Wikipedia talk:Featured topics/Archive 3

Question about scope
Would this be an appropriate place to canvass opinions on whether a bunch of articles is applicable in scope (note: not quality) for a featured topic?  Daniel  11:28, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
 * Now it isn't, but it should be. I'll look into getting some more links to here and checking it more often.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:58, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

New criteria and FTRC
After we last changed the criteria for featured topics, we said that old topics would be grandfathered in until 2008. Now that the new year has arrived, some topics are up for FTRC, but there has been some controversy. Regular contributers may want to weigh in on the debates. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:51, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
 * What about irregular contributors? ;) --kingboyk (talk) 23:39, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

They can also give their two cents. The more the marrier. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 04:41, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Individual audit for quality
How exactly do I go about getting an audit for an article? Will (talk) 20:10, 20 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You can ask to have a peer review done. If you need it done because an article has too limited a subject matter for GA status, you just have to show that the information is, in fact too limited, and that what little information you have is referenced and well written.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:29, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Number of featured-class articles
There is a discussion going on at Wikipedia talk:Featured topic criteria about if we should change criterion 3(a) to specify more precisely the number of Featured class articles required in a topic. Please place all comments there. Zginder(talk) (Contrib) 02:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Developing Topics
I'm currently working on a Featured Topic regarding the ACC Championship Game, which has been held annually since 2005. Does 2008 ACC Championship Game need to be GA-class or better even though the game hasn't been played yet? JKBrooks85 (talk) 09:08, 14 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Articles that cannot have enough content to write a GA about them, such as articles about events that have not yet taken place and media that has not yet been released, generally are exempt from the FA/FL/GA minimums. However, all information that is in the short article must be well written, NPOV, and referenced.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 13:30, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

Updating
I know we have to go through a formal process to amend a topic and whatnot, but what if an article goes from GA to FA? For example, if Halo (series) is promoted to FA, then all the article in Featured topics/Halo trilogy will be FA and it should get that little happy star in the corner. Can any editor make those changes? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk ) 11:35, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm pretty sure the star cluster is an automatic thing that doesn't need discussion, so anyone can put it on, the only thing that needs a new nomination is adding/removing articles. --PresN (talk) 17:06, 24 April 2008 (UTC)

"Degrassi: The Next Generation, Seasons of "Picture
"Degrassi: The Next Generation, Seasons of" currently doesn't have a picture, the only FT with that deficiency. Does anyone know of a good free picture we can use? --PresN (talk) 04:40, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * The only free one is Image:Degrassiautos.jpg. It's not that good, blurry and dark. I've asked User:Diliff if he can do anything with it. -- ṃ• α• Ł• ṭ• ʰ• Ə• Щ•   @  05:02, 27 April 2008 (UTC)
 * May be we should add a photo requirement to the criteria for topics so this doesn't happen again. Zginder 2008-04-27T12:54Z (UTC)
 * I think that a photo can be found for any topic, so we probably don't have to make a specific requirement. For the Degrassi topic, I think our best bet would be to get a photo of whatever school is used for exterior shots in the show.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:43, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * See Degrassi: The Next Generation. Unfortunately this isn't possible, because the school is actually a set on the studio's backlog. The only free image is Image:Degrassiautos.jpg. I asked Diliff if he could do anything wizardry to clean up the image, but got no response. Right now, I think this is the only image we can use. Matthewedwards (talk· contribs· count· email) 21:05, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

"There are 3 articles in more than one topic."
What is the value of stating this? Skomorokh 18:45, 1 May 2008 (UTC)
 * To explain the discrepency between the number of articles that are infeatured topics, and the sum of the number of articles in each topic. Tom pw (talk) (review) 19:05, 1 May 2008 (UTC)

Automatically maintained
WP:WBFTN is now being automatically regenerated daily by user:Rick Bot. The way the bot works is: Nominator errors here can be fixed by directly editing the appropriate by-year summary list (any co-noms will need to be fixed this way). Changes to these lists will be reflected here the next time the bot runs. Gary King and I have looked over the by-year summary lists and they are correct as far as we can tell. If anyone notices any problems, please let me know.
 * 1) It looks for newly promoted lists in the Featured topic candidates/Featured log pages.
 * 2) It determines the nominator based on the creator of the nomination page.
 * 3) It adds newly promoted topics to the appropriate by-month section of the yearly summary list (e.g. Featured topics promoted in 2008).
 * 4) It reads the current WP:FT and WP:FFT lists.
 * 5) It updates the by-year lists with featured/former status, also updating links to topic pages that have been renamed.
 * 6) It updates WP:WBFTN from the contents of the by-year lists (and the current featured/former status).

