Wikipedia:WikiProject Germany/Assessment

The assessment department of WikiProject Germany focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's articles related to Germany. The resulting article ratings are used within the project to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work, and are also expected to play a role in the WP:1.0 program.

The assessment is done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the WikiProject Germany project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:Germany articles by quality, which serve as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist.

Introduction
The assessment system used by WikiProject Germany is fairly orthodox, with two scales. The first evaluates articles, while the other assesses lists. The progression of these articles through this system is described further in the figure below.

Importance scale
Except for books and a few vital project-related pages, most non-article classes don't need a specific importance parameter.

An article's importance assessment is generated from the importance parameter in the WikiProject Germany project banner on its talk page:



The following values may be used for importance assessments:
 * Top - adds articles to Category:Top-importance Germany articles
 * High - adds articles to Category:High-importance Germany articles
 * Mid - adds articles to Category:Mid-importance Germany articles
 * Low - adds articles to Category:Low-importance Germany articles

Municipality clause
WikiProject pertains to the people, places, history, and culture of Germany, and cities, towns, and municipalities check off all of those boxes. All cities/municipalities/districts are to be marked as Mid Importance, and villages within them Low Importance.

Processes
This section describes the processes utilized by WikiProject Germany to assess the quality of its articles.

Individual review
The individual review process is used for all assessment activity up to B-Class articles. Any editor may assess an article or list and assign assessment according to the listed criteria by themselves.

An article's author may use this process to assign assessment themselves. However, the final assessment for B-Class and beyond is typically left in the hands of an independent editor for review. Requests for independent review can be made at the assessment request page.

Peer review
The peer review process is not used to evaluate an article for a particular assessment level directly; rather, it is a forum where article authors can solicit ideas for further improvements. Peer review is most often requested when an article is at the C-Class or B-Class level; articles at lower levels are typically so incomplete that a meaningful review is impossible, while articles at higher levels go through more formal review processes.

Good article review
The good article nomination process is an independent review mechanism through which an article receives a "good article" quality rating. The process involves a detailed review of the article by an independent examiner, who determines whether the article meets the good article criteria.

Full instructions for requesting a good article review are provided on the good article review page.

Featured article/list candidacy
The featured article candidacy and featured list candidacy processes are an independent, Wikipedia-wide quality assessment mechanism; these processes are the only way an article can receive a "featured" quality rating. The process involves a comprehensive review of the article by multiple independent examiners, all of whom must agree that the article meets the featured article or list criteria.

Full instructions for submitting a featured article or list candidacy are provided on the corresponding candidacy page. Editors are advised to carefully review the submission instructions; failing to follow them correctly may cause the submission to be rejected.

FAQ

 * 1. What is the purpose of the article ratings? : The rating system allows the project to monitor the quality of articles in our subject areas, and to prioritize work on these articles. It is also utilized by the Wikipedia 1.0 program to prepare for static releases of Wikipedia content. Please note, however, that these ratings are primarily intended for the internal use of the project, and do not necessarily imply any official standing within Wikipedia as a whole.
 * 2. How do I add an article to the WikiProject? : Just add WikiProject Germany to the talk page; there's no need to do anything else.
 * 3. Someone put a WikiProject Germany template on an article, but it doesn't seem to be within the project's scope. What should I do? : Because of the large number of articles we deal with, we occasionally make mistakes and add tags to articles that shouldn't have them. If you notice one, feel free to remove the tag, and optionally leave a note on the talk page of this department (or directly with the person who tagged the article).
 * 4. Who can assess articles? : Any member of the Germany WikiProject is free to add—or change—the rating of an article. Editors who are not participants in this project are also welcome to assess articles, but should defer to consensus within the project in case of procedural disputes.
 * 5. How do I rate an article? : Check the quality scale and select the level that best matches the state of the article; then, follow the instructions below to add the rating to the project banner on the article's talk page. Please note that some of the available levels have an associated formal review process; this is documented in the assessment scale.
 * 6. Can I request that someone else rate an article? : Of course; to do so, please list it in the section for assessment requests below.
 * 7. Why didn't the reviewer leave any comments? : Unfortunately, due to the volume of articles that need to be assessed, we are unable to leave detailed comments in most cases. If you have particular questions, you might ask the person who assessed the article; they will usually be happy to provide you with their reasoning.


 * 8. 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. Please note that some of the available levels have an associated formal review process; this is documented in the assessment scale.
 * 9. Aren't the ratings subjective? : Yes, they are somewhat subjective, 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!
 * 10. What if I have a question not listed here? : If your question concerns the article assessment process specifically, please refer to the discussion page for this department; for any other issues, you can go to the main project discussion page.

Assessment backlogs
Please help to clear any backlogs of unassessed articles in the following categories:


 * The current status of Category:Unassessed Germany articles = articles unassessed. After articles have been assessed, they are automatically removed from this category.

Statistics
In true stereotypical German fashion, it's time for graphs and numbers.

Progress
Progress in the backlogs for articles not assessed by quality or important to the WikiProject.

Task force statistics


Log
A full log of assessment changes for the past seven days is available; unfortunately, due to its extreme size, it cannot be transcluded directly.