This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
← ( Archive 9) | Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates (archive) | ( Archive 7) → |
Currently one cannot click the edit link for that nomination to vote or comment on it. All other links seem to work except this one. I have never seen this before. Anyone have any ideas? - Taxman 15:00, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
With 17 new featured articles, this past week was the best week in FAC history. Congratulations to all the writers, copyeditors, proofreaders, 'etc who made this possible :) →Raul654 07:58, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
From WP:FAC: If enough time passes without objections being resolved, nominations will be removed from the candidates list and archived.
What is the definition of "enough time"? Cheers, Smoddy ( t g e c k) 17:44, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Please nominate great work you've seen over the course of March for the int'l writing contest. The only requirements: that it is a great piece of work, and had no more than 2000 characters before March 1. Does not have to have met the FA standard; judging will be on the basis of excellence of writing. +sj + 00:14, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Those who are interested in the criteria used for accepting and rejecting featured articles should go to this discussion regarding the appropriate size for featured articles. Hydriotaphia 21:36, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
I've seen a trend this week toward demanding footnotes (as described in Wikipedia:Footnote3) as an actionable objection. In looking through the other comments on the FAC page, I see notes from other established editors that the footnote system described is merely a proposal and not a standard for usage in all articles yet. Personally, I'm indifferent to using footnotes vs. a list of references at the end of the article. It doesn't really matter to me which we start using, but let's get a consensus before we start using them as actionable objections. But, if it's taken too far, we could end up with articles that have multiple footnotes after nearly every sentence (which does not promote "brilliant prose").
So, the question is, which method will we use for featured articles moving forward from here? Will we require all featured articles to use footnotes or are the references sections that we've been using sufficient? slambo 14:02, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
Comment here, since I'm putting in most of these objections. I will not object to any system which provides correct references according to the best practices listed on Cite your sources; in particular, it is perfectly possible to have what might be called "invisible" footnotes, where you give a reference at the foot of the article and also state the facts taken from it as described in cite your sources. I personally believe that the easiest and best way to achive that is through footnotes, but that is my personal feeling. Non use of footnotes is not a criteria I am using to object to articles. However, providing footnotes or any other form of clear references is a criteria I personally will be using for deciding to support articles. More or less, this is just current policy as described in the various policy pages related to references and sources.
And yes, this means that, if we could just get rid of the numbered external links that are there and once I've read it through carefully, I would support PedanticallySpeaking's page with the current reference system. Even just titled external links in the same location would be enough for me. I just tried using the reference sytem in that article and could pretty quickly search through the text for each referenced fact; whilst it's much more effort than using footnotes, and I feel it will be almost impossible to maintain, it's still good enough for me and better than some of the existing featured articles. Mozzerati 21:30, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
The references and external links sections at the bottom of the page should be for the most general and comprehensive sources: books, journal articles, reports in PDF form, etc. In-line references should be for points of contention or to back up quotations, or for facts that are so recent that they are only available in brief news articles, etc. I have seen some objections stating that all the sources used for in-line references need to be collected at the bottom of the page, which I entirely disagree with. IMHO, with the exception of articles for the most recent events, a reference section consisting of short news articles and web pages with undetermined authority is usually a sign of a superficial treatment of the topic. Insisting that an article should have a preferred type of in-line references just seems to be making busy work for editors that could be doing something substantive instead. - Banyan Tree 23:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I actually ran into an objection for Lord's Resistance Army that the references and external links sections were so extensive that it would take a prohibitive amount of time for a reader to find the source of a particular piece of information. The solution was the creation of in-line references. While I see the logic of this, it does seem to be a Catch-22; if you have a few references, the article is in danger of being too superficial, while if you have many you need to tell the reader which is being used to back up what. Also imo, if an article doesn't need to back up anything, it may not have enough depth to be called "comprehensive". FAs should be more than common knowledge.
