Felicity held up the apron and shook her head sadly. "All these miles and miles of stitches![...]"
"Slow and steady, my child," said Mrs. Merriman. "They'll be done faster if you do them right, so that you don't have to sew every seam twice."—Meet Felicity, Chapter Three: "Jiggy Nye's Threat"
Do it right the first time, and we won't have to do it over again.
The American Girl Wiki is not like other wikis. While several other wikis may prefer many short articles to up the article count number, here we prefer fewer articles of a higher quality. Around here this can be summed up as Quality over Quantity.
What is Quality over Quantity?[]
Long story short, it's the rule that one well-done article or clear and crisp picture is heaps better than many short, poorly done articles or a bluk upload of tiny, grainy pictures. Creating and polishing up an article to a good quality--if not a superb one--is better than clicking every link on a list of items and making a one-line entry for them all. (Not to mention, those are against the article creation policy anyways!)
What About Stubs?[]
It's okay to make stub articles. Those still contribute, as long as they still have the basics of basic article creation. No one expects a perfect article in one go. But it's much harder to clean up and contribute to an article that doesn't even have an outline to work around.
But there are so many unmade articles! Doesn't it matter more that everything has an entry?[]
Not always. While it might seem like a good idea to fill a bunch of articles with a one line description or a short paragraph, this only means more work later to put in what should have been done right in the first place. Think of it as making an outfit. It's better to have one well done outfit after a day's work than thirty poorly done haphazard ones with frayed seams and poor stitching that will have to be corrected anyways (or completely scrapped).
In fact, short articles don't add to the article count at all.
Remember:[]
It doesn't matter if you are the first to create an article. It matters if you are the first to create a GOOD article.