Format a review

We format it; you publish it somewhere else. This sends us nothing.

How this works
  1. Fill this in. Only the page and a review or one grade are needed; everything else is optional.
  2. We hand it back as plain text, Markdown, a numbered thread, HTML or a PDF—each copyable and downloadable—and add the licence line for you.
  3. You publish it, somewhere we can read without logging in.
  4. Then send us that address at WikiCritic. We keep our copy beside yours so a reader can check one against the other, which is why a comment that exists only here is one we cannot take.

Nothing you type here is stored, anywhere, by anyone. This page has no server behind it: there is no draft, no address holding one, and nothing for us to delete. Copy what you want before you close the tab, because closing it is the whole of the deletion.

What are you writing?

Switching keeps everything you have written. Almost everything below is optional—what is not is marked required.

The page required

Begin typing to search Wikipedia article titles.

Reviewing something else?

The search covers English Wikipedia articles, which is what a review grades. For anything else—another language, a talk page, a deletion discussion, a policy page, a page on a different wiki entirely—paste the full address instead. A bare title with no wiki named is read as English Wikipedia.

One comment reviews one article. To write about several, write one comment for each; a comment naming several is refused and asked to be split.

The long number in the article's page-history URL, which ties your comment to the exact version you read. Blank means the revision current when you publish.

The review required, unless you grade

However you like—a paragraph or ten pages. Plain prose is fine.

Grades required, unless you write a review

A lone Overall is useful on its own. Overall is a summary judgement, not an average.

What the letters mean

A criterion you leave blank is left out of your comment rather than guessed at. The full written A–F descriptors for each criterion—the same standard our AI is held to—are behind the “?” beside each criterion's name below, and again on the submission page.

The rubric describes five levels—A, B, C, D and F. Use + and − when you think an article sits slightly above or below what the rubric says for a letter. A B− means the B description fits, but only just. There is no separate description for the half-steps; they are yours to judge. Where a description fits two levels, assign the lower one.

The lede is the introductory section above the table of contents. It is what most readers actually read, which is why it can be graded on its own; lede grades and whole-article grades are pooled separately and never mixed. Say nothing about scope and we take it as the whole article.

How do you want to grade?
Overall
?

Overallyour judgement of the article as a whole

A
Sound. A reader can rely on it. Nothing important is missing, wrong, one-sided, or out of date, and a general reader can follow it. Changes would be improvements, not repairs.
B
Good, with known limits. A reader is well served but should verify anything they mean to rely on. Its faults are visible and a competent editor could fix them in an afternoon.
C
Usable with care. Serviceable on the basics and unreliable past them. Someone who stops here leaves under-informed, but not misled.
D
Not to be relied on. Substantial failures on more than one criterion, and the reader who suffers them has no way to notice.
F
Should not be the encyclopedia’s answer to this topic. A reader is worse off for having read it than if the page did not exist.
your judgement of the article as a whole
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Completeness
?

Completenessdoes it cover what it must cover

A
Covers every major facet a competent treatment would include. A reader who knew nothing arrives knowing what matters. What is left out was left out on purpose.
B
Substantially complete. One or two secondary aspects thin or missing; nothing a specialist would call a hole.
C
Covers the obvious and misses the non-obvious. Noticeable gaps, no single fatal one.
D
Major facets absent. The reader leaves with a materially incomplete picture and no sign that they have.
F
So partial as to mislead by omission. What is missing changes the meaning of what is there.
does it cover what it must cover
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Competency
?

Competencyis it accurate, responsible, informed

A
Accurate, and stated with the right degree of confidence. Handles technical material without error or false simplification. Reads as written by someone who knows the field.
B
Accurate in substance. Occasional loose phrasing or an overstated claim; nothing that misleads.
C
Broadly accurate with identifiable errors—or correct facts assembled by someone who does not understand them.
D
Errors in material claims, or confident assertion where the field is unsettled. An informed reader is stopped repeatedly.
F
Substantially wrong about its subject, or so amateurish that no part of it can be relied on.
is it accurate, responsible, informed
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Scholarship
?

Scholarshipquality and range of the sources it should have

A
A thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature. The sources a specialist would expect are present, they are the best available, and they are used for what they actually say.
B
Well grounded. Minor gaps in the literature, or a weaker source used where a stronger one exists.
C
Adequately sourced but unrepresentative—heavy on what is easy to find, light on what is authoritative. Or well cited in volume and thin in quality.
D
Key literature absent. Load-bearing claims rest on weak, partisan, or tertiary sources, or the bibliography is padded with work that does not support the text.
F
Effectively unsourced, or sourced so as to misrepresent the literature it cites.
quality and range of the sources it should have
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Neutrality
?

