Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 18

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Featured Article for December 10, 2021

Hello all,

I am curious as to why an article regarding a Confederate American soldier is being headlined. I don't believe German-language Wikipedia features articles regarding Nazi soldiers, and I have yet to see a featured article that glorifies the Provisional IRA, the Ku Klux Klan, or other terrorist and seditionist groups.

On an unrelated note, why are articles discussing content from English-speaking countries that are not majority White rarely featured? The headlined articles focus almost exclusively on the United Kingdom, United States, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. I have yet to see a featured article discussing a figure or event related to India or an African country. They also use English Wikipedia 021120x (talk) 02:49, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

@021120x: - No, the article does not "glorify" Longstreet. I've read it and it's neutral. The Main Page is WP:NOTCENSORED; dislike of a topic is not reason for its removal. We are also constrained as to what can run as featured based on the sort of articles that are nominated, as you note, we do have an underrepresentation of some topics as featured articles, which means that they are less likely to run on the main page. (A very large proportion of English Wikipedia editors are from those 5 countries you listed, and naturally people are more likely to write about what they are familiar with/interests them) WP:FACR is the criteria for what featured articles must be; feel free to work an article up to those standards and help represent those areas! Hog Farm Talk 04:20, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Note for @WP:TFA coordinators per the complaint above, Barthélemy Boganda was run TFA in 2009, and is looking to be a save by Indy beetle at FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Jimfbleak I wonder if, considering the above, you might consider Boganda in place of Battle of Hayes Pond for January 18, 2022 TFA … both are Indy beetle and Boganda should clear FAR soon. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
If I'm allowed to, I'd rather keep it at Hayes Pond (if you mean what I think you mean), since its an anniversary date and those only happen once a year. -Indy beetle (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
021120x your claim is clearly based on emotion or suspicion, rather than real facts. I've just check what I'm scheduling for January, and of those that have a geographical link, three relate to eastern Europe, one to the Middle East, and two to south-east Asia. User:SandyGeorgia, that article was a TFAR request for that sepcific date, so I'm reluctant to overturn the !votes there Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:19, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
Got it, struck above, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:37, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia and Indy beetle: and @WP:TFA coordinators - If Boganda clears FAR quickly enough, it can take "my" 1st Missouri Field Battery's slot on January 4. Hog Farm Talk 04:27, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
It can probably wait … I was only trying to advance on the complaint above, and defer to Indy on when is best. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:34, 20 December 2021 (UTC)
  • (edit conflict) @021120x: I understand your frustration with lack of global coverage, but the proper response is to simply work to improve global content. Anyone can do it; I may be a Southerner who likes barbeque and catfishing and shooting shotguns (some of my ancestors were those said "Confederate American soldier"s, to affirm my Dixie credentials), but of my 7 FAs, 5 concern Africa, comprising two Congolese nationalists, the first Congolese chief justice of his country's supreme court, a peacekeeping operation in the Congo (coincidentally involved a large Indian army contingent), and a history making battle in Uganda. Three of them have featured on the main page. And I wouldn't have been able to do it without the support and (usually constructive) criticism of the people here at FAn. On an "unrelated note", please stay tuned for January 18, 2022, when one of my other featured articles on how a bunch of Native Americans kicked the KKK's ass is due to be featured. At risk of sounding dismissive, if you are upset about the lack of non-Western featured articles, then write one. -Indy beetle (talk) 15:21, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
I'd like to ditto the above, although I'd like to comment further that we seem to have someone calling out "under representation" in TFA (and FA in general) all the time. Is it worth us putting a message somewhere explaining the saga, that 1) TFAs are not representative of all genres and cultures. They are taken from all of the possible FAs, which are written by volunteer editors, 2) FAs are going to be written by users who have a dedicated interest in a specific field. There will be a culmination to a specific set of items (MIHIST, VG, Sports etc) and that users are incredibly unlikely to write about things that aren't in their wheelhouse, as it takes an ubsurd amount of effort to get something through FAC. I'm unlikely to write about African nobility for instance, and others might not want to write about Barbie & Ken Dolls, and that's ok. 3) The only way to change this, is to get on board and improve articles in areas where we are under represented.
I realise I have added 20 or so items to the log for a reasonably niche topic (cue sports) and I do have intentions to work on other items in the future, but this should always be seen as a positive to the project, rather than over highlight a specific series of articles. As for "glorifying" a subject - there's little chance of an item that isn't at WP:NPOV passing FA, and if you see one, take it to WP:FAR. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:03, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

General FA editnotice?

I know that there's been some discussion previously, e.g. here, about FA editnotices, and {{Medical FA editnotice}} is used fairly widely, as is {{TFA editnotice}} for TFAs. I'm curious to take stock of where folks' views are about the idea of having a general editnotice that applies to all FAs. I think there are certainly a few things we'd like to communicate to folks about FAs (e.g. it's fairly safe to assume anything in them has been chosen deliberately through discussion, and it's a good idea to propose major changes to them first at talk), but I'm not sure whether any of them are so crucial that it's worth the cost in banner blindness. There's also the question of who we'd want to be communicating to: newcomers generally have more important things to learn, and experienced editors generally already know about FA norms. Typing this out, I think I've talked myself out of supporting them, but curious to hear from others. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 21:03, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Here is the page where I keep track of medical FA notices, and the links to all previous discussions is in the second section (there were a few more than the one you linked):
I think they are very necessary and most helpful on the medical FAs (obviously :) because of WP:MEDRS. The MilHist editnotice, discussed, was never implemented. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:15, 19 December 2021 (UTC)
  • As at least one mod here knows  ;) we already have policy on our side (see WP:FAOWN) which explicitly states Editors are asked to take particular care when editing a Featured article; it is considerate to discuss significant changes of text or images on the talk page first. Explaining civilly why sources and policies support a particular version of a featured article does not necessarily constitute ownership. A link to this at the top of every open FA would be good. ——Serial 18:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Cul-de-sac into an unnecessary diversion
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.

, also this should justify the NOBOTS magic word as citations, etc., have also been considered at its candidature. ——Serial 17:19, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

