User:MuZemike/GA standards
 | 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 page in a nutshell: MuZemike has high standards when it comes to promoting articles to good article status. These standards complement the featured article process, help prepare those articles towards FA quality, and help ensure that good articles represent Wikipedia's better works. |
The following describes my standards for good articles and outlines my review process for good article nominees. This branches past reviewing good articles and help maintain a high standard for such articles. This also attempts to address issues commonly brought up with most featured article candidates before it gets there. I also borrow reviewing tips from other users, all of which have given me motiviation for writing this page.
Quick fail criteria
The following will immediately fail any good article nominee:
- Complete lack of verifiable sources.
- Article is clearly not written from a neutral point of view.
- Article, upon nomination, still has valid cleanup tags—such as {{refimprove}} or {{cleanup}}—or still has many valid smaller maintenance tags such as {{fact}} or {{rs}}.
- Article is unstable; that is, is currently under or has had significant recent edit warring.
- Article is about a still-evolving current event without closure.
Items 1 through 3 are obvious. The cornerstones of Wikipedia articles are verifiability, neutral point of view, and no original research. The article will fall apart if even one of these things are missing.
Item 4 and 5 together require that the article be stable. Good articles, in practice, must have some sense of completeness and closure to it. There should be no recent edit-warring or ongoing expansion (with common sense exceptions in regards to expansion). Ideally, users should be able to leave the article alone for a week with little or no changes to the content. If this doesn't happen, then that's a good indication that the article still has issues that needs to be worked out, normally via dispute resolution.
Full article check
Checking for good prose
If the article does not meet any of the quick-fail criteria above, then the first thing I do is a comprehensive read of the article, which means, for me, printing out a hard copy of the article, sitting down with a beverage and a pen (normally green), and marking all writing errors I see. Most simple grammatical, syntax, or prose errors I will correct myself, but for more complex errors or those which if I change it would change the meaning of that passage, I leave to the nominator to correct. I will not pass on 1a until such noted errors are corrected.
A big thing for me is passive voice. Try to use active voice whenever possible; only when absolutely necessary should passive voice be used. Another big thing for me is paragraph length. They should be between four and six sentences long, and they should remain of consistent length throughout the article if possible. Paragraphs that are too long tend to drone out, which tunes out readers.
Manual of style check
Lead section – It is imperative that good articles meet all aspects of Wikipedia's manual of style. Lead sections must be at a minimum of two paragraphs and no more than four paragraphs. It should not be too short or too long. There should also be no inline citations in the lead; it should be verifiable material already mentioned in the body of the article, which doesn't require the need of a citation when mentioned in the lead.
Inline citations – Inline citations need to follow WP:CITE. Do not mix and match citation templates; stick with one throughout. That is, if you have {{cite web}}, {{cite book}}, and {{cite news}} in the article for instance, then they should all be changed to the general {{citation}}. Date formats are supposed to be YYYY-MM-DD. When citing the author's name or authors' names, use the |first=, |last=, |first2=, |last2=, ... parameters. Avoid using redundant citations—only use one citation at the end of the covered material. If multiple citations are being used, then make sure they're in numerical order. All citations must remain consistent throughout the article and not change style part of the way through.
Section layout – It should follow consistent structure with other similar articles. One common mistake is using too many section or having sections or subsections that are too short. If a section or subsection is only one paragraph long, then it may not be needed and can be combined into another section or subsection. This keeps the Table of Contents short and concise.
Overlinking – Overlinking is a big problem in many Wikipedia articles. For wikilinking terms, the rule of thumb is this: once in the lead, once in the infobox, and once in the body. Only things relevant to the article or subject should be wikilinked. Dates should not be wikilinked. When using citations, only wikilink the publisher on the first mention, and that's it.
Image layout – Per WP:MOS#Images, images shall not be resized when being used as thumbnails. In other words, when an image is set to a thumbnail, the size defaults to 180px and should not be changed. Any forced image resizing, aside from the image in the infobox, will be removed. It must have a valid caption. Captions must either be a sentence fragment with no end-punctuation or full sentences with end punctuation. Keep captions consistent throughout the article.
Infobox – the big thing I see in infoboxes is the usage of flagicons. Don't use them.
Redirects – Click on "What links here" on the left side of the page, and click "Hide transclusions" and "Hide links". This will show you all redirects to the page. First, make sure they are valid redirects per WP:R; if there are Wikipedia:Redirect#Undesirable redirects, then they need to be deleted via the deletion process. All valid redirects need to be categorized (see WP:RCAT).
Disambiguation – if disambiguation is necessary, then it needs to be done correctly. The appropriate dablinks must be placed on top of the article. Dab pages should mention the article at hand.