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.