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The debates here and here may be of interest in relation to the interpretation and enforcement of Criterion 3. Tony 00:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the FA 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · is an example of an article that needed a bit more work before it is promoted to FA status. I think that one of the missing pieces here would be accessibility. I know this will be a technical article, but as a FA, I think this needs to say in the intro why it is important and, if it can't say what it is in a brief summary, then at least tell what you need to know to understand it. I think that Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible should be something that is included in any part of the FA review.
I have no problem with a Mathamatics article being a FA. I think they are at least as worthy as a Bulbasaur. I would like to suggest that the importance of the topic be asserted in the intro so that someone going there from the Main Page would see first the summary of what it is and then the summary of why it matters.
I have seen several articles which I think miss out on making the importance of the subject and the accessibility of the article prominent features of the FA review. Any comments? Slavlin 20:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I wrote the article, and I've been paying attention to what people say about it throughout both Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet, so I hope my perspective here will help.
First of all, the series is notable simply by virtue of the fact that it gets nontrivial coverage in multiple reliable sources, such as Hardy, Saichev, and Weidlich. It helps that one of these is a respected primary source, namely Euler. It also helps that the series gets a ton of passing mentions. You may judge that the series does not deserve its notability, but then you're making a judgement on how human inquiry should be done and not how Wikipedia should report on it.
Even though I think that article topics don't need to be important (in the more-than-notable sense), I have stuff to say about that too. If you have a physics background with linear algebra, you've probably seen Fourier series. This means that there's an excellent chance that you've seen Abel summation without realizing it; see the reference to Davis at the end of the article for how. Abel and Borel summation are essential to modern physics, which deals with divergent series all the time, and I for one think that examples like 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · are essential to understanding such methods.
There are at least two reasons why I wouldn't say so in the article:
On to accessibility. The closest the article comes to explaining what's "really going on" is in Stability and linearity: "A generalized definition of the 'sum' of a divergent series is called a summation method or summability method, which sums some subset of all possible series. There are many different methods (some of which are described below) which are characterized by the properties that they share with ordinary summation." This is just a couple of sentences. One could explain the situation a lot better by writing a whole section, but then you'd have to duplicate that section across every article dealing with divergent series. Duplication of information is bad for lots of reasons. Oh sure, you could make sure to mention the series by name within the explanation, and then do a find-and-replace for other articles, but that's cheating. It also opens doors you don't want to open: then we can have suspiciously similar articles on every divergent series under the sun.
We avoid duplication by placing information where it belongs, in this case in the article titled Divergent series. Perhaps the latter article doesn't explain the philosophy of divergent series very well either, but it already says a lot more than 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · should.
The upshot of my explanations for 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · is that we generally shouldn't add FA criteria that many articles won't be able to meet without stretching policy and damaging the encyclopedia as a whole. The current criteria encourage fundamental good practices that all articles should be able to implement without conflict. Melchoir 03:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this wording change is extremely necessary. Not only does it underscore 1a, it also helps distinguish GA 1a from FA 1a (since I got complaints for adding "'reasonably' well written" during my GA criteria revision last week). — Deckill er 09:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
All too often, even featured articles use technical terms to excess. Obviously, the basic terms of the field should be used, however, particularly in more general articles, they ought to be briefly explained at first use. As it is, all too often we get articles that think that a wikilink absolves them of all responsibility to write layman-accessible text. Many such articles require the reading of dozens of other articles just to get through a few paragraphs, and if they wikilink to each other, the reader is screwed.
A general rule might be "All terms not in general use should be explained at first occurrance, not just wikilinked, except where a technical term is substantially more basic and better known than the subject of the article itself." Adam Cuerden talk 13:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Is there a maximum to article length. I tried splitting an article I was working on into subarticles and then compressed the text in the main article but was reverted to take the 89kb article to 111kb. The reverter said they reverted to try and get the article to featured-article length. I thought that it was a bit too long for FA. I would like confirmation. Traing 07:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I would oppose any such criterion for a minimum length (indeed, any criterion designed simply to exclude otherwise flawless articles). It's unfortunate, Tony, that you believe short articles do not display Wikipedia's best work, but it is not at all clear why that is true. My opposition would be tempered if you promise never again to oppose an article for redundant prose or other excess verbiage: if this criterion is added, there will indeed be a good reason for padding the word count at the expense of readability. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
To my knowledge, these are the only ultra-long FAs. Six out of 1382 = .4 % — I can't find the most recent list of ultra-long articles, but this is all that showed up last time I perused it.
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Several could clearly make better use of Summary Style (e.g.; at least Schizophrenia, Byzantime Empire). Also note Dr pda doesn't pick up listy prose, so Sound film had to be calculated manually. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Found this list in archives — will come back and add Dr pda data:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Looking at this list above, I'm back to thinking 10KB prose should be a lower limit, because the Frog article is worthy. With all due respect to Titoxd and the Hurricane, Wiki isn't short on hurricane FAs. Austin Nichols and the Camper article don't convince me. Guess I should polish up Intrusive thoughts and sumbit it. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, here is an article with a mere 13KB of prose; do people feel it's insufficiently long? Kirill Lokshin 18:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like that's that :-) But ya'll didn't say how you feel about including an upper limit in the criteria. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, the old 32k rule-of-thumb limit always seemed to me to produce articles of a nice, readable size, but it does often require a quart to be squeezed into a pint pot. Anything more than, say, twice as long as that is getting too long, IMHO, and probably ought to be broken down into daughter articles. The saffron / history of saffron / trade and usage of saffron series shows how it can be done. But I don't think we need a hard-and-fast limit. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
4. It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail. Nominations that fall outside the recommended prose size range are discouraged and must demonstrate appropriate usage of summary style. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 08:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
This is for only those at the big end of the spectrum, not for the aluminium cent ones? I presume that the current wording of Criterion 4 is not strong enough to allow objections on the basis that summary style is not used in parts or the whole of the nomination. (It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).) Perhaps reviewers haven't used this Criterion explicitly for this purpose. I'm wondering how nominators will "demonstrate appropriate usage of summary style" when challenged; they'll just say "It's all in summary style—go away", won't they? The onus will still be on us to say where and why it's not in summary style. So I'm unsure that the new version would change anything in practice. Tony 10:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
It's up to individual FA reviewers and their colleagues to form an opinion of where the limit lies beyond which they start to object; that might be better than cementing it in black-letter law (which might upset the 30/45 KB guideliners). Tony 13:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I didn't know I would trigger such a long discussion...:)...I've been working on Sino-Indian War, where I summarized the 111kb article to 89kb by creating articles Origins of the Sino-Indian border dispute and Events leading to the Sino-Indian War while just keeping a summarized version on the actual page. I was reverted and User:Yuje explained that he did not support me because I supposedly "deleted huge sections of information that despite what he said, did not restore anywhere else" and said the he is "trying to improve it by extended it and giving the historical background leading up to the war, to make it a feature-length article". Which made me think whether there should be a limit to feature-length articles, particularly because the article hardly has any pictures and still takes time to load (depending on your browser speed). I believe the maximum for an article should be 70kb because we could allow them to go over the 64kb mark slightly. The minimum should be 15kb, some topics are simply not worthy to make it to the main page because there is not much information related to their topics. Those are my view's and could someone clarify to Yuje on Talk:Sino-Indian War because he seems to be of the view that I am deleting all this information without restoring them anywhere else. For example, he says "He editted the article in a completely POVed manner, editting out selectively, and he deleted huge sections of information that despite what he said, did not restore anywhere else". Traing 08:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
This matter was brought up in the recent (and successful) nomination of Conatus. This article, as I originally sourced it, used Harvard referencing, not the more typical ref/note method. I believed that this, while not the standard, would be acceptable in an FAC because of the endorsement of this method on various pages, including the "guideline" WP:CITE. According to this page, the three accepted methods of citing sources are: Embedded HTML links, Harvard referencing and Footnotes. In my experience, however, only the last is truly acceptable for a modern FA: during the Conatus's FAC, there was overwhelming support for a conversion to Footnotes style. I say that if FAs must realistically use Footnotes, the list of criteria should specify that; or if Harvard style is decidedly OK, that should be said directly. WP:CITE may be a good guideline (I don't know if it is) for most articles, but it is not a good guideline for FAs right now. -- Rmrfstar 23:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
FACs needing feedback view • | |
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Susanna Hoffs | Review it now |
Fountain Fire | Review it now |
Will reviewers kindly note that these boxes are regularly updated for problematic nominations and for those that are hanging around for too long with too few comments. Transcluding them on your user page and/or at the top of your talk page would be a great way to generate more interest in these processes, especially by reviewers who manage to visit only occasionally.
All you do is to key in {{User:Deckiller/FAC urgents}} and {{User:Tony1/FAR urgents}}. Tony 02:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I've proposed a new version of the existing criteria to be implemented after a week or so of debate, if consensus can be achieved. Comments from reviewers from this room would be welcomed. Tony 02:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opnion, Featured Articles should be structured with section sizes being appropriate to that which would actually interest readers. This may not make sense, so here's a hypothetical example:
Stairway to Heaven is an FAC. It meets all of the criteria, and is lengthy and well-structured. It includes information about the backwards lyrics. However, the largest sections are:
That would certainly be a comprehensive article. However, if the volume of non-notable and uninteresting material vastly outweighs the pertinent information, I would say the article is too unfocused or misproportioned to be an FA.
The problem with having focus as in the FA criteria is that it is subjective. An editor who really doesn't want an article to pass FAC could easily say "This article doesn't stay focused on the pertinent information." The easiest way to apply this objectively would be to ask "What would the average reader want to know about this topic?" Whatever the answer to that is should be the focus of the article.
This wouldn't necessarily have to be its own criterion, nor would it have to be strictly enforced. It could fall under well-written and would really only be actionable in extreme cases. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 23:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Two editors are editing WP:LAYOUT to state that Wiki "sister" links should be added to the lead rather than the See also or External links at the end of the article. I believe this will clutter the lead, resulting in ugly articles, and external content (even interwiki) belongs at the end. Other opinions ? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I think the discussion above finished prematurely... May I re-word the criteria to recommend only footnotes for the sake of standardization and readability? -- Rmrfstar 17:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that it would be best to use a single consistent style of referencing, and the <ref> ones are certainly the most convenient for the reader. Atropos 07:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello. I've noticed that several featured articles use non-animated images stored in the GIF format. This is not recommended because images like these are often better represented in the PNG format. The PNG format is completely lossless, often compresses better, and supports full alpha-channel transparency. The templates {{ BadGIF}} and {{ ShouldBePNG}} exist to help us identify and resolve this problem by doing a fairly simple conversion from GIF to PNG. The PNG crusade bot can do this conversion with little human intervention.
Would it be OK if another criteria was added, requiring that GIF images be converted to PNG unless there is a good reason not to? — Remember the dot ( talk) 23:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
How about setting up some technical content FA process? A lot of technical content can't be boiled down to the same level as a Celebrity biography, or an article about the flag of Peru, and that appears to be a criteria imposed by reviewers for getting technical articles through the FA process. Just wondering... SqlPac 20:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't see us changing the FA process to accomodate technical articles; however, if someone would like to come up with criteria that apply specifically to technical articles, I'm all ears. Raul654 21:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
If it helps, this page is transcludable as {{Wikipedia:Featured article criteria}}; if not, revert my changes :) Gracenotes T § 22:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, at the moment we have a rather subjective criterion (3) in determining whether or not images are a prerequisite. After reviewing at Birchington-on-Sea I felt that images would be (a) pretty easy to get and (b) essential for facilitating engagement, I thus decided not to continue reviewing until images were added, which they were.
Now the criterion states: It has images where they are appropriate to the subject,...
I could imagine some obscure theoretical idea maybe not require images but I would have thought just about everything else would need them to make "Wikipedia's best work". Have there been FAs in recent times with no images? cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 22:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
We have far too many people ignoring the message to upload free images there, not here. We also have far too few articles linking to commons when there is a valid page to link to. Creating this as a standard for FAs should signal to all articles that this is how things should be done. It will improve Wikipedia articles by providing a link to more images and other media, it will allow editors to browse other possible images to improve the article as they become available (or are moved into the category), will provide better awareness and closer relations with Commons, and it will improve commons in similar fashion, as editors may improve the commons categories/pages, upload images there for use on other projects, and see better utilization of Commons resources.
