Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive18

persondata
In an effort to increase the number of Wiki articles with persondata, should it be made a requirement for biographical articles? I think it should given how little effort it takes to add and populate the template and the eventual benefit of having most biographical articles with persondata. Just my opinion.--NMajdan &bull;talk 14:47, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * For biographical articles for FAC, it looks like a very good suggestion. We should also see to it that all FAs on people have the template. -Ambuj Saxena (talk) 18:12, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I've added persondata to the script (the persondata suggestion will appear as long as the article has either the correct birth/death year category (Category:1873 births) or an infobox biography). Couldn't we run a bot to go through all of the articles with Infobox biography, Infobox Military Person, etc., to populate the template, using the fields in those infoboxes to automatically add to the fields for persondata? (I have no clue how to write a WP:BOT.) Andy t 01:49, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I can do it if needed. I think it is easy enough to do semi-automatically that there is not real need to make it a hard requirement. Schutz 11:24, 24 June 2006 (UTC)
 * That's how I feel. It is not that hard of a requirement at all. Generally, the information in the template is already somewhere on the page and just needs to be copied to the template. A bot would definitely speed this process up for articles with infoboxes that already contain the specified info.--NMajdan &bull;talk 15:16, 26 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The only tricky part about automating the process is that the Persondata name is in a specific format (lastname, firstname middlename, titles). The format is important as one of the primary purposes of Persondata is adding the ability to create alphabetized lists of people. If the name parsing can be figured out, having a bot for creating persondata would be awesome. Kaldari 20:04, 27 June 2006 (UTC)

No, this requirement is unnecessary. Raul654 06:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Can you specify a reason? Having persondata on a majority of articles will definitely benefit Wikipedia and its users. And it takes very little effort. Again, what are your reasons for why not?--NMajdan &bull;talk 13:10, 25 June 2006 (UTC)
 * If the request was for "every biography should have an infobox" that would be silly, since it is an editorial judgement call whether the appearance changes are satisfactory. But PERSONDATA doesn't have that limitation - it's all but invisible to most readers - so I can see a strong argument that all of Wikipedia's "very best" biographical articles should contain it. But lots of minor rules for specific types of article are probably not great either. The question I have is whether "oppose, no PERSONDATA" will be taken as an actionable objection on biographies. If so, then enough editors who cared about it would probably be able to make it a "de facto" standard at least. TheGrappler 18:11, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Because the benefits (making it easier to machine process wikipedia's data) are limited to a tiny number of applications. It seems like a needless hurdle. Raul654 18:24, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * While technically actionable, it seems kind of pointless to oppose an article based on persondata (perhaps just use a comment). It only has 7 short easy-to-fill fields that can probably be filled out in less than half a minute. Andy t 15:50, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Music noticeboard
Please link to music-related Featured Article candidates at the new Music Noticeboard. The Noticeboard also details current music-related Featured Article nominees and articles undergoing Peer Review. It also contains centralized music-related discussion.  Λυδ α  cιτγ  01:52, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Stagnant Proposal
What to do when a FAC is receiving little attention? Only four people have commented on Featured article candidates/Cornell University/archive1 since it was proposed on June 17. As of this post, it was 1 support, 1 weak object, and 2 withdrawn objections. Bump to the top of FAC? Archive and re-submit? - mercuryboard talk &spades; 18:40, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I usually let a nomination "cook" longer if it is having trouble getting comments. Raul654 18:42, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Something about the HTML on that subpage makes it very hard to read for me... the lines of text overlap in such a way that every second sentence only has the bottom half of its characters being rendered. If it isn't just my browser... Jkelly 19:17, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Looks fine on my system in both Firefox and IE on Win XP, 1280x1024. - mercuryboard talk &spades; 19:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

About five days ago I nominated an article and it's so far only received my one support vote and one oppose vote; if it remains that way despite its allotted "cooking" time, does the final decision then come down to the director's discretion?TonyJoe 21:10, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The director will surely leave it until more concensus is gathered. Joelito (talk) 21:12, 27 June 2006 (UTC)
 * If a page one has nominated is being ignored, usually because the subject is a little off-beat or unusual - then one has to nudge a few people - not spam tens of pages - just subtly prompt a few people who are known to be interested in the subject etc. If the page is then still ignored perhaps one has to ask oneself a few searching questions about it - are people being polite (not an often known phenomena on FAC) or is the page so boring no-one can reach the end of it.  This happened to a nomination of mine once - and in retrospect I can see now it was very dull indeed. Giano | talk 21:49, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Wesley Clark
i think the wesley clark article is pretty good JMW814 21:09, 28 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Do you think it meets the Featured article criteria? Jkelly 21:18, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

