The assessment segment of WikiProject Spaceflight focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's Spaceflight and Space Exploration 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.
An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{WikiProject Spaceflight}} project banner on its talk page:
To assess an article, using the rating scheme described below, fill in the parameters on the Spaceflight banner on the article's talk page:
You can request an article is assessed. If you are not sure what the assessment should be or have recently done work to an article, list the article at: Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Assessment/Requests, along with what changes have occured since the last assessment and if you wish, quality, importance or both to be reassessed.
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.
It is:
well-written: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard;
comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context;
well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate;
stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process; and
a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections;
appropriate structure: a substantial but not overwhelming system of hierarchical section headings; and
consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotesโsee citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.
Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style where appropriate.
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.
A-Class articles are assessed by two editors within the project to determine that they are close to featured article status. Submit a request for an assessment the same way you would for a B-class article; the only difference is two reviewers will assess it.
More detailed criteria
Articles should be checked against the following criteria:
Well-written: The article is well-written and contains no spelling or grammatical errors, it adheres to the relevant sections of the manual of style
Comprehensive: The article covers every relevant aspect of its subject in sufficient detail, including background information, but is not unnecessarily long due to trivial or irrelevant information
Referencing and citation: The article is supported with inline citations to reliable sources for all claims, and these citations are appropriately formatted
Neutral: The article is accurate and unbiased, none of its content is disputed, and it is not the subject of any edit warring
Structure: The article is well structured, consisting of a lead which summarizes the rest of the article, and a reasonable number of sections containing more detailed information
Media: The article contains images relevant to the illustrate subject, accompanied with captions and alt text
Additionally, the article should meet all B-class criteria
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting.
Expert knowledge may be needed to "tweak" the article, and style issues may need addressing. Peer-review may help.
it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;
reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);
Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia.
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.
The article is mostly complete, without major issues, but requires some further work to reach Good Article standards.
More detailed criteria
The article meets the following criteria:
Referencing and citation: The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. The citations are not just raw URLs
Coverage and accuracy: The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies.
Structure: The article has a defined structure. This should consist of a lead section and appropriately divided sections.
Grammar and style: The article is reasonably well-written. There are no significant errors in spelling or grammar, and no outstanding cleanup issues
Supporting materials: The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. This should include relevant images if any are available, and an infobox if one exists.
Additionally, that the article should meet all the C class criteria
No reader should be 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, and expert knowledge is increasingly needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the manual of style.
The article meets B1 or B2 as well as B3 and B4 and B5 of the B-Class criteria.
More detailed criteria
The article meets the following criteria:
Referencing and citation: The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary. The citations are not just raw URLs
Coverage and accuracy: The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. Some aspects, particularly the background, may still be covered in less detail than would be desirable, however no critical information should be absent.
Structure: The article has a defined structure. This should consist of a lead section and appropriately divided sections.
Grammar and style: The article is reasonably well-written. There are no significant errors in spelling or grammar, and no outstanding cleanup issues
Supporting materials: The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. This should include relevant images if any are available, and an infobox if one exists.
Accessibility: The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way although it should not be "dumbed down". Technical terms should be explained or at least linked.
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.
The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, may lack one or more key elements, and may require serious cleanup. It should have at least one serious element of content, and should not meet the definition of a stub.
More detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content, but it is weak in many areas, usually in referencing. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and MoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide enough sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted.
Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more.
Provision of references to reliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation.
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information which will require a large amount of work to achieve recognition. It meets the general definition of a Stub.
More detailed criteria
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition
Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority.
Prose. It features professional standards of writing.
Lead. It has an engaging lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
Comprehensiveness.
(a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing at least all of the major items and, where practical, a complete set of items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about the items.
(c) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists and includes at minimum eight items; does not violate the content-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.
Style. It complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages.
(a) Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting, tables, and colour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked.
Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured list process.
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.
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.
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.
Categories (along with other features like cross-references, lists, and infoboxes) help users find information, even if they don't know that it exists or what it's called.
Be aware not to over-categorise and to be careful of maintaining a neutral point of view when creating or filling categories. Make decisions about the structure of categories and subcategories that make it easy for users to browse through similar articles.
Images are used to help explain articles by providing examples of style, lay-out, logo, or other typical visual aspects. Many images are fair use and should be used sparingly. Public domain or Creative Commons / GFDL licensed images can be used more freely.
Editors need to ensure that images have correct licenses, fair use rationales (where applicable), and are only used in articles for which they have such rationale. Fair use images should not be used as pure decoration.
Is any type of template. The most common types of template used in the WikiProject are infoboxes and navboxes.
Serves different purposes depending upon the type of template. Infoboxes go at the upper right of a page and are a way of providing easy access to important pieces of introductory infomation about the subject. Navboxes normally go across the very bottom of a page, and are for the purpose of uniting a group of related articles into an easily accessible format for inclusion on every page listed in the navbox.
Beware of too many different templates, as well as templates that give either too little, too much, or too specialized information.
The articles are rated for their importance to spaceflight. When making importance assessments, it may be helpful to ask, "How important would it be for the topic of spaceflight to include this article in an abridged version of the encyclopedia?"
Three different ways of expressing the priority of articles are currently used.
The importance, significance and depth of the topic within its particular field or subject.
The extent of the topic's impact, usually in the sense of "impact beyond its particular field", but it is also used to express global impact, and impact through history.
The bottom line: how important is it for an encyclopaedia to have an article on the given topic?
