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

Purpose, method and endstate
The project's A-class Review process has been a key part of its success of the past five to ten years. The criteria are deliberately set close to the standards required of Featured Articles in order to help editors easily make the leap from A-class to FA. That said, the process is intended to be more forgiving, with reviewers and nominators working together to improve articles to the required standard, rather than just make a judgement as to whether or not an article meets the standard and leaving it at that. As such, members seeking to get involved with Milhist ACR are requested to be familiar with the criteria, but should be reticent to oppose an article straight up. It is expected, to an extent, that a nominator will be given a fair go at making adjustments, before an oppose is added to the review. ACR is supposed to be outcome focused, rather than process driven.

The A-class criteria can be found here. This should be the first place a new reviewer, or indeed nominator, goes before diving into the process. All participants should try to get a good understanding of these points. That said, as it is meant to be outcomes focused, we strive to maintain a collegiate approach so (hopefully) mistakes from both nominators and reviewers should be tolerated. But the corollary of this is that editors should be prepared to educate, but also to be educated about the process and or the topics that are being reviewed. A nominator does not always know everything there is to know about the topic they have written about, or about the requirements for A-class; the same goes for the reviewer. They won't always be an expert in the topic they are reviewing, nor will they always know everything there is about reviewing. It is meant to be a collaborative mechanism to improve articles to A-class and eventually FA status. This requires give and take, and an environment that encourages editors to get involved.

Another good place to look before getting involved is the current archive page. There you will find completed reviews, which will potentially help you work out some of the ways other reviewers focus their efforts, what things to look for, or how to interact with others.

Reviewing your first A-class article
When reviewing an article for promotion to A-class keep in mind the following:
 * Commit to reviewing only when you can check back : Its frustrating for the nominator to move on issues that arise during an A-class review and receive no further replies from the person who left the message pointing out the issues in the first place. This is particularly true of users who oppose an article's upgrade to A-class status, leave reasons that can be addressed, and then never return to check and see if the issues identified have been corrected. Therefore, if you intend to oppose an A-class nomination, make sure you leave yourself time to check back during the review and update your comments or opposition as necessary. If you are uncertain of your ability to return and update your comments during an A-class review but would still like to participate consider leaving comments for the nominator; as comments do not count as votes, they will not be held against the nominator during the closure.
 * Look to see who the main contributor is : A-class articles can be "drive by nom'd" by those who have little to do with the development of the article. If the A-class nominator is not the person who worked the hardest on the article consider leaving a message for the latter so they can be involved in the process. A drive by nominator likely will be unfamiliar with the article's sources, and may be unsure of how to fix problems arising during the ACR. Additionally, some users have problems with template coding, spelling and grammar, punctuation, and other matters that will need to be addressed, and may leave messages in the nomination statement asking for one or more reviewers to help fix an aspect of the article they know needs help. You should be prepared to answer such requests if at all possible, and if not, to make others aware of the problem.
 * Check the article's current assessment letter : An article rated as B-class will need to be checked for Manual of Style (MoS) compliance and factual accuracy, while an article that has cleared a GA-class review will likely be in full compliance with MoS and thus only require a factual accuracy check. If you are reviewing an A-class article make sure you check the assessment level so you can point out MoS errors to the nominator as well.
 * Check for factual accuracy : GA-class is less concerned with an article's content and factual accuracy because its focused mostly on a check of all applicable points of the main Wikipedia MoS, while A-class should check for issues like factual accuracy and other points that external reviewers would miss in an article. This is the only time an article will be reviewed internally for a higher assessment standard, so it is of vital importance that the content and factual accuracy be checked since those who contribute to FAC and the person responsible for the article's GAC (if any) will likely not be involved with the project and will not be in a position to ensure the article's technical facts and other matters of factual importance like name, title, rank, position, and so forth are correct.
 * Check all external links : The internet, like the ocean, is in a constant state of movement. Websites that are active today may be defunct tomorrow. Links to reliable sources on the web can be redirected to the wrong page. As a result, if an article has external links, those links need to be checked to ensure that they are all still live and that the sites themselves meet the requirements set forth under Wikipedia's reliable sources policy. If a website is dead or appears unreliable, bring it up during the A-class review.
 * Check for ambiguous links : Ambiguous links are links to pages that list all applicable pages that a given word or phrase could mean. Any such links in an article undergoing an A-class review should be found and if at all possible corrected to focus on the precise link the article should head to so that visitors reading the article will not end up on a disambiguation page and then have to guess where they are suppose to go for more information on a linked term.
 * Check images for copyright compliance : There will be times when an article's subject matter prohibits the use of free images, but if that be the case then it will be your job to ensure that the non free fair use guidelines are applied to the images correctly. If an image is tagged under fair use guidelines but is not correctly filled out then you need to bring this to the nominator's attention.
 * Leave specific examples of what you feel needs to be fixed : The user who nominated the article for A-class review is probably not a mind reader, and after reading through the material so many times most users will have roughly memorized the version they added. Because of this, the nominator (and any other heavily involved editors) may not be reading what is actually written in the article and instead read what they believe has been written in the article. It would therefore be a good idea to list examples of any problems in the article, as well as their location, so that the nominator can find such errors with a greater degree of ease.

Reviewing advice from the_ed17
"Reviewing" is a general term. Very general. It encompasses five different reviewing methods; at MILHIST A-class noms and FAC, different people review for different things (GAN is a whole different boat). Take a look:
 * Prose: some, like Tony1, Bryce, or Joe N will look at the prose of an article and address grammar errors and the like. Reviewers of this field come from three schools of thought: those who copy-edit the articles themselves, those who leave all of the problems on the talk page, or those who combine both of those (this third group is probably the largest). This is what a majority of reviewers do.
 * References: Ealdgyth or me will look at the sources and references used in an article to ensure that they are reliable and formatted correctly. Do they use cite web, cite book etc.? Do they have access dates for online references?
 * Files/Images: at FAC, either Jappalang or NuclearWarfare will check an article's images to be sure that they have the right licenses (i.e. a photo tagged with PD-old was actually published before 1923, or an image tagged with PD-USGov-Military-Navy was actually taken by the Navy and is not just hosted on the Naval Historical Center's site)
 * MOS: while most articles nominated at ACR or FAC will already be following the broader points of the Manual of Style ("MOS"), reviewers like SandyGeorgia will check for the fine points buried deep within MOS, and will commonly point out things like endashes are needed between page and date ranges (MOS:ENDASH) or how there is an image sandwich in x section (MOS:IMAGE).
 * Content: lastly, and possibly the most important, there are reviewers that will check for factual errors in the article. There are no examples of users here because they vary from FAC to FAC and ACR to ACR, but these people, who either have a knowledge of the topic or have an interest and sources on the topic, will check the article for factual errors in existing information and ensure that the article is complete and missing no vital information.

Why do I say all of this which is seemingly unrelated to helping you? Well, I'm trying to demonstrate that there is really no 'right' way to review; every editor will find different things to comment on. If you think you like one of the approaches above, go to WP:FAC or WP:MHR and find a review from someone that looks like something you would want to do. Read what they've commented on in the article, see how they think, and imitate them!