I must say I do like the idea of an unfettered choice of subject matter at FAC - something like some sort of Freudian free association as to what wikifolks really want to give a spit 'n' boot polish too to polish up to FAC. Pop culture is today's version of folklore, fables and mythology so I have no problem with Simpsons as I do with ancient material.
But I digress; there is so much passing through FAC that I wonder if by choosing something too obscure one is dooming a FA candidate article to failing or at least delaying passing as it raises less interest than a more accessible one..and that as FAC gets busier this may be more apparent (or maybe I am just putting 1 & 1 together and getting 3....)...cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I disagree about those triassic dino FAs - the only one which has had a collaborative workout is Herrerasaurus which has gone a bit pear-shaped. I haven't looked at the others recently but all these are meaty enough to become FAs. Gawd Firs, yer gettin' all pessimistic all of a sudden..at least there are some active editors in WP dinos, compared with WP Fungi it's a wealth of talent, enough of whom are keen to point out things and assess at FAC to allow Raul to see there is a consensus of support (though outside input is always much appreciated).cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 10:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Right now there are 97 FACs on the list. I recall when there used to be no more than 40 or so. Some have been there since Sept. I don't recall us ever hitting the 100-FACs at once limit before. I can't help but wonder if Raul654 is overtaxed on his FA director duties. Sumoeagle179 ( talk) 20:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I'll be archiving it in the near future (like tomorrow or Monday). Raul654 ( talk) 05:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I know people have been saying for some time now that I need to delegate some of the work I do here. I have said that I didn't feel like it was too much, and that I didn't need a deputy. Well, with trends in FAC (towards ever more nominations - 100+ at a time now), I've re-evaluated my position on the matter, and I've come to the conclusion that I do need some help.
To that end, I've decided to name user:SandyGeorgia as my proxy here. The role will be essentially equivalent for the FAC to what Marskell and Joel31 do on FAR - she'll close nominations as either successful or unsuccessful, and interpret policies about what an article should or should not contain, and what is and is not an actionable objection - all just the same as I would. I don't intend to delegate the FAC as much as I do the FAR - I'll still be doing a significant portion of the promotions, but the job has become too big for one person to do it on a voluntary basis. It's possible that a second person might not be enough to break the logjam here - so I'm keeping open the possibility of having a third person do it. (I already have someone in mind.)
Lastly, succession issues come up from time to time. People ask me what will happen if I go on vacation or get hit by a bus. The FA director essentially has three big jobs - FAC, FAR, and scheduling the main page. (On those occasions when I do take a vacation, I can schedule FAs for the main page ahead of time and the FAC is robust enough to be unattended alone for a few days) If the worst should happen to me (knock on wood), I expect that Marskell could handle the FAR and Sandy the FAC. I haven't decided what to do about the main page scheduling - I consider that at some future juncture. Raul654 ( talk) 20:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't really think Sandy should have to be an admin. Admins have a lot of things to do and tend to get spread thin, which we don't want. I think a person can be respected without an RfA. At least, I certainly hope so. There are a lot of admins I would be very opposed to for this job, however their RfA might have been. Also, I like how Sandy does reviews a lot. I'd encourage her to continue, personally. I find her opinions non-biased and based on the criteria, although it may give her an unhealthy amount of weight in FAC discussions. Hmmm... Wrad ( talk) 21:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Sandy is an excellent choice. No doubt Sandy is qualified to do the job well. -- Aude ( talk) 00:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
While I do not object, in general, to SandyGeorgia becoming the FA assistant, I question the method by which she acquired the position. No one voted on this and no one got any input; it was an arbitrary decision by a single person. Personally, I don't agree with some of the decisions SandyGeorgia has made and her opinions on certain subjects. I know I am not alone. That said, my opinion may not be the majority and I am perfectly willing to accept a consensus one way or the other. While administrator status need not be a requirement, the community's approval is. I suggest some sort of discussion prior to beginning her duties where people can ask questions and get answers before we decide on additional assistance for Raul (and yes, I agree you could use some help, Raul) — BQZip01 — talk 04:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
My question here, again why is FA/FAR/FAC not subject to community input while arbcom, etc is? No offense to all the work Raul has done, but this strikes me as decidedly unwiki. I commend his work in the FA area and all the other work he does, but I simply think the community should have input to FA director selection and maybe the assistants to, just like at RFA, RFB, Arbcom, etc. Raul himself became FA director on a talk page vote, so there there is precedent for this community input in this area. Arbcom has yearly elections, on rotating 3-yr terms as I understand it. I think we should give consideration to a similar process here in the FA area. If the FA director, just like at arbcom gets reelected, that's fine, but at least there has been community input on it. Again, I have no ill will to Raul654 at all and commend all his great work, but I feel we should look at options in this area. — Rlevse • Talk • 18:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Let me clarify what I meant on all this. The issue is deeper than the appointment of Sandy for FAC. Raul654 became FA director in Aug 2004, by what was called ratification then, by a vote/not vote of 17 people, see here. This is over 3 years ago--longer than an arbcom term. Arbcom clerks are selected by arbitrators, not by the community. If an analagous process were in place for FA director, we'd have an FA director election every 3 years with that person selecting assistants for FAC, FAR, and TFA if he/she desired. I feel that since all this has come up recently and more than once, let's just settle it now instead of continually beating around the bush. It's obvious there are several editors with views/concerns in this area, so let's just air it out and settle it peaceably. Key questions as I see it are a) do we desire community input just on who the FA director is or their assistant too and 2) if so, how often should that person be reconfirmed/reelected/etc (pick your term of choice there). — Rlevse • Talk • 21:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
From Melty girl: At minimum, I think it might be a good idea for the two of them to write up something about how FAC assistantship works, what the COI groundrules are, whether Sandy's decisions might ever be overturned by Raul, what the community can do if problems arise, etc. Thanks for bringing up the specifics again, Melty. My take is the following. Of course Raul can always overturn any decision I make; he's the FA director. I don't imagine that ever happening, though, because if there's a FAC that isn't clear or where we might differ, I would leave it to him anyway or consult with him pre-closing. I can't think of anything less desirable for Wiki or the nominator than having an FA star stripped, and I would try hard to avoid promoting a controversial nom and risk that happening. This is not to say I'll always agree with Raul on promotions/archives, nor have I always agreed in the past, but when I disagree, absolutely the FA director's decision must trump. I strongly believe that the FA process must be driven a bit differently than any other process on Wiki, and Raul as director has long-standing community consensus. Otherwise, we could end up with a situation like GA, where an article can be a GA, be stripped of GA, and be returned to GA within a week. The FA process must be more stable. On COI, there are some people I've had differences with in the past over various issues; unless the consensus was very clear on their FAC noms, common sense would dictate that I not close their noms. That is my common sense take on COI; you can't write rules for common sense. I wouldn't close a FAC I've taken a position on, although I'll continue to try to keep the process moving by formatting the previous FACs, giving reminders when needed (for example, reminding that redlinks are not a valid oppose), etc. Raul can boot me at any time, or the community can boot me by talk page discussion; I'm not sure a new "process" is called for, and believe talk page consensus should work. Whether an RfA style vote is called for now, here or elsewhere, I think should be left up to Raul, but either way is fine with me. Avoiding problems down the road, and getting busy with the FAC backlog is what matters. On a related issue, Raul recently had to fail one of his own FACs; it goes without saying that having a delegate means I'll likely to have to make decisions on Raul's own noms, but I'm sure he's thought of that. I do agree with Marskell that too much turnover in the "janitors" wouldn't benefit FAC/FAR, and I'm not sure we need "term limits". As to "delegate for life"; it's demanding work. I don't think I'll be able to do it for life. The term will probably be self-limiting. :-) No, Shankbone, I don't hold grudges. Many editors can vouch that in spite of initial differences on FACs, FARs, or any other issue, I'll dig in and help them anytime, and forget past differences. And I usually literally do forget differences, unless I'm reminded. I try to never forget the positive, though. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 22:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I wish to know what'll be done about FACs which garner little comments, and just the odd oppose. Sometimes the oppose is addressed, but the opposer cannot be bothered to check back if their concerns have been dealt with. Then, an FAC gets archived when the nominator is actually willing to work on the article. It's a rather rubbish situation, and seems to crop up more and more often. LuciferMorgan ( talk) 01:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the latest reply above, Sandy. This is all good to know and I like what I'm hearing. I'm now feeling comfortable with this talk page as the process for the community ratifying Raul's decision. But I do think that in the long run, this talk page doesn't really substitute for a page that editors can refer to about the FAC process and the FAC director and assistant(s) (and FAR staff too). Maybe I'm missing an existing WP: or Help: page, but I don't think so. I think if you wrote something up about how the process works, a lot of time could be saved answering recurring questions on this page and on your personal talk pages. This page could include much of the material you've sketched out here, and could also cover process issues such as User_talk:Raul654#Some_questions_about_your_job_as_the_FA_director, User_talk:Raul654#Anticipating_the_inevitable_.22Is_this_article_featured.22_questions, what the bot does after closing vs. what the nominator does (adding the barnstar!), and so on. I think that writing up the process on a WP: page and linking to that from all the FA pages would go a long way to making the process more transparent to editors and would save everyone time. You could walk people through from start to finish of FAC and FAR as to how you're handling things and how nominators should interact at various stages in the process. FAC and FAR are primary Wiki processes, and I think it would be helpful to better document how they work. -- Melty girl ( talk) 04:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
*Support for Raul's selection of Sandy as his proxy --
RelHistBuff (
talk) 14:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think qp10qp got it exactly right in his post above; I don't think there's a problem with accepting Sandy's position and moving on, and I don't think there would be much difficulty in resolving the issue if she were to fail. I also prefer a talk discussion to a formal vote; I think it allows for more fluidity in the posters' opinions.
Mike Christie
(talk) 14:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me for asking, but if Raul654 says he needs help/a proxy, and has identified Sandy as being the best person for that job, why is anyone second guessing his (cap)ability to make such a decision? The recent discussions about judiciousness sound very much like a fundamental distrust of the FA director's ability to do the RightThingTM. This is not fair to the Raul, or to his position. -- Fullstop ( talk) 23:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
That's only one small piece of this whole pie. Sumoeagle179 19:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
It is not easy to be a FA director. You must know the FA criteria by heart, you must read a lot of comments in each FAC and you must know which opposes are "actionable". Raul654 has a few years experience as a FA director but SandyGeorgia is new to this. Even if she commented at a lot of FACs she only started closing them a few weeks ago. Raul654 needs to teach SandyGeorgia what to do and how to do it. -- Kaypoh ( talk) 14:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the two topics of the "strangeness of the FA process" and the nomination/promotion by Raul should be treated separately, as they are different topics. I note three issues to the issue of the strangeness of the FA Process
-- Keerlls ton 16:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC) Quotes
“ | That is an example. If the problems are bigger than spelling mistakes, and the nominator says he fixed them but he did not, and the article is promoted wrongly? -- Kaypoh ( talk) 04:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC) | ” |
from User_talk:Raul654#Some_questions_about_your_job_as_the_FA_director-- Keerlls ton 14:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
“ | I wish to know what'll be done about FACs which garner little comments, and just the odd oppose. Sometimes the oppose is addressed, but the opposer cannot be bothered to check back if their concerns have been dealt with. Then, an FAC gets archived when the nominator is actually willing to work on the article. It's a rather rubbish situation, and seems to crop up more and more often. LuciferMorgan] (talk) 01:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC | ” |
From Concerns, above [added by -- Keerlls ton]
Proposed answer to 1: The strangeness is the erroneous promotion and erroneous lack of promotion and erroneous delisting from FAC.-- Keerlls ton 14:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
The "strangeness" -or "errors" are found everywhere in wikipedia.