So getting back to slambo's original question, I think that the general case should be that some in-line references should be expected for FACs, but that objections to their form are unreasonable as long as key or contended items in the article are clearly sourced. The could obviously vary from a few references to an authoritative source on an uncontroversial topic, to multiple references for the most bitterly divisive points. - Banyan Tree 23:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think everyone agrees that articles should have references. In the past, there has been an obvious split between people who thought that a references section at the end was sufficient, and those who felt that inline citation be required along with a reference section. This footnotes controversy reflects a split in the people who wanted inline citation - the people who believe we should have footnotes vs people who want full inline citation. So, obviously, there's now a 3 way split:
Now, my personal opinion puts me in group #2. For research purposes, having only a reference section is totally, 100% useless. On the other hand, footnotes are (a) overkill for 99.9% of things, and (b) not supported at all in wiki-syntax, not to mention ugly and terribly distracting. On the other hand, I recognize that the community is pretty sharply split over this, so I think we should continue to accept all three referencing styles, until at some time in the future people can come to some kind of agreement. →Raul654 02:31, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
Good take, Raul, I'll base mine on yours, even though I'll add a group 4, which I'm in, and I believe Slim is too (hello, Slim, I think I remember why you and I hold to the same system, though I'm not sure you do :-)):
Footnotes are terribly distracting. Visually, a footnote is smaller than an inline citation, but mentally it's bigger, because it teases my curiosity to click on it—I always do click on it, though I know I'm going to hate myself in a second—to go to the foot of the page to find something uninspirational like "Note 14. Winterbottom, 163", and then have to click again to get back to where I was in the text (that's with the best kind of footnotes; with some other kinds, also in use on Wikipedia, you have to scroll upwards looking for where you were). By contrast, a bracketed (Winterbottom, p. 163) inlined in the text can be taken in and dismissed as "not what I need right now" in literally no time at all, without even impinging on the conscious mind—unless of course it is what I need right now. And inline citations should by no means be longer than that! Don't repeat information, don't use it for decoration or to look learned: there is full information about Winterbottom's book in the references section, conveniently alphabetized. All that's wanted inline is author's last name + page number, unless there are several Winterbottoms, or several works by Winterbottom, in which case some minimalist common-sense information is added ("Reginald Winterbottom, p. 163" or "Winterbottom, English Baroque, 163).
Footnotes are ugly or at least undesirable-looking. They make a text look more academic, which is a Bad Thing. It's unwelcoming to the nonacademic reader, without extending any special courtesy to the academic, who is, or seriously needs to hurry up and become, familiar with many different reference styles, including inline citations. I've only used footnotes once, reluctantly, in The Country Wife, a recent FA. Some paragraphs in that page just had so much POV and so many little-known facts in them, which needed attributing, that my original inlined references made the text unreadable; they passed (IMO) some threshold where the mass of them became intolerable, and totally distracting, or so I thought. Perhaps illogically, I decided it would be easier in such a case for the reader to ignore swarms of footnotes than hordes of inlined names. Rather to my surprise nobody scoffed at the footnotes in the FAC vote, so hopefully they weren't too distracting. But I plan to go on avoiding using footnotes wherever possible. I agree that we should go on accepting both the inline style and the footnote style (with references sections), but I'm against accepting either inline or footnote references meaninglessly cluttered with information that is repeated in the references section--publisher, year, and so on. Do not use redundant information for decoration! An article is not a Christmas tree! -- Bishonen| Talk 04:24, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it is important to be able to tell which facts come from which reference. Otherwise, you would have to wade through all those references, which for a featured article are often voluminous. In addition, someone else could add a questionable statement to the article that is not backed up by any of the references there, and your laborious search through the references would be in vain. Rad Racer | Talk 12:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What I would like is to the ability to type <note>Book Name, page #</note> and have a numbered footnote created inplace with an automatically-created corresponding footnote in an automatically-created ==Notes== section at the end of the page. Then for JavaScript-enabled browsers, clicking on the inline footnote number will expand that footnote - in place. There is really no need to send the user to the ==Notes== section and, as has already been mentioned, that breaks the flow of reading.
It would also be nice to have alt text display the footnote’s text when a cursor is above the footnote. Non- JavaScript-enabled browsers would need to have the jump links (clicking on the number would bring the user to the ==Notes== section ; not good from a usability perspective, but the best that can be done without JS). Either way jump links from the numbered items in the ==Notes== section to the numbered inline footnotes in the text will be needed.
Until such a feature is created, I will continue to comment-out my inline citations since all the template-based methods to add footnotes are ugly hacks that are difficult to create and hard to maintain. -- mav 15:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Is there a minimum number of "Support" votes needed to approve a nomination? Would two "Support" votes count as the necessary "consensus," if they were the only votes? Rad Racer | Talk 12:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
From what I've seen Brian0918's excellent Great Lakes Storm of 1913 currently holds the record of new→featured of just 14 days. I think ANPR just took the prize by 11 days, 2 hours and 39 minutes (00:40, 28 Mar 2005 to 03:19, 8 Apr 2005). Great work by Harry491 copyediting the content, a few others fixing the typos and some others giving advice at WP:PR and WP:FAC. violet/riga (t) 11:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hall of fame?
