Guide:Writing and rating articles (Meta, no ontology)

From Compile Worlds

Evaluating the rating of an article is split up into two processes. Firstly, the following questions are considered, and negative tags are applied as necessary.

  • Does the article cover all material in its scope?
    • If there is little material because the subject is too narrow, the page is {{trivial}}, and likely to be deleted.
    • If there is little or no material suitable for Kawachan, the page should be marked as requiring a {{domain}} move.
    • If there significant material to discuss within the subject of the article under the context of Kawachan, but not all material is covered, the page is {{short}}, and additional information should be added.
    • If the article does cover everything in its scope, is within the scope of Kawachan, and covers a wide range of material, good.
  • Does the article make grammatical sense? Can it be understood?
    • If not, it is {{crap}}, and should be rewritten.
    • If yes, good.
  • How much logical sense does it make?
    • If it is entirely consistent with outside sources, then it has too much {{fact}}, and needs moar opinion and sarcasm.
    • If it is inconsistent with itself, or with older articles on Kawachan, it is {{wrong}}, and should be edited to restore consistency.
      • Since Kawachan is parody, statements need not be consistent with outside facts.
      • However, once a statement is established on Kawachan, newer ones must conform to it.
      • This helps to generate more humorous material.
    • If it is consistent with itself and other Kawachan articles, but partially inconsistent with outside sources, good.
  • Does the article have correct spelling, punctuation, grammar and formatting?
    • If not, it requires {{cleanup}}.
    • If so, good.

If not all four questions above resulted in a good, the process stops now. Otherwise, one goes on to less important criteria to choose a positive tag:

  • What is the state of the links in the article?
    • If there are few or no links, more need to be added.
    • If there are lots of links, but a large proportion are red, either add more, change some of the link targets, or write new articles from the red links.
    • If both the number and proportion of blue links is high, good.
    • Piped links should be used only to add hidden content to phrases, as in the example in this sentence. They should not be used for changing the form of a word - use redirects for that.
  • How is the article tagged?
    • Rageboard will introduce a much more flexible tagging scheme; however the following are good rules of thumb.
    • Does the article have an infobox (if one is appropriate) with all appropriate entries filled in?
    • Is the article correctly placed in the category system, by both topic and type?
    • Does the article reference or link to all appropriate database templates?
    • If all of the above conditions are met, good.
  • Is the article illustrated appropriately?
    • Pictures and videos should be added to the article to illustrate it.
    • If the article is generic or entirely philosophical and as such cannot be illustrated by normal media, consider adding diagrams.
    • There are very few cases where an article cannot use any media at all.
    • If the article contains appropriate media, good.
  • Is the article split up into appropriate sections?
    • Sections should be neither too long (more than two screens on a 1280x800 display) nor too short (less than two paragraphs).
    • Sections should also be neither too many (more than 30 total, or more than 10 with a common parent) nor too few (less than three).
    • Sections should focus on their content without repeating information elsewhere in the article.
    • If there are overlapping parts of the subject, consider using a broader main section, with sub-sections for more unique parts.
    • If there are many short sections, consider using a definition list instead.
    • Consider splitting out sections that are very long or have a large number of sub-sections into separate articles.
    • If sections are appropriate, good.

Finally, count up the number of good answers in the previous list, and apply a positive tag as follows:

See also