I imagine FA status started out as a wikipedian's list of "what articles are good in wikipedia". It I imagine has since gotten somewhat official.
But is the rating of articles really building an encyclopedia? it does not improve an article to receive FA status - it helps people appreciate it, helps people receive credit for work, helps publicity... But this is not building an encyclopedia. This is a side-project aimed to help in improving wikipedia - not the main project - "Building wikipedia"
- Receiving FA status does not help an article - it does not magically change the writing style or improve it's quality in any other way.
--
Keerlls
ton 10:26, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Rationale from Directorship
Perhaps a short rationale in each promotion / decline would be useful? Like we see them in AfDs or RfMs.--
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |
talk 18:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I hate to break up the above discussion, but various FAs that were promoted yesterday don't have the FA stars on their page. I've certainly noticed it on M62 Motorway, Pre-dreadnought battleship, Powderfinger and others. Yet some already have got the star. Peanut4 ( talk) 02:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
After *another* FAC going down in flames because not one, not two, not even three but four opposing editors never showed up after multiple posts on their talk pages, can we put some sort of note on the FAC page asking for more time, as concerns have been addressed but the reviewers don't show to refactor? David Fuchs ( talk) 20:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I have just witnessed a not very amusing version of non-responding FAC critique: 1) an editor demands a POV-ed 'criticism' section and objects due to its lack 2) few days later that editor adds this section (poorly wikified) himself AND does not withdraw his objection 3) few days later I merge the section into the article, keeping most of the added information (after some wikifying and NPOVing) and... 4) the editor wakes up, restores the section (despite that its content is now duplicated) and comes back to the FAC commenting on 'removal of material' :> Sigh... -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 19:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
PR is basically dead these days, except for automated reviews. Editors know this, and would rather go straight to FAC instead of 'waste time' on PR. However, the automated review is not totally useless and will likely pick up some issues that could be improved. This suggests that there could be benefits from running the script on FA candidates. If this was done it might make sense to put the results on the talk page of the FAC; in the style of edit count on RFA.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 10:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
PR works for me, but I will ask a few people (who are familiar with the topic, edit similar topics, are in a relevant WikiProject, are good at copyediting, or otherwise I think they can help). I leave notes on their talk pages to please come and review. I am willing and try to return the favor for articles they are working on. That seems to work well, trying to resolve issues before I bring something to FAC. I haven't had much to fix with articles while they are at FAC. -- Aude ( talk) 18:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
For a long time I argued that an article should reach GA first, as a prerequisite to FA. Perhaps we could implement that, in place of the theoretically useful but in practice dead PR? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 19:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
(Undent) All this "PR is dead; GA sucks" talk is yesterday's news. It is not categorically true in either case. Moreover, it encourages posers to come in and mimic the GA sucks/PR dead cant, thus turning it into a minor meme of sorts. Stop whining and find something to improve and somewhere to contribute (including GA and PR). Ling.Nut 07:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Umm guys, I know you enjoy debating which of GA or PR is better (or worse); but that was not the point I was suggesting at the start of this thread... I was proposing simply that if an article ends up on FAC without going through PR (as happens frequently), that the PR review bots do their job and report back to the FAC talk page.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 22:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Editors know this, and would rather go straight to FAC instead of 'waste time' on PR. | ” |
I think that comment led to this topic.-- Keerlls ton 21:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
'The automated review from Peer Review is useful and will pick up issues. There are huge benefits from running the script on FA candidates. It makes sense to put the results on the talk page of the FAC; in the style of edit count on RFA.'
My version/interpretation/paraphrase of Nilfanion's comment- Let us begin again!--
Keerlls
ton 21:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi guys, I hope all is well. Can some of you pop over to my FAC above and give some feedback? I appreciate that the FAC page is really busy, although I'd like to get this specific FAC finished as soon as possible. Thanks in advance. I'd also like to thank everyone nice I've met on Wikipedia since my time here, and those that have helped at PR and FAC etc. I wish you all the best. LuciferMorgan ( talk) 02:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Improper nomination I request that the nominator remove one of his nominations before proceeding or requesting further comments. -The FAC should not be flooded by nominations from one user. Before nominating more than one article at the very least some further bureocracy should be done, noting the worth. The fact that neither of the nominator's concurrently nominated articles are receiving much comment are significators of the lack of worth of these articles and the lack of proper involvement of the wikipedia community on these articles - Which would be given if someone else had nominated one of the two. Move to dismiss either one or both of the nominated articles.
--
Keerlls
ton 16:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
REQUEST OF COMMENT FROM DIRETORSHIP -- Keerlls ton 15:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | I've been watching. There are some unfortunate reviews and comments being made (not only on those FACs) that I trust will get sorted out. It may not be possible to prevent unfortunate discussions and comments, but I do hope my message at the bottom of that discussion is clear; if I thought a nomination "improper", I'd remove it. I haven't; neither has Raul. Hangeth in there! SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 19:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
[quote from SandyGeorgia's User Talk Page added -- Keerlls ton 09:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)]
So - does the directorship believes that not noting (significant) NPOV concerns as a nominator constitutes negligence?-- Keerlls ton 10:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
The Rock Steady FAC is still open because Wesley Dodds has requested time to review it more thoroughly; there are no Opposes at all, much less Opposes that aren't being dealt with, evidenced by Tony's strike of his Oppose. Considering the situation, a second nomination a month later is not a violation of the spirit of the instruction, which is to make sure subsequent noms aren't put up too quickly, or when another article still has opposes or has not gained support. On the other hand, there are some older double FACs where the first is not resolved and does have outstanding Opposes; it would be good if that practice stopped, but those have been up for quite a while now, so it wouldn't be appropriate to remove them at this late stage. Some articles may pass with two Supports, and some may fail with 25 Supports; it's not a vote, it's a determination of when an article has attained the standards of WP:WIAFA. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | "While we don't have strict rules on when you can restart a FAC nomination, we very much prefer that nominators wait a few weeks between nominations (instead of immediately re-nominating). The number of reviewers is limited, and it's not fair to other nominators to have some people immediately restart failed FAC nominations. Raul654 05:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
(a) It seems clear, at the very least, that we disagree on what consitutes support for an article's candidateship, - I believe support for an article means "substancial support" and not "one or two votes of support".
(a) It seems clear also that we disagree that what I quoted is relevant - I believe they do, in regards to there being similar reasons for the different policies.
--
Keerlls
ton 15:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Step 1 from the Nomination Instructions:
“ | 1. Before nominating an article, ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria. | ” |
My interpretation of step one is that if a nominator has not done this - ensured that it meets all of the FA criteria - then he should not nominate at all.-- Keerlls ton 13:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Multiple nominations aren't a problem if the person doing the nominating is capable of keeping on top of them. Raul654 22:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC) | ” |
While copy-editing was going on he nominated another article that (predicably) had copy-editing needs. This does not constitute ensuring FA quality - he should have contacted a copy-editor before nominating.-- Keerlls ton 13:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
For the record, Sandy has my full support on these judgment calls. Raul654 ( talk) 16:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion here. Permalink is here. Samsara ( talk • contribs) 14:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Step 1 from the Nomination Instructions:
“ | 1. Before nominating an article [a nominator must] ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria. | ” |
What constitutes ensuring that it meets all of the FA criteria?-- Keerlls ton 10:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Verb: to ensure: To make sure or certain of something (usually some future event or condition). | ” |
From Wiktionary-- Keerlls ton 13:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I have just discovered the Dead links toolbox installed next to the FAC TOC; it indicates several of the FACs have an alarming number of dead links that may need to be checked. Have others been checking this, and is there a way to run that tool on a specific article and paste that to the article FAC? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Should FACs be objected to if they contain dead links? Wikipedia:Citing sources#What to do when a reference link "goes dead" seems quite tolerant of dead links if they can't be replaced. Epbr123 ( talk) 19:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Identifier | Meaning |
---|---|
Green (1) Message |
Link should work but should be checked. |
Yellow (2) Warn |
Link that could pose a problem to users. Examples: expiring news, registration/subscription req., and low signal to noise |
Blue (3) Server/connection |
Simple connection issue/just about impossible to fix without the webmaster's help |
Orange (4) Heuristically determined |
The software thinks that the link is dead. 404 or similar appear in redirects urls.
|
Red (5) 404, 410 error |
Server has confirmed the link as dead. |
Slategray (6) | Spamlink or Google Cache link |
I'm surprised that very few people have tried the edit feature. Its by far the most powerful feature as you can edit the set of links to an article and send back the results. It also has the preset to help find that dead link again and something ith the internet archive.
The colors as nobody really seem to be picking up on the subtle with the selector at the top so I have a graph here explaining the basics.
The tool will account for 404 redirect, otherwise known as soft 404s. There's a hidden debug mode for the on-the-fly stuff, just append &debug=1
to the
end like so. And a hint for find the live article is to search for text pulled from the Internet Archive. And if people could provided interface feedback suggestion that would be much appreciated. —
Dispenser (
talk) 01:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Dead link tool is mighty useful! Thanks for advertising it, any other tools of that caliber that you guys want to share? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 06:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I've update the tool once again, the mergeChanges.py has been re-engineered to work faster while providing more feedback. A few minor changes some of the other files. Please notify me of bugs.
