Wikipedia talk:Featured topics/Archive 2

Seems to me that this page should work with the various wikiprojects
The topics that would be most useful as featured topics are all ones that probably have wikiprojects dedicated to them. I could imagine Featured topics such as all articles on currently functioning governments "The government of ....", or "The constitution of .....". Like with the Wikipedia 0.5 and 1.0 efforts it strikes me that working through the other wikiprojects and using this page as a stagging point track who has the most momentum or potential is probably the best idea. Dalf | Talk 03:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Turning their work into featured topics should be a goal for the wikiprojects. If only they knew that we existed.  --Arctic Gnome 15:08, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * oops, just saw this - just said same about whales. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Which reminds me - WikiProject Military history is a very strong, active Project, with a gazillion FAs and a strong internal review process - have you approached them to inquire if they have any groupings of articles that might form a featured topic? And how about all of the FAs  has put through recently in the realm of Biology and Enzymes - perhaps some of them form a group - if they don't, I'll bet he'll make one - he turns out a couple of FAs a month. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 17:21, 7 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Mostly I was thinking that this project might server as a way to start a drive for some topics by finding a topic that overlaps several wikiprojects then trying to get them to coordinate for a week or a month on a small set of overlaping articles. We could for example try and get WikiProject Countries, WikiProject European Union, WikiProject Bulgaria, Romanian Wikipedians' notice board, and the other wikiprojects for the various EU countries to all work together and try and get all of the countires in the EU as FA's.  Or even all the countries then also all the articles linked as "Main article" from those articles.  The same could be done for countries in Africa.  Basically, this wikiprject is really redundant if it only works with or on one wikiproject at a time.  We should work on ways of finding where active groups of editors who are not coordinating are working on related topics and try and get them to focus on a small grup of related articles.  Dalf | Talk 00:22, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Only one 'true' featured topic?
Why do none of these featured topics actually qualify as far as What is a featured topic? states? They all contain B class or lower articles in them, which the guidelines specifically state aren't allowed (This includes the Halloween series, as it is cherry picking). Is saffron the only real featured topic?--SeizureDog 10:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In some cases a B-class can be acceptable, such as in cases where a member article is on too narrow a subject to ever get featured. Most of the time, however, you’re right, B’s shouldn’t be here.  Most of the featured topics passed before B-class articles became less acceptable.  In time they will have to be either listed for review or improved, but I think most editors have been allowing small inconsistencies while this project takes time to grow.  --Arctic Gnome 14:32, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Don't get me wrong, I'm fine with it. But I think the rules need to be tweaked a little. Perfection across the board is very hard to reach. I think any given topic of less than 20 articles that has at least three featured has done an impressive amount of work.--SeizureDog 14:59, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There have been a lot of users arguing that FTs need minimum standards. Many were arguing for all member articles to be featured, which seems like a bit too much IMO.  As a compromise, we have to say that B-class articles are not good enough without a reasonable excuse.  --Arctic Gnome 15:06, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I would strengthen "a reasonable excuse" to "a exceptioally good reason". Tom pw (talk) 22:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

