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The assessment of articles on Wikipedia is essential to help editors improve and maintain quality standards. Within the scope of a WikiProject, members with shared interests can identify and assess articles, in order to appraise editor contributions, using an established quality grading scheme. In addition to standard ratings, articles can also be assessed, independent of WikiProjects, as Good articles and Featured articles, allowing editors to produce work at a professional encyclopedic level. What follows are the assessment standards offered by WikiProject Westerns.
Frequently asked questions
edit- How can I get my article rated?
- Please list it in the section for assessment requests below.
- Who can assess articles?
- Any member of the Westerns WikiProject is free to add or change the rating of an article, up to and including B-Class without need for a formal review process. See instructions below.
- 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.
- What if I don't agree with a rating?
- You can list it in the section for assessment requests below, and someone will take a look at it. Alternately, you can ask any member of the project to rate the article again.
- Aren't the ratings subjective?
- Yes, they are, 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!
Instructions
editProject members may grade articles up to and including B-Class without need for a formal review process. Editors should enter the class they feel the article meets using the {{Westerns}}
project banner. Editors may also raise or lower an article's class, accordingly, if the article appears over-rated or has been developed to a higher quality grade.
- Template and Category pages that are related to the project should be tagged with the
{{Westerns}}
project banner and given the appropriate class. No further action is required. - The project does not identify Disambiguation, Book, or FM (featured media) pages, at present.
- Articles that have been reviewed as FA/FL or GA class should also be identified as such within the project banner.
- Editors may tag and assess articles which they have created up to B-Class, although a second opinion should normally be made at B-Class requests to avoid bias.
Quality assessments
editWikiProject Westerns uses the same criteria for grading articles as set out by the Version 1.0 Editorial Team. If you are not sure what class an article falls under, leave a note on the WikiProject's talkpage, and someone will help you out.
An article's quality assessment is generated from the class parameter in the {{WikiProject Banner Shell}}. Articles that have the {{WikiProject Westerns}} project banner on their talk page will be added to the appropriate categories by quality.
The following values may be used for the class parameter to describe the quality of the article (see Wikipedia:Content assessment for assessment criteria):
FA (for featured articles only; adds articles to Category:FA-Class Westerns articles) | FA | |
A (adds articles to Category:A-Class Westerns articles) | A | |
GA (for good articles only; adds articles to Category:GA-Class Westerns articles) | GA | |
B (adds articles to Category:B-Class Westerns articles) | B | |
C (adds articles to Category:C-Class Westerns articles) | C | |
Start (adds articles to Category:Start-Class Westerns articles) | Start | |
Stub (adds articles to Category:Stub-Class Westerns articles) | Stub | |
FL (for featured lists only; adds articles to Category:FL-Class Westerns articles) | FL | |
List (adds articles to Category:List-Class Westerns articles) | List |
For non-standard grades and non-mainspace content, the following values may be used for the class parameter:
Category (for categories; adds pages to Category:Category-Class Westerns articles) | Category | |
Draft (for drafts; adds pages to Category:Draft-Class Westerns articles) | Draft | |
File (for files and timed text; adds pages to Category:File-Class Westerns articles) | File | |
Project (for project pages; adds pages to Category:Project-Class Westerns articles) | Project | |
Redirect (for redirect pages; adds pages to Category:Redirect-Class Westerns articles) | Redirect | |
Template (for templates and modules; adds pages to Category:Template-Class Westerns articles) | Template | |
NA (for any other pages where assessment is unnecessary; adds pages to Category:NA-Class Westerns articles) | NA | |
??? (articles for which a valid class has not yet been provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Westerns articles) | ??? |
For a non-article, such as a Category, File, Template, or Project page, placing the {{WikiProject Westerns}} banner on the talk page, without a class parameter, will automatically put the page in the appropriate class category.
Quality scale
editClass | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editing suggestions | Example |
---|---|---|---|---|
FA | The article has attained featured article status by passing an in-depth examination by impartial reviewers from WP:Featured article candidates. More detailed criteria
The article meets 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.
|
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. | The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. |
FL | The article has attained featured list status by passing an in-depth examination by impartial reviewers from WP:Featured list candidates. More detailed criteria
The article meets the featured list criteria:
|
Professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items. | No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible. | List of Gunsmoke television episodes |
A | The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been examined by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class. More detailed criteria
The article meets the A-Class criteria:
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 would typically find nothing wanting. | Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style problems may need solving. WP:Peer review may help. | — |
GA | The article meets all of the good article criteria, and has been examined by one or more impartial reviewers from WP:Good article nominations. More detailed criteria
A good article is:
|
Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (though not necessarily equalling) the quality of a professional publication. | 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. | Clint Eastwood |
B | The article meets all of the B-Class criteria. It is mostly complete and does not have major problems, but requires some further work to reach good article standards. More detailed criteria
|
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. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines. | High Noon |
C | The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup. More detailed criteria
The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements, or need editing for clarity, balance, or flow.