  • I don't think I'd support adding NOBOTS to all FAs. If we can expect that everything about an article has been considered at its FAC, we can expect that to include adding NOBOTS if an article does anything likely to upset a bot. More saliently, the goal of an editnotice would be to prevent decay, and often the work of bots is to update parameter names, MOS compliance elements, etc. as they change over time. They're never 100% immune to errors, but my impression is that overall we can trust BAG to only approve bots that won't do harm. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:34, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
    The important point, which you've completely disregarded, is the policy consideration! :o ——Serial 17:40, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
    While I have less faith in BAG than Sdkb due to this incident, I agree that FAs should not be tagged with NOBOTS, simply because there are times where bots improve articles. I'm not sure how Cluebot or some of Citation bot's more reasonable changes interact with NOBOTS, but there's potential value in bot edits to FAs, especially as time goes by. Hog Farm Talk 17:44, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Serial, while I agree that we already have policy on our side (and note that the Medical FA editnotice mimics that very wording while adding mention of MEDRS), I remain reluctant to implement any editnotice on FAs more broadly, because the work at WP:URFA/2020 and WP:FARGIVEN is substantiating my long-held statement that a rather enormous percentage of our FAs ... aren't ... and we are not protecting an FA version of them. (I used to say the percentage of older FAs that no longer meet criteria was about 50%; because URFA has spurred a good amount of upgrading on dated articles, I now estimate it at about 40%. Ummmm ... if more editors would indicate more "Satisfactory" at URFA, we could now move more of them off the list ... see the instructions tab ... hint, hint, hint.) I would feel much better about adding an editnotice on FAs if FAR had not gone moribund for a decade, such that we now have a considerable backlog in restoring both the Very old and the Old to anything that actually enjoys consensus as being of featured quality. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:37, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Excellent point Sandy, although for what it's worth I wasn't thinking the FAOWN tag should be placed retroactively, just on the recent stuff we "know" to be worthy of the star. The scary thing is of course that per that policy, it strictly applies to everything until it's busted down a grade a FAR! (Although I don't think I've ever seen it used on old material which is...reassuring!) ——Serial 18:53, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
...and hint(s) taken  ;) ——Serial 18:54, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Yes, we have a broader problem when we have a policy page that applies to FAs, and attempts to protect their status, but we aren't working adequately to assure that application of that policy is valid since status has so often deteriorated (and quite alarmingly in a huge percentage of cases). That is, unless URFA makes a dent, and we refocus on the overall FA process and the entire pool of FAs, we risk losing the very policy that protects the newer FAs. So I am happy that the hint is taken :) :) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:17, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
  • @SandyGeorgia: I'd be curious to hear, given your experience at URFA2020, what you've noticed about how unmonitored FAs tend to change over time, and what we can do about it. My knowledge on this is at WP:Build content to endure (recently expanded with a broad-scope article section by CactiStaccingCrane), but I'm guessing you may have some further insights. My sense is that articles tend to get expanded, and that the new (or updated) stuff isn't up to FA standard. Is that right, or are there other major culprits? As a thought experiment, how many of articles that get brought to FAR wouldn't have been if they'd just stayed in their original FA state? (I do think our standards for comprehensiveness have risen over time, so that may be part of the issue. They might continue to rise in the future or Wikipedia might be mature enough at this point that they'll stay roughly the same. If they continue to rise, that could be bad, lowering the editor-to-content ratio, and a project-wide effort to enforce a stricter version of summary style could be needed.)
    On solutions, I suspect it doesn't really help to tell editors to take special care, since the editors adding subpar content don't generally know that it's subpar (if they knew, they'd add quality content). That means our only current recourse is to try to get them to go through the talk page, where we hope that someone with more of a clue will intervene. But that adds a ton of friction, which hinders updating of outdated content. (Maybe it makes more sense to add notices/controls to historical FAs, since those don't need as much updating?) Brainstorming, maybe we ought to have a featured article recent edit feed linked prominently from {{FApages}}? (Although, another sidenote, I have mixed feelings about that sidebar) Or maybe we could employ edit filters? I know there's a "possible unreferenced addition to BLP" tag added by an edit filter. Maybe we could add a similar tag for unreferenced additions to FAs. Sorry for the rambling/tangents haha, but wanted to throw some ideas out there, and curious what you all think. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 19:39, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Because ... long :)

Admitting I have a pony in this editnotice race, as I have a 2006 medical FA (Tourette syndrome) which requires constant and extreme maintenance efforts, so it is irksome to find topics that are relatively easier to maintain falling out of standard, with the attached problem that they jeopardize the WP:OWN wording that should apply to all FAs, included my 2006 FA. Heck I even had to make some pretty significant changes just this week at dementia with Lewy bodies, which is a 2020 FA.

The short answer to your queries is, unless the FA is on a very obscure, little-read, and (rarely) static historical topic (take Red River Trails), they all turn to black goo on the internet unless constantly watched, upgraded and maintained. Because ... it's Wikipedia. Just that simple, and not something we can change by any means I am familiar with.

It is shocking to see the current versions of some FAs I promoted last decade, and what almost always divides those that are still in good shape from those that are not is far less attributable to (an off-miscited) change in standards than to the simple issue of whether or not the article has FA-knowledgeable watchers who are consistently maintaining and updating them. My shock of this week at WP:FAR was Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy; amazing to see what has crept in since I promoted it, while simultaneously, it hasn't been kept up to date.

On the other hand, some very old or older FAs do have watchers, but they may refuse to maintain them to standards; that's more of a behavioral issue than a matter of FA standards. URFA has, unfortunately, unmasked some previously prolific FA writers who just can't be bothered to update their FAs, which is sad. (Some of those had former collaborators who have moved on.)

You mention the essay WP:ENDURE.

  • Most content on Wikipedia naturally improves over time. You're familiar with that bridge in Brooklyn?
  • ... but if maintenance is so complicated or tedious that only you would reasonably do it, it's sure to eventually fail ... yes, and ? This doesn't really help us, because that means you shouldn't write Education FAs, and I shouldn't write medical ones. Not many FAs will endure in static form.
  • The specific items mentioned in Measures are fine, and helpful but won't forestall all of the problems we see at FAR. (And a good number of those points should be regularly reviewed for at FAC, but aren't always.) From the vantage point of the problems we eventually see at FAR, it would be nice if summary style and length were better enforced at FAC. The (good) advice given there in the Broad-scope articles rarely gains consensus at FAC. Pet-peeve alert, as I have never supported a very long article, although I did have to promote some because, consensus. The Islam example was perfect (although even that article eventually fell apart), in contrast to the five miserable FACs for Catholic Church whose main author refused to trim in accordance with the Islam example.

On your other specific questions:

  • My sense is that articles tend to get expanded, and that the new (or updated) stuff isn't up to FA standard. Is that right, or are there other major culprits? Two kinds of problems. 1. They actually don't get expanded and aren't kept up to date. This happens often in Geography, Education (as you know), Chemistry, Astronomy, Health and medicine ... lots of areas. 2. When the FA knowledgeable watcher moves on, poor quality additions do happen, alarmingly and quickly. I have taken lately to cleaning up MOS:SANDWICHing as the bellweather. When you look at an old FA that is chock full of images that are poorly laid out, you know the article isn't being watched by an FA-knowledgeable editor, and you're going to find deeper problems.
  • As a thought experiment, how many of articles that get brought to FAR wouldn't have been if they'd just stayed in their original FA state? This is a misunderstanding we should combat aggressively :) Barack Obama was featured before he was President; how could it have stayed the same? J. K. Rowling? I have rewritten Tourette syndrome twice since 2006; medicine advances. All city, state, country articles change. Lucky the few FA writers whose work is in topics that don't require constant vigilance and updating, but those are rare, and the idea that we can freeze an approved version of an FA is all wrong.
  • ... our only current recourse is to try to get them to go through the talk page, where we hope that someone with more of a clue will intervene, yes, but on way too many of the Old and Very old FAs, there is no one watching the articles, much less responding on talk. This is a fact of Wikipedia that we have to accept (maintaining an article at FA standard requires constant vigilance from someone who cares, and editors move on or lose interest), and the only way to deal with this is to encourage active URFA, URFA, URFA, and FAR, FAR, FAR. Some of our most worthy articles have gained new watchers/keepers/maintainers as a result of FAR, hence the importance of WP:FASA (HINT, reminder, go enter your votes :)
  • Maybe it makes more sense to add notices/controls to historical FAs, since those don't need as much updating?) I hope my other answers have demonstrated the variability. Tourette syndrome is a 2006 FA; it is no different in quality than dementia with Lewy bodies, which is a 2020 FA. It is all about whether an article has active FA-knowledgeable watchers and maintainers. Those that don't need to go to FAR.