FT boxes
I made some FT boxes that one day could be used on portals or WP:FC pages. I'm not sure if we will ever need these, but I'd like to see what people think of them. Featured topics/boxes --Arctic Gnome 21:46, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Nice work :-) However, I'm not sure if the vertical box look is the way to go... I'm more inclined towards a horizontal style nav-box that goes at the bottom. Tom pw (talk) 23:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I didn't have nav-boxes in mind when designing them, I was thinking more along the lines of the boxes used in Portals and the WP:FC page.  I guess I could make a horizontal variant, but I figured that vertical would be better since the items in the boxes form lists.  --Arctic Gnome 23:06, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I did some experimenting - see User:Tompw/templates. My main conclusion is that vertical looks better when you have only a few articles (with short article names), particularly when the associated image is large. Of the four exmaples on my userpage, I think the Star Wars works a lot better on horizontal (it avoid the line breaks in the middle of article names); the Final Fantasy works well in both modes; the Halloween looks terrible in horizontal due to huge amount of whitespace (greenspace?); and the Solar system works better in horizontal mode when the image is small enough to keep everything on one line, as there's too much greenspace on the vertical. Anyway, I see no reason why we can't use both modes, according to which suits the particular topic list better. Tom pw (talk) 00:05, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree. The horizontal ones can all be the same size, so they would be good for the WP:FC page.  Even on the small topics the wide ones look okay.  The tall ones we can keep as an option for portals.  --Arctic Gnome 15:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oh, and the horizontal would be suitable for listing topics on Featured topics. Tom pw (talk) 00:08, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That would be interesting. It would make this page a bit more colourful than of the other FC projects.  It might work.  --Arctic Gnome 15:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * See my response to a similar question on the FC talk page. I really think we need to find a way to have a single link to a consistently designed page for each featured topic - for use on things like Template:Announcements/New featured pages. Note that this now shows FTs by linking to just the 'top article'... which does nothing to define the scope of the topic. In the comment linked above I suggested sub-pages like Featured topics/Saffron. Another option might be to use Category:Saffron and put something like these box designs on each category page to indicate which articles in the category are part of the featured topic. If we went that route I might even suggest changing the name to 'featured categories'... while anyone could still add new pages to a category the 'featured' box on the category page would define those which make up a consistent and well written 'featured' group. --CBD 14:13, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I also thought about sub pages as a main link. I don't think we could use categories as the main link because new users would add articles to the category without knowing that the pages have to be nominated first.  --Arctic Gnome 15:36, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree that categories aren't the way forward, and that there is a need for a page for the topic itself. So, there are several seperate requirements going on here:
 * Presenting the topic and its components on WP:FT
 * Presenting the topic and its components on WP:FC
 * Linking the components of topic together on its members pages
 * Having some sort of gateway for the topic itself
 * For (1), I think horizontal is the way to go (in a full-width version). For (2), either could work, depending exactly how things are laid out. (Vertical in a column under Portals would work, as would horizontal under pictures or lists. For (3), I would say the default should be the vertical, unless there is something in the way (such as an infobox), the topic is too big (e.g. any topic coverign all states of the US) or the articles' names too long (Star Wars). For (4), I would say go for a portal style sub-page.... a bit introducing / explaining the topic, the articles included in the Featured Topic (using either the vertical or horizonta box), plus potentially links to related material. Tom pw (talk) 16:03, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For (1) I agree, full-width horizontal. Although we have to have a separate discussion about whether it's a good idea to change from the existing list-format.  For (2), I agree, either works.  Leave that up to the people organizing the layout of the WP:FC page.  For (3), we don't need to put this in the member pages since as a requirement of being featured, they already have to be well-linked together.  It could, however, be useful in (3.1), the talk pages of member articles.  Maybe a modified version could replace Featuredtopicmain and Featuredtopic.  For (4), that isn't a bad idea, but I'm not sure if there will always be someone to write the mini-portal for each topic.  It might be better to keep the gateways as just the list of articles.  For (5), portals, we should leave the vertical versions open even if we don't use it here or on WP:FC.  --Arctic Gnome 17:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new way of listing topics
Following the discussion in the previous section, I'm proposing somethign like User:Tompw/featured topics. The template used is at User:Tompw/sandbox7, and if you look there, you'll see the various options. (The page doesn't include the GA or FA icons; this is just me not including them to see what it would look like without, not me proposing they be abolished). It may that the image thing is a bad idea, in which case it can easily dropped or made optional.

What do people think? Tom pw (talk) 23:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It looks nice, but there's a problem. We can't use fair use images outside of the article itself. There might be some free use images hidden in those film and game articles, but we certainly can't use the logos. Also, shouldn't it be in alphabitical order? It seems odd to have the FF series and the FFX series seperated like that.--SeizureDog 23:57, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * You're absolutely right about the images. If the proposal gets implemented, then non fair use ones would have to be used (or no image at all). The order on the page was just the order I create things... I have re-ordered it alphabetically. Tom pw (talk) 00:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, template now supports having no image, and all fair use ones have been removed. Any other comments? Tom pw (talk) 18:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I like it. I also like just having the stars on fully featured topics rather than having FA stars all over the place.  The images are nice, though not a big deal.  I would also like the article counts to be included (maybe on the far-left of the header), because without them it would be a big hassle to double-check the totals on WP:FT.  I would also kind of like the Star Wars category to not be linked in the same way that articles are.  --Arctic Gnome 18:25, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've simplified how the title is done, so that one can have anything you want. The Star Wars cat link is now done along the same lines as the exsisting page. Tom pw (talk) 20:06, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Oops, I meant to have article counts on the right and stars on the left. Switch those around and I support implementing your set-up.  Nicely done.  --Arctic Gnome 20:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * "The Rum Tum Tugger is a Curious Cat..." :-) anyway, done. For good mesaure, I've made sure the title is centre aligned, regardless of whether or not there's an FT star present. Tom pw (talk) 22:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

As there have been no further comments, I shall implement the proposal. Tom pw (talk) 16:12, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

