Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the miscellaneous page below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the discussion was keep. It is pretty clear that people like and use the page, and there is nothing egregious about it. Implementing the recommended modification is suggested. &mdash;harej (talk) (cool!) 03:01, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations
Goodness me, what an awful page this is, and how unbelievable no one has ever nominated it before! Anyway, there are numerous reasons why this page should be deleted. First off, it makes the FAC process look like some sort of race to get as many bronze stars as possible, to get to the ultimate spot at the top of the list. Second, it is a violation of WP:OWN. This gives a false impression articles belong to somebody, when they absolutely do not. Third, it is clearly emphasising quantity over quality. Numbers don't mean everything, but apparently this page is done that way. Fourth, by "highlighting" these editors it gives a false impression that the people on this list are somehow better and more important, or better at writing than everyone else. Fifth, it is completely and utterly pointless (perhaps about as useful as a list of people who have nominated something for deletion, an article to GA, or whatever. It doesn't matter). As far as I can see, its only purpose is to massage the egos of people who write FAs. I don't see what benefit that has to anything, but I do see lots of negatives. --  Majorly  talk  00:55, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep I used this list just today to see how many FA's an editor I know had worked on. I can see your point, but I think that the list should be kept because it provides a more useful resource than just the raw edit count to show which editors are concentrating their efforts onto individual articles.  There is a difference between an editor with 70000 mainspace contributions spread out over thousands of articles and editor with 7000 mainspace contributions who has built up very resourceful articles from nothing.  To put it another way, whether this page exists or not, people are going to be searching for the information, so why not just let that information be known?   -- Soap Talk/Contributions 01:03, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Delete. I don't feel particularly strongly about this, but I do agree with Majorly's points, andI would like to do my bit to counteract the pile-on of keeps that is about to happen. Hesperian 01:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * FAC is a race - a race to get as many articles as possible up to a certain minimum status. The point of Wikipedia is to write an encyclopaedia.  All the other stuff - all of it - exists to support the job of writing an encyclopaedia.  So we have a list of people who are the primary authors of encyclopaedia articles that have met some basic threshold.  If it's seen as a reward to writing good articles, then it's a good thing.  We want more of that sort of behaviour.  And no, there's no comparison between nominating an article for deletion and writing an FA (and bear in mind that nominators are expected to be the lead - or one of the lead - contributors to the article). I have no idea how this page somehow creates the impression that a certain editor "owns" an article.  The article titles aren't mentioned on the page, they're only accessible as links if you hover over relatively small stars.  So keep.  Guettarda (talk) 01:19, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. This list has provided several years of friendly competition, leading to hundreds of featured articles that have dramatically improved our encyclopedia. It's led to no drama that I know of.  People will likely still keep the stars on their user page, so it's not as if deletion of this page would actually address any of the nominator's concerns either.  The only person taking this too seriously is the nominator.  Furthermore the notion that we shouldn't have encouragement for people who write FAs is disturbingly wrongheaded and the claim that it has no benefit ridiculous on its face. --JayHenry (talk) 02:27, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Is it possible for you to simply disagree with me without going out of your way to insult me as much as possible? Fine, you disagree with deletion, I get it. "Obvious keep" "The only person taking this too seriously is the nominator" (untrue) "ridiculous on its face". Comments like that lead to an unpleasant atmosphere. I have done nothing to deserve being on the receiving end of your abusive remarks, so please cut it out and express your disagreement in a more civil manner. Thank you.  Majorly  talk  02:32, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry if you feel that I am going out of my way to insult you -- that is not my intention. We're here to build a high-quality encyclopedia and this list is something that has fairly obviously contributed to that.  "Its only purpose is to massage the egos of people who write FAs" is certainly an example of something that's untrue, insulting and is sure to contribute to an unpleasant atmosphere for Rick who has worked so hard to maintain the list over the years. --JayHenry (talk) 02:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I disagree. It's a list of names with a bunch of stars. We should be concentrating on quality not quanitity. This list promotes quantity over quality, which is a bad thing. The people on the list have certainly contributed to quality, but why do their names need listing by how many FAs they wrote? And as for your final point, that's my opinion as I made abundantly clear but you missed off the first part of my sentence saying so. I'm still unconvinced it does anything useful other than what I said it does already.  