| Class |
Criteria |
Reader's experience |
Editing suggestions |
Example
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The article has attained featured article status by passing an in-depth examination by impartial reviewers from WP:Featured article candidates.
More detailed criteria
The article meets the featured article criteria:
A featured article exemplifies our very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting the policies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.
- It is—
- well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard;
- comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context;
- well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature. Claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate;
- neutral: it presents views fairly and without bias; and
- stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process.
- It follows the style guidelines, including the provision of—
- a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections;
- appropriate structure: a system of hierarchical section headings and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents; and
- consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes (<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1.</ref>) or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1)—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended. The use of citation templates is not required.
- Media. It has images and other media where appropriate, with succinct captions, and acceptable copyright status. Images included follow the image use policy. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly.
- Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style.
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Professional, outstanding, and thorough; a definitive source for encyclopedic information. |
No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible. |
Cleopatra
(as of June 2018) |
| The article has attained featured list status. |
Professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items. |
No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available. |
List of dates predicted for apocalyptic events
(as of May 2018) |
| Featured pages in the file namespace fall under this class. |
The page contains a featured image, sound clip or other media-related content. |
Make sure that the file is properly licensed and credited. |
File:American World War II senior military officials, 1945.JPEG |
| The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been examined by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class. |
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject would typically find nothing wanting. |
Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style problems may need solving. WP:Peer review may help. |
Battle of Nam River
(as of June 2014) |
| The article has attained good article status, having been examined by one or more impartial reviewers from WP:Good article nominations. |
Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (but not equaling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia. |
Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existing featured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing. |
Discovery of the neutron
(as of April 2019) |
| The article is mostly complete and without major problems but requires some further work to reach good article standards. |
Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher. |
A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines. |
Human
(as of April 2019) |
The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup.
More detailed criteria
The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance, or flow; or contain policy violations, such as bias or original research. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from an in-universe perspective. It is most likely that C-Class articles have a reasonable encyclopedic style. |
Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study. |
Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and solve cleanup problems. |
Wing
(as of June 2018) |
An article that is developing but still quite incomplete. It may or may not cite adequate reliable sources.
More detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and Wikipedia:Manual of Style compliance non-existent. The article should satisfy fundamental content policies, such as Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons. Frequently, the referencing is inadequate, although enough sources are usually provided to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted. |
Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more. |
Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation. Also improve the grammar, spelling, writing style and improve the jargon use. |
Ring-tailed cardinalfish
(as of June 2018) |
A very basic description of the topic. Can be well-written, but may also have significant content issues.
More detailed criteria
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short; however, if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category. Although Stub-class articles are the lowest class of the normal classes, they are adequate enough to be an accepted article, though they do have risks of being dropped from being an article altogether.
|
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant. |
Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. The best solution for a Stub-class Article to step up to a Start-class Article is to add in referenced reasons of why the topic is significant. |
Crescent Falls
(as of June 2018) |
| Meets the criteria of a stand-alone list, which is an article that contains primarily a list, usually consisting of links to articles in a particular subject area. |
There is no set format for a list, but its organization should be logical and useful to the reader. |
Lists should be lists of live links to Wikipedia articles, appropriately named and organized. |
List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1947
(as of June 2018) |
A topic about which details are subject to change often.
More detailed criteria
The article covers a future topic of which no broadcast version exists so far and all information is subject to change when new information arises from reliable sources. With multiple reliable sources, there might be information that contradicts other information in the same or other articles. All future categories will not be rated with "Future" and may be rated like normal.
|
Amount of meaningful content varies over time as the projected event draws near. |
Material added might be speculation and should be carefully sourced. |
Future of the Earth
(as of July 2014) |
| Any category falls under this class. |
Categories are mainly used to group together articles within a particular subject area. |
Large categories may need to be split into one or more subcategories. Be wary of articles that have been miscategorized. |
Category:Software |
| Any disambiguation page falls under this class. |
The page serves to distinguish multiple articles that share the same (or similar) title. |
Additions should be made as new articles of that name are created. Pay close attention to the proper naming of such pages, as they often do not need "(disambiguation)" appended to the title. |
Apple (disambiguation)
(as of July 2014) |
| Any page in the file namespace falls under this class. |
The page contains an image, a sound clip or other media-related content. |
Make sure that the file is properly licensed and credited. |
File:Musk Lorikeet jul08.jpg |
| Any page in the portal namespace falls under this class. |
Portals are intended to serve as "main pages" for specific topics. |
Editor involvement is essential to ensure that portals are kept up to date. |
Portal:Science |
| All WikiProject-related pages fall under this class. |
Project pages are intended to aid editors in article development. |
Develop these pages into collaborative resources that are useful for improving articles within the project. |
Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history |
| Any redirect falls under this class. |
The page redirects to another article with a similar name, related topic or that has been merged with the original article at this location. |
Editor involvement is essential to ensure that articles are not mis-classified as redirects, and that redirects are not mis-classified as articles. |
|
| Any template falls under this class. The most common types of templates include infoboxes and navboxes. |
Different types of templates serve different purposes. Infoboxes provide easy access to key pieces of information about the subject. Navboxes are for the purpose of grouping together related subjects into an easily accessible format, to assist the user in navigating between articles. |
Infoboxes are typically placed at the upper right of an article, while navboxes normally go across the very bottom of a page. Beware of too many different templates, as well as templates that give either too little, too much, or too specialized information. |
Template:Martial arts |
| Any non-article page that fits no other classification. |
The page contains no article content. |
Look out for misclassified articles. Currently, many NA-class articles may need to be re-classified. |
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| Article quality has not yet been assessed. |
Articles for which a valid quality rating has not yet been provided are listed in this category. |
A quality parameter should be assigned according to the assessment department of the WikiProject. |
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