User:SandyGeorgia/FAC history and culture

From User talk:Mike Christie: At FAC, the objection to "Done" tick marks came before the transclusion limits problem impacting FAC archive pages was discovered. On the template limits problem, when I was doing a month-end tally, I couldn't figure out why the total nominations listed in a file were off, until I realized the last FACs on the archive pages were dropping off, so the number of FACs promoted and archived didn't match what showed on the page. After I went through and deleted some of the tick marks, they dropped nominations re-appeared.

But before that, there was a problem with the "done" tickmarks, because they rendered the pages a) too long, and b) meaningless and jumbled for me (the only closer at the time) in terms of knowing what was actually done. For a nominator to take space on a FAC page to state that something is done isn't helpful; it's not "done" until the reviewer indicates they are satisfied. And back then, the way a reviewer indicated "done" was by striking the objection. So we were getting unhelpful and unnecessary "done" tickmarks, followed by reviewers striking, resulting in lengthy FACs and impossible-to-read jumbles. That's the background on the tickmarks.

The entirely separate, and cultural, issue leading to impossible-to-sort FACs also has several different components (and I suspect that Mike Christie and I define "regulars" on the page differently, as my list includes those who have been so alienated they won't return until the problems are addressed, and most of these problems are unknown to newer "regulars", who know nothing else but the system now on the page).

One component is that new participants, when first approaching FAC, wlll today find an over-complicated, indecipherable and at times unloadable page, and be put off. Reviews have declined; the off-puttting page doesn't help. Compare any FAC page today with, for example, a page at AFD, DYK, GAN-- any other forum-- and it becomes clearer why editors may avoid engaging. Page functioning and instructions are unclear, and the entry barrier is high. So a walled garden effect predominates, and those who have the long-standing presence or prominence in the process to attract their own reviewers are happy with the system because their articles are getting promoted, while overall the page is stalled and clogged. Current "regulars" have no reason to object to this dysfunction, because they are getting their bronze stars. So we are left with a self-perpetuating dysfunctional process, in decline. As one indication of the content areas in decline, the (FAC stats tool, Long and short FACs, sort by supports) shows that three biomedical FACs historically had the most and fastest unopposed support (Tim Vickers and SandyGeorgia, see Tourette syndrome, DNA, Bacteria, and by the way, the top support count at Samuel Johnson). In my last medical FAC, I had to bring my own reviewers. Never mind that I spent years selflessly reviewing the most boring MilHist, ship, hurricane, pop culture, or any other kind of article possible; a MilHist regular declined to review a medical article because it was outside of their area. A medical article today can't buy a review. And yet, there was resistance when I suggested the process has become too MilHist oriented, and that once thriving areas of FA growth have gone completely missing.

Another cultural issue is the old mantra that "FAC is not peer review", has been replaced by the new culture, where FAC most clearly is functioning as peer review (to the detriment of the actual Peer review process, as "old-timers" used to go there, and they no longer do, as PR has moved to FAC). The FAC pages were simpler in the past (see my previous point) because you either Supported, Opposed, or entered limited commentary. If you had to engage the extended PR that is now happening on FAC, the convention instead was that you gave only a few examples of the deficiencies, suggested what was needed (a copyedit, better sourcing, whatever), and Opposed. Under that scheme, the process worked MUCH faster than it does today, as sub-standard FACs were moved quickly off the page (under two weeks was my goal), which allowed them to return faster and be promoted quicker than today. You can poke around in the FAC stats tool (eg, year summaries, average durations) that Mike developed (I believe partly in response to my long-standing concerns in this area), and you can see the evidence for these concerning trends. (I used to be attacked for "no evidence" for these statements I knew very well to be true, having read FAC top-to-bottom near daily for seven years-- Mike's stats show them clearly.) For ten years, we've had longer (but not necessarily better) FACs, of longer duration, with a higher promotion rate (ie, more sub-standard promotions being pulled through by brute force). "Old-timers" aren't going to engage a page where they are forced to return over and over again to address comments on sub-standard article nominations that should be archived with content re-worked via the peer review process.

An entirely separate cultural matter is the leadership role, somewhat related to institutional memory (moi). The archiveN issue has surfaced several times over the years (mostly at FAR), and needed to be addressed. I am perhaps the only institutional memory who could have answered those questions, and the discussion needed to happen at FAC (rather than on a subpage) precisely for the reasons of institutional memory (keep it in FAC archives-- I'm not getting any younger, and that institutional memory needs to be preserved). Unfortunately, that long discussion happened to coincide with several others, and 60% of my posts over four days were dealing with deferred housekeeping, including discovering that no one was watching the page archivals and important threads had even disappeared from the archive search tool. Perhaps in hindsight, we might have moved that discussion to a subpage, but there's already a problem of institutional memory, so it's just unfortunate that Mathglot's query contributed to a perfect storm of page overload. (One of the Coord roles is to keep an eye on overall page functioning, and if that is done, we wouldn't have to overwork to catch up on problems.)

And then another cultural issue is that many "old-timers" did not pick and choose which FAC to review based on their personal topic preferences; they chose based on a desire to preserve the overall status of the bronze star overall (many also active at WP:FAR, doing selfless work, rather than reward-culture seeking via new personal stars at FAC only). To best help the process overall, they engaged the entire FAC page; they/we have no interest in viewing the page via a nomination viewer, whereby they can pick one FAC to review. They/we WANT to be able to read the entire page, see trends, spot problems, decide then where their engagement is most needed.

So, all of that combines to show how the dysfunction has accumulated towards the overall decline in the FA process, which has real consequences-- what brought me back temporarily to the page. We have excellent editors and reviewers, like Vaticidalprophet, caught in this "cultural war" and completely unaware of what other-functioning of FAC looked like. Vaticidalprophet says here, that they'd likely have no FACs if we went back to more expedient archivals. That they would have more FAs, better review, and quicker FAs if the page were functioning properly is something completely unknown to newer participants, as they have no experience of the page as it was before, with more engaged reviewers, and quicker turnaround.

The number of FAs has now declined to the point that FAC can't feed the needs of TFA, so saving older stars via FAR and URFA/2020 has had to fill the gap. Re-runs at TFA were once extremely rare; now they are essential, as there aren't regularly enough FAs to feed 365 annual TFAs without them. The overall process is failing, but the "currents" are happy as they are getting their stars, and critics are shunned.