Article | Created | {{ fac}} | {{ featured}} | Time elapsed |
---|---|---|---|---|
Pioneer Zephyr | 15:45, 24 Feb 2005 | 17:22, 27 Feb 2005 | 15:58, 2 Mar 2005 | 6 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes |
Kreutz Sungrazers | 19:00, 23 Mar 2005 | 12:18, 24 Mar 2005 | 05:16, 30 Mar 2005 | 6 days, 10 hours, 16 minutes (21 edits) |
Japanese toilet | 09:45, 8 Oct 2004 | 02:36, 12 Oct 2004 | 22:22, 18 Oct 2004 | 10 days, 12 hours and 37 minutes |
ANPR | 00:40, 28 Mar 2005 | 18:24, 3 Apr 2005 | 03:19, 8 Apr 2005 | 11 days, 2 hours and 39 minutes |
Great Lakes Storm of 1913 | 03:31, 3 Feb 2005 | 22:56, 11 Feb 2005 | 18:47, 17 Feb 2005 | 14 days, 15 hours, 16 minutes |
Franklin B. Gowen | 18:14, 2 Mar 2005 | 22:56, 5 Mar 2005 | 00:04, 19 Mar 2005 | 16 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes |
(I hope I remembered all the BST → UTC conversions...) -- ALoan (Talk) 14:20, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
All very good - but what's the opposite record. Longest from article creation to featured status? Or the article with featured status that has been through the most FACs? Maybe we should have a Wikipedia:Featured articles/Facts and figures page:) jguk 17:44, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Stick in the mud position: This little game of finding the "fastest" FA, while entertaining, is misguided. Many of us are able to write FA-quality articles on our own. To challenge a record such as this, all that would be required is to "hide" a developing article by writing it entirely offline, and then contributing it as a completed article once it is finished and nominating it on FAC straight away. While contributions such as those certainly add good material to Wikipedia, they also serve to destroy the best aspects of Wikipedia. Such a program of article development creates a strong, perhaps overwhelming, sense of ownership both on the part of the author and in the perception of the community at large. It also makes collaboration on the initial article impossible, and strongly discourages future collaboration and editing in general. Wikipedia is special because we can all edit each other's work; this "contest" serves to defeat that feature. Instead it transforms WP, and especially the list of FAs, into more of a classical publication in the vein of magazines, where fine but essentially unchangeable articles are presented for the readers' enjoyment -- but not their contributions. I think that feting an achievement (and thereby encouraging challengers to it) that does not serve the best interest of Wikipedia and what it stands for, is a mistake. - Bantman 17:54, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
Just to weigh in here: if we are going to have some kind of scoreboard, I really don't like the idea of doing it based on the amount of time from creation to featuring - it only encourages people to try to make lots of noms, to hold their stuff offline until it's ready to be posted, and to pester me to promote them quickly (which goes against the idea of a vetted community opinion). I would encourage you guys instead to think about doing it by featured article count - e.g., the number of articles have you gotten up to FA standard. →Raul654 22:20, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
Oy! That's what you call record time from new to Featured? When I saw the heading, I naturally assumed excellence was imputed to the longest time from new to Featured, and I'll just modestly point out that the articles I work with (like Colley Cibber, The Country Wife) were usually created in 1911— beat that, losers!—and moved to Wikipedia by, mostly, Deb, sometime in 2003. Nya na na na na. Bishonen| Talk 19:36, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that a lot of articles are being added to FAC while failing one or more of the basic FA requirements (most usually, no references). Would there be any advantage to some sort of pre-qualification system, where at least one person other than the would-be nominator confirms that the article meets at very least the barest interpretation of the requirements, before it can be added to FAC? Or, could we have a "speedy-delete" analog where obviously deficient articles are summarily removed to WP:PR? I'm not suggesting that the person who qualifies it should be stingy with listing aticles -- they could even list articles they end up voting against; I'm more interested in a "you must be this tall to ride this ride" kind of check before an article gets listed on FAC. This would reduce clutter, and save time for all of us by eliminating a long read of an article that, alas, has no references section at the end. Thoughts? - Bantman 19:08, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)
This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
← ( Archive 9) | Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates (archive) | ( Archive 7) → |
Currently one cannot click the edit link for that nomination to vote or comment on it. All other links seem to work except this one. I have never seen this before. Anyone have any ideas? - Taxman 15:00, Feb 19, 2005 (UTC)
With 17 new featured articles, this past week was the best week in FAC history. Congratulations to all the writers, copyeditors, proofreaders, 'etc who made this possible :) →Raul654 07:58, Mar 6, 2005 (UTC)
From WP:FAC: If enough time passes without objections being resolved, nominations will be removed from the candidates list and archived.
