Often, an article with good information can turn out pretty bad. There are a few things to follow when writing an article.

Note: By technique, I mean what your article is about. Whether if it’s from making a split-screen to submitting your game to a shareware site, you’re (or at least you should be) teaching how to do something.

Pick how broad and deep you want to go in relevance to how often your technique is used.

If you are writing an article that is very useful, (“useful” as in “All my good ideas needed that, and now I finally know how to do it.” Not as in “Wow, that’s a cool technique. It’s so cool, that I just have to use it.”) then, by all means, go deep. However, if you’re technique isn’t used very often, you might want to teach related things too. If you can write an article that is broad and deep, then kudos to you.

Be sure there’s enough on your subject.

You don’t want to write a quarter-page article. I’d say that an article should be at least three-quarters of a page long, but that’s just my opinion. Some cases (like the article on solving the event skip bug) are important but there just isn’t much to say. If there isn’t much to say, teach something related also. If your subject is reasonably large, you shouldn’t be caught with one page.

Use proper English

People will respect you more if you use proper English. If you don’t have a spelling (and grammar) checker, get someone who’s good at English to help.

Watch the big words

A lot of people here at the DC don’t have a large vocabulary. You should adapt to them. If you can’t lower the reading level, warn your readers.

Say if it’s advanced

People WILL give you a low rating if that can’t understand your article. I’ve had this happen to me.

Beware un-racial racism.

Some people think “some things should never be done.” If you’re writing an article about selling games, using Jamagic, or other unpopular motions some people will give you a bad rating because they are opposed to something that you’re suggesting that should be done.

SOLUTION: Try putting at the end of your article “All ratings not made because of the quality of this article will be treated as racial slurs.” Although you (probably) have no power, this should stop some people.

Administrative solution: The admins could make something where you must give a reason for a rating. These reasons (along with their ratings) could be viewed by the author of the article and could be sent in if their reason is questionable.

Use code and explanation

Some people just want to see code. Some people just want you to tell them what you’re doing. Try to please both.

Ask on the forums if your article is too newbie-ish

If you’re not sure if you should do an article about how to program HP, ask on the forums. If you think you’re article could be done by anyone who thinks about it, consider yourself before scrapping it. There are a lot more newbies now and you can get some 5-stars by catering to them. They often don’t want to perform logical linear thought, so you can get some DC points doing this for them.

Check if an article of your type has been done recently.

A few months a go, an article about making an MMORPG was written. The next article written was “Making an RPG online game in MOOCLICK/MOOGAME.” This shouldn’t happen. No good article should be done more than once, but, because most people won’t check back very far, you can repeat something that was done a while ago. You might get worse reviews if they already know how to do your technique, especially if the previous article about your topic is better than yours. But, if the previous article was (censored)…

To the DC, and to better articles!