Majorly  talk  02:48, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Of course it's your opinion. I'm just expressing my opinion too. If you believe my opinions could be insulting did it not occur to you that then yours could be as well? As for the first point, FAs are by definition high-quality articles, so I don't agree that it's emphasizing quantity over quality. It's emphasizing both, which seems quite compatible with our goal of writing an encyclopedia with many high quality articles. We have to do both. --JayHenry (talk) 02:57, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * In the rush to get as many stars as possible, the quality will inevitably go down, as the number of decent reviews dwindle. FAC struggles for reviewers as it is, with articles passing with just three comments, so if people are really putting more and more articles on FAC, reviewers are going to struggle. Just because something is a FA doesn't mean it is at its best. FA is simply arbitrary criteria, which makes this list even worse. It is emphasising the things you say, but it is ranking and giving unwarranted importance to quanitity. Some FAs are better than others, they aren't all the same.  Majorly  talk  03:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * If this list were new those would be interesting theoretical concerns, but in fact the list has been there for four years, and the quality of FAs has improved substantially in that time. With really only a few exceptions and niggles FAs are much better now than they were in 2005.  I've never seen an instance where someone with 20 "easy" FAs says they're better than someone with 9 "hard" FAs.  As the list has been here for four years, we know that in practice it just doesn't actually do the things you're concerned about, whereas we also know it does encourage friendly competition to improve the encyclopedia. --JayHenry (talk) 03:16, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Emphatic delete there is NO difference between an editor with 70,000 edits spread all over the project and one with 7000 concentrating on just a handful of articles. A featured article writer depends on thousands of other editors doing copyedits, template construction, mainspace organization, and zillions of other tasks on this project. Without those people, the featured article writers would have NOTHING to work with. I also do not agree with Guettarda that this doesn't create the impression these articles are owned by their nominators. It certainly does. Further, so what if someone NOMINATES something? That's nothing. I could cast about the project finding worthy articles and nominate them, never having edited the articles in question. Nominating something has little value. This list doesn't encourage FA writers, and what it does do is create a hierarchy that is antithetical to the absolutely critical contributions of so many other editors that never do thing one for featured articles. Maybe we should create List of Wikipedians by MfD nominations or List of Wikipedians by image uploads or List of Wikipedians by script assisted edits. This list is worthless. --Hammersoft (talk) 02:46, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * [S]o what if someone NOMINATES something? That's nothing. I could cast about the project finding worthy articles and nominate them, never having edited the articles in question - No, that's not the way it works. FAC usually only accepts noms from one of the leading editors on an article - not because it's an ownership thing, but because you need an active editor to shepherd the article through the process.  Have you really never participated in a FAC discussion?  Not to mention that just aren't a lot of articles that are up to standard sitting around waiting for a nomination. As for the dependence on other editors - sure templates are helpful, organisation is helpful, but content is what really matters.  Without content, you have no encyclopaedia, no matter how many templates you have to choose from.  Despite the fact that it's easy to port templates between projects, the smaller projects will never catch up with en. unless they find a lot of content writers.  There's nothing wrong with finding ways to recognise the contribution of volunteers in other areas.  It just so happens that we have a system of evaluating articles that have gone through the highest level of scrutiny we currently have available.  Find a system to recognise the best templates, and hey, you're in business.  Guettarda (talk) 03:41, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Strong Keep A little friendly competition among FA contributors never hurt anyone. What good are records and bragging rights if there is no place to record the accomplishments and no proof of your accomplishments? Isn't this the whole purpose of WP:BS? Why should we treat this page any differently then a userpage filled with barnstars and other shiny things? If anything, we ought to rigorously link to this article and encourage every wikipedian to try and earn a star here; it can be our version on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. TomStar81 (Talk) 02:52, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Since you ask questions, I'm sure you won't mind me responding :) Competition is fine, it's great. Just not where every person who wrote a FA is involved. I, for example, am involved whether I wanted to be or not. As Hammersoft said FAs are never down to one person, so why should just one person get the credit? A userpage is a userpage. It doesn't have ranking by number of FAs against everyone else, does it? I think encouraging people to get a star is a horrible idea. We're meant to be doing this to write a quality encyclopedia, not get a pretty star to decorate our userpage.  