These are the best of our articles and I think they should demonstrate proper use of this important sister project. Richard001 01:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates
Some FA articles ( Evolution for example) have scrollable content (References, in Evolution's case) that make the printable version incomplete. In the case of Evolution it is especially noticeable in that only a few of the many many references are in the printable version of the article. Is there any guideline about having a complete printable version in the criteria for a FA? - Bevo 02:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia. What we write is designed to be read on screen as part of a hyperlinked set of webpages. Formatting should be designed to aid our huge web readership, not the tiny minority of people who choose to print out web-pages. TimVickers 03:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Isn't this a problem that should have a technical solution; i.e. that the scroll box should be automatically expanded in the 'printable version'?-- Pharos 04:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Is there any markup that allows conditional expansion depending on whether or not the current rendering is the printable version of an article? I imagine it would be some sort of If-Then-Else construction. It would be useful for alternative images to the animated ones, for example, as well as for using the simpler rendering of the References list for the printable version. - Bevo 04:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
To address Bevo's original point - I've thought about it some more. There are clearly some things that do not translate into paper - movie and music files linked from articles; animated gifs, etc. So really, the camel is already inside the tent. With that acknowledged, however, I'd prefer that, for something like Evolution, that we not go out of our way to make articles that do not print correctly. Raul654 04:39, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
This has strayed from what I asked originally. That was, the impact, if any, of an incomplete printable version on the suitability of an article to be a FA. I intend to start a discussion elsewhere that will be more generally on the subject of the situation where it is not possible to produce a complete printable version of an article. Maybe that general discussion needs to play out before any overlap with FA suitability is determined. - Bevo 04:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a simple stylesheet issue. If you are going to use scrolling sections, then the stylesheet needs to be set up so that scrolling happens only on screen media. —Cel ithemis 05:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Bevo, on your original question, there are other problems in the printable version, and I've been "had" by it several times. I like to print out long FACs to read and review when I travel. The seealso and other templates at the tops of sections don't reproduce on the printable versions, so once I stopped reviewing an article and commented that it wasn't comprehensive, not noticing that Summary sytle had been used, as it didn't show on the printable version. There is also a problem with math formulas on the printable version, but I can't remember what the problem was. I've not raised these issues before as I wasn't sure where they might be addressed, but do wish someone knowledgeable would help fix them. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
These are popping up everywhere: {{ scroll box}} says not to use it in mainspace, and references this TfD result. These boxes not only lose references on the printable version; I believe they also result in a loss of references on mirrors, of which there are many for FAs. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Is it possible for an article to have too many images? We are currently expanding Kushan Empire and a problem is arising in trying to ensure that the layout doesn't have so many images that it crowds out the text. Is there any guideline about this? All the images are relevant one way or the other, and there is no agreement on what can be cut. A WikiFairy has suggested making cuts, but is getting resistance. Can any of you take a look and weigh in on the talk page regarding this? Buddhipriya 06:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Today, I removed 20 fair use images from Robbie Williams [1]. No, this is not a featured article. However, in trying to further support my explanation as to why this was done, I came here to WP:FA to review articles on other musicians, to give examples of how an article should be using fair use images (if at all). I was rather shocked and dismayed to find a wide number of FAs having decorative use of fair use images. I'll take Genesis (band) as an example. This article, which attained featured status in April of 2006 and was reviewed to that status on May 1 of this year (form as of that date: [2]), had and has six fair use images on it. In the review for featured status, fair use was raised but only with regards to the audio clips. With regards to the images;
This case example is just one case. I could go on for a while here, as I've seen a number of featured articles for which fair use review was done very poorly or not at all. Especially in light of the Foundation's recent resolution on the use of copyrighted works (see Foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy), the culture here with regards to the support of the use of fair use images, if only by silence in not taking a stronger stance towards review of the use of such images, needs to change to be more in line with the m:Mission of Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
There's a number of us who are fighting fair use over use tooth and nail across a wide variety of articles. See User:Durin/Fair Use Overuse for a list of nearly 3000 articles where there are at least ten fair use images, much less the considerably longer list of articles with >4 and <10 (more than twice as long in fact), available at User:Durin/Fair Use Overuse smaller. To come here, at FA, to find examples of how it should be done and find rampant overuse undermines this effort and isn't in keeping with our mission here. We've been fighting this fair use overuse and continually become embroiled in debates over it. Time and time again this happens, and each time the reduction of fair use eventually wins out. But, an oft cited argument is "well this is how it's done at XYZ". No one has yet cited featured articles, but it will happen. These should be our finest examples, not examples where our licensing policy is abused.
I'd also like to note that the 100k FA article goal, while completely unachievable, is readily more achievable by virtue of having less fair use images per article that need to be reviewed. This would make review of such articles less complex. The culture needs to change; those of you conducting reviews of articles for featured status need to be considerably more direct and restrictive in the use of fair use images than is apparently the current case. -- Durin 15:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
(undent) I would say, start at GA and work upwards. I know many FA people have an attitude of GA is irrelevant etc., but that is simply & demonstrably false. The few FAs I've looked at always go thru GA first....and consider an axiom in computer programming: the earlier you catch an error, the more time/money you save. BUT, having said that, I think I soft–spoken, consensus–building approach is better than a top–down, authoritative tone. Seek out and secure allies amongst the GA troops. Be willing to spend the time on talk discussing it reasonably etc. Ling.Nut 23:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Responding to several points:
To be honest, I'm fairly disappointed at the responses here. I've not been a contributor to FA, but I'd always made the assumption that FA was striving to uphold the highest ideals of Wikipedia. I see now I was in error. If that's antagonistic, so be it. Yesterday, I removed a number of fair use images from that day's featured article, Slayer. One of the images was put back. I should be getting support on this from the people here. Instead, I'm getting told I'm wrong. Ok, I'm wrong. Please use fair use liberally wherever you'd like, and wherever it's not clearly illegal. Don't worry about our m:Mission. It's meaningless tripe. Sigh. -- Durin 13:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
there. cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
FAs should conform to to MOS, but if we look at recent FAs, we find that the presentation of dates is often incorrect. American Dating finds its way into many articles that have no link at all to the U.S. (or the small number of other nations where AD is used). WP:DATE gives the established criteria.
Recent FAs include:
A common response is to say, "So what? Just turn on your date preferences and all dates appear in the format you prefer!", but this only applies for users with established accounts, (i.e. editors rather than readers), and given the widespread popularity of WP it is obvious that most users are readers, rather than the relatively limited community of editors. -- Jumbo 20:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
While the auto-formatting and linking functions are still the same, despite concerted attempts to get the techs at WM to fix this, I just don't care. I advise all WPians not to link any dates at all, and to choose the formatting they prefer, as long as consistent within an article. Make them fix this issue. Tony 14:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
No, in fact, the quality of FAs has noticeably declined over the past year; whenever FAC concentrates on some minor point, and ignores sourcing, writing, and neutrality, FAs decline to the point of mere adequacy. About 18 months ago, anything could get through FA if it had pretty pictures; then it was having enough footnotes (their content didn't matter); now it's the barely visible difference between hyphens and en-dashes. All these would enhance an otherwise perfect article, and proper citation, in some form, is vital; but at present anything which en-dashes correctly is likely to be promoted, whatever its other flaws, unless they are glaringly obvious.
Tony defended
Andrew Saul, which was abominably biased and execrably written.
Daniel Webster passed, despite being sourced from
Profiles in Courage (I'm not making this up, I regret to say).
Augustus just passed, and it's not a bad article, exactly; but it still says things like The longevity of Augustus' reign for length, and the Augustan PoV of its chief author and its chief source still shines through.
Fortunately, FA is ultimately unimportant to Wikipedia. Many editors ignore it altogether; but it could be a useful tool. I just cringe, half the time, when I see the front page, and I'm tired of it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I was reading Wikipedia:The perfect article, and I noticed that that page says that Wikipedia articles should be "nearly self-contained", ie. "it includes essential information and terminology, and is comprehensible by itself, without requiring significant reading of other articles". Is there a reason why something similar to this is not stated here? Where is the line drawn between explaining something in an article and directing the reader to read another article? Surely the problem lies in not knowing what level to pitch an article at? Carcharoth 15:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware that the issue of article lenght has been properly discussed here yet, but it has been a reoccuring issue at FAR in the last few months. Want to throw it out for openion from the community. This is the leading thread. Ceoil 01:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
WP's Manual of Style has been expanded to include a summary of the recently overhauled MOSNUM submanual. Featured Article candidates are explicitly required to follow these guidelines, as are all WP articles.
At issue are the new Sections 9–14:
More detailed information on these and other topics is at WP:MOSNUM. Tony 06:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
As suggested on the FA talk page, there's an urgent need to lay down a few simple rules to minimise visual and structural chaos. Unless good counterarguments are put here, on Friday I intend to add the following to what we already have in the instructions ("Do not split a FAC page into subsections").
Please read a nominated article fully before deciding to support or oppose a nomination.
- To respond to a nomination, click the "Edit" link to the right of the article nomination (not the "Edit this page" link for the whole FAC page).
- If you support a nomination, write *'''Support''' ~~~~, followed by your reason(s). If you have been a significant contributor to the article, please indicate this.
- If you oppose a nomination, write *'''Oppose''' ~~~~, followed by your 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 FA 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, consider accepting it.
- Sign your name immediately to the right of this initial word (after one space), as well as after your comments; this makes it easier to keep track of who is declaring what on the page.
- Reviewers who object are strongly encouraged to return after a few days to check whether their objection has been addressed. To withdraw the objection, strike it out (with <s>...</s>) rather than removing it. Contributors should allow reviewers the opportunity to do this themselves.
- To provide constructive input on a nomination without specifically supporting or objecting, write *'''Comment''' ~~~~ followed by your advice.
- Contributors are asked not to (i) split a FAC page into subsections, (ii) add symbols (such as ticks and crosses) or boxes, or (iii) bold text or strike through it (except for each reviewer's initial word). Rather than striking through a reviewer's comments, nominators should write a plain word such as “Done” or a substantive rejoinder after them.
This allows one sentence to be removed from the lead above; I even trimmed the rest of the "Supporting and opposing" text to pay for the addition (no substantive change in meaning in the rest). And while we're at it, can we get rid of "Object" and make it just "Oppose" (I don't care which, but why clutter the instructions with two terms)? Tony 10:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
These guidelines are designed to prevent messes like this. Tony 09:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Regarding this edit; JooperCoopers, please explain how you are distinguishing between 1) providing inline citations where appropriate—1c, and 2) formatting them correctly when they are provided—2d. Separate issues; one is WP:V, the other is WP:MOS. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 20:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
A featured article exemplifies our very best work and features professional standards of writing and presentation. In addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.........It complies with the manual of style and relevant WikiProjects. Thus, it includes.........(d) consistently formatted inline citations, using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1). (See citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended.)
This implies footnotes are mandatory - you need to modify the sentence to say 'where appropriate' - yes it duplicates 1c, but it needs the duplication.
Do you see? -- Joopercoopers 21:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
(several ecs) Joopers, your wording said citations should be correctly formatted when appropriate; when is it not appropriate to format citations correctly? 2d allows for Harvard, cite.php, whatever, as long as citations are consistently formattted. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 21:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
"Factually accurate" means that claims are verifiable against reliable sources and accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge. Claims are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out and, where approriate, complemented by inline citations consistently formatted per MOS, using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1). (See citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended.) "
-- Joopercoopers 21:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I think what you say exposes one of the problems of MOS. It's supposed to be a guideline but WIAFA appears to give it the status of policy when applying for FA - nowhere on WIAFA does it say that items under criteria 1. are more important than items under criteria 2.