You asked what we can do about this deterioration. I have long advocated for (and been ignored by all but a handful of editors) two things:

  1. FAR, FAR, FAR. URFA, URFA, URFA. We have this problem now because FAR was moribund for a decade, and we no longer have a "buck stops here" as we once had in the FA director, who simply would not have allowed this to happen. Where FAC, FAR and TFA were presumed to work together for the preservation of the overall pool of FAs a decade ago, they are now treated as three almost separate pieces.
  2. By scheduling out TFA so far in advance, and deferring entirely to the preferences of their writers, we have allowed a situation where editors can neglect their FAs 'til the last moment, and be guaranteed of plenty of notice to clean them up or that the article won't run TFA if they don't want it to. That is, we have furthered OWNership that is not in the best interest of the FA process or the articles. I don't know why we are enabling such behavior. FA writers should not be adding more FAs if they aren't maintaining the ones they have, and while we have countless exceptions, we have plenty of this. This has been, to me, one of the most revealing issues of the WP:URFA/2020 effort. There are scores of editors who have dutifully gone through their extreme number of FAs and made sure they were updated (as well as updating FAs that they didn't write!!) But there are similar numbers of still active editors who don't or won't. It seems as if, now that they've had their mainpage day, some have decided it no longer matters.

You mention comprehensiveness standards having changed. Our standard for comprehensiveness has not changed at all, but whether or not FAC reviewers check that comprehensiveness is met is a separate issue. Ditto for every important aspect like POV, compliance with LEAD, involved supports, and the like. I often see reference to these rising standards, and would be entertained to know what those are :)

I tend to divide FAC into pre- and post-October 31, 2010 when the mainpage copyvio scandal left a permanent dent upon FAC (see yearly stats). Before that, standards had already increased: you can scroll to just above this section to see a footnoted list of the dates of significant changes at FAC or WIAFA. Looking at the changes to WP:WIAFA since the end of 2010 ... here is WIAFA then. An examination of past and present shows the early wisdom of FA leadership (although I'm not sure why it took us so long to add 1f).

  • 1a has degraded; we no longer expect "brilliant prose". Since 2010, we have lost several of the better and more strict prose reviewers, for a variety of reasons. And it shows.
  • On 1 (b) comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context the wording is identical to the wording today.
  • 1c is similarly identical to today. I would say that both 1b and 1c may be (sporadically) more rigorously applied today, simply because of the efforts of one editor (Buidhe). And all too often, what gets reviewed seriously at FAC depends on who is doing the reviews; while we have lost out on prose, we have gained on what Buidhe adds. On the flip side of that coin, we frequently find reviewers misapplying 1b and 1c at FAR. It is not sufficient to say that an article lacks comprehensiveness because one wishes it would cover X, Y or Z, if sources don't cover that, and it is equally unhelpful to pop up a list of sources that aren't covered if one hasn't verified that there is actually missing content from those sources. Also, in general, how often do you see a FAC reviewer actually go and do a minimal (eg google) check to make sure all sources and issues are considered? And we have seen a recent issue at FAR where reviewers had a mistaken understanding of when primary sources or sources not independent from the subject can be used. It is my opinion that understanding of things like these have fallen over the years.
  • 1d is identical. Same question: when was the last time you read of a reviewer who perused the article talk archives to assure there were no disputes swept into archives?
  • 1e also identical. Frequently misapplied though. A recent FAR talks about the number of reverts out of total edits; well, we are allowed to revert vandalism, etc, and in my view, understanding of how 1e is applied has fallen.
  • 1f brand new, based on an RFC last year, and in light of a four-page CCI with broad-ranging implications at Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/WikiProject Tropical cyclones, thank goodness we did that. Nonetheless, last month, a cyclone FAC passed without a check for the pervasive failures in most cyclone articles to attribute public domain sources and copying within Wikipedia. We now have hundreds of cyclone/hurricane/weather FAs that need a CCI check, complicated by the fact that most of them have not been kept up to date to account for newer sources, and how to handle this is a challenge. I am still trying to develop a methodology for those checks, and each article so far has taken me four to six hours to check.
  • 2a is also identical. This is one of the unfortunate areas of current reviewing, where we no longer expect coordination between what FAC produces and what TFA needs. Leads are now very rarely scrupulously examined and in too many cases, that leads to difficulties at WP:ERRORS. Part of the reason LEAD was singled out historically was to aid in writing TFA blurbs.
  • 2b identical. But I rarely see editors reviewing for that anymore.
  • 2c we dropped some older citation methods. Examination of 2c remains about the same as it was prior to 2011.
  • 3 Media. I don't understand images, and can't comment. I relied on two or three top-notch media people, and I have no reason to believe that Nikkimaria and Buidhe AREN'T keeping up that good work, but I wouldn't know. I do think that media reviewing has become less complex because we now have far fewer fair-use images than when Elcobbola wrote this.
  • 4, identical wording, and frequently breached today, IMNSHO (but that is a pet peeve for me).

So, first, yes standards increased from the VERY VERY old FAs (2004 to 2008), but other than that, where is this oft-cited "increase in standards" notion coming from? What happens instead is the natural deterioration of a wiki if articles aren't constantly maintained. And the way to deal with that is ... URFA URFA URFA and FAR FAR FAR.

