SCP Foundation

I've been reading over the various guides (How to write an SCP, this essay on common mistakes, among others) and I'm just not grasping, for instance, why SCP-173 isn't a "generic monster" and what's stopping half of Series I from being downvoted into oblivion. Are the current guidelines/suggestions/community consensus/what-have-you resulting from that fact that Series I covered a bunch of general ground and re-treading it is seen as repetitive? If so, what's the best way to tell what general categories of item are covered by Series I? If not, where do the guidelines come from?

I guess I'm just mildly frustrated by not being able to tell what makes a good article, even after reading as much guide material as I can. I find myself consistently wondering why articles with 100+ upvotes have that many and why articles barely hitting +10 don't have way more. This naturally makes it impossible to even think about doing any writing. So, uh, tips, I guess?

EDIT: Don't want to bump since I've got what I needed, but yeah. Thanks guys.

Because they are old.

Series 1 is old.

If you want to know what makes a good article, read series 2 and 3. Get in chat. Post in discussion threads. Interact with the community.

1) series one was made before those essays

2) Portions of Series 1 are getting downvoted. Not all of its bad, but it's slowly dying. Notice how many recent article rewrites are in Series 1?

3) Series 3 and 2 have the more recent and better quality articles. You can always look in a discussion page to see why an article isn't rated as high.

4) 173 is the first SCP. If someone posted it in its current state today, it would most certainly be downvoted.

Yeah, pretty much everything Accel and Djoric have said above. Just because something is the original doesn't necessarily mean it's the best. Series 2 and 3 definitely have more quality articles than Series 1; there are already several articles in the Series 1 that have been called to attention for a rewrite because they're not up to par with present standards.

Don't get too frustrated; that only makes things worse when you try to think of something. We all have to start somewhere; build yourself up instead of tearing into yourself too hard.

I find myself consistently wondering why articles with 100+ upvotes have that many and why articles barely hitting +10 don't have way more.

Just going to also note that the older an article is, the more people have seen it, and also the lower standards it would've been looked at to begin with (if you're looking at something from 3+ years ago). It takes time. Some articles accumulate votes over months or even years. Part of it is exposure.