If this is the case, merging the sentence makes no difference. If it's not the case - it needs to be explicit on the page. I think if it's guideline it's a guideline and WIAFA shouldn't be used to circumvent that status - FAC needs to concentrate more on well written, reliable and accurate information rather than attempt to impose an increasingly prescriptive style.--
Joopercoopers
23:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, let's find a way. -- Joopercoopers 16:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
This passage needs to be altered. It ignores the nature of MOS; it's a guideline. It contains portions
Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC) I strongly commend the wording, follows MOS
Included "follow" and "Most importantly", in accordance with Bishonen's discussion above. If anyone is going to argue that WP:MOSDASH is as important as a hierarchical system of headers, please do so here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment: I see that Bishonen accidentally saved a version without Sandy's reply. This is what happens, about 1% of the time, when there is an edit conflict and the software doesn't catch it to put up the edit-conflict screen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Is it reasonable to add to the FA criteria that a FA should have a sufficient length (time period) of page history in order to demonstrate stability as currently defined? In other words, should there be a minimum time from an article's creation before which FA status can be awarded? I don't mean an arbitrary cutoff, but just enough time to show many editors have "touched" the article. This is in relation to the FAC for Andrew Saul. Although I don't think that FAC will succeed for other reasons, I think featured articles that have a short history cannot demonstrate they are stable or that they are Wikipedia's best work. TLK 'in 05:14, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
"...where inline citations are appropriate (see 1c above), they should be consistently formatted using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing..." I thought that Harvard notes were going to be phased out? Every time I've brought a FA hopeful to FAC, the general consensus has been to swap Harvard notes for foot notes. Is there going to be a change since the consensus already is contrary to the criteria? Spawn Man 07:08, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I suggest a national points system? There is obviously a bias in favour of the USA, and more variety could be had if there was a handicap/scoring system for articles concerning those countries who receive many or few articles -- MacRusgail 15:40, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
New user Dano'Sullivan has just added a page of advice for reviewers that may contain useful stuff, but is wrongly positioned on his talk page, and needs trimming, formatting and rationalising. I'd be happier if people presented links to their drafts here so we could offer advice before they were posted. Tony 01:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just seen the above comments on my points-suggestions for evaluating articles User:Dano'sullivan/How to edit an article. I appreciate what was said but I still think there is a case for such a system, though mine may not be the best one. Many editors of varying experience and knowledge look at articles, and a grading system of some sort would bring some uniformity of approach. There are many considerations to think about when assessing articles and its quite useful to be reminded of them. I know my suggestions are rather long - but assessment is important and takes time. I've picked two featured articles more or less at random and tried to assess them according to my system. One got 34/50 points and the other 25/50. I'd be grateful for further comments. Dano'sullivan ( talk) 16:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Why "Thus, it includes" rather than "including"? DrKiernan 14:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Number 2 currently reads, "It follows the style guidelines and relevant WikiProjects, including:"
Does this make sense to anyone else? "Follows the relevant WikiProjects"? I don't get it. Was this something else, or worded differently, in the past? Mahalo. -- Ali'i 16:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
In the beginning, it said "A featured article should ... [c]omply with the standards set by any relevant WikiProjects, as well as those in the style manual." -- !! ?? 23:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, this is great! I've always wondered about a guideline page on writing medical wikipedia articles and only recently found this page via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine...
Page | Talk page |
---|---|
MoS page (or subpage) | Redirect to main project talk page |
Main project page | Main project talk page (all discussion centralized here) |
Page | Talk page |
---|---|
MoS page (or subpage) | MoS talk page (most discussions occur here) |
Main project page | Main project talk page (some discussions occur here) |
I see nothing wrong with the projects having guidelines separate from yet subordinate to the WP MOS. The projects are after all the subject matter experts in their fields and responsible for a huge percentage of articles that get to FAs. Rlevse 14:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Sandy, hsving objected to a sentence which indicated the sort of Wikiproject we mean by example, now objects to "widely respected" Wikiproject guidelines as too vague.
Better wording than "widely respected" would of course be welcome; none occurs to me.
A more captious mind than myself would suspect that this is mere imperialism on behalf of poor beleaguered WP:MOS, but I'm sure that there is a more logical explanation, which Sandy has not yet expressed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
While we're discussing brevity in the criteria, what difference is intended between the two terms above? Isn't a "system of hierarchical headings" the same thing as a table of contents? Combine to: "A heirarchical table of contents that is substantial but not overwhelming." Marskell 09:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I think "not overwhelming" is essential. Thirty or forty headlines in a ToC turns off readers, almost always indicates stub sections, and generally suggests poor integration of material and poor prose flow.
But I agree with above that "substantial" isn't right for smaller articles; you don't have to throw in excess headlines just for the sake of having a large ToC. "Logical and convenient for reader browsing but not overwhelming" or something like that? Marskell 15:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely need "not overwhelming"; an overwhelming TOC is often a sign of poor article organization. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, Raul seems to disagree with this discussion: [4]. He replaced the thing about the TOC being "substantial but not overwhelming". Maybe a little discussion from him here would help. -- Ali'i 14:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Non-regular or intra-universal words, terms, or concepts specifically related to the article should be explained, or avoided if this would be possible without lowering the quality of the article. For instance, video game or comic book babble should be ignored or explained, specific (e.g. mathematical/chemical/philosophical...) concepts used should be properly introduced, etc. Sijo Ripa 12:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Just like we have Arguments to Avoid in Deletion Discussions, I suspect that writing a similar page for FAC will help address the apparent problems with feature discussions (FAC, FLC, FPC, etc). It seems that several pages have been featured while failing to address important problems, or not featured for spurious reasons, such as whether their en-dashes were "properly spaced". Please contribute to the above page, and give comments on its talk page. >Radiant< 13:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
(indent) - hang on, you were the one who started this with your comment about errors in promotions/non-promotions, which has now sidetracked what could have been more productive than what has ensued. As before - please cite your examples and deal with appropriately or strike out your comments.cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 09:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm surprised this William Claiborne non-example is still kicking around, since we discussed it (including Raul's response) already at WT:MOS and there seemed to be an understanding that the problem there was that the nominator stopped responding. [5] SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
We've been led to believe that somehow FAC reviews used to focus more on content than they currently do, and I continue to say (based on what I've seen in archives) that's just not the case. A stunning example surfacd today. Compare Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stuttering to the issues at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Stuttering. Some strong review of content there, huh? Not a single content reviewer, and all focus on style, no one knowledgeable in the subject matter. That review focused on images, reference formatting, table layout, etc. So, what has changed? We have much more serious content reviews now, and we also review style issues as a bonus. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm quite willing to discuss this with you, but other people keep derailing the thread with ad hominems. As soon as that stops I'd be happy to reopen productive discussion. >Radiant< 14:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) - I massaged the prose of Augustus and was happy with the end result. If you feel so strongly about it PMA then there is FAR (which is its purpose), which is the appropriate forum for discussion.cheers,
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
03:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
PS: I won't take it personally either and will try to collaborate. cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) We're back to Projects again, when this all started on consensus to delete Projects ... due weight to style recommendations from Wikiprojects, allowing for their record within the featured article process , still relative and meaningless. Where does the Chicago Project fit? Where does NBA fit? What one editor considers a good record another may not; this is still entirely too relative, and the whole concept is being solved by MilHist becoming part of MOS. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Did we not have clear consensus to remove mention of WikiProjects? What changed? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Holy smokes! "Due weight" requires as much judgement (and is prone to as much disagreement) as determining whether prose is "engaging" "brilliant" and "professional standard", or whether an omitted fact is "major", or how reliable a source is, or whether an article is neutral or stable, or whether images are "appropriate", and the length is "appropriate", or whether detail is "unnecessary". None of these are objective criteria.
There is no need to be scared of adjectives that impose a degree of subjectivity or uncertainty. It is an elephant test - you know it when you see it.
As Douglas Adams said: "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty." -- !! ?? 13:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
OK folks - let's see if carrots work better than sticks to get folks (darn! repetition!!) editors in the mood for sprucing up articles. I've got a game plan
here.....cheers,
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
11:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
How about... people swap jobs for a month? That way everyone will be more sympathetic to each other afterwards. I got this idea from reading Septentrionalis's comment here about what reviewers should do: "all they have to do is stop making FAC comments on dashes, dots, and year-links except on articles otherwise flawless. They might then have to actually consider content and writing". In my view, the ideal reviewer will be a jack-of-all-trades, and will comment on both style and content. Not necessarily at the same time, but equally not ignoring the other side of the coin. I know when I review something, I try and do both. So how about it? Why don't the content reviewers try and do intensive copyediting for a while, and the copyeditors try and review content for a while. Or at least for long enough to confirm why they don't normally do it, and to get a little bit more insight into the other side of the issues. Carcharoth 23:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
So... the conclusion is that we should stop worrying about the MoS and all go and carefully review the sources used to write articles? That is what it sounds like to me. So why don't we (or rather you, as I don't participate at FAC on a regular basis) all actually go and do that? No replies needed here. Go and review the sources in a FAC instead! :-) Carcharoth 17:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I haven't counted up anyone's exact edits/reverts, but I do see a lot of to and fro. Would everyone please be careful of the three revert rule? I don't want to see anyone involved in this get a short block, and 3RR is one of the surest ways to draw a block no matter what the explanation. Let's sort this out on the talk page. Mike Christie (talk) 19:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre#Martial. Yet the FAC found time to discuss endashes again. Possibly if wasting time on WP:MOSDASH had been precluded, by disallowing it in the criteria, someone might have actually noticed that one of the sources is a work of literature, and inserted the necessary caveats before this got on the main page. Let's do it now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
For another example, consider the discussion on the article Yomangani was watching on the Parliament Acts. This could have used some attention to the prose; but not endashes and hyphens: Doubts that existed in academic circles concerning the validity of the 1949 Act were refuted... in the lead. Are doubts refuted? Is the passive necessary? (I've settled the first; the second is harder, but it should have been considered.) Let us get to the xondition where we don't pass articles without these defects before we worry whether to always use a symbol for pounds. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Yomangani ( talk · contribs) has retired. If you're able to help maintain the FAs that he wrote and restored at FAR, please add them to your watchlist:
I've got Red Barn Murder, Beagle and Laika, but I'm not sure I'll stick around much longer for this either. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
How long is an "appropriate length"? Wikipedia:Article size seems exceedingly vague on the subject. AndyJones 17:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The chief purpose of having MOS at all is to contribute to the quality of articles; the original purpose of including it here was so that articles insofar as they contribute to the clarity, neutrality, accuracy, or verifiability of the article. We should say this. I note that Tony is opposed to this; but then he wants to follow the guidance of MOS when it introduces ambiguity.
I acknowledge that this standard would interfere with the endless opposes about dashes, year-linking, or that there were periods at the ends of the wrong captions. On the other hand, without those, FA might accept fewer mediocre articles, and reject fewer decent ones. Is anyone else opposed to clarity, accuracy, neutrality, and verifiability as our overriding standards? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the tag, per Tony, Kirill, Marskell, etc. Raul654 15:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Raul has recently inserted a link to an essay on when to cite, which explicitly says at the top that it's opinion. While we do need more guidelines here (I haven't yet digested the contents of the essay), may I suggest that until the status of the essay is firmed up, this link be moved to the "See also" section? Tony (talk) 06:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe Featured Articles are special things that "exemplifies the finest outcome achieved by the Wikipedia community," and thus should not be handed out easily or carelessly as if it was not worth much and meant nothing.
Here's the first draft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Leranedo/Criteria
Feel free to edit it!
I like to know everything WRONG with it, and what can make it better. Please help.
The main elements I like about it:
The major flaws I see:
What can be made better? Need Feedback. Learnedo 07:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
FA doesn't mean much, and isn't worth very much; it never has been. (It is still better than some of its competitors, which mean nothing.)
The fundamental problem with FA is that reviewing an article strictly takes an enormous amount of time; unfortunately, accuracy and verifiability take the most time, and therefore all too often are not adequately considered at all. We don't have enough reviewers to do this for the articles we consider now, to the extent we do consider them. This is a scaling problem, and mya be expected to get worse until FA is abandoned.
The result of this is that almost any article can be attacked by arguing that it is, in one or another aspect, not the best we can do; this will be correct: No article is the best we can do, or beyond the reach of improvement. Meanwhile the same aspect will be let slide on articles that are promoted.
