Wikipedia talk:Featured article removal candidates/Archive 4

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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 1 Giano's Nominations 2 Recently 3 The last 25 unreferenced featured articles 4 Speedy removal of Bulbasaur by Jeffrey O. Gustafson 5 The Ku Klux Klan 6 Spoo decision 7 Properly dealing with rising standards 7.1 A case for incremental improvement to the criteria 8 Incorrect filmography orders 9 Nominating without suggesting improvements 10 template advising of impending nomination? 11 Backlog 12 Blue Whale 13 Taxman's extreme intervention and behaviour! 14 New thread on Wigwag + reform suggestion 14.1 Update 14.2 Evil strawpoll 14.2.1 Support 14.2.2 Neutral 14.2.3 Oppose 14.2.4 Mu 14.2.5 Comments 14.2.6 Alabama comments and replies 15 Over-specifying? 16 FARC and FAR merger 17 Notice of intention to remove nominations 18 Minor change to procedure 19 Proposal to specify a time date to nomination prodecure 20 Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Quantum computer 21 Can someone please clear the backlog? 22 Quantum Mechanics and expert input 23 Synapse DNA Repair 24 FAR 25 It begins! 26 unexplained retention of Edward Vi as an FA

Giano's Nominations

RE: These edits. Alright. I can see where Giano is coming from here, but I feel this is a violation of WP:POINT to some degree. To use the same text for each of these FA's disrespects the individual articles and the Farc process. Featured articles are our highest standard, and individual attention and reasoning for removal should be given to each one if a Farc is proposed. Just because two users have certain standards, does not mean that it is the communities' standards. To quote: "If this is what is required then I don't choose to comply." WP:OWN. Then let them be and breathe and improve, and let them maintain their well deserved status. I have removed all of these and deleted (out of process, yes) the subpages. Finally, references are not everything, prose is not everything. If anyone feels any of these articles warrants removal, please nominate it with specific reasons. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 04:10, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Comment These nominations seem entirely petulant and ridiculous. I could do the same in FAC, nominate an endless stream of articles, to prove a point. Worse, it's a cheap form of re-validation, requiring people to write "Keep" for no good reason. And they're not well-written, I don't exactly see what the FARC reasoning is for each of 'em. Silly... IMHO... --Tsavage 04:11, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

They were there and then they weren't. These out of process vanishing things are also disturbing... But, whatever.. --Tsavage 04:15, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

The removal of the nominations was not out of process when reversing WP:POINT. The deletions were (which I will reverse if anyone has a huge problem with it). (Unofficial Farc Closer, Archive Maintainer, and FFA guy) --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 04:20, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, since I'm receiving callers on my page regarding the above comment—I guess, "petulant" and "silly" are particularly bad word choices—would you undelete the subpages, for the record...? --Tsavage 05:04, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Just repeating my request. Thanks. --Tsavage 01:02, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• The pages were nominated because I felt (as I have made abundantly clear) they did not meet current FA requirements. I note TSavage says here "And they're not well-written" Yet I am still wrong for nominating them? I wrote several paragraphs to continue my theme here , but what the hell - it's bashing one's head against a brick wall. Just please in future, those of you who know so much on the subject, just charge in on FAC when you see those comments on a favoured prose, or lack of numerous foot-notes and point out they are not essential requirements. Otherwise all FAs written before the last 6 months will be here. Buckingham Palace is 47KB long and has just two inline cites - So how long do you give it before some clever soul re-nominates it again? It has been a much edited victim of it's own success -would it pass FAC today? I doubt I would have written it like that today.

It passed FAC as recently as the 30th June 2005 with just those same two inline cites. So unless you are going to give immunity to those older pages they are mostly going to be here again and again. The original contributors even if they are still here are unlikely to return to libraries to borrow and read through huge great books to say Oh yes page 867 vol. XIV. When they have already provided a list or references at the bottom of the page. Which any serious student will need to check anyway. (I could easily write an inline source linking to Enid Blyton "Domestic Etruscan Architecture" Page 946.) So I suggest you people with so much to say - sort it! Giano | talk 11:33, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

My comment about "well-written" referred to the FARC nominations. I read through them, and clicked to the examples, and wasn't entirely clear in any case what the reasons for nom were. I could, of course, work it out, on both "procedural" and...editor's opinion levels, but they were not clear to me.

Also, I entirely agree with the References problem, "overuse" being unhelpful for many subject areas in a general encyclopedia, and especially as manifest in some FACs which I think have been loaded with spurious and/or simply unnecessary references, and citations presented in a manner disruptive to the reader, largely for the sake of presenting a certain appearance. For example, my objection to Bulbasaur is based on IMO useless references that obscure the topic for the reader, in some cases misrepresent/mislead, and also make article development and FAC vetting much more difficult than need be. I try to balance my WP work within the rules, keeping in mind the...delightful WP:IAR rule.

On a slightly higher level, I do find WP, and FAC/FARC, specifically, "fun" (well, fun), an interesting, kinda stimulating exercise in collaboration on an insane scale. And having some experience in working within and managing fairly large collaborative groups, often volunteers, in publishing ventures, the need for both rules AND practicable, flexible interpretations that act as sort of widely known precedents are both IMO critical to any sort of success. The BIG difference with WP (in FAC and elsewhere) is, no "editor-in-chief". There is the Founder, and that is a critical role, someone who can step in, cut the red tape, and make decisions, "right" or "wrong", that break impasses and open things up to at least a different level of debate. But on the day-to-day content level (as with FAC, AfD, etc), the idea of "someone who finds consensus" is essentially an "ed-in-chief" role, but in the guise of something more neutral, particularly in those areas where the decisions are more interpretive of comments (FAC) than more vote-counting/majority opinion (FARC, at least, as I see it). This is its own problem. You do need someone who steps in and makes the hard calls, I don't think "pure consensus" is at all realistic or is nearly the case here. So, while I totally don't advocate creating more of a hierarchy (like a "board of PhDs", yikes...), I do think vigorous debate is the current step, and more uniform accountability (i.e. comments from) people "running" these content admin areas (FAC, FARC, etc).

Bottom line, fight it out in the designated forums, as an individual voice, like the rules say.

Perhaps this is an over-simplified, a simplistic view, but my kinda harsh comment about these FARC noms is more based on the principle that, I guess, is embodied in WP:POINT, and in general is: Stand up for what you believe in! People aren't in the end too rational, and harmony is a transient state, but still, the momemnts are all worth battling for...else, give up. Support and shifts in general opinion only come after a struggle, which is usually, it seems, undertaken by an initially small number of individuals. Something like that... :) (Smilies and IM(H)Os will be the death of the electronic me :). --Tsavage 16:28, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Could you just simplify that further - because I am competely lost as to what your point is? No more than 20 words please. Giano | talk 21:52, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Just get on with it. --Tsavage 22:29, 4 March 2006 (UTC)

Of course consistency among articles is desirable, but here, this must be balanced against the democratic nature of the project. Tony 02:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Recently

