Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Closing an A-Class review

The Military history A-Class promotion criteria are unique to our project, and assessing them requires an internal review. While anyone can file for, or comment on, an A-Class review, authority to close these reviews rests solely with the current tranche of coordinators and the current cadre of Coordinators Emeritus.

Closing A-Class reviews is one of the few coordinator-only functions in the project. To close a review, you should be able to interpret consensus as well as apply sound reasoning and judgement to make sure that the integrity of the review process is upheld. In addition, a degree of technical ability in updating templates and keeping track of edits across multiple pages is desirable.

Prior to 2014, all project A-Class reviews were closed manually in a rather tedious and time consuming process that required a very high degree of technical knowledge and an ability to track pages off multiple tabs. Thankfully, this project's A-Class reviews are now closed by, which handles the bulk of tedious work. Using the bot requires that you make a few edits for the bot to hone in on and close the A-Class review in question. This essay will therefore serve as a guide on what to edit to ensure that the bot closes an A-Class review properly.

Finding reviews to close
There are two places to look for article reviews that are ready to be closed:
 * The A-Class review section of our review page displays all current A-Class reviews in nomination-date order, latest at the top.
 * The ACRs for closure section of the coordinators' talk page links to reviews that are due for closure. Reviews aren't listed here automatically (generally only those that need uninvolved coordinator attention).

General advice

 * There is no deadline: if work is ongoing and the article appears to be close to meeting the requirements for promotion, the review may be kept open until the consensus is achieved. There is no timeline or deadline to close a review, sometimes it could be five days, or 100. The point to remember is that the review should be active and the nominator should be making improvements to the article to address the comments.
 * Any review may be closed early if its outcome is not in doubt. The "not in doubt" caveat is important. Unaddressed criteria-based opposes in particular should not be dismissed even if there is otherwise significant support for promotion; one reviewer may have picked up valid issues that the others have missed. For more guidance on early closures, see Early closures below.
 * Set aside enough time to do a thorough job if closing an A-Class review manually. Depending on the outcome, your familiarity with the process, and the number of pages that have to be updated, a manual review can easily take 30 minutes or more to close.
 * Recuse yourself from closing A-Class reviews where you may have a conflict of interest. As a rule, you should not close an A-Class review if you have been a major contributor to the article or if you have reviewed the article. This is mainly a procedural check to ensure that closing coordinators cannot be accused of having an interest in seeing the article passed or failed, although some leeway may be possible depending on your level of involvement. If you are unsure if closing a review puts you in a potentially awkward position, then refrain and request someone else do it. Such requests are normally posted in the ACRs for closure section of the coordinators' talk page.

Early closures
A review can be closed after a minimum of five days have passed. Reasons for early closure are:
 * the nomination will clearly pass. Proceed as for successful nominations, though take care that the review is not being closed before the article has received proper attention.
 * the nomination will clearly fail. Proceed as for unsuccessful nominations. Often this type of early closure is a courtesy to the nominator, to prevent demoralising pile-on opposition where it is apparent that an article has no chance of being promoted.
 * the nominator has withdrawn their nomination. Proceed as for unsuccessful nominations.

If you are unsure about closing a review early, raise the matter on the coordinators' talk page, and post a comment announcing your intentions on the review page.

Deciding the outcome
If you are not already familiar with the criteria, read our A-Class criteria.

