Welcome to the assessment department of the WikiProject Pittsburgh! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Pittsburgh 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 Pittsburgh}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:Pittsburgh articles by quality, Category:Pittsburgh articles by importance, Category:Pittsburgh articles needing attention, Category:Pittsburgh past collaborations, and Category:Pittsburgh past selected articles. The quality and importance ratings serve as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist. There is also Category:Non-article Pittsburgh pages) for things like redirect pages, templates, categories, images, etc.

Frequently asked questions

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How can I get my article rated?
As a member of the WikiProject Pittsburgh, you can do it yourself. If you're unsure, list it in the requesting an assessment section below.
Who can assess articles?
Any member of WikiProject Pittsburgh is free to add—or change—the rating of an article, but please follow the guidelines.
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.
Where can I get more comments about my article?
Contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Pittsburgh who will handle it or assign the issue to someone. You may also list it for a Peer review.
What if I don't agree with a rating?
Relist it as a request or contact Wikipedia:WikiProject Pittsburgh who will handle it or assign the issue to someone.
Aren't the ratings subjective?
Yes, they are (see, in particular, the disclaimers on the importance scale), 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, or to contact the Wikipedia:WikiProject Pittsburgh directly.

Instructions

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An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{WikiProject Pittsburgh}} project banner on its talk page. You can learn the syntax by looking at the talk pages in edit mode and by reading the info below.

This is the rating syntax (ratings and dates are samples, change to what applies to the article in question):

{{WikiProject Pittsburgh}}
  • displays the default banner, showing the project info and only ??? for the quality and importance parameters.
{{WikiProject Pittsburgh|class=FA|importance=Top}}
  • all assessed articles should have quality and importance filled in. Leaving the other parameters off does not hurt anything.
{{WikiProject Pittsburgh|class=Start|importance=Mid|attention=yes}}
  • if an article needs immediate attention, add the attention tag and please leave talk notes as to why. "yes" is the only valid parameter here. If it doesn't need attention, leave the parameter off.
{{WikiProject Pittsburgh|class=B|importance=High|attention=yes|past-selected=[[July]] [[2006]]|past-collaboration=[[April]] [[2006]]}}
  • if an article has been the SATM or COTM, these tags get added in this format.

The following values may be used for the class parameter:

Articles for which a valid class and/or importance is not provided are listed in Category:Unassessed Pittsburgh articles. The class should be assigned according to the quality scale below.

The following values may be used for the importance parameter:

The parameter is not used if an article's class is set to NA, and may be omitted in those cases. The importance should be assigned according to the importance scale below.

Quality scale

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Note: A B-class article should have at least one reference.

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 military history. Importance does not equate to quality; a featured article could rate 'mid' on importance.

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. Rate international region/country-specific articles from the prespective of someone from that region.

Article importance grading scheme
Label Criteria Examples
Top Subject is a "core" or "key" topic for Pittsburgh, or is generally notable to people other than students of Pittsburgh. They define and determine the subject of the Pittsburgh WikiProject. Pittsburgh
High Subject is notable in a significant and important way within the field of Pittsburgh, but not necessarily outside it. UPMC
Mid Subject contributes to the total subject of the Pittsburgh WikiProject. Subject may not necessarily be famous. Tepper School of Business
Low Subject is not particularly notable or significant even within the field of Pittsburgh, and may have been included primarily to achieve comprehensive coverage of another topic. Mt. Lebanon (PAT station)

Requesting an assessment or re-assessment

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If you have made significant changes to an article and would like an outside opinion on a new rating for it, please feel free to list it below. If you are interested in more extensive comments on an article, please use the peer review department instead.

  1. Add articles here! Newest requests on the BOTTOM
  2. Like this (and put "(re-)assessment request" in your edit summary of this assessment page), leave reasons if a reassessment.
Rated Class=B due to GA Candidate failure; rated Importance=High due to its affect on the economics of the area. – Paschmitts 11:43, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Rated Class=B and Importance=Low. – Paschmitts 20:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]