FA as a super Peer review
Is it just me or does anyone else notice that the FA process is being used by some users as a super-duper peer review? Stuff that is clearly subpar is just being plopped on the page. Meanwhile, the peer review process itself seems to be quickly turning into a ghost town, containing mostly bot generated comments. If this trend continues, we could have a situation where the amount of entries would overwhelm the capacity of the FA page, while leaving the Peer Review process dried up. Any thoughts on this guys? Anyways, that's just my 2 cents.--P-Chan 06:39, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As the number of sub-par articles submitted to FAC increases, so will the surliness of the reviewers, who will have to wade through all of them; this will naturally result in a more vicious style of critique that will drive away the people using this as a peer review substitute, restoring the balance. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 06:55, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I've always felt that PR should be split into two parts. One for a general peer review, and another for articles that need to have a look into before being moved to FAC. Unfortunately there are very few takers for my suggestion and that's why PR languishes with so many requests. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  07:06, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I would think that a subject-wise split (farming the PR requests out to relevant WikiProjects, for example) would be more effective than a quality-wise one (which would have the same problem we have now—the "lower" levels would be deserted and people would push sub-par articles higher up the chain just to get someone to comment on them). Kirill Lokshin 07:08, 1 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I feel this has happened to my work on the FBI article. I went through two Peer Reviews and a failed GA and then got it to GA status. Then working on it for FA, I had to change most of the pages    just to try to get it satified with the objections rasied in the FAC process. Though the saying Time is money does not work here, but Time is better spent helping that just reviewing should become a fortay for the FAC process. --Shane (T - C - E) 06:50, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Referencing for plot-type sections
Hi FAC people. This is prompted by Featured article candidates/Excel Saga/archive1. Another example is Megatokyo and its characters section - see Talk:Megatokyo and this diff of mine. The question is what should FAs CURRENTLY require for referencing for plot-type sections? If the article discusses itself, is it simply OK? Or, should it have inline cites for the issue number, for example? Final Fantasy X, for example, uses quotations from the game. Aradia,_or_the_Gospel_of_the_Witches uses the book as an inline ref too. I may be completely insane though :). RN 10:49, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

IMHO that's overdoing it a bit. self-reffing should apply to verbatim quotations from the text. Assessment of self-evident material, if basic ("The main character is a young american student") while technically WP:OR, is trivial and should not either require a fact tag or an OR accusation. If it gets into complex judgements, however, ("The most psychogically disturbed protagonist ever") there should be a cite from an outside source (- a notable critique or review). Hope that helps a bit.Bridesmill 15:03, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The important thing, in my opinion, is just to remember what we require citations for.  We want a reader to be able to quickly identify some source that will quickly demonstrate that what they're reading is firmly grounded in reality.  This goes for plot summaries the same as it does for any other statement we make.  What makes it tricky is determining how much you can extrapolate from your experience of the plot before it becomes OR.


 * In the case of the fact tags on the Megatokyo article, I would say that the statements describing parallels between the character and the author, or the process of character creation, definitely need to be individually cited; the ones describing basic plot themes are the sort of thing I would be happy to see sourced to a broad plot summary somewhere with a footnote at the end of the section. --RobthTalk 16:43, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * My own understanding was that inline-citation was meant to insulate articles and Wikipedia in cases of controversy or dispute. Plot summaries seem rather innocuous in this regard. Anyway, if this were adopted, would one have to cite a secondary source for the dramatis personae of Othello or such statements such as "Othello's plot revolves around Iago's manipulation of his fellow Venetians, and culminates in the deaths of Desdamona and Othello?" In nonfiction, would we need to source a statement such as "Smith's Wealth of Nations was an influential text of political economy, containing discussions of the theoretical nature and historical implications of concepts such as price, value, supply, and demand?" Ultimately, it seems we would have to have secondary sources for the Bible's inclusion of the creation and the Crucifixion. If not, where is the dividing line between works needing and not needing citation?--Monocrat 15:34, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Minor quibble: in your example, a reputable secondary source for such a statement would be quite necessary, as Othello wasn't a Venetian! ;-) Kirill Lokshin 15:38, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * While a Moor by birth or blood (note, his race is unclear), Othello was the Venetian governor in Cyprus and married a Venetian senator's daughter. Is Carlos Ghosn Brazilian, French, or Lebanese? :)--Monocrat 15:57, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Doesn't matter; he wouldn't have been a citizen of the Republic of Venice regardless of his position or marriage. (This is, admittedly, a possibly too obscure point to actually comment on; but it underscores the fact that even statements which may seem perfectly obvious can have subtleties which may require citing them.)  Kirill Lokshin 16:11, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * That seems kind of like saying William I wasn't an English king though he was King of England. Even if William wasn't English per se, such terms need not refer to nationality, but rather to affiliation. I stand by calling Othello a Venetian, citizen or not (and citizenship in Venice was thoroughly restricted, even to those native to the region). Regardless, the Iago statement is factually correct since he certainly manipulated the other Venetians in the play. A citation in this case in unnecessary; all that is needed is to insert "and Othello."--Monocrat 16:26, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * More like saying that Richard de la Pole wasn't French even though he lived in France and commanded French armies ;-)
 * In any case, you're right in that you can get away without a citation here (unless you wanted to make a note of Othello's exact status in a footnote, in which case you might need some citations on Venice's social system and so forth), so this was probably a bad example on my part. Kirill Lokshin 16:31, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