Carefully read the review, looking for support and in particular oppose comments. The following questions may help to guide your thought processes:
 * How many reviewers support promotion? A minimum of three is required, although this may be counterbalanced by outstanding opposition.
 * Has an image review been provided?
 * Have any reviewers that initially opposed struck their opposition, or opposed after initially supporting? It can be easy to overlook (or even double-count) "support" or "oppose" comments that come at the end of a review and are buried in the text.
 * Is support or opposition implied by reviewers that haven't explicitly stated a preference? Sometimes reviewers will confine themselves to a comment—perhaps because they are unsure whether a potential issue should affect promotion or not. You may need to exercise your own judgement as to how much weight should be given to such remarks.
 * Are reviews based on the A-Class criteria? Reviewers will generally explain why they support or oppose. Beware of reviews that don't seem to be criteria-based: "Support because I like this article" is not a valid reason for promotion; neither is "Oppose because according to Randy in Boise the article is inaccurate" a valid reason for failure.
 * Which criteria were considered? Some reviewers prefer to specialise and will confine their comments to an individual criterion such as prose (A4) or factual accuracy (A1). In such cases the reviewer will normally indicate which criterion they have reviewed against. In closing the review you should be careful not to translate assessments based on a single criterion into assessments for the article as a whole. To take an extreme example, if a review had attracted the requisite three supports but all reviews were based on individual criteria, the article could not be promoted. There must be evidence that the article in its entirety merits promotion—either through at least three full-article reviews, or an accumulation of single-criterion reviews that amount to at least three full-article reviews, or some combination of the two.
 * Is there any outstanding opposition? A single criteria-based oppose that hasn't been satisfactorily dealt with can prevent promotion. However, you may need to apply discretion in cases where an oppose seems to have been addressed by the nominator but the reviewer hasn't struck it out. This could be because the reviewer's opposition stands, but could also be simply because the reviewer hasn't revisited the review recently—in which case a note on their talk page may help to resolve the issue.
 * Is there a clear consensus among reviewers? No consensus means that the article is not promoted.

Closures
Make your decision! For a review that isn't a reappraisal of a current A-Class article there are two possible outcomes: The will carry out the necessary work within an hour or two.
 * The article is promoted. To close a successful nomination, change to  in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
 * The article is not promoted. For closing an unsuccessful nomination, change to  in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.

Reappraisals
Occasionally one of our current A-Class articles will be nominated for reappraisal to ascertain if it still merits its A-Class status. Although the considerations for deciding the result are largely the same as those outlined in Deciding the outcome above, there are a few minor differences:

The will carry out the necessary work within an hour or two.
 * The result will be one of either kept or demoted
 * The article is kept. To close a successful nomination, change to  in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
 * The article is demoted. For closing an unsuccessful nomination, change to  in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.

Manual procedure
As noted above, prior to 2014 all A-Class Reviews were manually closed. To assist with this process, in case of bot failure, set out below are the various stages you will need to go through to ensure that when a review is closed, the closure is sound and all appropriate updates are made. In time you will undoubtedly develop your own method of closing reviews; the sequence described here is only one way of performing a closure and not intended to be definitive.

Technical note: The following makes extensive use of the technique of opening links in new browser tabs. In most modern browsers this can be achieved by holding Ctrl while clicking on the link, or by clicking on the link with the middle mouse button (or pressing in the wheel) if you have a three-button/wheel mouse.

Successful nominations
The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.


 * First, ensure that you have the following three tabs open in your browser:
 * The article review page that individual article reviews take place on their own pages, which are then transcluded into the A-Class review section of our main project review page. One way to get to the individual article review page is to click "edit" next to the transcluded review then the "project page" tab.
 * The article page
 * The article talk page

Step 1: Closing the review page
Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you are busy with other parts of the process.
 * Open the full review page for editing and copy/paste at the very top of the page above the title.
 * Under this, briefly summarise the outcome of the review. Please keep your statement concise unless a compelling reason exists to go into more detail. Do not forget to sign your name with  so that we can track who closed the nomination and when it was closed.
 * Copy/paste at the very bottom of the page.
 * Preview the page. It should look like this:

Article promoted EyeSerene talk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Sangju (1950)


 * Nominator(s): — Ed! (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review. — Ed! (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support: I reviewed this for GA yesterday and believe that it also meets the A-class criteria. I have the following comments for the sake of the review:
 * there are no dabs, ext links work and all images have alt text (no action required);
 * my only suggestion is that you might consider getting someone outside the project to go over the article for jargon and to do a copy edit as, to be honest, my copy editing skills are not that great and as an insider my ability to identify jargon is limited. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

etc...


