Star Wars Fanon:Featured articles/Tutorial

The featured article tutorial was an article written on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki in 2009 by Atarumaster88. At the time, the wiki was undergoing a shortage of featured articles to display on the Main Page. In a community discussion, Atarumaster88 sought to provide a possible solution for the article and began work on a subpage of his. His idea was to create an article that serve both as a tutorial for prospective featured article writers, as well as model the appropriate layout and writing style that Star Wars Fanon required of their featured articles. His inspiration came from tutorials that himself and other Inquisitors had produced on Wookieepedia to aid writers on that wiki. The tutorial eventually received the approval of the Star Wars Fanon community, as well as its review board, the Council of Seers and was used to help writers understand the requirements of a featured article.

When writing the tutorial, Atarumaster88 consistently employed proper spelling and grammar. The sentences were written in a consistent past tense and were standardized in American English, so as to avoid reader confusion. He began the article with an introduction of more than two hundred words. All these measures were taken to insure that the tutorial conformed to the requirements laid down by the Star Wars Fanon community. However, preceding the introduction, Atarumaster88 placed an infobox and eras templates in accordance with the Manual of Style. He then proceeded to layout the sections of the tutorial in order to discuss topics and concepts that he felt would be helpful to writers on the Star Wars Fanon Wiki, based on his experience writing featured articles on Wookieepedia and his reviewing of featured articles on Star Wars Fanon.

Eras
In which Atarumaster88 briefly discussed the tiny little templates that occupied the top right corner of the article.

Infoboxes
In this section of the tutorial, Atarumaster88 addressed the uses of infoboxes, where to find them, and how to add them to infoboxes.

Introduction
The introduction was one of the first things that readers examined and the part of the article that appeared on the Main Page. As such, Atarumaster88 devoted a segment to discussing the introduction.

The question of tense
Atarumaster88 used this segment to clarify the usage of past and present tense.

Linking
The topic of how much and where to link, as well as pipelinking was discussed here.

Quotes
An explanation of the Quote template was given here.

From my point of view
Herein, Atarumaster88 warned prospective writers about the dangers of falling into the snares of point-of-view and cautioned them to be sure that their writing adhered to a neutral point of view, also known as NPOV.

Prosetry, or the art of growing prose flowers
The folly of writing in a flowery, poetic style were examined in this section.

Common spelling and grammar errors
Some of the most frequent usage errors and spelling mistakes were addressed by Atarumaster88.

Diction and syntax
Two words that every FA writer should know and cherish, according to Atarumaster88, were clarified and defined in this segment.

Transition and flow
Once the basic principles of sentence structure and wording were discussed, the tutorial transitioned to a commentary on joining ideas and thoughts together.

Sectioning
In this section, Atarumaster88 provided a guide for how to section articles of different types and what to avoid when making segments.

Images
A succinct description of proper image formatting was supplied to users in this section.

Detail
Wherein Atarumaster88 provided a small piece to illustrate the kind of detail expected in featured articles.

Subsidiaries
Having explained sectioning previously, Atarumaster88 then turned his attention to explaining sections such as "Personality and traits", "Powers and abilities", and above all, "Behind the scenes".

Categories
The importance of clearly classifying one's work was given a thorough treatment here.

Mary Sue
The dark path of the overused and unprofessional phenomena known as Mary Sue was pointed out to users as a dubious distinction to avoid.

Surrealism
Wherein Atarumaster88 explained the dangers of stretching reality and how adverse effects could ensue in the FAN process from doing so.

Referencing
This section was used by Atarumaster88 to provide a basic guide to referencing, for those interested in such things.

Good article
Atarumaster88 gave a brief explanation of the Good Article process and its purposes, as well as its workings.

Featured article nomination
The benefits, proceedings, rewards, expected obstacles, and people behind the FA process were revealed in this segment.

Council of Seers
Atarumaster88 created a small piece about the review board of Star Wars Fanon, posting it here.

Acknowledgments
I'd like to thank Wookieepedia for getting me started on article writing. I'd like to thank 4dot for inspiring me to write tutorials. Also, my acknowledgments go out to Solus, who requested that I explore this idea. And to whatever lucky victims let me use their Featured Articles as fodder for my examples, thank you as well, for being so willing to let me use your work as an example to others.