User:Jayron32/The Featured Article test

Many times, editors will make changes to an article and it is hard for them, or for others, to determine if the edits are, on the whole, beneficial to the article. The following method should provide a clear means to judge this.

The Featured Article test

 * 1) Go to The Featured Article list and select any article at random.
 * 2) Read it.
 * 3) Ask yourself "does the change I just made to an article make it more like this featured article or less like this featured article"
 * 4) If you answer in the former, it was a good edit. If you answer in the latter, it was a bad edit.

Rationale for the test
Wikipedia's best work is represented by its Featured Articles. Such articles form the pool from which we select the article we will feature on the main page. As such, they are the best that Wikipedia has to offer. Featured Articles are held to the highest standards, they go through a very thorough vetting process and are subjected to continuous monitoring to ensure that quality is not lost. At Wikipedia, the little star means something, and you could do no better than to use a featured article as your model.

What featured articles always do
Pay special attention to all of the following facets of a featured article, and learn how to spot if the edit you just made fits these ideas.


 * Featured articles are well organized
 * Featured articles are well referenced
 * Featured articles use images appropriately
 * Featured articles follow consistent rules of grammar
 * Featured articles have a small number (two or three) of external links which are directly relevent, and segregated into their own section of the article.
 * Featured articles use wikilinks appropriately.
 * Featured articles are comprehensive, but not indiscriminate.

What featured articles never do
If your edit does this, it's a bad edit. Don't do it.


 * Featured articles never have random, disconnected sentences.
 * Featured articles never have random images strewn all over.
 * Featured articles never have trivia sections. Ever.  Even under other names like "Miscellaneous" or "In popular culture" or "Facts about..."
 * Featured articles never make outrageous claims which are unsupported.
 * Featured articles never have external links littered through the text, and never have more than two or three in the External Links section.