I think Roboth is on the mark here. It's important not to lose the forest for the trees. We're not adding citations for the sake of adding citations; the purpose is to make our articles verifable. However - and I beleive this come up previously in regards to some star wars article - for an article about a particular work, there's no need to cite it as a a source for its own plot summary - that's just silly. The structure of the article should make it clear where the information is coming from, so that anyone wishing to verify it knows where to go. Raul654 15:44, 6 July 2006 (UTC)


 * There's no requirement to do so, but in the case of longer and more complicated works (particularly in cases such as The Lord of the Rings, where there is significant additional information and appendices that may or may not be regarded as part of the work itself), it may be useful for readers to provide chapter or page numbers for less obvious points. The same is probably true in cases where the plot summary may have changed between different editions of the same work (although this should probably be indicated in the article itself). Kirill Lokshin 15:54, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for their comments, I think I get it finally. Sorry for being a wikiknucklehead about it :). RN 21:14, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Audio license information
I've noticed a lot of FAC lately that have been using audio file templates that don't link to the license information. Please note that this is quite inappropriate, since it makes it effectively impossible for anyone without knowledge of how the project stores it's media to find information on either the person who recorded the file or its license information.

I urge you to scrutinize FAC more carefully for raw image links in the future.

Peter Isotalo 15:45, 7 July 2006 (UTC)
 * This is a very important point. Raul654 15:57, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

Stats on FAC pass rates?
The one stat that I can't find is the proportion of candidates that pass. I wonder whether it exists or can be added to the list of stats. It would be an important indicator of how the process is evolving. Tony 04:08, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * What list of stats? &mdash;Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:11, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe he's referring the stats on WP:FA about featured article vs. overall article numbers? RN 04:24, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I believe he means Featured article statistics. We don't have the pass/fail ratio anywhere, but all you'd need to do to get it would be to compare the number of articles in the /Featured log/ with the number in the archive for a given month. --RobthTalk 04:27, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

For the month of june, that would be 43 successful FAC noms and 78 unsuccesful FAC noms, or roughly 1:2. Raul654 06:40, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thx, Raul: a promotion rate of 35.6% is nice to know; I wonder about the long-term trend, but don't go to any trouble. Tony 06:48, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I've done a count of the failed nominations lists for each month back to May 05. The data are presented below; sorry, I can't do tables on WP.

The results show two trends: more nominations and a lower pass rate. I've compared six months last year (May to Oct 05) with the subsequent eight months (Nov 05 to Jun 06): nominations are up by about 24%, from an average of 86.2 to 106.5 a month; pass rates are slightly down from 43.8% to 38.2%.

The average number of nominations over the past three months (117.0 a month) is nearly 40% up on the same period in 05 (84.3 a month)—a much greater increase.

The pass rate peaked at an average of 44.7% in the four months from Jun 05 to Sep 05, compared with lows of 34.7% in Apr 06 and 35.6% last month; this suggests a mild downward trend.

