wikimedia-page-assessment

name	wikimedia-page-assessment
description	Query Wikipedia article quality (FA/GA/B/C/Start/Stub) and importance ratings from WikiProject assessment banners on any Wikimedia wiki with the PageAssessments extension
license	MIT
compatibility	opencode
depends_on	["wikimedia-database"]
last_verified	"2026-06-10T00:00:00.000Z"
skill_discovery_hints	[{"keywords":["WikiProject","WikiProject assessment","article quality","GA","FA","page assessment","content assessment"]},{"keywords":["popular pages","WikiProject popular pages","Assessment subpage","quality matrix","importance rating"]}]

⚠️ User-Agent required: While this skill primarily uses SQL via SSH tunnel, any direct API calls (e.g., for checking WikiProject subpages via the Action API) must include a descriptive User-Agent header. See the wikimedia-api-access skill for the correct format.

Enables the agent to retrieve quality and importance ratings for Wikipedia articles. This data is derived from WikiProject banners on talk pages and is stored in the page_assessments and page_assessments_projects tables in Wikimedia database replicas.

Which wikis have PageAssessments?

PageAssessments is not deployed on every language Wikipedia. It requires active opt-in per wiki (via a Phabricator request to WMF). As of 2026, the following wikis have it enabled, with subproject/task-force support noted:

Wiki	Subprojects enabled?	Phab ticket
English Wikipedia (enwiki)	✅	T146679
English Wikivoyage (enwikivoyage)	❌	T142056
French Wikipedia (frwiki)	❌	T153393
Arabic Wikipedia (arwiki)	❌	T185023
Turkish Wikipedia (trwiki)	❌	T184969
Hungarian Wikipedia (huwiki)	❌	T191697
Chinese Wikipedia (zhwiki)	✅	T326387
Nepali Wikipedia (newiki)	✅	T328224
Test Wikipedia (testwiki)	✅	T137918

This means the page_assessments tables will be empty on other language Wikipedias (dewiki, eswiki, jawiki, ruwiki, etc.). Most queries and examples in this skill target English Wikipedia (enwiki_p), which has the most comprehensive assessment coverage by far.

Prerequisites

• Database access: Requires an active SSH tunnel to Toolforge per the wikimedia-database skill.
• Credentials: TOOLFORGE_USER, TOOLFORGE_SQL_USER, TOOLFORGE_SQL_PASSWORD in .env or environment.
• SSH keys: Added to ssh-agent for non-interactive tunnel connections.

Database Schema: enwiki_p

Three primary tables:

1. page_assessments — One row per assessment (page × WikiProject pair).

   Column	Type	Description
   pa_page_id	int	Page ID of the Subject article (namespace 0)
   pa_project_id	int	Foreign key to page_assessments_projects
   pa_class	varbinary(20)	Quality grade: FA, GA, B, C, Start, Stub, List, FL, A, Book, Category, Disambig, File, Portal, Project, Redirect, Template, NA
   pa_importance	varbinary(20)	Priority: Top, High, Mid, Low, NA, Unknown
   pa_page_revision	int	Revision ID when this assessment was last updated (join with revision table for timestamp)

2. page_assessments_projects — WikiProject name mapping.

   Column	Type	Description
   pap_project_id	int	Primary key
   pap_project_title	varbinary(255)	WikiProject name, e.g. "Chemistry", "Medicine"
   pap_parent_id	int	Parent project ID for subprojects/task forces (NULL if top-level)

3. page — Core page metadata for title resolution.

   Column	Type	Description
   page_id	int	Joins to pa_page_id
   page_title	varbinary(255)	Article title (underscores, e.g. Albert_Einstein)
   page_namespace	int	0 for mainspace articles

Core Data Model

• pa_class — Quality grade. Standard values (ascending): Stub → Start → C → B → GA (Good Article) → FA (Featured Article)
• pa_importance — Priority within a WikiProject: Top → High → Mid → Low → NA / Unknown

Standard Implementation Pattern

SQL (via database tunnel)

-- Basic lookup: get assessment for a specific article
SELECT 
    p.page_title, 
    pap.pap_project_title AS wikiproject,
    pa.pa_class, 
    pa.pa_importance
FROM page_assessments pa
JOIN page_assessments_projects pap ON pa.pa_project_id = pap.pap_project_id
JOIN page p ON pa.pa_page_id = p.page_id
WHERE p.page_title = 'YOUR_PAGE_TITLE'  -- Replace spaces with underscores
  AND p.page_namespace = 0;

