Welcome to theassessment department of WikiProject Law! This department focuses on assessing the quality of Wikipedia's articles about the law and legal system. While much of the work is done in conjunction with theWP:1.0 program, the article ratings are also used within the project itself to aid in recognising excellent contributions and identifying topics in need of further work.
The ratings are done in a distributed fashion through parameters in the{{WikiProject Law}} project banner; this causes the articles to be placed in the appropriate sub-categories ofCategory:Law articles by quality andCategory:Law articles by importance.
If you have any other questions not listed here, please feel free to ask them on the discussion page for this department.
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 theWikipedia:Peer review instead. Completed requests are usually placed in thearchive.
Please place new requests (in the format, # [[article name]] -- ~~~~ ) at the bottom of the list.
An article's assessment is generated from theclass andimportance parameters in the{{WikiProject Law}} project banner on its talk page:
{{WikiProject Law|class=|importance=|attention=|needs-infobox=|peer-review=|old-peer-review=}}
The following values may be used for theclass parameter:
Articles for which a valid class is not provided are listed inCategory:Unassessed law articles. The class should be assigned according to thequality scale below.
While this is a general guide, many editors feel that a page is still a "stub" if the text is less than about 250 words or about 1,500 characters, as a heuristic.
| Class | Criteria | Reader's experience | Editing suggestions | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 FA | The article has attainedfeatured article status by passing an in-depth examination by impartial reviewers fromWP:Featured article candidates. More detailed criteria The article meets thefeatured article criteria: Afeatured article exemplifies Wikipedia's very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting thepolicies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.
| 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. | Cleopatra (as of June 2018) |
| FL | The article has attainedfeatured list status by passing an in-depth examination by impartial reviewers fromWP:Featured list candidates. More detailed criteria The article meets thefeatured list criteria:
| 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; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible. | List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events (as of May 2018) |
 A | The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been examined by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class. More detailed criteria The article meets theA-Class criteria: Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described inWikipedia:Article development. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, appropriately structured, and be well referenced by a broad array of reliable sources. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Only minor style issues and other details need to be addressed before submission as afeatured article candidate. See the A-Class assessment departments of some of the larger WikiProjects (e.g.WikiProject Military history). | Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject would typically find nothing wanting. | Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style problems may need solving.WP:Peer review may help. | Battle of Nam River (as of June 2014) |
 GA | The article meetsall of thegood article criteria, and has been examined by one or more impartial reviewers fromWP:Good article nominations. More detailed criteria Agood article is:
| Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (though not necessarily equalling) the quality of a professional publication. | Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existingfeatured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing. | Discovery of the neutron (as of April 2019) |
| B | The article meetsall of theB-Class criteria. It is mostly complete and does not have major problems, but requires some further work to reachgood article standards. More detailed criteria
| Readers are not 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. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with theManual of Style and relatedstyle guidelines. | Psychology (as of January 2024) |
| C | The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantialcleanup. More detailed criteria The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements, or need editing for clarity, balance, or flow. | 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 solvecleanup problems. | Wing (as of June 2018) |
| Start | An article that is developing but still quite incomplete. It may or may not cite adequate reliable sources. More detailed criteria The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas. The article has one or more of the following:
| Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more. | Providing references toreliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation. Improve the grammar, spelling, and writing style; decrease the use of jargon. | Ball (as of September 2014) |
| Stub | A very basic description of the topic. Meets none of the Start-Class criteria. | Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant. | Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. The best solution for a Stub-class Article to step up to a Start-class Article is to add in referenced reasons of why the topic is significant. | Lineage (anthropology) (as of December 2014) |
| List | Meets the criteria of astand-alone list orset index article, 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. | List of literary movements |
An article's importance assessment is generated from theimportance parameter in the{{WikiProject Law}} project banner on its talk page:
The criteria used for rating article importance arenot meant to be an absolute or canonical view of how significant the topic is. Rather, they attempt to gauge the probability of theaverage reader of the English Wikipedia needing to look up the topic (and thus the immediate need to have a suitably well-written article on it). Thus, subjects with greaterpopular notability may be rated higher than topics which are arguably more "important" but which are of interest primarily to students of the law.
Further, generally notability should not be limited to the perspective of editor demographics, or one jurisdiction or country. Thus, topics which may seem obscure to a common law audience—but which are of high notability in other places—should still be highly rated. Generally, articles on the topic in one country should have the same importance rating as an equivalent topic in another country. For example, an article on criminal law in Canada, Germany, or China should receive the same importance rating as an article on criminal law in the US.
The following values may be used for importance assessments:
| 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. The article is about one of the core legal topics. Adds articles toCategory:Top-importance law articles |
| High | {{High-Class}} | This article is fairly important to this project, as it covers a general area of knowledge. The article is about the most well-known or historically significant aspects of the law. Adds articles toCategory:High-importance law articles. |
| Mid | {{Mid-Class}} | This article is relatively important to this project, as it fills in some more specific knowledge of certain areas. The article is about a topic within the legal field that may or may not be commonly known outside the profession. Adds articles toCategory:Mid-importance law articles. |
| 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. The article is about a topic that is highly specialised within the field of legal studies and is not generally common knowledge to lay people. Adds articles toCategory:Low-importance law articles. |
| None | None | This article has yet to be rated. Adds articles toCategory:Unknown-importance law articles. |
The list of members below make up the WikiProject Law Assessment team. Members of the team who are bolded (below) are currently the main, active member(s) of the assessment team - they are most likely to assess articles, so please direct any enquiries regarding assessment or the assessment department towards them.
If you would like to join the assessment team, please add your name below.
The full log of assessment changes for the past thirty days is availablehere. Unfortunately, due to its extreme size, it cannot be transcluded directly.