The FARC guidelines mention not to nominate recently promoted articles. I'm in dispute with someone who's nominated This Charming Man which was promoted to FA on 19th January. I feel that 5th March is too soon, he does not. We need some clarification or hard time limit here. How recent is recently? A week? A month? 3 months? 6 months? We need some consensus on this. exolon 01:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Around three months is the general threshhold, and the nomination has been removed. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 03:30, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• I have to say I very strongly disagree with this delisting. As I understand it, the time limit is aimed at preventing people who opposed an FAC misusing FARC to get their grievances reconsidered. I didn't comment on the FAC because I was in Peru at the time, but I have taken the time to identify serious failings in the article, now that it's been brought to my attention by appearing on the main page. The failings seem to be quite distinct from anything discussed in the FAC, and I think delisting is placing the importance of process above the integrity of the encyclopaedia. I don't agree that an arbitrary 3 month limit should ever be enforced. And this is a minor point but I really think it would have been nicer to leave an edit summary like 'removed, see talk' rather than using the rollback button. Worldtraveller 14:18, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• Yeah, I thought we used to go with a month and I agree with Worldtraveller on the reasons for the rule in the first place, and that means this listing is valid at least. I haven't even looked at the article, but these seem like legitimate issues. It's not just whining to get it off the main page. Please relist it. - Taxman ^Talk 15:13, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• I also agree that three months is entirely unreasonable. Perhaps unfortunately, I started participating in FAC after seeing a front page TFA exactly like this last November; when an article reads badly to someone in the way this does, it's...not a good impression. There shouldn't be a grace period if the quality isn't there (especially with not only TFA, but a star now on FA articles, highlighting them). Also, failed FACs are relisted quite promptly with no major changes, in no more than a month, and multiple times consecutively, when serious amounts of discussion have gone into previously reviewing them. There doesn't seem to be a big difference in cases. (I didn't have time to review this article, or several other articles I'd have objected to, like electrical engineering, because I was caught up in pursuing objections to just such serially relisted FAC noms. Unfortunately, IMO bad FAs particularly for pop topics can and do get through if the objections aren't vigorously followed up on, and this is draining and time-consuming and not so much fun. Perhaps this has something to do with "premature" FARC listings.) --Tsavage 15:52, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

• Folks, this is what happens when the point of policy/guidelines is missed. Really, we should try to apply the mischief rule instead of the literal rule whenever practical. The point of prohibiting hasty FARCs is to avoid people trying to lynch an article that was just promoted. If real issues that have never been presented at FAC are brought up, and no WP:POINT is being made, the FARC nom should stand. Johnleemk | Talk 16:25, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Part of my decision in delisting was based on the relative lack of change in the article since its promotion. I was not being overly literal - had it been a completely different article, in tone or substance, or the reversed objections from the FAC had popped back up, I wouldn't have touched it. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

I am not aware of a 3-month rule (inflexible or of thumb). I have been bold and stetted the nomination. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:41, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Its been what was (at least in my time closing Farcs), what I saw as a general limit. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

OK - having done some research, the "not recently promoted" rule seems to have been there explictly for around 20 months (since around 12 June 2004 - see also /archive1#political correctness), which is almost antediluvial by Wikipedia standards. Examples of previous nominations speedily removed on those grounds include (I may have inadvertantyly missed some out - for example, I see political correctness was re-FARCed within a couple of weeks in May/June 2004, and the renomination ran its course):

• Shroud of Turin (FAC promoted 18 October 2004; FARC nominated 1 November 2004; c.2 weeks)
• Heliobacter pylori (FAC promoted 23 September 2004; FARC nominated 21 December 2004; c.3 months)
• Polish-Soviet War (FAC promoted 14 April 2005; FARC nominated 21 April 2005; 1 week)
• Sicilian Baroque (FAC promoted 27 October 2005; FARC nominated 28 October 2005; 1 day)
• Sun Yat Sen (FAC promoted 24 August 2005; FARC nominated 28 October 2005; c.2 months; speedily removed and then reinstated)

Most of these are obvious (a few days, a few weeks). The tipping points appears to be at around 2 months (see Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_removal_candidates/Sun_Yat-sen). -- ALoan (Talk) 17:24, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposal - Change this wording :

Do not list articles that have recently been promoted—such complaints should have been brought up during the candidacy period. Do not list articles that have recently survived removal attempts. Either listing is likely to be summarily removed.

to :

Do not list articles that have recently been promoted UNLESS you genuinely believe there are valid problems with the articles that were not raised during the FA process. DO NOT NOMINATE AN ARTICLE FOR FARC THAT WAS PROMOTED DESPITE OBJECTIONS RAISED DURING THE FA PROCESS.

Do not list articles that have recently survived removal attempts, UNLESS you genuinely believe there are problems with the article that were not raised during the FARC process. DO NOT RE-NOMINATE AN ARTICLE FOR FARC THAT RETAINED FA STATUS DESPITE OBJECTIONS RAISED DURING THE PREVIOUS FARC NOMINATION.

Listings violating these guidelines are liable to be summarily removed.

This will probably need chopping down, but the gist is there.

exolon 23:55, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

I strongly disagree with the proposed rewording above. I'd prefer to keep it simple, leave the wording the same and take it on a case by case basis, (which has worked, BTW). If not, then, for consistency's sake (and to be fair to all Farcs), we should have a concrete amount of time. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 02:41, 7 March 2006 (UTC)

The spirit of the proposal is fine. "Do not list articles that have recently been promoted UNLESS you can demonstrate that there are substantial problems affecting the overall quality of the article's content that were not raised during the FA process." might move us closer. As I see it, the burden of proof should be on anyone applying for FARC, and the issues raised must not be trivial but must affect a major portion of the article's content (since I assume that stylistic objections would almost certainly have been raised). David91 08:35, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Instead of saying "Do not list articles that have recently been promoted", how about saying “Provide a one month notice of the FARC nomination on talk page with a specific list of issues. If these listed issues are not resolved after one month the nomination can be brought to the FARC page for a general review on defeaturing”. Implications:

• allows speedy removal of nominations made in haste (instead of complaining that not enough time was given),
• reduce uncertainty (no more guessing what "recently" is supposed to mean),
• provides grace period to improve articles (opposed to a caught-off-guard removal),
• reduces amount of time spent reviewing articles (as fewer would theoretically come to FARC),
• sets a time-limit to motivate editors (rather than panic),
• it is an instruction-creep. --maclean25 20:44, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Maclean's list looks fine to me. Plus two months' grace after FA listing before notice is given. Perhaps there should be a template for the notice. Tony 01:17, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

The last 25 unreferenced featured articles

I've finished updating my list of featured articles without references, and there are only 25 left. I'd much rather see them get fixed than listed here at FARC, so pick an article you're able to help research and reference. As I noted at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review, I'll commit to researching and adding references to Labour economics. If several more people did that we'd be in good shape. - Taxman ^Talk 16:15, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

• The problem with Blackadder was the "and tie ins", which I have deleted. The cited sources (the original videos/DVDs and books) are the references. It would not hurt to have some more references, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 17:33, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

• And then there were 24. - Taxman ^Talk 17:43, 10 March 2006 (UTC)

Speedy removal of Bulbasaur by Jeffrey O. Gustafson

This gets more bizarre. After the discussion and poll, it seemed clear that "recently" was decided on a case-by-case basis. Here, the concerns brought up WERE fully part of the FAC review, so the idea of using FARC as some sort of free-for-all in this case is wrong.

• There were serious concerns, by eight editors, that were brought up in the FAC, that werent' addressed there and remain part of the FA.
• There were "remove" votes in this FARC nom, so there was no consensus on "keep", after a few hours.

