Wikipedia:WikiProject Human spaceflight/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance

Describing importance

Three different ways of expressing the priority of articles are currently used.

1. The importance, significance and depth of the topic within its particular field or subject.
2. The extent of the topic's impact, usually in the sense of "impact beyond its particular field", but it is also used to express global impact, and impact through history.
3. The bottom line: how important is it for an encyclopaedia to have an article on the given topic?

These are often different ways of saying the same thing, but the current WP 1.0 summary table mixes the three approaches: Top priority is described using method 3, High and Mid priority using method 1, and Low priority using method 2.

The following table of possible priority or importance levels lists these distinct approaches in separate columns, and provides more detail on the meaning of the individual levels, as well as examples.

Article importance/priority rating scheme

Priority	Importance within field	Impact	Need for encyclopedia	Examples
Top	Article/subject is extremely important, even crucial, to its field	Widespread and very significant	An absolute "must-have" human spaceflight article. Should include items such as models of manned spacecraft, manned space programs & major space stations. Space disasters and the 'top five' single spaceflights are also included.	Soyuz spacecraft Salyut Program International Space Station Space Shuttle Columbia disaster Vostok 1
High	Article/subject contributes a substantial depth of knowledge	Significant impact in other fields	Very much needed, even vital, human spaceflight articles. Should include high-profile single missions, 'series' space stations, space station modules and notable astronauts.	STS-71 Salyut 6 Harmony (ISS module) Yuri Gagarin
Mid	Article/subject adds important further details within its field	Some impact beyond field	Adds further depth, but not vital to the encyclopaedia. Includes single missions, spacesuits & other equipment, and most astronauts.	STS-120 Orlan space suit Manned Maneuvering Unit Vasili Tsibliyev
Low	Article/subject contributes more specific or less significant details	Mainly of specialist interest	Not at all essential, or can be covered adequately by other articles. Includes subsystems of manned spacecraft, cancelled missions, planetary colonisation articles and ground teams & equipment.	Extended Duration Orbiter Cancelled Apollo missions Colonization of Europa Vehicle Assembly Building
(None)	Article/subject may be peripheral	May be too highly specialized	May not be relevant or may be too trivial in content to be needed	Comment: such articles are not relevant enough to the human spaceflight project to need a rating.

The last row is not an importance level per se, but is intended to provide guidance on adding (and perhaps sometimes even removing) human spaceflight ratings. In addition there is a Category:Unknown-importance Human spaceflight articles for articles which have a human spaceflight rating, but no importance level: editors should feel free either to assign an importance level (Low-Priority or higher) or remove the human spaceflight rating from these articles.