User talk:Indubitably/Good Article development

Some ideas, just off the cuff. This is mostly stream of consiousness riffing on this page, and some stuff that might help it out.

1) The best way to write a good article (and even a Good Article) is to WRITE FROM SOURCES. What that means is: a) Don't write from memory and later try to find a reference to back it up. This puts the cart before the horse, and can easily lead to non-neutral, incomplete, POV articles. Find the source first, then write based on what the source says, citing as you go. b) Read the entire source BEFORE you begin working on the article. If you just skim the table of contents or the index for what you think may help the article, it is easy to cherry-pick facts, which again leads to incomplete, non-neutral, POV articles. c) Use several sources, and not just one. It can often be helpful to use the bibliography of one book to find additional sources. The more points of view you have on a subject, the more complete and neutral the article will be. d) Cite as you write. Whenever you add a fact or a paragraph to an article, immediately add a citation.  If you don't have a source, consider finding one BEFORE you write. (see point a above)

See User:Uncle G/On sources and content especially the part labeled "tips for editors".

2) The Pro Wrestling section may be TOO specific and seems targeted at a specific group of editors and could bring about hurt feelings. Pokeman, Star Wars, and many other fictional topics suffer from the same problem.  Rather than focusing on the negative examples, why not find some positive ones where it works well.  Many Simpsons articles are done right (look at The Simpsons (season 8), a featured topic), also consider citing other featured content dealing with fiction, such as the several articles on The Quatermass Experiment and its characters.  It is well possible to write good articles on nearly any fictional topic.  The issue is that lazy editors don't want to do the work to do so.

just some ideas to start with. I'll drop some more stuff in if I think of anything. --Jayron32| talk | contribs 16:29, 30 August 2007 (UTC)