So why the summary removal? And why is one editor just removing FARCs? It seems like suppression of the discussion simply to maybe "keep the peace", when in fact, this is supposed to be orderly FA reviewing, not some sort of riot with crowd control... --Tsavage 02:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

The "recently" criteria is for exactly this: to prevent FARC being used to immediately continue a FAC. That's why the criteria exists. Move on. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Read the discussion above, and the poll. That may be your opinion, but it's not universal. If you wnat to spend time on something and then drop it, go ahead. Don't tell me to move on. --Tsavage 03:05, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

You can't move on? If you don't have it in you to move on from a FAC that doesn't go the way you voted, then almost by definition it is disruptive to have you voting at FAC at all, for surely some won't go your way. Have some perspective - Bulbasaur as it stands now is easily better than a significant percentage of older FAs, and even if it weren't, this exercise is a process toward an eventual goal, not immediate 100% perfection. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:18, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

almost by definition it is disruptive to have you voting at FAC at all You sound as if you're threatening me with something. If that's the case, then get on with it. Do you suggest that I be barred from FAC? I certainly don't know all the ins and outs of WP censure, and I can always learn more. As for the rest, I'm commenting on DISCUSSION pages, this wasn't my FARC nom, and several other editors seemed equally dissatisfied with that particular result. And I've spent a fair amount of time that I considered quite productive, on quite a number of FACs, none quite as bizarre as this one. If you're going to spend any time talking to me, please say something with a little substance or interest. Comparing Bulbasaur with real or imagined older FAs is dull. I think you're being, in a polite way, quite rude. Like I said, don't tell me to move on (I can make those decisions on my own). --Tsavage 03:49, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

The poll was hideously inconclusive and a bad idea, and did not change policy one iota; going back to status quo, "recently," would be judged on a case by case basis. There was sufficient support for summary removal in the comments expressed in the vote. As for me closing FARCs, it is something I have done uncontested since August. I also maintain the archives and created WP:FFA. The times I have requested commentary from Raul on my decisions, he has supported them. Ultimately, Raul is the final arbiter of all things Featured, so take it to him if there is an issue. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 03:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I suppose all roads lead to Raul654. (BTW, re "uncontested", wasn't your speedy decision on This Charming Man contested and reversed a few days ago...?) This Bulbasaur issue has a surprising capacity for annoying me... --Tsavage 04:01, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Contested as in nobody has said I shouldn't be doing this. The Charming man deal had discussion about the listing which leaned towards it being allowed. The discussion for Balbasaur lead to removal. And that the Bulbasaur situation (an article I have no opinion of, BTW) "has a surprising capacity for annoying me," simply says that you need to back up and chill out. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 04:14, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

... you need to back up and chill out is pretty annoying as well. --Tsavage 04:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jeffrey O. Gustafson - I would have speedily removed the FARC myself as the policy is so clear, but felt unconfortable doing so given my previous involvement with the subject matter.

Tsavage - perhaps you would like to tell us what "recently" means if you don't think less than a day is "recently". The "recently" policy was created precisely to prevent an article and its authors being put under siege with the same objections that were brought up in "recent" FAC (and so, clearly, not thought sufficiently serious to prevent promotion) or a "recent" FARC (and so, clearly, not thought sufficiently serious to require demotion). There is a case for a similar policy in FAC (indeed, I think you will find that continued FAC renomination without a significant effort to meet objections will be voted down on those grounds, even if the blurb does not say so - consider the Terri Schiavo debacle a few months ago). -- ALoan (Talk) 10:58, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

ALoan in full response to your question, IMO, this statement sums up my current "position" with Bulbasaur: Support [no FARC time limit], since there is no mechanism to deal with controvertial promotions this would be prefferable to unsuitable articles being untouchable until they have appeared on the main page.--nixie 03:47, 7 March 2006 (UTC) I use another editor's words to perhaps add a degree of "it's not just me whining about stuff". It is taken from the now "officially" bad idea recent poll on FARC timing.

The larger, intextricable aspect is: Ultimately, Raul is the final arbiter of all things Featured, so take it to him if there is an issue. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson 03:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC), and that FARC results aren't likely to differ from FAC anyway. As it is, FA is a pretty closed system, with one don who apparently can and does make unilateral decisions, a number of which from time to time do not seem to reflect broad agreement among even the relatively small handful of editors involved overall in FAC. Furthermore, the "reasoning", in the rare cases where it is presented by Raul654, does not (again, IMO/IME) illustrate a proper consensus-finding process: decisions are made about the validity of some objections, in a way that seems to go well beyond simple fact-finding, and become instead one editorial judgement trumping another. (For instance, in the case at hand, if a source by source reference analysis is dismissed, one would expect either a counter-analysis or a succinct piece of reasoning that bypasses the substance of the objection, but addresses how dismissal fits into the larger issue of FA and consensus. The Bulbasaur explanation simply says, to summarize: I read the whole article, checked these points and didn't agree.) On that basis, FA is more or less one person's choice of what's an FA. In most cases, but certainly not all, the decisions concur with majority or unanimous opinion by a number of contributing reviewers (most/all "supports" or "objects"). It is the extreme cases, such as Early life of Hugo Chavez and Bulbasaur, where perhaps collaborative WP progress can be made in identifying tricky editorial areas and working on improved examples, precedents and guidelines. But this is only possible when all views are properly measured. This takes facilitation, not extended cage matches (1-2 month noms) followed by summary decisions with little or no explanation. If that's how FA works is intended to work, with essentially an "editor-in-chief" making final judgements based on editorial evaluation of each article, I think that should be explained on the FAC page. I've seen enough people ask...

Finally, please allow me emphasize that I'm not speaking out anger, annoyance, petulance, frustration, or the like, AND my intention is not to disrupt but to hopefully provide a constructive contribution. I at times post long comments in FAC, and I am fairly dedicated to speaking up and following things through, but my initial reviews are always brief and to the point, quite cleary expressed, and accessibly formatted. I simply back them up. Vigorous debate is good, but seems to be seldom tolerated in the world in general, and so viewed as somehow driven by odd personal motives. That's unfortunate. I don't mind being told to "back off" and "move on", threatened with blocking, accused of being an inflexible fanatic, called a "punisher" (that was a good one), pursued on my Talk page... Having rational opinions ignored in FAC does bother me. That's about it... Thanks for the consideration. --Tsavage 17:27, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you - let me be clear too: your statements above are objections to the way the WP:FAC process, and to an extent the WP:FARC process, works; they are not objections to Bulbasaur. m:Polls are evil in any event; at best, they are a way of quickly testing consensus. That is why FAC and FARC are not votes, despite the "Support"/"Keep" and "Object"/"Remove" - it is a way of testing consensus. We need someone to take action when they think there is a consensus, otherwise nothing would get done.

You may be surprised to hear it, but I value your views (and those of the other "hard" FAC reviewers, naming no names) as they are important for setting our aspirations. The fact is that sometimes you are going to lose an argument (how mauny FACs I have supported have failed? how many FARCs have passed despite my "keep" vote? See Talk:Río de la Plata... need I go on?): when you lose the argument, you have to move on. The place that may be worth moving on to in this case is a wider-ranging review of the FAC process - as is entirely apparent, it has its weaknesses. -- ALoan (Talk) 18:24, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I have no problem with your general assessment. And I take no offense at your use of "move on". I'm not planning to make my last stand (whatever that might be about) around Bulbasaur. But my concern is with B, as well as the context of its review, they're not separate things. Anyhow, in practically all of these recent Talk page discussions, no-one has seemed to be on an entirely different page, but taking any sort of action, other than protecting the status quo of the moment and getting testy, seems to happen. Evolution does take time, and I think I'm doing my part in that process by being...assertive when necessary (such as, responding to all of the various comments in this post-B turmoil). Not everyone is inclined to speak up or to have the identical focus, even when the aim is shared. (As a relevant side note, especially after this B decision, I've been reluctant to participate in We Belong Together, which is IMO another article that falls in the unfortunate class of "under-researched, media-styled pop topic". B is quite possibly the worst FA out there, older and newer, because it is, as one reviewer put it, "gussied up" to look like a current FA, with inlines, heavily worked writing styled to sound "objective" and so forth. (Celestianpower can comment below, but it's just an opinion.) So, IF we are now promoting a new level of encyclopedically "bad" amongst the rest, that is something that should have all interested parties concerned.) --Tsavage 19:07, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, I'm glad that you are not offended because I was not intending to offend. I completely disagree with your assessment that B is the worst FA (or even "possibly" the worst) FA out there - look at some of the others that come to FARC! - or indeed that it is "gussied up" to look like a current FA, any more than any other article is polished up to meet out evolving criteria is "gussied up". It is a FA. Period. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:50, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Someone left message on my talk page regarding Request for Comment. I can post this affair on that, but I don't think I am going to do it now. Raul's "busy" guy, I'll wait for a satisfactory answer. Nevertheless, I will re-nominate Bulba for deletion in a few weeks (is that recent enough for you?). Oh Aloan, can you name a couple FA that's worse than Bulbasaur? It is is a FA, but one of the worst FAs. Temporary account 00:52, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

An RfC? Over Bulbasaur being a featured article? Words fail me. I would hardly classify some people forming one view, and a few other people forming another view, and a third person deciding to go with one of those views rather than the other, as an "affair". I am really finding it hard to understand why this matters to you so much.