Neutralityfair to everyone with a stake, not just to experts

A
On every controversial question the topic raises, competing perspectives are presented fairly and the article takes no side. The factual aspects of disputes are described plainly. No lean is discernible, in emphasis, placement or word choice.
B
Even-handed, with lapses. No sustained lean, but an occasional word choice or framing favours one side. A reader would not come away with a skewed impression of who is right.
C
A discernible lean. Every significant view is present and taken seriously, but one side gets less room, later placement, or cooler language, and a reader would notice which side the article prefers.
D
Severely imbalanced. Opposing views are acknowledged without being treated fairly—characterized by their opponents, or answered rather than stated.
F
One-sided. Significant perspectives are ignored or misrepresented. The article reads as an argument.
fair to everyone with a stake, not just to experts
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Currency
?

Currencyhow up to date is the discussion

A
Reflects the present state of the subject, including recent developments and current scholarship.
B
Current in substance. One or two recent developments not yet incorporated.
C
Several years behind. Nothing false, but the discussion has moved and the article has not.
D
Substantially dated. Superseded findings or defunct arrangements presented as though current.
F
Describes a state of affairs that no longer obtains, with nothing to indicate it has changed.
how up to date is the discussion
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)
Simplicity
?

Simplicityas simple as the topic allows, for the general public

A
As simple as the subject permits without distortion. A capable general reader can follow it start to finish, and the lede is intelligible to anyone.
B
Mostly plain. An occasional unexplained term or dense passage.
C
Followable with effort. Jargon arrives before its definition; sentences carry more clauses than they need.
D
Opaque to a general reader. Written for people who already know the subject, and the lede does not orient.
F
Incomprehensible outside the specialty. It assumes what the reader came to find out.
as simple as the topic allows, for the general public
Whole article
Lede only (introductory section)

About you all optional

Your own words, shown as your claim and never checked by us.

Who you are, generally.

Who you are in a sentence, in your own words—the sort of line that appears under a byline. This is not a claim of standing on this topic; that is the next field. Where an author claims no particular standing here, this is what a reader sees under their name.

Why your view of THIS subject carries weight.

How we tell an expert from a member of the general public, so that informed commentary gets due weight. Stated credentials that are confirmed will result in your comment being weighted more heavily. It need not be a degree—years of doing the thing count. What matters is that it bears on this subject: a mathematician is not thereby an authority on the Tetragrammaton, and saying so plainly serves you better than stretching.

Where you already stand.

Where you stand on the topic. Knowing it helps readers interpret your critique; disclosure strengthens credibility rather than weakening it.

Anything you stand to gain or lose.

A disclosed conflict is more credible than a hidden one. We want this path to exist.

You speak for the person or body written about.

You are not the subject of the article, but you are authorized to speak for them.

You were there.

Not a credential—a statement that you were personally present in the events described.

A disclosure. It disqualifies nothing.

Whether a machine helped, and how much. We cannot check this and are not trying to: a disclosure asked plainly is worth more than a classifier that would refuse real people. Say what you did—a draft you rewrote, a tidy-up of your own prose, research you then verified. Editing help is fine; work a machine wrote is not.

Answering another comment optional

Point at another WikiCritic comment you agree or disagree with.

What these do

Endorses: you agree with that comment and want your name behind it. Disputes: you disagree—lighter than writing a full reply of your own, which is a Rebuttal. Name as many addresses as you like.

Use whichever address you have to hand—where the comment was originally published, or its WikiCritic page. Both resolve to the same comment.

There is no voting on comments, and there won't be. An endorsement counts only when it arrives attached to a published comment of your own, which is what keeps it from being cheap.

What the tags are, and which are ours to decide

Tags are how WikiCritic files and filters comments, and our agent reads your post and tags it from what it finds. Naming the kind yourself is welcome: Review Talkback Page suppression Subject response Rebuttal.

The content tags—factual correction, new sources, sourcing dispute, omission, citogenesis and the rest—are ours to detect; don't assert them. Two of them, Diffs provided and Sources cited, are things we can see for ourselves and are never yours to claim. One, Systemic pattern, is applied only when you say it yourself.

Correcting a comment you have already submitted

Comments are not edited on WikiCritic—they are re-imported from wherever you published them. The simplest correction is to fix your own post and send us the same address again. Nothing else is needed.

If instead you publish the correction somewhere new, say plainly which comment it changes by putting one of these lines in the text of your comment, with the address: Replaces: overwrites the earlier comment entirely; Updates: stacks a dated follow-up beneath it while the original stays visible. We cannot work this out on our own, and without it you end up with two live comments on the same page under your name.

