Wikipedia:How to write a featured article

Featured articles are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer, which makes writing them not an easy task. This essay is a one stop shop of valuable resources, whether you are seriously aiming to write a featured topic or just tweaking a shabby vital article. Each section is designated for an assessment category outlined in Wikipedia:Content assessment for easy navigation.

Stub

A stub is an article deemed too short to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject, usually only a few sentences long. This is one of the most common types of article on Wikipedia, with a good example being Crescent Falls in May 2018. Such article can be tagged with {{stub}} or its variant for easy identification. Some articles will always be a stub due to a lack of reliable source about the topic, but some is just not notable enough to exist and will be nominated for deletion. Because there is so little content available, the usual best course of action is to just add more content via sources, which this topic is discussed thoroughly at the reliable source guideline.

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 ring-tailed cardinalfish in June 2018. Some sectioning is attempted to categorize new information in the article. Even though the definition of a Start-class article can vary between editors, Wikipedia:Content assessment defined it as an article that "should [not] be in any danger of being speedily deleted." This means that the article must follow very basic policies about content, such as having a neutral point of view, verifiable, and contains no original research. In some cases, they also need to satisfy article title, biographies of living persons, image use, and "what Wikipedia is not" guidelines.

Most Start-class articles are sourced, though usually to questionable ones. Therefore, a good way to improve the article is to add more content, clean up the layout, and reformat the article to be up to standards. Grammar, spelling, jargon use and writing style can also be improved via copyediting, though the latter should never be based on personal preferences. Since Wikipedia is a work in progress, not all article must be better than Start-class, though it is generally agreed that any Start-class article has a potential to be a B-class or even a good article. Collaboration between editors happens much more often starting from this stage.

Finding a Start-class article is easy as it is the most numerous on Wikipedia. Therefore, the most problematic ones can be found at Wikipedia:Cleanup, Template:Opentask, Category:Wikipedia pages with to-do lists, and Category:Articles needing attention. Some Start-class articles can be merged to have enough content, though this practice is controversial to many editors.

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.