Wikipedia:How to write a featured article
This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints. |
This essay could benefit from being converted into a how-to-guide. It contains some non-opinionated instructional content related to the processes or procedures of some aspect(s) of Wikipedia's norms and practices. |
This page in a nutshell: There are many resources to improve articles of all quality levels. |
Stub
A
For new editors, Help:Your first article can be useful as an all-in-one guide. There are some essays that express viewpoints of extremely short or undeveloped stubs, such as Wikipedia:Don't hope the house will build itself, Wikipedia:Don't demolish the house while it's still being built, and Wikipedia:An unfinished house is a real problem. A word of caution: please use your own words – directly copying other sources without giving them credit is plagiarism, and may in some cases be a violation of copyright.
A good stub contains:
- Adequate context to make it clear what the subject of the article is and for other editors to expand upon it
- A sorted{{stub}} template at the end
- At least one good category at the very end
- Tagged with appropriate WikiProjects at its talk page
- Providing sources that is archived to prevent link rot
- Some appropriate wikilinks to prevent orphaning
Start
A Start-class article provides some meaningful content but is still weak in many areas. A good example of such an article being
Most Start-class articles are sourced, though usually to
Finding a Start-class article is easy as it is the most numerous on Wikipedia. Therefore, the most problematic ones can be found at
A good Start-class article contains all of the above criteria and:
- A few sections to categorize information
- No {{stub}} template at the end
- Providing reliable information from reputable primary, secondary or tertiary source
- An image, preferably freely licensed
- Met core policies about content
- Intelligible grammar and formatting
- Bold first instance of the word
C-class
A C-class article is defined as "still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material" by Wikipedia:Content assessment, and usually considered to be an "average" article quality by many editors. An example of a C-class article being wing in June 2018.
B-class
A B-class article is generally considered to be comprehensive by casual readers, like human in April 2019. This is generally an advised end goal for an article that is about a very obscure topic. Unlike prior assessments, B-class has six concrete criteria:
- The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations – it has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. Any format of inline citation is acceptable: the use of <ref> tags and citation templates such as}} is optional.
{{cite web
- The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies – it contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
- The article has a defined structure – content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
- The article is reasonably well-written – the prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it does not need to be "brilliant". The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.
- The article contains supporting materials where appropriate – illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
- The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way – it is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. Although Wikipedia is more than just a general encyclopedia, the article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.
Good article
A good article is reviewed by an impartial editor, like discovery of the neutron article in April 2019 and its review. For a reader, the article is of very high quality with no obvious omissions. It must satisfy the following criteria:
- Well written:
- the prose is clear, concise, and list incorporation.
- the prose is clear, concise, and
- the layout style guideline;.
- all inline citations are from reliable sources, including those for direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements that are challenged or likely to be challenged, and contentious material relating to living persons—science-based articles should follow the scientific citation guidelines;
- it contains no original research; and
- it contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism
- it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and
- it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
A-class
An A-class article is often considered as a transition between good article and featured article status. It was originally created to serve as a buffer between B-class and featured article, though now it saw limited use by some large Wikiprojects. An example is the Battle of Nam River and its review in June 2014.
Featured article
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Further
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