|
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 solve cleanup problems. | Cheyenne (1955 TV series) |
Start | An article that is developing but still quite incomplete. It may or may not cite adequate reliable sources. More detailed criteria
The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas. The article has one or more of the following:
|
Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more. | Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation. Also improve the grammar, spelling, writing style and improve the jargon use. | Geronimo (1962 film) |
Stub | A very basic description of the topic. Meets none of the Start-Class criteria. | Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant. | Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. The best solution for a Stub-class Article to step up to a Start-class Article is to add in referenced reasons of why the topic is significant. | Alias Billy the Kid |
List | Meets the criteria of a stand-alone list or set index article, which is an article that contains primarily a list, usually consisting of links to articles in a particular subject area. | There is no set format for a list, but its organization should be logical and useful to the reader. | Lists should be lists of live links to Wikipedia articles, appropriately named and organized. | John Wayne filmography (1961–1976) |
Category | Any category falls under this class. | Categories are mainly used to group together articles within a particular subject area. | Large categories may need to be split into one or more subcategories. Be wary of articles that have been miscategorized. | Western (genre) |
Redirect | Any redirect falls under this class. | The page redirects to another article with a similar name, related topic or that has been merged with the original article at this location. | Editor involvement is essential to ensure that articles are not mis-classified as redirects, and that redirects are not mis-classified as articles. | — |
Template | Any template falls under this class. The most common types of templates include infoboxes and navboxes. | Different types of templates serve different purposes. Infoboxes provide easy access to key pieces of information about the subject. Navboxes are for the purpose of grouping together related subjects into an easily accessible format, to assist the user in navigating between articles. | Infoboxes are typically placed at the upper right of an article, while navboxes normally go across the very bottom of a page. Beware of too many different templates, as well as templates that give either too little, too much, or too specialized information. | — |
Importance assessment
editAn article's importance assessment is generated from the importance parameter in the {{WikiProject Westerns}} project banner on its talk page:
The following values may be used for the importance parameter to describe the relative importance of the article within the project (see Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Priority of topic for assessment criteria):
Top (adds articles to Category:Top-importance Westerns articles) | Top | |
High (adds articles to Category:High-importance Westerns articles) | High | |
Mid (adds articles to Category:Mid-importance Westerns articles) | Mid | |
Low (adds articles to Category:Low-importance Westerns articles) | Low | |
NA (adds articles to Category:NA-importance Westerns articles) | NA | |
??? (articles for which a valid importance rating has not yet been provided are listed in Category:Unknown-importance Westerns articles) | ??? |
Importance scale
editDon't worry too much about assessing for Importance. It's helpful to have the most vital westerns genre articles tagged as Top importance so they can be easily identified as the highest priority, but less influential television articles don't really need to be tagged for importance.
Note: The "importance" of an article is to be assessed for its importance within this WikiProject.
Article importance grading scheme
editImportance | Criteria | Example |
---|---|---|
Top | Subject is extremely important, even crucial, to its specific field. Reserved for subjects that have achieved international notability within their field. | Western (genre) |
High | Subject is extremely notable, but has not achieved international notability, or is only notable within a particular continent. | Gary Cooper |
Mid | Subject is only notable within its particular field or subject and has achieved notability in a particular place or area. | Gunslinger (film) |
Low | Subject is not particularly notable or significant even within its field of study. It may only be included to cover a specific part of a notable article. | Bordertown (1989 TV series) |
NA | Subject importance is not applicable. Generally applies to non-article pages such as redirects, categories, templates, etc. | Template:WikiProject Westerns |
??? | Subject importance has not yet been assessed. | N/A |
Requesting an assessment
editIf you have made significant changes to an article and would like an outside opinion on a new rating for it, please feel free to list it below. Please add new entries to the bottom of the list and sign with four tildes (~~~~).
Assessment Requests
edit2022
edit2022 assessments |
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|
2023
edit- Pages related to the Yellowstone franchise: Yellowstone (American TV series), 1883 (TV series), 1923 (TV series), Bass Reeves (TV series), and likely more in the near future. Some, but not all, are approaching or exceeding B class. For at least the main Yellowstone article another question needs to be asked: isn't this mid importance - this show is easily the most influential Western on (US) television in recent times, and it is definitely one of the biggest (American) show full stop, across all time and all genres (production budgets, guest star actors, articles written etc) in recent times. CapnZapp (talk) 07:16, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
- I would agree that Yellowstone for sure should be at least mid importance - at least as far as the Westerns project is concerned (the other projects have their own criteria). Our criteria for importance actually needs to be reviewed (and probably revised) as it is rather unclear. For the Westerns project, the imporance assessment is intended to be based on what the work means to the genre. Audience response and big production budgets are not all that important to that - they're an influence, but not the deciding factor. What Sheridan is doing for the genre itself - that's what makes it a more important work. Taylor Sheridan is not only widening the audience of the neo-Western genre, he's also pushing the boundaries of Contemporary Westerns and Revisionist Westerns (IMO). ButlerBlog (talk) 14:44, 8 March 2023 (UTC)
Statistics
editAs articles are assessed they are categorized in Category:Westerns articles by quality and Category:Westerns articles by importance. From this, WP:1.0 creates a quality statistics table and a quality log of articles assessed using the project {{WikiProject Westerns}}
banner.
Westerns articles by quality and importance | |||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Quality | Importance | ||||||
Top | High | Mid | Low | NA | ??? | Total | |
FA | 1 | 3 | 1 | 5 | |||
FL | 1 | 2 | 3 | ||||
GA | 5 | 9 | 14 | 17 | 45 | ||
B | 10 | 45 | 46 | 44 | 6 | 151 | |
C | 28 | 185 | 322 | 360 | 18 | 913 | |
Start | 1 | 62 | 385 | 2,032 | 62 | 2,542 | |
Stub | 2 | 814 | 3,638 | 58 | 4,512 | ||
List | 6 | 27 | 61 | 94 | |||
Category | 588 | 588 | |||||
File | 442 | 442 | |||||
Project | 21 | 21 | |||||
Redirect | 1 | 70 | 65 | 136 | |||
Template | 65 | 65 | |||||
NA | 2 | 2 | |||||
Other | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||||
Assessed | 45 | 310 | 1,612 | 6,226 | 1,186 | 144 | 9,523 |
Total | 45 | 310 | 1,612 | 6,226 | 1,186 | 144 | 9,523 |