I would summarize my very long response to a) better coordination of and respect for the necessary (and once helpful) relationship between FAC, FAR and TFA; b) URFA URFA URFA, FAR FAR FAR; and c) restore active healthy debate to WT:FAC, so we can actually discuss these issues without personalization. We cannot change the fact that editors write on topics that interest them, and tend to eventually leave Wikipedia. We can make sure we bring deficient articles to FAR as soon as needed, so that we can then expect the project to defend the overall pool of FAs as examples of Wikipedia's finest work, which they no longer are in huge numbers, as demonstrated by WP:FARGIVEN and WP:URFA/2020. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:10, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for writing all that out, Sandy! It's very interesting to learn about the history of the FA system (I hadn't seen things like that massive 2010 copyvio discussion before).
Regarding comprehensiveness, my rough sense from occasionally digging into the archives is that the average length of Wikipedia articles has increased over time, since adding things is a more common activity than removing them, and I hypothesize that this has led to a shift into how much detail is expected for an article to be considered comprehensive. It's important to note that level of detail ≠ quality—if you look at e.g. many Encyclopedia Britannica entries, they're generally high quality but much shorter than Wikipedia articles, just since they've decided to write at a more summarized level. But granted, I don't have extensive personal knowledge of what Wikipedia used to be like, so I defer to you and others who have been around for longer.
On solutions, the main point I take away from your insights is the importance of having FA-knowledgeable editors present (both in nominating and in the different forums for reviewing). Unfortunately, from a long-term systemic point of view, having more editors participating isn't a solution alone, since it's not something we can directly control beyond ourselves, and even if all of us here decided to become more active in certain areas, that'd only last as long as we do. What we can control from a systemic perspective is changing the incentive structure around the various tasks we want people to take on, since that changes behavior in an enduring way.
On that note, I'm very glad to see the WP:Featured Article Save Award that you and Z1720 recently set up—I think it's fantastic to make it clear that saving an FA at FAR is valued work for which you can earn a gold star. Setting up an ongoing task force to monitor edits to FAs is also something that I think could have a lasting impact. I'll see about putting that page together (might take me a bit to get to it). Another, perhaps more controversial thought: if we want to incentivize more people to take articles to FAR, should we be giving out some form of recognition for that? Something like "here's an award for every FA you get delisted" would obviously be toxic, but maybe something like "here's an award for every FAR you started where the FA was ultimately saved (whether by you or someone else)" could be appropriate.
Lastly, on improving the level of discussion here, should we be merging this page and WT:FAC? Best, {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:47, 22 December 2021 (UTC)
Z gets most of the credit for FASA; I just pushed the final buttons because Z was busy that day.
Re It's important to note that level of detail ≠ quality—if you look at e.g. many Encyclopedia Britannica entries, they're generally high quality but much shorter than Wikipedia articles, just since they've decided to write at a more summarized level. But granted, I don't have extensive personal knowledge of what Wikipedia used to be like, so I defer to you and others who have been around for longer. I suspect we would have FAR fewer problems eventually at FAR if WP:SS were more closely adhered to, ala Encyclopedia Britannica. To that end, when I was first writing the TS article, a most helpful mentor forced me to spin off the sub-articles on History, Management, Societal and cultural ... and I thank him every day for that wisdom. Imagine if I had to keep up with every bit of yearly detail on medication, and so on. And I can keep out a lot of the cruft by referring it to sub-articles (eg Societal on every notable person with a new TS diagnosis, or every new song about Tourette's). This is why I encouraged you to define your criteria at Pomona College.
If you want more history of the process, do go and browse everything at {{FCDW}}. I wish we would keep up that effort, but no one is interested.
I'm unsure about the idea of more awards, as the reception to WP:FASA has been more lukewarm that I would have liked. What I do know is that if we keep losing some of the meatier old FAs via FAR, while gaining more niche topics via FAC, that will not bode well for the overall FA process.
As to merging the talk pages, that could happen under a tabbed format, and we had the beginnings of a good discussion about setting up tabbed pages (similar to what you now see at WP:FASA and WP:URFA/2020, and where the idea of making FAR more prominent was quite clearly expressed and yet ignored), but the entire discussion was personalized and went nowhere, and I am no longer interested in dealing with that toxicity. Perhaps others can effect some improvements, but I am apparently not that person. In fact, if I propose something, I seem to increase the chances it will be rejected :) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:04, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
Sandy is being too modest in how instrumental she was in getting FASA set up; I suggested the idea, but she created the infrastructure around it. The tabs in FASA and URFA were taken directly from WP:GA, and it's used in many other places in Wikipedia like GOCE and MILHIST. Maybe I'll do a markup tomorrow on how it might look if FA implemented it and post it below. If I forget, ping me.
Sandy's explanation of deteriorating FA is great. In my opinion, FA needs a culture shift on what happens after an FA is promoted, as many editors think getting an article to FA is the end. Instead, it is the beginning of maintaining an article. Before I nominated my first FA, I read everything I could find about the FA process. I do not recall an essay, signpost article, or explainer on maintaining FA status. Yes, there are WP:OWNERSHIP concerns about a nominator gatekeeping an article, but an editor needs to be watching every FA to ensure new sources and information are properly incorporated into the article. This responsibility needs to be clearly communicated to FA nominators so that they are more likely to maintain their articles after promotion. Articles that are not being watched need to be sent to FAR faster: many editors don't "want to lose their star" so pointing out problems on the talk page or sending the article to FAR sometimes gives editors the nudge to improve "their" articles.
FAR and URFA needs more editors to identify problems in FAs. It needs more editors to nominate at FAR to give editors the nudge they need to come back and fix their articles. If anyone needs someone to be the bad guy, ping me and I will review the article (and give my honest assessment on if the article is at FA standards). If you want to adopt an FA, do so now and fix it up; some of these articles only need an afternoon to get fixed up. The important thing is to get involved in FAR and URFA, because we need as many editors as we can to help us review these FAs. Z1720 (talk) 04:42, 23 December 2021 (UTC)
  • Casual peruser here. Sandy's analysis is excellent and enlightening. I have a minor quibble with 1a has degraded; we no longer expect "brilliant prose" though. I've only been here since 2016, but my fear is that demanding "brilliant" prose leads to embellishment and departures from NPOV. Sounding good is often in tension with being accurate and true to the source material, since its often boring material we work with; also the need for things in Wikivoice to be factually authoritative. Rhodesian mission in Lisbon has entertaining prose, but it's also white supremacy apologia lite. As far as maintaining FAs over time, it is indeed quite natural for FA writers to move on after earning the bronze star. I've done this as well, though occasionally I'll go back to my older FAs and think, "Oh, I could revise this to be more clear" or "Let me Google this subject to see if anyone's released a new book or article about it." I work in more historical areas (and especially stagnant ones at that) because things aren't constantly changing, and comprehensiveness is not some constantly evolving yardstick. I don't know how people who write in the dumpster fire of current affairs do it without losing their minds. For the more static historically subjects, I think it can suffice to do a new source search re comprehensiveness every three to five years or so. An article on someone like Barack Obama is going to need to be checked every 6 months or less. -Indy beetle (talk) 12:50, 24 December 2021 (UTC)
    Delayed response to Indy beetle.
    • Sounding good is often in tension with being accurate and true to the source material, since its often boring material we work with. As an editor who works mostly with such material (medicine), I believe it is even more important to make sure our prose shines in the "boring material" areas. I have often said that the problem with our math articles is not the math, but the english. (I saw an a journal article in this week's Signpost which seems to agree.) And Tony1 slaved over Tourette syndrome for weeks before I brought it to FAC (Tony1 is the language mentor mentioned in this Nature article). Now that Tony1 is gone from FA-level work, I relied on Ceoil, Colin, Outriggr, Yomangani and others for prose work at dementia with Lewy bodies. But that FAC no longer has the services of some of our top copyeditors (eg, Tony1 and Eric Corbett), no matter whether we label it brilliant or something else, prose standards have dropped. Tony1 and Eric could be counted on to quickly shut down FACs with deficient prose, where these days, we struggle through pages and pages and pages of commentary (causing WP:TLIMIT issues) trying to pull prose up to standards, and I believe we often don't make it there. The downward trend in prose reached a peak in about the period 2016 to 2018, when buddies pushed their buddies' articles through on a few prose nitpicks. The trend seems to be improving, but the absence of the Oppose button continues to produce sub-optimal results and poor allocation of resources. It would be more expedient to encourage those editors whose prose isn't up to FA level to go out and develop a network of collaborators-- which is what I have had to do, since my prose stinks.
    • On a side note, I saw the oddest thing this month at TFA, but was reading from the car on my iPad, and by the time I got home, forgot to make note and now don't remember what article it was (and WP:ERRORS has no archives, so finding old stuff is horrible). But an article showed at WP:ERRORS with a real error in the lead and in the blurb. That error was in the article when it came to FAC, and when it left FAC. The lead is where our most serious scrutiny of prose should be happening. I looked at the FAC for that TFA and saw that the lead had actually been damaging during its FAC, by the faulty recommendation from a reviewer to cut down the perfectly adequate lead, based on a misinterpretation of the LEAD guidelines; the lead was in full compliance with WP:LEAD when it first came to FAC, but left FAC with a less-than-satisfactory lead, still with the error. There is nothing in LEAD that demands a very short lead for a short article, and a fine lead was lost at FAC.
    • For the more static historically subjects, I think it can suffice to do a new source search re comprehensiveness every three to five years or so. Possibly, but we generally aren't getting even that (although WP:URFA/2020 has prompted a lot of updating). In medicine, articles need at least a yearly check for new reviews; dementia with Lewy bodies research is moving fast, so I browse Pubmed at least every two months. Tourette syndrome is more settled (meaning the research money dried up), so a bi-annual check is fine. I wonder if we could come up with general guidelines ...
    While I have your attention, thank you for the fine work at FAR !! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:28, 29 December 2021 (UTC)
    @SandyGeorgia: The science/math stuff is particularly incomprehensible, guess I was thinking more about historical subjects, where it's usually not too technical. I see your point there; perhaps you could supply an example of a history-esque FA article that you think has brilliant prose? Also, in the future I'm always willing to look over any Africa military/history/politics at FAR. -Indy beetle (talk) 02:47, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
    I can agree with this, as people in aerospace often write big rocket as super heavy-lift launch vehicle and basically make the prose very technical. It is extremely difficult to make them lay-friendly, especially if you don't really care about the subject to begin with. That can also explain why FA growth on these topics are very low. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:50, 30 December 2021 (UTC)
I just made an essay about this: Wikipedia:After achieving featured status as a primer for some solution eventually, what do you think? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:35, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
I think it's missing the part about keeping articles up-to-date. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:07, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
The Cyclone CCI did not lead up to 1f; we put 1f in place before we knew about the Cyclone CCI. And since it doesn’t mostly pertain to FA writers or FAs (rather a lot of lack of attribution and copying within done by other editors that affect the entire content area), I’m not sure mentioning it there will be helpful. Doing so may leave the impression that the most prolific FA hurricane writers are serial copyright violators, when in fact, the case is that some of their articles may be victims of copying within going to and fro, not necessarily by them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:20, 26 December 2021 (UTC)
Agreed, I just picked your example to make a very rough essay. Feel free to fix it, after all, this is Wikipedia :) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 13:44, 26 December 2021 (UTC)

