A featured article exemplifies Wikipedia's very best work and is distinguished by professional standards of writing, presentation, and sourcing. In addition to meeting the policies regarding content for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.
It is:
well-written: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard;
comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context;
well-researched: it is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature; claims are verifiable against high-quality reliable sources and are supported by inline citations where appropriate;
stable: it is not subject to ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured article process; and
a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections;
appropriate structure: a substantial but not overwhelming system of hierarchical section headings; and
consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.
Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described in Wikipedia:How to write a great article. It should be of a length suitable for the subject, appropriately structured, and be well referenced by a broad array of reliable sources. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. Only minor style issues and other details need to be addressed before the article would be suitable for submission as a featured article candidate.
An A-Class article should approach the standards for a Featured article (FA), but can fall short because of minor style issues. The article may need minor copyedits, but it should be comprehensive, accurate, well-sourced, and well-written. A peer review by project editors should find the article to be a viable candidate for FA status. Assessing an article as A-Class requires more than one reviewer.
Reader's experience
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject would typically find nothing wanting.
Suggestions for moving rating upwards: Some editing by subject and style experts is helpful; comparison with an existing featured article on a similar topic may highlight areas where content is weak or missing.
it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;
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);
Suggestions for moving rating upwards: A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines.
The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but does not need to be of the standard of featured articles. The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.
The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
The article is substantial, but is still missing important content or contains much irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup. It meets B1 or B2 and all of B3 and B4 and B5 of the B-Class criteria.
Detailed criteria
The article is better developed in style, structure and quality than Start-Class, but fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements; need editing for clarity, balance or flow; or contain policy violations such as bias or original research.
The article reasonably covers the topic, and does not contain obvious omissions or inaccuracies. It contains a large proportion of the material necessary for an A-Class article, although some sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing.
The article has a defined structure. Content should be organized into groups of related material, including a lead section and all the sections that can reasonably be included in an article of its kind.
The article is reasonably well-written. The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but does not need to be of the standard of featured articles. The Manual of Style does not need to be followed rigorously.
The article contains supporting materials where appropriate. Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams, an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
Some aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert classicist knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should also be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines.
Suggestions for moving rating upwards: Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation.
A classics article that is developing, but which is quite incomplete and, most notably, lacks adequate reliable sources.
Detailed criteria
The article has a usable amount of good content but is weak in many areas. Quality of the prose may be distinctly unencyclopedic, and MoS compliance non-existent; but the article should satisfy fundamental content policies such as notability and BLP, and provide sources to establish verifiability. No Start-Class article should be in any danger of being speedily deleted.
The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas, and may lack a key element; it has at least one serious element of gathered materials, including any one of the following:
Recent, reliable scholarship (from a classics journal or other relevant source)
A particularly useful picture or graphic
Multiple links that help explain or illustrate the topic
A subheading that fully treats an element of the topic
Multiple subheadings that indicate material that could be added to complete the article
Reader's experience
Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more.
Suggestions for moving rating upwards: Any editing or additional material will be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be prioritised. Bear in mind that some topics may simply not have anything more than rudimentary data available on them – for example, many topics from the early Roman Republic and the Roman Kingdom.
A very basic description of a topic clearly related to classics.
Detailed criteria
The article is either a very short article or a rough collection of information that will need much work to become a meaningful article. It is usually very short; but, if the material is irrelevant or incomprehensible, an article of any length falls into this category. The article may be so short because information on the subject is simply not available to anybody, because it has been lost or not re-discovered.
Reader's experience
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more useful than a dictionary definition.
This template is used to produce the table outlining Quality assessment criteria for the WikiProject for Phoenicia. In order to place this table, use the following code:
FA
A
GA
Template documentation