FT box on talk page?
Should the FT box used on this page be included on the talk page of the topic's articles? (specifically, within the FT messagebox). Have a look at User:Tompw/featured topics to get some idea of what it would look like. I'm not really sure if it's worth doing or not, in truth. Tom pw (talk) 17:33, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I had the same idea for the talk pages, and I think it makes a lot of sense. The thing that first jumped out when seeing your demos was the colour contrast between FC orange and TF green.  They look pretty bad together.  My second observation is that it might be easier to have templates for each topic's box and just make the tag on the talk page something like  with the word "Saffron" refering to  .  Such templates could also have other uses at some point.  --Arctic Gnome 19:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It sort of works. Check out User:Arctic.gnome/FT .  --Arctic Gnome 19:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Give it a |small option (per Talk page templates) and I'll like it :) —Quiddity 20:19, 13 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I agree the orange and green look bloody hideous togther, but I think we're stuck with it (short of changing the FT colour). I like the idea of using a sub-page... will work on it. I'll also try assemble a small verion. Tom pw (talk) 21:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I've suggested at Wikipedia talk:Featured content that we should change the Featured orange color, to blue, to match the color scheme in use throughout most of the top level pages. I'll try to make it a more concise proposal, and submit it for approval to each of the sub-featured pages. Pls reply in that thread. —Quiddity 21:29, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Now the template-in-template looks pretty good. --Arctic Gnome 21:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, have a look at User:Tompw/featured topics2 - includes small-style support, backwards compatavility (so the FT box is included by default). The FT box itself stored on a subpage. I think all bases have been covered. Tom pw (talk) 21:51, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Looks great :) —Quiddity 23:31, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Thank-you :-) Though most of the ideas (and especially the colour scheme) were Arctic Gnome's... anyone opposed to using this? Tom pw (talk) 17:47, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * On second thought, might it be a bad idea to make a talk page tag that is a different colour from all the other tags in use? I like the design, but can we justify being different from the standard?  --Arctic Gnome 18:11, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I oppose the color change as well for talk page templates- that bland tan color is the law, unfortunately, and this would be the only one on all of wikipedia that's a different color. --PresN 19:15, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Sigh. You're right.  How about an all tan version: User:Arctic.gnome/FT?  It needs a bit of work, but it might do the job.  Then again, it would probably be better to just scrap the template-in-template idea and design a nice tan template from scratch.  We can leave the boxes for portals.  --Arctic Gnome 22:46, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured topic and good articles
I don't know if anyone brought it up, but maybe the criteria could be that all articles covered in a topic must be GA or better. That way people will start looking at groups and bringing them up to a well defined level of quality.--Rayc 23:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * That already is a requirement. It's #5 on what is a featured topic.  --Arctic Gnome 23:39, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Looking at the front side of this page, it doesn't seem that requirement is being followed.--Pharos 23:10, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
 * A few got in before that requirement was nailed down. They'll be taken off/fixed eventually, but right now we'd like to at least have something on the page, you know? --PresN 03:56, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that GA or better is necesarrily the way to go... As I have said before, there is an extreme disparity between B class and GA class articles. B is anything better than just a start. If we're featuring a topic and not merely a collection of articles, the topic's more trivial corners don't necesarrily need to have exemplary articles, just sufficient articles such that the comprehensiveness of data on the topic does not suffer. Currently, a featured topic only needs GA's and some FA's indiscriminatly. Because of this, a topic's most important articles can technically languish in GA status while editors struggle to get minor parts of the topic up to GA to make it a Featured topic. Wouldn't it be better if we linked the required state of the article directly to its importance? Perrhaps it's just in my particular area of expertise (ancient history), but it seems that in every topic, there will be articles with so little data on them that it's impractical to make them GA's, but the topic itself won't suffer. For example, if I tried to get my pet project, the 18th dynasty of ancient Egypt, to be a featured topic, I would just have to shape up Thutmose II, III, IV, and Amenhotep II and II, and Aye to be GA's, and a few of them FAs. However, even the most exhaustive of specialist encyclopedias on Egypt don't even have an article on Thutmose II at all, and thus even having a good B article makes our comprehensiveness better than the best professional encyclopedias already. Thus, I believe the less important corners of a topic don't necesarrily need to be GA's to be comprehensive. Now, on the flip side, Hatshepsut, Akhenaten, and Tutankhamun are currently GA's, and under current rules, that's just fine. However, it would be an atrocity if these, among the most important of all figures during the dynasty, were not required to be FA's. Basically, we should link importance more explicitly with required classification. Thanatosimii 05:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I propose that we change the reqs to say that "most, if not all" articles should be GAs or FAs, especially the most important articles in the series. Especially since we actually only have 2 topics that fulfill the current requirement.  Even the Canada Elections one would fail, and it has 14 FAs!  --PresN 06:53, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I think you are underestimating the quality of the articles without a star or disk; many of them are GA or A quality. The Canadian Elections topic, for example, is only missing Nunavut from being all featured.  The Nunavut article meets all of the FL requirements, but is too short simply because the territory is so new.  By meeting all of the FL requirements, that list would easily be GA or A if such rankings were allowed for lists.  I think similar arguments could be made for all topics with the possible exception of FFX and Halloween.  That being said, I wouldn't mind adding the qualifier "most if not all" to the requirement, but the existing requirement was a compromise with the people who wanted all member articles to be FA.  I don't think that crowd would be happy with a lowering of the requirements.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I completely understand why the reqs are the way they are, I was there at the time, but my concern is that the way that the requirement is written, technically the only FTs we have that meet the criteria are Saffron and Retired Pacific Hurricanes. Canada elections has 14 Fls, but since there's no "good list" criteria, it would fail with the one non-FL.  Halloween is missing Halloween Film Series, Star Wars is missing Episode 6, and Final Fantasy Titles is missing 2,3,11 and 12.  There's a mismatch between the existing standards as written and as as used, and I think the solution is, if not to lower the standards, then to at least allow some more flexibility into the process.  --PresN 17:48, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I'll suggest it again, we should directly tie required quality to topical importance. That'll allow the kind of flexability required to make comprehensive topics. I'm not sure how that would look, but I believe that is the right road to travel down. Thanatosimii 20:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Can you think of a way to phrase that as official criteria that we can quote in FTC debates? You argument makes a lot of sense, but it seems like it would be hard to make a policy out of it.  Everyone would have a different idea about how important a given article is relative to its quality.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:43, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

