Wikipedia:WikiProject Boston/Assessment

Welcome to the assessment department of the Boston WikiProject! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Boston related articles. While much of the work is done in conjunction with the WP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.

The ratings are done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the {{WikiProject Boston}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:Boston articles by quality and Category:Boston articles by importance, which serves as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist.

Frequently asked questions

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 Boston WikiProject is free to add or change the rating of an article.

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!

If you have any other questions not listed here, please feel free to ask them on the discussion page for this department.

Instructions

Quality assessments

An article's quality assessment is generated from the class parameter in the {{WikiProject Banner Shell}}. Articles that have the {{WikiProject Boston}} 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 Boston articles)		FA
A (adds articles to Category:A-Class Boston articles)		A
GA (for good articles only; adds articles to Category:GA-Class Boston articles)		GA
B (adds articles to Category:B-Class Boston articles)		B
C (adds articles to Category:C-Class Boston articles)		C
Start (adds articles to Category:Start-Class Boston articles)		Start
Stub (adds articles to Category:Stub-Class Boston articles)		Stub
FL (for featured lists only; adds articles to Category:FL-Class Boston articles)		FL
List (adds articles to Category:List-Class Boston 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 Boston articles)		Category
Disambig (for disambiguation pages; adds pages to Category:Disambig-Class Boston articles)		Disambig
Draft (for drafts; adds pages to Category:Draft-Class Boston articles)		Draft
File (for files and timed text; adds pages to Category:File-Class Boston articles)		File
Portal (for portal pages; adds pages to Category:Portal-Class Boston articles)		Portal
Project (for project pages; adds pages to Category:Project-Class Boston articles)		Project
Redirect (for redirect pages; adds pages to Category:Redirect-Class Boston articles)		Redirect
Template (for templates and modules; adds pages to Category:Template-Class Boston articles)		Template
NA (for any other pages where assessment is unnecessary; adds pages to Category:NA-Class Boston articles)		NA
??? (articles for which a valid class has not yet been provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Boston articles)		???

After assessing an article's quality, any comments on the assessment can be added to the article's talk page.

Quality scale

WikiProject content quality grading scheme

Class	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. It is: well-written: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard; comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context; 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; neutral: it presents views fairly and without bias; 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 compliant with Wikipedia's copyright policy and free of plagiarism or too-close paraphrasing. It follows the style guidelines, including the provision of: a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections; appropriate structure: a substantial but not overwhelming system of hierarchical section headings; and 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.	Example needed
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: 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 sourced where they appear, and they provide inline citations if they contain any of the four kinds of material absolutely required to have citations. (c) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists and includes at minimum eight items; does not violate the 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, tables, and colour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked. (b) Media files. It has images and other media, if appropriate to the topic, that follow Wikipedia's usage policies, with succinct captions. Non-free images and other media satisfy the criteria for the inclusion of non-free content and are labeled accordingly. (c) Accessibility. It uses proper formating to be accessible to all readers. Bulleted and unbulleted lists and tables are structured correctly. Visual media, if included, utilize 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.	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.	Example needed
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.	Example needed
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: Well-written: the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation. Verifiable with no original research: it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline; 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); it contains no original research; and it contains no copyright violations or plagiarism. Broad in its coverage: it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and 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 images, video, or audio: media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.	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.	Example needed
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 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 appropriately understandable way. It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. The article should not assume unnecessary technical background and 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. 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.	Example needed
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.	Example needed
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: A useful picture or graphic Multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic A subheading that fully treats an element of the topic Multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article	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.	Example needed
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.	Example needed
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.	Example needed
Future	A topic about which details are subject to change often. More detailed criteria The article covers a future topic of which no broadcast version exists so far and all information is subject to change when new information arises from reliable sources. With multiple reliable sources, there might be information that contradicts other information in the same or other articles. Not all future categories will be rated with "Future" and may be rated like normal.	Amount of meaningful content varies over time as the projected event draws near.	Material added might be speculation and should be carefully sourced.	Example needed
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.	Category:Food and Category:Drink
Disambig	Any disambiguation page falls under this class.	The page serves to distinguish multiple articles that share the same (or similar) title.	Additions should be made as new articles of that name are created. Pay close attention to the proper naming of such pages, as they often do not need "(disambiguation)" appended to the title.	BK (disambiguation)
File	Any page in the file namespace falls under this class.	The page contains an image, a sound clip or other media-related content.	Make sure that the file is properly licensed and credited.
Portal	Any page in the portal namespace falls under this class.	Portals are intended to serve as "main pages" for specific topics.	Editor involvement is essential to ensure that portals are kept up to date.	Food and Drink
Project	All WikiProject-related pages fall under this class.	Project pages are intended to aid editors in article development.	Develop these pages into collaborative resources that are useful for improving articles within the project.	This one
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.	{{wpfood}}
NA	Any non-article page that fits no other classification.	The page contains no article content.	Look out for misclassified articles. Currently, many NA-class articles may need to be re-classified.	Example needed