The threshold hack should be replace with #display=0,1,1,1,1,1
(
example) which can be simplified to #display=0
where each number corresponds to the rank. A script will toggle the rows once the page has loaded. Doing it this way allows users to see all links on the page. —
Dispenser (
talk) 23:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
The editor who nominated this FAC contacted roughly 50 editors in an attempt to gain votes for their FAC - surely such behaviour should not be encouraged? Or is FAC encouraging everyone to shamelessly spam numerous talk pages for support votes nowadays? Maybe I should spam everyone to check my FAC - maybe I should start with all the editors I'm in regular contact with... LuciferMorgan ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[←]LOL, I certainly agree with some of that. If I see an editor citing AGF in defence of their own edit, I pretty much always take it that the edit wasn't good faith at all; similarly, where an editor cites AGF when describing another's edit is quite often an indicator that bad faith was assumed. Carre ( talk) 20:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry I had to be the one to bring this issue forward, but I'm more sorry that the article was languishing at the bottom of the list, compelling me to take off the proxy hat and put on my review hat to kickstart it. Now to focus back on the article, not the editors contacted. It's the article that matters; without AGF on Wiki, we could all be in a deep dark nasty hole here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
[←]Hi Lucifer: Somehow, we've really gotten off on the wrong foot here. I am hardly defending the idea of canvassing for yes votes. I firmly agree with you that such behavior is NOT acceptable (as you know from my posts, if you've read them carefully). All I've said is that I don't think that contacting WPs is unacceptable. As you have since posted, that isn't what this user did. I confess, I didn't check; I'm afraid I have rather limited time for Wiki stuff, and try not to get involved in controversial stuff. For this very reason! Life's too short to have our blood pressures raised like this. Truce? MeegsC | Talk 17:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | The editor who nominated this FAC contacted roughly 50 editors in an attempt to gain votes for their FAC - surely such behaviour should not be encouraged? Or is FAC encouraging everyone to shamelessly spam numerous talk pages for support votes nowadays? Maybe I should spam everyone to check my FAC - maybe I should start with all the editors I'm in regular contact with... LuciferMorgan ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
Let's see - I think friendly notices should be encouraged and greater involvement should be encouraged. (I in fact encouraged this instance of canvassing (whether it be friendly notices or not I am unsure)
I am sure you shouldn`t spam - let's be serious - the discussion is not about whether spam is alright - spam is obviously bad.
The problem is that your characterization of this person's actions as in bad faith is not yet clear - let's try and clarify.--
Keerlls
ton 14:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
“ |
United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
|
” |
and similar statements were put. - this does constitute "an attempt to gain votes" - but I don't see that asking for vote is too different from asking for a "review of candicacy" - it's different wording - perhaps bad wording - but ultimately they are the same thing.-- Keerlls ton 18:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Topic started by Keerlls ton 14:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | To oppose a nomination, write *Object or *Oppose, followed by the reason(s). Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to address the objection, the director may ignore it. References on style and grammar do not always agree; if a contributor cites support for a certain style in a standard reference work or other authoritative source, reviewers should consider accepting it. | ” |
Does this mean that rather than saying "I don't like it" editors should say "It's badly written" or does it instead say that rather than saying "it's badly written" reviewers should say "I have found 12374 of bad grammar and I shall show each and how to improve it"?
--
Keerlls
ton 15:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
This is not about the Peer Review or GA, but FAC. In general, the quality of the reviews on this page is of a high standard. Some candidatures are being shot down by opposes that are not struck when the article is adjusted accordingly. These are false negatives, which are potentially hurtful to the nominator but not directly damaging to Wikipedia. False positives, articles passing FAC without being of FA quality, are much more serious. Gaining the FA star is a disincentive to further work, so these articles may not ever improve to the "required" standard.
This candidature stayed open for 9 days. It gained 2 supports, one of which probably should be discounted, before passing. This is the sort of review quality that is expected at GAC not FAC. This alteration is the sum total of the modifications resulting from Wikipedia's review process. There are two questions this suggests: Firstly, is this article FA-standard at this time? Secondly, is that review something we want to hold up as a validation of an example of our best work?
I feel the article fails criteria 1(a) and 1(b), and possibly more. The last sentence of the lead contains a redundancy, and a thorough review would likely find more. Furthermore, if this is about the meteorological history of a storm - where is information about rain? That's meteorological information... The quality of this article is properly a job for FAR, but the low quality of its review should be discussed here.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 22:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there a competition going on in the Hurricane WikiProject? I've noticed some commentary that doesn't make sense about how many noms Hink has, so I feel like I might be missing something. There's a template at the top of this talk page, FACs needing feedback, that currently has 13 FACs that don't have enough review for consensus. Although I've been faithfully maintaining it and pestering people on their talk pages to review articles, many articles sit for weeks with no review. Maybe that FAC committee can start closing FACs as soon as people start reviewing them. Articles have always been passed on two supports after that amount of time unless the FA director sees problems with the article; nothing new here. The only way to get more review is to, well, give more review. Regards, SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I've opened an FAR on this article. Please discuss the article there, and the process here.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 01:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Improving the FAC page? - How? "Featured Article Comittee"? - fewer candidateships and therefore more attention per candidateship? more transparency? enforcing greater bureocracy as a pre-requisite to candidacy? greater "friendly notices"/number of reviewers? abolition of multiple candidateships and restarted nominations? having regulations/rules and an active directorship that can enforce regulations?-- Keerlls ton 23:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
There has been a lively debate at MOSNUM on the further relaxation of what used to be the compulsory linking/autoformatting of all full dates in WP aritlces; see also here. This has resulted, in the interim, in the insertion of a set of guidelines for non-autoformatted dates into MOSNUM by User:Remember the dot. The new guidelines mirror WP's existing practice for varieties of English, as set out at MOS.
This debate has emerged a number of times since the failed attempt to persuade the developers at MediaWiki to decouple the autoformatting and linking functions, as a first step towards fixing what many WPians, including me, regard as a dysfunctional system. In particular, several participants in the debate at MOSNUM talk have pointed out that date autoformatting hides inconsistency in the raw dates for logged-in editors, that there is a surprising amount of inconsistency, and that our articles need to be cleaned up in this respect, especially where autoformatting is retained. There is concern that the vast majority of readers (who do not log in or, if they do, do not select a date format preference) see an ungainly mixture of whatever raw date formats have been entered by various editors over the years, hidden from us, of course, by the system.
For the FAC process, there are three relevant points:
This is an example of what most of our readers see (even if dates are formatted) if different raw formats are used in an article; they aren't logged in, so they don't have user preference settings:
On the other hand, logged in users with user preferences set will see consistent formatting depending on their preference settings, no matter the raw formatting used (same text as above, but linked):
Which in my preference settings, yields:
The point is, we're logged in and have preferences set, so we're not seeing the raw formatting mess that most of our readers are seeing, caused by different formats entered by different editors. Because we're logged in, by wikilinking dates, we are covering up inconsistency seen by most Wiki readers. The proposal has to do with consistent raw formatting, since that is what most readers see. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a ridiculous limitation in the MediaWiki software. Even if non-logged-in users have no Wiki preference set, there is still a locale associated with the browser itself, such as en_US (English, United States), that gives both language and country; that should be used as the default to render the dates in a consistent style. That's how most internationalized web sites work. Wasted Time R ( talk) 04:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/International Speedway Corporation was closed after three rather brief comments, all of the "oh you should fix this" type and all of which I addressed. I expected that at least one person would need to object to the article being featured for it to be rejected, but maybe I am mistaken. The problem I have with this is that if someone in the future wanted to take the article and get try to get it to FA, they would look at the failed FA nomination and have no idea what needed to be improved. Recury ( talk) 19:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
My point is, isn't everyone entitled to a detailed review before their nomination gets closed? I could understand foregoing that if 4 or 5 people said it wasn't even close, but that isn't what happened. Recury ( talk) 14:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
(undent)I've spent some time looking at this, and notwithstanding the comments above, I think Recury has something of a point here. That's not to say that it should have been promoted -- Tony and Gimmetrow say they have comments to make about flaws in the article. As a FAC nominator, though, it would be good to get at least one substantive negative comment before closure so that you'd have something to work with for next time. Not to criticize the closer of this FAC (I haven't looked to see if it was Sandy or Raul) but if I'd had a FAC closed with only these comments and responses I would be a bit disappointed. Just my two cents. Mike Christie (talk) 13:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There are currently 11 FACs (listed in the "FACs needing feedback" template at the top of this page) that don't have enough feedback for consensus. There are more at the top of the FAC page. Review by folks knowledgeable about the criteria is encouraged. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
People (and by this, I mean non-Wikipedians) often wonder who it is exactly that writes Wikipedia's articles, especially the FAs. Often, they will assume that thousands of monkeys on typewriters wrote the thing equally, each individual contributing only an anonymous sentence fragment or two. While random passers-by do help, in reality most FAs are primarily written by one or a very few authors in close collaboration, and that is probably a Good Thing in terms of coherence of the writing. And it is valuable to know who these primary authors are for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, though, discerning the primary authors from long edit histories is not practicable for outsider non-Wikipedians, and can in some cases be a seriously time-consuming task even for those of us most familiar with wiki structures. So, I propose that we simply include a listing of the primary contributor(s) to the current version of the article in the FAC, when such information is still fresh in everyone's minds, to be consulted for future reference.
Among the people and processes that would find such information valuable:
I also suggest that the listings be made machine-readable (perhaps through a template?), so as to keep options open on the further aggregation of these listings. Thank you.-- Pharos ( talk) 05:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
FAR gets everything it needs from Article stats and {{ articlehistory}}. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I realize this is not a popular idea right now. I think it's maybe just one of those things we should have been doing since the beginning, but neglected to, and so it seems to go against our principles, but it really doesn't. I do not think that being one of the primary contributors should give you any special rights or privileges over an article on Wikipedia.
As I see it, this is an issue of transparency. On a theoretical level, we already have fantastic transparency here — transparency unrivaled in the history of publishing, really — by the openly readable nature of our edit logs. But on a practical level, for people who are not wiki-savvy (the vast majority of our readership, unfortunately), these people do not know who writes our articles. The idea that real individuals have written the article, and not some "hive-mind", is a powerful corrective to one of the most persistent myths about us.
And I don't think pseudonyms are a detriment here to inquiries by academics or media: the contributions of user accounts can still be followed, and most important, the owners of those accounts can still be easily contacted for future questions. This is an important point: the primary contributors to an article will be the #1 experts on how the article was constructed, including all of the background stuff like research methods which is often undocumented on talk pages. It is vital, to my thinking, to maintain this link between primary contributors and those making inquiries about the articles, for as long as possible, because questions will inevitably arise that need answering. I don't think it is enough to put a note on a talk page — really, you want to be able to e-mail the person (and many users have this feature enabled), even if they're no longer active at Wikipedia.
As I see it, raw statistics are and will always be an imperfect measurement of contribution level. It is not uncommon for one person to make major contributions in a handful of edits, but for others to make many edits of small corrections or just fixing vandalism. The advantage of a wiki, which is a human technology, is that it allows the people most knowledgeable about a situation, which in this case would be the people at the FAC, to make such decisions. Yes, the listing of the primary contributors to an article's current version (and by that I mean simply the version at FAC) would be a subjective, human-based process, no doubt. But I do not think it should have to be a controversial process. In the vast majority of cases I don't think there will be any controversy at all, and if there ever is we should just be inclusive. Even on an article with many major contributors, narrowing down hundreds of usernames to five primary contributors would really help with our book-keeping (most FAs I think would probably only have 1-3, though). And keeping our book-keeping in order on this point will only prevent the necessity of people having to go through reams of edit histories whenever these questions come up.-- Pharos ( talk) 05:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I have some concerns about a recent trend of lists and quasi-lists being nominated here instead of featured articles. Specifically, I'm talking about Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series, Characters of Kingdom Hearts, and List of works by William Monahan. Should these be (or be nominated as) featured articles, or featured lists? Raul654 ( talk) 16:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Two observations:
"List of ..." isn't a requirement for being considered at FL. I agree that all Raul's examples are lists. The first two are very similar in concept to List of Metal Gear Solid characters, which is an FL. The list of works was an FL candidate. It failed because it only attracted two reviewers (who were negative) but only one of those thought it was half-list-half-article-and-should-make-its-mind-up. So it would be a stretch to say there was consensus to push it over to FA. The €2 commemorative coins was discussed recently at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/€2 commemorative coins. I think that is a list too, but I sense people were reluctant to strip off its FA star, which is considered a higher award.