O Temporary account! (See! I can use the vocative too!) - if you look at the section #Recently slightly above, you will see that the consensus previously has been that roughly two months is about the minimum for "not recent", but you can always try again in two weeks and see what the consensus is then. Worse FAs? Let me see: Fountain pen, Bathing machine, Hip hop music. -- ALoan (Talk) 01:43, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

• Temporary account, Tsavage the problem is that the Bubasaur article was just recently promoted that's the case and will survive any attempts of a FARC because of that. The Bulbasaur article is good, and I think it's as good as my FA History of Miami, Florida comparing that there is not much info about Bulbasaur out there. Thanks --Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:48, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

And if I may, if you promise to re-Farc in a few weeks, it would probably be a really good idea to bring it up here first. Not for approval from the Featured Cabal, but because if the community decides it is still to close to its promotion, then you will have aborted another Balbasaur Farc mid way - and by the time you can fit a legit farc in, people will be sick of it (see the reaction to the later GNAA deletion debates, or the Schiavo mess). If you give it a couple of months, like ALoan so astutely suggested, then it can get a legit, unimpeachable Farc. That is fair to you, your fellow editors, the article, and the featured standard, regardless of the outcome of the eventual re-Farc. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 01:58, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Jesus people, ever thought of, I dunno, editing the article to make it better rather than spending all this time lawyering against it because you don't like it? Saying "I will re-nominate Bulba for deletion in a few weeks" is not helpful, use the few weeks to mean you don't have to ask to 'delete' (de-feature, I presume) it.

Likewise, lawyering over the exact featured article criteria when it comes to references and citations is silly. There is no binding law in the world of wiki - I know it's easier to check something against a ticklist rather than actually read and appraise it, but this page isn't here for people to check one section of an article and then 'vote'. Not all articles are going to be best served by a bunch of weblinks in footnotes, people just need to exercise some common sense...

Certain people should just take a break from the Wikipedia namespace and get back to the important bit - writing articles - for a while. --zippedmartin 09:47, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

The Ku Klux Klan

I just noticed that the Ku Klux Klan article was nominated for removal, but I do not know if it were ever listed on this page. See Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Ku Klux Klan - Dozenist talk 13:48, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Spoo decision

FWIW, I wholly endorse Jeffrey's decision to get Raul to close off the FARC for Spoo. Tony 08:33, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

FWIW, I didn't ask him... --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 10:03, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes... Tony's message had me confused too ;) -- I removed it because I didn't want an open farc on an article while it was on the main page, and since it's for April 1 there was an additional likelihood of confusing people. Raul654 10:32, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

OK Tony 13:12, 27 March 2006 (UTC)

Properly dealing with rising standards

Well it seems there is some tension and I think it is primarily due to the rising (rising standards is good) featured article candidate (FAC) standards mixed with some newer contributors to FARC that haven't participated in most of the FAC and FARC discussions over the last couple years. Being new is not a problem, but making no effort to learn solutions already developed is. There were long and heated arguments about removing FAs that had no references and after many pages of conversation were generated, the agreement was to wait and give some time for previous articles to meet the new higher standards. I was one of those arguing for removing FAs with no references, but I agree the compromise that we came to was very reasonable. In Nov 2004 I identified all the FAs that had no references. It was about 190 out of 400 or so. People did not feel it was reasonable to remove all of those from featured at once and to give them some time to meet the new references standard. In mid 2005 I left a request for references on the talk page of every FA missing them. After some time to implement that it was felt nominating them was reasonable. Now, I am as strong a proponent of the new verifiability policy and featured article criteria requiring inline citations as anyone. But since the FA criteria requiring them with no exceptions has not even been solidified, nominating articles here without detailing on the article's talk page what statements need citation and requesting them is not helpful.

Sorry that was too long, but the summary is to apply the previous compromise to the new situation because it worked. I propose that before articles can be listed at FARC for lack of inline citations (or even considered as a reason to remove) 1) the criteria calling for inline citations needs to be solidified then 2) a detailed request needs to be made on the talk page 3) Some time needs to be allowed to implement them. I think 1 is mandatory, and 2 and 3 are common sense and the minimum for politeness. - Taxman ^Talk 21:21, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with you regarding the necessity for articles to be as clearly references as possible, which indeed does now seem to be the norm with new FAs. However, I think we have to accept that many of the older FAs which though adequately referenced, in as much as they list sources, are going to be FARCd unless some firm policy is determined to deal with them. It is simply not realistic to expect an editor (even if he/she is still here) to, when spotting a demand for inline cites on a page they wrote two years or so ago to drop everything, often return to a library to borrow books just to look up which fact came from which book and page. Sadly, but realistically, that is not going to happen. I've written a few FAs (said modestly) and I find it interesting to look at them now and see how unconsciously I have written them progressively better referenced as tides have turned, but what I think is important to remember is that while, not just with mine (OK, not mine, those I have edited) the earlier ones may not have a little number behind each verb (yes, that will come) is that the facts did indeed come from the books listed in the references. How long, I wonder, before pages without inline cites start to have a template for deletion not just FARC?

When reading any reference book one has to accept a degree of trust towards the authors and of course we are anonymous authors so that trust has to be greater but at the end of the day we are providing a free service, our work is scrutinised for flaws by hundreds of fellow experts, something that never happens to a paid author until after publication when it's too late for it to be retracted. My point is that unless one of the older FAs is found to be full of false and inaccurate information I can see no harm in retaining it. Instead of nominating them for FARC these eagle eyed potential nominators could always rewrite and bring them up to today's criteria which would be beneficial to all. It seems to me that some of the residents of the FARC page are spending too much time discussing the shortcomings of older FAs when they could more usefully be employed writing and editing elsewhere. Giano | talk 22:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

I aggree with Giano. Older FAs that are well referenced should not be removed for only lack of inlines, even if inlines become a necessary part of the mandatory criteria. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 08:35, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm fine with that too. My above comments I guess were meant as a bridge from what is actually going on (lots of votes against articles for not having inlines) and what should be going on. And I certainly agree with Giano's last point. - Taxman ^Talk 12:48, 31 March 2006 (UTC)

Giano's point is good. Tony 10:24, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with pretty much everything Taxman has to say, although I disagreed with him previously on this issue. (I was the prime opponent of the 'let's FARC all the uncited FAs' movement and was a prime advocate of slow-and-steady moderate approach we did end up adopting). I also agree with most of what Giano stated.

With all that said, however, I am not sure I want to commit to saying that, for all time, all the articles we promoted without inline citations should stay FAs. I believe that, for now and the forseeable future, articles that have no shortcomings besides lacking inline citations should remain FAs. Given rising standards, however, I do reserve the right to revisit this issue in the future. Raul654 10:34, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The previous discussion is in the last couple of sections of /archive1, if anyone is interested. After User:Taxman's extremely helpful review, around half of the FAs were thought to be deficient in references. Over time (getting on for 18 months later!) this situation has improved considerably, although there are still some that are inadequate (as the occasional FARC - and nowadays, pretty automatic demotion - shows).