Raising the standards of WIAFA will make this worse; so will lengthening it. This will worsen the outcome of FA,
viewed as a competition of gold stars,
while decreasing its actual service to WP: articles that go through FAC are generally, not always, better articles when they pass than when they are nominated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Criterion 4 states:
It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
Does the first clause add anything? Isn't it all said subsequently? "It stays focused ...". Tony (talk) 10:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm concerned about what seems, to me at least, to be a recent trend for applying the MOS rules – particularly concerning the use of dashes – to the titles of publications given in the {{cite}} template. Altering the title of a publication from the form which its authors' gave it seems to me to be a dangerous road to be going down. There's an example of this having happened recently at one of the current FA candidates, Chew Stoke. -- Malleus Fatuarum 17:39, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Removing the spaces from "Royal Diary of Engagements - January - August" was an oversight, but I was unaware of the searchability issues of changing the dashes. I don't think changing the dashes actually does affect searches though; I don't think correcting the dashes does any more harm than changing an uppercase web article title to lowercase, which I think MOS recommends. Epbr123 00:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I don't entirely agree. It's quite acceptable to change an article or book title from title-case to sentence-case (although it's conventional to retain title case for the titles of journals and conferences, for some reason, which I think should be respected); most worklists I have to edit out there are inconsistent in upper/lower case, and need to be ironed out. I'm highly suspicious of double hyphens as separators in journal titles; as above, I'm pretty sure journals don't allow it, and thus I'm inclined to change to a single punctuation (which would make a search more accurate, anyway). Work lists are typically full of mistakes and inconsistencies: I comment on this in my reviews where necessary, and expect contributors to fix the problem. Inserting rules into MOS or the FA criteria is probably not the way to go. Tony (talk) 01:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
This is something that cuts across the whole Manual of Style and I think it ought to be discussed there. I've suggested we add some text to it reminding everyone that there are some things which should not be altered for style, see this discussion. -- bainer ( talk) 00:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this is redundant but I have seen tons of articles where user created maps, tables, graphs, diagrams, etc. do not provide verifiable sources like they should. Most parts of the text are usually referenced but people don't bother to add references to their images in many cases leading to articles like trade route which is a particularly bad offender since we have to take the images on faith rather than through the knowledge that the routes have been taken from verifiable reliable sources. Can we explicitly mention this under the images section? gren グレン 14:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, I just created Template:Imagefact to add in the thumbnail caption area of articles... I wonder if this will actually become useful or if it will be deleted, but I hope it helps to address the problem for now. gren グレン 14:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Some (most?) pop/rock music articles that make FA are simply nothing more than fan pages. ...if an article's text is drawn overwhelmingly from one source, plus a few scattered snippets from People magazine or MTV.... is this a violation of the "Comprehensive" requirement? It does not seem to be a serious critical examination of the topic.... Even if an article has several refs, the refs are typically ... fan pages! Or some variety of "People"! Are these reliable sources? Ling.Nut ( talk) 01:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion here. Permalink is here. Samsara ( talk • contribs) 14:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I've just posted on the the 2006 Chick-fil-A Bowl talk page, queued up for 31 Dec FA, and will repeat here: Odd that this got to FA and no-one noticed that the COUNTRY is not even mentioned (well, it is now, because I just added it). I've noticed this so many time in Wikipedia articles: ones that originate from/ are about countries other than the US almost always state the country, but American ones generally don't bother. Is this a reflection of American parochialism, not looking beyond their borders, not realising there's a whole world reading out there, most of whom won't have a clue where the places they talk about might be? Or are we all supposed somehow to know all about American geography, even though this is never expected of articles on other countries? An encylcopedia is supposed to be ENCYCLOPEDIC and to educate.
Try this. You'll need a pad and paper. Keep hitting 'random article' and see how many US-related articles mention the country, and how many non-US ones mention their country. See what I mean? The American editors seem to think that putting 'Athens, Georgia' is enough. It really gets my goat. I know this isn't a specifically FA-related gripe, but the fact that an article got promoted with this glaring omission is an indicator of the mind set of those choosing/reviewing the articles. It's just not good enough. 86.137.136.17 ( talk) 13:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Me again on a dynamic IP. Several things. First off, I think an enclopedia article should as a very basic fact state the country / nationality of the subject of the article. That's a basic. You shouldn't have to send people off by links to other articles to find out that information. Secondly, Tony's comment about 'any fool' is telling. We should treat all our readers with respect, and we should provide the knowledge they need, not send them off searching for it. 'Good training' it may be, but surely the all the relevant, basic information that the reader needs should be in the article? Nil Einne makes a good point. Who chooses at what stage we decide? By what criteria? And by the way, I chose Atlanta Georgia for good reason - it's perfectly possible that readers will assume that Georgia is the country rather than the state. 81.129.130.162 ( talk) 19:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed this trend before, I posted a comment on WT:MOS and got little response, if you check my contrib page, you'll find that a large number of my edits are for fixing this issue. I don't know why you're discrediting this matter as over serious, I think it violates the neutrality of the article and increases the US-centrism of our encyclopedia. It is a very basic job for an article to define its geographical context, and the basic geographical, and most useful, unit would be the country. Why do we consider that any reader will know where Atlanta is? And assume that Kiev or Manille are more obscure city? The only argument would be that this is an English Encyclopedia, so it should be US- or Anglo-centric. This violates WP neutral and geographically unbiased spirit. My solution would be to make a requirement that in every article the basic geographical context (ie. the country) be defined. And you could write Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia instead of Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
One more thing, I noticed that this issue affects "British" articles more than "US" ones. There has been a consensus between British editors that the basic geographical unit would be their country (ie. England, Wales, Scotland, Nothern Ireland) and not UK, which is very unfamiliar to the average user (I took me a lot of browsing through discussion to figure out why). CG ( talk) 16:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this post from Sandy so much that I copy it here:
The added italics are mine. They add up, I think, to a coherent and generalizable position: MOS covers a lot of stuff, some of it, like non-breaking spaces in footnotes, of doubtful net value to the project; one or two editors can add stuff to obscure corners of MOS; and there is sentiment that all of it becomes obligatory here immediately. This is a bad thing; we should apply MOS with common sense. I agree.
When the present WIAFA was written, MOS contained many fewer rules, and fewer of them dealt with matters like this, which would be part of the ideal Wikipedia, but may without serious loss be postponed until just before WP:DEADLINE. The problem here can in principle be solved by continually arguing over MOS; but it would be simpler to cut the Gordian knot. Let us rephrase condition 2, to make the application of common sense the actual rule. Adding generally should be enough, but I don't care how this is done; merely that it is done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Over three months ago, I added that a featured article needed to have at least one free image in order to become Today's Featured Article. It was reverted within the hour: (Rv: requires discussion at talk.). Today, I added the suggestion again, per discussion in Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria exemptions. -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 18:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I need a bit of clarification because I have seen an apparent double-standard and I'd like to form a consensus here about what we really expect of FA's. In particular, I am speaking of candidate articles that are about works of fiction. Recently I have participated in an FAC ( Randall Flagg) where a reviewer posted significant oppose comments, chief of which was that the plot summaries in the articles are primarily the interpretation of the author and not backed up by scholarly sources. The FAC basically failed because of these concerns.
I actually came around to the reviewer's point of view and have since left a couple similar comments on other FAC's about fictional works ( The Last Temptation of Krust). I've been told there that, at least for the television articles, there is a consensus that plot summaries do not require academic or any other kind of secondary source.
I tend to think that FA reviewers can and should hold these articles up to a higher standard than perhaps their respective WikiProjects do, and that we should decide here if FAC's on fictional works should have such requirements. I, for one, lean toward requiring secondary sources but I don't necessarily think that plot summaries derived from only primary sources make for bad or inaccurate articles. -- Laser brain ( talk) 04:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Continued from above, the Randall Flagg FAC hasn't failed, and my understanding of the Oppose is different than what Laser writes above; Laser, you might want to revisit your understanding of that oppose. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this up Sandy, citing plot summaries in the articles I have done work to can be frustrating, especially since the cited sources lack the detail some of the summaries I have to write have. I have a question, though. From the video game FA's I have seen, they seem to cite the plot in every few sentences, mostly from dialogue from the game. Do they have some sort of set rules, or does the editor do this them self? See various Final Fantasy game articles to see what I am talking about. xihix( talk) 23:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Citing the script is extremely important, because it discourages original research and shows that there is none. It allows logical/obvious claims in the summary to be checked with direct excerpts from the script. It also shows the effort that went into making the synopsis; with Final Fantasy articles, we usually cite the script either every few sentences to show that the summary is not being drawn out of thin air, and also to support potentially shocking events. Sorry if I'm difficult to understand tonight; just got home from work and it's 2 in the morning here :) — Deckill er 06:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Citing the script is potentially a can of worms, since there is much which never appears in detail in a shooting script ("the battle ensues"), and additionally the shooting script often is not identical to the film. The film style guidelines, IIRC, make provision that the plots should be straightforward and uncontroversial. Anything which would require a secondary source - such as analysis or interpretation - should not be in the plot section, but instead should be contained in separate analysis sections. Remember, primary sources are not absolutely verboten, they're just not acceptable in certain circumstances. Things like plot summarization are precisely what primary sources are excellent for. Girolamo Savonarola ( talk) 23:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I disagree that writing about primary sources is original research. Now, it is more likely to lead to original research than citing secondary sources, which is why we have the requirement to present primary sources in a purely descriptive manner. Such descriptions should be reviewed by others to avoid personal interpretations and specialist knowledge. I think it's completely possible to find wording that would be indisputable to all editors. If there is a plot element that is unclear to all, the issue can either be avoided, made ambiguous in its description, or clarified through a secondary source. In addition, we should be able to cite non-print primary sources. Some sources, like films, can be difficult with lack of segmentation, but hopefully nobody thinks it's realistic to cite time stamps for a film's scenes in presenting a plot. In the case of Randall Flagg, though, I agree with Awadewit's assessment that it is predominantly a plot summary of the fictional character. Not only does it cover every appearance of the character, it goes into detail about each appearance. Imagine if we did this for Batman or Superman! All appearances by the character are in works that have their own Wikipedia articles, so a lot of the context could belong at their respective articles, especially considering that Randall Flagg is only a part of these works, not entirely representative of it. I think that the issue with the article, at least in terms of using primary sources, is that it embellishes them. Primary sources are second-tier and should only be included to support the context of secondary sources, not to be a force of its own. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 15:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
A FA needs its context to be described either in a number of articles or in external sources. Fallacy of quoting out of context describes only literal quoting but the same danger exists for any text -Wikipedia article. Any reader has his/her backgound so he/she understands the article in the context of his/her culture. Example: Authoritarian countries frequently have democratic institutions like constitution, elections, media, but the institutions work worse than in democratic countries, but also better than in totalitarian ones. So an article about elections in country X should inform about the freedom of the elections, not only that 99% supported John Doe on September 22. Xx236 ( talk) 14:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
What level of wikifying is expected of a featured article. If an article contains a word that is very rare would you expect the article to wikify the word so the reader could understand what it means? If further more the rare word had no article on wikipedia to explain it, what should happen? Should it be redlinked, left without being wikified or something else? SunCreator ( talk) 15:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to say that the lead actually has to meet the lead section guidelines! Richard001 ( talk) 11:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Consensus is being tested concerning a proposal to establish a directorate (possibly two of the regular reviewers) as part of a program to improve the FLC process. Input is welcome. Wikipedia_talk:Featured_list_candidates#Should_we_have_a_FL_director.3F Tony (talk) 12:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I've re-started the process here. The input of reviewers and nominators from this page would be valued. Tony (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2008 (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 1 | ← | Archive 5 | Archive 6 | Archive 7 | Archive 8 | Archive 9 | Archive 10 |
The debates here and here may be of interest in relation to the interpretation and enforcement of Criterion 3. Tony 00:07, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I think the FA 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · is an example of an article that needed a bit more work before it is promoted to FA status. I think that one of the missing pieces here would be accessibility. I know this will be a technical article, but as a FA, I think this needs to say in the intro why it is important and, if it can't say what it is in a brief summary, then at least tell what you need to know to understand it. I think that Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible should be something that is included in any part of the FA review.
I have no problem with a Mathamatics article being a FA. I think they are at least as worthy as a Bulbasaur. I would like to suggest that the importance of the topic be asserted in the intro so that someone going there from the Main Page would see first the summary of what it is and then the summary of why it matters.
I have seen several articles which I think miss out on making the importance of the subject and the accessibility of the article prominent features of the FA review. Any comments? Slavlin 20:00, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
I wrote the article, and I've been paying attention to what people say about it throughout both Wikipedia and the rest of the Internet, so I hope my perspective here will help.
First of all, the series is notable simply by virtue of the fact that it gets nontrivial coverage in multiple reliable sources, such as Hardy, Saichev, and Weidlich. It helps that one of these is a respected primary source, namely Euler. It also helps that the series gets a ton of passing mentions. You may judge that the series does not deserve its notability, but then you're making a judgement on how human inquiry should be done and not how Wikipedia should report on it.
Even though I think that article topics don't need to be important (in the more-than-notable sense), I have stuff to say about that too. If you have a physics background with linear algebra, you've probably seen Fourier series. This means that there's an excellent chance that you've seen Abel summation without realizing it; see the reference to Davis at the end of the article for how. Abel and Borel summation are essential to modern physics, which deals with divergent series all the time, and I for one think that examples like 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · are essential to understanding such methods.