FL is capable of handling lists with a lot of prose. When I was more active at FL, there were a couple of occasions where a list had substantial prose, and I sought out a prose-reviewer to help out. Perhaps we could discuss a way of handling that situation routinely. United States Navy enlisted rates has more prose than list, and I hope List of United States Presidential assassination attempts will turn up at FLC one day. It is probably best for any list/article discussion to occur before it turns up as a candidate.
Do we need some distinction to recommend where to seek featured status? A quick thought: "If the subject is plural and the article contains more content on the (distinct but similar) topic elements than the topic as a whole." So, for example, an article on a rock band wouldn't be a list, even if it discusses each band member, since the article mainly concerns the whole. Typically, for a list, discussion of the whole topic isn't expected to continue beyond the lead, though there are exceptions. However, I'm not convinced a formal distinction is possible or desirable. Colin° Talk 19:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, I think all the examples I cited (as well as the Sweet Escape Tour article Indianescence mentioned) should all be featured lists, and that if FLC doesn't currently accomodate them, it should expand so that it does. Raul654 ( talk) 16:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing in the FL criteria to prevent them being considered. There is a "Useful list" threshold that long ago only accepted lists where each entry was (or could be) an article. This was changed to allow timelines and finite sets (such as the character lists, or lists of works). We have three FAs that some say should be FLs ( Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, Characters of Kingdom Hearts and €2 commemorative coins); and two FACs that should be at FLC ( Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series and List of works by William Monahan).
The List of works seems least controversial as everyone, including the nominator, thinks it is a list (clue's in the title :-). Awadewit noted that perhaps reviewers were unfamiliar with the "annotated bibliography" genre. If this was renominated as an FLC, some literary-minded reviewers can be invited. I'd be happy to write something about the issues at the previous FLC (that the issues with the large chunks of prose are stylistic and editorial, not reasons to exclude from consideration at FLC). Could this move be done now?
Raul, what do you intend to do with the existing FAs and the other FAC? Do the FAs need to go through FAR, or could the process be short-circuited with a special FLC nomination for discussion? Colin° Talk 17:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think that these sorts of pages, which have a significant amount of prose content, should be considered articles rather than lists. The need for attention to the neutrality and accuracy of the text surpasses the need for attention to organization and design, so FAC serves them better than FLC. The most important thing however is that FAC and FLC both stick to improving pages, rather than bringing them into compliance with some conception of the FA and FL criteria; where the two conflict, first takes precedence, and where the latter does not entail the former, the work is without value. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Having taken some time to reflect on the failure of the FAC on the article I had been working on for some time as well as reading comments on current nominations, I'm rather concerned with the number of reviewers who leave a long bulleted list of spelling errors, grammatical errors and badly worded sentences as a review and then conclude - badly written, not FA standard yet.
I wonder why the reviewer doesn't use his time to simply correct the article itself rather than just use it to rub into the poor nominator's face. It's almost as if you trying to use the typographical errors as a body of evidence to bring down the whole article. FAC isn't some sort of English exam where people submit essays to be graded and marked for errors. My biggest annoyance is when the reviewer actually spells out in his review blah is badly phrased, blah blah is better. Why didn't you just change it in the article then and just tell the nominator you've copyeditted his article, check the history? It's supposed to be a collaborative effort. Articles are supposed to judged here for their detail, references and the layout and style of writing as a whole etc. not single sentences.
I urge reviewers to stop cataloguing grammatical errors and example clumsy writing in their reviews and actually go and edit the thing. This does not require any in depth knowledge of the subject...all you are doing is rewriting what is already there. Centy – reply• contribs – 02:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
In my current review of an FAC, I did both. I corrected the minor grammatical errors that were relatively uncontroversial, but I left some for the nominator to correct. Sometimes what is one user's "better" phrasing is another user's worse phrasing. Going in and editing the prose of another user is sometimes a tricky affair. Better to err on the side of caution in giving comments, in my opinion, than risk alienating an editor. Moreover, when someone points out errors to me and I correct them myself, I'm much more apt to learn from my mistakes, rather than having someone else just correct them for me. 69.202.60.86 ( talk) 16:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
The community doesn't seem to be highlighting and addressing unactionable or invalid declarations on FACs, and the number is increasing. When there are so many of these occurring, the risk is that other reviewers will glance at the previous declarations and won't seriously review the article per the criteria. This trend contributes to the backlog at FAC; several articles are in need of considered review before they can be closed. Perhaps this trend could be addressed if nominators who bring many articles to FAC can begin to review as many articles as they bring? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
However they are just as bad as long but off-topic rambling votes. I have seen support or opposes which are pretty long but discuss other articles, editors, or general philosophy :> And they may detract other reviewers even more - as they might think "oh, it's long so it's probably good". Short, at least, are what they appear to be.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. I nominated Tawfiq Canaan for FA review. It's my first such nomination and I am unfamiliar with the process. After one 'weak oppose', the nomination was closed with no further comments. I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on why this happened. Is it that the comments in the 'weak oppose' were deemed valid? I responded to the comment and posed a question to which I received no response. In order to improve the article, I was hoping for more feedback and an explanation. Also, is it that one weak oppose leads to the closure of the nomination? Thanks. Tiamut 13:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
There's a discussion at this discussion that may interest some here. It's not directly a FAC issue, but I'm posting here because (a) at least a couple of FAs may be affected, most notably Constantine II of Scotland, which was promoted very recently; and (b) it relates to a MOS issue and I know there are several MOS experts who read this page. Please contribute at the discussion page if you're interested. See also Talk:Constantine II of Scotland for some related debate. Mike Christie (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
sgeureka self-nominated the good article Mythology of Carnivàle for featured article status at 1:12 on December 18. By 21:43 on December 27, there was not a single vote (with the exception of an implied support from the nominator) and the discussion was closed and not promoted. The FAC is here. Is there anything wrong with this? – thedemonhog talk • edits 18:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
This is something which seems to be done quite a bit in FAC's and FLC's, where users from a particular project support articles to do with the project area. This, would surely consistute of "vote-stacking" as all of the Supports are coming from the home project, no other place, meaning if it had say for instance, 7 supports (all from that home project members) and 1 oppose, it would for sure be promoted. Am I wrong?
However, there seems to be an area of confusion. If a project member decides to support one of their project area FAC's, it should be compulsary for them (as they are a member of the main project) to give a detailed explaination of what led them to make this decision. If four or five people put support without a reason, surely their votes should just be discounted? Also, do Raul and Sandy look at particular FACs to see if some have six or seven supports and look at who has voted for the particular article, or not?
Is vote-stacking prohibited from FAC/FLC's? Are members from the "home project" allowed to vote on their FAC/FLC? In my view they should not, as stated earlier, this is clearly vote-stacking. The current system in place leads for a biast FAC/FLC where one article could stroll through with seven supports all from a particular project.
Let's take for instance this FAC. The FAC mentioned, of Gilberto Silva had eight supports (ten in total) with very little comment. Whoever nominated the article, although it may feel good for them, everybody should write down problems with the article - there is always problems with articles, no article is perfect. Just writing support makes me think that vote stacking is involved. In my view, project members should not be allowed to support their FAC/FLCs as there is room for bias in here. 10 project members could support one FAC, but another FAC to do with another project because no project members supported the article. This leads to the system becoming very disjointed.
D.M.N. ( talk) 21:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a problem on FLC, particularly on subjects that attract less mature editors. It is nice to support your friends and it feels good to see a subject you care about become featured. Wikiproject members have the potential to be really good reviewers. They are much more familiar with the subject, good and bad sources and can spot errors or omissions that many reviewers wouldn't see. A good Wikiproject would have reviewed the list prior to FLC, but that rarely happens. The big problem, as Sandy notes, is lack of reviewers. Often the best and most thorough reviewers are attracted to commenting on the best and most thorough lists/articles. So we end up with the situation where our best lists get a hard time at FLC but some of our worst lists are only looked at by fans.
The problem with FLC is compounded by the lack of a director, which means decisions on promotion have to be fairly clear-cut in the guidelines. These are consensus plus a minimum of four support (including the nominator). [Note: I'm not suggesting we need a director.] I'm minded to suggest that at least two of those should be from disinterested editors (no substantial editing history on the article or subject, no project affiliation, no close wikifriendship) but this may be difficult to check or enforce while assuming good faith. Colin° Talk 16:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Independent RfC comment from one who doesn't work in this area: I think any change in policy would be unnecessary rules creep, which would be difficult-to-apply and of questionable value. This isn't a vote anyways, and I trust that Sandy and Raul do more than count !votes. I imagine such a policy would lead to users challenging comments for being de facto project supporters, and so forth. It could be messy, unnecessarily personal, and off-topic. Challenging project membership doesn't really address the substance of each candidate article. The existing guidelines on CANVASSing along with some modest scrutiny should suffice. Cool Hand Luke 23:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
ASTM International uses a consensus process to develop standards documents; perhaps it would be a useful model for FAC. -- Una Smith ( talk) 03:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
So I stumbled across User:VeblenBot/C/Requests_for_peer_review, which is a product of the revamped peer review process. I figured that FAC and FAR could use a similar page, so I dropped a note on VeblenBot's operator User:CBM, and he kindly set up User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article review candidates and User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates. So for those of you who dislike wading through the 1 MB monstrosity that is the FAC page, enjoy! (and don't forget to thank CBM!). Budding Journalist 03:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)
I must say I do like the idea of an unfettered choice of subject matter at FAC - something like some sort of Freudian free association as to what wikifolks really want to give a spit 'n' boot polish too to polish up to FAC. Pop culture is today's version of folklore, fables and mythology so I have no problem with Simpsons as I do with ancient material.