Majorly  talk  02:56, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * On point one: No, I do not mind you answering; that is after the point of consensus, is it not? :) I agree with the first part of your response, but even students who are forced to sell stuff by schools to help earn money get some sort of reward or prize; so why must the reward for getting an article to featured status be limited to the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so many hours of hard work upon the alter of knowledge for the masses? Now I agree that those listed here should not go out and rub their accomplishments in everyone's face, but I do think that some sort of recognition should be allotted to those who had the endurance to go the distance for the sake of FA. And though you would not see it here I do make a point to thank those who helped me get an article to FA-class; I do realize that behind every winner in the winners circle is a pit crew that helped keep things moving in the race for FA-status. I do find your position interesting, and your grounds for the mfd are not without merit, but I respectfully choose to disagree with the decision to do away with the page. That said, I will bow to consensus here, whatever that may be. TomStar81 (Talk) 03:15, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep - at the end of the day, if the existence of the page serves to make more wikipedians write better articles via collaboration, then it is a net positive. Point one is irrelevant anyway to whether an article is kept or deleted, point two falls flat in the experience of anyone who has ever nominated an article at FAC - the nominator is beholden to the reviewer's actionable opposes to pass FAC, it is actually a counterbalance against WP:OWN as it allows consensus to override a primary editor's opinion on an article. Third point...yeah sort of, but most of the time editors who have shouldered a hefty broad article to FA status have gained kudos for doing so as well. I do agree that there should be more of this, which is why I tried to kick-start WP:ACID with mixed results. Fourth...well I am better than everyone else...(chuckle) no seriously, content is what we're here to contribute and promote, and more than ever we need to focus on polishing and improving what we do have as much as adding more esoterica. GA and FA are absolutely integral to this process occurring and hence anything promoting their use is a plus. Casliber (talk · contribs) 03:30, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. I use the page as a reference to know which editors are heavily involved in contributing quality content and in which subject areas.  This knowledge is useful to help me or other editors know who to ask for help or advice in certain subject areas.  Or, if someone needs assistance in preparing an article for the FAC process, they can use this list to find someone who could help them out.  Actually, that has already happened to me a couple of times.  Think of this page as a guide or list of some of Wikipedia's most involved and experienced content editors.  Wouldn't you agree that that is a useful resource to have? Cla68 (talk) 03:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Response - Point by point.
 * First, this page is not directly referenced (as far as I know) from FAC and exists completely independently. If anyone interprets it to mean FAC is a race to get as many gold (not bronze) stars as possible, and because of this works harder to get more articles to FA status, then it is serving its intended purpose.  Wikipedia has nearly 3M articles, but only about 2500 FAs.  The proportion of FAs is declining (see Featured article statistics).  Jimbo has publicly said he'd rather shift the focus from articles on everything under the Sun to quality.  This list is but the mildest of encouragements along these lines.
 * WP:OWN? Did you read the intro?  The star is not awarded to the "author" but to the brave soul(s) (stars are "awarded" to co-noms quite liberally) willing to endure the slings and arrows of comments at the FAC process.  This choice (nominator(s), not author(s)) is specifically because of WP:OWN.  Nearly all articles are collaborative efforts.  We all know this.  But collaborating on brilliant articles does not make any articles WP:featured articles.  Like it or not, FAC is the process we use to put Wikipedia's highest stamp of approval on articles.  Less than .1% of our articles have this stamp.
 * Third - exactly how does this emphasize quantity over quality? There's no way to get a star other than by nominating an article and responding to each and every comment raised at FAC.  The FAC process is the FAC process.  There's really no way to cheat.  You aren't trying to imply Hurricanehink or YellowMonkey are nominating lousy articles, are you?
 * Fourth - Anyone thinking the editors on this list are better in any way than any other editors is simply incorrect. The only thing those "higher" on this list have over other editors is the demonstrated ability to get articles through the final step of the FAC process.
 * Fifth - Pointless? Perhaps.  Although far less pointless than List of Wikipedians by number of edits (which was actually the motivation for its creation in the first place).