The bot adds comments at the bottom of the table at WP:WBFTN indicating FTs or FFTs it finds that don't have an entry in one of the by-year summary lists (and vice-versa). There currently seems to be no nomination record for Featured topics/Characters of Halo. If someone could help out with the history for this one, that'd be great. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:30, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Categories of topics
I suggest that the video game FTs, as they are definitely not everyday-life-events either A) be moved to the "arts" section, or B) be moved to a new section called just for video games. I really support only the first suggestion; mostly because video games "don't happen" to everyone. &mdash;OverMyHead 14:51, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
 * If the everyday-life section can only include things that are universal, than the only things that could be in it would be things like eating and sleeping, in which case we might as well get rid of the whole section. The reason I included an everyday-life section is that it is part of the classification system used in other places in Wikipedia, such as Good articles.  I would like for Wikipedia to have some consistency in its categories, but if this system really doesn't work here we can discuss changing it.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:37, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

We already have 17 topics in the "everyday life" subcategory. They are all about Sports or Videogames. What about subdividing them into these two sections to get a better overview. Maybe we can open a new "everyday life" section if we get a topic which is not about Sports or Videogames (maybe about food and drink)? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.227.201.164 (talk) 12:04, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

I'll change the categorization to that used by WP:FA, it should serve our needs in this matter. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 15:33, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Can we get a bot?
Can we get a bot to make sure that only the articles that are in topics have their talk page marked as being in a topic. It could also let us know when a article gets demoted or promoted. Zginder 2008-05-23T20:24Z (UTC)
 * A bot to also link archived nomination discussions on the topic talk pages would be good. Since FA and FP have such histories linked, so should this. &mdash;OverMyHead 16:23, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * I can set up talk page archiving pretty easily, I get on that now. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
 * Has there been a problem with articles being tagged as part of an FT when they really weren't? If so I haven't seen it.  I agree that it would be nice to automatically tell if an article has been demoted.  I'll go ask the people at bot requests what we can do about it.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:51, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

I think the easiest thing to do is make Articlehistory put articles in FTs into a category together and then have a script we can run that checks if every article in the category are linked on the main FT page. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:00, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed rule change
I've proposed a rule change for featured topics here - rst20xx (talk) 17:58, 26 June 2008 (UTC)
 * ...and now I've implemented it - rst20xx (talk) 22:34, 3 July 2008 (UTC)

Overview topics
We have to decide whether we are going to allow overview topics that only include top-importance articles in its field rather than all articles. Three examples that have been made of such overview topis are: I'd like to hear everyone's opinions on the matter. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 22:45, 25 July 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) a topic on the band Nine Inch Nails, which would include band members and a discography list, leaving the albums themselves for a future discography subtopic;
 * 2) a topic on the major bodies of the Solar System, leaving articles on smaller objects to a future subtopic (such as one about a planet and its moons); and
 * 3) a topic on a country, including only the top-importance articles like history of, politics of, and geography of, leaving the tens of thousands of other articles to subtopics.
 * I'd support allowing them; it's effectively narrowing the topic choice without arbitrarily excluding any articles. Skomorokh  16:02, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm for them as well, though there's going to be some interesting arguements on the nomination pages about which articles are "important" or not. --PresN (talk) 16:10, 26 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I do not understand why we would not allow them. Do you have text to put in the criteria? Zginder 2008-07-26T22:12Z (UTC)
 * I too would allow them, though obviously I think we need to be careful as to how we define this to prevent future arguments. At the Nine Inch Nails nom, I argued down the lines of levels of notability, and would refer to my arguments there (which I'm too tired to repeat, sorry) for my own beliefs on the matter - rst20xx (talk) 09:44, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * We need an official definition to decide which articles are the key top-level articles in a topic so than we can avoid cherry-picking and gaps, some way to figure out if all notable parts are included but no non-notable ones. I'll put some thought into it between now and the next time I get to the Internet.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:16, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Featured processes to portals
A proposal at Village pump %28proposals%29 to move some pages (unsure which) of the featured processes to portal pages. Sandy Georgia (Talk) 00:58, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

