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.
Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style where appropriate.
Professional, outstanding, and thorough; a definitive source for encyclopedic information.
No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible.
Prose. It features professional standards of writing.
Lead. It has an engaging lead that introduces the subject and defines the scope and inclusion criteria.
Comprehensiveness.
(a) It comprehensively covers the defined scope, providing at least all of the major items and, where practical, a complete set of items; where appropriate, it has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about the items.
(c) In length and/or topic, it meets all of the requirements for stand-alone lists; does not violate the content-forking guideline, does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article.
Structure. It is easy to navigate and includes, where helpful, section headings and table sort facilities.
Style. It complies with the Manual of Style and its supplementary pages.
(a) Visual appeal. It makes suitable use of text layout, formatting, tables, and colour; and a minimal proportion of items are redlinked.
Stability. It is not the subject of ongoing edit wars and its content does not change significantly from day to day, except in response to the featured list process.
Professional standard; it comprehensively covers the defined scope, usually providing a complete set of items, and has annotations that provide useful and appropriate information about those items.
No further content additions should be necessary unless new information becomes available; further improvements to the prose quality are often possible.
It has good contrast, accurate exposure and neutral colour balance.
It shows no significant compression artifacts, burned-out highlights, image noise ("graininess") or other processing anomalies. Examples of common technical problems can be found here.
Its main subject is in focus, it has good composition and has no highly distracting or obstructing elements.
Exceptions to this rule may be made for historical or otherwise unique images. If it is considered impossible to find a technically superior image of a given subject, lower quality may sometimes be allowed.
Is of high resolution.
It is of sufficiently high resolution to allow quality print reproduction. Still images should be a minimum of 1500 pixels in width and height (1500×1500px); larger sizes are generally preferred. The size of animated images is judged less strictly, though larger is still preferred. Further information on image size can be found here.
Exceptions to this rule may be made where justified on a case-by-case basis, such as for historical, technically difficult or otherwise unique images, if no higher resolution could realistically be acquired. This should be explained in the nomination so that it can be taken into consideration.
Note that vector graphics in SVG format omit any requirement for any pixel count.
Animations and video may be somewhat smaller.
Is among Wikipedia's best work.
It is a photograph, diagram, image or animation which is among the best examples of a given subject that the encyclopedia has to offer.
It illustrates the subject in a compelling way, making the viewer want to know more. A photograph has appropriate lighting to maximize visible detail; diagrams and other illustrations are clear and informative.
A featured picture is not always required to be aesthetically pleasing; it might be shocking, impressive, or just highly informative. Highly graphic, historical and otherwise unique images may not have to be classically beautiful at all. See these examples for a basic guide.
commons:Help:Scanning offers advice on preparing non-photographic media (engravings, illustrations from books, etc) in your possession for Wikipedia.
Has a free license. It is available in the public domain or under a free license. Fair use images are not allowed. To check which category a particular image tag falls under, see the list at Wikipedia:File copyright tags.
Adds significant encyclopedic value to an article and helps readers to understand an article.
The image is used in one or more articles. It is preferable to wait a reasonable period of time (at least 7 days) after the image is added to the article before nominating it, though this may be ignored in obvious cases, such as replacing a low-resolution version of an image with a higher resolution of the same image.
A picture's encyclopedic value (referred to as "EV") is given priority over its artistic value.
Has a descriptive, informative and complete file description in English. A complete file description:
Properly identifies the main subject, including Latin and technical names where applicable.
Describes the context of the photograph, painting, or other medium. Geotagging photographs of identifiable places is encouraged. This entails providing the coordinates of where the camera was when the medium was recorded to an appropriate degree of precision no less than ~10 km² (see Commons:Geocoding, or Template:Coord if the image is hosted on the English Wikipedia).
States the most relevant meta-detail (such as date, location, event, version, etc). It is suggested that additional relevant information that becomes known during the course of the nomination be subsequently included in the file description.
May include languages other than English but there must be an English version available that meets this criterion. The file name may be in a language other than English.
Avoids inappropriate digital manipulation.
Digital manipulation for the purpose of correcting flaws in a photographic image is generally acceptable provided it is limited, well-done, and not deceptive.
Typical acceptable manipulation includes cropping, perspective correction, sharpening/blurring, and colour/exposure correction.
More extensive manipulation should be clearly described in the image text.
Any manipulation which causes the main subject to be misrepresented is unacceptable.
Note that this criterion is not relevant to vector-based SVG images, as the entire image is a digital construction.
The page contains a featured image, sound clip or other media-related content.
Make sure that the file is properly licensed and credited.
The article is well organized and essentially complete, having been examined by impartial reviewers from a WikiProject or elsewhere. Good article status is not a requirement for A-Class.