What is the definition of "enough time"? Cheers, Smoddy ( t g e c k) 17:44, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Please nominate great work you've seen over the course of March for the int'l writing contest. The only requirements: that it is a great piece of work, and had no more than 2000 characters before March 1. Does not have to have met the FA standard; judging will be on the basis of excellence of writing. +sj + 00:14, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Those who are interested in the criteria used for accepting and rejecting featured articles should go to this discussion regarding the appropriate size for featured articles. Hydriotaphia 21:36, Mar 31, 2005 (UTC)
I've seen a trend this week toward demanding footnotes (as described in Wikipedia:Footnote3) as an actionable objection. In looking through the other comments on the FAC page, I see notes from other established editors that the footnote system described is merely a proposal and not a standard for usage in all articles yet. Personally, I'm indifferent to using footnotes vs. a list of references at the end of the article. It doesn't really matter to me which we start using, but let's get a consensus before we start using them as actionable objections. But, if it's taken too far, we could end up with articles that have multiple footnotes after nearly every sentence (which does not promote "brilliant prose").
So, the question is, which method will we use for featured articles moving forward from here? Will we require all featured articles to use footnotes or are the references sections that we've been using sufficient? slambo 14:02, Apr 4, 2005 (UTC)
Comment here, since I'm putting in most of these objections. I will not object to any system which provides correct references according to the best practices listed on Cite your sources; in particular, it is perfectly possible to have what might be called "invisible" footnotes, where you give a reference at the foot of the article and also state the facts taken from it as described in cite your sources. I personally believe that the easiest and best way to achive that is through footnotes, but that is my personal feeling. Non use of footnotes is not a criteria I am using to object to articles. However, providing footnotes or any other form of clear references is a criteria I personally will be using for deciding to support articles. More or less, this is just current policy as described in the various policy pages related to references and sources.
And yes, this means that, if we could just get rid of the numbered external links that are there and once I've read it through carefully, I would support PedanticallySpeaking's page with the current reference system. Even just titled external links in the same location would be enough for me. I just tried using the reference sytem in that article and could pretty quickly search through the text for each referenced fact; whilst it's much more effort than using footnotes, and I feel it will be almost impossible to maintain, it's still good enough for me and better than some of the existing featured articles. Mozzerati 21:30, 2005 Apr 4 (UTC)
The references and external links sections at the bottom of the page should be for the most general and comprehensive sources: books, journal articles, reports in PDF form, etc. In-line references should be for points of contention or to back up quotations, or for facts that are so recent that they are only available in brief news articles, etc. I have seen some objections stating that all the sources used for in-line references need to be collected at the bottom of the page, which I entirely disagree with. IMHO, with the exception of articles for the most recent events, a reference section consisting of short news articles and web pages with undetermined authority is usually a sign of a superficial treatment of the topic. Insisting that an article should have a preferred type of in-line references just seems to be making busy work for editors that could be doing something substantive instead. - Banyan Tree 23:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I actually ran into an objection for Lord's Resistance Army that the references and external links sections were so extensive that it would take a prohibitive amount of time for a reader to find the source of a particular piece of information. The solution was the creation of in-line references. While I see the logic of this, it does seem to be a Catch-22; if you have a few references, the article is in danger of being too superficial, while if you have many you need to tell the reader which is being used to back up what. Also imo, if an article doesn't need to back up anything, it may not have enough depth to be called "comprehensive". FAs should be more than common knowledge.