Python (for programmatic use)

import os
import pymysql
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()

conn = pymysql.connect(
    host='127.0.0.1',
    port=int(os.getenv('TOOLFORGE_DB_PORT', '3307')),
    user=os.getenv('TOOLFORGE_SQL_USER'),
    password=os.getenv('TOOLFORGE_SQL_PASSWORD'),
    database='enwiki_p',
    cursorclass=pymysql.cursors.DictCursor,
    charset='utf8mb4'
)

with conn.cursor() as cursor:
    cursor.execute("""
        SELECT pap.pap_project_title AS wikiproject,
               pa.pa_class, pa.pa_importance
        FROM page_assessments pa
        JOIN page_assessments_projects pap ON pa.pa_project_id = pap.pap_project_id
        JOIN page p ON pa.pa_page_id = p.page_id
        WHERE p.page_title = 'Albert_Einstein'
          AND p.page_namespace = 0
    """)
    for row in cursor.fetchall():
        print(f"[{row['wikiproject']}] Class={row['pa_class']}, Importance={row['pa_importance']}")
conn.close()

MySQL 9+ compatibility

If you get ERROR 2059: Authentication plugin 'mysql_native_password' cannot be loaded when using the mysql CLI, this is because MySQL 9.x removed the mysql_native_password plugin entirely from the client — both as a loadable .so and as a compiled-in implementation. Neither --default-auth nor any other flag can work around this.

The fix is to use pymysql (pure Python). It implements the MySQL protocol natively and handles mysql_native_password authentication without any external plugins:

pip install pymysql python-dotenv

The scripts in this skill (assess-project.sh, quality-gaps.sh) will automatically use pymysql if available, falling back to the mysql CLI only if Python dependencies are missing.

Constraint & Guardrails

1. Talk Page Paradox: Assessment templates exist on Talk pages (Namespace 1), but pa_page_id refers to the Subject page (Namespace 0). Always join with the Subject page ID for title resolution.

2. Duplicate Titles: A single page will have multiple rows if it is assessed by multiple WikiProjects. Use GROUP_CONCAT or your application-level grouping.

3. Normalization: Ratings are strings. Some projects use non-standard classes (e.g., "Future", "Current", "Draft"). The standard ordinal scale is: Stub → Start → C → B → GA → FA.

4. Case Sensitivity: WikiProject titles in pap_project_title are case-sensitive. "medicine" will fail; "Medicine" will succeed.

5. Safety Limits: Every exploratory query must include a LIMIT (default 10-50).

Example Use Cases for Agent

• "Find all 'Featured Articles' in the 'Computing' WikiProject."
• "Identify high-importance stubs that need immediate expansion."
• "Compare the average quality of articles in 'WikiProject Maryland' versus 'WikiProject Virginia'."
• "List every WikiProject that assesses articles about 'Chemistry'."
• "For the 'Physics' WikiProject, find all B-class articles with Top importance that haven't been assessed in over 5 years."

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SOP: Finding Pre-built WikiProject Reports

Many active WikiProjects maintain auto-generated subpages that summarize their coverage and article statistics. These are often more accessible than running SQL queries, especially for single-project lookups or when you don't have database access.

/Assessment — Quality and Importance Matrix

Most WikiProjects have an /Assessment subpage (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Assessment) that displays a color-coded table of article count by quality × importance, updated weekly by WP 1.0 bot.

URL pattern:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_<Name>/Assessment

Replace <Name> with the WikiProject name — case-sensitive:

• ✅ Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics/Assessment
• ✅ Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment
• ❌ Wikipedia:WikiProject physics/Assessment

What the page contains: A table with importance (Top/High/Mid/Low/???) as columns and quality (FA/FL/A/GA/B/C/Start/Stub/List) as rows. Each cell shows the count of articles at that intersection, linked to the corresponding category page for deeper inspection.

To check programmatically:

import requests

def has_assessment_page(project_name):
    """Check if a WikiProject has an /Assessment subpage."""
    headers = {'User-Agent': 'MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail]) SkillsDemo'}
    title = f"Wikipedia:WikiProject_{project_name}/Assessment"
    url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php"
    params = {
        'action': 'query',
        'titles': title,
        'format': 'json',
        'prop': 'info'
    }
    resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params=params, timeout=10)
    data = resp.json()
    pages = data['query']['pages']
    # Page key '-1' indicates a missing page
    return '-1' not in pages

print(has_assessment_page("Physics"))    # True
print(has_assessment_page("Chemistry"))  # True

/Popular_pages — Pageviews by Quality and Importance

Many WikiProjects also have a /Popular_pages subpage (e.g., Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Popular_pages) generated monthly by the Community Tech popular pages bot. Each entry lists an article with its rank, monthly pageviews, quality class, and importance — a pre-computed intersection of traffic data and assessment data that saves you from cross-referencing two separate APIs.

