User:Jackyd101/Guide for writing an article

This is a step by step guide of the process I follow in creating a high quality article. My guidance focuses on siginificant military engagements as this is my primary area of contributions, but many of the lessons are applicable in other situations with minimal adaptation. When I was starting out I learned a lot from a page similar to this on User:Cla68's page and I gratefully acknowledge his influence in these guidelines.

Stage one

1. Choose a military engagement to write on. It is better to select one from a time period and geographical context that you are reasonably familiar with, otherwise basic mistakes can creep into your writing caused by faulty assumptions of geography and tactics. If you are unfamilir, make sure you read as many general histories of the period as you can to absorb as much context as possible.
2. Read as much as you can about the engagement. Identify one source in particular that gives the most detailed and comprehensible description of the battle and between five and fifteen other sources that cover it to varying degrees. Try to make sure that these sources come from a variety of historiological and ideological contexts and if possible from different nationalities to gain the clearest picture of how the engagement is viewed.
3. Begin an article in a userspace sandbox on the campaign in which the battle was fought: no battle is fought in a vacumn and it is vital that a detailed context is presented to introduce the battle. There is rarely space for this to appear in full on the main battle page, and so an umbrella article is needed. Make sure the campaign has clearly defined historical start and end points and stick to them. Write and source this article up to the point that the battle begins (following the steps below) and then move to the battle itself.
4. Start an article on the battle in your userspace. If the battle already has an article in mainspace then leave a clear notice on that article's talk page of your intentions and invite others to comment and contribute.
5. Create an infobox with initial statistical information.
6. Use the background from the campaign article you've worked on to summarise and reference the lead up to the battle in the opening sections.
7. Begin to write, basing the account on the most detailed source but avoiding including any judgement, commentary or assessment from the original writer. Leave notes to yourself in bold on improvements or research needed and give each section rudimentary headings to assist navigating the impenetrable blocks of text that will develop.
8. Remember the lessons taught in I, Claudius: remain focused, avoid drifting into irrelevancies, uneccessary detail or commentary and make sure the most important facts are properly emphasised.
9. Do not include any adjectives that imply judgement or partiality such as "unfortunately", "terrible", "amazing", "brave" or similar - the account must be neutral and tell both sides equally.
10. I prefer to use a roughly chronological narrative when discussing a battle. Not only is it neutral, it is usually also the most descriptive and clearest way to present the account.
11. For now, always link places, people, ships, units, tactics and specialist words even if you get a red link.
12. Once the write through is complete, take a break of a few days and return to the text for a copyedit. Reading it carefully, rewrite and restructure sections that are unclear, correct obvious spelling and grammar errors and add tags everywhere you think they are needed (approximately six to a paragraph is normal).
13. Once the copyedit is complete, take up your less detailed sources and read through them carefully one by one, following the text in the book with the text on screen. Where the texts agree, add a reference. Where the new text has additional detail, relevant quotes or other information, add it to the article and clearly reference it (otherwise you will become confused as to where information comes from). Where texts openly disagree, discuss the discrepancy in the article (unless one has made a clear error, which can be judged by comparing a range of sources), preferably in a footnote. This is also a good time to read though the exisiting wikipedia article (if one exists). It is presumably in a poor state if you have decided to rewrite it, but may well incorporate nuggets of information you may not have found elsewhere. As long as they are relevant and can be reliably referenced, incorporate them into the article.
14. Once you have gone through all of the less detailed sources, return to the most detailed one and perform the same read through as with the other texts. Any remaining tags can be referenced to this text and any detail left out earlier can be restored.
15. Critical commentary can now be added in a section towards the end of the article, discussing the historical assessment of the battle in various texts. This can include quotes, commentary and judgement by historians as long as everything is properly attributed.
16. Add a bibligraphy listing all of the texts used in the article.
17. Write a lead based on the text you have already prepared. It should be between two and four full paragraphs and explain where, when, who, how and why it is notable. Complete the infobox.
18. Create supporting materials, such as a seperate article with the order of battle or if needed, a timeline. Link these articles clearly to the main article and follow the steps below with FLC as your goal.
19. Copyedit the article for a second time, revising unclear sections.
20. Address any redlinks. Some will have articles under other names, in which case create redirects. Others will need to be created. Either put them together from the resources you have to hand or find other users more competent at creating them who can put them together for you.
21. Add images, co-ordinates and templates, remembering the rules on copyright, alttext and placement.
22. Run the whole thing through a spellchecker and add relevant categories.
23. Read through the article a final time, identifying and eliminating any remaining problems.
24. Move the article from your userspace to mainspace (or copy and paste over an exisiting poor article, remembering to leave a note on the talk page explaining your actions and giving a link to the article history you developed in constructing the article. Also, move any information that you have decided is irrelevant and not included in your new version to the talk page to allow others to judge on its inclusion).
25. Return to the campaign article and use the battle article to summarise and reference the engagement in the campaign article. Create cross links in both articles to assist those looking for more detail.
26. If the campaign has several battles, repeat the above process for all of them. Then wrap up the campaign with an end to the chronological account and a conclusion.
27. Develop a new template that includes all of these new articles and add it to each one.

Stage two

1. If writing a range of articles, select them one at a time. The early stages of the process can begin while another article is in the late stages, but putting more than one article through the process at the same time risks overburdening both you and the review process.
2. Approach friendly editors you trust to copyedit the article and ask for them to take a look. They may conduct a copyedit or they might just provide comments, but either way their input will be useful.
3. Nominate the completed article at GA and submit it for a peer review at Wikiproject:Military History. Both should draw comments, pay close attention to what is said and act on every comment (this does not mean that you should blindly do what is suggested, just that you consider and respond to every point, using those that you feel benefit the article.
4. Once it has passed GA and the peer review has closed, nominate the article at Wikiproject:Military History A-class review. It will attract more comments and if the other steps have been followed it should pass quite easily.
5. Once it has become A-class, take the article to FAC, ensuring you have the time to continue to work heavily on the article against a time limit. There it will be tested to destruction by the harshest referencers, reviewers, copyeditors and nitpickers wikipedia has to offer. You will be driven mad by the full weight of Wikipedia's beauraucratic regulation, but will also gain some of the most valuable feedback on the article you can get. Although it is easy to take offense, restrain yourself: they really are only trying to help. Follow their advice until they finally offer you their support and you get the fabled FAC star.
6. Repeat with the campaign article/related battle articles.