User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content

Featured articles ( FAs) "are considered to be some of the best articles Wikipedia has to offer", but more significantly "are used by editors as examples for writing other articles". FAs fulfill a vital purpose by serving as models for aspiring or new editors, whether by following usage and weighing of sources, prose and language style, editorial tone, placement of images, organization and formatting and Wikipedia's manual of style. Submitting prepared articles to Featured article candidates (FAC) allows one to learn new or improved wiki skills, while developing a network of collaborators who likewise aspire to generate top content.

Editors have different motivations when submitting articles to FAC; this essay focuses on the more common reasons, presented in the order of my own priorities, and focusing on my content area (medicine). I use the two most recent medical FAs, complete blood count (CBC, Spicy) and dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB, SandyGeorgia and Colin), as examples of how FAC works and why you should write a medical FA. Although both had primary writers, they each serve as examples of the collaborative effort necessary for writing at the FA level; the DLB FAC was a collaboration among about a dozen editors, and CBC involved at least 15 editors.