Wikipedia:WikiProject Boston/Assessment
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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
[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 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
[edit]Quality assessments
[edit]An article's quality assessment is recorded using the |class= parameter in the {{WikiProject banner shell}}. Articles that have the {{WikiProject Boston}} banner template on their talk page will be added to the appropriate categories by quality.
The following standard grades may be used to describe the quality of mainspace articles (see Wikipedia:Content assessment for assessment criteria):
| FA | (for featured articles only; adds them to the FA-Class Boston articles category) |  FA |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| FL | (for featured lists only; adds them to the FL-Class Boston articles category) | FL |
|
| A | (for articles that passed a formal peer review only; adds them to the A-Class Boston articles category) |  A |
|
| GA | (for good articles only; adds them to the GA-Class Boston articles category) |  GA |
|
| B | (for articles that satisfy all of the B-Class criteria; adds them to the B-Class Boston articles category) | B | |
| C | (for substantial articles; adds them to the C-Class Boston articles category) | C | |
| Start | (for developing articles; adds them to the Start-Class Boston articles category) | Start | |
| Stub | (for basic articles; adds them to the Stub-Class Boston articles category) | Stub | |
| List | (for stand-alone lists; adds them to the List-Class Boston articles category) | List | |
| NA | (for any other pages where assessment is unwarranted; adds them to the NA-Class Boston pages category) | NA | |
| ??? | (articles for which a valid class has not yet been provided are listed in the Unassessed Boston articles category) | ??? |
For non-mainspace content, the following values may be used:
| FM | (for featured media only; adds them to the FM-Class Boston pages category) | FM |
|
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | (for categories; adds them to the Category-Class Boston pages category) | Category | |
| Draft | (for drafts; adds them to the Draft-Class Boston pages category) | Draft | |
| File | (for files and timed text; adds them to the File-Class Boston pages category) | File | |
| Portal | (for portal pages; adds them to the Portal-Class Boston pages category) | Portal | |
| Project | (for project pages; adds them to the Project-Class Boston pages category) | Project | |
| Template | (for templates and modules; adds them to the Template-Class Boston pages category) | Template |
The following non-standard assessment grades for mainspace content may be used at a WikiProject's discretion:
| Disambig | (for disambiguation pages; adds them to the Disambig-Class Boston pages category) | Disambig | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Redirect | (for redirect pages; adds them to the Redirect-Class Boston pages category) | Redirect |
After assessing an article's quality, any comments on the assessment can be added to the article's talk page.
Quality scale
[edit]| 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.
|
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:
|
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:
|
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
|
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:
|
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. Improve the grammar, spelling, and writing style; decrease the use of jargon. | 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. | {{WikiProject Food and drink}} |
| 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
[edit]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
[edit]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.
| 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 |
Requesting an assessment
[edit]Assessment log
[edit]| Boston articles: Index · Statistics · Log |
The logs in this section are generated automatically (on a daily basis); please don't add entries to them by hand.
Assessment log
May 27, 2025
[edit]Renamed
[edit]- Boston College School of Theology and Ministry renamed to Gloria L. and Charles I. Clough School of Theology and Ministry.
- Draft:Norman A. Scotch renamed to Norman A. Scotch.
Reassessed
[edit]- 1981 New England Patriots season (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Stub-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
- 1982–83 Boston Celtics season (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Stub-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
- 2018–19 CWHL season (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from C-Class to Stub-Class. (rev · t)
- Allston DIY Fest (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Stub-Class to Redirect-Class. (rev · t)
- Boston Marathon bombing (talk) reassessed. Importance rating changed from High-Class to Top-Class. (rev · t)
- Dani's Queer Bar (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Unassessed-Class to Start-Class. (rev · t)
- Edgar Allan Poe (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from FA-Class to B-Class. (rev · t)
- Harriet Clisby (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)
- John R. Connolly (talk) reassessed. Quality rating changed from Start-Class to C-Class. (rev · t)
Assessed
[edit]- 1969–1970 Harvard University anti-Vietnam War protests (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as B-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)
- Draft:2026 Boston Marathon (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Redirect-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- Category:2026 in Boston (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Category-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- Gloria L. and Charles I. Clough School of Theology and Ministry (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as C-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)
- Jerry McDermott (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Start-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)
- Draft:John FitzGerald (talk) assessed. Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- Draft:Kristen Joy Emack (talk) assessed. Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- Draft:MyronBelfer (talk) assessed. Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- Off Their Plate (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Stub-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)
- Template:Patriots season (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Template-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as NA-Class. (rev · t)
- William G. Gross (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Start-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Low-Class. (rev · t)
- William Houghton Sprague Pearce (talk) assessed. Quality assessed as Start-Class. (rev · t) Importance assessed as Unknown-Class. (rev · t)
Removed
[edit]- Draft:Boston GLASS (talk) removed.
- Draft:Lil Blevins (talk) removed.
- Draft:Lyric Jones (talk) removed.
- World Figure Skating Championships (talk) removed.
- ^ Prose at the Good Article level is not expected to be at a professional level like it is for Featured Articles. Minor grammatical or style issues that do not impact clarity are not prohibitive of GA status.