I think there is a consensus that the absence of inline references is not, of itself, sufficient grounds for a FARC; not yet, anyway. Clearly the slippery slope will work as it has in the past, and it will become so in the next year and a half, at which point Giano will have to re-nominate his dozen or so articles for demotion.

Now, who wants to review our nearly 1,000 FAs and report which ones have inadequate inline references? :) -- ALoan (Talk) 11:43, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Talk about bringing back conversations out of the archives! And no, you won't find me going through all 1,000, though checking a statistical sample to get a handle on the issue might not be a bad idea. - Taxman ^Talk 21:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

With the specific issue of inline citations out of the way, we're still left with the issue of a significant number of voters more willing to vote remove than to fix up articles or help produce new featured ones. I'm afraid FARC is becoming more of a net negative process than a net positive one for the community. While I'm not sure there's the will to pull it off, I'm not convinced the process wouldn't be more useful if only those people who have produced a FA could vote to remove them. At least then people would have a better idea of the work it takes to write a FA. If we continue at the current rate we'll soon be removing more articles than we are featuring. Of course there's only about 19 left without any references, so it will slow down a bit when those are gone, but not enough if something doesn't change. - Taxman ^Talk 21:47, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the comment that it is unrealistic to expect an editor to return to an article they wrote over two years ago and be able to now insert references. In most cases, that will not happen. However, just because that is an unrealistic expectation doesn't mean the articles get a pass with regards to FA status. The article is not being deleted--it is merely losing its FA status. All FA articles must meet the current FA standards. If an editor/editors are unable to update an article to achieve this, that is understandable. But that is not a reason to keep a substandard article as a FA.--Alabamaboy 22:37, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm one of the new FAC/FARC participants Taxman was referring to, and I probably have higher standards than most. That said, I generally agree on the "grandfathering" principle favoured by the experienced users here; I do, however, think we shouldn't make the standards for old FACs too low. If FAs are really the best Wikipedia has to offer, they have to be pretty good if we're going to attain acceptance among a wider set of readers. One thing that must most definitely not be done is something like this: users A, B and C wrote a featured article but didn't reference it. Someone complains. User D creates a references section containing X number of books/articles/links. This isn't referencing, it's just unacceptable. By definition, a reference is a sources cited because it was actually used in writing the article. Let's not let our standards drop too low because we "like" having lots of FAs. Mikker ^(...) 23:15, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

• I would support Taxman's idea - let those that create vote. It would be a good way of encouraging others to produce more FAs too. Somehow though I suspect we may not be on to a winner here. Giano | talk 23:21, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

• Don't quite know how this would be enforced (other than adding more bureaucracy, Wikipedia:Request for voting rights at FAC/FARC?, but that issue aside, I wonder whether those who create FAs are necessarily the best judges of FACs and FARCs. In the latter case, there seems to be a possibility that this could result in (tacit and subconscious) slipping of standards... "you let my old FA stand, I'll let yours stand" whilst I can see no reason whatsoever for restricting serious FAC votes – they help the article after all. Mikker ^(...) 23:42, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we are defeaturing quite a lot of articles, and that's something I'm not happy about. I also agree with Taxman's observation that a lot of the people voting to remove don't have an understanding of what's involved having never written one themselves, and I think his suggestion is interesting (Note - I'm not sure if it's a good idea, but it certainly goes to the heart of an ongoing problem). However, now that more-or-less all of the totally unreference articles have been removed (articles not just lacking inline references, but lacking all references) I think we should take a wait-and-see approach. I predicted a while back that we would see a leveling off once we reached this stage; however, if the tread of ever-increasing defeaturings continues, I think we should take action. Raul654 01:25, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

PS - also, I'd like to note that this page, as with the FAC, is *not* a vote; everyone's opinion is *not* equal. The opinions of people like Taxman and Aloan (and the now-department Jeronimo) who have established themselves as good article reviewers are definitely to be given increased consideration. Raul654 01:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree, for the most part. I'm don't think we should be upset about defeaturing articles if they obviously do not meet a substantial portion of the FA criteria, but if FARCers hold old FAs to the standard of current FAs, there might be cause for concern. I don't think Taxman's suggestion is a good one; it sounds too clique-y too me (and how many FA-writers frequent FARC in the first place?). While I agree it goes to the heart of the problem, it sounds like it's throwing the baby out with the bathwater to me. An alternative might be only to allow an FARC to pass if it was seconded by at least one FA-writer (just brainstorming here, don't take this too seriously). If the article is beyond immediate repair, it shouldn't be very difficult to find someone who's helped write FAs before to second the motion. I'm still unconvinced if this is a good idea, but it's at least better than banning people from "voting" on FARCs at all if they haven't helped write an FA. I think the process as it is is fine -- the most it needs is some finetuning. If, as Raul says, the standards keep rising (which I doubt will happen), then yes, we should probably revisit this. But right now, I don't think it's that big a problem. Johnleemk | Talk 06:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Comment This us-vs-them attitude harms Wikipedia. Articulate critics are the most important contributors to article improvement in an open environment like this, otherwise, everything simply defaults to the standards of those who are around the most. Creating an environment that feels hostile to change, with unexplained decisions, unwritten but strongly held conventions, editors with favored opinions and extra sway, and the like is not conducive to healthy editorial debate and process improvement. I don't think some "regulars" realize how many potentially good critics, who could invigorate and move forward the whole process of FA as the standard for the rest of the encyclopedia, are being completely turned off by the relentless defense of everything in sight displayed on these discussion pages. --Tsavage 04:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with almost everything you said. What you are describing is, to wit, a clique. And I agree that turning wikipedia into a high-school environment pervaded by cliques is bad (Thus, I am not keen on Taxman's suggestion, although I do agree with Taxman that there does exist a such a problem). However, (obviously from my above comments) I disagree with the part about treating everyone's opinions equally. That is, for lack of a better phrase, academic socialism. Not everyone is an equally good reviewer. Some people are better at it than others. That's the way life is. We'd be fools not to recognize this. Raul654 04:47, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure there's an us-vs-them attitude right now, and if there is, I think both sides are at fault for being too abrasive and aggressive in arguing with one another. I think the main point Taxman and Giano have been making is that new FARCers need to understand that old FAs are not always held to the same standards as current ones. (I used to think this was obvious, but after someone said that "the article should never have been featured in the first place" -- when its only fault was not having any inline references, and its nomination date being circa September 2004 -- I no longer think this may be clear to everyone.) Johnleemk | Talk 06:15, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry you see an us vs them. There is a problem and I think we need to work on a solution together—that's why I brought it up. Note how carefully I worded my comments "I'm not convinced the process wouldn't be more useful if...". I didn't say that was the way it needed to be, but there is a problem with FARC reviewers that are making no efforts to improve articles. As I've said, there's nothing wrong with new reviewers, we need new ones, but we need them to gain an understanding of the process and what it takes to build FA's. If they did, we'd have more fixing and less de-featuring. - Taxman ^Talk 13:12, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Raul, the idea that the opinions of some WPians will be automatically favoured over those of others raises a host of difficult issues—I hope that you're not serious. Among these issues are what exactly makes a "good reviewer", as you put it, and the role of subjective opinion as opposed to verifiable technical matters in reviews of both FACs and FARCs. If you're harbouring these notions—of giving the opinions of some contributors "increased consideration"—they should be made explicit in the process. Can we have a list of those whom you favour? PS Why did you change Tsavage's "sight" to "site"? Tony 06:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• Oh come on Tony, there's no need to be so confrontational. People have different talent levels for everything. Some people are better athletes, writers, editors, etc. Just as Raul said, "That's the way life is. We'd be fools not to recognize this." That doesn't mean it needs to be officially codified and delineated to be useful. Oh and I put it back to "sight".- Taxman ^Talk 13:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• What I think is not clear to those who persistently nominate FARCs is that they are quite capable of attempting to fix a page up themselves, before launching it on to the FARC page with a list of (often ill conceived) criticisms. I'm beginning to wonder if some of them are on commission. I would like to see editors having to make a large amount (or set amount - say 1000) of edits before being permitted to vote and nominate. That theory could be taken to include most other votes on the site too. That would not be a clique but one rule for all. Giano | talk 06:27, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• My apologies for coming to this discussion late. There are a number of questions about standards:

• have the current standards for acceptance as an FA been articulated with sufficient certainty to be operationalised for judging quality?
• if so, are are they reasonable?