There are at least two reasons why I wouldn't say so in the article:
On to accessibility. The closest the article comes to explaining what's "really going on" is in Stability and linearity: "A generalized definition of the 'sum' of a divergent series is called a summation method or summability method, which sums some subset of all possible series. There are many different methods (some of which are described below) which are characterized by the properties that they share with ordinary summation." This is just a couple of sentences. One could explain the situation a lot better by writing a whole section, but then you'd have to duplicate that section across every article dealing with divergent series. Duplication of information is bad for lots of reasons. Oh sure, you could make sure to mention the series by name within the explanation, and then do a find-and-replace for other articles, but that's cheating. It also opens doors you don't want to open: then we can have suspiciously similar articles on every divergent series under the sun.
We avoid duplication by placing information where it belongs, in this case in the article titled Divergent series. Perhaps the latter article doesn't explain the philosophy of divergent series very well either, but it already says a lot more than 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · should.
The upshot of my explanations for 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + · · · is that we generally shouldn't add FA criteria that many articles won't be able to meet without stretching policy and damaging the encyclopedia as a whole. The current criteria encourage fundamental good practices that all articles should be able to implement without conflict. Melchoir 03:25, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
I think this wording change is extremely necessary. Not only does it underscore 1a, it also helps distinguish GA 1a from FA 1a (since I got complaints for adding "'reasonably' well written" during my GA criteria revision last week). — Deckill er 09:31, 19 April 2007 (UTC)
All too often, even featured articles use technical terms to excess. Obviously, the basic terms of the field should be used, however, particularly in more general articles, they ought to be briefly explained at first use. As it is, all too often we get articles that think that a wikilink absolves them of all responsibility to write layman-accessible text. Many such articles require the reading of dozens of other articles just to get through a few paragraphs, and if they wikilink to each other, the reader is screwed.
A general rule might be "All terms not in general use should be explained at first occurrance, not just wikilinked, except where a technical term is substantially more basic and better known than the subject of the article itself." Adam Cuerden talk 13:18, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
Is there a maximum to article length. I tried splitting an article I was working on into subarticles and then compressed the text in the main article but was reverted to take the 89kb article to 111kb. The reverter said they reverted to try and get the article to featured-article length. I thought that it was a bit too long for FA. I would like confirmation. Traing 07:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
I would oppose any such criterion for a minimum length (indeed, any criterion designed simply to exclude otherwise flawless articles). It's unfortunate, Tony, that you believe short articles do not display Wikipedia's best work, but it is not at all clear why that is true. My opposition would be tempered if you promise never again to oppose an article for redundant prose or other excess verbiage: if this criterion is added, there will indeed be a good reason for padding the word count at the expense of readability. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:55, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
To my knowledge, these are the only ultra-long FAs. Six out of 1382 = .4 % — I can't find the most recent list of ultra-long articles, but this is all that showed up last time I perused it.
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Several could clearly make better use of Summary Style (e.g.; at least Schizophrenia, Byzantime Empire). Also note Dr pda doesn't pick up listy prose, so Sound film had to be calculated manually. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 13:31, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Found this list in archives — will come back and add Dr pda data:
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:25, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Looking at this list above, I'm back to thinking 10KB prose should be a lower limit, because the Frog article is worthy. With all due respect to Titoxd and the Hurricane, Wiki isn't short on hurricane FAs. Austin Nichols and the Camper article don't convince me. Guess I should polish up Intrusive thoughts and sumbit it. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 14:57, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Out of curiosity, here is an article with a mere 13KB of prose; do people feel it's insufficiently long? Kirill Lokshin 18:49, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Sounds like that's that :-) But ya'll didn't say how you feel about including an upper limit in the criteria. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:56, 7 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, the old 32k rule-of-thumb limit always seemed to me to produce articles of a nice, readable size, but it does often require a quart to be squeezed into a pint pot. Anything more than, say, twice as long as that is getting too long, IMHO, and probably ought to be broken down into daughter articles. The saffron / history of saffron / trade and usage of saffron series shows how it can be done. But I don't think we need a hard-and-fast limit. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:19, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
4. It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail. Nominations that fall outside the recommended prose size range are discouraged and must demonstrate appropriate usage of summary style. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 08:53, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
This is for only those at the big end of the spectrum, not for the aluminium cent ones? I presume that the current wording of Criterion 4 is not strong enough to allow objections on the basis that summary style is not used in parts or the whole of the nomination. (It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).) Perhaps reviewers haven't used this Criterion explicitly for this purpose. I'm wondering how nominators will "demonstrate appropriate usage of summary style" when challenged; they'll just say "It's all in summary style—go away", won't they? The onus will still be on us to say where and why it's not in summary style. So I'm unsure that the new version would change anything in practice. Tony 10:06, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
It's up to individual FA reviewers and their colleagues to form an opinion of where the limit lies beyond which they start to object; that might be better than cementing it in black-letter law (which might upset the 30/45 KB guideliners). Tony 13:47, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
I didn't know I would trigger such a long discussion...:)...I've been working on Sino-Indian War, where I summarized the 111kb article to 89kb by creating articles Origins of the Sino-Indian border dispute and Events leading to the Sino-Indian War while just keeping a summarized version on the actual page. I was reverted and User:Yuje explained that he did not support me because I supposedly "deleted huge sections of information that despite what he said, did not restore anywhere else" and said the he is "trying to improve it by extended it and giving the historical background leading up to the war, to make it a feature-length article". Which made me think whether there should be a limit to feature-length articles, particularly because the article hardly has any pictures and still takes time to load (depending on your browser speed). I believe the maximum for an article should be 70kb because we could allow them to go over the 64kb mark slightly. The minimum should be 15kb, some topics are simply not worthy to make it to the main page because there is not much information related to their topics. Those are my view's and could someone clarify to Yuje on Talk:Sino-Indian War because he seems to be of the view that I am deleting all this information without restoring them anywhere else. For example, he says "He editted the article in a completely POVed manner, editting out selectively, and he deleted huge sections of information that despite what he said, did not restore anywhere else". Traing 08:37, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
This matter was brought up in the recent (and successful) nomination of Conatus. This article, as I originally sourced it, used Harvard referencing, not the more typical ref/note method. I believed that this, while not the standard, would be acceptable in an FAC because of the endorsement of this method on various pages, including the "guideline" WP:CITE. According to this page, the three accepted methods of citing sources are: Embedded HTML links, Harvard referencing and Footnotes. In my experience, however, only the last is truly acceptable for a modern FA: during the Conatus's FAC, there was overwhelming support for a conversion to Footnotes style. I say that if FAs must realistically use Footnotes, the list of criteria should specify that; or if Harvard style is decidedly OK, that should be said directly. WP:CITE may be a good guideline (I don't know if it is) for most articles, but it is not a good guideline for FAs right now. -- Rmrfstar 23:40, 8 May 2007 (UTC)
FACs needing feedback view • | |
---|---|
Susanna Hoffs | Review it now |
Fountain Fire | Review it now |
Will reviewers kindly note that these boxes are regularly updated for problematic nominations and for those that are hanging around for too long with too few comments. Transcluding them on your user page and/or at the top of your talk page would be a great way to generate more interest in these processes, especially by reviewers who manage to visit only occasionally.
All you do is to key in {{User:Deckiller/FAC urgents}} and {{User:Tony1/FAR urgents}}. Tony 02:14, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
I've proposed a new version of the existing criteria to be implemented after a week or so of debate, if consensus can be achieved. Comments from reviewers from this room would be welcomed. Tony 02:27, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
In my opnion, Featured Articles should be structured with section sizes being appropriate to that which would actually interest readers. This may not make sense, so here's a hypothetical example:
Stairway to Heaven is an FAC. It meets all of the criteria, and is lengthy and well-structured. It includes information about the backwards lyrics. However, the largest sections are:
That would certainly be a comprehensive article. However, if the volume of non-notable and uninteresting material vastly outweighs the pertinent information, I would say the article is too unfocused or misproportioned to be an FA.
The problem with having focus as in the FA criteria is that it is subjective. An editor who really doesn't want an article to pass FAC could easily say "This article doesn't stay focused on the pertinent information." The easiest way to apply this objectively would be to ask "What would the average reader want to know about this topic?" Whatever the answer to that is should be the focus of the article.
This wouldn't necessarily have to be its own criterion, nor would it have to be strictly enforced. It could fall under well-written and would really only be actionable in extreme cases. -- Cryptic C62 · Talk 23:00, 9 May 2007 (UTC)
Two editors are editing WP:LAYOUT to state that Wiki "sister" links should be added to the lead rather than the See also or External links at the end of the article. I believe this will clutter the lead, resulting in ugly articles, and external content (even interwiki) belongs at the end. Other opinions ? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:21, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I think the discussion above finished prematurely... May I re-word the criteria to recommend only footnotes for the sake of standardization and readability? -- Rmrfstar 17:35, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
I think that it would be best to use a single consistent style of referencing, and the <ref> ones are certainly the most convenient for the reader. Atropos 07:53, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
Hello. I've noticed that several featured articles use non-animated images stored in the GIF format. This is not recommended because images like these are often better represented in the PNG format. The PNG format is completely lossless, often compresses better, and supports full alpha-channel transparency. The templates {{ BadGIF}} and {{ ShouldBePNG}} exist to help us identify and resolve this problem by doing a fairly simple conversion from GIF to PNG. The PNG crusade bot can do this conversion with little human intervention.
Would it be OK if another criteria was added, requiring that GIF images be converted to PNG unless there is a good reason not to? — Remember the dot ( talk) 23:58, 16 May 2007 (UTC)
How about setting up some technical content FA process? A lot of technical content can't be boiled down to the same level as a Celebrity biography, or an article about the flag of Peru, and that appears to be a criteria imposed by reviewers for getting technical articles through the FA process. Just wondering... SqlPac 20:26, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
I don't see us changing the FA process to accomodate technical articles; however, if someone would like to come up with criteria that apply specifically to technical articles, I'm all ears. Raul654 21:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
If it helps, this page is transcludable as {{Wikipedia:Featured article criteria}}; if not, revert my changes :) Gracenotes T § 22:07, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
Hi all, at the moment we have a rather subjective criterion (3) in determining whether or not images are a prerequisite. After reviewing at Birchington-on-Sea I felt that images would be (a) pretty easy to get and (b) essential for facilitating engagement, I thus decided not to continue reviewing until images were added, which they were.
Now the criterion states: It has images where they are appropriate to the subject,...
I could imagine some obscure theoretical idea maybe not require images but I would have thought just about everything else would need them to make "Wikipedia's best work". Have there been FAs in recent times with no images? cheers, Cas Liber | talk | contribs 22:05, 26 May 2007 (UTC)
We have far too many people ignoring the message to upload free images there, not here. We also have far too few articles linking to commons when there is a valid page to link to. Creating this as a standard for FAs should signal to all articles that this is how things should be done. It will improve Wikipedia articles by providing a link to more images and other media, it will allow editors to browse other possible images to improve the article as they become available (or are moved into the category), will provide better awareness and closer relations with Commons, and it will improve commons in similar fashion, as editors may improve the commons categories/pages, upload images there for use on other projects, and see better utilization of Commons resources.
