Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Improving articles

Improving articles is an endless task on Wikipedia. No matter how well-written an article or how thorough its coverage of the subject, there will always be something more that can be added, better worded, or sourced. It is in the pursuit of the never-ending goal of reaching and achieving FA-class that articles on Wikipedia are rated on an assessment scale. This scale serves as an anchor for all article improvements. The scale rates articles according to several criteria and assigns them to one of several pre-existing ranks. In improving an article, it is helpful to understand the basic points of the system and what must be achieved for an article to move up to the next level.

All assessments on Wikipedia are, at their heart, attempts to communicate article quality to the 1.0 assessment team. This team is responsible for selecting articles for inclusion in offline releases of Wikipedia. In their attempts to select articles of outstanding quality, they have asked that articles be rated on a system from Stub to Featured, to better gauge what kind of articles they are receiving. The team has occasionally amended their criteria but the basics of the assessment chart remain the same.

Assessment is a point of pride for the Military History Project. We have long been considered a project that has high standards for article assessments. This reputation inspires our members to demand high standards to ensure the articles which move up on the scale are worthy of their new rank. The highest rankings apply to a relatively small proportion of our articles: those held to be GA-class or better. Most of our articles rate at or below B-class. They are in need of improvement to bring them up to the higher assessment levels needed for offline release. For this purpose, the rankings, their simplified definitions, and the means by which the criteria can be improved are listed below.

Stub-class

Stub-class articles refer to those that are of insufficient length to provide an encyclopedic definition of the material covered. Stubs often comprise only a few lines, and have no tables, images, or citations. They may include external links, but these often add little or no value to the material. Stubs are the easiest articles to improve upon. Adding one or two paragraphs, or adding images, tables, or citations, will bump a stub class article up to start class.

Start-class

Start-class articles are the other major article group within the Military History Project. Start-class articles are larger than Stub-class articles. They usually include some combination of section headers, a table of contents, images, graphs, inline citations, and external links.

Promotion from Start-class to B-class requires that an article meet all points in the B-class criteria chart. To improve a Start-class article, you should start by looking on the talk page of the article and locating the {{WPMILHIST}} banner. Locate the Start-class rating and determining what points on the B-class rating the article does not satisfy. There are a total of five unique points that must be fully met before B-class status will be awarded.

Citation and referencing

The first of these five points relates to citation and referencing. All points of the Start-class article must be adequately cited and referenced before the article will be permitted to move up to B-class. By project standards, this means that there is at least one citation per paragraph in all paragraphs in the article, and that all citations in the reference/notes sections cite reliable sources as defined at Wikipedia:Reliable Sources. Additional citations may be required for information that appears questionable or likely to be challenged. More information in citations and referencing can be found in the sourcing and citation section of the Military history Project Manual of Style.

Coverage

The coverage of an article must touch on all aspects of the topic without giving undue weight to any part of it. The article must maintain a neutral point of view. This point can be difficult to interpret, so be prepared to answer questions concerning coverage if they happen to arise.

Structure

An encyclopedia article should have a lead section. The lead section is an abstract or precis of the article. In a developed article, it consists of a minimum of two or three paragraphs that adequately summarize the rest of the article. The main part of the article and the lead should each be able to be read and make sense, even if the other did not exist. The rest of the article, the main text, should be logically broken into sections to make reading the article more manageable. How this should be done depends on the subject matter. In general, every time a major point-shift occurs, you should have a new heading, and any time notable events occur within the major point, a subsection header should be considered. Headings help improve the readability of an article. They break the text into smaller "chunks" that are easier to take in than a continuous block of text. This is particularly important for text being read from screen devices. However, many headings with little detail will break the "flow" of reading.

Spelling and grammar

The article should be free of obvious grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

Supporting materials

Images, pictures, diagrams, graphs or tables should be included.

When all five of these points have been met, the article can be promoted to B-class.

C-class

C-class is an intermediary level, used for articles which are almost, but not quite, up to B-class standards. Project standards for C-class require an article to pass the B-class requirements for structure, spelling and grammar, and supporting materials. They must also pass one of the criteria, either citation and referencing, or coverage.

B-class

Promotion to B-class requires that an article adequately meet all points listed on the B-class criteria chart. To improve a start class article, you should start by looking on the talk page to see why the article has been assessed as C-class and not B-class. Locate the {{WPMILHIST}} banner and then, the class rating to seeing what points on the B-class rating the article does not satisfy. There are a total of five unique points that must be fully met before B-class status will be awarded.