Month/FACs/Passes/Fails/Pass rate %

Jun 06...121...43....78....35.6%

May 06...112...45....67....40.2%

Apr 06...118....41....77....34.7%

Mar 06...112...44....68....39.3%

Feb 06....88....35....53....39.8%

Jan 06....101...43....58....42.6%

Dec 05....95....36....59....37.9%

Nov 05...105...37....68....35.2%

Oct 05....72....34....38....47.2%

Sep05.....89....36....53....40.4%

Aug05....108...45...63....41.7%

Jul 05.....78.....37.....41...47.4%

Jun 05....86.....40.....46...46.5%

May 05...84....33......51....39.3%

Apr 05....83....31.....52....37.3%

Tony 09:36, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

Prose and article size question
Considering Summary Style, article size, and attribute 5 of a FA, is there ever a situation where 70 - 80KB of prose (125KB total article size) would be acceptable, albeit for a very controversial topic? I am encountering resistance on holding the 50KB line on prose on Hugo Chavez, and other editors argue that controversial topics warrant longer prose. I argue that no one will read it, and that it will never pass FA. Sandy 22:32, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * And if it can't pass FA, it's no big deal. Some topics are so complex and controversial that they make inherently difficult candidates for FA. On the Chavez article, if someone does not want to read the entirety of a detailed, informative entry, then she/she may merely read the intro and possibly skim through the rest of the article. Trying to fit the article into an arbitrary size limit would only render the article less useful for readers looking for a more comprehensive entry. 172 | Talk 22:49, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I can see situations where 70-80 kb of prose would be acceptable. Raul654 22:51, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Raul, that's what we needed to know, although I don't think we've "stayed tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail". Sandy 00:59, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * We should keep in mind that KB size is not always a reliable indicator of article length. Much of the KB size stems from templates, references, notes, etc. For example, Hugo Chávez is 122 KB, while the FA History of Russia is 78 KB. Yet the Chávez article is actually shorter in length than History of Russia, because of the extra weight. I ran a test and determined the word count without the references, notes, templates, etc. of both articles on my MS Word browser. The Chávez article had 10,827 words. History of Russia had 11,303 words. I'm not saying the Chávez article should be a FA, just pointing out the flaws in setting limits based on KB size. 172 | Talk 23:28, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
 * A long discussion which is already accounted for by simply calculating the prose size. Sandy 00:59, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * The current prose size of History of Russia is 69KB. The last time I ran the prose size on Chavez (a few hours ago), it was 71KB.  Chavez was longer than the History of Russia, for the record.  Sandy 01:30, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * My test found that the difference in the word count was 476, with History of Russia being a bit larger. I can't figure out why you're result is a little different. Still, it's not worth figuring out, since the difference is marginal. The articles are about the same size. 172 | Talk 07:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The discrepancy in article and prose size between Hugo Chavez and History of Russia is partially accounted for by the fact that Russia has only 4 inline citations. Should it be submitted for review, to bring it to current standards?  Sandy 01:47, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * No, that's comparing apples and organges. Elementary facts do not require citations. An article covering more than 1,000 years of history, unlike the article on a controversial contemporary political figure, is largely laying out elementary facts, like Peter the Great ruled from 1672 to 1725. 172 | Talk 07:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * 69KB is a lot of elementary facts. Sandy 14:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It's over 1,000 years of history. Enough with the sarcasm. You should understand the difference between the nature of the two entries. 172 | Talk 17:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Summary style does not mean that it should fit into a fixed size limit. It states that detail should be moved to daughter articles. If I find that long articles can be summarised, I usually object. To cut down on size I usually recommend that editors précis the text. =Nichalp  «Talk»=  06:41, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Exactly. Whatever the article size, if the article is well-written, avoiding repetition, rambling, and off-topic diversions, it's fine. KB size may be an indicator of a problem, but in and of itself it is not the problem. 172 | Talk 07:21, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 *  It states that detail should be moved to daughter articles. If I find that long articles can be summarised, I usually object. Yep, we aren't effectively using Summary Style, except in one case. Summary Style is in place, but the only area that has really been summarized is criticism, in the daughter article, Criticism of Hugo Chávez. I argue that we use Summary Style, or we don't, but by using it for only one area (Criticism), we create a POV fork.  If we employ Summary Style to shorten and summarize the entire article, then Criticism is just another area that was summarized.  We've got a double standard going on, and a very long article which could benefit from using Summary Style, so that readers can find the detail they want in daughter articles, while getting a readable overview in the main article.  Sandy 14:10, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It's not a POV fork. There are many of these "criticisms of" sections, e.g., criticisms of Marxism, criticisms of capitalism, and criticisms of socialism. So long as the "crticisms" section is reasonably long in the main article, and the daughter article is longer, there's no problem in what you are nothing above. By the way, we should not be having this discussion here. 172 | Talk 17:29, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

