User talk:Maintain

Sarajevo
What about asking Rebecca: please see her comment on the FARC page. Tony 02:51, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

some university training
Thanks for raising that issue. I'll think about replacing it, although I did want a redundant use of "some" in the exercises. "The" workers would refer to particular, identifiable workers, such as those in that factory. "Have isn't entirely redundant either: just a little more vivid/recent than simple past.

Yes, on the page you linked to, "some" university training is contrasted with "university degree"; it's more functional in that context, but I don't like it, even there, because it's vague. I'd be writing "incomplete university training", which is exactly what they mean. I notice "Higherst" just next to that, ahem! Who wrote the census report?!

Nice to get good feedback.

Tony 13:12, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Here's a barnstar for you, Maintain—feel free to paste it to your userpage. Everytime I go to look and see who's worked on one of the WP:FAR reviews, you've done so. Many don't keep status, but not for lack of trying. I notice you haven't edited in a few days and hope to see you back. Cheers, Marskell 07:59, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

FAR
Hi, Maintain. I wanted to echo Marskell's thanks to you for the extensive work you've put into articles at FAR. There is too much work to be done, and not enough people doing it.

I've been contemplating something you said on Marskell's page, and decided it would be better to discuss it here.


 * Wikipedia:Featured article review/Liberal Party (Utah) is pathetic - it has been there almost a month and has not received any intelligent reviews, just accusations. They say not comprehensive (and that it is short but that is not a criteria) but cannot say what is missing, they say "doesn't meet criterion 2a" but provide no examples (or edits) of how or why, they say "no inline citations" but do not say where they would be appropriate (as per the criteria), just accusations.

I haven't addressed the comprehensive or other issues in that particular article, since it is an uncited article (I don't consider it a good use of time to extensively analyze uncited articles that no one is working on), but I do say "no inline citations" when there are literally *no* inline citations. FAs must be cited. If a particular article is receiving work, and there are editors who are truly making the effort to cite an article and ask if specific passages should be cited, then I will go in and indicate where. But in the case of the Liberal Party article, almost every sentence needs to be cited, so pointing out each one isn't helpful, particularly since no one appears willing to do the work. In articles with *no* cites (the majority which come up on FAR) or articles that no one is attempting to fix, it also doesn't make sense to go in and tag every single statement that needs a cite. That would make an eyesore of the articles, and take limited time away from the huge amount of work to be done on articles that do have editors who are interested in working on the article.

On a more personal note, I find that one has to have a VERY thick skin to work at FAC and FAR, since just about anything you do is eventually criticized by someone. For my good faith efforts to help out there, I have been smeared across Wikipedia by one editor who took offense to my actively editing an article under FARC, resulting in me becoming even more hesitant to actively work on an article unless invited by the primary editors. I try to do my best. Spending time indicating, as in the case of the Liberal Party article, that almost every single sentence there needs to be cited, just doesn't seem to be a good use of limited time, particularly since the main editor agrees with the citation problems, and appears unwilling to fix them. As a counterexample, the Bob Dylan editors were working on citing: I went in and tagged each line I thought needed a cite, and discussed those issues with them on the talk page. I hope this explanation helps. I hope that, with each person contributing what they can, we can keep the good articles, bending over backwards when someone is at least trying to fix the deficiencies, and move the volume of bad ones through efficiently. Regards, Sandy 03:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)


 * Thanks for taking the time to reply. I guess the point I'm trying to get at is that I see it as providing an impetus. Start the editing, demonstrate what needs to be done, show that it is not impossible, provide a practical reason to get others involved. Much of the effort in the FAR reviews is not helping the article. The Liberal Party (Utah) article is an extreme case. I understand the 'no inline cites' argument will lead to de-featuring but that is just shuffling papers around. Compare this with this: same user, same FAR, but one comment is a vague accusation and one is well-explained criticism of the article. Maybe I'm focusing on the ones that are abandoned, but these are the reasons why I do what I do and say what I said. Maintain 04:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
 * But, we have the other problem that we have too many articles (always around 3 dozen) and not enough reviewers. I've noticed that Tony often kickstarts a copyedit, as an example, and then we watch as a month goes by and no regular editor makes any attempt to copy edit.  The regular reviewers just can't do it all (and even less so when they are attacked as I was by a regular editor of a FARC'd article).  And, even in some cases where we get actively involved, and do as much as we can considering we might not know the subject matter (Bob Dylan), if other editors don't step up to finish the task, there's not much else we can do.  I do think the Utah Liberal Party is an exception: it's the rare case when we actually get a response from the original author, who should have access to the sources used and still won't provide the cites.  So, I just wanted to say that I will do much more detailed work when there are involved editors, but feel like it's OK to say "no inline cites" when no one is willing to do anything about it.  I also tend to focus on the citations, knowing that others will focus on prose or other areas.  At any rate, your comments made me more aware of the need to spend more time on each review, although there's already not enough time to do the job well :-)  Regards, Sandy 05:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Maintain that comprehensiveness should not be invoked without examples; indeed, we may want to raise that in a thread at FAR. I disagree somewhat that inline citations are only paper-shuffling, though. This would be true if the pages were immediately locked after becoming FAs, but that's not the case. What's been pointed out is that a year or two after an FAC anons may have added numerous sentences here and there that are dubious and unverifiable (often memes). Having the inline cites makes it much easier to weed these out.

On the general topic of successes and failures at FAR, I think we have to change the things we can and accept the things we cannot. A majority are not going to be engaged robustly enough no matter how much we ask for it, but a significant minority can be and have been (see Cambodia and Tintin, recently). Anyway, hope you'll remain around for some of that work, Maintain. Marskell 10:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

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