Citation and referencing

The first of these five points relates to citations and referencing. All points of the Start-class article must be adequately cited and referenced before the article will be permitted to move up to B-class. By project standards, this means that there is at least one citation per paragraph in all paragraphs in the article. All citations in the reference/notes sections must be reliable sources, as defined at Wikipedia:Reliable Sources. Additional citations may be required for information if the information appears questionable or if it is likely to be challenged. More information in citations and referencing as it related to the Military history Project can be found in the sourcing and citation section of the Military history Project Manual of Style.

Coverage

The second of these five points relates to the coverage of the material in question. The coverage in the article must touch on all aspects on the material covered in a way which gives no undue weight to the material. It must be presented in a way consistent with a neutral point of view. This point can be obtuse to interpret, so be prepared to answer questions concerning coverage if they happen to arise.

Structure

The third point relates to the structure of the article. It must have a lead section that adequately summarize the information in the article. The main article must be broken into "logical" sections that aid the reader in navigating through the article.

Spelling and grammar

This requirement demands that the article be free or nearly free of grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

Supporting materials

The last point is the use of visual aids, and demands that some amount of images, pictures, diagrams, graphs, or tables be present in the article.

B-class is a high standard within our project, as we consider B-class to be the gateway from which articles can move up to GA, A, and FA classes. We take the ranking of B-class seriously. As a matter of honor, we usually move to get all articles within our project singled out for offline release to be at least B-class. Information within a B-class article must be correct, insofar as the sources are concerned.

B-class standards from our project were adopted Wikipedia wide in 2008 and, as such, are now found on nearly every major project template.

GA-class

GA-class is the first of the three highest ratings possible on Wikipedia, and the first of three grades from which community consensus is required to obtain a higher ranking.

GA-class is short hand for Good Article class, and it is a certification that the article meets currently acceptable GA-class standards for MoS compliance, prose flow, citations, and other matters. A GA-class review is carried out on the talk page of the article in question by a single editor unaffiliated with the article's development. The article in question must meet all currently acceptable GA-standards to be promoted. If the article is not quite there yet, the person running the GA-class assessment may temporarily suspend the nomination to allow for the article's primary contributor(s) to address any complaints raised.

If you nominate the article for GA-class you are solely responsible for addressing any and all complaints raised during the GA-class assessment. You may seek outside assistance to aid with the addressing of GA-assessment issues but ultimately, only the person who nominated the article for GA-class is held responsible for addressing the concerns brought up during the GA-assessment.

A-class

Main page: Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Writing an A-Class article

A-class is a unique status that indicates the article has been internally reviewed by a project to confirm with the project's guidelines concerning A-class.

A-class differs from GA-class in that GA-class is principally concerned with adherence to the MoS and other issues such as spelling, grammar, image size, verifiability, stability, infoboxes, and so forth. A-class is more concerned with checking the article for factual accuracy and compliance with a project's policies on matters concerning the naming of events, reliability of sources, consistent formatting, and other issues that would otherwise not be addressed by a GA-class review but would be considered problematic during a Featured Article Candidacy. A-class covers most, if not all, of the issues raised at GAN as well.

If you nominate an article for A-class then you are solely responsible for addressing all complaints that arise during the article's A-class candidacy. You may seek assistance from other editors on points, but as the nominator it is your responsibility to ensure that all points of concerns and/or opposition are addressed during the A-class review.

Under no circumstances should a GA-class review and A-class review run simultaneously. Although both processes are means to achieve a higher assessment, previous GA and A-class reviews that have run at the same time have caused disagreement between the editor overseeing the GA-class review and the editors reviewing the A-class request. Resolving the difference of opinion between GA and A-class assessors under such circumstances usually forces the nominator to choose between two equally unattractive options: fail the GA-class nomination, or attempt to persuade the A-class reviewers that the change is necessary in the article, which can result in an article failing an A-class review.

FA-class

Featured articles are considered to be the best articles in Wikipedia, as determined by Wikipedia's editors. Before being listed as FAs, articles are reviewed at featured article candidates for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style according to the featured article criteria.

A small bronze star on the top right corner of an article's page indicates that the article is featured. Additionally, if the current article is featured in another language version, a star will appear next to the language page link on the left of the page.

Featured Articles are reviewed at an independent Featured Article Candidates page which subjects the article to all manner of scrutiny to ensure compliance with the current FA standards. Typically after 10 to 30 days, if a candidate's problems have been addressed, the FAC Director or one of his or her two Delegates will close the FAC and promote the article to FA-class.

As the nominator you are responsible for addressing the concerns that arise during the FAC. You may seek outside assistance to with addressing the points of concern, but it is your responsibility to ensure that all concerns and objections are addressed during the FAC.