User:Temporary account

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I don't have a preference for a name right now, thus my user name is Temporary Account. Usually I am too lazy to log in, so if IP starts with 171, that might be me.

What do I think about wikipedia and FAC:

1. It has severe systemic bias. It lacks substantial and comprehensive articles on sciences, for example. I will do my best to put some good science articles up.
2. The FA process is a joke. Some articles with clear shortcomings are becoming FAs recently, and the rationale for it is defying FA criteria. Please see Bulbasaur.
3. The monotheistic FA process is amateurish and arbitrary.
4. A lot of editors are not reasonably critical.

Regarding this issue, I plan to:

1. Stand by my principles and be reasonably critical, as always.
2. Get at least one hard science article to FA, probably in molecular biology.

March 11th: The Day Wikipedia Hit the New Low.

Bulbasaur article became FA. What were they thinking?

Good FAs vs Bad FAs

Rationale:

1. Wikipedia has over a million articles.

2. Thus a FA better be the BEST OF THE BEST of that million.

Bad FAs

Dubious references

1. Citations or quotations taken out of context to fit the article.

2. Citations that offer only cursory mentions of the subject matter, and are not specifically about the subject matter.

3. Commercial websites and fan webpages. Chatroom discussions, newsgroup discussions, email messages, blogs (unless they are archived, published, referenced by some other respected sources)

Information padding

1. Extraneous, unwarranted, and trivial details.

2. Plot summary without any significance that goes on and on.

3. Product information and "in other media."

4. Information that only fans would understandand appreciate.

Explanations and Notes:

1. "In other media" is a feature of both Bad FAs and Bad Fanwork. It serves to do length padding, and to promote fandom. In many good articles, a section called "in other media" is added, and usually the new information is about this particular subject's appearance in anime, games, other movies. This addition degrades the article and serves no purpose, and is the product of a fan's whim

2. Information that only fans would appreciate does not include special jargons, concepts, or knowledge in specialized field of study such as biochemistry or sociology.

Common Sense applied to FA

1. Comprehensiveness is both coverage and depth. But it does not tell how much.

a. Articles about barren subjects can be comprehensive with minimal information in both quality and quantity, only because nothing much can be said and researched about it.

b. In contrast, if an article on rich subject has the same coverage and depth as that of an article on barren subject, it is not comprehensive at all. Thus it is more difficult to make this article comprehensive.

c. Obscurity does not equate barren. The former means that the topic is relatively unknown, yet researchable. The latter denotes that nothing much is researchable about the topic, and sources that turn up are likely to be of poor quality.

2. Length measures how concise an article is.

a. If the same meaning can be conveyed with fewer words, convey it with fewer words.

b. An article should have a clear "gist," thus extraneous details are not needed, since they only serve to cloud the gist or hide shortcomings of the article.

c. conclusion: taken 1 and 2 together:

A "comprehensive" article that has limited scope, depth, and coverage should not be FA simply because it is barren and nothing much can be learned about it, and hence it is likely to have shorter length without extraneous languages. If nothing can be said about this subject, it is not likely it will be one of the best in Wikipedia.

3. Actionable and unactionable is the degree an article's shortcomings can be fixed based on objections

a. Actionable objections means that the shortcomings of the article can be addressed according to the objections.

b. Unactionable objections in FAC means that the errors are not fixable.

4. Validity is both rationale and relevance of the objection.

a. If an objection is well-grounded and relevant to the article, then it's valid.

b. If an objection is not well-grounded formulated, and unsupported by proof, then it is invalid.

c. conclusion: taken 3 and 4 together:

Unactionability of the objection does not necessary entail that the objection is invalid. If an article has a shortcoming that is simply unfixable for whatever reason, but the objection is reasoned and supported by proof elsewhere and within the article and conforms to general rules of FA criteria, then the article itself simply is not of FA caliber. Thus under this condition, even though the objection is unactionable at this point, it is still valid and should be taken into serious consideration.

Notes and comments: I think my common sense is reasonable here, however, giuidelines for FA are broad, and often taken to the extreme to force sub-par articles to barely pass (or miss) the criteria. I believe this is clearly because of oversight when FA process was originally formulated. For instance, the critieria mentions about "comprehensiveness," but I clearly point out the pitfalls of this concept. But articles that are more or less like extended stubs are becoming FA simply because the quantitaive measures of comprehensiveness as menioned in 1. are not specified. Furthermore, unactionable objections are disregarded and labelled as invalid, but according to 3 and 4, unactionability does not equate invalidity. However, these issues are not addressed currently, and becoming even harder to bring up at discussion pages. As far as I can see, this FA process is becoming a farce.

Unquotable quotes about FA

1. "this article meets the FA requirements and that is all that matters" -Alabamaboy

2. "If I wasn't Admin Gen of Esperanza I'd both block you and call you all of the swear words under the Sun." -Celestianpower

examples of Bad FAs:

1. Bulbasaur

a. the article is all detailed, extraneous plot summary.

b. the other media section is all product information.

c. dubious use of references that are not specifically about the topic.

d. heavy reference padding, citing fan pages and commercial websites.

2. Spoo

a. the subject matter is barren, and only fans would appreciate.

b. heavy reference padding, citing unpublished usenet websites.