These are the best of our articles and I think they should demonstrate proper use of this important sister project. Richard001 01:14, 27 May 2007 (UTC)
Moved to Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates
Some FA articles ( Evolution for example) have scrollable content (References, in Evolution's case) that make the printable version incomplete. In the case of Evolution it is especially noticeable in that only a few of the many many references are in the printable version of the article. Is there any guideline about having a complete printable version in the criteria for a FA? - Bevo 02:59, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopaedia. What we write is designed to be read on screen as part of a hyperlinked set of webpages. Formatting should be designed to aid our huge web readership, not the tiny minority of people who choose to print out web-pages. TimVickers 03:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Isn't this a problem that should have a technical solution; i.e. that the scroll box should be automatically expanded in the 'printable version'?-- Pharos 04:08, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Is there any markup that allows conditional expansion depending on whether or not the current rendering is the printable version of an article? I imagine it would be some sort of If-Then-Else construction. It would be useful for alternative images to the animated ones, for example, as well as for using the simpler rendering of the References list for the printable version. - Bevo 04:32, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
To address Bevo's original point - I've thought about it some more. There are clearly some things that do not translate into paper - movie and music files linked from articles; animated gifs, etc. So really, the camel is already inside the tent. With that acknowledged, however, I'd prefer that, for something like Evolution, that we not go out of our way to make articles that do not print correctly. Raul654 04:39, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
This has strayed from what I asked originally. That was, the impact, if any, of an incomplete printable version on the suitability of an article to be a FA. I intend to start a discussion elsewhere that will be more generally on the subject of the situation where it is not possible to produce a complete printable version of an article. Maybe that general discussion needs to play out before any overlap with FA suitability is determined. - Bevo 04:49, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
This is a simple stylesheet issue. If you are going to use scrolling sections, then the stylesheet needs to be set up so that scrolling happens only on screen media. —Cel ithemis 05:15, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Bevo, on your original question, there are other problems in the printable version, and I've been "had" by it several times. I like to print out long FACs to read and review when I travel. The seealso and other templates at the tops of sections don't reproduce on the printable versions, so once I stopped reviewing an article and commented that it wasn't comprehensive, not noticing that Summary sytle had been used, as it didn't show on the printable version. There is also a problem with math formulas on the printable version, but I can't remember what the problem was. I've not raised these issues before as I wasn't sure where they might be addressed, but do wish someone knowledgeable would help fix them. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:38, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
These are popping up everywhere: {{ scroll box}} says not to use it in mainspace, and references this TfD result. These boxes not only lose references on the printable version; I believe they also result in a loss of references on mirrors, of which there are many for FAs. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:04, 8 July 2007 (UTC)
Is it possible for an article to have too many images? We are currently expanding Kushan Empire and a problem is arising in trying to ensure that the layout doesn't have so many images that it crowds out the text. Is there any guideline about this? All the images are relevant one way or the other, and there is no agreement on what can be cut. A WikiFairy has suggested making cuts, but is getting resistance. Can any of you take a look and weigh in on the talk page regarding this? Buddhipriya 06:23, 14 June 2007 (UTC)
Today, I removed 20 fair use images from Robbie Williams [1]. No, this is not a featured article. However, in trying to further support my explanation as to why this was done, I came here to WP:FA to review articles on other musicians, to give examples of how an article should be using fair use images (if at all). I was rather shocked and dismayed to find a wide number of FAs having decorative use of fair use images. I'll take Genesis (band) as an example. This article, which attained featured status in April of 2006 and was reviewed to that status on May 1 of this year (form as of that date: [2]), had and has six fair use images on it. In the review for featured status, fair use was raised but only with regards to the audio clips. With regards to the images;
This case example is just one case. I could go on for a while here, as I've seen a number of featured articles for which fair use review was done very poorly or not at all. Especially in light of the Foundation's recent resolution on the use of copyrighted works (see Foundation:Resolution:Licensing policy), the culture here with regards to the support of the use of fair use images, if only by silence in not taking a stronger stance towards review of the use of such images, needs to change to be more in line with the m:Mission of Wikimedia and Wikipedia.
There's a number of us who are fighting fair use over use tooth and nail across a wide variety of articles. See User:Durin/Fair Use Overuse for a list of nearly 3000 articles where there are at least ten fair use images, much less the considerably longer list of articles with >4 and <10 (more than twice as long in fact), available at User:Durin/Fair Use Overuse smaller. To come here, at FA, to find examples of how it should be done and find rampant overuse undermines this effort and isn't in keeping with our mission here. We've been fighting this fair use overuse and continually become embroiled in debates over it. Time and time again this happens, and each time the reduction of fair use eventually wins out. But, an oft cited argument is "well this is how it's done at XYZ". No one has yet cited featured articles, but it will happen. These should be our finest examples, not examples where our licensing policy is abused.
I'd also like to note that the 100k FA article goal, while completely unachievable, is readily more achievable by virtue of having less fair use images per article that need to be reviewed. This would make review of such articles less complex. The culture needs to change; those of you conducting reviews of articles for featured status need to be considerably more direct and restrictive in the use of fair use images than is apparently the current case. -- Durin 15:34, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
(undent) I would say, start at GA and work upwards. I know many FA people have an attitude of GA is irrelevant etc., but that is simply & demonstrably false. The few FAs I've looked at always go thru GA first....and consider an axiom in computer programming: the earlier you catch an error, the more time/money you save. BUT, having said that, I think I soft–spoken, consensus–building approach is better than a top–down, authoritative tone. Seek out and secure allies amongst the GA troops. Be willing to spend the time on talk discussing it reasonably etc. Ling.Nut 23:55, 27 June 2007 (UTC)
Responding to several points:
To be honest, I'm fairly disappointed at the responses here. I've not been a contributor to FA, but I'd always made the assumption that FA was striving to uphold the highest ideals of Wikipedia. I see now I was in error. If that's antagonistic, so be it. Yesterday, I removed a number of fair use images from that day's featured article, Slayer. One of the images was put back. I should be getting support on this from the people here. Instead, I'm getting told I'm wrong. Ok, I'm wrong. Please use fair use liberally wherever you'd like, and wherever it's not clearly illegal. Don't worry about our m:Mission. It's meaningless tripe. Sigh. -- Durin 13:16, 28 June 2007 (UTC)
there. cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 04:05, 29 June 2007 (UTC)
FAs should conform to to MOS, but if we look at recent FAs, we find that the presentation of dates is often incorrect. American Dating finds its way into many articles that have no link at all to the U.S. (or the small number of other nations where AD is used). WP:DATE gives the established criteria.
Recent FAs include:
A common response is to say, "So what? Just turn on your date preferences and all dates appear in the format you prefer!", but this only applies for users with established accounts, (i.e. editors rather than readers), and given the widespread popularity of WP it is obvious that most users are readers, rather than the relatively limited community of editors. -- Jumbo 20:50, 9 July 2007 (UTC)
While the auto-formatting and linking functions are still the same, despite concerted attempts to get the techs at WM to fix this, I just don't care. I advise all WPians not to link any dates at all, and to choose the formatting they prefer, as long as consistent within an article. Make them fix this issue. Tony 14:58, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
No, in fact, the quality of FAs has noticeably declined over the past year; whenever FAC concentrates on some minor point, and ignores sourcing, writing, and neutrality, FAs decline to the point of mere adequacy. About 18 months ago, anything could get through FA if it had pretty pictures; then it was having enough footnotes (their content didn't matter); now it's the barely visible difference between hyphens and en-dashes. All these would enhance an otherwise perfect article, and proper citation, in some form, is vital; but at present anything which en-dashes correctly is likely to be promoted, whatever its other flaws, unless they are glaringly obvious.
Tony defended
Andrew Saul, which was abominably biased and execrably written.
Daniel Webster passed, despite being sourced from
Profiles in Courage (I'm not making this up, I regret to say).
Augustus just passed, and it's not a bad article, exactly; but it still says things like The longevity of Augustus' reign for length, and the Augustan PoV of its chief author and its chief source still shines through.
Fortunately, FA is ultimately unimportant to Wikipedia. Many editors ignore it altogether; but it could be a useful tool. I just cringe, half the time, when I see the front page, and I'm tired of it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:33, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I was reading Wikipedia:The perfect article, and I noticed that that page says that Wikipedia articles should be "nearly self-contained", ie. "it includes essential information and terminology, and is comprehensible by itself, without requiring significant reading of other articles". Is there a reason why something similar to this is not stated here? Where is the line drawn between explaining something in an article and directing the reader to read another article? Surely the problem lies in not knowing what level to pitch an article at? Carcharoth 15:23, 16 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm not aware that the issue of article lenght has been properly discussed here yet, but it has been a reoccuring issue at FAR in the last few months. Want to throw it out for openion from the community. This is the leading thread. Ceoil 01:16, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 01:32, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Dear colleagues
WP's Manual of Style has been expanded to include a summary of the recently overhauled MOSNUM submanual. Featured Article candidates are explicitly required to follow these guidelines, as are all WP articles.
At issue are the new Sections 9–14:
More detailed information on these and other topics is at WP:MOSNUM. Tony 06:43, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
As suggested on the FA talk page, there's an urgent need to lay down a few simple rules to minimise visual and structural chaos. Unless good counterarguments are put here, on Friday I intend to add the following to what we already have in the instructions ("Do not split a FAC page into subsections").
Please read a nominated article fully before deciding to support or oppose a nomination.
- To respond to a nomination, click the "Edit" link to the right of the article nomination (not the "Edit this page" link for the whole FAC page).
- If you support a nomination, write *'''Support''' ~~~~, followed by your reason(s). If you have been a significant contributor to the article, please indicate this.
- If you oppose a nomination, write *'''Oppose''' ~~~~, followed by your 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 FA 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, consider accepting it.
- Sign your name immediately to the right of this initial word (after one space), as well as after your comments; this makes it easier to keep track of who is declaring what on the page.
- Reviewers who object are strongly encouraged to return after a few days to check whether their objection has been addressed. To withdraw the objection, strike it out (with <s>...</s>) rather than removing it. Contributors should allow reviewers the opportunity to do this themselves.
- To provide constructive input on a nomination without specifically supporting or objecting, write *'''Comment''' ~~~~ followed by your advice.
- Contributors are asked not to (i) split a FAC page into subsections, (ii) add symbols (such as ticks and crosses) or boxes, or (iii) bold text or strike through it (except for each reviewer's initial word). Rather than striking through a reviewer's comments, nominators should write a plain word such as “Done” or a substantive rejoinder after them.
This allows one sentence to be removed from the lead above; I even trimmed the rest of the "Supporting and opposing" text to pay for the addition (no substantive change in meaning in the rest). And while we're at it, can we get rid of "Object" and make it just "Oppose" (I don't care which, but why clutter the instructions with two terms)? Tony 10:23, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
These guidelines are designed to prevent messes like this. Tony 09:24, 1 August 2007 (UTC)
Regarding this edit; JooperCoopers, please explain how you are distinguishing between 1) providing inline citations where appropriate—1c, and 2) formatting them correctly when they are provided—2d. Separate issues; one is WP:V, the other is WP:MOS. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 20:24, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
A featured article exemplifies our very best work and features professional standards of writing and presentation. In addition to meeting the requirements for all Wikipedia articles, it has the following attributes.........It complies with the manual of style and relevant WikiProjects. Thus, it includes.........(d) consistently formatted inline citations, using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1). (See citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended.)
This implies footnotes are mandatory - you need to modify the sentence to say 'where appropriate' - yes it duplicates 1c, but it needs the duplication.
Do you see? -- Joopercoopers 21:02, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
(several ecs) Joopers, your wording said citations should be correctly formatted when appropriate; when is it not appropriate to format citations correctly? 2d allows for Harvard, cite.php, whatever, as long as citations are consistently formattted. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 21:22, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
"Factually accurate" means that claims are verifiable against reliable sources and accurately represent the relevant body of published knowledge. Claims are supported with specific evidence and external citations; this involves the provision of a "References" section in which sources are set out and, where approriate, complemented by inline citations consistently formatted per MOS, using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1). (See citing sources for suggestions on formatting references; for articles with footnotes or endnotes, the meta:cite format is recommended.) "
-- Joopercoopers 21:54, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
I think what you say exposes one of the problems of MOS. It's supposed to be a guideline but WIAFA appears to give it the status of policy when applying for FA - nowhere on WIAFA does it say that items under criteria 1. are more important than items under criteria 2.
