Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Assessment

Welcome to the assessment department of the WikiProject Video games! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's video games 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 WP:1.0 program, and more specifically in the Video games essential articles page.

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

To request reassessment, add  to the WikiProject Video games banner on the article's talk page. Articles needing reassessment are listed in Category:Wikipedia video game articles for reassessment.

FAQ

 * See also the general assessment 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 Video games to the talk page; there's no need to do anything else.
 * 3. Someone put a WikiProject Video games 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 Video games 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 that must be followed; this is documented in the assessment instructions.
 * 6. Can I request that someone else rate an article? : Of course. To request reassessment, add  to the WikiProject Video games banner on the article's talk page.
 * 7. Where can I get more comments about an article? : Peer reviews can conduct more thorough examination of articles; please submit it for review there.
 * 8. What if I don't agree with a rating? : You can request reassessment (by adding  to the WikiProject Video games banner on the article's talk page), 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 that must be followed—this is documented in the assessment instructions.
 * 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.
 * 11. What is the difference between video games assessment and general assessment? : At WikiProject Video games, we do things a little differently than normal assessment. You will find most of the below in other sections as well, but this is a summary for those familiar with the assessment procedure in general:
 * Our project doesn't assess A-class.
 * Comments and suggestions are usually placed as a list on the talk page of the article, not here.
 * We have some specific standards based upon the guidelines, see the table below.

Assessment instructions
An article's assessment is generated from the class parameter in the WikiProject Video games project banner on its talk page:



The following values may be used:
 * FA (adds articles to Category:FA-Class video game articles; should only be used for articles that are currently listed as featured articles)
 * FL (adds articles to Category:FL-Class video game articles; should only be used for articles that are currently listed as featured lists)
 * GA (adds articles to Category:GA-Class video game articles; should only be used for articles that are currently listed as good articles)
 * B (adds articles to Category:B-Class video game articles)
 * C (adds articles to Category:C-Class video game articles)
 * Start (adds articles to Category:Start-Class video game articles)
 * Stub (adds articles to Category:Stub-Class video game articles)
 * List (adds articles to Category:List-Class video game articles)
 * Disambig (for disambiguation pages, adds articles to Category:Disambig-Class video game articles)
 * Redirect (for redirect pages, adds articles to Category:Redirect-Class video game articles)

There are other classes used by WP:VG which are automatically assessed by the template based on namespace, and should not be rated manually. These classes are Category, File, Portal, Template, Project, Book, Draft, and NA or Non-Article (for pages in the User, Help and Mediawiki namespace). All other articles should fit somewhere in the above grading scheme. A full list of valid class names and abbreviations can be found at Template:WikiProject Video games/class.

Articles for which a valid class is not provided are listed in Category:Unassessed video game articles. The class should be assigned according to the quality scale below.

Importance scale

 * Top importance articles reflect the basis of video gaming and not so much the hallmarks of the fields. Such hallmark games and other aspects are typically treated in Top articles, but they are not their sole content.
 * Low importance articles and almost all lists cover very specific or obscure knowledge. Any other notable article or list not described in the table below is of low importance. A low importance article is not the same as a bad or unnecessary article. But in some cases there is more value to merging it under the umbrella of a larger article, as this will enhance both topics.
 * Importance is not necessarily related to the popularity of an article. A list of articles ranked by pageviews is available here.

Assessment tools
The process of going through unassessed articles can become mundane quickly. To speed up the process you can use the Kingbotk plugin for the AutoWikiBrowser if you are running Windows. This tool requires admin approval (generally, only users with over 500 edits in the mainspace are accepted) before a user can make edits with the tool. After approval, the Kingbotk plugin can be set up to make assessments with the WikiProject Video games tag. For further details on installation and setup visit the pages for AutoWikiBrowser, Kingbotk plugin, and Generic WikiProject templates.

For editors who do not have AWB permission or who would like to be able to assess individual articles without launching AWB, Evad37's userscript Rater is still much faster than manually copying and pasting templates on talk pages. This is the updated version of Kephir's script, and is actively maintained and significantly improved. It includes ORES-generated quality suggestions to assist users as well as several hotkeys and other improvements. Users of Kephir's script are recommended to try the newer script.

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