 * I understand you (Majorly) don't like this list. Fine.  Don't look at it.  I don't like List of Wikipedians by number of edits.  So I never look at it.  I don't like it has never been a valid reason for deletion.  If no one closes this as a speedy keep in the next 24 hours, I'll be disappointed. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:37, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Do not delete. These bad ideas are our history, and if we suppress our history we doom ourselves to repeat it.  Otherwise, I think I agree with Majorly.  Blank and tag historical.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:08, 8 July 2009 (UTC), but support any attempts to improve the page if they reduce the valid concerns.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 01:17, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep - Fail to see anything wrong with it, and indeed see it as a good thing to have, encouraging FA contributors. Skinny87 (talk) 14:02, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Comment Majorly has said that this list promotes quality over quantity. It's true that people might be tempted to cut corners. Even if the list did not exist people would still go and brag to newspapers about things or put adverts on their userpages or on websites saying that they have lots of FAs and can write spam articles for money! Nevertheless, if people write a lot of bad FAs, they will go to the top of the list and people can inspect them and downgrade them again. Secondly, a lot of people who are very high up on the list were from the older days when the standards were less stringent. I know for sure that people look at the upper reaches of the list and look for weak articles because they have come to the conclusion that some people with a lot of FAs had it easy in the old days. From 2006, there was a continuous stream of FARs on articles by Lord Emsworth, who had 50+ FAs, mostly from the pre-citation era. There was basically an Emsworth FAR at all times, sometimes two. After all his articles had been FARed, I noticed a flurry of FARs against old Piotrus articles starting in late 2008, which has continued since; at the time Piotrus was 2/3rd on the list. Since then I've noticed a lot of Worldtraveller articles being sent to FAR, he was also high on the list. And other cases where a user nominates a string of old articles by the same user. It seems to me that a lot of users use the list to identify users with a lot of decayed FAs in order to scrutinise them, or to hunt down FAs by people they regard to be POV pushers. The FAR patterns indicate that some people use this list to hunt for [in their opinion at least] bad FAs. So the list might actually bring more attention to people who deliberately make cheap FAs.  YellowMonkey  ( cricket calendar poll! ) paid editing=POV 15:14, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Obviously, I have already agreed with Majorly's point #4 as one can do a driveby nom without actually writing anything. Or one can rewrite an old-era FA by another user and not get credit. Regardless of whether this page exists or not people will always be taken in by stunts. Like subdividing their edits into microedits to appear to be hard-working. Also, Flcelloguy, he used to list on his userpage a list of FACs. AnonEMouse, who was regarded as a meticulous researcher, wrote on his Arb election report that Flc had several FAs. Actually, Fl just made a few driveby noms of other people's articles in 2005; one passed, the other two got piled-on opposed for being full of problems. but I wonder how many people read the report or saw the headline and assumed that Fl had actually written any of them or that they actually passed.  YellowMonkey  ( cricket calendar poll! ) paid editing=POV 15:25, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Keep. I must agree with Casliber and YellowMonkey's comments. This list is an excellent motivational tool for editors to start or continue producing FA-quality articles. It is also useful in identifying contributors with a good FA track record who you may want to consult or for identifying articles nominated by a particular user which no longer meet the FA criteria. Nishkid64 (Make articles, not wikidrama) 15:40, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Neutral - Casliber and YellowMonkey raise excellent points; this list serves as an incentive to produce quality content, and is generally a useful tool. However, I agree with Majorly's nomination statement as well, and there are many faults with this page. I'm on the fence at the moment. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 16:20, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep I concur with YM and Cas' opinions on this matter. Sure, I want to beat that cricket-loving yellow mammal directly ahead of me on the list, but that's not going to make me nominate horrible articles in some attempt to "win". :) I should point out that driveby noms are pretty hard to do these days, because most people check and make sure that a significant contributor has nom'd the article; if not and a contributor says it's not ready, it's immediately removed from the FAC page. One can reply that this in turn causes WP:OWN problems, but either way, then, we can't win. -- Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk ) 16:58, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep, but clean it up. Get rid of the burnt-out stars. If the sense of competition is offensive, how about representing the list in alphabetical order by nominators? Brianboulton (talk) 17:54, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep per Casliber and YellowMonkey. KillerChihuahua ?!?Advice 02:42, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. Majorly said, "As far as I can see, its only purpose is to massage the egos of people who write FAs. I don't see what benefit that has to anything." Well, the benefit is that the people who do take this page seriously produce more content in an effort to get to the top. It's the same premise behind the WikiCup. In both cases, I see that the end result is an effort to improve the content of the encyclopedia. I'm not in the mood for beating around the bush, so I'll put it bluntly: I honestly don't give a rat's ass whether that is done by a listing of bronze stars or a promise of a blow job if someone gets 80 FAs. All I know is that we got better content, which is the reason we're all here. The FAC process is caustic enough to make me never want to touch it again with a 200-ft pole, but I do recognize that it is still the best certification of high quality that we possess in this place, so I don't see anything wrong with giving a Unicode star to the brave soul who risked 120 hours of heartburn to pass an article through that Via Crucis. Tito xd (?!? - cool stuff) 06:38, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I think the list is useful.  