Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment rewrite

We elected to use the combined version of the table for the main description.

This page is to be used for the revised drafting of the assessment criteria. The main summary page will be drafted here, and we will have other detailed pages linked from here.

Assessment guidelines
WikiProject-based assessment levels are shown first. These ratings are given by individual WikiProjects to articles under their scope.

This table shows assessments of an article by the general Wikipedia community. These are given to articles that pass Wikipedia-wide processes.

There are a few other assessments used in the mainspace that are done by WikiProjects but do not fit into the scale. Some of these are not used by all WikiProjects. Of these, only List-Class is tracked by the bot. In no particular order:

Assessment description
This table provides more detailed descriptions for the main assessment levels.

Combined table
This table combines the short examples with more substantial criteria explanations. It transcludes the FA, FL and GA criteria straight from their respective pages, to match the B-Class criteria we've just created (which are great, BTW Titoxd!). I've redefined the fourth column as "editing guidelines", which I think is more useful: we don't want to be focusing on what editors 'see', but rather where editors should be going. Just some ideas. Happy‑melon 15:53, 4 July 2008 (UTC)

Evolution of an article - an example
This example of the article "Atom" may help demonstrate the typical profile for an article's development through the levels. Click on the numbers to see the version at that time.
 * The article started as a stub [] on Oct 1, 2001.
 * By 8 October, 2001 it received some additions and approached the upper bound of the definition of stub: []
 * On 20 September 2002, the article was enriched with some more information and it moves into start class: []
 * The version as of 3 June 2004 [] is still in start class. There is a meaningful amount of information - but it needs further structuring improvement.
 * On 24 June 2004, the article receives another important addition - a useful image. It has reached the upper bound of start class, but still not good enough to get a C-class rating: [].
 * On 18 September 2004, the article looks like this: []. Some of the sections have expanded and now it barely meets the C-class requirements.
 * By 31 August 2005 the article has been expanded further and can now be comfortably called a C-class article: []. The article's major shortcoming is in referencing.
 * The version of 12 December 2005 [] has enough content and structure of a respectable article. In spite of its lack of in-line citation, the article is approaching the upper limit of C-Class. If it were properly referenced, we could have considered rating it B-class.
 * After addition of several new images and contents from a book (now cited), the article looks like this [] on 19 August 2006. Though some editors would still hesitate to rate it B-Class, due to its lack of in-line citation; content wise it deserves a B-Class.
 * By 23 March 2007 [] new contents and references have been added and the article would now safely pass a B-class assessment by any editor.
 * The October 17 2007 version of the article: [] is nominated for a Peer Review. Review closes on February 9, 2007 leaving the article like this: []. The review ensures completeness of the content, addresses many MoS issues and inline citation problems and upgrades the article to A-class.
 * Next day [] the article is nominated and listed as GA.
 * On February 12, 2008 the article was nominated for FA and this version of the article: [] (as of 17 February 2008) was promoted.