But I digress; there is so much passing through FAC that I wonder if by choosing something too obscure one is dooming a FA candidate article to failing or at least delaying passing as it raises less interest than a more accessible one..and that as FAC gets busier this may be more apparent (or maybe I am just putting 1 & 1 together and getting 3....)...cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 14:11, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I disagree about those triassic dino FAs - the only one which has had a collaborative workout is Herrerasaurus which has gone a bit pear-shaped. I haven't looked at the others recently but all these are meaty enough to become FAs. Gawd Firs, yer gettin' all pessimistic all of a sudden..at least there are some active editors in WP dinos, compared with WP Fungi it's a wealth of talent, enough of whom are keen to point out things and assess at FAC to allow Raul to see there is a consensus of support (though outside input is always much appreciated).cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 10:28, 24 November 2007 (UTC)
Right now there are 97 FACs on the list. I recall when there used to be no more than 40 or so. Some have been there since Sept. I don't recall us ever hitting the 100-FACs at once limit before. I can't help but wonder if Raul654 is overtaxed on his FA director duties. Sumoeagle179 ( talk) 20:15, 23 November 2007 (UTC)
I'll be archiving it in the near future (like tomorrow or Monday). Raul654 ( talk) 05:33, 25 November 2007 (UTC)
I know people have been saying for some time now that I need to delegate some of the work I do here. I have said that I didn't feel like it was too much, and that I didn't need a deputy. Well, with trends in FAC (towards ever more nominations - 100+ at a time now), I've re-evaluated my position on the matter, and I've come to the conclusion that I do need some help.
To that end, I've decided to name user:SandyGeorgia as my proxy here. The role will be essentially equivalent for the FAC to what Marskell and Joel31 do on FAR - she'll close nominations as either successful or unsuccessful, and interpret policies about what an article should or should not contain, and what is and is not an actionable objection - all just the same as I would. I don't intend to delegate the FAC as much as I do the FAR - I'll still be doing a significant portion of the promotions, but the job has become too big for one person to do it on a voluntary basis. It's possible that a second person might not be enough to break the logjam here - so I'm keeping open the possibility of having a third person do it. (I already have someone in mind.)
Lastly, succession issues come up from time to time. People ask me what will happen if I go on vacation or get hit by a bus. The FA director essentially has three big jobs - FAC, FAR, and scheduling the main page. (On those occasions when I do take a vacation, I can schedule FAs for the main page ahead of time and the FAC is robust enough to be unattended alone for a few days) If the worst should happen to me (knock on wood), I expect that Marskell could handle the FAR and Sandy the FAC. I haven't decided what to do about the main page scheduling - I consider that at some future juncture. Raul654 ( talk) 20:26, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
I don't really think Sandy should have to be an admin. Admins have a lot of things to do and tend to get spread thin, which we don't want. I think a person can be respected without an RfA. At least, I certainly hope so. There are a lot of admins I would be very opposed to for this job, however their RfA might have been. Also, I like how Sandy does reviews a lot. I'd encourage her to continue, personally. I find her opinions non-biased and based on the criteria, although it may give her an unhealthy amount of weight in FAC discussions. Hmmm... Wrad ( talk) 21:16, 26 November 2007 (UTC)
Sandy is an excellent choice. No doubt Sandy is qualified to do the job well. -- Aude ( talk) 00:46, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
While I do not object, in general, to SandyGeorgia becoming the FA assistant, I question the method by which she acquired the position. No one voted on this and no one got any input; it was an arbitrary decision by a single person. Personally, I don't agree with some of the decisions SandyGeorgia has made and her opinions on certain subjects. I know I am not alone. That said, my opinion may not be the majority and I am perfectly willing to accept a consensus one way or the other. While administrator status need not be a requirement, the community's approval is. I suggest some sort of discussion prior to beginning her duties where people can ask questions and get answers before we decide on additional assistance for Raul (and yes, I agree you could use some help, Raul) — BQZip01 — talk 04:57, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
My question here, again why is FA/FAR/FAC not subject to community input while arbcom, etc is? No offense to all the work Raul has done, but this strikes me as decidedly unwiki. I commend his work in the FA area and all the other work he does, but I simply think the community should have input to FA director selection and maybe the assistants to, just like at RFA, RFB, Arbcom, etc. Raul himself became FA director on a talk page vote, so there there is precedent for this community input in this area. Arbcom has yearly elections, on rotating 3-yr terms as I understand it. I think we should give consideration to a similar process here in the FA area. If the FA director, just like at arbcom gets reelected, that's fine, but at least there has been community input on it. Again, I have no ill will to Raul654 at all and commend all his great work, but I feel we should look at options in this area. — Rlevse • Talk • 18:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Let me clarify what I meant on all this. The issue is deeper than the appointment of Sandy for FAC. Raul654 became FA director in Aug 2004, by what was called ratification then, by a vote/not vote of 17 people, see here. This is over 3 years ago--longer than an arbcom term. Arbcom clerks are selected by arbitrators, not by the community. If an analagous process were in place for FA director, we'd have an FA director election every 3 years with that person selecting assistants for FAC, FAR, and TFA if he/she desired. I feel that since all this has come up recently and more than once, let's just settle it now instead of continually beating around the bush. It's obvious there are several editors with views/concerns in this area, so let's just air it out and settle it peaceably. Key questions as I see it are a) do we desire community input just on who the FA director is or their assistant too and 2) if so, how often should that person be reconfirmed/reelected/etc (pick your term of choice there). — Rlevse • Talk • 21:16, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
From Melty girl: At minimum, I think it might be a good idea for the two of them to write up something about how FAC assistantship works, what the COI groundrules are, whether Sandy's decisions might ever be overturned by Raul, what the community can do if problems arise, etc. Thanks for bringing up the specifics again, Melty. My take is the following. Of course Raul can always overturn any decision I make; he's the FA director. I don't imagine that ever happening, though, because if there's a FAC that isn't clear or where we might differ, I would leave it to him anyway or consult with him pre-closing. I can't think of anything less desirable for Wiki or the nominator than having an FA star stripped, and I would try hard to avoid promoting a controversial nom and risk that happening. This is not to say I'll always agree with Raul on promotions/archives, nor have I always agreed in the past, but when I disagree, absolutely the FA director's decision must trump. I strongly believe that the FA process must be driven a bit differently than any other process on Wiki, and Raul as director has long-standing community consensus. Otherwise, we could end up with a situation like GA, where an article can be a GA, be stripped of GA, and be returned to GA within a week. The FA process must be more stable. On COI, there are some people I've had differences with in the past over various issues; unless the consensus was very clear on their FAC noms, common sense would dictate that I not close their noms. That is my common sense take on COI; you can't write rules for common sense. I wouldn't close a FAC I've taken a position on, although I'll continue to try to keep the process moving by formatting the previous FACs, giving reminders when needed (for example, reminding that redlinks are not a valid oppose), etc. Raul can boot me at any time, or the community can boot me by talk page discussion; I'm not sure a new "process" is called for, and believe talk page consensus should work. Whether an RfA style vote is called for now, here or elsewhere, I think should be left up to Raul, but either way is fine with me. Avoiding problems down the road, and getting busy with the FAC backlog is what matters. On a related issue, Raul recently had to fail one of his own FACs; it goes without saying that having a delegate means I'll likely to have to make decisions on Raul's own noms, but I'm sure he's thought of that. I do agree with Marskell that too much turnover in the "janitors" wouldn't benefit FAC/FAR, and I'm not sure we need "term limits". As to "delegate for life"; it's demanding work. I don't think I'll be able to do it for life. The term will probably be self-limiting. :-) No, Shankbone, I don't hold grudges. Many editors can vouch that in spite of initial differences on FACs, FARs, or any other issue, I'll dig in and help them anytime, and forget past differences. And I usually literally do forget differences, unless I'm reminded. I try to never forget the positive, though. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 22:56, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
I wish to know what'll be done about FACs which garner little comments, and just the odd oppose. Sometimes the oppose is addressed, but the opposer cannot be bothered to check back if their concerns have been dealt with. Then, an FAC gets archived when the nominator is actually willing to work on the article. It's a rather rubbish situation, and seems to crop up more and more often. LuciferMorgan ( talk) 01:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the latest reply above, Sandy. This is all good to know and I like what I'm hearing. I'm now feeling comfortable with this talk page as the process for the community ratifying Raul's decision. But I do think that in the long run, this talk page doesn't really substitute for a page that editors can refer to about the FAC process and the FAC director and assistant(s) (and FAR staff too). Maybe I'm missing an existing WP: or Help: page, but I don't think so. I think if you wrote something up about how the process works, a lot of time could be saved answering recurring questions on this page and on your personal talk pages. This page could include much of the material you've sketched out here, and could also cover process issues such as User_talk:Raul654#Some_questions_about_your_job_as_the_FA_director, User_talk:Raul654#Anticipating_the_inevitable_.22Is_this_article_featured.22_questions, what the bot does after closing vs. what the nominator does (adding the barnstar!), and so on. I think that writing up the process on a WP: page and linking to that from all the FA pages would go a long way to making the process more transparent to editors and would save everyone time. You could walk people through from start to finish of FAC and FAR as to how you're handling things and how nominators should interact at various stages in the process. FAC and FAR are primary Wiki processes, and I think it would be helpful to better document how they work. -- Melty girl ( talk) 04:21, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
*Support for Raul's selection of Sandy as his proxy --
RelHistBuff (
talk) 14:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
I think qp10qp got it exactly right in his post above; I don't think there's a problem with accepting Sandy's position and moving on, and I don't think there would be much difficulty in resolving the issue if she were to fail. I also prefer a talk discussion to a formal vote; I think it allows for more fluidity in the posters' opinions.
Mike Christie
(talk) 14:59, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
Excuse me for asking, but if Raul654 says he needs help/a proxy, and has identified Sandy as being the best person for that job, why is anyone second guessing his (cap)ability to make such a decision? The recent discussions about judiciousness sound very much like a fundamental distrust of the FA director's ability to do the RightThingTM. This is not fair to the Raul, or to his position. -- Fullstop ( talk) 23:51, 28 November 2007 (UTC)
That's only one small piece of this whole pie. Sumoeagle179 19:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
It is not easy to be a FA director. You must know the FA criteria by heart, you must read a lot of comments in each FAC and you must know which opposes are "actionable". Raul654 has a few years experience as a FA director but SandyGeorgia is new to this. Even if she commented at a lot of FACs she only started closing them a few weeks ago. Raul654 needs to teach SandyGeorgia what to do and how to do it. -- Kaypoh ( talk) 14:28, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
It seems to me that the two topics of the "strangeness of the FA process" and the nomination/promotion by Raul should be treated separately, as they are different topics. I note three issues to the issue of the strangeness of the FA Process
-- Keerlls ton 16:27, 29 November 2007 (UTC) Quotes
“ | That is an example. If the problems are bigger than spelling mistakes, and the nominator says he fixed them but he did not, and the article is promoted wrongly? -- Kaypoh ( talk) 04:08, 24 November 2007 (UTC) | ” |
from User_talk:Raul654#Some_questions_about_your_job_as_the_FA_director-- Keerlls ton 14:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
“ | I wish to know what'll be done about FACs which garner little comments, and just the odd oppose. Sometimes the oppose is addressed, but the opposer cannot be bothered to check back if their concerns have been dealt with. Then, an FAC gets archived when the nominator is actually willing to work on the article. It's a rather rubbish situation, and seems to crop up more and more often. LuciferMorgan] (talk) 01:28, 28 November 2007 (UTC | ” |
From Concerns, above [added by -- Keerlls ton]
Proposed answer to 1: The strangeness is the erroneous promotion and erroneous lack of promotion and erroneous delisting from FAC.-- Keerlls ton 14:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
The "strangeness" -or "errors" are found everywhere in wikipedia.