FA and GA stars disappeared
I notice that when the new layout was implemented, the and  stars were removed. Is this part of the new layout decision, or was it just someone couldn't be bothered to add them back in? Please let me know if there is any rationale not to have them, otherwise if I don't hear from anyone I'll add them back in. I find them extremely important to have because a "featured topic" should have an active drive towards getting all its contained articles to featured article status, and this is easiest if you can see at a glance which ones are missing. &mdash; Timwi 15:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with re-adding the FA/GA stars. --PresN 18:30, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Also, is there some way to fix the boxes so that the text is centered regardless of whether there's a picture or not? The Saffron topic in particular looks off balanced.  --PresN 18:33, 29 January 2007 (UTC)
 * I think there should be some way of looking at the completeness of each topic, but I'm opposed to putting back the stars like they were before. The new layout is very neat, and I think those stars would make it too cluttered.  Maybe we can think of another way of showing the number of FAs.  For example, we could make the parameter that adds the FT icon to the upper left corner optionally add a regular FA icon with the number of FAs.  --Arctic Gnome 21:27, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Well how about arranging the articles in a list rather than flowing text with bullets in between:

—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Timwi (talk • contribs).


 * I like it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:28, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Indeed. That is a much nicer looking presentation. Thanatosimii 19:14, 6 February 2007 (UTC)


 * I have added the FA/GAstar templates back in and implemented the layout I suggested above. &mdash; (As an aside, I am disappointed with Final Fantasy X &mdash; with so many of them not even GA, how can the topic be featured?) &mdash; Timwi 17:58, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Well done. This is getting to be a very nice-looking page.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:08, 8 February 2007 (UTC)


 * My only concern isthat it makes A-Class articles appear inferior to the other articles in the topic, when in fact A-Class is generally considered superior to GA... I suggest putting A where the GA/FA star would go for A-Class. See Star Wars episodes box above for an example. Tom pw  (talk) 00:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Not necesarrily... GA is absorbed into the grading scheme used by many wikiprojects, but it quite predates that. GA articles which are rated as A class can still use the GA symbol, since they still are GA. Thanatosimii 00:27, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * That wasn't my point... there are GAs on many wikiprojects (e.g. Maths) that wouldn't get A-Class, because they hold A-Class as being a higher standard than GA. (Though I expect some are the other way round). Anyway, I feel it is imnportant to indicate that articles which aren't GA or FA are still of a high quality. Tom pw (talk) 00:45, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree with User:Thanatosimii. An A-class article is one that is almost ready to be nominated for FA status; by definition it must therefore be a GA and can get a GA disk quickly and without any trouble.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * I disagree with putting in the "A" picture- while some projects use it as higher than GA, many projects don't use it at all, and technically you don't need to be GA-class first before A-class. As a result, A-class means something different on every single article.  As there is no wikipedia-wide A-class rating system, it shouldn't be used in the template. --PresN 06:00, 9 February 2007 (UTC)
 * (&;lt--) There is a wikipedia-wide A-class rating system, and also lists can't get GA. Anyway, majority seems against me. Tom pw (talk) 00:14, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, well, that's a ranking page. GA and FA are used by that system, however they are both also independant of it. And if there's been uproar about how easily an article can get GA, think how bad it would be if we started using a ranking that someone can just go and tag on without any criteria whatsoever. Thanatosimii 01:45, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, if that page counts as a Wikipedia-wide A-class rating system, then it also counts as a GA-class and FA-class ranking system. it's just a guideline telling you what it should look like, there's no reviewing involved.  --PresN 07:34, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

Should be shown whether articles are FA or GA
In the template. Gives an overview of the overall quality. Sijo Ripa 13:51, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Potential FT
I almost submitted this one, before realizing that it fails the criteria 5, i.e. that at least some of the articles are FA class. All 4 are GA though, so if anyone feels like pumping one up (probably the main article, no?) I think the topic would pass. I'm going to talk to WP Astronomy about it. --PresN 18:49, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * The articles are well-referenced and well-written, and they share a common format. However, the main article is way too short; for an article about two stars and a system, you should be able to make it long enough to be featured.  By the way, why is there no planet "a"?  --Arctic Gnome 19:03, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * For the same reason there's no planet b, c, or d- the star is Upsilon a, and the planets are Upsilons b, c, and d, as in objects in the Upsilon system a, b, c, and d. I guess everything gets lettered before they figure out what's a star and what's not. I could be wrong though, I'm not an astonomer by any standards.  --PresN 22:54, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * There is thechnically no lower bound on article length for FA status, it just have to be comprehensive. As to the naming Objects in a system are named starting with a for the star and then proceeding based on when they are discovered (not based on proximity to the star).  In a binary system one of the starts will be a and the other b. Dalf | Talk 02:49, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Comments
This is a great idea!