Topic Milestones
I added a "Topic Milestones" section to Template:Featuredtopictalk - a good example of it in use is here. It works much like the Milestones bit over at Template:ArticleHistory, but 1) there is no actionXoldid, 2) actionX can take FTC, FTA or FTR as arguments and 3) actionXresult is currently just text, as setting this up to work right would be damn complicated. I'd like to make it so that it doesn't linebreak the "Date" column but can't work out how. I'll roll it out across more Featured topic talks tomorrow - rst20xx (talk) 04:10, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I've rolled it out across the lot. That took ages! rst20xx (talk) 22:34, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

50 Topics!!!!!
Sorry that I am late, but we have reached a mile stone in the Featured topics project 50 topics. The 50th was Lost (season 4). This topic also put us over 400 articles now that we have 406. The average number of articles in a topic is 8.18. Zginder 2008-08-04T20:43Z (UTC)

Reaaranging categories
I made it so that Template:ArticleHistory puts articles in subcategories of Category:Wikipedia featured topics all articles if they are featured/good/main articles, so this way we can see quite easily if an article gets delisted, because assuming the currentstatus is updated in ArticleHistory it'll show up in the category itself, as opposed to a subcategory. There are currently 7 articles in the category, as can be seen here.

Also, I made it that Template:Featured topic box categorises featured topics in Category:Wikipedia featured topics itself, instead of having to add this category manually on the topic's page, and further if a topic has ftstar=yes then it goes in a subcategory saying so. I added a "mock" parameter to the template so that if someone makes a mockup using the template, it doesn't get miscategorised as a genuine featured article and spam the category. This should make it easier to check the number of fully featured topics, by looking at the subcategory, and has generally made the category cleaner. Though it isn't foolproof as transclusions of the template such as Portal:Featured content still get tagged - rst20xx (talk) 18:19, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing this is due to your edits—Portal:Featured content now says we have 3 featured topics (because there are three subcategories in Category:Wikipedia featured topics main articles I believe). We should probably switch it over to FT number (also incorrect for the same reason), and set it up to use the same system as FA number and all the other counts.  Pagra shtak  19:22, 6 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I updated the logic to reflect the split directory structure above. --CBD 12:27, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ahh okay, sorry about that, unexpected consequences! But it appears it's all in order now - rst20xx (talk) 12:41, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Well I realised that the way to get round the transclusions would be to do what I probably should have thought to do in the first place, and have the talkpages be the things that get categorised, not the topic pages themselves. So I removed the categorisations from Template:Featured topic box and added them to the Template:Featuredtopictalk. (There should be no reason to transclude talk pages, and hence this template should never get transcluded.) These changes meant I could also remove the "mock" parameter which I added earlier. I added "fullyfeatured" and "title" as parameters to Template:Featuredtopictalk, so that the fully featured topics would go in a subcategory and the topics would be sorted properly in the categories, respectively. I also made it so that former featured topics went in a seperate category by using the "currentstatus" parameter. And now the 3 categories (Category:Wikipedia featured topics, Category:Wikipedia former featured topics and Category:Wikipedia fully featured topics) are all completely clean of any spam, and their sizes should reflect the number of actual featured/fully featured/former featured topics there are - rst20xx (talk) 15:49, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

discography topics
There are two discography FT's (Powderfinger and Wilco) that do not include EPs and singles. Is that ok? Nergaal (talk) 01:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Look at the current nom. I think so