If this is the case, merging the sentence makes no difference. If it's not the case - it needs to be explicit on the page. I think if it's guideline it's a guideline and WIAFA shouldn't be used to circumvent that status - FAC needs to concentrate more on well written, reliable and accurate information rather than attempt to impose an increasingly prescriptive style.--
Joopercoopers
23:36, 6 August 2007 (UTC)
OK, let's find a way. -- Joopercoopers 16:00, 8 August 2007 (UTC)
This passage needs to be altered. It ignores the nature of MOS; it's a guideline. It contains portions
Septentrionalis PMAnderson 02:38, 8 September 2007 (UTC) I strongly commend the wording, follows MOS
Included "follow" and "Most importantly", in accordance with Bishonen's discussion above. If anyone is going to argue that WP:MOSDASH is as important as a hierarchical system of headers, please do so here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:18, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Comment: I see that Bishonen accidentally saved a version without Sandy's reply. This is what happens, about 1% of the time, when there is an edit conflict and the software doesn't catch it to put up the edit-conflict screen. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:17, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
Is it reasonable to add to the FA criteria that a FA should have a sufficient length (time period) of page history in order to demonstrate stability as currently defined? In other words, should there be a minimum time from an article's creation before which FA status can be awarded? I don't mean an arbitrary cutoff, but just enough time to show many editors have "touched" the article. This is in relation to the FAC for Andrew Saul. Although I don't think that FAC will succeed for other reasons, I think featured articles that have a short history cannot demonstrate they are stable or that they are Wikipedia's best work. TLK 'in 05:14, 26 August 2007 (UTC)
"...where inline citations are appropriate (see 1c above), they should be consistently formatted using either footnotes[1] or Harvard referencing..." I thought that Harvard notes were going to be phased out? Every time I've brought a FA hopeful to FAC, the general consensus has been to swap Harvard notes for foot notes. Is there going to be a change since the consensus already is contrary to the criteria? Spawn Man 07:08, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Can I suggest a national points system? There is obviously a bias in favour of the USA, and more variety could be had if there was a handicap/scoring system for articles concerning those countries who receive many or few articles -- MacRusgail 15:40, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
New user Dano'Sullivan has just added a page of advice for reviewers that may contain useful stuff, but is wrongly positioned on his talk page, and needs trimming, formatting and rationalising. I'd be happier if people presented links to their drafts here so we could offer advice before they were posted. Tony 01:24, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I've just seen the above comments on my points-suggestions for evaluating articles User:Dano'sullivan/How to edit an article. I appreciate what was said but I still think there is a case for such a system, though mine may not be the best one. Many editors of varying experience and knowledge look at articles, and a grading system of some sort would bring some uniformity of approach. There are many considerations to think about when assessing articles and its quite useful to be reminded of them. I know my suggestions are rather long - but assessment is important and takes time. I've picked two featured articles more or less at random and tried to assess them according to my system. One got 34/50 points and the other 25/50. I'd be grateful for further comments. Dano'sullivan ( talk) 16:23, 19 November 2007 (UTC)
Why "Thus, it includes" rather than "including"? DrKiernan 14:59, 12 September 2007 (UTC)
Number 2 currently reads, "It follows the style guidelines and relevant WikiProjects, including:"
Does this make sense to anyone else? "Follows the relevant WikiProjects"? I don't get it. Was this something else, or worded differently, in the past? Mahalo. -- Ali'i 16:30, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
In the beginning, it said "A featured article should ... [c]omply with the standards set by any relevant WikiProjects, as well as those in the style manual." -- !! ?? 23:14, 13 September 2007 (UTC)
Hi, this is great! I've always wondered about a guideline page on writing medical wikipedia articles and only recently found this page via Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine...
Page | Talk page |
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MoS page (or subpage) | Redirect to main project talk page |
Main project page | Main project talk page (all discussion centralized here) |
Page | Talk page |
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MoS page (or subpage) | MoS talk page (most discussions occur here) |
Main project page | Main project talk page (some discussions occur here) |
I see nothing wrong with the projects having guidelines separate from yet subordinate to the WP MOS. The projects are after all the subject matter experts in their fields and responsible for a huge percentage of articles that get to FAs. Rlevse 14:53, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Sandy, hsving objected to a sentence which indicated the sort of Wikiproject we mean by example, now objects to "widely respected" Wikiproject guidelines as too vague.
Better wording than "widely respected" would of course be welcome; none occurs to me.
A more captious mind than myself would suspect that this is mere imperialism on behalf of poor beleaguered WP:MOS, but I'm sure that there is a more logical explanation, which Sandy has not yet expressed. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 04:34, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
While we're discussing brevity in the criteria, what difference is intended between the two terms above? Isn't a "system of hierarchical headings" the same thing as a table of contents? Combine to: "A heirarchical table of contents that is substantial but not overwhelming." Marskell 09:33, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
I think "not overwhelming" is essential. Thirty or forty headlines in a ToC turns off readers, almost always indicates stub sections, and generally suggests poor integration of material and poor prose flow.
But I agree with above that "substantial" isn't right for smaller articles; you don't have to throw in excess headlines just for the sake of having a large ToC. "Logical and convenient for reader browsing but not overwhelming" or something like that? Marskell 15:49, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Absolutely need "not overwhelming"; an overwhelming TOC is often a sign of poor article organization. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 15:58, 14 September 2007 (UTC)
Well, Raul seems to disagree with this discussion: [4]. He replaced the thing about the TOC being "substantial but not overwhelming". Maybe a little discussion from him here would help. -- Ali'i 14:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Non-regular or intra-universal words, terms, or concepts specifically related to the article should be explained, or avoided if this would be possible without lowering the quality of the article. For instance, video game or comic book babble should be ignored or explained, specific (e.g. mathematical/chemical/philosophical...) concepts used should be properly introduced, etc. Sijo Ripa 12:13, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Just like we have Arguments to Avoid in Deletion Discussions, I suspect that writing a similar page for FAC will help address the apparent problems with feature discussions (FAC, FLC, FPC, etc). It seems that several pages have been featured while failing to address important problems, or not featured for spurious reasons, such as whether their en-dashes were "properly spaced". Please contribute to the above page, and give comments on its talk page. >Radiant< 13:46, 17 September 2007 (UTC)
(indent) - hang on, you were the one who started this with your comment about errors in promotions/non-promotions, which has now sidetracked what could have been more productive than what has ensued. As before - please cite your examples and deal with appropriately or strike out your comments.cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 09:32, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm surprised this William Claiborne non-example is still kicking around, since we discussed it (including Raul's response) already at WT:MOS and there seemed to be an understanding that the problem there was that the nominator stopped responding. [5] SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 00:42, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
We've been led to believe that somehow FAC reviews used to focus more on content than they currently do, and I continue to say (based on what I've seen in archives) that's just not the case. A stunning example surfacd today. Compare Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Stuttering to the issues at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Stuttering. Some strong review of content there, huh? Not a single content reviewer, and all focus on style, no one knowledgeable in the subject matter. That review focused on images, reference formatting, table layout, etc. So, what has changed? We have much more serious content reviews now, and we also review style issues as a bonus. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 02:39, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm quite willing to discuss this with you, but other people keep derailing the thread with ad hominems. As soon as that stops I'd be happy to reopen productive discussion. >Radiant< 14:00, 18 September 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) - I massaged the prose of Augustus and was happy with the end result. If you feel so strongly about it PMA then there is FAR (which is its purpose), which is the appropriate forum for discussion.cheers,
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
03:58, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
PS: I won't take it personally either and will try to collaborate. cheers, Casliber ( talk · contribs) 03:59, 19 September 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) We're back to Projects again, when this all started on consensus to delete Projects ... due weight to style recommendations from Wikiprojects, allowing for their record within the featured article process , still relative and meaningless. Where does the Chicago Project fit? Where does NBA fit? What one editor considers a good record another may not; this is still entirely too relative, and the whole concept is being solved by MilHist becoming part of MOS. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Did we not have clear consensus to remove mention of WikiProjects? What changed? SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 23:48, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
Holy smokes! "Due weight" requires as much judgement (and is prone to as much disagreement) as determining whether prose is "engaging" "brilliant" and "professional standard", or whether an omitted fact is "major", or how reliable a source is, or whether an article is neutral or stable, or whether images are "appropriate", and the length is "appropriate", or whether detail is "unnecessary". None of these are objective criteria.
There is no need to be scared of adjectives that impose a degree of subjectivity or uncertainty. It is an elephant test - you know it when you see it.
As Douglas Adams said: "We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty." -- !! ?? 13:26, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
OK folks - let's see if carrots work better than sticks to get folks (darn! repetition!!) editors in the mood for sprucing up articles. I've got a game plan
here.....cheers,
Casliber (
talk ·
contribs)
11:35, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
How about... people swap jobs for a month? That way everyone will be more sympathetic to each other afterwards. I got this idea from reading Septentrionalis's comment here about what reviewers should do: "all they have to do is stop making FAC comments on dashes, dots, and year-links except on articles otherwise flawless. They might then have to actually consider content and writing". In my view, the ideal reviewer will be a jack-of-all-trades, and will comment on both style and content. Not necessarily at the same time, but equally not ignoring the other side of the coin. I know when I review something, I try and do both. So how about it? Why don't the content reviewers try and do intensive copyediting for a while, and the copyeditors try and review content for a while. Or at least for long enough to confirm why they don't normally do it, and to get a little bit more insight into the other side of the issues. Carcharoth 23:07, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
So... the conclusion is that we should stop worrying about the MoS and all go and carefully review the sources used to write articles? That is what it sounds like to me. So why don't we (or rather you, as I don't participate at FAC on a regular basis) all actually go and do that? No replies needed here. Go and review the sources in a FAC instead! :-) Carcharoth 17:39, 22 September 2007 (UTC)
I haven't counted up anyone's exact edits/reverts, but I do see a lot of to and fro. Would everyone please be careful of the three revert rule? I don't want to see anyone involved in this get a short block, and 3RR is one of the surest ways to draw a block no matter what the explanation. Let's sort this out on the talk page. Mike Christie (talk) 19:37, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
Please see Talk:Inaugural games of the Flavian Amphitheatre#Martial. Yet the FAC found time to discuss endashes again. Possibly if wasting time on WP:MOSDASH had been precluded, by disallowing it in the criteria, someone might have actually noticed that one of the sources is a work of literature, and inserted the necessary caveats before this got on the main page. Let's do it now. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 05:36, 25 September 2007 (UTC)
For another example, consider the discussion on the article Yomangani was watching on the Parliament Acts. This could have used some attention to the prose; but not endashes and hyphens: Doubts that existed in academic circles concerning the validity of the 1949 Act were refuted... in the lead. Are doubts refuted? Is the passive necessary? (I've settled the first; the second is harder, but it should have been considered.) Let us get to the xondition where we don't pass articles without these defects before we worry whether to always use a symbol for pounds. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:35, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
Yomangani ( talk · contribs) has retired. If you're able to help maintain the FAs that he wrote and restored at FAR, please add them to your watchlist:
I've got Red Barn Murder, Beagle and Laika, but I'm not sure I'll stick around much longer for this either. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 16:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)
How long is an "appropriate length"? Wikipedia:Article size seems exceedingly vague on the subject. AndyJones 17:39, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
The chief purpose of having MOS at all is to contribute to the quality of articles; the original purpose of including it here was so that articles insofar as they contribute to the clarity, neutrality, accuracy, or verifiability of the article. We should say this. I note that Tony is opposed to this; but then he wants to follow the guidance of MOS when it introduces ambiguity.
I acknowledge that this standard would interfere with the endless opposes about dashes, year-linking, or that there were periods at the ends of the wrong captions. On the other hand, without those, FA might accept fewer mediocre articles, and reject fewer decent ones. Is anyone else opposed to clarity, accuracy, neutrality, and verifiability as our overriding standards? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 13:13, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
I have removed the tag, per Tony, Kirill, Marskell, etc. Raul654 15:15, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
Raul has recently inserted a link to an essay on when to cite, which explicitly says at the top that it's opinion. While we do need more guidelines here (I haven't yet digested the contents of the essay), may I suggest that until the status of the essay is firmed up, this link be moved to the "See also" section? Tony (talk) 06:06, 13 October 2007 (UTC)
I believe Featured Articles are special things that "exemplifies the finest outcome achieved by the Wikipedia community," and thus should not be handed out easily or carelessly as if it was not worth much and meant nothing.
Here's the first draft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Leranedo/Criteria
Feel free to edit it!
I like to know everything WRONG with it, and what can make it better. Please help.
The main elements I like about it:
The major flaws I see:
What can be made better? Need Feedback. Learnedo 07:14, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
FA doesn't mean much, and isn't worth very much; it never has been. (It is still better than some of its competitors, which mean nothing.)
The fundamental problem with FA is that reviewing an article strictly takes an enormous amount of time; unfortunately, accuracy and verifiability take the most time, and therefore all too often are not adequately considered at all. We don't have enough reviewers to do this for the articles we consider now, to the extent we do consider them. This is a scaling problem, and mya be expected to get worse until FA is abandoned.
The result of this is that almost any article can be attacked by arguing that it is, in one or another aspect, not the best we can do; this will be correct: No article is the best we can do, or beyond the reach of improvement. Meanwhile the same aspect will be let slide on articles that are promoted.
