Template talk:FACfailed

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I changed the "is" to "was" on this template message so that it won't have to be removed from talk pages in case nominations fail. • Benc • 06:05, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Contents 1 New design 2 Optional parameter 3 Shrink template? 4 Image change?

[edit] New design

The new design has been implemented here. I would like to suggest one small tweak: bolding/italicising the word "former" so that it stands out a little bit more. violet/riga (t) 08:24, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Optional parameter

Some articles have problem with the default "view its sub-page" link in this template because the articles were renamed from the name used for the nomination. In thise case, use the original article name as an optional parameter. Example: {{FACfailed|2001: A Space Odyssey}} Shawnc 05:56, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Shrink template?

Although the slightly different image is helpful in this respect, I think that this template is still too similar to the main template for Featured Articles. In my view, the best way to remedy this is to shorten this article to about half the size (in height) it currently is. The same should be done for other "pseudo-FA" templates, like the one for former Featured Articles. This will not only make immediately obvious that, despite the similar color scheme, layout, and image, the template is not indicative of an FA, but also has the very useful service of consuming less space in the article's talk page. I feel that this is especially important for the "FACfailed" template because there's absolutely nothing special, unusual, or noteworthy about failing an FAC: any article whatsoever can be a failed FAC, it's purely a matter of what articles individual editors decided to nominate on a whim. Whaddaye think? -Silence 13:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The template is also problematic in that the subpages that it links to don't hang around forever, and its remedy, a generic link to the nomination archives, burdens the user with searching the archives. Direct links into the archives are possible, given a month and year. Perhaps there should be two templates: one for recent failures, linking only to the current place where the nomination was discussed, and one for older failures, for when the discussion was archived. A bot could convert the recent ones to the older ones.—mjb 17:21, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree. Having two separate templates for more recent FAs and for archived ones will not only make it much easier to specify exactly where to find the relevant vote, but will also shorten the text of both versions further to make it more possible to present truly necessary information in a concise way. -Silence 22:38, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The standard format was created getting on for a year ago as a result of a wide-ranging review. See Wikipedia:Template standardisation and Wikipedia:Templates used for featured content. It would be shame to lose the results of that good work.

There is something special about a failed FAC - someone thought the article was good enough to nominatem, and then some other editors found some faults which may or may not still need correcting. It is often useful to be able to find the discussion on failed FACs, FARCs, PRs, etc, from an article's talk page.

I'm not sure what mjb means about "subpages that it links to don't hang around forever". Once they have been created, FAC sub-pages do hang around pretty much forever. There are two major exceptions - sub-pages don't exist for the earliest FACs, because sub-pages were not used at that time (hence the explanatory text in the template, which was removed by Silence), and the sub-pages may be moved to an archive to make way for a new nomination if the page is re-nominated at FAC. -- ALoan (Talk) 13:11, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Image change?

It's been bothering me that we use the same image for Former FAs (i.e. articles that were once Featured, but then removed) as we use for Failed FACs: Image:Cscr-former.png. It makes it difficult to tell at first glance whether the article was once an FA, but then lost that status (which is typically a very important issue for the article in question), or whether it was simply a failed FAC (which is typically a trivial, non-vital feature of the article in question). I feel that we should replace the image in one of the two templates with a new image that better distinguishes between the two and conveys meaning more clearly: how about a dotted-line outline of a Featured Star? We could replace the broken-star of the {{FormerFA}} template with that on the grounds that it represents the empty space left where there was once a star, or we could replace the broken-star of the {{FACfailed}} template on the grounds that it isn't really a "broken FA" since it was never an FA to begin with.

The main argument for doing the former is because it would require a less widespread change, since there are many, many more failed FACs than demoted FAs, whereas the argument for doing the latter is that the "broken star" image suits a demoted FA more than a mere failed FAC. Personally, I'm kind of on the fence (leaning on the latter, though), and don't have any strong opinions on what is changed or how, but I feel that it's a very important distinction to make, one way or another. Plus it probably wouldn't be terrible difficult for someone to make a transparent "FA-star outline" image.

On a related note, I think we should also have a different image for {{FARCfailed}}, though that's less important. The generic FA star isn't really relevant to a template about a failed attempt to remove FA status; how about an FA star with a green "Checkmark" overlayed, to distinguish its significance and show that the Review ended in approval? -Silence 19:53, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, if FARCfailed is going to have a star with a green tick, how about a star with a red cross for a FormerFA, and keep the "broken" star for FACfailed? (The same rationale applies to the other featured content templates, btw - {{FLCfailed}}, {{FLRCfailed}}, {{FFL}}, etc) -- ALoan (Talk) 21:12, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Sure. That sounds like a great idea. So, under the proposed scheme: A full star will represent an FA; a green-checked star will represent an FA that went through FARC successfully; a red-crossed star will represent a former FA, that went through FARC and was removed; an incomplete star will represent a failed FA candidate; an incomplete star with the missing piece being added will represent an FA candidate; and an enlarged missing piece will represent an FA going through FARC. I actually considered suggesting a crossed-out star myself, except that I was worried that an X shape wouldn't show up well on a star-shape, since they're so similar; if we put the X a little to the side, though, and make it stylized and shiny (like the check should look too), it should work. Anyway, I like the idea, and if we can get someone to do graphics for them, I think we should definitely make the switch; of the aforementioned image choices, the only one I don't much care for is the "incomplete star" for failed FACs, since it's not really a significant accomplishment to fail an FAC (it can happen to any article, even a one-sentence stub, after all), yet the image implies that it's "almost an FA", which may be misleading. If we had the dotted-line "empty FA star" image that I described earlier, I'd support replacing the "incomplete FA star" with that one for the failed FAC template. However, that's not pressingly important, so if there's support for keeping the "incomplete FA star" for failed FACs, I won't push. What matters most is making the templates easy to distinguish from one another at a glance, and a couple of new images are the best way to do that. -Silence 21:28, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Oh, none of this is really that important - nice to have, not must have - but we need someone to draw some examples for the new graphics to see how they look (hint hint). -- ALoan (Talk) 21:51, 16 June 2006 (UTC)