Protecting topic boxes
I think that it might be time to protect the FT boxes for each topic. Whenever the number of articles tagged as being part of a FT doesn't match the total number in boxes, it takes a long time to go through all the boxes to check whether an editor has added an article to a topic without a nomination. Even if people have the boxes on their watchlist, some edits can sneak through, and as we get more FTs, it's only going to get harder to watch them all. The big problem with this proposal is that if an article is promoted from GA to FA or is demoted, only a sysop will be able to update the icons on the topic. I think that this extra hassle will be worth it to keep our FTs in check. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It might be a good idea, even if we do not, we might want to simi-pro them. Zginder 2008-08-27T21:11Z (UTC)
 * I thought of that, but any user that would be at the stage where they are trying to update FTs would already have got past the semi-pro barrier. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:23, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

After the GT thing goes through, and the cats have been reorganised, I might be able to write a template to do this. It would require an equivalent to PAGESINCATEGORY, except it'll test if a given page is in a given category, instead of counting the size of a given category. Only problem is I don't know if such a function exists :/ An alternative is to set up a bot-managed Daily log of status changes for all articles tagged as being FTC articles, under the theory that if people add an article when they shouldn't, then they'll probably also add the fact it's part of an FTC to the article's talk page, and then it'll show up in the log. This'll probably work about half the time, as obviously not everyone will tag the talk page - rst20xx (talk) 01:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I suspect that those who don't know enough to nominate an article also don't know enough to change the talk page. I bot might be able to work with the "what links here" of topic boxes, but I can't think of how that would work.  Hopefully we can work something out, but would people mind if I be bold enough to block the boxes until then?  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't. Maybe you can set up an easy-to-find talk page so people can notify you of any status changes. And also, maybe you don't need to block the topic boxes of non-sequential topics - rst20xx (talk) 17:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Good topics implementation plan
Following on from the prior straw poll, I've written a fully detailed, unambiguous plan as to how I would implement good topics, and all that remains is to sort out some of the finer points of it. Please feel free to contribute to the discussion here - rst20xx (talk) 01:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move of the "discography" topics to "albums"
As far as I can tell, the way the topics came to be under the current "discography" name is that: While I think that the ultimate scope of the two "discography" topics is the whole discography of the respective bands - be it albums, EPs, singles or anything else - at the moment they both cover just albums. And time and time again, we see a debate about whether this is cherry picking. I feel that if we rename the topics back to "albums", this would knock out half the argument. And then we can always rename them back to "discography" or something else (e.g. "albums and EPs") if they ever expand beyond just the albums - rst20xx (talk) 17:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) "Powderfinger albums" was nominated and promoted
 * 2) "Wilco discography" was nominated, but while the page name may be "Wilco discography", the header says "Wilco albums". Hence, most of the voters would have seen "Wilco albums" only, but when it was promoted, it was promoted as "Wilco discography"
 * 3) "Powderfinger albums" was renamed "Powderfinger discography" to bring it in line with "Wilco discography", and citing "Wilco discography" as precedent.
 * I support that. We can probably just call that a caretaking technicality and avoid having to do sup noms for them.  --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * That's effectively how it was done in the first place, so if anyone kicks up a fuss, we could in fact be cheeky and say that the pre-moves place would be albums... rst20xx (talk) 00:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I support this as a compromise measure, and in light of this, would like to thank the above two individuals for taking everyone's opinions into account. LuciferMorgan (talk) 12:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Another name standardisation - "series" to "titles"
Would anyone have a problem with moving the video game topics with "series" in the title to "titles" so that they all match? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I would have a problem—Organization XIII is a part of the Kingdom Hearts series, but it is not a Kingdom Hearts title.  Pagra shtak  02:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, looking over them, it's called "titles" where just the video game articles are involved, and "series" where other articles (such as Organization XIII) are involved - makes sense to me. Having said that, I now realise that the Super Smash Bros topic is under "series", when it should be under "titles", so I would support the moving of that - rst20xx (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Very good points, I agree with you both. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Sooo... can we get the Super Smash Bros topic renamed? rst20xx (talk) 17:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, rename it. Gary King ( talk ) 00:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Note that I'm currently creating the categories for good topics, and now whoever does the rename will have to rename them, too :/ rst20xx (talk) 01:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Questions about the Good Topics Implementation
Please address any questions you have about how exactly good topics are implemented here - rst20xx (talk) 02:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

FT star calculations
Ok, there have been a lot of changes with FT recently, and I'm not sure I'm caught up on them all. If I read Featured topic box correctly, a featured topic comprising four featured articles and one B-class article (from a recent FAR, for instance) would have the "fully featured" star incorrectly applied—what used to be handled with the ftstar parameter. Is this correct?