Importance assessment

An article's importance assessment is generated from the importance parameter in the {{Project Boston}} project banner on its talk page:

{{Project Boston|importance=???}}

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 Boston articles)		Top
High (adds articles to Category:High-importance Boston articles)		High
Mid (adds articles to Category:Mid-importance Boston articles)		Mid
Low (adds articles to Category:Low-importance Boston articles)		Low
NA (adds articles to Category:NA-importance Boston articles)		NA
??? (articles for which a valid importance rating has not yet been provided are listed in Category:Unknown-importance Boston articles)		???

Importance scale

The criteria used for rating article importance are not meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of the average reader of Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it). Thus, subjects with greater popular notability may be rated higher than topics which are arguably more "important" but which are of interest primarily to students of Comics.

Note that general notability need not be from the perspective of editor demographics; generally notable topics should be rated similarly regardless of the country or region in which they hold said notability. Thus, topics which may seem obscure to a Western audience—but which are of high notability in other places—should still be highly rated.

WikiProject article importance scheme

Importance	Criteria	Example
Top	Subject is extremely important, even crucial, to its specific field. Reserved for subjects that have achieved international notability within their field.	Boston
High	Subject is extremely notable, but has not achieved international notability, or is only notable within a particular continent.	City Hall Plaza
Mid	Subject is only notable within its particular field or subject and has achieved notability in a particular place or area.	example needed
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.	example needed
NA	Subject importance is not applicable. Generally applies to non-article pages such as redirects, categories, templates, etc.	Category:Boston, Massachusetts

Assessment log

The logs in this section are generated automatically (on a daily basis); please don't add entries to them by hand.

Assessment log

December 13, 2024

Reassessed

• David A. Sinclair (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)

December 12, 2024

Reassessed

• File:Boston Massacre high-res.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from File-Class to FM-Class. (rev · t)
• Harvard Medical School (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)
• File:John F Kennedy Official Portrait.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from File-Class to FM-Class. (rev · t)

December 11, 2024

Reassessed

• John Phillips (mayor) (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Stub-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
• Kenzie Bok (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)
• Mike Barnicle (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)

December 10, 2024

Reassessed

• File:Edgar Allan Poe, circa 1849, restored, squared off.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from File-Class to FM-Class. (rev · t)
• File:Edgar Allan Poe 2.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from File-Class to FM-Class. (rev · t)
• USS Boston (CA-69) (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)

December 8, 2024

Reassessed

• 1927 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Unassessed-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
• 1928 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Unassessed-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
• 1929 USA Indoor Track and Field Championships (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Unassessed-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
• File:Boston Massacre high-res.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from FM-Class to File-Class. (rev · t)
• File:John F Kennedy Official Portrait.jpg (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from FM-Class to File-Class. (rev · t)

Assessed

• Lawreen Connors (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as C-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Unknown-Class. (rev · t)

December 7, 2024

Assessed

• Category:Boston College Eagles women's basketball navigational boxes (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Category-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
• Lifeline Systems, Inc. (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as C-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)