Wikipedia:WikiProject Severe weather/Assessment
This is a guide to assessing articles for WikiProject Severe weather.
The basic concept edit
Articles are assessed on a scale of class and importance. The class of an article is a measure of how complete, well-organized, accurate, and all-around nice-looking it is. The importance of an article is a measure of how essential it is to the completeness of the subject which this WikiProject covers—in this case, severe weather. For more details on class categories, keep reading
Assessments can be done by any member of the project, and it is fairly simple to do. Simply adding the {{severe}} template to an article's talk page, and the article will appear on the Severe weather assessment page. More details on how to use this template, keep reading.
Class edit
The class of an article can usually be assessed simply by glancing over the article. While most classes can be assessed by any editor, some require specialized processes. This table is partially adapted from {{Grading scheme}}.
| Label | Criteria | Editor's experience | Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stub {{Stub-Class}} |
The article is either a very short article or a short (a few paragraphs or less), rough collection of unsourced information that will need much work to bring it to B-Class level. At best a brief, informed dictionary definition. | Any editing or additional material can be helpful. | Daultipur-Salturia Tornado (as of October 2006) |
| Start {{Start-Class}} |
The article has a meaningful amount of content, but it is still weak in many areas. May be disorganized, with few or no section headers, grammatical errors, and multiple cleanup tags. A good rule of thumb is that if useful text fills more than the browser window, the article is Start-class or better. | Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article still needs to be completed, so an article cleanup tag is inappropriate at this stage. | Heat burst (as of May 2007) |
| C {{C-Class}} |
Has a good amount of the material needed for a completed article, and contains no glaring grammatical or stylistic errors. Nonetheless, it has significant gaps, and needs substantial editing for English language usage and/or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright or No Original Research (NOR), and may have some sort of cleanup tag. Should contain a picture or graphic if appropriate. Should have good coverage on the main point(s) of a topic. Should contain at least a few references and/or external links to further information. | Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. | Cloud (as of June 2008) |
| B {{B-Class}} |
Nearly meets the criteria for a Good Article. Should have no large gaps, stub sections, or cleanup templates, and should contain at least some vital in-line citations. May need a copyedit, but reads logically and is understandable to the average layperson. | Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some minor gaps in coverage or Manual of Style errors. References that are not yet referenced in-line should have this done. May need to be split into sub-articles if it is getting too long. | Surface weather observation (as of March 2008) |
 GA{{GA-Class}} |
The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and been granted GA status. Should have no obvious problems, gaps, or excessive information. This should be used for articles that still need some work to reach featured article standards, but that are otherwise acceptable, even exceptional. | Some editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time. Should be put up for Peer Review before promoting to A-class. | Evansville Tornado of November 2005 (as of April 2007) |
 A{{A-Class}} |
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 "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Should have already achieved Good Article status, and should be near-completed or done with Peer Review. If not already a featured article candidate, it should be nominated soon. | Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. | Cyclogenesis (as of June 2008) |
 FA{{FA-Class}} |
Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured article" status, and meet the current criteria for featured articles. "Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information." | No further editing is necessary unless new published information has come to light; but further improvements to the text are often possible. | Tornado (as of May 2007) |
| Label | Criteria | Example |
|---|---|---|
| List {{List-Class}} |
This class is for pages which qualify as a list. | List of tornadoes and tornado outbreaks |
| FL {{FL-Class}} |
This class is for lists (see above) which have received Featured List status. | List of snow events in Florida |
| Future {{Future-Class}} |
This class is for future events. (Rarely used) | Tornadoes of 2013 (If created before 2013) |
| Disambig {{Dab-Class}} |
This class is for disambiguation pages which help distinguish between similar- and like-named subjects. "No Importance" should be used for this class. | Birmingham Tornado |
| Template {{Template-Class}} |
This class is for pages in the template namespace. "No Importance" should be used for this class. | Template:Tornado Chart |
| Category {{Cat-Class}} |
This class is for severe weather categories. "No Importance" should be used for this class. | Category:Severe weather templates |
| Needed {{Needed-Class}} |
This class is for needed severe weather articles. Talk pages which do not have associated articles will often be deleted, so a {{severe}} template with Needed class should usually only be placed on the talk page of redirects which should be their own article. This is a rarely-used class. | Talk:Lake effect |
| None {{No-Class}} |
This class is for severe weather pages which, for some reason, do not fit into any of the categories above. | No example |
Importance edit
Assessing the importance of an article is one part guidelines below, one part common sense. Importance assessments can be done by any editor.
| Label | Criteria | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Top {{Top-importance}} |
This level of importance is for the most vital articles to the subject of severe weather. This includes important severe weather phenomena, as well as benchmark historic storms. | Severe weather, Tornado, Hail Super Outbreak, Daultipur-Salturia Tornado, Tri-State Tornado |
| High {{High-importance}} |
This level is for articles on fairly important severe weather phenomena, as well as important weather prediction/research organizations and very important severe weather meteorologists. For storm articles, any storm which caused more than 50 deaths (100 deaths before 1953) or $250 million in damage, as well as any extremely notable and/or unprecedented events, should be High-importance | Squall line, Funnel cloud Ted Fujita, Storm Prediction Center 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak, Salt Lake City Tornado |
| Mid {{Mid-importance}} |
This level is for articles which do a good job completing the subject of severe weather. Included should be less notable severe weather phenomena, as well as less important severe weather organizations and meteorologists. Any severe weather events which are notable historically, have killed a significant amount of people, or have caused a significant amount of damage should be included. All F5/EF5 tornadoes causing fatalities should be at least Mid-importance, as well as all tornado outbreaks of 50 or more tornadoes (or 20 or more significant tornadoes) in a day. | Dust devil, Heat burst, Thomas P. Grazulis 2007 Central Florida tornadoes, Western Wisconsin Derecho |
| Low {{Low-importance}} |
This level is for all other articles, the least important ones. | London Tornado of 2006, Memphis Summer Storm of 2003, Keith Browning |
| NA {{NA-importance}} |
This level is for non-articles such as disambiguation pages and templates. | Birmingham Tornado, Template:Tornado Chart |
Using the {{WikiProject Weather}} template edit
When using the {{WikiProject Weather}} template, there are several important rules to remember. For the page to be included in the task force {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes}} should be used
- To assess a page, first decide at which of the above levels it should be assessed.
- Add the text {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes|class=|importance=}}, with the appropriate assessment code following each "=" sign. A few examples are as follows:
- For a Start-Class, Low-importance article, add the text {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes|class=Start|importance=Low}} to the article's talk page.
- For an FA-Class, High-importance article, add the text {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes|class=FA|importance=High}}
- For a Future-Class, Mid-importance article, add the text {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes|class=Future|importance=Mid}}
- For a Cat-Class, No-importance article (remember that Dab, Template, and Cat class should always have No-importance), add the text {{WikiProject Weather|thunderstorms-and-tornadoes-task-force=yes|class=Cat|importance=No}}
- Always capitalize the assessment code! The assessment list will break if you use lower-case. It is important that the text appear as above.
- All the above suggestions/rules must be taken into account while assessing, but editors have a good deal of freedom in their assessments.