Issue two: the TopicTransclude method results in blank spaces in the FT listing where the Good Topics are located.  Pagra shtak  03:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Gonna answer over at the good topics questions page linked above - rst20xx (talk) 14:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Article
This weeks Wikipedia Signpost contains an article about Featured Topics written by yours truly- check it out! --PresN (talk) 14:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice work! rst20xx (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I forgot to compliment you on that one; it's a nicely written article, well done (and thanks for mentioning me)! --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:41, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Fix a topic
Hi. Recently, 2008 ACC Championship Game underwent a peer review to satisfy criterion 3.c. It was reviewed and now the topic needs to be updated. Does someone mind updating the FT template? Also, the retention period in the criterion page needs to be removed. Thanks! Pie is good  (Apple is the best)  20:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Just noticed that it never closed yet, sorry. Pie is good   (Apple is the best)  21:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You need to renominate the topic, as a "supplementary nomination". See the nomination procedure page for how to do this - rst20xx (talk) 23:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Move: North Carolina hurricanes -> Lists of North Carolina hurricanes
This should probably be moved, per the Florida topic - rst20xx (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * As primary contributor, I agree. ♬♩ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 15:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Odd. Upon closer inspection, it seems OhanaUnited for some reason made the duplicate (North Carolina hurricanes) a while back, and then replaced the original with it in various places. But the original is correct, so I shall bring the topic to requested moves, citing it as an error on the part of one of the editors, and once the move has been made, then we can go about fixing the links - rst20xx (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC) In fact, Hurricanehink, you're an admin, can you do the moves? Would be quicker. So the topic box needs moving on top of the other, and you'd also need to rename: I can do the rest - rst20xx (talk) 15:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes
 * Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes featured content -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes featured content
 * Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes good content -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes good content
 * Unfortunately, as an admin, I cannot move those categories. That requires a bot, or something. However, I did the right thing and proposed them for moving. ♬♩ Hurricanehink ( talk ) 02:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh right, I didn't know that! You learn something new every day! Thanks for proposing! rst20xx (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Move completed. --Kbdank71 13:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you. And I've completed the move down our end, too - rst20xx (talk) 13:56, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

We need a list of things to do
When a topic goes from GA to FA and from FA to GA; e.g., do this. Zginder 2008-09-12T04:17Z (UTC)
 * Yeah, that's true. Going from GT to FT is basically the 3 steps in the promotion procedure that are just for FTs, i.e.


 * 1) Add a notice to Template:Announcements/New featured content using
 * 2) Add a notice to Goings-on using
 * 3) Add the topic to the random topic generator at Featured content/Topics and update the count.
 * 4) (Added by me just now) Update Featured topics/count and Good topics/count
 * and then the other direction has the step you just carried out, plus step 4 above, plus the GA guys might want to name a few places they want notification as well (both for new and demoted topics).
 * Thanks for updating that by the way, I completely forgot about that! rst20xx (talk) 14:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