 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "Close as successful"—and save the page. However, don't close the tab just yet.
 * Switch to the article page

Step 2: Preparing the article page
Although you will probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
 * Verify that the article is free from vandalism and other problematic edits by clicking on the history tab at the top of the page and, if necessary, viewing the diffs. The most recent entry will probably relate to work undertaken as part of the review.
 * If there is any vandalism etc, revert back to the last known good version of the article.
 * Switch back to the article page and, from the toolbox, select "Permanent link". The reason for this is that you will need the oldid of this version of the article to record in the talk page Article History template.
 * Leaving this browser tab open, switch to the article talk page.

Step 3: Updating the article talk page
The review is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains:
 * The Military history WikiProject banner template
 * The Article history template

It is possible that the article history template will be missing; more on that later. First...

Military history WikiProject banner

 * Open the top section of the page for editing
 * Look for the line that starts with {{green| {{WPMILHIST| }}. For our example it looks like this:{{pre| {{WPMILHIST|class=GA|US=yes|Korean=yes|Cold-War=yes|A-Class=current}} }}
 * Change {{green| class=GA }} to {{green| class=A }}
 * Change {{green| A-Class=current }} to {{green| A-Class=pass }}
 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [{{blue|Show}}] in the Milhist banner to verify that the A-Class symbol is now displayed and the review is recorded and linked.
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "passed milhist ACR"—and save the page but don't close the browser tab.

{{red|Note}} that we share reviews and ratings with some other WikiProjects, such as WikiProject Ships. Where our partner projects' banners are present, they can be updated at the same time.

Article history template
If the Article history template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it is missing you will need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
 * Open the top section of the article talk page for editing once more. For our example, the Article History entry looks like:


 * You need to record a new event so copy the section


 * Start a new line below and paste in the section you just copied. The markup (with some added line spacing for clarity) now looks like:


 * In the section you have just duplicated, change all the "1"s to "2"s and delete the text that follows each entry. In our example the article ACR is the second event; your review closure may be different so adapt your numbering accordingly.


 * Finally complete the new entries as follows, adapting the parameters that follow and  to fit your review closure:
 * Note that five tildes automatically inserts the date and time
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=


 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [] to verify that the review is displayed in the template
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "update AH"—and save the page.


 * The article talk page browser tab can now be closed. However, if you wish you can leave the article page and article review page tabs open—they contain information you'll be needing later.

Step 4: Archiving the review
The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.


 * Ensure that you have the following two tabs open in your browser:
 * The A-Class review section of the project review page
 * The current archive page


 * Open the A-Class review section for editing. You should see something like== A-Class review ==


 * Please add new requests below this line


 * Find the entry corresponding to the review you've just closed (in our example, "Battle of Sangju")
 * Highlight the entire entry, copy it, and remove it from the list. Don't save the page just yet though.


 * Switch browser tabs. In the current archive page, find the location for storing successful A-Class reviews. This could be under the subheading "Promoted" or on a sub-page.


 * Open the appropriate section/sub-page for editing. Paste the entry you removed from the A-Class review page at the top of the "Promoted" section as follows:== Promoted ==


 * Double-check both the A-Class review and archive pages, add suitable edit summaries to each—for example "remove successful review" and "archive successful review"—and save both pages.


 * You can now close the A-Class review section and current archive page page browser tabs.

Step 5: Updating the announcements notice
With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it. Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the WPMILHIST Review alerts template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed.
 * In a new browser tab open the project announcements notice
 * Open the page for editing, and in the A-Class reviews section find the entry for the reviewed article&amp;bull; Battle of Sangju (1950) &amp;bull;
 * Optionally, highlight the entry and copy it (this will save some time in the next stage)
 * Remove the entire entry for the closed review, including one of the bullet points to ensure consistent formatting in the rest of the list
 * Preview, add a suitable edit summary, save the page and close the announcements notice browser tab.

