Wikipedia:Veropedia WikiProject Certification

The Veropedia WikiProject Certification Program is an external initiative from Veropedia, Inc. to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles by appealing to WikiProjects.

On Wikipedia exists many WikiProjects, which are groups of people who ideally are responsible for making sure the articles in their jurisprudence are up to standard. The problem, though, is that WikiProjects are of varying quality. There are some magnificent WikiProjects, such as WikiProject Military history, which are highly organized and highly productive, and there are projects which serve as nothing but the cause of many categories and pages. The latter kind are less developed, but there is great potential in these projects.

Veropedia has pursued relationships with WikiProjects, such as WikiProject Dinosaurs, and this proposal intends on improving the infrastructure and scale on which it engages with WikiProjects. Such relations are beneficial to both, as Veropedia benefits from their contributions and WikiProjects benefit from our efforts to preserve their work.

In order for WikiProjects to be most effective in providing a reliable, consistent, and standardized resource, it is necessary that they comply to a set of standards that ensure maximum productivity. Two types of certification will be available: VWC Standard and VWC Gold, where the former is awarded for ideal infrastructure and participation, and the latter is awarded for excellent content.

VWC Standard

VWC Standard is the basic requirements Veropedia requires for affiliation with WikiProjects. The requirements are as follows:

• Community
  • Be properly named ("Wikipedia:WikiProject ____" being the proper scheme)
  • Have at least five involved members, determined by the evaluator on behalf of Veropedia.
  • Must be actively engaged in collaborative article improvement (not necessarily a Collaboration of the Month).
  • Have respect for editorial policies.
  • Take an active interest in article improvement.
  • Utilize as little bureaucracy and meta-discussion as possible.
• Infrastructure
  • Links to resources that may assist in improving articles. This includes subpages of the WikiProject page, as well as external links.
  • WikiProject peer review.
  • Topical style guide
  • Topical article standards
  • Requests for images
  • Requests for articles
  • Optional: the WikiProject should accommodate expert editors somehow.
• Article assessment
  • Have the WP:1.0 article assessment grid and associated categorization scheme.
  • Have less than 30% of the articles in the assessment grid unsorted.

VWC Gold

VWC Gold is the upper echelon of the certification for WikiProjects with very high article quality. The requirements are as follows:

• Be VWC Standard-certified
• All articles with top-importance are Featured Articles.
• Fewer than 25% of articles have verifiability issues.
• Fewer than 15% of articles have editorial (grammar, usage, structure, etc.) issues.
• Fewer than 10% of articles have original research or neutrality issues.
• No excessive fair use (as determined by the evaluator on behalf of Veropedia).
• No improperly tagged images.

Benefits

Asides from the apparent incentive of increased efforts to preserve the fruit of each compliant WikiProject's labors, Veropedia would also like to make available research assistance to assist in the further improvement of articles. While it is not currently an option, at a later time Veropedia may consider furnishing research grants to WikiProjects for the purchase or rent of research materials.