How will we keep on top of this when we have a hundred topics with thousands of articles that each have the potential to be automatically moved any day? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:43, 17 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not sure, I guess we'll just have to see how it goes. We can see when topics move quite easily though: run the 1.0 bot on "Featured topics", then check if any articles have changed importance in the quality log. Top = FT main article. High = FT other. Mid = GT main article. Low = GT other - rst20xx (talk) 13:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Display of fully-featured star cluster
Alright, so the FT boxes have been retooled to automatically determine whether the fully-featured star cluster should be displayed or not. Previously, this was done manually with the  parameter. The basic way it works is that it checks to see if there are any articles in the "good" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series good content). The "featured" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series featured content) doesn't need to be checked, and the "other" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series) isn't checked, because this is where audited articles show up. The problem with this is that if an article is demoted to B-class, it shows up in the "other" category and is not checked. So, if there were a featured topic with nine FAs and one GA, if a GAR resulted in the demotion of the GA to B-class, the fully-featured star would pop up on the topic box. I feel this is a significant enough problem to warrant a fix. I discussed this a little with, who feels the automation is beneficial enough to forgive an overlook like this and suggested I bring it up to the FT community. Any thoughts?  Pagra shtak  17:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I suppose what we could do is have a manual override, so that in a case of a topic that is under retention due to a demotion (as opposed to one that is there due to a topic coming out of an audited period, which should get to keep its ft-star IMO) we can say "nope, this one doesn't get the star". And then it's still automated but can be overridden - rst20xx (talk) 17:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)
 * In fact I can also make it that the manual override stops overriding if it becomes the case that there are no audited articles either... rst20xx (talk) 14:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the manual override should always override. It would be useful for work pages, where the categories don't even exist. Actually, I'd rather see this work in reverse—add a parameter  to all the topics listed at FT and GT that tells the template to enable the automatic ftstar. That way work pages, etc. wouldn't trigger that part of the code and wouldn't have the star cluster. Then add a manual override in addition to take care of the B-class problem.  Pagra  shtak  20:09, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think I agree, I feel it doesn't really matter whether mockup topics have the ftstar or not. Anyone else have an opinion on this? rst20xx (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't care about mockup topics, but I don't feel like fully featured topics should keep the star after one of the articles gets FARC'd or FLR'd down to B-class. Maybe we should just make it so you don't get the star if you have "checkmark" articles? --PresN (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support that.  Pagra shtak  20:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)
 * No, that's not fair, because the whole point of the checkmark is that it's an article that can't get to GA/FL, so is the best it can be - rst20xx (talk) 08:21, 14 September 2008 (UTC)
 * I could argue that if we aren't going to call the article our best work (not FA), then it would be logical for the topic to not be our best topic by extension. But taking a step back, is there really that much use to having that cluster in the first place? I mean, it's painfully obvious how many FAs and FLs the topics have with or without that cluster there.  Pagra shtak  01:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * It's shiny. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ( talk  ) 01:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

(reset) (Response to Pagrashtak) Firstly, I could argue that a checkmarked article is the best that Wikipedia could possibly offer on the subject of that article, hence the checkmark. And secondly, in response to whether we need the checkmark at all, well that's true that it's somewhat obvious how many FAs/FLs there are anyway, but then equally one could argue that therefore, maybe, whether it appears or not shouldn't be taken so seriously?...

It seems to me that the only point of it is to act as a (very small) added incentive for editors to get their topics fully featured. If we say that some topics can't get it at all (by saying that those with audited articles can't have it) then the incentive is gone - rst20xx (talk) 20:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Not being eligible for GA or FA is removing a pretty big incentive, but no one seems to have a problem with that. Why is it ok to say "this article cannot be featured" but not "this topic cannot be fully featured"?  Pagra shtak  18:33, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, I have a problem with articles being ineligible for GA/FA. I believe that if an article is as well written as it possibly can be, it should be able to get FA no matter how short it is. IMO this would shift the emphasis of GA/FA from crediting the editors for making a sizeable quality contribution, to simply crediting the articles for being of a high quality - rst20xx (talk) 01:18, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Dwarf planets
Now that Haumea has been officially deemed a dwarf planet, doesn't that mean that the featured topic is now missing a gap, and needs to go under a suitable grace period to get Haumea to GA / FA? LuciferMorgan (talk) 15:10, 18 September 2008 (UTC)
 * Already done, my friend - rst20xx (talk) 16:47, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

New Featured content IRC channel
Following on from the creation of for discussing the WP:Featured list process, a new IRC channel for discussing all Featured content has been created. . Please see WP:IRC for more on using IRC with Wikipedia. Matthewedwards (talk • contribs • email) 20:36, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 0.7 articles have been selected for Featured topics
Wikipedia 0.7 is a collection of English Wikipedia articles due to be released on DVD, and available for free download, later this year. The Version 1.0 Editorial Team has made an automated selection of articles for Version 0.7.