I imagine FA status started out as a wikipedian's list of "what articles are good in wikipedia". It I imagine has since gotten somewhat official.
But is the rating of articles really building an encyclopedia? it does not improve an article to receive FA status - it helps people appreciate it, helps people receive credit for work, helps publicity... But this is not building an encyclopedia. This is a side-project aimed to help in improving wikipedia - not the main project - "Building wikipedia"
- Receiving FA status does not help an article - it does not magically change the writing style or improve it's quality in any other way.
--
Keerlls
ton 10:26, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Rationale from Directorship
Perhaps a short rationale in each promotion / decline would be useful? Like we see them in AfDs or RfMs.--
Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus |
talk 18:54, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
I hate to break up the above discussion, but various FAs that were promoted yesterday don't have the FA stars on their page. I've certainly noticed it on M62 Motorway, Pre-dreadnought battleship, Powderfinger and others. Yet some already have got the star. Peanut4 ( talk) 02:37, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
After *another* FAC going down in flames because not one, not two, not even three but four opposing editors never showed up after multiple posts on their talk pages, can we put some sort of note on the FAC page asking for more time, as concerns have been addressed but the reviewers don't show to refactor? David Fuchs ( talk) 20:56, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
I have just witnessed a not very amusing version of non-responding FAC critique: 1) an editor demands a POV-ed 'criticism' section and objects due to its lack 2) few days later that editor adds this section (poorly wikified) himself AND does not withdraw his objection 3) few days later I merge the section into the article, keeping most of the added information (after some wikifying and NPOVing) and... 4) the editor wakes up, restores the section (despite that its content is now duplicated) and comes back to the FAC commenting on 'removal of material' :> Sigh... -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 19:47, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
PR is basically dead these days, except for automated reviews. Editors know this, and would rather go straight to FAC instead of 'waste time' on PR. However, the automated review is not totally useless and will likely pick up some issues that could be improved. This suggests that there could be benefits from running the script on FA candidates. If this was done it might make sense to put the results on the talk page of the FAC; in the style of edit count on RFA.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 10:44, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
PR works for me, but I will ask a few people (who are familiar with the topic, edit similar topics, are in a relevant WikiProject, are good at copyediting, or otherwise I think they can help). I leave notes on their talk pages to please come and review. I am willing and try to return the favor for articles they are working on. That seems to work well, trying to resolve issues before I bring something to FAC. I haven't had much to fix with articles while they are at FAC. -- Aude ( talk) 18:22, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
For a long time I argued that an article should reach GA first, as a prerequisite to FA. Perhaps we could implement that, in place of the theoretically useful but in practice dead PR? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus | talk 19:43, 1 December 2007 (UTC)
(Undent) All this "PR is dead; GA sucks" talk is yesterday's news. It is not categorically true in either case. Moreover, it encourages posers to come in and mimic the GA sucks/PR dead cant, thus turning it into a minor meme of sorts. Stop whining and find something to improve and somewhere to contribute (including GA and PR). Ling.Nut 07:00, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
Umm guys, I know you enjoy debating which of GA or PR is better (or worse); but that was not the point I was suggesting at the start of this thread... I was proposing simply that if an article ends up on FAC without going through PR (as happens frequently), that the PR review bots do their job and report back to the FAC talk page.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 22:07, 4 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Editors know this, and would rather go straight to FAC instead of 'waste time' on PR. | ” |
I think that comment led to this topic.-- Keerlls ton 21:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
'The automated review from Peer Review is useful and will pick up issues. There are huge benefits from running the script on FA candidates. It makes sense to put the results on the talk page of the FAC; in the style of edit count on RFA.'
My version/interpretation/paraphrase of Nilfanion's comment- Let us begin again!--
Keerlls
ton 21:04, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi guys, I hope all is well. Can some of you pop over to my FAC above and give some feedback? I appreciate that the FAC page is really busy, although I'd like to get this specific FAC finished as soon as possible. Thanks in advance. I'd also like to thank everyone nice I've met on Wikipedia since my time here, and those that have helped at PR and FAC etc. I wish you all the best. LuciferMorgan ( talk) 02:42, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Improper nomination I request that the nominator remove one of his nominations before proceeding or requesting further comments. -The FAC should not be flooded by nominations from one user. Before nominating more than one article at the very least some further bureocracy should be done, noting the worth. The fact that neither of the nominator's concurrently nominated articles are receiving much comment are significators of the lack of worth of these articles and the lack of proper involvement of the wikipedia community on these articles - Which would be given if someone else had nominated one of the two. Move to dismiss either one or both of the nominated articles.
--
Keerlls
ton 16:00, 5 December 2007 (UTC)
REQUEST OF COMMENT FROM DIRETORSHIP -- Keerlls ton 15:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | I've been watching. There are some unfortunate reviews and comments being made (not only on those FACs) that I trust will get sorted out. It may not be possible to prevent unfortunate discussions and comments, but I do hope my message at the bottom of that discussion is clear; if I thought a nomination "improper", I'd remove it. I haven't; neither has Raul. Hangeth in there! SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 19:41, 6 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
[quote from SandyGeorgia's User Talk Page added -- Keerlls ton 09:54, 8 December 2007 (UTC)]
So - does the directorship believes that not noting (significant) NPOV concerns as a nominator constitutes negligence?-- Keerlls ton 10:14, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
The Rock Steady FAC is still open because Wesley Dodds has requested time to review it more thoroughly; there are no Opposes at all, much less Opposes that aren't being dealt with, evidenced by Tony's strike of his Oppose. Considering the situation, a second nomination a month later is not a violation of the spirit of the instruction, which is to make sure subsequent noms aren't put up too quickly, or when another article still has opposes or has not gained support. On the other hand, there are some older double FACs where the first is not resolved and does have outstanding Opposes; it would be good if that practice stopped, but those have been up for quite a while now, so it wouldn't be appropriate to remove them at this late stage. Some articles may pass with two Supports, and some may fail with 25 Supports; it's not a vote, it's a determination of when an article has attained the standards of WP:WIAFA. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:25, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | "While we don't have strict rules on when you can restart a FAC nomination, we very much prefer that nominators wait a few weeks between nominations (instead of immediately re-nominating). The number of reviewers is limited, and it's not fair to other nominators to have some people immediately restart failed FAC nominations. Raul654 05:08, 4 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
(a) It seems clear, at the very least, that we disagree on what consitutes support for an article's candidateship, - I believe support for an article means "substancial support" and not "one or two votes of support".
(a) It seems clear also that we disagree that what I quoted is relevant - I believe they do, in regards to there being similar reasons for the different policies.
--
Keerlls
ton 15:21, 6 December 2007 (UTC)
Step 1 from the Nomination Instructions:
“ | 1. Before nominating an article, ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria. | ” |
My interpretation of step one is that if a nominator has not done this - ensured that it meets all of the FA criteria - then he should not nominate at all.-- Keerlls ton 13:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Multiple nominations aren't a problem if the person doing the nominating is capable of keeping on top of them. Raul654 22:31, 11 April 2007 (UTC) | ” |
While copy-editing was going on he nominated another article that (predicably) had copy-editing needs. This does not constitute ensuring FA quality - he should have contacted a copy-editor before nominating.-- Keerlls ton 13:58, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
For the record, Sandy has my full support on these judgment calls. Raul654 ( talk) 16:31, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion here. Permalink is here. Samsara ( talk • contribs) 14:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
Step 1 from the Nomination Instructions:
“ | 1. Before nominating an article [a nominator must] ensure that it meets all of the FA criteria. | ” |
What constitutes ensuring that it meets all of the FA criteria?-- Keerlls ton 10:11, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | Verb: to ensure: To make sure or certain of something (usually some future event or condition). | ” |
From Wiktionary-- Keerlls ton 13:37, 8 December 2007 (UTC)
I have just discovered the Dead links toolbox installed next to the FAC TOC; it indicates several of the FACs have an alarming number of dead links that may need to be checked. Have others been checking this, and is there a way to run that tool on a specific article and paste that to the article FAC? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:00, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Should FACs be objected to if they contain dead links? Wikipedia:Citing sources#What to do when a reference link "goes dead" seems quite tolerant of dead links if they can't be replaced. Epbr123 ( talk) 19:16, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
Identifier | Meaning |
---|---|
Green (1) Message |
Link should work but should be checked. |
Yellow (2) Warn |
Link that could pose a problem to users. Examples: expiring news, registration/subscription req., and low signal to noise |
Blue (3) Server/connection |
Simple connection issue/just about impossible to fix without the webmaster's help |
Orange (4) Heuristically determined |
The software thinks that the link is dead. 404 or similar appear in redirects urls.
|
Red (5) 404, 410 error |
Server has confirmed the link as dead. |
Slategray (6) | Spamlink or Google Cache link |
I'm surprised that very few people have tried the edit feature. Its by far the most powerful feature as you can edit the set of links to an article and send back the results. It also has the preset to help find that dead link again and something ith the internet archive.
The colors as nobody really seem to be picking up on the subtle with the selector at the top so I have a graph here explaining the basics.
The tool will account for 404 redirect, otherwise known as soft 404s. There's a hidden debug mode for the on-the-fly stuff, just append &debug=1
to the
end like so. And a hint for find the live article is to search for text pulled from the Internet Archive. And if people could provided interface feedback suggestion that would be much appreciated. —
Dispenser (
talk) 01:54, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
Dead link tool is mighty useful! Thanks for advertising it, any other tools of that caliber that you guys want to share? -- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 06:05, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
I've update the tool once again, the mergeChanges.py has been re-engineered to work faster while providing more feedback. A few minor changes some of the other files. Please notify me of bugs.