Raising the standards of WIAFA will make this worse; so will lengthening it. This will worsen the outcome of FA,
viewed as a competition of gold stars,
while decreasing its actual service to WP: articles that go through FAC are generally, not always, better articles when they pass than when they are nominated. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:54, 20 October 2007 (UTC)
Criterion 4 states:
It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).
Does the first clause add anything? Isn't it all said subsequently? "It stays focused ...". Tony (talk) 10:15, 27 October 2007 (UTC)
I'm concerned about what seems, to me at least, to be a recent trend for applying the MOS rules – particularly concerning the use of dashes – to the titles of publications given in the {{cite}} template. Altering the title of a publication from the form which its authors' gave it seems to me to be a dangerous road to be going down. There's an example of this having happened recently at one of the current FA candidates, Chew Stoke. -- Malleus Fatuarum 17:39, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
Removing the spaces from "Royal Diary of Engagements - January - August" was an oversight, but I was unaware of the searchability issues of changing the dashes. I don't think changing the dashes actually does affect searches though; I don't think correcting the dashes does any more harm than changing an uppercase web article title to lowercase, which I think MOS recommends. Epbr123 00:18, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
(outdent) I don't entirely agree. It's quite acceptable to change an article or book title from title-case to sentence-case (although it's conventional to retain title case for the titles of journals and conferences, for some reason, which I think should be respected); most worklists I have to edit out there are inconsistent in upper/lower case, and need to be ironed out. I'm highly suspicious of double hyphens as separators in journal titles; as above, I'm pretty sure journals don't allow it, and thus I'm inclined to change to a single punctuation (which would make a search more accurate, anyway). Work lists are typically full of mistakes and inconsistencies: I comment on this in my reviews where necessary, and expect contributors to fix the problem. Inserting rules into MOS or the FA criteria is probably not the way to go. Tony (talk) 01:42, 30 October 2007 (UTC)
This is something that cuts across the whole Manual of Style and I think it ought to be discussed there. I've suggested we add some text to it reminding everyone that there are some things which should not be altered for style, see this discussion. -- bainer ( talk) 00:36, 3 November 2007 (UTC)
Maybe this is redundant but I have seen tons of articles where user created maps, tables, graphs, diagrams, etc. do not provide verifiable sources like they should. Most parts of the text are usually referenced but people don't bother to add references to their images in many cases leading to articles like trade route which is a particularly bad offender since we have to take the images on faith rather than through the knowledge that the routes have been taken from verifiable reliable sources. Can we explicitly mention this under the images section? gren グレン 14:30, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Also, I just created Template:Imagefact to add in the thumbnail caption area of articles... I wonder if this will actually become useful or if it will be deleted, but I hope it helps to address the problem for now. gren グレン 14:48, 27 November 2007 (UTC)
Some (most?) pop/rock music articles that make FA are simply nothing more than fan pages. ...if an article's text is drawn overwhelmingly from one source, plus a few scattered snippets from People magazine or MTV.... is this a violation of the "Comprehensive" requirement? It does not seem to be a serious critical examination of the topic.... Even if an article has several refs, the refs are typically ... fan pages! Or some variety of "People"! Are these reliable sources? Ling.Nut ( talk) 01:15, 30 November 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion here. Permalink is here. Samsara ( talk • contribs) 14:40, 7 December 2007 (UTC)
I've just posted on the the 2006 Chick-fil-A Bowl talk page, queued up for 31 Dec FA, and will repeat here: Odd that this got to FA and no-one noticed that the COUNTRY is not even mentioned (well, it is now, because I just added it). I've noticed this so many time in Wikipedia articles: ones that originate from/ are about countries other than the US almost always state the country, but American ones generally don't bother. Is this a reflection of American parochialism, not looking beyond their borders, not realising there's a whole world reading out there, most of whom won't have a clue where the places they talk about might be? Or are we all supposed somehow to know all about American geography, even though this is never expected of articles on other countries? An encylcopedia is supposed to be ENCYCLOPEDIC and to educate.
Try this. You'll need a pad and paper. Keep hitting 'random article' and see how many US-related articles mention the country, and how many non-US ones mention their country. See what I mean? The American editors seem to think that putting 'Athens, Georgia' is enough. It really gets my goat. I know this isn't a specifically FA-related gripe, but the fact that an article got promoted with this glaring omission is an indicator of the mind set of those choosing/reviewing the articles. It's just not good enough. 86.137.136.17 ( talk) 13:26, 27 December 2007 (UTC)
Me again on a dynamic IP. Several things. First off, I think an enclopedia article should as a very basic fact state the country / nationality of the subject of the article. That's a basic. You shouldn't have to send people off by links to other articles to find out that information. Secondly, Tony's comment about 'any fool' is telling. We should treat all our readers with respect, and we should provide the knowledge they need, not send them off searching for it. 'Good training' it may be, but surely the all the relevant, basic information that the reader needs should be in the article? Nil Einne makes a good point. Who chooses at what stage we decide? By what criteria? And by the way, I chose Atlanta Georgia for good reason - it's perfectly possible that readers will assume that Georgia is the country rather than the state. 81.129.130.162 ( talk) 19:09, 28 December 2007 (UTC)
I've noticed this trend before, I posted a comment on WT:MOS and got little response, if you check my contrib page, you'll find that a large number of my edits are for fixing this issue. I don't know why you're discrediting this matter as over serious, I think it violates the neutrality of the article and increases the US-centrism of our encyclopedia. It is a very basic job for an article to define its geographical context, and the basic geographical, and most useful, unit would be the country. Why do we consider that any reader will know where Atlanta is? And assume that Kiev or Manille are more obscure city? The only argument would be that this is an English Encyclopedia, so it should be US- or Anglo-centric. This violates WP neutral and geographically unbiased spirit. My solution would be to make a requirement that in every article the basic geographical context (ie. the country) be defined. And you could write Atlanta in the U.S. state of Georgia instead of Atlanta, Georgia, United States.
One more thing, I noticed that this issue affects "British" articles more than "US" ones. There has been a consensus between British editors that the basic geographical unit would be their country (ie. England, Wales, Scotland, Nothern Ireland) and not UK, which is very unfamiliar to the average user (I took me a lot of browsing through discussion to figure out why). CG ( talk) 16:07, 29 December 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this post from Sandy so much that I copy it here:
The added italics are mine. They add up, I think, to a coherent and generalizable position: MOS covers a lot of stuff, some of it, like non-breaking spaces in footnotes, of doubtful net value to the project; one or two editors can add stuff to obscure corners of MOS; and there is sentiment that all of it becomes obligatory here immediately. This is a bad thing; we should apply MOS with common sense. I agree.
When the present WIAFA was written, MOS contained many fewer rules, and fewer of them dealt with matters like this, which would be part of the ideal Wikipedia, but may without serious loss be postponed until just before WP:DEADLINE. The problem here can in principle be solved by continually arguing over MOS; but it would be simpler to cut the Gordian knot. Let us rephrase condition 2, to make the application of common sense the actual rule. Adding generally should be enough, but I don't care how this is done; merely that it is done. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
Over three months ago, I added that a featured article needed to have at least one free image in order to become Today's Featured Article. It was reverted within the hour: (Rv: requires discussion at talk.). Today, I added the suggestion again, per discussion in Wikipedia talk:Non-free content criteria exemptions. -- Damian Yerrick ( talk | stalk) 18:09, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
I need a bit of clarification because I have seen an apparent double-standard and I'd like to form a consensus here about what we really expect of FA's. In particular, I am speaking of candidate articles that are about works of fiction. Recently I have participated in an FAC ( Randall Flagg) where a reviewer posted significant oppose comments, chief of which was that the plot summaries in the articles are primarily the interpretation of the author and not backed up by scholarly sources. The FAC basically failed because of these concerns.
I actually came around to the reviewer's point of view and have since left a couple similar comments on other FAC's about fictional works ( The Last Temptation of Krust). I've been told there that, at least for the television articles, there is a consensus that plot summaries do not require academic or any other kind of secondary source.
I tend to think that FA reviewers can and should hold these articles up to a higher standard than perhaps their respective WikiProjects do, and that we should decide here if FAC's on fictional works should have such requirements. I, for one, lean toward requiring secondary sources but I don't necessarily think that plot summaries derived from only primary sources make for bad or inaccurate articles. -- Laser brain ( talk) 04:03, 20 February 2008 (UTC)
Continued from above, the Randall Flagg FAC hasn't failed, and my understanding of the Oppose is different than what Laser writes above; Laser, you might want to revisit your understanding of that oppose. SandyGeorgia ( Talk) 05:21, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for bringing this up Sandy, citing plot summaries in the articles I have done work to can be frustrating, especially since the cited sources lack the detail some of the summaries I have to write have. I have a question, though. From the video game FA's I have seen, they seem to cite the plot in every few sentences, mostly from dialogue from the game. Do they have some sort of set rules, or does the editor do this them self? See various Final Fantasy game articles to see what I am talking about. xihix( talk) 23:55, 21 February 2008 (UTC)
Citing the script is extremely important, because it discourages original research and shows that there is none. It allows logical/obvious claims in the summary to be checked with direct excerpts from the script. It also shows the effort that went into making the synopsis; with Final Fantasy articles, we usually cite the script either every few sentences to show that the summary is not being drawn out of thin air, and also to support potentially shocking events. Sorry if I'm difficult to understand tonight; just got home from work and it's 2 in the morning here :) — Deckill er 06:59, 22 February 2008 (UTC)
Citing the script is potentially a can of worms, since there is much which never appears in detail in a shooting script ("the battle ensues"), and additionally the shooting script often is not identical to the film. The film style guidelines, IIRC, make provision that the plots should be straightforward and uncontroversial. Anything which would require a secondary source - such as analysis or interpretation - should not be in the plot section, but instead should be contained in separate analysis sections. Remember, primary sources are not absolutely verboten, they're just not acceptable in certain circumstances. Things like plot summarization are precisely what primary sources are excellent for. Girolamo Savonarola ( talk) 23:37, 28 February 2008 (UTC)
I disagree that writing about primary sources is original research. Now, it is more likely to lead to original research than citing secondary sources, which is why we have the requirement to present primary sources in a purely descriptive manner. Such descriptions should be reviewed by others to avoid personal interpretations and specialist knowledge. I think it's completely possible to find wording that would be indisputable to all editors. If there is a plot element that is unclear to all, the issue can either be avoided, made ambiguous in its description, or clarified through a secondary source. In addition, we should be able to cite non-print primary sources. Some sources, like films, can be difficult with lack of segmentation, but hopefully nobody thinks it's realistic to cite time stamps for a film's scenes in presenting a plot. In the case of Randall Flagg, though, I agree with Awadewit's assessment that it is predominantly a plot summary of the fictional character. Not only does it cover every appearance of the character, it goes into detail about each appearance. Imagine if we did this for Batman or Superman! All appearances by the character are in works that have their own Wikipedia articles, so a lot of the context could belong at their respective articles, especially considering that Randall Flagg is only a part of these works, not entirely representative of it. I think that the issue with the article, at least in terms of using primary sources, is that it embellishes them. Primary sources are second-tier and should only be included to support the context of secondary sources, not to be a force of its own. — Erik ( talk • contrib) - 15:13, 1 March 2008 (UTC)
A FA needs its context to be described either in a number of articles or in external sources. Fallacy of quoting out of context describes only literal quoting but the same danger exists for any text -Wikipedia article. Any reader has his/her backgound so he/she understands the article in the context of his/her culture. Example: Authoritarian countries frequently have democratic institutions like constitution, elections, media, but the institutions work worse than in democratic countries, but also better than in totalitarian ones. So an article about elections in country X should inform about the freedom of the elections, not only that 99% supported John Doe on September 22. Xx236 ( talk) 14:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)
What level of wikifying is expected of a featured article. If an article contains a word that is very rare would you expect the article to wikify the word so the reader could understand what it means? If further more the rare word had no article on wikipedia to explain it, what should happen? Should it be redlinked, left without being wikified or something else? SunCreator ( talk) 15:28, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
It doesn't seem to say that the lead actually has to meet the lead section guidelines! Richard001 ( talk) 11:26, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
Consensus is being tested concerning a proposal to establish a directorate (possibly two of the regular reviewers) as part of a program to improve the FLC process. Input is welcome. Wikipedia_talk:Featured_list_candidates#Should_we_have_a_FL_director.3F Tony (talk) 12:17, 24 April 2008 (UTC)
I've re-started the process here. The input of reviewers and nominators from this page would be valued. Tony (talk) 05:29, 3 May 2008 (UTC)