URL pattern:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_<Name>/Popular_pages

Master list of all Popular_pages reports:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Community_Tech_bot/Popular_pages

This page indexes every WikiProject that has opted into the popular pages bot, grouped by topic category (Science, History, Geography, etc.). Browse it to discover which projects have traffic data available.

To check programmatically:

def has_popular_pages(project_name):
    """Check if a WikiProject has a /Popular_pages subpage."""
    headers = {'User-Agent': 'MyBot/1.0 ([e-mail]) SkillsDemo'}
    title = f"Wikipedia:WikiProject_{project_name}/Popular_pages"
    url = "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/api.php"
    params = {
        'action': 'query',
        'titles': title,
        'format': 'json',
        'prop': 'info'
    }
    resp = requests.get(url, headers=headers, params=params, timeout=10)
    pages = resp.json()['query']['pages']
    return '-1' not in pages

print(has_popular_pages("Physics"))     # True
print(has_popular_pages("Medicine"))    # True

What the page contains: A multi-column table:

Rank	Page	Views	Quality	Importance
1	Article Title	1,234,567	B	Top
2	Another Article	987,654	GA	High

The data is pre-sorted by pageviews descending. The bot has already handled the cross-API join of pageviews data with assessment data.

Finding All WikiProjects (Discovery)

To discover which WikiProjects exist, use one of these approaches:

• Manual directory (curated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory

• Automatic directory (bot-updated): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Directory

• Category-based API query: WikiProjects are listed in Category:WikiProjects and its subcategories:

  action=query&list=categorymembers&cmtitle=Category:WikiProjects&cmtype=page&cmlimit=max&format=json
  

Use Cases for Agents

• "Find the Assessment page for WikiProject Chemistry and report the quality distribution."
• "Get the top 10 most-viewed articles in WikiProject Physics from its Popular_pages report."
• "Browse the master Popular_pages index to find which WikiProjects have traffic data."
• "Check whether WikiProject Medicine has both an Assessment page and a Popular_pages page."

Guardrails

1. Case sensitivity: WikiProject names in URLs are case-sensitive. Wikipedia:WikiProject_physics/Popular_pages returns a 404; Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics/Popular_pages works.
2. Not all projects opt in: Only projects that opted in to the bot-generated reports have /Assessment and/or /Popular_pages. Always check existence before attempting to fetch.
3. Data lag: Popular_pages data is generated monthly; the most recent report may be 1–2 months behind. Assessment pages are refreshed weekly.
4. Red links are normal: A WikiProject page may exist while its subpages are missing. Handle 404s gracefully via the API check above.

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Tooling

This skill includes helper scripts, reference docs, and templates:

🔧 Assess Project (scripts/assess-project.sh)

Get quality and importance distribution for any WikiProject.

./scripts/assess-project.sh "Chemistry" [limit]
./scripts/assess-project.sh "Medicine" 100

🔧 Quality Gaps (scripts/quality-gaps.sh)

Find high-importance articles with low quality — the highest-ROI improvement targets.

./scripts/quality-gaps.sh "Physics" [limit]
./scripts/quality-gaps.sh "Biology" 50

📚 Schema Reference (references/assessments-schema.md)

Full reference of the page_assessments and page_assessments_projects tables with column descriptions, join patterns, and edge cases.

🧩 Sample SQL Queries (assets/sample-queries.sql)

20+ pre-built SQL queries for assessments organized by category: project-level summaries, article lookups, quality gaps, importance distributions, multi-project intersections, and maintenance workflows.

🧩 Environment Template (assets/.env.example)

cp assets/.env.example .env
# Edit .env with your credentials

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Cross-References

Related Skill	Why
wikimedia-database	Database connection and pymysql patterns
wikipedia-page-anatomy	Article structure context for assessment ratings
wikipedia-talk-page	Assessment banners appear on talk pages
wikimedia-ml-services	ML-based quality scoring (complementary to human assessments)
wikimedia-pageviews	Article traffic data — Popular_pages bot combines pageviews with assessments