What happens if one of the articles in a Featured topic loses FA or GA status? --Ideogram 12:35, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
 * The topic will probably still be featured status, they don't all have to be featured; but if the change has significantly lowered the status of the overall topic, it should be listed at Featured topic removal candidates. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:04, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

I changed the boxes on the main page to templates
I changed the boxes on the main page to templates at Wikipedia:Featured topics/boxes/topicname. This way if we change one, we won't forget to change the other. As templates, we can use the boxes in other places, such as on the random topic generator, which will hopefuly end up on the featured contents page. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:12, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
 * For the record, these were added to the WP:FC page a few days ago. --CBD 19:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Smaller nominations for lists
For lists that are over 20 articles in length, the criteria page recommends to break it up into smaller lists, but for items in a series it should be the entire series. However, that becomes impractical and quite difficult to get all of them ready. However, what if the series could get broken up by number? For example, if Presidents of the United States was a featured topic would it be wrong to just propose the first 10, or the 10 most recent, and clarify that in the nomination? We haven't run into this problem, yet, but I thought I'd bring it up. If we do it that way, it wouldn't lower the criteria any. Supplementary nominations could simply be tacked on. Keeping the example of Presidents of the United States, the first 10 could be a featured topic, then once the next 10 are ready they could be added to the same topic. Comments? Hurricanehink ( talk ) 18:40, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I've thought a bit about that myself. If you wanted to break something into subtopics, you would have to do so in a way that was not arbitrary, and that made your subtopic a unified subject that would be worth researching on its own as a group.  A good rule of thumb would be to ask yourself whether a main article could be written about the nominated group.  In the case of US Presidents, I don't think that "the first 10" would work; it's too arbitrary and we wouldn't make a main article just about those ten individuals as a group.  You could however, nominate a subtopic like "War-time US Presidents" or "Republican US Presidents".  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Hmm, I had forgotten about the requirement for main article. Alright, that works, I guess. Hurricanehink ( talk ) 19:39, 3 March 2007 (UTC)


 * I would suggest breaking it up by "Party System", a conventional periodization of American politics. Perhaps the main articles could be of the form First Party System and the Presidency etc.--Pharos 05:51, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Categories in Topics?
I'm putting together a couple of possible candidates for FT for the Scouting WikiProject, and come up with a question that I can't find the answer to at the moment - are categories allowed in FT, or is it just articles and lists? Horus Kol Talk 22:54, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * According to Featured topic criteria, "A featured topic is a collection of articles". Categoriesare not articles, so are not eligable. (Lists are a special type of article) Tom pw (talk) 23:07, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The one category that is presently part of a topic is from one of the older topics and has be grandfathered in. Eventually, it will have to find a main article or face FTRC.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 04:18, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Guidelines for completness -- what is an "obvious gap"
So I have found a few small clusters of FAs that I think will eventually end up here but I was wonering what the standard for completness was when trying to decide what articles belong in a topic? Several examples are:


 * Boy Scouts of America


 * [[Image:Cscr-candidate.png|left|20px]] Boy Scouts (Boy Scouts of America)


 * Eagle Scout (Boy Scouts of America)


 * History of merit badges (Boy Scouts of America)


 * Boy Scouts of America membership controversies

Or


 * Mini


 * Mini Moke

In both of these cases there are a lot of related articles that could be included. With the mini several of the other modles mentioned in the table at the bottom all redirect to the same place. Should they all have individual articles before FT is a option? How related does an article have to be before it is an "obvious gap"?

As for the scouting articles Category:Boy Scouts of America has 36 articles and 13 sub-categories, what is the correct method for selecting a sub-topic in such a situation? I read the featured topic criteria but it did not really give that insight on how to go about deciding on comprehensivness. I would think in this case we would need to improve the following all to A class articles before it could be a FT: Cub Scouts (Boy Scouts of America), Varsity Scouts (Boy Scouts of America), Venturing (Boy Scouts of America), Sea Scouts (Boy Scouts of America) (all of which are B-Class articles). However, would that be enough? There are a lot of other articles that could be included under the main ariticle of Boy Scouts of America. Even worse if we broaden things a little we get a few more FAs for the scouts:


 * Scouting - This would be the lead article obviously


 * Girl Scouts of the USA


 * The Scout Association of Hong Kong


 * Robert Baden-Powell, 1st Baron Baden-Powell - from the talk page looks like someone is going to nominate this asa FAC soon.