Step 6: Updating the article showcase
The newly promoted article now needs to be added to our content showcase.
 * In a new browser tab, open the project Showcase of A-Class articles (if an article) or Showcase of A-Class lists (if a list)
 * Open the page for editing and, in alphabetical order in the appropriate section, add a link to the article you've promoted. If you copied the link during the previous stage this can be pasted in here, although some editing will be needed so that the link points to the article and not the review!; B


 * Barton S. Alexander
 * Battle of Aachen
 * Battle of Chochiwon
 * Battle of Kalavrye
 * Battle of Naktong Bulge
 * Battle of the Plains of Abraham
 * Battle of Salamis
 * Battle of Sangju (1950)
 * Battle of Strasbourg
 * Battle of Taegu
 * Battle of Vaslui
 * Bob Chappuis


 * Increment the article count by one. This is buried in the markup at the top of the page:Currently, there are '''
 * Preview, add a suitable edit summary, save the page and close the browser tab.

Step 7: Updating the newsletter
The newly promoted article also needs be added to the correct issue of our project newsletter.
 * Open the following two pages in new browser tabs:
 * The month of promotion's "Articles" sub-page of The Bugle (please note that promotions are listed in the edition of the following month e.g. if an article was promoted in September, it would be listed in October's edition)
 * The nominator's user page (linked from the review page you still have open from earlier)
 * Additionally you will need to refer to the article page (hopefully also still open from earlier!)


 * In the "New A-Class articles" section, add a link in alphabetical order to the promoted article and, next to the article title, a link to the nominator as shown below:; Battle of Sangju (1950) (Ed!) :
 * Preview, add an edit summary, and save and close the "Articles" sub-page tab.

Step 8: Tracking award eligibility
For every successful A-Class nomination we record the nominator and the article. After three successful nominations the nominator is eligible for one of our A-Class medals.

In the case of joint nominations, treat each nominator separately for ACM tracking and award purposes.


 * Open the A-Class Medal eligibility tracking page in a new tab
 * Check the alphabetical list of successful nominators. that some editors go by aliases other than their registered username—for example Climie.ca goes by Cam, Cplakidas by Constantine, and The ed17 by Ed. Such editors could be listed under either variant although they should not be double-listed under both. If in doubt, you can check the nominator's registered username and any aliases by reference to their userpage (still open from last step).

Either
 * For an unlisted editor or a listed editor with only one graphical A-Class symbol next to their name:
 * Record their successful review in the list. The A-Class symbols link to the relevant article—for the current example the entry would look like:# Ed! Symbol a class.svg


 * Preview to ensure that the A-Class symbol link works as intended, add an edit summary, and save and close the page.
 * If the editor has not been previously awarded an A-class medal, you should leave a congratulatory message on their talk page encouraging them to develop further articles to A-class standard or beyond.

Or
 * For a listed editor with two symbols already next to their name:
 * With their third successful ACR, this editor is now eligible for an award. Open the Nominations for the A-Class medal section of our Awards page and add a new nomination to the bottom of the page To determine which medal is due, look for old nominations for the editor both on the Awards page and in the archive of ACM nominations. The award criteria for each medal type are explained in the A-Class medals section of our Awardee showcase page.
 * Once the medal nomination has been posted, remove the editor's entry from the A-Class Medal eligibility tracking page. This resets the tracking, which will restart with their next successful A-Class review.
 * Optionally as a housekeeping matter, any old nominations on the Award page for the editor (the most recent tends to be left in place to facilitate tracking) can be now moved into the archive.

that if you are unsure about the A-Class Medal nomination process and do not wish to make the nomination yourself, you should instead add a third entry by the nominator's name on the tracking page. This way we at least know that they're due for a medal and another coordinator can complete the medal nomination process.

Step 9: Finish
You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination, although this is not necessary as the nominator will be aware via their watchlist of the review's closure and their article's new status.

Unsuccessful nominations
The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.


