Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Writing an A-Class article

Decided to shoot for A-class status? Congrats! A-class is a unique status that indicates the article has been internally reviewed by a project to confirm with the project's guidelines concerning A-class.

A-class differs from GA-class in various aspects. GA-class is principally concerned with adherence to the MoS and other issues such as spelling, grammar, image size, correct use of templates for citations and infoboxes, and so forth, while A-class is more concerned with checking the article for factual accuracy, comprehensiveness and compliance with a project's policies on matters concerning the naming of events, reliability of sources, and other issues that would otherwise not be addressed at a GA nomination, but would be considered problematic during a Featured Article Candidacy (although A-class covers most, if not all, of GA's issues as well). Writing an A-class article is not difficult—depending on an article's size and the reliability of your sources you could do it in about a week—although there is no "time limit" one must adhere to when looking to achieve A-class status. Like all higher assessments though, A-class is time consuming because it seeks to establish consensus from other editors that A-class status is warranted for an article, and consensus can require some time to attain.

When writing to achieve an A-class assessment, remember that you are being held to a standard between GA and FA classes, so you can use both the GA criteria and the advice at what is a featured article to gauge where your article currently stands. Within the military history project, A-class is considered a high mark for assessment, and we pride ourselves on our A-class assessment system because of its reputation for reducing the amount of work FAC reviewers must do before supporting or opposing an FAC. To maintain this reputation, A-class reviews need to be rigorous.

To begin, aim for clearing the B-class criteria. An article that has met all points on the B-class scale is ready to move up the scale. You can find a B-class assessment scale on the talk page of any milhist article by looking for our template (WPMILHIST) and clicking the show tab, which will reveal a five point checklist we require for an article to be at B-class. Alternatively, our B-class assessment criteria can be found on the master class chart located in the assessment department. In addition to the five B-class criteria points, you should ensure that the A-class article you aim to write is on a matter that is stable (not prone to edit warring) and that there is enough material to adequately cover all points of the article. A-class bound articles should touch on all points of an article's subject and material, leaving nothing for want unless the article's size compels a split for size compliance.

When the article meets the B-class criteria, move to address any MoS issues the article might have. At this stage, a peer review (external or internal) may be helpful to determine what you still need to work on to go to A-class. Alternatively, you can file for a GA nomination, which will provide feed back on issues remaining in article bound for A-class. Each method has advantages and disadvantages: A GA nomination will allow a jump in assessment prior to A-class, but only allows for one reviewer; a peer review will not permit a jump in class structure, but will allow multiple editors comment on potential issues.

In either case, when you are reasonably satisfied that the major issues with your article have been addressed, you may file for an A-class review. To do this, simply follow the instructions here. Once the A-class review opens up, coordinators for the Military history Project will update the main project templates and the review alert box to spread the word throughout the project.

As the nominator, you are solely responsible for addressing any concerns that arise during the A-class review. On average, approximately 3–5 users will add comments and either support or oppose based on the article's preparedness. Expect at least one coordinator for the project to weigh in on an article undergoing an A-class review as well. You will have about a month (although reviews typically stay open for two or three months now) to address all applicable complaints, or if you are unable to address the complaints be able to explain why and support your reason with evidence. Do note though that it is very rare for reviewers to reverse a vote if action is not taken on a point raised during an A-class review, so if you are unable to address an issue make sure you explain clearly and concisely why the issue can not be addressed.

At the end of the review, a coordinator will close the review and either promote the article to A-class or let it remain at its previous rating. If you are unsuccessful in promoting your article through an A-class review, do not give up on getting there, look through the A-class review for any unaddressed points and move to fix them. You can try getting your article to A-class status through another review, but you should wait for a few weeks before trying again so as to avoid the appearance of rapid firing A-class reviews.

Once an article achieves A-class status it will remain at A-class until one of two things occurs: the article is successfully promoted to FA-class by way of a Featured Article Candidacy, or until the article in question undergoes an A-class reassessment/reappraisal review. In the case of the former, if an article is promoted to FA-class, it joins an elite group or articles that are permitted to display a bronze star and appear on the main page as the featured article of the day. An article at FA-class remains there unless demoted through the FAR/FARC process, in which case it reverts to its A-class status. In the latter case, an A-class article may be internally reviewed if it is judged to no longer meet the current standards of an A-class article. An A-class article undergoing reassessment will demoted to whatever class is deemed appropriate (e.g. B-class, C-class, or Start) by the closing coordinator. If it was a GA before hand, though, it must be demoted to GA and then put through a formal GAR to be demoted further. Alternatively, the article will be allowed to retain its A-class status if all identified issues are addressed during the reassessment.