Proposal to adjust the TFA re-running period

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article § Adjusting the TFA re-running period. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 17:26, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

Count off again ?

At WP:FAS, there were 6,053 FAs end of January. For February so far, 25 promotions minus 13 demotions equals 12, so total should be 6,065, but Wikipedia:Featured articles show 6,066. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

It's my fault - I was trying to promote a FAC by memory without looking at the instructions, and happened to forget to add it to the log ... Hog Farm Talk 17:05, 26 February 2022 (UTC)
Whew ... I had just verified the number was correct, and was going there next. Thanks, HF! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

Essay

Alright, here's my attempt to list resources for building FAs at this essay. What do you think? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 17:40, 28 March 2022 (UTC)

It's not a bad essay, but it's also not the title - at the moment it's a version of WP:ASSESS. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:36, 29 March 2022 (UTC)

Misclassifications

There are some misclassificationbs here. In "Literature", Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots is what it says, a book of illustrations, with no text at all. It should go under biology (like Lemurs of Madagascar (book)) and art, but not here. Black Hours, Morgan MS 493 is a standard copy of the book of hours texts, also of interest only for the illustations. It should go under art, & possibly religion, though I don't think we do that. Probably we need a new category in Biology for the parrots, A History of the Birds of Europe, and Nature fakers controversy all far more biological than literary. Johnbod (talk) 15:30, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Likewise, I would suggest that Operation Boomerang belongs under warfare, not history. Hog Farm Talk 18:50, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 29 April 2022

Please replace everything with: 

#REDIRECT [[Wikipedia:Featured articles]]
{{Redirect category shell|
{{R from shortcut}}
{{R to project namespace}}
}}

This would automatically tag the redirect with {{R fully protected}} (which is handled by {{Redirect category shell}}). –MJL ‐Talk‐☖ 18:13, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

 Done Hog Farm Talk 18:20, 29 April 2022 (UTC)

Why is there no image for Billy Porter's tuxedo dress?

An image of him in it would help fill up the space Pink Saffron (talk) 08:35, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Pink Saffron: Since the dress is under copyright, any image of it would have to meet fair use to be useable on Wikipedia. Wikipedia's fair use guidelines do not allow non-free (under copyright) images on the main page, I believe for "contextual significance" (part of the fair use doctrine) reasons. Hog Farm Talk 12:18, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Georgetown University Featured Articles

Just wondering who the Georgetown University alum is who has selected Georgetown priests, presidents, and administrators numerous times over the past year and a half for the featured article? I have noted 5 times since Feb 2021 (I got tired of looking for 3-4 months earlier this year, so probably missed a couple). Hootgoestheowl (talk) 17:28, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Three different coordinates schedule, alternating per month, and they usually take what is available. There are more flowers and Georgetown people than other topics. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 17:34, 1 September 2022 (UTC)

Re-assessment required for Kangana Ranaut

As the subject says we seriously need re-assessment as most of the citations are WP:PRIMARY. This page should be handled carefully. -✍ NeverTry4Me⛅ C♯ 10:06, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

@NeverTry4Me: Please first outline your concerns on the article's talk page, and then if they are not addressed after a couple of weeks you can proceed with a Featured Article Review. See the instructions on that page. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:53, 5 September 2022 (UTC)

Gender breakdown?

I'm curious, has anyone calculated the percentage of FA bios that are male vs. female? {{u|Sdkb}} talk 23:28, 23 November 2022 (UTC)

@Sdkb I tried a Wikidata query and got 1234 male, 250 female (plus 11 male and 5 female non-human organisms, mostly racehorses). the wub "?!" 00:36, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
I just realised that included fictional characters which maybe we don't want. Narrowing it to "instance of: human" gives 1203 male, 235 female. the wub "?!" 00:46, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
Ack, I was hoping it'd be a little better than the Wikipedia baseline, but that's worse — 16% compared to 20% overall at this point. A concerted effort to get more women bios (or articles of particular interest to women) to FA status might be warranted. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 02:14, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
There are lots of kings and other heads of state, and so on. The useful way to look at such stats, avoiding historical issues, is to look at living people less sportspeople (where the overall figures have been over 30% for some years, though I haven't seen recent stats). Of course feel free to write as many FAs as you like. Mildly interesting that we have a higher ratio of fictional females! Johnbod (talk) 05:47, 24 November 2022 (UTC)
@Sdkb WikiProject Women in Green appears quite active. Primarily working on getting such articles to Good status, but it appears they are interested in FAs as well. the wub "?!" 00:21, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
Surprising that only 1,484 of the 7,919 FA articles on the EN Wikipedia are about people (see WP:Statistics). Seems to me we should be giving more attention to improving the quality of biographies in general. As for FAs about women, it should not be too difficult to restore some of the 20 former FA articles listed on WikiProject Women Writers.--Ipigott (talk) 07:05, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
BLPs and Biographies more widely are harder to progress than non-bios in my experience. I can't say I'd want to start working on female bios specifically to "tip the scales" as it were. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:27, 25 November 2022 (UTC)
That's 18.19% compared to an overall ~25% of bios. Personally I think this is a good thing, and wp in general has far too many biographies, and far too much emphasis on them. But one knows that the actual reason is that even a not fantastically well-recorded life from recent centuries leaves more material to read up than the micro-topics that most FA writers favour. But we do have lots of Anglo-Saxon kings, to sit beside the hurricanes, coins and naval ships. FAR has had rather a blitz on the 18th-century literature FAs by one editor, sadly now deceased. 6 of that 20 are on books not bios, and several more are people not mainly known as writers, whether Hilary Clinton or Margaret Thatcher. Quite a lot of work needed on those two, I'd guess. Johnbod (talk) 15:37, 25 November 2022 (UTC)

Featured articles requiring cleanup

According to the WikiProject cleanup listing, there are 1,138 Featured Articles that have cleanup issues, or 18% of all Featured Articles. Is this something that should be receiving more attention? It feels like most cleanup issues would mean that an article does not meet the Featured Article criteria. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:34, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

That listing isn't particularly helpful for a variety of reasons; what is being done is explained at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2022-01-30/WikiProject report. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:39, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

Feedback

Hello all. Dietrich v The Queen is a former featured article. Delisted just over a year ago for various concerns, I spent months bringing it up to GA class. Having achieved that, I would like to return it to FA class. Not sure where to begin. Would any editors please provide me with some feedback on what they'd like to see, or if they feel it may be ready for a nom for formal review? I have not changed much since the GA nom, however the GA nom was much more strict than the basic GA criteria. The entire article was re-written from the ground up with the referencing system replaced.

Cheers MaxnaCarta (talk) 00:32, 6 January 2023 (UTC)

@MaxnaCarta: It might be worth listing the article at Peer review if you want feedback in preparation for FAC. A quick look through suggests a thorough copyedit is in order – it reads pretty impenetrably in places to me. For example Special leave to appeal to the High Court was made by Dietrich on the grounds the Court of Appeal erred in law by holding Dietrich did not have a right to be provided with counsel at public expense, and/or by not granting adjournment his lack of representation meant a miscarriage of justice had occurred, first by finding Dietrich did not have a right for publicly funded representation, and second by failing to find that a miscarriage of justice had occurred due to this lack of representation.
I'm also baffled by the §Biography of Dietrich section which seems to just be tacked onto the end of the article for no discernable reason. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:41, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
This post would get more attention at WT:FAC. Also, have you posted at WT:LAW? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 12 January 2023 (UTC)

"From today's featured article" front page excerpt

I happened to read today's front page featured article excerpt. The writing quality seemed poor, particularly in comparison with the actual intro to the featured article. How is the front page excerpt created? Wouldn't using the FA's intro be more representative, even if it was truncated for space? Tsavage (talk) 03:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

It would be helpful to know which TFA blurb you were dissatisfied with. Wikipedia:About Today's featured article gives some rudimentary information about the process. The blurbs were historically always exactly as you suggest (truncated versions of the lead); these days, leads aren't always checked at WP:FAC for WP:TFA readiness, and lots of editors subsequently edit the TFA blurb. For example, Ignacio Tonene blurb and Boulton and Park blurb. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:15, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
I don't remember which article now, it would be the one featured on May 30, 2023.
Thanks for the information. Tsavage (talk) 23:10, 21 June 2023 (UTC)
The intro is the starting point for the blurb, but in almost all cases it is too long. In the past the blurb was written by the Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests nominator when the article was proposed for TFA or the TFA coordinator when it was selected. Since 2016 the TFA coordinator has created the blurb shortly the article passes FAC, and it is checked and edited by the FAC nominator. Most of the work is cutting the blurb down to between 925 and 1025 characters. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 18:47, 30 May 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the info.
It would seem that, being an FA, the first paragraph of the intro, or the first sentences of that paragraph if it needs to be cut down, would contain the most notable details. There shouldn't be any rewriting, if the purpose is to highlight the quality of the writing. Maybe there's no way to enforce that.
In any case, I pointed this out because this one example, the only I'd seen in ages, was truly not good. If I recall correctly, it actually gave me a different impression from the article intro. Maybe this rarely happens. Tsavage (talk) 23:22, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Unexplained reversion

@Sheep8144402: Why? @FAC coordinators: for information. Gog the Mild (talk) 15:34, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Based on the edit tags this edit is a mobile rollback edit. Presumably just a misclick. Would recommend that Sheep add the editing feature where it prompts for confirmation of rollback and then somebody manually add those FAs back. Hog Farm Talk 16:38, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
Sorry for that, that rollback is completely unintentional. I do have rollback confirmations and for some reason when the "confirm rollback" prompt appears more than once at the same time, even after I click "cancel" it rolls back the edit. This makes me roll back the edit without even realizing that I've done so. :(
My phone is a bit slow, and whenever I was opening up my watchlist/recent changes/related changes and click my desired link within a few seconds of the page loading, sometimes I accidentally click the rollback thing. Sheep (talk • he/him) 20:12, 25 August 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations

Have we ever considered indicating WP:VA status on the Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations. Could we add a number to the stars to show what VA levels some of the important FA contributions are recognized at. That would also encourage FA pursuit of the more important articles. User:RJHall (20 FAs, 17 current) with his FA of Earth is the only nominator with a Level 1 FA. User:Cwmhiraeth (24 FAs, 24 current) with his FA of Sea and User:Worldtraveller (24 FAs, 15 current) with his FA of Sun are tied for the most FA promotions to include a level 2. It would be interesting to see who has a lot of FA VAs especially at the higher levels.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 22:45, 27 September 2023 (UTC)