• if the standards are known to all editors and to those who vote in this forum, this process is equivalent to the certification of roadworthiness that older vehicles have to undergo to be allowed on the roads, i.e. the vehicle either meets the current emissions standard or it fails.

• is there a steady state?

• If this process is eliminating FAs for failing to match current standards, is there an equivalent number of new articles achieving FA status? If there are few new FAs, this may suggest that the standards are too high or the general quality of articles being written is of an inherently low standard (the latter being what I observe as current reality).
• As only a casual observer here, I see a self-selecting group who have an interest in maintaining standards. If the rules being applied to judge FA status are sufficiently clear, it would seem irrelevant how many edits a voter has made. A judge newly appointed to a court applies the existing law. But if this process is actually experiential and opinion-based, then track record would seem to be more important. But then, would that not make this process rather arbitrary because the process is mere opinion rather than the application of clear rules? David91 10:31, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• The standards are outlined at WP:WIAFA, IIRC, but generally we tend to be more lax in applying them to old FAs, especially WRT the newer requirements. I don't think they're unreasonable, since nobody (AFAIK) has ever claimed that. The people here who are upset about the large number of defeaturings appear (at least to me) to be more concerned about unreasonable FARC nominators. I think the FA criteria are mostly steady; the problem is that every time in a blue moon that we add another criterion, hundreds of FAs suddenly become unworthy overnight if we apply the FA criteria. IIRC a study conducted not too long ago indicates that our net number of FAs is increasing. And as for your last point, the problem is not about policy (although a recent FARC *cough* had a number of people who misunderstood the FA criteria, such as the one pertaining to comprehensiveness) -- it's about interpreting it. As in real life, if the law were so clear, we wouldn't need judges. For now, Raul and Jeffrey Gustafson appear to be the supreme arbiters of any disputes on FAC and FARC respectively; Raul officially holds the title of Featured Article Director (last time I checked). Johnleemk | Talk 13:39, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

So, in a way, you are agreeing with me. There are standards, but they need interpretation and, in any event, the current group tends to be more lax in applying them. If people were more aware of the real standards as applied in FARC, they might not make so many references that are "unreasonable". Further, you are confirming that there is no real problem because the number of FAs is actually increasing, so weeding out is enhancing quality overall which is a desirable outcome. David91 16:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree entirely with David91's summary, and the central questions he sets out. A major problem, as I've attempted to address below, is an unwillingness to write anything down. LOTS of specific decisions are made, good and bad, all the time in the execution of FA/FARC, but it's all "off the books", by side discussion. Decisions are made but not explained, conventions are followed but not set out except in a protracted talk page denouement of whatever contentious event last occurred. What's wrong with a steady, ongoing criteria improvement drive. With, it seems, all of WP looking to FA as the ultimate quality assurance process, this sort of loose and unwritten direction can't be good. And, another important question, underlying manner other issues, which I've been meaning to start a section on, is "What is the current ROLE of FA"? If we are all not exactly sure of the intended purpose, how can anything else be clear? --Tsavage 17:20, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

• I suppose the answer is rather than to have a FA template on a page, is to have a template proclaiming {This article met all FA requirements on 32nd January 200?}. This I would imagine be less offensive to many editors, than being told their pages were no longer any good, which in effect an FARC means. Also the FARC page could then be abandoned, allowing the editors who inhabit it the time and opportunity to do some proper editing. If all FAs carried this template, then the official FA list could be emptied and restarted each time the criteria changes. Of course the list would probably become top heavy with pop songs, computer games etc. - but hey!... if they meet the criteria - what the hell? Giano | talk 17:28, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

A case for incremental improvement to the criteria

Over and over, reasonable, well-articulated opinions and suggestions are presented on this and the other related FA talk pages, discussed, such counter-argument and digression introduced that "consensus" would seem unlikely, and so fade away into the archives. There seems to be a reluctance to make small improvements. Instead, there is often a "sky is falling" attitude, that any change will result in dire impact on the "FA process". All that is speculation. The fact is, the WIAFA is not a clearly defined set of guidelines, it is a mix of broad principle and specific rules of varying resolution, and overall is largely open to poor interpretation and basic confusion. The necessity of moving towards a proper set of true guidelines — practical, clearly worded direction that realize the current principles — seems obvious.

The case for incremental improvements in FAC and FARC criteria is simple. In practice, it means that small changes to the written criteria should be done routinely. Many such changes have been suggested, discussed, refined, and then...archived. Implementing these, and modifying them as quickly if and when problems are in fact identified, will not create chaos. Regular and experienced participating editors will have followed the natural evolution and not be surprised. New participants will not be confused, because the current wording is all that they will see.

The alternative is what we have now, waiting for things to build up to a crisis point of some sort, and then reacting in a sweeping way. Evolution by gentle increments is much more productive and cumulative in effect. For a simple FARC example, in the Recently discussion, above and heading for the archives, David91 ended the discussion with the suggestion: "Do not list articles that have recently been promoted UNLESS you can demonstrate that there are substantial problems affecting the overall quality of the article's content that were not raised during the FA process." The argument against the utter vagueness of "recently" was unresolved, the related poll deemed "unnecessary", and a fallback to "it's still two months as it has been" remains the entirely unwritten rule, and so we go. What disaster would have occurred with that well-discussed MINOR wording change? What advantages have been left untested? And so it goes... See Proposed change to WIAFA criteria for Gnetworker's "secondary source" proposal, and so forth.

Small, well-discussed changes aren't a bunch of slippery slopes. At this point, the criteria are so open to interpretation as it is, it is hard to make a "mistake". If we fail to keep moving and adjusting, we're only creating a rut that is increasingly hard to escape... ACT ON SUGGESTIONS. BE PROACTIVE. DON'T EXPECT THE WORST. IMHO. --Tsavage 16:36, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps the criteria, etc, are deliberately vague and open to interpretation, because (i) that is the only way to get consensus as to what they should actually say, although a body of interpretation has built up as to what they usually mean (note "usually" - exceptions are made in exceptional cases), and (ii) the important thing is the consensus, not what the words say: the words are only an expression of consenus; we do not ossify consensus by writing down every aspect of it in minute detail. They are generally-accepted guidelines, not legislation, and it is a bit annoying when they are cited as such.

In the specific cases that you mention, we don't need to spell out what "recently" means: we judge it on a case by case basis; and there is little consensus on the addition of an explicit reference to secondary sources: the criteria ask for adequate references, and adequacy is again judged on a case by case basis. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:43, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Respectfully, Aloan, you are arguing for deliberate vagueness and ambiguity as a desirable editorial environment, and your view, as expressed, is exactly what I see as somewhat of a problem. Ossification is not what I was writing about, clarity is the thing. You've interpreted "gentle increments" and "small, well-discussed changes" to mean "every aspect ... in minute detail" and "legislation". That is perhaps your slippery slope, or abyss, or whatever, but that is not what I was referring to.

Have you ever tried assigning a story to a writer you don't know by offering vague guidelines, "Y'know, just go there and cover it thoroughly and give me a thousand words." It just doesn't work.