I did not check the GA's but I suspect there are enough Scoutning related GAs that it woudl make an impressive addition but again we come back to the "obvious gap" problem. So what is the standard for relatedness and should we just aim for getting smaller batches of featured topics for now and wait on the bigger ones till later? Dalf | Talk 08:09, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
 * As a side note I noticed that all of the articles in the Michigan State University topic except the two FA's seem to be unassessed. Is this allowed?  It would make creating a scoutning featured topic pretty easy to justify. Dalf | Talk 08:26, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * This is related to a discussion which we are currently having in the Scouting WikiProject - Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Scouting - I think we are reaching a consensus on topics and which articles to be included... User:NThurston/sandbox/test -- Horus Kol Talk 12:21, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Thanks, so I guess that is the answer to my question. Fine an approprate wikiproject and let them sort it out.  :) Dalf | Talk 19:46, 19 March 2007 (UTC)


 * If someone who knows a bit about the topic in question can point out a gap after less than five seconds thought, then the gap is an obvious one. That's rather subjective though... I think the most useful thing is to go through the topics main article and ensure any article linked using main are included, though this won't get everything.
 * With regard to the ratings... it is not required that evry article has FA or GA status. However, any articles that don't must have A-class status, including proper referncing, and they will checked by the reviwers. However, it is easier to find an approprate wikiproject and let them sort it out. (Everything still gets checked, but its good to have an independent, knowledgable group or person say the article is top-notch). Tom pw (talk) 00:52, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * Regarding the ratings and your comments match wat is on the page decsribing the requirments, I have to ask why the Michigan State University topic is included. It clearly does not meet the requirments. Dalf | Talk 08:14, 20 March 2007 (UTC)


 * The ratings criteria has the caveat "except where achieving such a class is impossible." However, I agree that its odd that three of the five articles in the Michigan State University topic don't seem to have been assessed at all... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Horus Kol (talk • contribs) 09:08, 20 March 2007 (UTC).


 * Top-level topics like "scouting" are tricky. If you included all of the articles that branch off of the section headings in the main article you should be fine.  However, you might find it easier to nominate a few smaller topics, such as "national scouting organizations" or "levels of the Boy Scouts of America" (which would include, scouts, cubs, and ventures as articles).  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:36, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree though I think in such a case (espcially this one scouting) even if the topic nominated is the boy scouts of america as the lead the article on scouting shoudl be in the topic. There is no reas that an article cant be in multiple topics even if it coudl eventually be the lead article in a topic. Dalf | Talk 07:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
 * Over at Wikipedia talk:Featured topic criteria we are now having a talk about whether to include "higher level" articles within a sub-article's topic. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:21, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

10th featured topic
Whoot! Go us. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

3 articles
How on earth can a topic with a whopping 3 articles be considered complete and without gaps? ie, saffron.Rlevse 02:15, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The topic covers the history, usage, and biology of the plant. What else would you like to know about it to make it more complete?  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, go look, there's not anything else out there having to do with saffron. It's just not the most complicated topic ever.  --PresN 04:57, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

WikiReader
Has anybody thought of using this project to help create wikireaders (WikiReader)? Remember 13:36, 14 May 2007 (UTC)

We need project pages for each Featured Topic
Because the Featured Topic is a somewhat nebulous concept, we currently don't have individual project pages where one can specifically discuss, say, how to make ensure that the topic stays featured, how to make additions to the topic, how to improve the GAs to FAs etc. I suggest that we start such pages at Featured topics/Solar System etc., so that we can better maintain and improve our FTs. We could link to these project pages from an asterisk in the FT box, for example.--Pharos 05:03, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Right now, links in talk pages of FTs and on the FC page link to the topic's box, such as Featured topics/boxes/Solar System. We could use those talk pages, if we wanted.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 05:09, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that would be good for me, but I'm not sure why we would want to classify a page with "/boxes" in the title, if the content is going to be more project-oriented. Perhaps we could move those pages.--Pharos 05:19, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

The Solar System topic given as an example is there some reason that:
 * Definition of planet
 * Comet
 * Asteroid belt
 * Asteroid

are not included?

Additionally:
 * A-class Kuiper belt
 * Scattered disc
 * Oort cloud - not good good enough

could be added when the last article is brought up to snuff.

Lastly Heliocentrism is a GA but would need a few other articles for its inclusion.

All that is a way of saying "yea I think starting a project for each topic is a good idea". It sure would give these sorts of things a proper place. Dalf | Talk 04:43, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Would there be any opposition to my moving the FTs from Wikipedia:Featured topics/boxes/X to Wikipedia:Featured topics/X and setting them up as little projects on the talk pages? I think these projects have to develop some sort of "working definition" of the scope of each topic, too.--Pharos 12:16, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm all for that. --PresN 16:18, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Makes sense. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:32, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

