Wikipedia talk:Featured Article Help Desk/Archive 1

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Archive 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.

Contents

Announcements

History of Arizona

History of Arizona has successfully made Featured Article status. Congratulations have to go to Toothpaste for her efforts on this one. Someone give her a barnstar. Rob Church Talk | Desk 04:13, 26 August 2005 (UTC)

Resources

A list of useful resources and tutorials on advanced editing topics can now be found at Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured Article Drive/Resources. Please feel free to add to this. Rob Church Talk | Desk 22:41, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Policies

Participants

  • An active participant is one who is contributing to a current effort by proposing or completing tasks or other significant contributions as part of his/her involvement in the project.
  • An inactive participant is a new participant, or a participant who does not appear to have made a significant contribution to any current effort as part of his/her involvement in the project in the past two weeks.
  • Inactive participants will be removed after a reasonable time period of inactivity.

Nominations for Future Efforts

  • Active participants may nominate up to two articles at any given time as proposed future efforts
  • Inactive participants may nominate one article at any given time as a proposed future effort
  • Nominations may be added, edited or retracted at any time

Improvement of FARC'd articles

Basically, I propose that since we're trying to improve count and quality on WP:FA, we should work on improving FARC'd articles, to keep both count and quality preserved. - A Link to the Past (talk) 23:20, September 1, 2005 (UTC)

Support

  1. A Link to the Past (talk) 23:20, September 1, 2005 (UTC)
  2. Magicmonster 13:33, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
  3. --Cool Cat Talk 22:52, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Object

Comment

  • Comment - A link to WP:FARC might be useful. Rob Church Talk | Desk 11:17, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
  • Comment - I agree that improving WP:FARC articles would be great to work toward improving Wikipedia, but how do you improve count for WP:FA? It always goes up by one per day.Magicmonster 13:33, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
    • I think he's referring to us increasing the number of Featured Articles that are available to be placed on the Main Page, whereas you're referring to those that are/have been on the Main Page. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but that's how I understand you so far. Rob Church Talk | Desk 08:38, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Role: Help Desk

Proposal

Problem

A number of participants have resorted to working on their individual FAC nominations as of late. While this is fine, not a lot is being done with our current efforts. We also have the problem that participants with little or no interest in the current efforts will probably not be able or willing to contribute from time to time.

Solution

The Featured Article Drive ought to convert it's role to that of a help desk; any user can request our help to get articles through the FAC process. This would be especially useful for newer users, who are often keen to find their feet in contributing, but can be daunted by the formal review process. Our role would be to act as editing assistants during that time, providing tips on how to edit better, and indeed, doing some of the work ourselves. I propose that, in addition, we form a link of some description with the Mediation Cabal, to provide a pleasant and informal means of resolving any disputes that those users might have with individuals during the FAC process.

If this proposal is passed, the project page and talk page will be redesigned to take our new role into account; providing spaces for participant details and selected skills, for users to ask for our help (and for us to respond) and to keep tabs on the project.

Our IRC channel will continue to be useful throughout this role, although the concept of a regular meeting is somewhat deprecated by the new role. Having said that, I can't see that meetings were working brilliantly anyway, so perhaps this new focus will help spark some renewed interest with our participants.

Existing participants would be more than welcome to leave the project if they do not wish to help us achieve the new goals, and to form their own forks. Participants are of course also welcome to remain on-project, and to help us (and our visiting users) with whatever comes along, in any way that they can. Participants are also welcome to ask for help in their own, individual FACs.

Rob Church Talk | Desk 09:56, 15 September 2005 (UTC)

Support

  1. I agree with the changes. My interest and knowledge is limited, so I could not contributes to most effort. I prefere to work on subject that I know and interested in.--Kiba 21:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC)
  2. Hmmm I would agree to that. --Cool Cat Talk 22:51, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
  3. Extreme lesbian support! --Phroziac (talk) 00:39, 18 September 2005 (UTC)
  4. Fine by me. Ambi 08:40, 1 October 2005 (UTC)
  5. Pretty much all I did is work on my own stuff with little help from the FAD group. I believe this is a good idea. Zach (Sound Off) 20:54, 1 October 2005 (UTC)

Oppose

Comments

  • Comment - this proposal was drawn up by A Link to the Past and Rob Church.
  • Comment - I obviously don't want to rush consensus un-necessarily, but this is now dragging on and if we're going to get the project back together, we need to know what we're doing with it. If people don't want to change direction, that's fine, but I'd appreciate some clearer consensus hee. Rob Church Talk 23:09, 30 September 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article Drive Logo

The Featured Article Drive logo, shown on the main page, is attributed to Rob Church. Please see the image description page for information on licensing and using this image.

Featured article advice

Since I'm going on a Wikibreak (temporary, I promise), I've written a page up detailing the most common failings that pages nominated to FAC have and a little expansion on the featured article criteria that I think is important for people to be aware of before nominating an article at FAC and especially for reviewers to read before giving advice. So I thought that would be valuable for you guys at this project as you are working to produce featured articles. I've put the advice together based on my more than a year of experience with a good portion of the FAC nominations over that time and from many discussions about the criteria. Like I explain there, if more editors were familiar with how articles should be written to pass the FA criteria, not only would more articles pass, but I think more would be nominated too. If we have more consistency about what advice is given less time would be wasted and more effort would be going in the right direction. So if others substantially agree with the advice or a version of it that can be agreed on, I suggest all potential FAC and Peer reviewers be directed towards it before reviewing articles, and that every FAC and PR nom get the advice contained there. Thanks all, it's certainly been fun so far. - Taxman Talk 15:12, 15 September 2005 (UTC)