We also have to be satisfied the two came from the same hands, and with no accounts here, control of the source page stands in for one. A second post on the same site and account is proof enough; from a different site, the original has to point at the new one. If common ownership can't be established nothing is lost—we import the new comment on its own and link it to the one it refers to.

We add the licence line. Nothing here is published or submitted.

Format a talkback

We format it; you publish it somewhere else. This sends us nothing.

How this works
  1. Fill this in. Only the page and the account are needed; everything else is optional.
  2. We hand it back as plain text, Markdown, a numbered thread, HTML or a PDF—each copyable and downloadable—and add the licence line for you.
  3. You publish it, somewhere we can read without logging in.
  4. Then send us that address at WikiCritic. We keep our copy beside yours so a reader can check one against the other, which is why a comment that exists only here is one we cannot take.

Nothing you type here is stored, anywhere, by anyone. This page has no server behind it: there is no draft, no address holding one, and nothing for us to delete. Copy what you want before you close the tab, because closing it is the whole of the deletion.

What are you writing?

Switching keeps everything you have written. Almost everything below is optional—what is not is marked required.

The page required

Begin typing to search Wikipedia article titles.

Reviewing something else?

The search covers English Wikipedia articles, which is what a review grades. For anything else—another language, a talk page, a deletion discussion, a policy page, a page on a different wiki entirely—paste the full address instead. A bare title with no wiki named is read as English Wikipedia.

One comment reviews one article. To write about several, write one comment for each; a comment naming several is refused and asked to be split.

What happened required

A talkback is about how the article is being handled, not about whether it is right.

Process, not content

Whether the article is right is a review. Whether the editing was conducted properly is a talkback—who did what, when, under which rationale, and what happened next. The same episode can be both; that is two comments, not one.

A useful test: strike out every sentence about whether the article is correct. What is left is the talkback.

The account required

Who did what, and when. Dates, usernames, diffs and noticeboards help—a report a reader can check is worth more than one they cannot.

Diffs and links optional

One per line.

Where these end up

In the text of your comment, not in a field of ours. Our agent notices diffs itself and tags the comment accordingly—that tag is never yours to claim.

About you all optional

Your own words, shown as your claim and never checked by us.

Who you are, generally.

Who you are in a sentence, in your own words—the sort of line that appears under a byline. This is not a claim of standing on this topic; that is the next field. Where an author claims no particular standing here, this is what a reader sees under their name.

Why your view of THIS subject carries weight.

How we tell an expert from a member of the general public, so that informed commentary gets due weight. Stated credentials that are confirmed will result in your comment being weighted more heavily. It need not be a degree—years of doing the thing count. What matters is that it bears on this subject: a mathematician is not thereby an authority on the Tetragrammaton, and saying so plainly serves you better than stretching.

Anything you stand to gain or lose.

A disclosed conflict is more credible than a hidden one. We want this path to exist.

You were there.

Not a credential—a statement that you were personally present in the events described.

A disclosure. It disqualifies nothing.

Whether a machine helped, and how much. We cannot check this and are not trying to: a disclosure asked plainly is worth more than a classifier that would refuse real people. Say what you did—a draft you rewrote, a tidy-up of your own prose, research you then verified. Editing help is fine; work a machine wrote is not.

Answering another comment optional

Point at another WikiCritic comment you agree or disagree with.

What these do

Endorses: you agree with that comment and want your name behind it. Disputes: you disagree—lighter than writing a full reply of your own, which is a Rebuttal. Name as many addresses as you like.

Use whichever address you have to hand—where the comment was originally published, or its WikiCritic page. Both resolve to the same comment.

There is no voting on comments, and there won't be. An endorsement counts only when it arrives attached to a published comment of your own, which is what keeps it from being cheap.

Correcting a comment you have already submitted

Comments are not edited on WikiCritic—they are re-imported from wherever you published them. The simplest correction is to fix your own post and send us the same address again. Nothing else is needed.

If instead you publish the correction somewhere new, say plainly which comment it changes by putting one of these lines in the text of your comment, with the address: Replaces: overwrites the earlier comment entirely; Updates: stacks a dated follow-up beneath it while the original stays visible. We cannot work this out on our own, and without it you end up with two live comments on the same page under your name.

We also have to be satisfied the two came from the same hands, and with no accounts here, control of the source page stands in for one. A second post on the same site and account is proof enough; from a different site, the original has to point at the new one. If common ownership can't be established nothing is lost—we import the new comment on its own and link it to the one it refers to.

We add the licence line. Nothing here is published or submitted.

Everything on this page happens in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere, and no copy of it exists outside this window. Close the tab and it is gone—so copy what you want before you do.

WikiCritic is in closed beta. Publish your review, then point Larry Sanger to it—that is both how a review reaches us during the beta and how to ask for access.