WikiProjects, Article Importance, and Article Quality: An Intimate Relationship (1/2)

By John Kleefeld
[social-bio] In a previous post, I wrote about how WikiProject Medicine acts as a forum for determining the priority (also called importance) of specific health-related Wikipedia articles and assessing their quality (also called class). More generally, these three concepts—WikiProjects, article importance, and article quality—are crucial for instructors and students to understand if they seek to use course-based assignments to improve Wikipedia. I will address each of them in turn.

WikiProjects

A WikiProject comprises a group of collaborators who aim to achieve specific Wikipedia editing goals, or to achieve goals in a specific subject or discipline represented in Wikipedia. An example of an editing type of project is WikiProject missing encyclopedic articles, which seeks to ensure that Wikipedia “has a corresponding article for every article in every other general purpose encyclopedia.” An example of a subject-specific type of project (in addition to WikiProject Medicine), is WikiProject Adoption, fostering, orphan care and displacement (“AFOD”). It aims to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of adoption, foster care, and child abandonment. A third type of project, one that combines both editing and subject goals, is exemplified by WikiProject Biography, which “concerns the creation, development, and organization of Wikipedia’s articles about persons.”

Wikipedia has a shortcut—sometimes more than one—for each project: “WP:” followed by an acronym. So, for example, entering WP:MISSING in Wikipedia’s search box takes you the Talk page for WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles; entering WP:AFOD takes you to the Talk page for WikiProject AFOD. Entering WP:WPBIO, WP:BIOG or WP:BIOGRAPHY takes you to the WikiProject Biography Talk page. There is even a project on WikiProjects—a meta-project, if you will—with the shortcut WP:PROJ.

A WikiProject Council tracks these projects, including activity levels and inter-project discussions. According to the most recent version of the Council’s WikiProject List, There are about 2,000 WikiProjects in English Wikipedia, with varying levels of activity and interest in articles. Indeed, a Wikipedia article will often be of interest to more than one WikiProject, and a key activity of participants is to identify the WikiProjects to which the article is of interest, along with the article’s importance and class, as assigned by those projects. This is done on the article’s Talk page. For example, the article on Barnardo’s, a British charity founded to care for vulnerable children and young people, is of interest to WikiProject AFOD, which ranks it as a high-importance, C-class article. But it is also of interest to WikiProject London, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia’s coverage of the city of London; that project ranks it as mid-importance and start-class. (See accompanying excerpt.)

Article Importance (Priority)

There are five levels of priority: top, high, mid, low, and NA (meaning “not an article”—that is, something other than an article, like a template or category). There is also a level for “unknown” or “needs assessing” that appears as ??? to the reader. Each WikiProject has its own criteria for these rankings. The table below shows the criteria in WikiProject Medicine, along with an example of a Wikipedia page for each ranking.

Source: WikiProject Medicine/Assessment (accessed 9 February 2017)

Article Quality (Class)

There are nine quality levels or classes for the typical Wikipedia article: stub, start, C-class, B-class, GA (good article), A-class, FA (featured article), List, and FL (featured list). These categories are used by the Wikipedia Version 1.0 Editorial Team for deciding how close an article is to being distribution-quality (that is, to the goal of publishing Wikipedia articles in print, CD, DVD, or a combination thereof). Some WikiProjects also use intermediate classes, such as B+. A summary of the common classes is provided below. For more detailed criteria, see the Version 1.0 assessment page; for a categorized list of articles in each class, click on the name of the class in the leftmost column.

Stub	The article is either very short or a rough collection of information that needs much work. Stub-class articles are adequate enough to be accepted, but risk being dropped from article status altogether. The first step in improving a Stub-class article is usually the addition of referenced reasons that show why the topic is significant.
Start	The article is developing but quite incomplete. Deficiencies may include inadequate citation to reliable sources or non-compliance with Wikipedia’s style guidelines. Raising the article to C-class typically requires further referencing, improvement in content and organization, and attention to grammar and writing style.
C	The article is substantial, but still lacks 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. By the time an article reaches C-class, it typically has at least some infoboxes, photographs, diagrams or other media.
B	The article is mostly complete and without major problems, but requires some further work to reach GA status. It is properly referenced to reliable sources, using inline citations. It is balanced, reasonably well written, and has a defined structure, including a lead section. Supporting materials, such as illustrations, diagrams and an infobox, should be included where relevant and useful. The article should not assume unnecessary technical background and should either avoid or explain technical terms where possible.
GA	The article has attained good-article status (indicated at the top of the article by the “plus sign” logo) via an official review. In addition to being well written and following style guidelines, it is verifiable, contains no original research, and has no copyright violations or plagiarism. It represents viewpoints fairly, giving due weight to each, and focuses on the topic without going into unnecessary detail. It is typically illustrated with copyright-compliant images that are appropriately captioned. The article is stable in the sense of not being subject to edit wars or content disputes, though comparison with a featured article on a similar topic may show areas where content could be further developed.
A	The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. GA status is not a requirement for this level, but with further tweaking or peer review, it may also be appropriate for GA or FA status.
FA	The article has attained featured article status (shown by the “star” logo at the top of the article) by passing an official review. It exemplifies the best work on Wikipedia and is distinguished by engaging and professional standards of writing, presentation and sourcing. A concise lead summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in subsequent sections that are hierarchically arranged and presented in a table of contents. Citation is extensive and consistent. The article has images and other media, where appropriate, with succinct captions and acceptable copyright status. FA-class articles may appear on Wikipedia’s home page, in a “Today’s featured article” section.
List	The article meets the criteria of a stand-alone list, which is an article that contains primarily a list, usually consisting of links to articles in a particular subject area. List articles are often alphabetized or chronologically ordered and may also be annotated.
FL	The article has attained featured list status. It comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items and annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items.

Source: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment (accessed and adapted 12 February 2017)

In my next post, I will discuss how WikiProjects, article importance and article quality come together in a format that provides a convenient basis for selecting articles to edit for Wikipedia-based course assignments.

John Kleefeld is an associate professor at the College of Law and a 2017 teaching fellow at the Gwenna Moss Centre for Teaching Effectiveness, where he is coordinating a campus-wide project on integrating Wikipedia assignments into course materials. Portions of this blog series are from an article that he and a former law student wrote about using a Wikipedia assignment for class credit. See J. Kleefeld and K. Rattray, 2016. “Write a Wikipedia Article for Law School Credit—Really?” Journal of Legal Education, 65:3, 597-621.