  • I am surprised to see no comment. Personally, seeing that my most important article creation has been delisted at FA, is part of the motivation for my current effort to get my only level 4 VA (Campbell's Soup Cans) relisted at FA. I think seeing who is doing important work and what work has been delisted could be motivating to some of the FA hunters.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 23:06, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I agree it would be interesting, but the bot that maintains that page is run by Rick Block, so he is who you would have to ask. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:12, 29 September 2023 (UTC)
I am not sure that a lot of people care about the Wikipedia:Vital articles project. The main objections that I see are that a) it's a largely arbitrary classification and b) that it's far from clear that these articles are actually the most important for Wikipedia. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 08:45, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
I feel like it's a different list: perhaps Wikipedians by Featured Vital articles or something. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:12, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
The Vital articles WikiProject is kind of a mess; we already note important FAs at Wikipedia:Million Award#Featured content, which reflects what readers want (by pageviews). For those who want to see them by editor, there's a sort button on the column. Another page encouraging entitlement by writer wouldn't be a good thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:43, 30 September 2023 (UTC)
I also tend to think that this wouldn't be useful; my (limited) experience with the vital articles process has indicated to me that it is primarily an extended exercise in navel-gazing, trying to determine what is "important" or not in ways that usually miss the point. Hog Farm Talk 17:07, 30 September 2023 (UTC)

How can I ask to future an article?

Hello, I was hoping to see if there was a way to submit a forum to inform an article. Since I think the directions were confusing for me, I would appreciate if there was any link or some guidelines to submit a request. (Also, I have a lot of certain articles that seem interesting…) Thank you to whoever reads this. If I might’ve formatted anything wrong in this talk page, please let me know. Ilikememes128 (talk) 17:59, 4 October 2023 (UTC)

Citation Source Links vs Text Question

I noticed that the Walt Disney Article doesn't have links to the sources in citations. For example: 

"Disney to Quit Post at Studio". Los Angeles Times. September 11, 1945.

Where the source, Los Angeles Times isn't an internal link. Is this preferred?

I have noticed that many articles have malformed sources, such as "New York Times" instead of "The New York Times" or "The Associated Press" instead of "Associated Press", which beg a link to assure appropriate spelling. Please advise. DarkLilac (talk) 03:26, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

It's neither preferred nor not preferred - as long as the treatment is consistent, any style of internal linking in citations is permissible. Note also that as long as it's internally consistent, the style shouldn't be changed without discussion. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:49, 16 October 2023 (UTC)
Thank you for the feedback, but this is a complicated situation since most pages I see are already hybrid and I tend to replace typos with internal links. DarkLilac (talk) 17:19, 16 October 2023 (UTC)

Can any article become a featured one?

Even if the topic of an article is about something very obscure, is it possible for it to still be a featured article? Millows! | 🪧 03:26, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

As long as the sourcing exists to support it. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:47, 7 August 2023 (UTC)
well, no, not ALL articles. List or glossary articles wouldn't be suitable, not would permanent stubs. WP:CONCEPTDABs are technically articles, and wouldn't be suitable either (maybe, I have no idea if anyone's ever tried). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:47, 25 August 2023 (UTC)
The general answer is yes, lest we fall into the trap of people's subjective opinions of "best work" and fall into even more elitism around here, although Lee is right (nothwithstanding the subjective "permanent stubs") that some things are technically in the mainspace and are ineligible such as lists (we have Featured Lists for that, although the demarcation is murky as demonstrated by the Mercury Seven case) and disambiguation pages. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:36, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
In the past, the usual case cited is Ælle of Sussex, whose very existence is far from certain. It's been an FA since 2007, when it was like this more or less. There's rather a lot of context/padding. Johnbod (talk) 17:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Appalachian Spring

Hey all, Appalachian Spring was just promoted the FA and I found that it was placed under the "Culture and society" section. This seems rather odd to me- other ballets, like The Rite of Spring, are under "Classical music works"- would Appalachian Spring not belong in the same place? Thanks! (ping for @FrB.TG, the promoter) MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 00:10, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

@MyCatIsAChonk you’re absolutely correct, and I have moved it there. Apologies for the mixup. FrB.TG (talk) 00:31, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
No worries, thanks for the quick fix MyCatIsAChonk (talk) (not me) (also not me) (still no) 01:04, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Pre-2003 Brilliant Prose donated to the coordinators

History of the Featured article process

I worked on a few reconstructions of the pre-2003 "Brilliant Prose" log, originally in my userspace but, with some assistance by @SJ and Wbm1058, now at WP:BrilliantProse. I have even used the Tim Starling logs to reconstruct some otherwise-unavailable "featured versions" in subpages, and I would love it if the @FAC coordinators: would be so kind as to begin finishing this work and ultimately incorporating it into the FA log so we can have a near-complete archive stretching back to January 2001.

Many thanks!

– John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 16:48, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

It's not entirely clear to me what you've done or what you're asking. When we (Gimmetrow, Maralia, and me) first built articlehistory at every FA and FFA, we went back to the first version of the FA and brilliant prose pages and captured everything then available. It seems you're saying you found an older database, but why do we need to re-capture, at this point, articles that were once FAs (that is, pre some very archaic date) but as of the first version of the Brilliant Prose pages, no longer were? That would be a TON of work for just about no benefit, to identify what an archaic process considered an FA which then lost status in another archaic process (a straight-up vote).
Perhaps I'm misunderstanding; could you provide an example of what it is you want done for one sample article? For example, if you look at the articlehistory at Talk:Sex Pistols, you can see how we re-captured the Refreshing Brilliant Prose votes. Refreshing brilliant prose was a straight up-and-down vote to keep or remove the older FAs, and to my knowledge, we captured that. I'm not understanding the benefit in going back further.
And while we are on the subject of Sex Pistols, to my knowledge, it is our oldest continuously featured article, and Ceoil and others are diligently working to restore it to modern standards at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Sex Pistols/archive2. Because of its history, it would be just grand if some FAC regulars could weigh in at that FAR to help assure that our oldest continuous FA is truly up to snuff when Ceoil finishes (right now, he's got a long list to work on still from HogFarm and me, but pls watchlist the FAR for now). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:47, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Also, if you look at the oldest date at Wikipedia:Featured article statistics#Tables, it seems that 81 FAs were voted out in the "Refreshing brilliant prose" up-or-down vote. Unless I am misunderstanding, you are asking that we incorporate those 81 delists into the FA archives (eg, add to artichistory, add to WP:FFA, and add to the archived log), and I'm not seeing a benefit in the amount of work it would take to do that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
@Ceoil: faulty ping above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:53, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
A better and more complete example can be seen in the articlehistory at Talk:Prostitution. If I'm understanding, you're asking that we dig back into a newly found copy of the old database, and find the version when Prostitution was first featured, before it was then twice de-featured. If we have to do that across several hundred then-extant FAs, what is the benefit? The content of all of those articles -- and what is considered an FA -- has so radically changed that I'm unsure what we are gaining by doing this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: I believe you're mistaken in saying that Sex Pistols is the longest continuously-Featured article; that honor goes to Byzantine Empire, which has been BP since May 26, 2001, and has never been demoted since. Using the example of Byzantine Empire's talk page, I'd like to at least have our old BP's that survived the up/down vote era (and, possibly, those who didn't) have that status reflected in {{Article history}}, and preferably, using the Starling logs (and possibly arch-WikiArchaeologist Graham87) reconstruct the "featured versions" of each article as I have done, for example, for Japanese Language. You're certainly correct that it's a bit of work for rather niche benefit, but I believe completeness of the FA/BP record (except from August to November 2001, which are well and truly lost with current knowledge and technology) is a worthwhile pursuit. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 19:16, 22 October 2023 (UTC)

