An article's assessment is generated from the class and importance parameters in the {{Tree of Life}} project banner on its talk page

{{Tree of Life|class=???|importance=???|...}}

Class[edit]

The following values may be used for the class parameter and should be assigned according to the quality scale:

• FA (adds articles to Category:FA-Class taxonomic articles)
• A (adds articles to Category:A-Class taxonomic articles)
• GA (adds articles to Category:GA-Class taxonomic articles)
• B (adds articles to Category:B-Class taxonomic articles)
• C (adds articles to Category:C-Class taxonomic articles)
• Start (adds articles to Category:Start-Class taxonomic articles)
• Stub (adds articles to Category:Stub-Class taxonomic articles)
• FL (adds pages to Category:FL-Class taxonomic articles)
• List (adds pages to Category:List-Class taxonomic articles)
• Cat (adds pages to Category:Category-Class taxonomic articles)
• Disambig (adds pages to Category:Disambig-Class taxonomic articles)
• Redirect (adds pages to Category:Redirect-Class taxonomic articles)
• Template (adds pages to Category:Template-Class taxonomic articles)
• NA (adds pages to Category:NA-Class taxonomic articles for pages where assessment is unnecessary)
• ??? or blank (adds pages to Category:Unassessed taxonomic articles)

Importance[edit]

The following values may be used for the importance parameter and should be assigned according to the importance scale:

• Top (adds articles to Category:Top-importance taxonomic articles)
• High (adds articles to Category:High-importance taxonomic articles)
• Mid (adds articles to Category:Mid-importance taxonomic articles)
• Low (adds articles to Category:Low-importance taxonomic articles)
• ??? or blank (adds page to Category:Unknown-importance taxonomic articles)

Pages where assessment is unnecessary, such as categories, templates, and disambiguation pages, are automatically assigned an importance of NA and added to Category:NA-importance taxonomic articles

Other parameters[edit]

The following parameters are used to assess specific needs for individual articles and are used in the form:

{{Tree of Life |class= |importance= |needs-taxobox=yes|...}}

• needs-taxobox=yes (adds articles to Category:Missing taxobox
• needs-photo=yes (adds articles to Category:Taxonomic articles needing images
• attention=yes (adds articles to Category:Taxonomic articles needing attention) for cases where immediate attention is needed.

Quality scale[edit]

Article progress grading scheme

Label	Criteria	Reader's experience	Editor's experience	Examples
FA {{FA-Class}}	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured article" status after peer review, and meet the current criteria for featured articles.	Definitive. Outstanding, thorough article; a great source for encyclopedic information.	No further editing necessary, unless new published information has come to light.	Banksia brownii (March 2007) Banksia integrifolia (March 2007)
A {{A-Class}}	Provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, with a well-written introduction and an appropriate series of headings to break up the content. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from the "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites. Should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. At the stage where it could at least be considered for featured article status, corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard.	Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting. May miss a few relevant points.	Minor edits and adjustments would improve the article, particularly if brought to bear by a subject-matter expert. In particular, issues of breadth, completeness, and balance may need work. Peer-review would be helpful at this stage.	Sarracenia (March 2007)
GA {{GA-Class}}	The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and been granted GA status, meeting the good article standards. This should be used for articles that still need some work to reach featured article standards, but that are otherwise good. Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but being a Good article is not a requirement for A-Class.	Useful to nearly all readers. A good treatment of the subject. No obvious problems, gaps, excessive information. Adequate for most purposes, but other encyclopedias could do a better job.	Some editing will clearly be helpful, but not necessary for a good reader experience. If the article is not already fully wikified, now is the time.	Stylidium (March 2007) Drosera anglica (March 2007)
B {{B-Class}}	Has several of the elements described in "start", usually a majority of the material needed for a completed article. Nonetheless, it has significant gaps or missing elements or references, needs substantial editing for English language usage and/or clarity, balance of content, or contains other policy problems such as copyright, NPOV or NOR. With NPOV a well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard. Articles that are close to GA status but don't meet the Good article criteria should be B- or Start-class articles.	Useful to many, but not all, readers. A casual reader flipping through articles would feel that they generally understood the topic, but a serious student or researcher trying to use the material would have trouble doing so, or would risk error in derivative work.	Considerable editing is still needed, including filling in some important gaps or correcting significant policy errors. Articles for which cleanup is needed will typically have this designation to start with.	Nepenthes ampullaria (March 2007) Darlingtonia californica (March 2007)
Start {{Start-Class}}	The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a table. For example an article on Africa might cover the geography well, but be weak on history and culture. Has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following: a particularly useful picture or graphic multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic a subheading that fully treats an element of the topic multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article	Not useless. Some readers will find what they are looking for, but most will not. Most articles in this category have the look of an article "under construction" and a reader genuinely interested in the topic is likely to seek additional information elsewhere.	Substantial/major editing is needed, most material for a complete article needs to be added. This article usually isn't even good enough for a cleanup tag: it still needs to be built.	Drosera intermedia (March 2007)
Stub {{Stub-Class}}	The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to bring it to A-Class level. It is usually very short, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.	May be useless to a reader only passingly familiar with the term. Possibly useful to someone who has no idea what the term meant. At best a brief, informed dictionary definition.	Any editing or additional material can be helpful.	Nepenthes burbidgeae (March 2007)
Needed {{Needed-Class}}	The article does not exist and needs to be created.

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 botany.

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.