We would like to ask you to review the articles selected from this project. These were chosen from the articles with this project's talk page tag, based on the rated importance and quality. If there are any specific articles that should be removed, please let us know at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.7. You can also nominate additional articles for release, following the procedure at Release Version Nominations.

A list of selected articles with cleanup tags, sorted by project, is available. The list is automatically updated each hour when it is loaded. Please try to fix any urgent problems in the selected articles. A team of copyeditors has agreed to help with copyediting requests, although you should try to fix simple issues on your own if possible.

We would also appreciate your help in identifying the version of each article that you think we should use, to help avoid vandalism or POV issues. These versions can be recorded at this project's subpage of User:SelectionBot/0.7. We are planning to release the selection before December 2008, so we ask you to select the revisions before October 20. At that time, we will use an automatic process to identify which version of each article to release, if no version has been manually selected. Thanks! For the Wikipedia 1.0 Editorial team, SelectionBot 16:15, 28 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Because the automated selection is intentionally naive about related topics, this project in particular may need to use the release version nominations page to nominate additional articles in order to get more complete coverage of particular topics. &mdash; Carl (CBM · talk) 16:17, 28 September 2008 (UTC)
 * See here - rst20xx (talk) 16:45, 29 September 2008 (UTC)

Featured short article proposal
There is much discussion about a proposal to create a "Featured short article" process at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates and a few other locations around the FA space. It sounds like this will have a significant impact on our "audited article" consideration if implemented.  Pagra shtak  15:56, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

List of Nunavut general elections
List of Nunavut general elections, an audited article of limited subject matter, is missing inline citations. Should the topc be put up for removal, or put on retention? Zginder 2008-10-08T14:40Z (UTC)
 * This actually goes along with my question below about how audited articles were audited for quality in the first place if they never had a peer review, because I have to assume that a peer review would have noticed that there were no inline citations. I'm inclined to put both the topics with audited articles without a peer review on retention. Rreagan007 (talk) 20:12, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Audited article symbol
I've noticed that someone has gone through and changed a lot of the check marks signifying audited articles to the peer review pen. Are these different symbols being used in different situations or do they both just mean the exact same thing. If they just mean the same thing then I think we should agree on one symbol to use. Having 2 symbols that mean the exact same thing would just add confusion. Rreagan007 (talk) 14:50, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What I think happened is all of the audited artilces that have been peer reviewed were changed, we would be lying if the others changed. Zginder 2008-10-08T17:14Z (UTC)
 * Hmm ok I guess that makes sense, but now I'd like to know how they were audited for quality if they did not receive a peer review. Rreagan007 (talk) 19:26, 8 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Those are the older topics that were audited, before I made the peer review rule. Zginder 2008-10-08T20:57Z (UTC)
 * Ok well I think that the topics with audited articles without a peer review should have been put into retention at that time. Since they weren't I suggest that should happen now. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:29, 8 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. There are I think only two topics with this problem, which ironically contain the only 4 articles that are audited for limited subject matter! - rst20xx (talk) 09:25, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and added the 2 topics in question to the retention period section since it seems unavoidable that the audited articles must receive a peer review in order to meet the current criteria. I went back and looked to see when the peer review requirement was added and it was 1/28/08 from what I can tell. That is obviously more than 6 months ago, so the topics should have already met the requirement. I have therefore set the retention period for 3 months instead of 6. If anyone feels the period should be 6 months from now instead go ahead and change it, but I can't see why getting a peer review done should take more than 3 months. Rreagan007 (talk) 16:09, 11 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Can you also tell the people/WikiProjects who created the topics, and leave a note on the articles'/topics' talk pages? It would be most unfair not to - rst20xx (talk) 00:38, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Update: I've run into an issue. Maxim has twice reverted my attempts to change the icons for the 2 audited articles that never received peer reviews claiming the A-class rating review was sufficient. After this, I discovered that the third audited article never actually received a peer review either. Zginder had listed it for peer review after the audit criterion was changed back in February, but Maxim stopped it from going forward. I have also tried to find the A-class review process for the WikiProject Ice Hockey and can find none. I also have only been able to find 3 articles that have received an A-class rating from the wikiproject, and all 3 are the 3 audited articles in this topic. This seems a little suspicious to me, but regardless of all this the 3 audited articles have to receive a proper peer review in order to satisfy the criteria. I have notified the wikiproject and placed notices on all 3 talk pages. Rreagan007 (talk) 04:13, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Can we make a rule as to where notice should be placed? I can think of all of the following: WP:FT?, the topic talk page, the affected artilces's talk, the main or lead article's talk, and all WikiProjects that are affected? Zginder 2008-10-12T04:26Z (UTC)
 * I have placed a notice about this at all of those places for both affected topics, as well as on the talk page of the editors that originally nominated the topics. Rreagan007 (talk) 04:39, 12 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah I think you covered all the right places between you. Anyway, I have tried one more time to change to s, with a well-reasoned edit summary, let's see what happens now - rst20xx (talk) 00:34, 13 October 2008 (UTC)