These are often different ways of saying the same thing, but the current WP 1.0 summary table mixes the three approaches: Top priority is described using method 3, High and Mid priority using method 1, and Low priority using method 2.
The table below of possible spaceflight importance levels provides more detail on the meaning of the individual levels, as well as examples.
This rating is not used. There is a Category:Unknown-importance spaceflight articles for articles which have a spaceflight rating, but no importance level: editors should feel free either to assign an importance level (Low-Priority or higher) or remove the spaceflight banner from these articles, if they are outside the project's scope.
Comment: Some articles are not relevant enough to the spaceflight project to need a rating.
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. B-Class requests are assessed using the six B-class criteria.
I'm afraid neither of these articles can be approved. The first has a weird formatting problem where every word in the lede is linked, and the second duplicates our Timeline articles. If you'd like some mentoring on how to produce usable Spaceflight articles, I'll be happy to assist. :) Just leave me a message on my Talk page. --Neopeius (talk) 14:05, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understood and fixed the issue on the first article. My second article is a list of every single launch, which is obviously going to have most of itโs launches covered elsewhere, but not all are. Can you rereview the first one and explain more clearly the issue with the second one? Thank you!
Normally I'm not reticent about rating my own articles up to B class, but given the high visibility of the Mariner missions, and since I plan to reuse much of the text I've done on this latest article for Mariner 2, I wonder if a friend could review Mariner 1 and determine if it be a B (and if you think it good enough for GA, let me know, and I'll start that process). Once I'm confident in the language, I can get to work on Mariner 2. :)
I have been working on this article for about two and a half months now and I feel it has gotten up to par. I have added images of its flyby targets and the schematics for the actual probe itself, and even found primary sources detailing the spacecraft itself. I also translated the page to Chinese so people in China (where the probe is actually from) can actually view the article for itself (the grammar may be a bit off, but it could be fixed). I am unsure how important the spacecraft actually is, but I feel it should be just as important as Trident, considering they both are targeting the same planet.
Hello! Thank you for this fine start on the article. A couple of things I would want to see before getting to B-class: there are some awkward phrasings and non sequiturs in the text -- I recommend reading the article aloud to spot the sharp corners. Also, you indicate that details are scant but briefly touch on the experiments that may be carried. Is there really no listing at all? Nor even a proposed rocket to be used? --Neopeius (talk) 13:51, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Hello ~Neopeius! Thank you for giving me these criteria. I have updated the page and I hope that it fits these criteria better than it used to. I have removed non-sequiturs and made sure that the text flowed better together. TheWhistleGag (talk) 00:13, 15 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I rewrote this article some time ago, translated parts from the Intalian FA, and uploaded better images. English is not my native lang, so please review it. (In theory, I'd like to nominate it to GA, but I'm not sure about it.)
Quite a good article! I gave it a B. For GA, you'll want to link some of the more abstruse technical terms like spectrometer. I also always recommend reading an article aloud to catch awkward bits. :) --Neopeius (talk) 13:44, 3 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Found some sources and added it to the article. I'm new, but I'd like a sanity check before I continue on with others. I'm not sure the rating system. Thanks in advance!
Good article. Well the addition of more sources is great, it still lacks enough sources for a higher quality class. It is also lacking in supporting material. Well there are plenty of images provided, 4 of the 7 are practically identical, and do little to support the article. The addition of other images from the mission would improve the article. I've given it a start rating due to lacking references.
James Denesuk (talk) 02:45, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I guess the issue is this: this article, and the one preceding it, are now extremely thorough chronologies of these two TM missions. And yet, is it really appropriate to have this chronology of events happening to the station the TM was attached to? The TM isn't doing anything but sitting there. I should think a more useful article format would be to have a short background of the TM Soyuz, describe the crew and launch, perhaps have a paragraph on significant ISS actions that occurred during its docking, and then describe the capsule's return to Earth, followed by a Legacy section describing where it is now, references in the media, etc.
In other words, folks aren't going to Soyuz TM-22 for info on Expedition 20 -- they go to Expedition 20 for that. I think this long article on incidentally related station activities is the wrong format. If there is information in your articles not currently in the Expedition 20 page, then by all means, find ways to incorporate them there.
I agree with you. The long term nature of the missions is what I'm really interested in (and the space research!) but the Expedition articles for the most part (except 19 because it started with a shuttle mission) are just redirects to the Soyuz articles. Being new I didn't feel comfortable creating a bunch of articles for the long term missions, but I can create them and move the information over if you and James would feel that would be a better way to present the information. Thanks for the feedback, it's exactly the kind I was looking for! Kilawyn Punx (talk) 17:56, 12 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I've spent the last several months working on the article. Since I've started the article has become around seven times the original size. I'm hoping that at this point the article has improved in quality that in theory could be nominated to a GA rating, but I'm unsure if it's reached that point yet.
I believe I've fixed most of the issues on this page. It used to be a GA, but it got delisted. I'm working on bringing it back up, and I think it's pretty close.
I've put a lot of work into overhauling this page, and would love to know where it could still use improvements. I'd love to get it to GA class but would like a benchmark.
Hello, and thank you for working on this article! I would say my biggest issues with the piece, and what would hold me back from giving it a "B" (which, for most purposes, is virtually the same as "GA" in terms of quality):
There's no narrative. It reads like a set of bullet points. Even the lead is unnecessarily split into two lines.
Many of the lines don't have citations after them. If some of the lines have citations covered by the next line, then consider deleting the carriage return between them.