'Canadian election timelines' deserves the all-featured icon
I believe the 'Canadian election timelines' topic deserves the symbol because the one item that is not featured (List of Nunavut general elections) is not featurable due to limited subject matter. Perhaps we could adjust the requirements for the "all-featured" status to take this into account. Maybe we could even give the certified-complete short articles a little check-mark.--Pharos 06:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I do agree that it looks a little strange with the "-" next to the nunavut timeline, especially given it's an "A class" article. But the point still remains that the whole set is NOT FA's. Is there absolutely no way that we can get the remaining article to FA?? I don't think we should just pretend like it is an FA, that defeats the point of the [[Image:Cscr-featuredtopic.svg|24px|Complete Featured topic]] symbol. Witty Lama 00:18, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * In that case, perhaps we could just change the wording to "every article in the topic is a featured article or featured list (with any limited subject matter items audited individually)" or something to that effect (or perhaps this could go in a footnote). This would be in keeping with the exemption at Featured topic criteria #6 in that, despite a list that is unfeaturable due to length only, this should still be considered a "perfect" featured topic, and deserves recognition as such.  If you look at Featured list candidates/List of Nunavut general elections, it really does seem that the issue is just that it's a new territory and there haven't been many elections held yet.--Pharos 01:57, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If there are no objections, I'm going to try to implement this in the next day or so.--Pharos 05:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * My worry is that as time goes by and more information becomes available on a short article, how do we decide whether to make a topic loose its topic-star until the small article is promoted? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * So far we have only one item that meets this criterion, so it's hard to make general statements, but more information becoming available would be quite a long-term process (consider Nunavut, which I don't think is holding another election till 2009). The short article checkmark should of course be subject to review like everything else, perhaps on a regular (annual) basis or through the WP:FTRC process itself (after all, having a non-FA non-GA non-approved short article is against the criteria and one day — perhaps January 2008 —this will be thoroughly enforced for the legacy FTs as well).--Pharos 17:06, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Great potential for South Asian countries featured topic
I would just like to let people know that there's a great potential here with India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal and Bhutan all FAs (Wow!). Afghanistan is a GA, Maldives is a B, and Sri Lanka is an unrated former FA candidate. The lead article would be South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (of which these states constitute the membership), which is currently a B.--Pharos 02:05, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * If you're up to it, the lead article would have to be improved to GA status, as would Maldives and Sri Lanka. The topic should be called Countries in the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, and looks pretty close to a nomination. Hurricanehink ( talk ) 02:35, 19 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Jumping jackrabbits batman! That sounds great. Let's see what there's to do at South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. Witty Lama 03:00, 19 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Wow! This is a great proposal. Let's work on it. Cheers.--Dwaipayan (talk) 04:28, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * You guys have my moral support. :) -- ♪♫ ĽąĦĩŘǔ ♫♪  walkie-talkie  05:42, 22 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I was thinking like Indian Independence movement and include the main players like Gandhi, Jinnah and the movement and resultant countries. atleast half a dozen there. Idleguy 04:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Suggestion to get all articles to GA status
Some have expressed reservation that the Simpsons topic had one non-GA article, but now it is taken care of. However, Topics: Solar System, Michigan State University and Canadian Elections all have an article that are below standard, so I suggest that those topics be given until 1 January, 2008 to get those articles into GA status, therefore giving them time to work, but also finally closing this last quality gap for the topic. Judgesurreal777 18:23, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Well as far as List of Nunavut general elections is concerned, it is an "A Class" article which is technically above GA status, so it certainly shouldn't be seen as a liability. The only reason that it isn't an FA is that there are no sources for it and it is too short (due to recent existance of the topic). Witty Lama 23:01, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
 * The FT criteria allow articles that are not GA or FA in special circumstances, but I think the Canadian elections topic is the only one that can take advantage of it right now. Getting the other ones to GA status by 2008 sounds reasonable.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * January 2008 seems quite reasonable (perhaps even more than reasonable). At some point we're gonna need a standard for when good/featured articles are demoted too, and in that case one would think the allotted restoration time should probably be something less than a year (probably more like a quarter).  As to Nunavut and similar sitautions, see my suggestion above at Wikipedia talk:Featured topics.--Pharos 01:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I would say, 3-4 months like you said, a quarter should be more than enough time, even if there are edit wars and other things to take into account. Judgesurreal777 05:00, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Remember that lists can't become Good Articles. I think that it should not be an absolute requirement that all articles be GA/FA/FL. However, I support the idea that it should be an exception, rather than the norm. Tom pw (talk) (review) 15:38, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This is why I label lists that are referenced and accurate but not FL as A-class. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I suggest that we formalize this deadline for legacy FTs with a note on Featured topic criteria.--Pharos 17:57, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
 * OK, see Wikipedia_talk:Featured_topic_criteria, where I've formally proposed this.--Pharos 04:17, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

We should also give the Star Wars topic the same deadline to get itself a main article. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:10, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Yes, I agree with that.--Pharos 19:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Well, I think we've agreed that the main article should indeed be Star Wars (discussion here). The problem however, is that it has recently been delisted as a GA. So, we don't need to find a lead article, it just has to get up to standard. Witty Lama 01:09, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