And in this case, the criteria already do exist in writing, and they are not so "vague" (as in, the "desirable vague", I guess, as opposed to the simply...unclear) that they lend themselves to productive interpretation. People read the criteria, get from them what they can, and the stream of FAC and FARC nominations continues. Consistently adjusting the wording to increase editors' understanding going in cannot be but a positive step. There is enough discussion power and editor scrutiny around here to ensure precise wording each time. Need I say, if "we" can be bold and promote Bulbasaur, we surely can be bold enough to improve some wording and make things clearer... --Tsavage 23:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Does anyone ever check that the required warning has been posted on nominated articles' talk pages ahead of nomination, as required? Tony 00:45, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

If FAs are intended to be the flagship articles, the writing and content that Wiki currently holds out as the best it can offer, I find it slightly odd that the criteria should be left deliberately vague. Whether there is a consensus or not, the commissioning editor always know what is required and writes down clear instructions on all aspects of style. Further, wherever possible, the commissioning editor explains the reasons for style choices so that all may understand what is currently considered best practice even though they may not agree. This is highly desirable because such a style manual gives everyone a yardstick against which to measure their own and others' performance and, perhaps more importantly, it encourages a trickle down of best practice. This discussion is a deja vu from my encounters with several other small independent groups who aspire to setting style standards. I do not consider this collective creative obscurity to be constructive at any level within Wiki. A naive reader coming to Wiki for the first time and starting to browse the FAs, should find consistency of style. If there is a random adoption of different styles, it may confirm the reader's existing prejudice that Wiki is slightly anarchic and lacks academic credibility. I think that there is something seriously wrong if a team of willing editors cannot work their way through several hundred FAs and achieve a desirable level of consistency. All that is required is a proper manual of style as the touchstone and off we go. David91 01:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

But WP:WIAFA is not a style guide - it is just a list of attributes that we expect featured articles to have. We have oodles of guidance on style and content, from WP:MOS to WP:V and WP:CITE to WP:NPOV, all of which are referred to in WP:WIAFA. To put it another way, I think WP:WIAFA already does a good enough job of setting out the criteria we think are important for featured articles; which is not to say that it is perfect, of course, nor has it remained static: feel free to propose additions or amendments.

The fact is that we don't have a "commissioning editor", we have a community consensus instead, and that inevitably leads to a degree of creative anarchy and inconsistency. The failure of Nupedia shows what happens if you impose too rigid a structure of review; and the success of Wikipedia shows what happens if you just ask writers to get on and write. If the issue is style, there is nothing to stop you or anyone else editing any articles - just go ahead, be bold and do it. - -- ALoan (Talk) 11:48, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

It is so sad there there are these oodles with people queuing up to become senior controller in charge of commas, instead of a single rational style manual for the whole shooting match. Given this mess, one more would be neither here nor there, except that, if we were to adopt say Chicago Manual of Style. 15th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003 as an American example, we could become the uber-style leaders. If we could agree which comprehensive manual to adopt, I suppose I could be persuaded to stop writing original material and become an editor of the FAs. But I can make this offer knowing that it is unlikely that a consensus would emerge for anything so obvious. So I shall get back off my hobby horse. I have had my ten cents worth here and I will leave it to all you young ones to argue endlessly over turf. David91 13:27, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

"Young ones"? That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me all day :) But seriously, the antidote to all of this endless argument is to go and write some articles! That is what most of us want to be doing anyway. -- 16:50, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

And another discussion heads into the archives... I can't believe how "we" are completely wasting FA energy. This is not all of WP, it is an area dealing with a tiny subset of articles, where editors are willing to work by better articulated rules, yet no-one wants to provide them, for fear of what, that they are somehow scared away... Clarity is equated with rigidity, and from there to Nupedia and collapse... Don't forget, the "magic" of WP is not found in vagueness (and it is not a mystery), this is simply a giant blog that now has guaranteed traffic for whatever you feel like writing as long as it loosely fits into the "sum of all knowledge". The progress to any sort of encylopedic standards is not going to come from a Blogspot environment, it can only be made through establishing consistency, and that can only come by having clear guidelines, and FA seems to be the one place where that experiment, creating practical, usable editorial guidelines, can progress in a way that has a chance of invigorating the rest of the project. I've looked at Stable versions, proposals on Village Pump, WP 1.0, 2.0, whatever, and they all point to FA as the gold standard. And what do we have here, "deliberately vague" rules, quite wildly inconsistent article quality, one person making final decisions, and talk page arguments that mainly focus on 1) holding the lines, maintaining the status quo, 2) defending existing FAs, 3) getting FAs on the front page. The general WP editorial guidelines are OK in principle, but not too effective in application. Notability on businesses, for example: a popular big-city dry cleaner has a better chance of passing a notability test than any manner of interesting, worthy "small businesses" — we're featuring high schools, and trying to delete companies because they're not notable based on "only grossing US$6 million a year", they're not Fortune 500. It will take forever to sort out the general guides by current methods, but here in FA, where there are willing and able editors, with a little push, Practical guidelines that actually help all editors finish articles to a basic decent fairly uniform quality could be developed in a fraction of that time. But it seems, vagueness is good, vagueness is the consensus. Problem is, all of that is simply not realistic for the stated goal: to build an encyclopedia. IMHO. Time to archive yet? --Tsavage 17:58, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems I must add an eleventh cent. It is good to care but equally one must remain realistic. For so long as Wiki allows itself to be divided into petty fiefdoms, the "leaders" will seek to preserve their own local domain's integrity. To counteract this in the "flagship" project, it would seem better to ignore the existing Wiki sets of rules and, by adopting an outside general style manual, signal a desire to be more conventional. If editors wish to work towards having their work accepted or retained as an FA, they will therefore know by what standards they will be judged as to style. Content is obviously more difficult without peer reviewing, but that is a different battle.

I have never before been associated with a project which does not seem to care about appearance. In virtually every aspect of life, people are "sold" products and services by the "look" of the thing. Whether it is a meal at a restaurant, the design of a new car or a new piece of architecture, people are seduced by the eye. But Wiki denies this reality by refusing to standardise in the very set of articles that it goes out of its way to promote. In a way, a lack of uniform standards adds a certain local charm to the mass of articles. The eccentric and eclectic touches jostle the eye and enrich the experience. I sympathise with the view that losing this rough and ready "feel" would be sad, quite apart from the fact that a more rigid set of style rules would deter the majority of new contributors. But when a relatively tiny subset of the mass is actively promoted as the best Wiki can offer, I feel that credibility is judged as much by the look as by the content. When outside sceptics come to test the waters, what might be an endearing anarchy in the mass becomes a liability in the supposed best. We are actually giving the sceptics a rod with which to beat us because they can point to form and not substance as the main defect. Why should "they" take "us" seriously when we cannot even agree on which citation system to use as default. But we have had our say here and, if among this self-selecting group who aspire to being the arbiters of what constitutes the best, we cannot prevail, then we cannot prevail. There is no value in railing at the majority who do not want to hear. Perhaps later when new blood emerges. . . David91 05:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what's the problem. We do have uniform standards for articles related to comprehensiveness, etc. We don't impose a uniform house style because it's impractical and a waste of time (for now). Furthermore, doing so would engender disrespect for policy (refer to the broken window theory; if we can't enforce the small rules, pretty soon people will think they can get away with breaking big rules -- and on a generally self-regulating project like Wikipedia, they probably will unless we avoid making policies we can't enforce). Even if it were practical to hunt down every inconsistency with whatever standard we have set, the fact remains that it would be an immense waste of our time. External links like [1] are not recommended by policy, but look how far we've gotten in implementing it. Any effort to phase them out (and this being just one small style problem) would consume lots of effort that could be spent reverting vandalism or editing. Our image is hardly affected by this -- this appears to be a presumption, since I've never heard anyone say "Oh, my, look at Wikipedia! They don't conform to the MLA/APA/whatever standards!", but I have heard people complain about poor writing or vandalism. Wikipedia is still a work in progress. Let's get the big picture right and worry about the minor details later. Johnleemk | Talk 06:51, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem is that the FA guidelines are sufficiently specific to indicate to editors that there are criteria to meet, sufficiently vague that what those guidelines actually mean is open to wide interpretation, and the "culture" here seems to be one of resisting incremental improvements to said vague guidelines. It's not an issue of selecting a style guide and dropping it on WP, it is a problem with resistance to change in FA, which is the area where practical guidelines are in development (regardless of whether or not the process is seen that way, that is what's going on). Johnleemk, it would seem preferable to you to have vague guidelines, and then, say, decide to be bold and simply move FAC nominations that you personally see as unfit to another process like Peer Review, than to steadily work on the guidelines so that it becomes increasingly, effectively clearer to all what FA (and therefore, the WP ideal) is about.

