User:Odie5533/What the B-Class article criteria are not
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The following is an essay to help editors assess articles for the six B-Class criteria.
B-Class criteria
[edit]The article is mostly complete and without major issues, but requires some further work to reach good article standards.
Actual criteria are shown in the yellow boxes.
1: Referencing
[edit]The article is suitably referenced, with inline citations where necessary.
- It has reliable sources, and any important or controversial material which is likely to be challenged is cited. The use of either <ref> tags or citation templates such as
{{cite web}}is not required.
Inline citations are required for only four types of statements:
- direct quotations,
- material that has been challenged (e.g., with a {{fact}} tag),
- material that is likely to be challenged, and
- "contentious material, whether negative, positive, or neutral, about living persons".[1]
There is no rule that requires one citation per sentence or paragraph. For B-class, most reviewers require at least one inline citation per section, and often a majority of the paragraphs need an inline citation due to material that is likely to be challenged (e.g., statistics or statements about living people). There are a few exceptions, however, such as the plot summary for works of fiction, which are generally left uncited. B-class articles are expected to have fewer citations than the Good article criteria and FA criteria require.
Citations do not need to be fully or consistently formatted. Bare URLs are deprecated but technically acceptable for B-class.
2: Coverage
[edit]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.
- Sections may need expansion, and some less important topics may be missing. The A criteria says the article should be "of a length suitable for the subject", and the B-Class should have a large proportion of that.
3: Structure
[edit]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 lead section must exist. It is not required to be complete or to perfectly comply with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections.
All other content must be organized into sections split using section headers. Every section that you reasonably expect, based on the topic of the article, must exist. For example, articles about diseases must have a section about treatments, articles about fictional books must have a section about the plot, etc.
- Mistakes to avoid
- Requiring the lead section to adequately summarize the article
- Requiring compliance with any Manual of Style pages, even WP:LAYOUT
- Requiring sections match the format of similar articles you've found
4: Grammar
[edit]The article is reasonably well-written.
- The prose contains no major grammatical errors and flows sensibly, but it certainly need not be "brilliant". The Manual of Style need not be followed rigorously.
- GA requires that spelling and grammar must be correct. B-Class requires the text not have any major grammatical errors.
- Flows sensibly means the article does not jump around needlessly but maintains a flow from sentence to sentence and paragraph to paragraph.
- Much of the content in any given article follows usually the MoS. Asking an editor to make specific changes for B-Class assessment based on the MoS would probably constitute a rigorous application of the style guideline.
5: Periphery
[edit]The article contains supporting materials where appropriate.
- Illustrations are encouraged, though not required. Diagrams and an infobox etc. should be included where they are relevant and useful to the content.
- This criteria is fairly loose.
- Articles do not need to be illustrated.
- Diagrams and Infoboxes etc. should be included, but are not always necessary.
6: Clarity
[edit]The article presents its content in an appropriately understandable way.
- It is written with as broad an audience in mind as possible. Although Wikipedia is more than just a general encyclopedia, the article should not assume unnecessary technical background and technical terms should be explained or avoided where possible.
- Any jargon must be defined in the article and any confusing topics should be introduced.
- The guideline for Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable should be followed.