The threshold hack should be replace with #display=0,1,1,1,1,1
(
example) which can be simplified to #display=0
where each number corresponds to the rank. A script will toggle the rows once the page has loaded. Doing it this way allows users to see all links on the page. —
Dispenser (
talk) 23:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
The editor who nominated this FAC contacted roughly 50 editors in an attempt to gain votes for their FAC - surely such behaviour should not be encouraged? Or is FAC encouraging everyone to shamelessly spam numerous talk pages for support votes nowadays? Maybe I should spam everyone to check my FAC - maybe I should start with all the editors I'm in regular contact with... LuciferMorgan ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
[←]LOL, I certainly agree with some of that. If I see an editor citing AGF in defence of their own edit, I pretty much always take it that the edit wasn't good faith at all; similarly, where an editor cites AGF when describing another's edit is quite often an indicator that bad faith was assumed. Carre ( talk) 20:55, 10 December 2007 (UTC)
I'm sorry I had to be the one to bring this issue forward, but I'm more sorry that the article was languishing at the bottom of the list, compelling me to take off the proxy hat and put on my review hat to kickstart it. Now to focus back on the article, not the editors contacted. It's the article that matters; without AGF on Wiki, we could all be in a deep dark nasty hole here. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:56, 11 December 2007 (UTC)
[←]Hi Lucifer: Somehow, we've really gotten off on the wrong foot here. I am hardly defending the idea of canvassing for yes votes. I firmly agree with you that such behavior is NOT acceptable (as you know from my posts, if you've read them carefully). All I've said is that I don't think that contacting WPs is unacceptable. As you have since posted, that isn't what this user did. I confess, I didn't check; I'm afraid I have rather limited time for Wiki stuff, and try not to get involved in controversial stuff. For this very reason! Life's too short to have our blood pressures raised like this. Truce? MeegsC | Talk 17:06, 13 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | The editor who nominated this FAC contacted roughly 50 editors in an attempt to gain votes for their FAC - surely such behaviour should not be encouraged? Or is FAC encouraging everyone to shamelessly spam numerous talk pages for support votes nowadays? Maybe I should spam everyone to check my FAC - maybe I should start with all the editors I'm in regular contact with... LuciferMorgan ( talk) 19:50, 10 December 2007 (UTC) | ” |
Let's see - I think friendly notices should be encouraged and greater involvement should be encouraged. (I in fact encouraged this instance of canvassing (whether it be friendly notices or not I am unsure)
I am sure you shouldn`t spam - let's be serious - the discussion is not about whether spam is alright - spam is obviously bad.
The problem is that your characterization of this person's actions as in bad faith is not yet clear - let's try and clarify.--
Keerlls
ton 14:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
“ |
United Nations Parliamentary Assembly
|
” |
and similar statements were put. - this does constitute "an attempt to gain votes" - but I don't see that asking for vote is too different from asking for a "review of candicacy" - it's different wording - perhaps bad wording - but ultimately they are the same thing.-- Keerlls ton 18:10, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
Topic started by Keerlls ton 14:31, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
“ | To oppose a nomination, write *Object or *Oppose, followed by the reason(s). Each objection must provide a specific rationale that can be addressed. If nothing can be done in principle to address the objection, the director may ignore it. References on style and grammar do not always agree; if a contributor cites support for a certain style in a standard reference work or other authoritative source, reviewers should consider accepting it. | ” |
Does this mean that rather than saying "I don't like it" editors should say "It's badly written" or does it instead say that rather than saying "it's badly written" reviewers should say "I have found 12374 of bad grammar and I shall show each and how to improve it"?
--
Keerlls
ton 15:10, 14 December 2007 (UTC)
This is not about the Peer Review or GA, but FAC. In general, the quality of the reviews on this page is of a high standard. Some candidatures are being shot down by opposes that are not struck when the article is adjusted accordingly. These are false negatives, which are potentially hurtful to the nominator but not directly damaging to Wikipedia. False positives, articles passing FAC without being of FA quality, are much more serious. Gaining the FA star is a disincentive to further work, so these articles may not ever improve to the "required" standard.
This candidature stayed open for 9 days. It gained 2 supports, one of which probably should be discounted, before passing. This is the sort of review quality that is expected at GAC not FAC. This alteration is the sum total of the modifications resulting from Wikipedia's review process. There are two questions this suggests: Firstly, is this article FA-standard at this time? Secondly, is that review something we want to hold up as a validation of an example of our best work?
I feel the article fails criteria 1(a) and 1(b), and possibly more. The last sentence of the lead contains a redundancy, and a thorough review would likely find more. Furthermore, if this is about the meteorological history of a storm - where is information about rain? That's meteorological information... The quality of this article is properly a job for FAR, but the low quality of its review should be discussed here.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 22:52, 15 December 2007 (UTC)
Is there a competition going on in the Hurricane WikiProject? I've noticed some commentary that doesn't make sense about how many noms Hink has, so I feel like I might be missing something. There's a template at the top of this talk page, FACs needing feedback, that currently has 13 FACs that don't have enough review for consensus. Although I've been faithfully maintaining it and pestering people on their talk pages to review articles, many articles sit for weeks with no review. Maybe that FAC committee can start closing FACs as soon as people start reviewing them. Articles have always been passed on two supports after that amount of time unless the FA director sees problems with the article; nothing new here. The only way to get more review is to, well, give more review. Regards, SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:03, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
I've opened an FAR on this article. Please discuss the article there, and the process here.-- Nilf anion ( talk) 01:17, 16 December 2007 (UTC)
Improving the FAC page? - How? "Featured Article Comittee"? - fewer candidateships and therefore more attention per candidateship? more transparency? enforcing greater bureocracy as a pre-requisite to candidacy? greater "friendly notices"/number of reviewers? abolition of multiple candidateships and restarted nominations? having regulations/rules and an active directorship that can enforce regulations?-- Keerlls ton 23:06, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
There has been a lively debate at MOSNUM on the further relaxation of what used to be the compulsory linking/autoformatting of all full dates in WP aritlces; see also here. This has resulted, in the interim, in the insertion of a set of guidelines for non-autoformatted dates into MOSNUM by User:Remember the dot. The new guidelines mirror WP's existing practice for varieties of English, as set out at MOS.
This debate has emerged a number of times since the failed attempt to persuade the developers at MediaWiki to decouple the autoformatting and linking functions, as a first step towards fixing what many WPians, including me, regard as a dysfunctional system. In particular, several participants in the debate at MOSNUM talk have pointed out that date autoformatting hides inconsistency in the raw dates for logged-in editors, that there is a surprising amount of inconsistency, and that our articles need to be cleaned up in this respect, especially where autoformatting is retained. There is concern that the vast majority of readers (who do not log in or, if they do, do not select a date format preference) see an ungainly mixture of whatever raw date formats have been entered by various editors over the years, hidden from us, of course, by the system.
For the FAC process, there are three relevant points:
This is an example of what most of our readers see (even if dates are formatted) if different raw formats are used in an article; they aren't logged in, so they don't have user preference settings:
On the other hand, logged in users with user preferences set will see consistent formatting depending on their preference settings, no matter the raw formatting used (same text as above, but linked):
Which in my preference settings, yields:
The point is, we're logged in and have preferences set, so we're not seeing the raw formatting mess that most of our readers are seeing, caused by different formats entered by different editors. Because we're logged in, by wikilinking dates, we are covering up inconsistency seen by most Wiki readers. The proposal has to do with consistent raw formatting, since that is what most readers see. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 04:05, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a ridiculous limitation in the MediaWiki software. Even if non-logged-in users have no Wiki preference set, there is still a locale associated with the browser itself, such as en_US (English, United States), that gives both language and country; that should be used as the default to render the dates in a consistent style. That's how most internationalized web sites work. Wasted Time R ( talk) 04:34, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/International Speedway Corporation was closed after three rather brief comments, all of the "oh you should fix this" type and all of which I addressed. I expected that at least one person would need to object to the article being featured for it to be rejected, but maybe I am mistaken. The problem I have with this is that if someone in the future wanted to take the article and get try to get it to FA, they would look at the failed FA nomination and have no idea what needed to be improved. Recury ( talk) 19:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
My point is, isn't everyone entitled to a detailed review before their nomination gets closed? I could understand foregoing that if 4 or 5 people said it wasn't even close, but that isn't what happened. Recury ( talk) 14:28, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
(undent)I've spent some time looking at this, and notwithstanding the comments above, I think Recury has something of a point here. That's not to say that it should have been promoted -- Tony and Gimmetrow say they have comments to make about flaws in the article. As a FAC nominator, though, it would be good to get at least one substantive negative comment before closure so that you'd have something to work with for next time. Not to criticize the closer of this FAC (I haven't looked to see if it was Sandy or Raul) but if I'd had a FAC closed with only these comments and responses I would be a bit disappointed. Just my two cents. Mike Christie (talk) 13:25, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
There are currently 11 FACs (listed in the "FACs needing feedback" template at the top of this page) that don't have enough feedback for consensus. There are more at the top of the FAC page. Review by folks knowledgeable about the criteria is encouraged. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:04, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
People (and by this, I mean non-Wikipedians) often wonder who it is exactly that writes Wikipedia's articles, especially the FAs. Often, they will assume that thousands of monkeys on typewriters wrote the thing equally, each individual contributing only an anonymous sentence fragment or two. While random passers-by do help, in reality most FAs are primarily written by one or a very few authors in close collaboration, and that is probably a Good Thing in terms of coherence of the writing. And it is valuable to know who these primary authors are for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately, though, discerning the primary authors from long edit histories is not practicable for outsider non-Wikipedians, and can in some cases be a seriously time-consuming task even for those of us most familiar with wiki structures. So, I propose that we simply include a listing of the primary contributor(s) to the current version of the article in the FAC, when such information is still fresh in everyone's minds, to be consulted for future reference.
Among the people and processes that would find such information valuable:
I also suggest that the listings be made machine-readable (perhaps through a template?), so as to keep options open on the further aggregation of these listings. Thank you.-- Pharos ( talk) 05:19, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
FAR gets everything it needs from Article stats and {{ articlehistory}}. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:30, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
OK, I realize this is not a popular idea right now. I think it's maybe just one of those things we should have been doing since the beginning, but neglected to, and so it seems to go against our principles, but it really doesn't. I do not think that being one of the primary contributors should give you any special rights or privileges over an article on Wikipedia.
As I see it, this is an issue of transparency. On a theoretical level, we already have fantastic transparency here — transparency unrivaled in the history of publishing, really — by the openly readable nature of our edit logs. But on a practical level, for people who are not wiki-savvy (the vast majority of our readership, unfortunately), these people do not know who writes our articles. The idea that real individuals have written the article, and not some "hive-mind", is a powerful corrective to one of the most persistent myths about us.
And I don't think pseudonyms are a detriment here to inquiries by academics or media: the contributions of user accounts can still be followed, and most important, the owners of those accounts can still be easily contacted for future questions. This is an important point: the primary contributors to an article will be the #1 experts on how the article was constructed, including all of the background stuff like research methods which is often undocumented on talk pages. It is vital, to my thinking, to maintain this link between primary contributors and those making inquiries about the articles, for as long as possible, because questions will inevitably arise that need answering. I don't think it is enough to put a note on a talk page — really, you want to be able to e-mail the person (and many users have this feature enabled), even if they're no longer active at Wikipedia.