So getting back to slambo's original question, I think that the general case should be that some in-line references should be expected for FACs, but that objections to their form are unreasonable as long as key or contended items in the article are clearly sourced. The could obviously vary from a few references to an authoritative source on an uncontroversial topic, to multiple references for the most bitterly divisive points. - Banyan Tree 23:22, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I think everyone agrees that articles should have references. In the past, there has been an obvious split between people who thought that a references section at the end was sufficient, and those who felt that inline citation be required along with a reference section. This footnotes controversy reflects a split in the people who wanted inline citation - the people who believe we should have footnotes vs people who want full inline citation. So, obviously, there's now a 3 way split:
Now, my personal opinion puts me in group #2. For research purposes, having only a reference section is totally, 100% useless. On the other hand, footnotes are (a) overkill for 99.9% of things, and (b) not supported at all in wiki-syntax, not to mention ugly and terribly distracting. On the other hand, I recognize that the community is pretty sharply split over this, so I think we should continue to accept all three referencing styles, until at some time in the future people can come to some kind of agreement. →Raul654 02:31, Apr 5, 2005 (UTC)
Good take, Raul, I'll base mine on yours, even though I'll add a group 4, which I'm in, and I believe Slim is too (hello, Slim, I think I remember why you and I hold to the same system, though I'm not sure you do :-)):
Footnotes are terribly distracting. Visually, a footnote is smaller than an inline citation, but mentally it's bigger, because it teases my curiosity to click on it—I always do click on it, though I know I'm going to hate myself in a second—to go to the foot of the page to find something uninspirational like "Note 14. Winterbottom, 163", and then have to click again to get back to where I was in the text (that's with the best kind of footnotes; with some other kinds, also in use on Wikipedia, you have to scroll upwards looking for where you were). By contrast, a bracketed (Winterbottom, p. 163) inlined in the text can be taken in and dismissed as "not what I need right now" in literally no time at all, without even impinging on the conscious mind—unless of course it is what I need right now. And inline citations should by no means be longer than that! Don't repeat information, don't use it for decoration or to look learned: there is full information about Winterbottom's book in the references section, conveniently alphabetized. All that's wanted inline is author's last name + page number, unless there are several Winterbottoms, or several works by Winterbottom, in which case some minimalist common-sense information is added ("Reginald Winterbottom, p. 163" or "Winterbottom, English Baroque, 163).
Footnotes are ugly or at least undesirable-looking. They make a text look more academic, which is a Bad Thing. It's unwelcoming to the nonacademic reader, without extending any special courtesy to the academic, who is, or seriously needs to hurry up and become, familiar with many different reference styles, including inline citations. I've only used footnotes once, reluctantly, in The Country Wife, a recent FA. Some paragraphs in that page just had so much POV and so many little-known facts in them, which needed attributing, that my original inlined references made the text unreadable; they passed (IMO) some threshold where the mass of them became intolerable, and totally distracting, or so I thought. Perhaps illogically, I decided it would be easier in such a case for the reader to ignore swarms of footnotes than hordes of inlined names. Rather to my surprise nobody scoffed at the footnotes in the FAC vote, so hopefully they weren't too distracting. But I plan to go on avoiding using footnotes wherever possible. I agree that we should go on accepting both the inline style and the footnote style (with references sections), but I'm against accepting either inline or footnote references meaninglessly cluttered with information that is repeated in the references section--publisher, year, and so on. Do not use redundant information for decoration! An article is not a Christmas tree! -- Bishonen| Talk 04:24, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it is important to be able to tell which facts come from which reference. Otherwise, you would have to wade through all those references, which for a featured article are often voluminous. In addition, someone else could add a questionable statement to the article that is not backed up by any of the references there, and your laborious search through the references would be in vain. Rad Racer | Talk 12:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
What I would like is to the ability to type <note>Book Name, page #</note> and have a numbered footnote created inplace with an automatically-created corresponding footnote in an automatically-created ==Notes== section at the end of the page. Then for JavaScript-enabled browsers, clicking on the inline footnote number will expand that footnote - in place. There is really no need to send the user to the ==Notes== section and, as has already been mentioned, that breaks the flow of reading.
It would also be nice to have alt text display the footnote’s text when a cursor is above the footnote. Non- JavaScript-enabled browsers would need to have the jump links (clicking on the number would bring the user to the ==Notes== section ; not good from a usability perspective, but the best that can be done without JS). Either way jump links from the numbered items in the ==Notes== section to the numbered inline footnotes in the text will be needed.
Until such a feature is created, I will continue to comment-out my inline citations since all the template-based methods to add footnotes are ugly hacks that are difficult to create and hard to maintain. -- mav 15:10, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Is there a minimum number of "Support" votes needed to approve a nomination? Would two "Support" votes count as the necessary "consensus," if they were the only votes? Rad Racer | Talk 12:34, 6 Apr 2005 (UTC)
From what I've seen Brian0918's excellent Great Lakes Storm of 1913 currently holds the record of new→featured of just 14 days. I think ANPR just took the prize by 11 days, 2 hours and 39 minutes (00:40, 28 Mar 2005 to 03:19, 8 Apr 2005). Great work by Harry491 copyediting the content, a few others fixing the typos and some others giving advice at WP:PR and WP:FAC. violet/riga (t) 11:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hall of fame?