More detailed criteria
The article meets the A-Class criteria:
Provides a well-written, clear and complete description of the topic, as described in Wikipedia:Article development. 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 submission as a featured article candidate. See the A-Class assessment departments of some of the larger WikiProjects (e.g. WikiProject Military history).
Very useful to readers. A fairly complete treatment of the subject. A non-expert in the subject would typically find nothing wanting.
Expert knowledge may be needed to tweak the article, and style problems may need solving. WP:Peer review may help.
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);
Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (though not necessarily equalling) the quality of a professional publication.
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.
The article meets all of the B-Class criteria. It is mostly complete and does not have major problems, but requires some further work to reach good article standards.
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.
Readers are not left wanting, although the content may not be complete enough to satisfy a serious student or researcher.
A few aspects of content and style need to be addressed. Expert knowledge may be needed. The inclusion of supporting materials should be considered if practical, and the article checked for general compliance with the Manual of Style and related style guidelines.
The article is substantial but is still missing important content or contains irrelevant material. The article should have some references to reliable sources, but may still have significant problems or require substantial cleanup.
More detailed criteria
The article cites more than one reliable source and is better developed in style, structure, and quality than Start-Class, but it fails one or more of the criteria for B-Class. It may have some gaps or missing elements, or need editing for clarity, balance, or flow.
Useful to a casual reader, but would not provide a complete picture for even a moderately detailed study.
Considerable editing is needed to close gaps in content and solve cleanup problems.
An article that is developing but still quite incomplete. It may or may not cite adequate reliable sources.
More detailed criteria
The article has a meaningful amount of good content, but it is still weak in many areas. The article has one or more of the following:
A 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
Provides some meaningful content, but most readers will need more.
Providing references to reliable sources should come first; the article also needs substantial improvement in content and organisation. Also improve the grammar, spelling, writing style and improve the jargon use.
A very basic description of the topic. Meets none of the Start-Class criteria.
Provides very little meaningful content; may be little more than a dictionary definition. Readers probably see insufficiently developed features of the topic and may not see how the features of the topic are significant.
Any editing or additional material can be helpful. The provision of meaningful content should be a priority. The best solution for a Stub-class Article to step up to a Start-class Article is to add in referenced reasons of why the topic is significant.
Meets the criteria of a stand-alone list or set index article, which is an article that contains primarily a list, usually consisting of links to articles in a particular subject area.
There is no set format for a list, but its organization should be logical and useful to the reader.
Lists should be lists of live links to Wikipedia articles, appropriately named and organized.
A topic about which details are subject to change often.
More detailed criteria
The article covers a future topic of which no broadcast version exists so far and all information is subject to change when new information arises from reliable sources. With multiple reliable sources, there might be information that contradicts other information in the same or other articles. Not all future categories will be rated with "Future" and may be rated like normal.
Amount of meaningful content varies over time as the projected event draws near.
Material added might be speculation and should be carefully sourced.
The page serves to distinguish multiple articles that share the same (or similar) title.
Additions should be made as new articles of that name are created. Pay close attention to the proper naming of such pages, as they often do not need "(disambiguation)" appended to the title.
Any template falls under this class. The most common types of templates include infoboxes and navboxes.
Different types of templates serve different purposes. Infoboxes provide easy access to key pieces of information about the subject. Navboxes are for the purpose of grouping together related subjects into an easily accessible format, to assist the user in navigating between articles.
Infoboxes are typically placed at the upper right of an article, while navboxes normally go across the very bottom of a page. Beware of too many different templates, as well as templates that give either too little, too much, or too specialized information.
The code below is for customizing the template for a specific WikiProject. Fields are optional, and will default to generic examples if left blank.
Specifying the Project field will link the class labels to the appropriate quality category in the given project in the format "FA-Class Project articles".
Specifying article class examples will display the provided text in the example for the given quality.
The rows for Future, Cat, Dab, File, Portal, Project, Redirect, Template, NA, and Unassessed are optional and will not be displayed unless yes is specified for the respective "Future_cat", "Cat_cat", "Dab_cat", "File_cat", "Portal_cat", "Project_cat", "Redirect_cat", "Template_cat", "NA_cat", and "Unassessed_cat" parameters.
^For example, this image of the Battle of Normandy is grainy, but very few pictures of that event exist. However, where quite a number of pictures exist, for instance, the moon landing, FPC attempts to select the best of the ones produced.
^An image has more encyclopedic value (often abbreviated to "EV" or "enc" in discussions) if it contributes strongly to a single article, rather than contributing weakly to many. Adding an image to numerous articles to gain EV is counterproductive and may antagonize both FPC reviewers and article editors.
^While effects such as black and white, sepia, oversaturation, and abnormal angles may be visually pleasing, they often detract from the accurate depiction of the subject.
