User:John F. Lewis/Adopt/Reviewing Articles

Reviewing Articles

Another skill editors should know is how to review an article. It's not something overly useful, but it's still good to know. Wikipedia grades, or "assesses" its articles on a scale according to how much information they provide and how well. This assessment scale is largely unofficial, with the majority of assessments made by WikiProjects who claim jurisdiction over the articles. There are, however, two official ratings which are given to those articles which are nominated by editors and reviewed to see if they meet a series of criteria. The full ranking is as follows:

Label Criteria Reader's experience Editing suggestions Example

FA
{{FA-Class}}

The article has attained Featured article status.

More detailed criteria

The article must meet the featured article criteria:

A featured article exemplifies Wikipedia's very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting the policies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.

It is:
1. well-written: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard;
2. comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context;
3. well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate;
4. neutral: it presents views fairly and without bias;
5. stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process; and
6. compliant with Wikipedia's copyright policy and free of plagiarism or too-close paraphrasing.
It follows the style guidelines, including the provision of:
1. a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections;
2. appropriate structure: a substantial but not overwhelming system of hierarchical section headings; and
3. consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.
Media. It has images and other media, where appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. Images follow the image use policy. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly.
Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style where appropriate.

Professional, outstanding, and thorough; a definitive source for encyclopedic information.

No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible.

Tourette Syndrome
(as of March 2009)

FL
{{FL-Class}}

The article has attained Featured list status.

More detailed criteria

The article must meet the featured list criteria:

Prose. It features professional standards of writing.
Lead. It has an engaging
lead
that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
Comprehensiveness.
- (a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing at least all of the major items and, where practical, a complete set of items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about the items.
- (b) statements are
  four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations
  .
- (c) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for
  content-forking guideline
  , does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.
Style. It complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages.
- (a) Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting,
  colour
  ; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked.
- (b) Media files. It has
  are labeled accordingly
  .
- (c) Accessibility. It
  alternative (alt) text
  .
Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing
edit wars
and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured list process.

Avatar: The Last Airbender (season 3)
(as of February 2009)

A
{{A-Class}}

The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been

reviewed by impartial reviewers

from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class.

More detailed criteria

A	Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described in Wikipedia:Article development. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, appropriately structured, and be well referenced by a broad array of reliable sources. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Only minor style issues and other details need to be addressed before submission as a featured article candidate. See the A-Class assessment departments of some of the larger WikiProjects (e.g. WikiProject Military history).

Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting.

Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style issues may need addressing. Peer-review may help.

Batman (1989 film)
(as of October 2008)

GA
{{GA-Class}}

The article has attained Good article status.

More detailed criteria

The article must meet the good article criteria:

A good article is:

Well-written:
1. the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and
2. it complies with the
  list incorporation
  .
Verifiable with no original research:
1. it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with
  the layout style guideline
  ;
2. reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);
3. it contains no original research; and
4. it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism.
Broad in its coverage:
1. it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and
2. it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
Illustrated, if possible, by media such as
audio
:
1. media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
2. media are
  relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions
  .

Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia.

Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existing featured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing.

2008 ACC Championship Game
(as of January 2009)

B
{{B-Class}}

The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach

six B-Class criteria

.

More detailed criteria

The article is
suitably referenced, with inline citations. It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Any format of inline citation is acceptable: the use of <ref> tags and citation templates such as {{cite web
}} is optional.

The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an

A-Class article

, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.

The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but does not need to be of the standard of featured articles. The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.
The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
The article presents its content in an
technical terms should be explained or avoided
where possible.

Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher.

A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed, and expert knowledge is increasingly needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the

manual of style and related style guidelines

.

Jammu and Kashmir
(as of September 2007)

C
{{C-Class}}

The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantial cleanup.

More detailed criteria
The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as in-universe perspective .

Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.

Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and address cleanup issues.

Exeter Cathedral
(as of June 2008)

Start
{{Start-Class}}

An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.

More detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content, but it is weak in many areas, usually in referencing. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and speedily deleted .

Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more.

Provision of references to reliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation.

Real analysis
(as of November 2006)

Stub
{{Stub-Class}}

A very basic description of the topic.

More detailed criteria
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category.

Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition

Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority.

Cuthwine
(as of August 2008)

Other types of pages are graded outside this criteria. Lists are no more than that, long lists of topics that all relate to the main theme of the list. Lists don't provide any prose, and any references are there simply to confirm that the topic does meet the criteria for inclusion. Each list must provide a specific criteria for what is considered a member of that list. Usually this is clear in the title, such as in

List of people affected by bipolar disorder

, and require some strong referencing to merit inclusion.

Disambiguation pages are designed to help people find the right article. Some topics share names with other topics, leading to confusion. For example, if you were to search for George Washington, you're probably looking for

rge Washin gtons. That last sentence contains a total of 8 links, all of which lead to a George Washington of some variety, and I certainly could have included more from George Washington (disambiguation)

.

The assignment

Now that you've seen the different kinds of articles, take a look at some of these and tell me what you think they should be graded as. Don't look at the talk pages, just read the article and give it your own assessment. Give a short reasoning of why you have graded it such. If you believe an article does not meet the requirements of any level, mark it as a "sub-stub". Once you have done that, leave me a message on my

talk page

.

So, to complete this lesson, click the random article, say, five times, and assess each article on the above scale (without looking at the talk page) and give me a short reasoning on each of the 5 articles, on my talk page. Cheers.