Article | Created | {{ fac}} | {{ featured}} | Time elapsed |
---|---|---|---|---|
Pioneer Zephyr | 15:45, 24 Feb 2005 | 17:22, 27 Feb 2005 | 15:58, 2 Mar 2005 | 6 days, 0 hours, 13 minutes |
Kreutz Sungrazers | 19:00, 23 Mar 2005 | 12:18, 24 Mar 2005 | 05:16, 30 Mar 2005 | 6 days, 10 hours, 16 minutes (21 edits) |
Japanese toilet | 09:45, 8 Oct 2004 | 02:36, 12 Oct 2004 | 22:22, 18 Oct 2004 | 10 days, 12 hours and 37 minutes |
ANPR | 00:40, 28 Mar 2005 | 18:24, 3 Apr 2005 | 03:19, 8 Apr 2005 | 11 days, 2 hours and 39 minutes |
Great Lakes Storm of 1913 | 03:31, 3 Feb 2005 | 22:56, 11 Feb 2005 | 18:47, 17 Feb 2005 | 14 days, 15 hours, 16 minutes |
Franklin B. Gowen | 18:14, 2 Mar 2005 | 22:56, 5 Mar 2005 | 00:04, 19 Mar 2005 | 16 days, 5 hours, 50 minutes |
(I hope I remembered all the BST → UTC conversions...) -- ALoan (Talk) 14:20, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
All very good - but what's the opposite record. Longest from article creation to featured status? Or the article with featured status that has been through the most FACs? Maybe we should have a Wikipedia:Featured articles/Facts and figures page:) jguk 17:44, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Stick in the mud position: This little game of finding the "fastest" FA, while entertaining, is misguided. Many of us are able to write FA-quality articles on our own. To challenge a record such as this, all that would be required is to "hide" a developing article by writing it entirely offline, and then contributing it as a completed article once it is finished and nominating it on FAC straight away. While contributions such as those certainly add good material to Wikipedia, they also serve to destroy the best aspects of Wikipedia. Such a program of article development creates a strong, perhaps overwhelming, sense of ownership both on the part of the author and in the perception of the community at large. It also makes collaboration on the initial article impossible, and strongly discourages future collaboration and editing in general. Wikipedia is special because we can all edit each other's work; this "contest" serves to defeat that feature. Instead it transforms WP, and especially the list of FAs, into more of a classical publication in the vein of magazines, where fine but essentially unchangeable articles are presented for the readers' enjoyment -- but not their contributions. I think that feting an achievement (and thereby encouraging challengers to it) that does not serve the best interest of Wikipedia and what it stands for, is a mistake. - Bantman 17:54, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
Just to weigh in here: if we are going to have some kind of scoreboard, I really don't like the idea of doing it based on the amount of time from creation to featuring - it only encourages people to try to make lots of noms, to hold their stuff offline until it's ready to be posted, and to pester me to promote them quickly (which goes against the idea of a vetted community opinion). I would encourage you guys instead to think about doing it by featured article count - e.g., the number of articles have you gotten up to FA standard. →Raul654 22:20, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)
Oy! That's what you call record time from new to Featured? When I saw the heading, I naturally assumed excellence was imputed to the longest time from new to Featured, and I'll just modestly point out that the articles I work with (like Colley Cibber, The Country Wife) were usually created in 1911— beat that, losers!—and moved to Wikipedia by, mostly, Deb, sometime in 2003. Nya na na na na. Bishonen| Talk 19:36, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
It seems to me that a lot of articles are being added to FAC while failing one or more of the basic FA requirements (most usually, no references). Would there be any advantage to some sort of pre-qualification system, where at least one person other than the would-be nominator confirms that the article meets at very least the barest interpretation of the requirements, before it can be added to FAC? Or, could we have a "speedy-delete" analog where obviously deficient articles are summarily removed to WP:PR? I'm not suggesting that the person who qualifies it should be stingy with listing aticles -- they could even list articles they end up voting against; I'm more interested in a "you must be this tall to ride this ride" kind of check before an article gets listed on FAC. This would reduce clutter, and save time for all of us by eliminating a long read of an article that, alas, has no references section at the end. Thoughts? - Bantman 19:08, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)