Afeatured article exemplifies Wikipedia's very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting thepolicies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.
It is:
well-written: its prose is engaging 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 areverifiable against high-qualityreliable sources and are supported by inline citationswhere appropriate;
stable: it is not subject to ongoingedit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process; and
a lead: a conciselead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections;
appropriate structure: a substantial but not overwhelming system of hierarchicalsection headings; and
consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes—seeciting sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.
Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and usessummary style where appropriate.
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.
Prose. It features professional standards of writing.
Lead. It has an engaginglead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
Comprehensiveness.
(a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing at least all of the major items and, where practical, a complete set of items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about the items.
(c) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements forstand-alone lists and includes at minimum eight items; does not violate thecontent-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful,section headings andtable sort facilities.
Style. It complies with theManual of Style and its supplementary pages.
(a)Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting,tables, andcolour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked.
Stability. It is not the subject of ongoingedit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured list process.
The article is well organized and is essentially complete, having been reviewed by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere, as describedhere.
Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described inWikipedia:Article development. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, appropriately structured, and be well referenced by a broad array of reliable sources. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Only minor style issues and other details need to be addressed before submission as afeatured article candidate. See the A-Class assessment departments of some of the larger WikiProjects (e.g.WikiProject Military history).
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject matter would typically find nothing wanting.
Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style issues may need addressing.Peer-review may help.
it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance withthe layout style guideline;
reliable sources arecited inline. All content thatcould reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose);
Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (although not equalling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia.
Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existingfeatured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing.
The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reachGood Article standards. B-Class articles should meet thesix B-Class criteria:
The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for anA-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 alead 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 does not need to beof the standard of featured articles. TheManual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.
The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, aninfobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
No reader should be 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, and expert knowledge is increasingly needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with themanual of style.
The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains a lot of irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant issues or require substantialcleanup.
More detailed criteria
The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but 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 asbias ortrivia. Articles on fictional topics are likely to be marked as C-Class if they are written from anin-universe perspective.
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 addresscleanup issues.
An article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.
More detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content, but it is weak in many areas, usually in referencing. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, andMoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such asnotability andBLP, and provideenough sources to establishverifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of beingspeedily deleted.
Provides some meaningful content, but the majority of readers will need more.
Provision of references toreliable sources should be prioritised; the article will also need substantial improvements in content and organisation.
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, but can be of any length if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible.
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition
Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority.
FA
GA
A