Project pages created
I've now created a project page for each of the current FTs. You can easily access these by clicking on the asterisk now in the header of each FT box. For example, the first one is Wikipedia talk:Featured topics/2003 Atlantic hurricane season.--Pharos 06:16, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Article order in topics
Maybe we should come up with some standards of in what order articles appear in the topic boxes. Right now we have a few different standards: alphabetical, release date, track number, distance from the Sun. There could be more even more; for example, most list of Canadian provinces, like in the election timelines, normally go from one coast to the other rather than alphabetically. We could either make all topics alphabetical or come up with a few standard models for them to follow. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:28, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Eh, each topic is so different that it would be hard to come up with one rule for all of them. I'm fine with just ordering them in whatever way makes sense, and if anyone disagrees, discussing it on the associated talk page.  --PresN 19:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorize the list?
Forgive me if this has been brought up before, but perhaps we finally have enough featured topics to create headings of specific subjects to place them under so that the list is more organized? What would probably work best is simple headings like on the list at WP:FA, but perhaps "topics of topics" could be created to encourage the improvement of general articles and coordination between related featured topics. —  Pious 7  15:28, 16 June 2007 (UTC)
 * One day we will, and the page will be very pretty, but I'm at a loss as how to categorize 13 FT's into sections that are all but 2 single-FT sections. If anyone has any suggestions I'm all ears, though.  --PresN 23:42, 17 June 2007 (UTC)
 * We could break in into the broad groupings of "entertainment" (6 topics), "science" (5 topics), and "social studies" (2 topics). However, I don't think that it will be necessary until we have a few more topics, maybe around 25.  You can find an experiment of mine with categories way back in the edit history, but when we have enough topics to make categories worth while we'll come to a consensus about how to lay out the new page.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 00:08, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Box on Featured content broken
I noticed today that the featured topics box on Featured content is broken for the newer featured lists as they do not have redirects from the old "boxes" link schema. I've gone ahead and made the change and removed "boxes" from the link. Have all the pages been moved to their new locations? Are there any other spots that might need fixed up that anyone knows of? --- RockMFR 03:37, 26 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I thought I found all of the pages and templates that linked to the /box pages, but I guess I missed at least one. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:56, 26 June 2007 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I took care of all the talk page templates when we did the changeover. Sorry the Wikipedia:Featured content didn't occur to me, but it works by a mechanism rather thank directly linking, so it didn't show up in 'What links here'.--Pharos 04:00, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

Potential FT
Hey, I have a question about a featured topic candidate that I may be able to submit soon. All of Wilco's studio albums (except Summerteeth, which is next on my list) have been improved to GA status, and their most recent album, Sky Blue Sky, is at FAC. Wilco discography is also a featured list. Should Sky Blue Sky pass FAC and Summerteeth be upgraded to GA, could I submit this with:

Wilco Discography (FL) (topic), A.M. (GA), Being There (GA), Summerteeth (GA), Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (GA), A Ghost Is Born (GA), Sky Blue Sky (FA)

The reason I ask is because while those are all of Wilco's studio albums, it doesn't include their live album, EPs, singles, or collaborations with other artists. Would I have to get another album to FA and submit the topic as Category:Wilco albums? Teemu08 20:33, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Christ Illusion
How did something with articles on one album and two songs become from a band become FT? FTs should not have obvious gaps. What about their (Slayer's) musicology, band membership, other albums, etc? What a joke. Even limiting it to one album is a stretch. Sumoeagle179 23:58, 28 September 2007 (UTC)
 * If the topic is "The album 'Christ Illusion' and associated singles", then what are the obvious gaps? If there are any please say so, but everything you've listed here is outside of the given topic- the topic isn't "everything associated with Slayer".  --PresN 06:53, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Featured Topic with a non-FA main article
List of Final Fantasy media has recently been demoted from its Featured List status. However, it is the main article of the Featured topics/Final Fantasy titles. The topic thus doesn't meet the FT criteria anymore. How much time do we have to improve the main article back to Featured List status before the topic risks being demoted? Kariteh 12:27, 21 September 2007 (UTC)


 * If you actually read the criteria, Rule 2 states "The topic has an introductory and summary lead article." (which in your case it is List of Final Fantasy media) but it does not say that this has to be FA status. Rule 3 states that there should be about a 1/3 of articles which are FA, and the rest GA. So as long as List of Final Fantasy media is GA status then it is fine.  SpecialWindler   talk   (currently )  21:37, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
 * That's the point though- as a list, it can't be GA, it has to be FL. --PresN 17:31, 23 September 2007 (UTC)
 * Personally, I would rather see Final Fantasy (the series page) brought up to GA and used for the main article.  Pagra shtak  18:59, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
 * And I see it's now a GA candidate.  Pagra shtak  17:02, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

FYI, new list of users

 * List of Wikipedians by featured topic nominations, modeled after List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations and List of Wikipedians by featured portal nominations. Cheers, Cirt 19:49, 30 November 2007 (UTC).

FYI, new userbox
In addition to User Featured Topic, which only allows a user to specify a specific topic, here is User Featured topics, which simply states the number of topics an editor helped promote to WP:FT. Cirt (talk) 19:56, 6 December 2007 (UTC).

move to portal namespace
See Portal talk:Featured content. —Ruud 12:50, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Organizing the topics
Seeing that it's been a few months, and that Featured Sounds has its sounds divided with half of the number of Featured topics, what about organizing the topics into sub-sections? --Hurricanehink ( talk ) 22:54, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
 * I said I'd do it when we got to 25, and now we have (though four of them will soon be up for FTRC). I've divided it into entertainment, science, and social studies.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 06:49, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Can portals be a topic
If, say, all six of the Australian states' portals were featured, and the main one already is, can that qualify as a featured topic? Or do they have to be articles and lists?  Daniel  09:33, 26 December 2007 (UTC)
 * As impressive as a full series of featured portals is, I think that featured topics is for encyclopedia content (as opposed to navigational tools). --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 12:52, 26 December 2007 (UTC)