As I see it, raw statistics are and will always be an imperfect measurement of contribution level. It is not uncommon for one person to make major contributions in a handful of edits, but for others to make many edits of small corrections or just fixing vandalism. The advantage of a wiki, which is a human technology, is that it allows the people most knowledgeable about a situation, which in this case would be the people at the FAC, to make such decisions. Yes, the listing of the primary contributors to an article's current version (and by that I mean simply the version at FAC) would be a subjective, human-based process, no doubt. But I do not think it should have to be a controversial process. In the vast majority of cases I don't think there will be any controversy at all, and if there ever is we should just be inclusive. Even on an article with many major contributors, narrowing down hundreds of usernames to five primary contributors would really help with our book-keeping (most FAs I think would probably only have 1-3, though). And keeping our book-keeping in order on this point will only prevent the necessity of people having to go through reams of edit histories whenever these questions come up.-- Pharos ( talk) 05:07, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I have some concerns about a recent trend of lists and quasi-lists being nominated here instead of featured articles. Specifically, I'm talking about Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series, Characters of Kingdom Hearts, and List of works by William Monahan. Should these be (or be nominated as) featured articles, or featured lists? Raul654 ( talk) 16:41, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Two observations:
"List of ..." isn't a requirement for being considered at FL. I agree that all Raul's examples are lists. The first two are very similar in concept to List of Metal Gear Solid characters, which is an FL. The list of works was an FL candidate. It failed because it only attracted two reviewers (who were negative) but only one of those thought it was half-list-half-article-and-should-make-its-mind-up. So it would be a stretch to say there was consensus to push it over to FA. The €2 commemorative coins was discussed recently at Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/€2 commemorative coins. I think that is a list too, but I sense people were reluctant to strip off its FA star, which is considered a higher award.
FL is capable of handling lists with a lot of prose. When I was more active at FL, there were a couple of occasions where a list had substantial prose, and I sought out a prose-reviewer to help out. Perhaps we could discuss a way of handling that situation routinely. United States Navy enlisted rates has more prose than list, and I hope List of United States Presidential assassination attempts will turn up at FLC one day. It is probably best for any list/article discussion to occur before it turns up as a candidate.
Do we need some distinction to recommend where to seek featured status? A quick thought: "If the subject is plural and the article contains more content on the (distinct but similar) topic elements than the topic as a whole." So, for example, an article on a rock band wouldn't be a list, even if it discusses each band member, since the article mainly concerns the whole. Typically, for a list, discussion of the whole topic isn't expected to continue beyond the lead, though there are exceptions. However, I'm not convinced a formal distinction is possible or desirable. Colin° Talk 19:08, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Frankly, I think all the examples I cited (as well as the Sweet Escape Tour article Indianescence mentioned) should all be featured lists, and that if FLC doesn't currently accomodate them, it should expand so that it does. Raul654 ( talk) 16:10, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
There is nothing in the FL criteria to prevent them being considered. There is a "Useful list" threshold that long ago only accepted lists where each entry was (or could be) an article. This was changed to allow timelines and finite sets (such as the character lists, or lists of works). We have three FAs that some say should be FLs ( Characters of Final Fantasy VIII, Characters of Kingdom Hearts and €2 commemorative coins); and two FACs that should be at FLC ( Characters in Castlevania: Sorrow series and List of works by William Monahan).
The List of works seems least controversial as everyone, including the nominator, thinks it is a list (clue's in the title :-). Awadewit noted that perhaps reviewers were unfamiliar with the "annotated bibliography" genre. If this was renominated as an FLC, some literary-minded reviewers can be invited. I'd be happy to write something about the issues at the previous FLC (that the issues with the large chunks of prose are stylistic and editorial, not reasons to exclude from consideration at FLC). Could this move be done now?
Raul, what do you intend to do with the existing FAs and the other FAC? Do the FAs need to go through FAR, or could the process be short-circuited with a special FLC nomination for discussion? Colin° Talk 17:42, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
I think that these sorts of pages, which have a significant amount of prose content, should be considered articles rather than lists. The need for attention to the neutrality and accuracy of the text surpasses the need for attention to organization and design, so FAC serves them better than FLC. The most important thing however is that FAC and FLC both stick to improving pages, rather than bringing them into compliance with some conception of the FA and FL criteria; where the two conflict, first takes precedence, and where the latter does not entail the former, the work is without value. Christopher Parham (talk) 20:43, 21 December 2007 (UTC)
Having taken some time to reflect on the failure of the FAC on the article I had been working on for some time as well as reading comments on current nominations, I'm rather concerned with the number of reviewers who leave a long bulleted list of spelling errors, grammatical errors and badly worded sentences as a review and then conclude - badly written, not FA standard yet.
I wonder why the reviewer doesn't use his time to simply correct the article itself rather than just use it to rub into the poor nominator's face. It's almost as if you trying to use the typographical errors as a body of evidence to bring down the whole article. FAC isn't some sort of English exam where people submit essays to be graded and marked for errors. My biggest annoyance is when the reviewer actually spells out in his review blah is badly phrased, blah blah is better. Why didn't you just change it in the article then and just tell the nominator you've copyeditted his article, check the history? It's supposed to be a collaborative effort. Articles are supposed to judged here for their detail, references and the layout and style of writing as a whole etc. not single sentences.
I urge reviewers to stop cataloguing grammatical errors and example clumsy writing in their reviews and actually go and edit the thing. This does not require any in depth knowledge of the subject...all you are doing is rewriting what is already there. Centy – reply• contribs – 02:28, 23 December 2007 (UTC)
In my current review of an FAC, I did both. I corrected the minor grammatical errors that were relatively uncontroversial, but I left some for the nominator to correct. Sometimes what is one user's "better" phrasing is another user's worse phrasing. Going in and editing the prose of another user is sometimes a tricky affair. Better to err on the side of caution in giving comments, in my opinion, than risk alienating an editor. Moreover, when someone points out errors to me and I correct them myself, I'm much more apt to learn from my mistakes, rather than having someone else just correct them for me. 69.202.60.86 ( talk) 16:56, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
The community doesn't seem to be highlighting and addressing unactionable or invalid declarations on FACs, and the number is increasing. When there are so many of these occurring, the risk is that other reviewers will glance at the previous declarations and won't seriously review the article per the criteria. This trend contributes to the backlog at FAC; several articles are in need of considered review before they can be closed. Perhaps this trend could be addressed if nominators who bring many articles to FAC can begin to review as many articles as they bring? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:29, 24 December 2007 (UTC)
However they are just as bad as long but off-topic rambling votes. I have seen support or opposes which are pretty long but discuss other articles, editors, or general philosophy :> And they may detract other reviewers even more - as they might think "oh, it's long so it's probably good". Short, at least, are what they appear to be.-- Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk 02:53, 25 December 2007 (UTC)
Hi there. I nominated Tawfiq Canaan for FA review. It's my first such nomination and I am unfamiliar with the process. After one 'weak oppose', the nomination was closed with no further comments. I was wondering if anyone could elaborate on why this happened. Is it that the comments in the 'weak oppose' were deemed valid? I responded to the comment and posed a question to which I received no response. In order to improve the article, I was hoping for more feedback and an explanation. Also, is it that one weak oppose leads to the closure of the nomination? Thanks. Tiamut 13:56, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
There's a discussion at this discussion that may interest some here. It's not directly a FAC issue, but I'm posting here because (a) at least a couple of FAs may be affected, most notably Constantine II of Scotland, which was promoted very recently; and (b) it relates to a MOS issue and I know there are several MOS experts who read this page. Please contribute at the discussion page if you're interested. See also Talk:Constantine II of Scotland for some related debate. Mike Christie (talk) 15:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
sgeureka self-nominated the good article Mythology of Carnivàle for featured article status at 1:12 on December 18. By 21:43 on December 27, there was not a single vote (with the exception of an implied support from the nominator) and the discussion was closed and not promoted. The FAC is here. Is there anything wrong with this? – thedemonhog talk • edits 18:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
This is something which seems to be done quite a bit in FAC's and FLC's, where users from a particular project support articles to do with the project area. This, would surely consistute of "vote-stacking" as all of the Supports are coming from the home project, no other place, meaning if it had say for instance, 7 supports (all from that home project members) and 1 oppose, it would for sure be promoted. Am I wrong?
However, there seems to be an area of confusion. If a project member decides to support one of their project area FAC's, it should be compulsary for them (as they are a member of the main project) to give a detailed explaination of what led them to make this decision. If four or five people put support without a reason, surely their votes should just be discounted? Also, do Raul and Sandy look at particular FACs to see if some have six or seven supports and look at who has voted for the particular article, or not?
Is vote-stacking prohibited from FAC/FLC's? Are members from the "home project" allowed to vote on their FAC/FLC? In my view they should not, as stated earlier, this is clearly vote-stacking. The current system in place leads for a biast FAC/FLC where one article could stroll through with seven supports all from a particular project.
Let's take for instance this FAC. The FAC mentioned, of Gilberto Silva had eight supports (ten in total) with very little comment. Whoever nominated the article, although it may feel good for them, everybody should write down problems with the article - there is always problems with articles, no article is perfect. Just writing support makes me think that vote stacking is involved. In my view, project members should not be allowed to support their FAC/FLCs as there is room for bias in here. 10 project members could support one FAC, but another FAC to do with another project because no project members supported the article. This leads to the system becoming very disjointed.
D.M.N. ( talk) 21:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
This is a problem on FLC, particularly on subjects that attract less mature editors. It is nice to support your friends and it feels good to see a subject you care about become featured. Wikiproject members have the potential to be really good reviewers. They are much more familiar with the subject, good and bad sources and can spot errors or omissions that many reviewers wouldn't see. A good Wikiproject would have reviewed the list prior to FLC, but that rarely happens. The big problem, as Sandy notes, is lack of reviewers. Often the best and most thorough reviewers are attracted to commenting on the best and most thorough lists/articles. So we end up with the situation where our best lists get a hard time at FLC but some of our worst lists are only looked at by fans.
The problem with FLC is compounded by the lack of a director, which means decisions on promotion have to be fairly clear-cut in the guidelines. These are consensus plus a minimum of four support (including the nominator). [Note: I'm not suggesting we need a director.] I'm minded to suggest that at least two of those should be from disinterested editors (no substantial editing history on the article or subject, no project affiliation, no close wikifriendship) but this may be difficult to check or enforce while assuming good faith. Colin° Talk 16:24, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
Independent RfC comment from one who doesn't work in this area: I think any change in policy would be unnecessary rules creep, which would be difficult-to-apply and of questionable value. This isn't a vote anyways, and I trust that Sandy and Raul do more than count !votes. I imagine such a policy would lead to users challenging comments for being de facto project supporters, and so forth. It could be messy, unnecessarily personal, and off-topic. Challenging project membership doesn't really address the substance of each candidate article. The existing guidelines on CANVASSing along with some modest scrutiny should suffice. Cool Hand Luke 23:19, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
ASTM International uses a consensus process to develop standards documents; perhaps it would be a useful model for FAC. -- Una Smith ( talk) 03:44, 30 December 2007 (UTC)
So I stumbled across User:VeblenBot/C/Requests_for_peer_review, which is a product of the revamped peer review process. I figured that FAC and FAR could use a similar page, so I dropped a note on VeblenBot's operator User:CBM, and he kindly set up User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article review candidates and User:VeblenBot/C/Wikipedia featured article candidates. So for those of you who dislike wading through the 1 MB monstrosity that is the FAC page, enjoy! (and don't forget to thank CBM!). Budding Journalist 03:31, 31 December 2007 (UTC)