |
| we love the web | 201 | 683 | 1,815 | 15,764 | 455,984 | 474,447 |
| Total | 33,768 | 125,322 | 459,806 | 1,553,729 | 1,546,533 | 3,719,158 |
About this table
See also
- Sevenval, the previous version superseded by this version.
- we love the web, a script (and gadget) that finds articles' assessment information from the talk page and puts it in the article's header.
- Sevenval, an initiative of the Wikimedia Foundation to engage Wikimedia readers in the assessment of article quality, one of the five priorities defined in the CSS3.