 * First, ensure that you have the following three tabs open in your browser:
 * The article review page. that individual article reviews take place on their own pages, which are then transcluded into the A-Class review section of our main project review page. One way to get to the individual article review page is to click "edit" next to the transcluded review then the "project page" tab.
 * The article page
 * The article talk page

Step 1: Closing the review page
Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you're busy with other parts of the process.
 * Open the full review page for editing and copy/paste at the very top of the page above the title.
 * Under this, briefly summarise the outcome of the review. Be tactful—remember that you are commenting on another editor's hard work and, despite their inevitable disappointment, we value their efforts and want them to continue contributing to both the project and Wikipedia. Please keep your statement concise unless a compelling reason exists to go into more detail. Don't forget to sign your name with  so that we can track who closed the nomination and when it was closed. This is particularly important in closing unsuccessful nominations as there is a generally accepted rule that some time should pass between successive nominations. The date and time stamp in your signature will give the nominator and reviewers a basis to judge whether or not enough time has gone by to permit renomination.
 * Copy/paste at the very bottom of the page.
 * Preview the page. It should look like this:

No consensus to promote at this time. EyeSerene talk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

-OR-

Nomination withdrawn at nominator's request. EyeSerene talk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Sangju (1950)


 * Nominator(s): — Ed! (talk)

I am nominating this article for A-Class review. — Ed! (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Support: I reviewed this for GA yesterday and believe that it also meets the A-class criteria. I have the following comments for the sake of the review:
 * there are no dabs, ext links work and all images have alt text (no action required);
 * my only suggestion is that you might consider getting someone outside the project to go over the article for jargon and to do a copy edit as, to be honest, my copy editing skills are not that great and as an insider my ability to identify jargon is limited. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

etc...


 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "Close as unsuccessful"—and save the page. However, don't close the tab just yet.
 * Switch to the article page

Step 2: Preparing the article page
Although you'll probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
 * Verify that the article is free from vandalism and other problematic edits by clicking on the history tab at the top of the page and, if necessary, viewing the diffs. The most recent entry will probably relate to work undertaken as part of the review.
 * If there is any vandalism etc, revert back to the last known good version of the article.
 * Switch back to the article page and, from the toolbox, select "Permanent link". The reason for this is that you will need the oldid of this version of the article to record in the talk page Article History template.
 * Leaving this browser tab open, switch to the article talk page.

Step 3: Updating the article talk page
The review is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains:
 * The Military history WikiProject banner template
 * The Article History template

It's possible that Article History will be missing; more on that later. First...

Military history WikiProject banner

 * Open the top section of the page for editing
 * Look for the line that starts with {{green| {{WPMILHIST| }}. For our example it looks like this:{{pre| {{WPMILHIST|class=GA|US=yes|Korean=yes|Cold-War=yes|A-Class=current}} }}
 * Change {{green| A-Class=current }} to {{green|<tt> A-Class=fail </tt>}}
 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [{{blue|Show}}] in the Milhist banner to verify that the A-Class symbol is now displayed and the review is recorded and linked.
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "failed milhist ACR"—and save the page but don't close the browser tab.

Article History template
If the Article History template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it's missing you'll need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
 * Open the top section of the article talk page for editing once more. For our example, the Article History entry looks like:


 * You need to record a new event so copy the section


 * Start a new line below and paste in the section you just copied. The markup (with some added line spacing for clarity) now looks like:


 * In the section you've just duplicated, change all the "1"s to "2"s and delete the text that follows each entry. In our example the article ACR is the second event; your review closure may be different so adapt your numbering accordingly.


 * Finally complete the new entries as follows, adapting the parameters that follow and  to fit your review closure:
 * Note that five tildes automatically inserts the date and time
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=


 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [] to verify that the review is displayed in the template
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "update AH"—and save the page.


 * The article page, article talk page and article review page browser tabs can now be closed.

Step 4: Archiving the review
The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.


 * Ensure that you have the following two tabs open in your browser:
 * The A-Class review section of the project review page
 * The current archive page


 * Open the A-Class review section for editing. You should see something like== A-Class review ==


 * Please add new requests below this line


 * Find the entry corresponding to the review you've just closed (in our example, "Battle of Sangju")
 * Highlight the entire entry, copy it, and remove it from the list. Don't save the page just yet though.


 * Switch browser tabs. In the current archive page, find the location for storing unsuccessful A-Class reviews. This could be under the subheading "Failed" or on a sub-page.


