Wikipedia:GRADES

The following system is used by the for assessing how close we are to a distribution-quality article on a particular topic. The system is based on a letter scheme which reflects principally how factually complete the article is, though the content and language quality are also factors. Once an article reaches the A-Class, it is considered "complete", although edits will continue to be made.

It is vital that editors not take these assessments of their contributions personally. It is understood that we each have our own opinions of the priorities of the objective criteria for a perfect article. Generally an active project will develop a consensus, though be aware that different projects may use their own variation of the criteria more tuned for the subject area, such as this. Many projects have an assessment team. If you contribute a lot of content to an article you may request an independent assessment.

There is a separate scale for rating articles for importance or priority, which is unrelated to the quality scale outlined here. Unlike the quality scale, the priority scale varies based on the project scope. See also a proposed template at {{}}

A good article is—

This clickable imagemap, using the article "Atom" as an example, demonstrates the typical profile for an article's development through the levels. Hold the mouse over a number to see key events, and click on a number to see that version of the article. Please note that until 2008, a C-class rating did not exist on the project, and as such this grading is retroactive. Also, in 2006 references were much less used, and inline references were quite rare; a barely-B-Class article today would typically have many more references than this article did in late 2006.

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