Editors may want to seek out other editors for possible advice pertaining to bringing an article to FA status, which we all know is not an easy task.  Plus the list is updated by a bot so there is no real upkeep and stays relatively updated.  I dont' see any harm in keeping it.   ♫ Cricket02  (talk) 15:06, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep As I may have mentioned once or twice, I'm no fan of this list – even aside from the whole issue of differentiating between the nominator and the writer, all an FA count measures is the ability to comply with the increasingly arcane and arbitrary rulings of the MOS, not any significant ability – but I can still see times when it would be potentially useful. If any of these "high score tables" are to be deleted, I'd far sooner see the ridiculous List of Wikipedians by number of edits deleted, salted and trampled to dust, but as long as that remains, these other bot-generated statistical tables should remain too. As a certain user said at the MFD for WP:WBE, "It's irrelevant if people get upset over it; they should get a thicker skin if such a page gets them so upset". – irides cent 2  16:24, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Whatever. Is that a vote? Is is now. I'm on the list and I don't care about it. I use it occasionally to see if other Wikipedians who allude to familiarity with the FA process have actually produced an FA. Otherwise, I forget it's here. --Moni3 (talk) 18:14, 9 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep. I've used this list before to help identify editors who have experience with bringing certain topics to FA status. I also sometimes use it to see if an FAC nominator has ever gotten an article promoted so that I can give barnstars to those who have just had their first successful nomination. Karanacs (talk) 00:21, 10 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Suggestions for improvement. I empathize with the deleter's arguments (there are, interestly, featured article writers who don't want to be listed here), but I also don't think the page's problems outweigh the positives suggested in this MfD. The page needs a good old Wikipedia de-hierarchicizing (of course that's a word). I second Brianboulton's suggestion to sort it in alphabetical order. And I add to that the following suggestion: instead of displaying stars,  display the article names. These suggestions, combined, would transition the page from preferencing "ranking" (the main reason that some detest it) to preferencing "information". An excerpt might look like this (I am not going to spend time trying to make the example's formatting prettier):

Notice how this improves the page with respect to one of the ostensible uses of the list: to find editors who have written about particular subjects. (I realize the page is updated by an automated process that would have to be re-jigged, but I don't believe that the implementation problem should decide whether the idea is a good one.) The page is now more informational, and is organized in a way that minimizes the ranking implications that some don't like, while still allowing those who consult the page to find what they found before (with only some extra effort required to compare the FA nominators at the top of the charts--I mean, the four of you know who you're in friendly competition with anyway). No implied hierarchy. Thoughts? Outriggr (talk) 07:14, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This should really be discussed at Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. I'll mention here only that this format would make the page insanely long and that FAC archives are kept (by month and by year) at Featured article candidates/Featured log. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:58, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * This is why I never participate in XfD. They say it's not a "vote", so I put up an idea or a suggestion or something along the line of discussion that is oriented towards improvement instead of binary reactions, and you tell me it's not the place to discuss it. Forget it. Outriggr (talk) 15:54, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * I think they're both good ideas: averting the vote and the actual concept of presenting information instead of a trophy list. --Moni3 (talk) 16:34, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Agree--even as it I find it very helpful & appropriate --and wish I had known about it earlier. If people are going to boast about something done here, this might be the most justifiable of all the possibilities, even though I am never likely to be on this list myself. The improvements suggested would make it much better. DGG (talk)
 * True - the new tables are versatile enough so that the competitive of us can still measure stars too (rubs hands together with clunning glee and chuckles fiendishly) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:49, 10 July 2009 (UTC)
 * Keep This is useful information for the project in truth. Although it does not serve the reader, it helps editors understand who editorial experts are.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 07:32, 14 July 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the page's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.