 * Open the appropriate section/sub-page for editing. Paste the entry you removed from the A-Class review page at the top of the "Failed" section as follows:== Failed ==


 * Double-check both the A-Class review and archive pages, add suitable edit summaries to each—for example "remove unsuccessful review" and "archive unsuccessful review"—and save both pages.


 * You can now close the A-Class review section and current archive page page browser tabs.

Step 5: Updating the announcements notice
With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it. Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the WPMILHIST Review alerts template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed.
 * In a new browser tab open the project announcements notice
 * Open the page for editing, and in the A-Class reviews section find the entry for the reviewed article&amp;bull; Battle of Sangju (1950) &amp;bull;
 * Remove the entire entry for the closed review,including if necessary  one of the bullet points to ensure consistent formatting in the rest of the list
 * Preview, add a suitable edit summary, save the page and close the announcements notice browser tab.

Step 6: Finish
You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. If the editor has not previously successfully nominated an article for A-class, you should leave a personal note on their talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed. You may also wish to do this for article nominators who have previously developed articles to A-class standard.

Reappraisal nominations
The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.


 * First, ensure that you have the following three tabs open in your browser:
 * The article review page. that individual article reviews take place on their own pages, which are then transcluded into the A-Class review section of our main project review page. One way to get to the individual article review page is to click "edit" next to the transcluded review then the "project page" tab.
 * The article page
 * The article talk page

Step 1: Closing the review page
Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you're busy with other parts of the process.
 * Open the full review page for editing and copy/paste at the very top of the page above the title.
 * Under this, briefly summarise the outcome of the review. Be tactful if the article is being demoted—remember that you are commenting on another editor's hard work and, despite their inevitable disappointment, we value their efforts and want them to continue contributing to both the project and Wikipedia. Please keep your statement concise unless a compelling reason exists to go into more detail. Don't forget to sign your name with  so that we can track who closed the nomination and when it was closed. This is particularly important in closing demoted reappraisals as there is a generally accepted rule that some time should pass between successive nominations. The date and time stamp in your signature will give the nominator and reviewers a basis to judge whether or not enough time has gone by to permit renomination.
 * Copy/paste at the very bottom of the page.
 * Preview the page. It should look like this:

No longer meets A-Class criteria EyeSerene talk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

-OR-

Kept EyeSerene talk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC)

Battle of Sangju (1950)


 * Nominator(s): — Ed! (talk)

I am nominating this article for reappraisal. — Ed! (talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep: I believe it still meets the A-class criteria. I have the following comments for the sake of the review:
 * there are no dabs, ext links work and all images have alt text (no action required);
 * my only suggestion is that you might consider getting someone outside the project to go over the article for jargon and to do a copy edit as, to be honest, my copy editing skills are not that great and as an insider my ability to identify jargon is limited. AustralianRupert (talk) 13:06, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

etc...


 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "Close as keep" or "Close as demoted"—and save the page. However, don't close the tab just yet.
 * Switch to the article page

Step 2: Preparing the article page
Although you'll probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
 * Verify that the article is free from vandalism and other problematic edits by clicking on the history tab at the top of the page and, if necessary, viewing the diffs. The most recent entry will probably relate to work undertaken as part of the review.
 * If there is any vandalism etc, revert back to the last known good version of the article.
 * Switch back to the article page and, from the toolbox, select "Permanent link". The reason for this is that you will need the oldid of this version of the article to record in the talk page Article History template.
 * Leaving this browser tab open, switch to the article talk page.

Step 3: Updating the article talk page
The reappraisal is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains:
 * The Military history WikiProject banner template
 * The Article History template

It's possible that Article History will be missing; more on that later. First...

Military history WikiProject banner

 * Open the top section of the page for editing
 * Look for the line that starts with {{green|<tt> {{WPMILHIST| </tt>}}. For our example it looks like this:{{pre| {{WPMILHIST|class=A|US=yes|Korean=yes|Cold-War=yes|A-Class=current}} }}

If the article retains its A-Class status:
 * Change {{green|<tt> A-Class=current </tt>}} to {{green|<tt> A-Class=kept </tt>}}
 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [{{blue|Show}}] in the Milhist banner to verify that the A-Class symbol is now displayed and the review is recorded and linked.
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "kept at milhist ACRR"—and save the page but don't close the browser tab.

If the article loses its A-Class status:
 * Change {{green|<tt> A-Class=current </tt>}} to {{green|<tt> A-Class=demoted </tt>}}
 * {{red|Reassess the article}}. The most likely result is that the article will be downgraded to B-Class, but you should be guided by our assessment criteria.
 * Record your new assessment in the template. For example, if you decide the article now meets the B-Class criteria this would mean changing {{green|<tt> class=A </tt>}} to {{green|<tt> class=B </tt>}}.
 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [{{blue|Show}}] in the Milhist banner to verify that the changes are displayed.
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "demoted at milhist ACRR; reassessed" or "kept at milhist ACRR"—and save the page but don't close the browser tab.

Article history template
If the article history template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it's missing you'll need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
 * Open the top section of the article talk page for editing once more. For our example, the Article History entry looks like:


 * You need to record a new event so copy the previously recorded project A-Class review section


 * Start a new line below and paste in the section you just copied. The markup (with some added line spacing for clarity) now looks like:


 * In the section you've just duplicated, change all the "2"s to "3"s and delete the text that follows each entry. In our example the article ACRR is the third event; your reappraisal review closure may be different so adapt your numbering accordingly.


 * Finally complete the new entries as follows, adapting the parameters that follow and  to fit your reappraisal review closure:
 * Note that five tildes automatically inserts the date and time
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * Either or
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * This is the title of the review page (without square brackets unlike normal wikilinks). Briefly switch to the review page tab and copy the title, then switch back and paste it in here.
 * Either or
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=
 * To find the oldid, switch back to the article page. This should still be displaying a permanent link to the current version. The oldid is the long number at the right end of the URL (address) bar in the top of your browser:http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Battle_of_Sangju_%281950%29&oldid=


 * Preview the page, if necessary clicking [] to verify that the review is displayed in the template
 * Add a meaningful edit summary—for example "update AH"—and save the page.


 * The article page, article talk page and article review page browser tabs can now be closed.

Step 4: Archiving the review
The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.


 * Ensure that you have the following two tabs open in your browser:
 * The A-Class review section of the project review page
 * The current archive page


 * Open the A-Class review section for editing. You should see something like== A-Class review ==


 * Please add new requests below this line


 * Find the entry corresponding to the review you've just closed (in our example, "Battle of Sangju")
 * Highlight the entire entry, copy it, and remove it from the list. Don't save the page just yet though.


 * Switch browser tabs. In the current archive page, find the location for storing A-Class reappraisals. This could be under the subheadings "Kept" or "Demoted", or on sub-pages.


 * Open the appropriate section/sub-page for editing. Paste the entry you removed from the A-Class review page at the top of either the "Kept" or the "Demoted" section as follows:== Kept ==


 * Double-check both the A-Class review and archive pages, add suitable edit summaries to each, and save both pages.


 * You can now close the A-Class review section and current archive page page browser tabs.

Step 5: Updating the announcements notice
With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it. Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the WPMILHIST Review alerts template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed.
 * In a new browser tab open the project announcements notice
 * Open the page for editing, and in the A-Class reviews section find the entry for the reviewed article&amp;bull; Battle of Sangju (1950) &amp;bull;
 * Remove the entire entry for the closed review,including if necessary  one of the bullet points to ensure consistent formatting in the rest of the list
 * Preview, add a suitable edit summary, save the page and close the announcements notice browser tab.

Step 6: Updating the article showcase


The demoted article now needs to be removed from our content showcase.
 * In a new browser tab, open the project Showcase of A-Class articles
 * Open the page for editing and remove the article's link from the appropriate section.
 * Decrease the article count by one. This is buried in the markup at the top of the page:Currently, there are '''
 * Preview, add a suitable edit summary, save the page and close the browser tab.

Step 7: Finish
You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page informing them of the reappraisal's outcome.