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Article assessment levels: a layman's guide |
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- By Ian Rose
Occasionally I see questions about the differences between writing or reviewing at the various article assessment levels on Wikipedia and, in particular, the Military history WikiProject (MilHist). Just where project-oriented classes like B- and A-Class sit among Wikipedia-wide assessments like GA and FA can be confusing. This essay seeks to clarify those things, based on consensus reached through various discussions and on my own observations, rather than strict interpretation or translation of the guidelines on WP and in MilHist.
Personally, while I don't necessarily ignore all rules, nor am I a lawyer by profession, I place far more emphasis on precedent than statute. That is, if someone asks me how to write a Featured Article, I won't say "read the FA criteria", I'll say "find some recently promoted FAs on a similar subject to yours, and study not just the articles themselves, but their FACs, to see how they were put into final shape and what reviewers were looking for". It certainly helped me when I started work on what I hoped would be my first Featured Article.[1] Having had a good deal of experience writing and reviewing articles at all levels in WP, I'd expect there’s something in my system that will be of benefit to people. Just remember that I’m also the sort of person who carefully looks both ways before crossing a road, and then proceeds whether the light is red or green. It works perfectly well for me, but I don’t want anyone following me across the road blindly – I expect them to look both ways too!!
- Where the Wikipedia and Wikiproject assessment levels sit in relation to one another
The main thing to understand here is that are two parallel but staggered streams of assessment, the Wikipedia-wide one (GA and FA) and the Wikiproject one(s) (Stub, Start, C-Class, B-Class and A-Class). Peer Review sits in the Wikipedia-wide stream too, but this is simply a review, not an assessment. Nearly every Wikiproject has Stub/Start/C/B, but most do not have formal A-Class review systems; our project does. In terms of how the two assessment streams 'rate' against each other, it may look confusing but we have come to a consensus on it. It is neatly reflected in the MilHist Monthly Contest scoring system, which allocates points for Start (1), C (3), B (6), GA (11), A (21) and finally FA (26). A class-by-class progression from Start to FA across the two main assessment streams (Wikipedia and Wikiproject), showing the relative 'difficulty' of each level per the MilHist Monthly Contest scoring system, appears in the following diagram. Note that there is no requirement to follow each step of this progression – in theory one could nominate for FAC straight from Start-Class, for example.
The other important thing to understand here is that because there are two main streams of assessment, an article may have different assessments simultaneously. Because GA is Wikipedia-wide, the project assessments are all raised to GA when the article passes GAN. For our project, passing an A-Class Review (ACR) 'trumps' GA, but you can have an article at A-Class in MilHist and GA in others, as A-Class is a WikiProject-specific assessment.[2] As a result, some consider both GA and ACR worthwhile assessments to have on the same article (even when the ultimate destination of that article is FAC). Taking an article through GA gives you the opportunity of getting a non-MilHist pair of eyes on it and thus a layman's perspective (it can pick up weaknesses in jargon, context, etc, that subject experts don't even notice). Mind you, in practice it will often be another MilHist editor who assesses your nom, if only because of the broadly shared interest in the subject matter. GA can be an end point in itself for shorter articles that won't ever achieve FA; owing for instance to a lack of comprehensive information, some subjects are really only appropriate to go as far as GA.
- Writing and reviewing at the various assessment levels
At MilHist, we see our B-Class assessment as being pretty tough, coming quite close to GA in terms of detail and referencing, but with a more journeyman standard of style and prose.[3] Both B and GA assessments are generally undertaken by just one reviewer, but the latter involves a more structured system and checklist of requirements. In a similar way, we see our A-Class as only a little short of FA standard with, again, style and prose, plus more thorough image and source review, generally playing a bigger part in the latter. Both of these assessments are undertaken by what amounts to an ad hoc 'panel' of reviewers.
Logically, each assessment level should meet all the criteria of the previous level, plus a few more items in certain areas. For me:
- MilHist B-Class should meet all criteria of C-Class, but it should display more rigorous attention to referencing and/or depth and breadth of coverage (as an article can make C-Class with only one of those criteria being satisfactory).
- GA should at minimum match B-Class in terms of structure, referencing and supporting materials, but pay greater attention to style and prose quality, and perhaps include a little more context/detail for the non-military crowd (reflective of GA's WP-wide assessment).
- MilHist A-Class should at least match GA in terms of style and prose quality, but provide a good deal more depth and breadth of coverage, which will generally also require a broader survey of available references.
- FA's relationship to A-Class is not unlike GA's to B-Class: comparable in terms of structure, referencing, and supporting materials, but with a still greater emphasis on style and prose quality, and perhaps yet more context/detail for the non-military crowd (again because of FA's WP-wide assessment). To borrow Grandiose's succinct observation, ACR is like FAC, but more forgiving.
When it comes to copyright checks, I'll always give images the once-over no matter what level, but don't tend to do detailed source spotchecks for accuracy and avoidance of plagiarism or close paraphrasing until I get to ACR/FAC, although it's worth doing some reference checking at each level. I also don't always conduct spotchecks at reviews up to and including ACR if I'm familiar with the nominator's work, whereas at FAC I tend to do it on every article I review, unless someone else has. I encourage everyone to do the same, at minimum, as avoidance of copyright violation is a core Wikipedia principle (see related Bugle op-ed "Hunting for plagiarism" by Fifelfoo).
My last piece of advice is not to be intimidated by article assessments. Some can be confrontational and nerve-wracking, just like a workplace performance review. Ultimately though, it's a classic case of getting out of it what you put into it, either as the editor of a well-prepared article who is also able to receive and act on constructive criticism, or as the reviewer who digs deep but focusses their attention purely on getting the article as good as possible, always playing the ball rather than the man. Good luck and happy writing/reviewing! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:50, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
- Footnotes
- ^ George Jones, though back in 2007 there were only two or three comparable military biographies at FA-Class – now there seem to be hundreds, for which I must take my share of the blame!
- ^ There's a few exceptions; some closely related projects like Ships and Aviation accept our A-Class rating.
- ^ It was largely owing to the high standard expected for MilHist B-Class that an intermediate level between Start and B, i.e. C-Class, was introduced to the project after much debate.
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