Wikipedia:After achieving featured status



Many editors think that having a bronze star at the top of the article is the apex, the peak of article development. And in a sense, it is, as the final stage of Wikipedia's content assessment system. The problem, however, is that it will not stay on it forever. Unless you are writing about a very obscure topic that won't likely change overtime, it is bounded to rot by irrelevancy, poor writing, or simply change of styling conventions. How to prevent this is a very heated topic of debate, and this essay provide some ways this can be prevented.

Upgraded standard
It is a commonly-held belief that interpretation of the featured article criteria has become more strict over time. However, this is not necessarily the case, as User:SandyGeorgia, a very-long time contributor to the featured article process, argues that "1a [well-written criteria] has degraded; we no longer expect "brilliant prose". Since 2010, we have lost several of the better and more strict prose reviewers, for a variety of reasons. And it shows."

Another myth is that most contributions will have a net positive on the article. Newer editors often unintentionally degrade the article's prose and structure, leading to either overlong or cluttered articles.

Proposed solutions
There has been many proposed solutions to the problem, with many think that having a detailed and through review may solve the problem. The main contributors and nominator of the article should also be encouraged to keep an eye on their article, as SandyGeorgia pointed out that this is the biggest contributing factor to article quality. However, I think there is a good reason to believe that the article should already be excellent by the time it is nominated, and that the burden of work is on the nominator, not the reviewers. If so, the biggest criteria that the nominator should focus on are 1a (well-written), 2a (concise lede), 2b (appropriate structure), and 4 (summary style). Let's breakdown each of those: