Wikipedia:WikiProject Iowa/Assessment

The assessment department of WikiProject Iowa focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Iowa articles. 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 Version 1.0 Editorial Team program.

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

Frequently ask questions

 * 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 to the talk page; there's no need to do anything else.
 * 3. Someone put a 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 project talk page (or directly with the person who tagged the article).
 * 4. Who can assess articles? : Any member of the Iowa 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. 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.
 * 7. What if I don't agree with a rating? : 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.
 * 8. 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!

Importance scale
Importance must be regarded as a relative term. If priority values are applied within this project, these only reflect the perceived importance to this project and to the work groups the biography falls under. An article judged to be "Top-importance" in one context may be only "Mid-importance" in another project. The criteria used for rating article priority are not meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus, the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it.)