Wikipedia:WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review

Welcome to the A-Class Review (ACR) page, where Good Articles are judged by our community of editors and may be promoted to A-Class. An A-Class article is defined as one that "Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from reliable, third-party published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy (peer-reviewed where appropriate). Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the 'Wikipedia 1.0' standard." The main goals of ACR are to standardize the quality of all A-Class articles across the Highways WikiProject and its subprojects, and to provide a thorough review process that is similar to FAC without the stress that can come from the FAC process.

If you know of a Good Article that meets this criteria, you can nominate it below. If you are not a significant contributor to the article, you are encouraged to consult a significant contributor prior to nominating. From time to time, current A-Class or Featured Article status are reviewed to ensure that they are still of high quality. Articles that no longer meet the current criteria may be nominated for demotion using the process below.

List-Class articles may also be nominated here, in preparation for the featured list candidate process. However, the A-List designation will not be awarded until 1) 10 nominations have passed the process and 2) of those 10 nominations, all those that have not passed FLC have been judged to meet the A-List standard.

How does ACR work?
The WP:Highway ACR process is fairly simple.
 * 1) An editor nominates an article that he or she feels meets the A-Class criteria. When ACR is busy, editors are urged to have only one open nomination at a time.
 * 2) The community of editors reviews the article. There is no one way to review an article; some editors specialize in certain aspects of reviewing, such as, but not limited to:
 * 3) *Fact checking
 * 4) *Judging the reliability of the sources
 * 5) *Reference formatting
 * 6) *Grammar and prose
 * 7) *Image license checks
 * 8) The nominator addresses the reviewers' concerns by editing the article accordingly.
 * 9) The reviewers then support or oppose promotion of the article based on how the article progresses. Generally, it takes 2 net supports (that is, two more supports than opposes) for an article to pass ACR.

Initiating a discussion
Before initiating an A-Class review, please verify the following:
 * The article you wish to nominate is a Good Article.
 * The article has a KML file. If you are nominating a list, KML is encouraged, but not required.
 * You do not already have an open A-Class Review. If you do, please wait until the first review is closed before starting another.

If you can answer yes to all three questions, you may initiate an A-Class review.


 * 1) Add  to the end of the WikiProject Australian Roads, WikiProject Canada Roads, WikiProject Highways, WikiProject Indian roads, WikiProject UK Roads, or WikiProject U.S. Roads banner on the article's talk page, and save the edit.
 * 2) Click the link in the line that reads "Follow this link and fill out the details in the edit window" to preload the nomination page. Fill in the details and save the nomination page.
 * 3) Add the name of this subpage to the end of the Current discussions section below.
 * 4) Add a link to the discussion on HWY Announcements, WikiProject Canada Roads/News/Content and other subproject talk pages or announcement templates.
 * 5) Consider participating in other open discussions to ensure that they are completed in a timely manner.

Participating in discussions
Everyone is welcome to participate in these discussions. The A-Class criteria should be used as a guideline and not as hard and fast rules. The most important part of each A-Class review is the review of the written prose designed to make sure that the content in the article is clear, complete, and formatted consistently with our MOS and other guidelines. We require two or three editors to perform a prose review for each nomination. Each review takes shape in its own way, but typically, editors will sign up to tackle different parts of the review. Regardless of who signs up for what section, all A-Class reviews must have all images used in the article checked to see if they possess a free license ("image review"). In addition, a percentage of references may be fact checked (typically called "the spotcheck"), and sources may be reviewed for reliability and formatting consistency ("source review"), though these are only required by request.

When reviewing, make any comments in a list format so the nominator can reply to each comment in kind. Keep in mind, various national-level subprojects may have slightly different standards for articles under their scope. They will also use different variations of English. These differences will be respected and applied as appropriate. To withdraw an objection, strike it out (with ... ) rather than removing it. Nominators should allow reviewers the opportunity to do this themselves; if you feel that the matter has been addressed, say so rather than striking out the reviewer's text. After the nominator addressed all the comments and concerns, the reviewer may support or oppose promotion. This is done by saying "Support" in bold and signing their name ( ~ ). If you have exceptionally long comments, use the following code to hide your comments after all of your issues have been resolved. Your comments here.

If you oppose a nomination, write "Oppose" followed by the reason for your objection. Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to fix the source of the objection or it is not based on policy, the objection may be ignored.

Suspending a nomination
Nominations that have outstanding comments and that have not been edited by the nominator in 30 days will be suspended and the transclusion of the review removed from this page. A nominator may reactivate a suspended nomination at any time. A suspended nomination will be removed from the candidates list automatically with a consensus to not promote at the earlier of 6 months from the suspension date or 1 year from the nomination date.

Closing a discussion
Consensus must be reached in order to be promoted to A-Class, in that all actionable objections must be addressed.
 * For promotion: Typically, two more substantial support declarations than oppose declarations ("two net supports") are necessary for promotion, along with an image review. Any reviewer who declared their support may review images in addition to their prose review.
 * For removal from the candidates list: A-Class article candidates that are not promoted will be removed from the candidates list once a candidate has received a net three opposes that cite standards-based objections. Please remember that the process is not entirely a vote, and articles with majority support can still fail if they don't fully meet the criteria.

When consensus is determined, the discussion can be closed. Discussions should not be closed by a participating reviewer except where the reviewer participated only to clarify points of the discussion to determine consensus, or in the case of a stale nomination or the nominator withdraws.
 * 1) Remove  from the end of the talk page banner.
 * 2) If the discussion resulted in a change in the article's quality assessment, then change the assessment as necessary.
 * 3) Add ArticleHistory to the talk page of the article, if not already present. Follow the instructions here on how to add the review to the template (see the "WikiProject A-class review" row).
 * 4) Add and  to the top and bottom of the discussion subpage, respectively.
 * 5) Remove HWY ACR status from the review.
 * 6) Move the line  from the list of discussions below to the current archive page.
 * 7) Remove the article from HWY Announcements or WikiProject Canada Roads/News/Content or otherwise update the posting on a subproject talk page.

Suspended nominations

 * WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/U.S. Route 33 in Michigan
 * WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/U.S. Route 223
 * WikiProject Highways/Assessment/A-Class Review/Interstate 5 in Washington

Current demotion discussions

 * A formal notice should be placed on the talk page of the original nominator (at ACR/FAC), and on the appropriate WikiProject talk page, to make sure appropriate editors are informed.
 * In order to keep the article at A-Class or FA-Class, three net Keep votes are required, but a spotcheck and image review are not necessarily required.
 * In order to demote the article from A-Class or FA-Class, three net Demote votes are required, and must cite specific criteria or standards in which the article is deficient. Note that in order to demote an article from FA-Class, a review at FAR is required. In that scenario, if the article is kept at FAR, the article will remain at FA-Class; if the article is demoted, the article will revert to GA-Class, if it retains that status; if not, the article will revert to B-Class (or lower, if necessary). It will not retain any A-Class status that it previously had.
 * After 30 days of no edits to the review page, such a review will be considered inactive. A formal notice should be left on WT:HWY, the original nominator's talk page, the appropriate task force or national project talk pages, and on the talk page of all people who have commented on the review, in order to encourage people to make changes to the article and/or make keep or demote declarations. If no attempts are made to continue working on the article within 7 days, the review will be closed as keep by default.