Busted link
I can't add a comment to the atmospheric reentry nomination: can someone fix the busted edit link? Sandy 02:33, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * It should work now. Joelito (talk) 02:39, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks! Sandy 02:40, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Peer review and good article
Something should be done here. We constantly have to object to FA nominations, in situations where the authors appear to be under the impression that a peer review and good article status are enough to go for FA. Can't it be made more clear somewhere that a peer review does not an FA make ? I feel like these folks are lambs to the slaughter. Sandy 17:16, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think it's a big issue. It's not the end of the world if someone nominates an article that isn't quite ready and that nom fails. Raul654 17:24, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * What he said. ;-)
 * In addition, peer review and GA status, while not necessarily sufficient for a successful FAC, are among the few available venues for a pre-FAC review of the article. (This is changing somewhat with the advent of WikiProject-run peer-reviews and the "A-Class" article rating, but those aren't really widespread enough to help most noms.) Kirill Lokshin 17:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * okey dokey ! Sandy 17:30, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I feel like the folks that do most of the peer review should be more helpful in that regard. Most people who request peer reviews do so with the idea of getting the article featured. The peer reviewers need to be more vocal in their criticism of articles, probably to the extent that the reviewers here are. I know I have an article that I want to get featured and I have requested it to be peer reviewed twice both times with limited responses. One I have the article de-red linked better and properly cited, I will put it as an FA candidate to see what responses I get. Some people may be using FA candidacy as a more robust peer review.--NMajdan &bull;talk 17:31, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
 * ah, I hadn't thought of it that way: good point. Then I will stop feeling badly for critiquing these nominations.  Someone (unknown to me) put up an article I wrote for peer review, and since I know the article's weaknesses, I can say the peer review was fairly useless, although I did get a couple of ideas from it.  It's from following FAC that one learns how to write a better article :-) Sandy 20:01, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

An observation
I've made this observation many times and would like to know people's thoughts on it. At the rate (about one a day) that FAs are produced, it will take 136 years to get 50,000 of them.


 * 1) Is this a problem?
 * 2) If it is, what can we do about it?

Worldtraveller 09:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * As our userbase increases, our number of good articles (those articles which are longer than a stub, have references and pictures) increases and our featured article criteria level off, the rate of addition of featured articles will increase. I think more strenuous featured article criteria have prevented an acceleration in the number of featured articles we have. This is just a suggestion though. --Oldak Quill 12:40, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Lies, damn lies, and statistics! ;-)
 * Generally, I would say that it's a philosophical problem—writing a good encyclopedia is hard, as it turns out—but not a practical one, since the small number of FAs (or rather the fact that FA status is a meaningful form of recognition) is likely a significant factor in motivating people to write them in the first place. Besides, we can't do much other than lowering the standards (as actually forcing people to write more FAs is rather impractical), which would make the entire process meaningless.  (The other option—to offer greater rewards of some sort to FA writers—would likely be far too controversial to be worth it.) Kirill Lokshin 13:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * This is what worries me - might we actually be forced to conclude that wikipedia can generate huge numbers of very poor articles but only a very small number of excellent ones? Is there anything we can do to boost the number of excellent ones by a large factor?  Worldtraveller 13:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * We actually have some halfway decent statistics for this: Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Index of subjects. Granted, it's somewhat limited in scope at this point (only ~15,000 articles have been assessed), but it does indicate that while substantial numbers of articles will reach a more-or-less decent level of quality, the number takes a nosedive as soon as polishing (copyediting, stylistic cleanup, exhaustive citation, etc.) is required.  Unless we somehow find money to hire an in-house editorial (in the publishing sense) staff (most Wikipedians being somewhat uninterested in doing heavy copyediting for articles they're not already working on), we can't really get a great increase in well-written articles. Kirill Lokshin 14:46, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Traveller, I'm unclear on your direction of concern? To me, the far bigger problem is the number of featured articles that have fallen into terrible decay.  I don't think it's possible to fix the small number of featured articles, considering anyone can edit Wiki.  Having more featured articles of the quality of some of the older ones would not be a good thing, IMO, and I believe that raising the standards has been helpful.  There are just too many old FAs that do not meet current standards, are not referenced, contain POV and original research, and are in need of review. I once thought the "stable versions" proposal was a good idea, but now that I'm aware of the quality problems in some of the older FAs, I don't think we should lock others out of edting them. Some articles achieve FA without thorough review and input from knowledgeable peers, so we need to allow future editors to edit them. As future editors observe the current quality standards, hopefully some articles will improve.  Sandy 13:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * To elaborate on my concern - if FA is a selection of the very best, the creme de la creme, then a small number is absolutely fine. The worry about what to do with the vast number of substandard articles is then something to be dealt with elsewhere.  But the view of many is that actually, FA status is something all articles should aspire to.  That's simply not going to happen, ever, unless something radical is done, both here to speed up the process and throughout the encyclopaedia to reduce the tolerance of shoddy articles and encourage the universal application of basic standards like referencing.  Worldtraveller 13:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Yes, agreed, don't know what can be done about it. Sandy 15:08, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * Projects like GA, PR do also reduce the tolerance of shoddy article, that intsead of trying to close these types of projects FA should be encouraging their use by being a requirement before FA nominations. Then again maybe you could just nominate for deletion any article you see that doesnt have reference. Gnangarra 15:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I've noticed that some of the Projects bring articles to FA, and then abandon them. Once articles are no longer under scrutiny, they decay.  It's unfortunate they don't all monitor articles they've brought to FA.  Sandy 15:31, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I am very interested in this topic of "article decay". Has anyone seen this discussed somewhere else on the Wiki? ike9898 03:54, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think that PR and GA decrease tolerance for low quality articles; they just create an incentive for the creation of a few more upper-middle quality articles. Worldtraveller is quite correct in observing that unless we decide to decrease our tolerance of low quality articles (disincentivizing and impeding their creation, deleting some of the ones we have) our average quality is going to stay low-ish.  The system we have at the moment is, intentionally or otherwise, designed to add content, irrespective of quality, at high speed.  If we want to increase average quality, we need to talk about changing the priorities inherent in our way of doing business; and while that might be a popular idea in theory, I very much doubt that the sort of concrete policies it would take to bring it about would win much support. That isn't to say, of course, that they wouldn't be good ideas; they just wouldn't be popular. --RobthTalk 15:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe FA needs to assess not just the article, also that the links/daughter articles are also are of a particular standard. Gnangarra 16:19, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * We'd never have another FA. An long article may link to dozens, if not hundreds, of other articles; bringing all of those up to any meaningful standard would take forever. Kirill Lokshin 16:28, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I know look at this one example 7 of the 8 links are to poor articles including stubs, here in lies the problem. In the rush for FA status of one article there are 100+ support article created. FA is never going to be achieved for more than 1% or 2% of the total articles on wikipedia.. Gnangarra 16:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Maybe the requirement could be that stub articles use only for definitions (eg. carapace) be moved to wiktionary. Gnangarra 16:57, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * That might work for, say, scientific articles where we're dealing with actual terminology. It'll be quite different for historical articles, for example; given the choices of having to write good articles for dozens of (clearly notable, but obscure enough that sources are hard to dig up) people mentioned and simply not linking their names and ignoring the issue, I think many people would take the former. Kirill Lokshin 17:13, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