 * Rreagan007, it would nice to tell that you've accused me of something, so I can defend myself, instead of doing so behind my back. I had the simply voiced my objection to a full peer review, as I have now, as I feel it is pointless.  Maxim (talk)  00:51, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I did not accuse you of anything. If any of the facts I stated above are incorrect, then please correct me. If all of the facts I stated are correct, then it still looks suspicious to me. I'm not saying you did anything wrong, so perhaps suspicious is the wrong word. Perhaps odd or strange would have been a better word. I have no reason to think you did not act in good faith, and if I made it sound that way then I apologize. But please stop reverting the audit symbols on the topic page. The articles have to go through peer review and there is really no way around that. Rreagan007 (talk) 02:08, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * What's the point of doing a peer review for the sake of doing one?  Maxim (talk)  02:15, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Because that's what the featured topic criteria require. In order for featured topics to work, we have to rely on the other processes of Wikipedia (FA, GA, and PR) to ensure the quality of the individual articles in a topic. If we had to get into looking at the quality of each article in a topic, things would get totally bogged down and would never work. And, unfortunately, A-class ratings are still largely unreliable, which is why we do not accept them. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:09, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

Template:TopicTransclude
Does Template:TopicTransclude automatically update for article promotions?--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 15:12, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes - rst20xx (talk) 19:34, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Featured topics/StarCraft titles appears to meet FT requirements now. Why is it not on WP:FT? Zginder 2008-10-16T04:03Z (UTC)
 * It is now... I guess pages just needed purging and the like - rst20xx (talk) 15:33, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Are you interested in a Main Page section?
Hi, I'm from the 2008 main page redesign proposal and I am interested in adding a new section that will display a Featured Portal, Topic, or List daily. (I don't think there's enough to have one of each a day for several years.) However, I am not involved with any of these projects and don't want to champion the cause myself. There has already been talk of Featured Sounds on the Main Page; and we would be willing to make combinations like the Beethoven mock-up there, featuring related lists, portals, topics, etc. on one day. I would appreciate your feedback here, because I'm posting this message in a number of places and would like a unified discussion. Thanks, HereToHelp (talk to me) 18:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Local discussion here - rst20xx (talk) 18:57, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

100 Good/Featured Topics
I just promoted State touring routes in Hamilton County, New York, which has hence become the 100th good or featured topic. Thanks to Zginder's message at the top of the page, we know the 50th topic was promoted on 1st August 2008. This means that in 4 1/2 months, the number of topics has doubled. There are currently 26 good topics, so slightly over half of this growth has come from there - the first good topic was promoted on 18 September, and in the three months since then, there have been 12 featured topic promotions, so the introduction of good topics could largely explain the acceleration. Another factor is that there was also a rush of featured topic promotions in August/September.

There are now 536 articles in the 74 featured topics, and 20 articles in two featured topics, hence there is an average of 7.51 articles a topic, down from 8.18 in June - this could largely be attributed to the fact that the Simpsons seasons topics became good topics. There are 223 articles in the 26 good topics, and this gives 8.58 articles per topic.

Finally, by an amazing coincidence, there are exactly 750 unique articles between good and featured topics - rst20xx (talk) 20:42, 18 December 2008 (UTC)