User:Slambo/Assessment thoughts

In rating articles, I usually go with what I call the "culturally or historically significant" rule of thumb with regards to rail transport technology and history worldwide. I've tried to put this idea into words on the WikiProject Trains/Assessment page (see the Importance scale section) and so far haven't seen any dissenting opinions on the guidelines specified there. Generally, I look for notability statements (such as superlatives [first, largest, busiest, etc.], whether the structure is a listed building or equivalent status, notable historic events that occurred there, etc.) in the lead section and combine that information with my own experience in researching rail transport topics. There's more on subject notability in the Trains WikiProject MOS (another collection of guidelines where I have yet to see any major dissenting opinions). If I don't see any notability statements like these in the lead, then I usually examine my own familiarity with the subject and how important the topic seems to me in an understanding of rail transport history and technology. With several thousand articles still yet to rate (see Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Rail transport articles by quality statistics for the current count), I'm not spending a whole lot of time on each article right now.

The split between Start and B class is more difficult to see on a quick once-over. A few things that I look for are references, images, a comprehensive set of headings, a good article length, no maintenance tags and more prose than lists. It is very likely that on further review, article ratings should be different from what I initially put on them (and I've found and rerated several articles that I've come across a second time). The easiest way to get me to do a more thorough review on a specific article is to list it on the assessment page as a specific assessment request; I generally take more time on these and will often leave comments for improvement.

I don't claim to be the Trains WikiProject Article Ratings Guru, I'm just the guy who's been doing a lot of them, and if there are any specific ratings that should be changed, you don't need my permission to be bold and make the update.