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Welcome to the assessment department of the BBC WikiProject! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's articles about the BBC, its programs, and people. 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 BBC}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories of Category:BBC articles by quality and Category:BBC articles by importance, which serves as the foundation for an automatically generated worklist.

Frequently asked questions edit

How can I get my article rated?
Please list it in the section for assessment requests below.
Who can assess articles?
Any member of the BBC WikiProject is free to add, or change, the rating of an article.
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 be happy to provide you with their reasoning.
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.
Aren't the ratings subjective?
Yes, they are, 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 at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject BBC.

Instructions edit

An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{WikiProject BBC}} project banner on its talk page:

{{BBCproject
|class=
|importance=
|task force=
|attention=
|collaboration-candidate=
|past-collaboration=
|peer-review= 
|old-peer-review=
|needs-infobox=
}}

The following values may be used for the class parameter:

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

Quality scale edit

General Importance scale edit

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 the BBC.

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.

Please note we have specific guidelines for assessing the importance of BBC programmes and people, which are below the following table.

Status 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 assessed.

Importance Scale for BBC Programmes edit

These are a set of guidelines for how articles on BBC programmes should be assessed.

Status Template How programmes (radio and TV) are assigned
Top {{Top-Class}} Only main BBC articles are assigned this status - it is not for programming.
High {{High-Class}} Only high-profile BBC productions are assigned this status, for example Blue Peter, Doctor Who, EastEnders, Fawlty Towers, Match of the Day, Question Time, The Sky at Night, or Top of the Pops (TV) and The Radio 1 Chart Show, Today or Wake Up to Wogan (radio).
Mid {{Mid-Class}} Particularly notable broadcasts on the BBC get this status.
Low {{Low-Class}} This is the status that is assigned to all programmes that do not fit in the above categories.

If you wish to discuss what makes an article of top importance please post a message on this project's discussion page.

Importance Scale for BBC People edit

Status Template Which people are assigned
Top {{Top-Class}} Only John Reith, the current Director General and the current chairperson gets this status.
High {{High-Class}} Previous Director Generals or Chairpersons are awarded this status.
Mid {{Mid-Class}} Particularly notable current newsreaders and news editors. Current main characters or presenters of High category programming are allocated this status. Some particularly notable former presenters, characters and well known staff are also allocated this.
Low {{Low-Class}} Other current or former BBC staff and presenters of Mid/Low importance programming.

Requesting an assessment edit

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 by clicking here. Please use the format:

{{la|ARTICLE}}
Message ~~~~

Worklist edit

The worklists are available at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/BBC articles by quality. The logs are generated automatically (once every three days); please don't add entries to them by hand.

Assessment log edit

The assessment log is at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/BBC articles by quality log. The log is generated automatically (once every three days); please don't add entries to them by hand.

Unexpected changes, such as downgrading an article, or raising it more than two assessment classes at once, are shown in bold.