theres more space here moving back to the left
 * Agree that if Joe Bloggs needs a stub article about him to enhance another article then it's got happen, but where its just to define his nug then wiktionary should be required. I use the tool called Navigation popups it gives little drop down boxes of these links so its not a big deal to check each one and say these 10 stubs need to be moved to wiktionary. Gnangarra 17:20, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

example look at the links in this paragraph.
 * All members of the krill order are shrimp-like animals of the crustacean superorder Eucarida. Their breastplate units, or thoracomers, are joined with the carapace. The short length of these thoracomers on each side of the carapace makes the gills of the Antarctic krill visible to the human eye. The legs do not form a jaw structure, which differentiates this order from the crabs, lobsters and shrimp.

Its the second paragraph from the FA article Antarctic Krill Gnangarra 16:26, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

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I think when we're trying to evaluate the overall quality of Wikipedia, we have to define what quality means. I honestly don't think we should be too concerned about the low RATIOS of FA to non-FA, and instead the focus should be on developing CORE articles. The reality is that most of the articles on Wikipedia simply either don't have enough accessible information to write good articles or don't have enough intrinsic interest to get people contributing to them. That's no necessarily a bad thing... it's just how it is... and this shouldn't bother anyone. For example is Boogie Woogie going to reach FA status anytime soon? Probably not. Does Boogie Woogie deserve to be in Wikipedia still? Apparently it does.

Just to put this into perspective...what do you think is worse for the world's premier opensource encyclopedia? Tens-of-thousands of Boogie Woogie articles? Or.. the fact that the articles for London, Paris, New York, or Tokyo are not at FA level yet?

I think the answer is obvious. ''Remember... don't let the numbers get you down.'' That's my 2 cents.--P-Chan 17:21, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Bulbasaur and the other Pokemon characters are worse then a bit of Boogie Woogie and numbers only have value we give them, you could also say that 100% of the 1000+ articles in the FA category are FA articles, Ok 98% and falling fast I just read boogie woogie. Gnangarra 17:27, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm still relatively new to this process, so I might not know what I'm talking about here, but I have been thinking a lot about this subject lately, so I thought I'd throw in my two cents on the issue. Naturally, I don't have a solution to the overall problem Worldtraveller is speaking to, but it seems like as long as we are willing to imagine the FA process in a pro-active role with regards to increasing the quality of Wikipedia, there are a couple of things we could do to encourage better articles:


 * 1) Promote the clearest possible description of Featured Article standards, not excluding information that may be stated elsewhere in Wikipedia policy and guidelines. Lots of Wikiprojects currently make it a goal to raise the quality of their "core" articles to featured. Judging by this, and the number of weak nominations we recieve, I think it's fair to conclude that improving the Featured process is a very good way to improve the general standards of articles -- people really want the gold star. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concise, since that's part of communicating clearly, but if many editors have a tendency to start here rather than with the manual of style, perhaps we could allow one of the pages about "featured" to evolve into more of a hub for learning about relevant Wikipedian standards.
 * 2) Establish the specific criteria for featured pop culture articles. My observation is that pop-culture articles can promote a lot of animosity in the RAC review. In some cases, we wind up cutting them a lot of slack because there's no real criteria for determining acceptable sources for these articles anywhere in Wikipedia. Meanwhile, there's no real way to assess this, but I wonder if there aren't editors out there writing on more academic topics who are put off by the fact that their articles face a more rigorous review than certain pop-culture articles, which may pass simply because the criteria for sourcing them is sketchy.
 * 3) Work with Wikiprojects. As I mentioned above, wikiprojects have a natural tendency to want to set goals for themselves, and elevating core articles to FA is an obvious one for any such group to reach for. Many projects might welcome an informal "advice for writing featured articles" subpage, which spoke to spoke to specific concerns of a certain topic -- maybe would could hold a little drive to encourage the creation of such pages? "Comprehensiveness" in particular might merit discussion within the context of a specific subject.
 * 4) Consider giving a brief summary at the close of a discussion page when a nom is promoted or archived. My most unrealistic suggestion, because of the amount of work it would entail, but in a perfect world, a (very brief) consensus statement acknowledging what objections were raised, and which ones were overturned due to unactionability, triviality, etc, might decrease frustration in the process and help to keep the enthusiasm for creating featured articles high.

...Sorry for the very lengthy reply. If any of the above are idiotic, please let me know -- as a not-so-established editor discussing a very established process, I accept that I might not know what I'm talking about :) Just some thoughts. -- Lee Bailey(talk) 21:49, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I'd like to comment on your third point. I totally agree with you when you describe the importance of Wikiprojects.  Personally, I think there's actually a lot less we can do at such a MACRO level (here), than we can do with solid work on the project level.  As evidence of this, you need only look at the WikiMilitary History project with Kirill Lokshin as head.  I'm not exactly sure how they do it, but apparently they have 90 or so FA articles and just seem to get things done.  Building on your ideas Lee Bailey, I think it's very very important to pair-up users with topic-specific subject matter expertise with users with Wikipedia-article-building skills.  I honestly don't think you will have an easy time with the FA process without both.  And it's sometimes sad to see users with so much subject-matter-expertise go in the wrong direction, because there was no Wiki-technical person there to collaborate with them.  Thus, the projects can be a useful place for the two parties to find each other.  (BTW, I think the Wikiproject films really needs this, and I hope to eventually start something like this for WikiProject_Films).  That's my 2 cents.--P-Chan 22:01, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


 * To be fair, it should be pointed out that a great many of those FAs were written without any real involvement of the project as a whole; we simply happened to be in a subject area with a number of very capable writers (Piotrus, Raul654, etc.) already working in it. (Although we have been taking a more active role in articles working up to FAC over past few months, owing in part to a project-specific peer review process.) Kirill Lokshin 22:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Of course, you are just being modest! :) --P-Chan 22:15, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Perhaps anyone wanting to start an undertaking like this could mention it here -- since a topic specific list of FA suggestions would be subject to the same improvement-by-editing process as anything else, it would probably help if editors who know a lot about the FA process could be called upon to check it out. Incidentally, if P-Chan gets the ball rolling for the film wikiproject, I'd be happy to take a peek at it, and I certainly wouldn't mind attempting to write something up for the groups I already belong to; could this be the beginning of an "adopt-a-wikiproject" movement? -- Lee Bailey(talk) 22:35, 11 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I had a similar thought a little while ago. The result was first the Featured Music Project, which didn't get much activity.  More recently, I've just begun a WP:MUSTARD, which has gotten a lot of support from WikiProject Music people, but I don't think anyone's actually using it.  It's more of a music-specific cleanup than a "featured process", but many of its specific guidelines are based around common FAC objections. Tuf-Kat 22:59, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I want to nominate something?
But i don't know how, can someone show me, i'm niminating Star Wars, support; well written, baciallly real good.

