Wikipedia:WikiProject Games/Assessment

Welcome to the assessment department of the WikiProject Games. This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's articles related to all games. The article ratings are 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 Games}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:Games articles by quality and Category:Games articles by importance.

FAQ

See also the general assessment FAQ.

1. What is the purpose of the article ratings?

The rating system allows the project to monitor the quality of articles in our subject areas, and to prioritize work on these articles. It is also utilized by the Wikipedia 1.0 program to prepare for static releases of Wikipedia content. Please note, however, that these ratings are primarily intended for the internal use of the project, and do not necessarily imply any official standing within Wikipedia as a whole.

2. How do I add an article to the WikiProject?

Just add {{WikiProject Games}} to the talk page; there's no need to do anything else.

3. Someone put a {{WikiProject Games}} template on an article, but it doesn't seem to be within the project's scope. What should I do?

Because of the large number of articles we deal with, we occasionally make mistakes and add tags to articles that shouldn't have them. If you notice one, feel free to remove the tag, and optionally leave a note on the talk page of this department (or directly with the person who tagged the article).

4. Who can assess articles?

Any member of WikiProject Games is free to add—or change—the rating of an article. Editors who are not participants in this project are also welcome to assess articles, but should defer to consensus within the project in case of procedural disputes.

5. How do I rate an article?

Check the quality scale and select the level that best matches the state of the article; then, follow the instructions below to add the rating to the project banner on the article's talk page. Please note that some of the available levels have an associated formal review process that must be followed; this is documented in the assessment instructions.

6. Can I request that someone else rate an article?

Of course; to do so, please list it in the section for assessment requests below.

7. Where can I get more comments about an article?

The peer review department can conduct more thorough examination of articles; please submit it for review there.

8. 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. Please note that some of the available levels have an associated formal review process that must be followed; this is documented in the assessment instructions.

9. Aren't the ratings subjective?

Yes, they are somewhat subjective, 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!

10. What if I have a question not listed here?

If your question concerns the article assessment process specifically, please refer to the discussion page for this department; for any other issues, you can go to the main project discussion page.

• Our A-class rating is awarded with the informal agreement that two editors agree with the rating of A-class.
• Comments and suggestions are usually placed as a list on the talk page of the article, not here.
• We have some specific standards based upon the article advice page, see the table below.

Assessment instructions

An article's quality assessment is generated from the class parameter in the {{WikiProject Banner Shell}}. Articles that have the {{WikiProject Games}} 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 Games articles)		FA
GA (for good articles only; adds articles to Category:GA-Class Games articles)		GA
B (adds articles to Category:B-Class Games articles)		B
C (adds articles to Category:C-Class Games articles)		C
Start (adds articles to Category:Start-Class Games articles)		Start
Stub (adds articles to Category:Stub-Class Games articles)		Stub

For non-standard grades and non-mainspace content, the following values may be used for the class parameter:

??? (articles for which a valid class has not yet been provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Games articles)		???

Quality scale

Article progress grading scheme

Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Editor's experience	Example
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 additions are necessary unless new published information has come to light, but further improvements to the text are often possible.	Dungeons & Dragons (as of March 2016)
A {{A-Class}}	Provides a complete description of the topic, and contains all information that is normally expected of an article like it. Following the wikiproject's article advice is a good idea, as it working toward compliance with most of the Wikipedia-wide featured article guidelines. Should be well referenced, and include no excessive information. May miss a few details, and have some problems with the prose, for example with gaming jargon and in universe perspective. Could be considered for featured article status.	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points.	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. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage.
GA {{GA-Class}}	The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and been granted GA status, meeting the good article standards. Good articles with in the project scope often still need work, if they have not been following the wikiproject's article advice. Having completed the Good article designation process is not a requirement for A-Class.	Useful to most readers. A good treatment of the subject, but may lack information in some areas. Can contain excessive information and violate standards.	Some editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience. Further improvements may require outside comments, for example through an assessment. Now is the time to work on details such as the proper use of citation templates.
B {{B-Class}}	The highest article grade that can be assigned by a single reviewer from WikiProject Games. Has several of the elements described in "start", usually a majority of the material needed for a comprehensive article. May contain stub sections and excessive information and lists. Contains at least a few reliable, third party references, but some text may be unverifiable.	Useful to many, but not all, readers. The reader doing in-depth research may find some points missing, and the layperson may be confronted with excessive information only useful to fans.	Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. Cleanup may be needed, and a close look at the wikiproject's article advice page and featured article guidelines will help with identifying problems.
C {{C-Class}}	The article is substantially larger than a stub and has some good content, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article might have reliable sources referenced, but may still require more sourcing or substantial cleanup. The gameplay section might ramble or contain lots of trivia; sections on development and reception may need expansion.	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 address cleanup issues.
Start {{Start-Class}}	The article contains good content, however, it is clearly incomplete. May lack information in one or more areas. Prose and style will likely require work to bring the article to an encyclopedic standard.	Provides some information on the topic, however, many readers will need more information.	Reliable sources need to be found and added. Article may need re-organising. Cleanup of spelling, grammar and writing style needed.	World Without Oil (as of October 2013)
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. The article is usually very short, but may contain a lot of irrelevant lists and other inappropriate material.	Possibly useful to someone who has no idea what the term meant. May be useless to a reader only passingly familiar with the term. At best a brief, informed dictionary definition.	Any editing or additional material can be helpful.
List {{List-Class}}	Reserved exclusively for lists which are composed primarily of tables or which contain so little text as to be un-assessable on the regular scale. This class of article can only reach Featured List class, and is not acceptable for GA or FA status.	Useful as a method of sorting information into a sortable format.	May be missing critical information. Formatting may be not up to an acceptable level. Reliable sources may need to be found.

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 Australia.

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.

Label	Template	Meaning of Status
Top	{{Top-Class}}	This article is of the utmost importance to this project, as it forms the basis of all information.
High	{{High-Class}}	This article is fairly important to this project, as it covers a general area of knowledge.
Mid	{{Mid-Class}}	This article is relatively important to this project, as it fills in some more specific knowledge of certain areas.
Low	{{Low-Class}}	This article is of little importance to this project, but it covers a highly specific area of knowledge or an obscure piece of trivia.
None	None	This article is of unknown importance to this project. It remains to be analysed.

Assessment Tools

The process of going through unassessed articles can become mundane quickly. To speed up the process you can use the Kingbotk plugin for the AutoWikiBrowser if you are running Windows 2K/XP. This tool requires admin approval (generally, only users with over 500 edits in the mainspace are accepted) before a user can make edits with the tool. After approval, the Kingbotk plugin can be setup to make assessments with the {{WikiProject Video games}} tag. For futher details on installation and setup visit the pages for AutoWikiBrowser, Kingbotk plugin, and Generic WikiProject templates.

Another tool that helps with assessing articles is Metadatatest.js, which does not require any external software.