Wikipedia:WikiProject Photography/Assessment

The assessment department of WikiProject Photography focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's photography articles. The resulting article ratings are used within the project to aid in recognizing excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work, and are also expected to play a role in the Version 1.0 Editorial Team program.

The assessment is done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the {{WikiProject Photography}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Photography articles by quality and Photography articles by importance, which serves as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist. (Index · Statistics · Log)

Frequently asked questions

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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 Photography}} to the talk page; there's no need to do anything else.
3. Someone put a {{WikiProject Photography}} 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 project talk page (or directly with the person who tagged the article).
4. Who can assess articles?
Any member of the Photography WikiProject 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; this is documented in the assessment scale.
6. 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.
7. What if I don't agree with a rating?
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; this is documented in the assessment scale.
8. 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!

Instructions

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Quality assessment

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

Quality scale

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The scale for assessments is defined at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. Articles are divided into the following categories.

These criteria apply to general-content articles. The manual of style provides additional sorts of content and formatting should be provided for certain articles.

Each animation-related article has its assessment included within the {{WikiProject Photography}} template, such as {{WikiProject Photography|class=B}}. This provides automatic categorization within Category:Photography articles by quality. Note that the class parameter is case-specific; see the template's documentation for more information.

Importance assessment

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

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

Importance scale

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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 Photography.

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.

The full log of assessment changes for the past thirty days is available; due to its size (ca 100 kB), it cannot be transcluded directly.

  1. ^ For example, this image of the Battle of Normandy is grainy, but very few pictures of that event exist. However, where quite a number of pictures exist, for instance, the moon landing, FPC attempts to select the best of the ones produced.
  2. ^ An image has more encyclopedic value (often abbreviated to "EV" or "enc" in discussions) if it contributes strongly to a single article, rather than contributing weakly to many. Adding an image to numerous articles to gain EV is counterproductive and may antagonize both FPC reviewers and article editors.
  3. ^ While effects such as black and white, sepia, oversaturation, and abnormal angles may be visually pleasing, they often detract from the accurate depiction of the subject.