Wikipedia:Featured article checklist

Featured article criteria are often vague and are partially subjective, which may not reflect how featured article candidacy (FAC) is actually done in practice. This essay hopes to clarify it by listing common checks and arguments in bullet points.

The basic tenets in featured article reviews are citations, text, style, and files. Though some topics such as copyright violations may span on multiple tenets, most issues brought up in reviews can be listed neatly under those sections.

Citations

Fundamentally, Wikipedia articles are nothing more than synthesis of sources. The better the source, the better the article's facts will be. Therefore, it is essential that the text must reflect what reliable sources says. In FACs, this is often referred to as a "source review". This section roughly belongs to FA criteria:

• 1b (comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context)
• 1c (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)

Searching

Further information: Wikipedia:Advanced source searching

• Use search engines – Google, DuckDuckGo, Google Books, etc. Make use of search parameters.
• Search in newspapers – Newspaper of record, Newspapers.com, etc.
• Search in niche or industry sources – video games, medicine, science, etc.
• Find academic papers – Nature, PubMed, Google Scholar, JSTOR, etc.
• Look over at our internal list of free online resources
• Apply to The Wikipedia Library for free access to paywalled sources
• Go to WikiProject Resource Exchange to request access to paywalled sources
• Practice advanced research, just like what journalists do

Reliability

Further information: Wikipedia:Reliable sources

• Make sure that the sources are not listed as unreliable by Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources
• Identify whether the source is either primary, secondary or tertiary. Prefer secondary source.
• Examine the source's age, ideally it should not be too recent or too old
• Check if the source is an opinion piece or biased
• Check the author and publisher. Look for a consistent track of record.
• For scholarly source, check whether the study is tentative, vetted, or peer-reviewed
• Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence – Sagan standard
• Use common sense to determine whether the source is suitable for a Wikipedia article

Source–text integrity

Further information: Wikipedia:No original research

• Check for missing page numbers and other parameters
• Skim the source, see if the facts are mentioned
• Check causation for improper synthesis