Ah, yes, Byzantine; I probably overlooked it because it should come to FAR and be demoted. So at Talk:Byzantine Empire articlehistory, you would want a) a link to the May 26, 2001 version, and b) an addition to the Featured log. Then you would want same for one or two hundred articles. I can't think of anyone besides me who understands how to make all that happen correctly in both archives and articlehistory, and I just can't convince myself that a version that old is worth linking to. I am open to overseeing the work if someone else wants to do it; pls ping my talk page if there are questions, but you can see how we had to rig the RBP FAC simulations. (I still consider Sex Pistols the oldest as I have serious doubts anyone will ever update the 17,000 words of readable prose at BE :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:03, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
As an example, this is the oldest version of Byzantine Empire in the current database, and I believe you are saying the Featured version is even older than this. That is just embarrassing, and I'm not sure why we would expend the effort to link to something even older than that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:50, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Again, this is just an archivist's hobby, of interest to WikiArchaeologists and the potential of a "crossover" between them and the FAC crowd. Obviously no one would ever think about using 2001 Wikipedia as an unironic source of information, so this is just as a sort of "look how far we've come". – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 23:08, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
If you get someone interested in doing all that work, I can help make sure the archives and articlehistory parts are working right ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 22 October 2023 (UTC)
Importing the article history is an error-prone process especially these days, so I'm generally fairly reserved about doing it (and I like minimal gaps in the history when importing). I can deal with specific one-off requests but I'm not hugely in to the early history of brilliant prose like this. Graham87 (talk) 02:07, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

Spin-off Fashion from Culture

I was wondering if there are enough articles relating to fashion to spin the topic out of the catch-all of Culture and society? I know Premeditated Chaos is trying to get every McQueen collection to FA, so the topic is definitely going to grow over time. My suggestion is to place it under Art, but I understand that it may be controversial to purists. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 21:35, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

Give it its own section, or leave it. Culture and society isn't that big. As with Appalachian Spring a few sections above, there are some odd inclusions in C&S, things that should perhaps be in history. Johnbod (talk) 04:05, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Help gold star editors - Metrification

Dear gold star editors, i request your assitance in updating the metrification page on Wikipedia. I think this is a great achievement of the world universal system of measurement. 2406:3400:212:D700:3F52:FB52:BC6B:B290 (talk) 22:44, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Numismatics as own category?

Currently, out of the 122 Featured Articles in the "Business, economics, and finance" category, 106 are in the numismatics sub-section. I feel this is a bit unwieldy and awkward, as articles on numismatics topic often have quite little to do with business and economics itself, but rather the history and design of the coinage. Additionally, four FAs in the Numismatics sub-section are themselves biographies, matching the number of bios in *Business, economics, and finance biographies*.

Seperating it into its own category would allow the massive list to be broken up into sections, and better represent the current (low) number of FAs within the economics field. Generalissima (talk) 19:16, 4 November 2023 (UTC)

Agreed. Johnbod (talk) 19:24, 4 November 2023 (UTC)
Seems reasonable -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 13:09, 5 November 2023 (UTC)

Function to check if article is featured

Is there a json-file containing all featured articles or a module-function which could determine if the given article is featured? Want to use it in other module which would display a featured icon near the link if necessary. Kammerer55 (talk) 03:43, 1 December 2023 (UTC)

What category would William Utermohlen be in if it became an FA?

I've always thought this article would fit the Art and architechture category, but considering that all of the recent comments about improving this article for the FA criteria have mentioned getting help from medical editors, reading medical articles etc. I have a feeling that everyone will disagree with me on this. Interested to see your thoughts on this. Realmaxxver (talk) 19:46, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

He is primarily notable as an artist. -- Guerillero Parlez Moi 20:01, 8 December 2023 (UTC)
Art bio. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:02, 8 December 2023 (UTC)

Map

What's the point of the map atop WP:FA? It's non-interactive, presumably out of date, and definitely not representative of all FA's (where does a biography go on a world map?) ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:23, 23 October 2023 (UTC)

It was added after these two discussions. Courtesy ping: @Sdkb: Nikkimaria (talk) 22:35, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping. The fact that all graphs across Wikipedia are non-functional right now is deeply unfortunate, but I don't think mass-removing them would be an appropriate response. Taking the long-term view, they'll be back soon.
The map is generated dynamically, if I recall, so datedness shouldn't be an issue.
And yes, it doesn't include items that lack a geolocation. But that's why it's only one way of several we offer to browse FAs. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 22:39, 23 October 2023 (UTC)
If you click on the map it becomes interactive. -- In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 11:27, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
Seems like it sometimes takes more than one click. It's not out-of-date either; Incapillo was promoted just a few days ago and already shows up.

I notice that more than half the FAs in South America appear to be my work, and form a distinct cluster. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:48, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

It doesn't appear to be interactive for me, for whatever reason. Glad to hear it's functioning better for others. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:18, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Doesn't work for me, either, though it has in the past. Clicking it now just brings up a blank page. I like the idea though. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 12:28, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
For me, it takes a while to load. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:27, 28 October 2023 (UTC)
Accessibility nightmare but it does work for me. Not sure this is the first thing people should see if it's not working for all. Moxy- 01:46, 31 October 2023 (UTC)
A bit of a question here - does anyone know why Duckport Canal, which does have coordinates, doesn't appear on the map? I will note the map is working again for me - the blank page does show up sometimes but waiting it out always seems to work eventually. I find it interesting to note that I'm responsible for all of the current FAs with pins in Mississippi and Missouri, and all but one for Arkansas. Hog Farm Talk 03:04, 29 December 2023 (UTC)
@Hog Farm, it's because the Wikidata item (Duckport Canal (Q112567707)) doesn't have the coordinates. {{u|Sdkb}} talk 07:31, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

When is an article old enough to be featured on the front page twice?

I'm working on repairing a 2007 wrecked FA via translating a newer FA from another language; it appeared on the front page on February 2, 2008. It is approaching its 30th anniversary and though I won't quite have exactly 30, unfortunately, I'm hoping to have it in February if it's deemed eligible. I have in recent months seen old FAs re-run, but I don't remember just how old those examples were. dannymusiceditor oops 20:21, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Content assessment has an RfC

Wikipedia:Content assessment has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Schierbecker (talk) 22:39, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:Featured_articles/Archive_18&oldid=1218091175"