Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Writing a good article

While GA reviews of a similar era can vary rather widely in stringency due to there only being one reviewer, the presence of GAR notwithstanding, it can be tempting to find the lowest hurdle to jump over.

If one cops a firm reviewer, just renominate and wait for an easy pass, correct?

Well in the short term, this may work, but in the long run, as the standards on Wikipedia are ever increasing, it might cause more trouble than it is worth.

The GA model seeks to operate on a low red tape model, so that articles can also be removed relatively quickly. And as the standards rise, a soft pass can be in the firing line on a GA sweep within a year, whereas for FAs, they can be outdated for much longer periods.

It can be quite an inconvenience that after a long time, one has to dig up the books and old sources to clean something up, and possible refresh one’s memory, not on one’s own terms and timeframe, to fix up an article. Thus it is more efficient to be proactive and therefore, not do the minimum to scrape past, else one might have to overhaul the article in a way that takes a longer time in total than to do it properly from the outset.

One of the ways in which structural reworking can cause more overhead is in the sourcing. If the referencing requirements are changed, thereby necessitating higher quality sources, the prose often has to be rearranged or remoulded, as the content may not fit the new source. While additions like alt text or stylistic corrections can be done easily in a mechanical way, building an article on the basis of unsound references can necessitate a lot of future reform akin to purging deep-seated flaws in technique, a person having to unlearn an oversimplified/unrigourous treatment of something taught in a lower level class, or rebuilding a crooked house that has started to crack. The requirement for better sources has been one of the more prominent rises in standards in recent times, especially with the "high quality" clause for featured articles.

As such, while it is possible to pass GA with non-independent sources, such as the websites of the subject of the article, typically military units etc., or veterans’ groups, personal history websites etc. The article may then have to be completely reformed to pass through higher levels; this of course, also applies to FAs/As written in previous times when it was permissible to use poor sources, that then have to be overhauled. This is also true if one wants to take such an article to a higher level, and the sources are questioned by the reviewers.

To quote a military-related proverb

The more one sweats in peace, the less one bleeds in war.

What is a good article?

Straight from the horse’s mouth

A good article is—

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose); and

(c) it contains no original research.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Content

Unless one is an expert on the topic at hand, which is usually not the case, one will have to read up on some books or journal papers on the topic to know the state of knowledge on the subject matter, rather than writing in things off the top of one’s head and then citing. In the case of an amateur, doing the latter is very likely to lead to a rather unbalanced article, in terms of both comprehensiveness and POV balance. While in the vast majority of cases, only the author will have any in depth knowledge of the topic or the various aspects, it is a sloppy practice to simply rely on 2–3 sources as nobody else will know about other books that provide missing content.

• Look up many sources. Google books can provide hits in unlikely sounding titles and every different viewpoint can add breadth of coverage and greater richness to the article.
• As mentioned above, go for upmarket sources and challenge yourself to raise your own standards.
• Multiple sources also allow for cross-checking, as almost every source has some errors of some type, not just in terms of disputed information, but simple errors during research of uncontentious matter.
• As one is doing research and writing, it's simply easier to cite everything straightaway, rather than trying to locate it afterwards. Much easier!
• Write the article thoroughly and challenge yourself to raise your own standards.
• Make sure the article is not POV, contains original research or editorialising, hyperbole, weasel words etc., as is expected for all articles (in theory)
• Infoboxes are not necessary, but are part of the culture of a large proportion of Wikipedians, so be prepared to be asked for one, even if there is no statty-type of information that is particularly enhanced by an infobox.
• Remember to directly cite every opinion, quote, "regarded as the/one of the best military commanders" and so forth

Images

Per above, images are basically never a large factor in articles, so there is no need to bend copyright. Portraits of people, places etc. tend to decorative and do not often detract from one's understanding of a topic, so there is no need to decorate liberally with pictures of dubious license. Also note that in many cases, the image law specifies the number of years after first publication, not when the photo was taken. While is not always enforced properly and people just assume that the photo was immediately. In such cases the image is only supposed to be used if a source can be found for its earliest use in a newspaper/book etc.; there is no need to take advantage of the lax enforcement. The same goes for images where the criteria is based on the years after the death of the photographer. Again, images are not needed, so do not assume the creator was an old person who died 20 years after, they could have taken it at the age of 20 and lived to be 90 or 95.

Similarly, fair use images will rarely be needed, so non-urgent claims are not required.

Things that aid understanding such as graphs, flowcharts and diagrams can be easily made, without copyright restrictions.

• Prose should not be sandwiched between images on both sides
• An image caption should only end with a full-stop if it is a complete sentence

Style

• Remember to use a consistent style for dates, Am/Br English layout of referencing, as well as for capitalisation or hyphenisation of compound words as one writes. It saves a lot of trouble later, whether one decides to pursue higher status or not, so one should think of a mental list of what their style is, to avoid chopping and changing.
• Cite thoroughly, as verifiability is supposed to be a core policy, and this applies to any article.
• Cites immediately after punctuation, with no space (not negotiable)

Good habits

• Spell out acronyms first before reverting to shorthand
• When multiple citations are put together, keep them in numerical order
• Consistent datelinking (if used)
• Checking for dabs
• Non-breaking space -   between a number and the unit of measurement.
• Dash- – between a number range.
• Mdash or unspaced ndash for punctuation
• Don't put in external links if a website has already been used as a source

Red flags

• Short, choppy sentences or paragraphs not integrated with other themes in the article
• Unsourced paragraphs with no citation attached.
  • Do not just add one source at the end of the para that only pertains to the final sentence and hope that reviewers don't notice
• No contractions: don't, can't, would've, won't, haven't, wouldn't, couldn't, shouldn't, etc.
• The lead should summarise the content of the article and should not have things not mentioned in the rest of the article.
• Inflammatory, colourful prose.
• Blogs, amateur websites used as sources, incompletely detailed citations