Pece Kocovski 09:03, 14 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Hi, Pece. The nomination procedure is listed on the article, WP:FAC.  If you get stuck somewhere in those instructions, please tell us where so we can further guide you.  Before nominating the article, you should look at the entries currently on its talk page. It had a failed Featured Article candidacy.  Have you read that failed candidacy, and made sure all of those deficiencies have been corrected?  There is also a long To Do list on the talk page.  Have all of those items been completed?  Sandy 11:16, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Our FAC is not getting much input
I don't want to indicate that WikiProject Dinosaur's FAC is more important than anyone else's. At the same time, we really haven't gotten much input on Featured article candidates/Tyrannosaurus - it's mostly been objections to the footnotes, which we've formated according to the guidelines on WP:CITE. However, one user insists we format according to DNA_Resequencer, which is the worst example of citation I've ever seen: it's got mispellings and is very vague, but the user claims it's an example of "perfect citation". some of it has been corrected, but footnote #44 doesn't even refer to the specific episode, something I'm certain is required. We have gotten a few helpful suggestions from a few users, but a lot of the suggestions just seem vague. "Fix the references": as near as I can tell, the refs are according to WP:CITE. "Have someone unfamiliar with the text edit the text": this has been done a few times (by User:Casliber and User:Ballista). Other suggestions would be helpful. Advice, even further objections are appreciated, as long as it's something we can clearly fix, something that can be defined.-- Firsfron of Ronchester 23:58, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Note: I corrected your wikilink so that your entire entry would show correctly Sandy 00:07, 21 July 2006 (UTC)


 * I just checked the entry, and you have gotten a wide and detailed response. You are third on my list tonight for a third look, and there are 51 entries currently on FAC.  What would be most helpful would be for you to be sure you have completed the referencing and a copy edit before editors come back for another look.  I'll get to it, and I'm sure others will as well. Sandy 00:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * I have kind of the same problem - Mandy Moore is now at the bottom of the page - with a lot of commentary that was acted upon but not a single vote either way! (Well, there is one object by some person who said they objected because we have too many entertainment FAs, but obviously that person's vote is worth nothing) Mad Jack 00:16, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
 * And now the Moore nomination has been "Failed!" But how can it be failed if it doesn't have a single vote either way? (And I'm not counting the "too many entertainment FAs" as a vote) Mad Jack 02:15, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

A few questions
A few questions about the FAC process and really really long articles: Thanks in advance. TomStar81 02:43, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) If a really really long article (for the sake of example the page USS Tennessee) is split into multiple pages, but they all deal with the same core subject, will each recieve an FA star if only one part goes through the FAC process?
 * 2) In the case of the above example, if the answer is no, can all five of the pages be placed on the same FAC page at the same time, or would seperate nominations be nessicary for each of them?


 * Err, splitting the article up like that is a bad idea to begin with. (More generally, the article goes into such extensive discussion of side topics that it would likely fail a FAC anyways, so the question is pretty moot.) Kirill Lokshin 03:01, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Removal of nom
I was bold and removed this from the nom listings. Clearly not a serious nomination, and FAC is clogged as it is. If anyone thinks it was too bold though, feel free to re-list it. Thanks for everyone's time, RyanG e rbil10 (Drop on in!) 06:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
 * LOL! Good call. By the way, since you're here and Raul doesn't seem to be, do you know what I can do about Mandy Moore? It was brought out as "failed" today, but it didn't get any legitimate votes... never mind, it's been restarted, thanks :) Mad Jack 06:05, 22 July 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, I got your answer for the Mandy More article and all the other that don't receive a clear answer ... whenever people give comments ... they need to give a legetimate answer as to Pass or Fail the FACandidacy. Either you think the article is worth FA or it isn't worth it. That really means people believe in the project if they can give their opinion. Lincher 07:45, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania Awards
The Wikimania Awards honors the best writing and media on the Wikimedia projects from the past year. Please nominate great articles that have been written, or almost entirely rewritten, since last August. Please also let the authors know their work has been nominated.

Please also pass this on to FAC pages in other languages.

Cheers, +sj + 23:04, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

New proposal
Featured Articles and Good Articles are both Wikipedia processes to recognize quality articles. I created a proposal for greater co-ordination and integration between the two processes, so that both processes will be more successful in their aim of recognizing quality articles. Please read and participate in the discussion on the village pump. Thanks. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

FAC for former FA
The formerFA template links to the original FA nomination. It doesn't seem to allow for articles that have had more than one FAC. In particular, if a former FA is listed as a new FAC, isn't the old nom moved to /archive1? If an article had more than one FAC before achieving FA status and is then removed, shouldn't the removal template link to the successful FAC? If I've understood the process I can edit the template to allow an optional index number. Gimmetrow 16:02, 30 July 2006 (UTC)


 * The template has been updated to allow for the previous FAC (1st parameter) and/or the previous FARC pages (2nd parameter) to be provided as part of the template transclusion. I have also updated the template call at Talk:Christmas as an example of how to specify an optional parameter. --Allen3 talk 18:22, 30 July 2006 (UTC)