It's as if every article given a star magically validates the process (and the articles themselves), when in fact quite atrocious articles are getting stars regularly. Let's forget the too easy Bulbasaur and spend a moment with, say, Katie Holmes where her relationship with Tom Cruise comprises HALF of the lead, or revisit central processing unit, where the novel concept of PREREQUISITE reading is introduced, with a handy little box letting readers know that computer architecture and digital circuits should be studied first before proceeding to the final two-thirds of the article. What has happened to common sense? When the fundamental task of identifying overall article quality is lost in debate over the meaning and application of vague guidelines on an excruciating, article-by-article basis, and attempts to improve that situation are resisted with arguments like "deliberately vague" and "let's get the big picture right and worry about the minor details later", there is a "big picture" problem. IMHO. --Tsavage 04:20, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Um, my take on the "Prerequisites" box about half way through central processing unit is not that a reader needs to read computer architecture and digital circuit first before tackling the remainder of the article, but that you don't get a CPU without a computer architecture and digital circuits; I agree, though, that the box could make its meaning clearer. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:19, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that's at least a good interpretation as mine. Except, why is the Prerequisite box positioned at the top of the third section, " Design and implementation"? And are those two topics, computer architecture and digital circuits the only critical precursors to design and implementation of a central processing unit? And then, should we include Prerequisites elsewhere, like, tomato, Prerequisite: plant breeding, farming and soil? FAs, or any general encyclopedia articles, shouldn't need interpreters... FAC should at least be able to filter out obvious things like that (yes, I could just go and remove it myself, re-edit any other articles I have a problem with myself, but how much can one person do...?) Better guidelines would put the focus of more eyeballs verifying the same minimum criteria. --Tsavage 17:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I'll jump in randomly to note that devoting half of Katie Holmes to her relationship with Tom Cruise seems fairly reasonable to me. Which perhaps illustrates the reality that problems you view as utterly obvious are perhaps not so. In any case, I think the point has been made, but I'll make it again. Your objections are unlikely to be resolved because they are primarily objections to the fundamental operating procedure of Wikipedia: generating ad hoc consensus, guided by a sparse set of fundamental principles, in response to salient problems and issues. Christopher Parham (talk) 06:48, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Again, this discussion, which is still about steady, incremental improvements to the clarity and therefore usability of FAC guidelines, travels down the familiar path to vagueness, by increasingly long leaps, and by digression.

"Sparse set of fundamental principles" completely mischaracterizes and misrepresents the reality as it relates to FA/FAC/FARC. FA criteria alone — WP:WIAFA— comprise 11 specific points, and contain 14 links to relevant policies and guidelines, which further link to other policies, guidelines, proposals and essays. These are implicitly and explicitly argued regularly in reviews. What then does a practical reference to "5. It is of appropriate length, staying tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail" mean? In Katie Holmes, is half of the lead devoted to a relationship with Tom Cruise "unnecessary detail"? Who's to say? A vote of the 10 or 20 people on hand, an ad hoc consensus? Does that lead to any sort of consistency, even for that very article, let alone further the process for all articles? Try instead:

Wikipedia is not a newspaper, newsweekly or yearbook. As a rule of thumb, subjects and events which have short-term prominence that is likely to diminish dramatically over a period of months, should be assigned a length appropriate to their longer-term importance.

Now, having that as a guideline gives us something to tweak, rewrite, fine-tune, and so forth. Katie Holmes, and all FAC objections and debates, can improve future articles by contributing to the related guidelines. What better way to develop working practices than from the actual, front-line cases? The exact wording of my quick example is NOT important. It does express a WP principle in concrete terms, that most editors won't fail to understand, has all the flexibility anyone could possibly want, and can be reworded many ways while preserving the same practical sense. Having only Katie Holmes archived FAC review to consider does absolutely nothing to further anything, and entirely wastes the energy of this small sub-discussion.

Furthermore, a set of concise guidelines will not evolve into a tangle of rules if actively maintained and this can be done in the active, well-attended FAC environment. There are only so many patterns that make or break the existing criteria, and separate instances for every specific situation are not required. This reality can only be seen by some (or many, or perhaps most) through demonstration, but the fact is, well-honed PRACTICAL rules do not spontaneously multiply. How do successful projects work, by insititutional vagueness, or by simple, practical, experience-based guidelines?

As an experiment, rather than objecting to that example guideline refinement, try tweaking it rather than arguing about it... You'll see what I mean. --Tsavage 15:56, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't mean to say that I oppose expanding or revising our existing guidelines to better reflect consensus. I don't believe, however, that this is likely to have much practical effect on what gets passed at FAC. The group of people who contribute to any given article are basically free to interpret those guidelines in whatever way they desire, or even to ignore them entirely. Very often this is merely the "10 or 20 people on hand," or even less. You ask:

In Katie Holmes, is half of the lead devoted to a relationship with Tom Cruise "unnecessary detail"? Who's to say? A vote of the 10 or 20 people on hand, an ad hoc consensus?

The answer is very much YES. That is a perfect description of Wikipedia's basic framework and the way Wikipedia applies the principle of consensus. So if we changed the guideline as you propose, the commentators at FAC would remain free to interpret that guidelines in whatever way they choose. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:47, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that you're over-simplyfing the issue. First, we seem to agree that WP's "consensus" (or "ad hoc consensus") is a very specific implementation of a concept — what is "consensus"? — that is vague and hard to pin down to begin with. Small, fairly random groups, majority voting, single "arbiters" deciding that "consensus" has been reached, and such decisions standing unless other small, fairly random groups objects is hardly a grand implementation of consensus. At least, I don't see how it even represents "what the community thinks", it's more like, "what a tiny, vocal part of the community has done in the name of the rest". My point: if a problem can be identified, and it's not likely to magically solve itself, it must be addressed or it will persist. In this case, unhelpful, overly vague guidelines in a specific area like FA is such a problem. (Is it made clear to editors what "comprehensiveness" might entail? "Indiscriminate collection of facts"? "Inline citations where appropriate"? And so forth? We come up with ad hoc examples for individual articles, but somehow dare not adjust the criteria they're based on.)

Next, these "little votes" do try to conform to policies and rules and guidelines. Obviously. Policies and rules and guidelines are cited all the time. And attempts are made to refine and improve and add to them...all the time. However, this does not seem to be leading to better practical guides easily applied to, say, FAs, only to the standard "vagueness" increasingly spread to specific areas. (We have a WP:Notability essay, leading to seven guidelines (Books, Companies, etc), and nine active proposals and additional essays, and then a "Subject-specific notability criteria" category for good measure. That's just for "notability". If the expectation is that committed editors in a flagship area like FA will misinterpret two- and three-sentence guidelines that are regularly, gently refined, how is it expected that editors in FA or at large in WP will follow dozens, hundreds of guides and esaays and so forth? Eventually, this course may lead to more usable guidelines overall, but that is more likely to take years than days, weeks or months. Meanwhile, bad practices, poor articles, and overall article volume will continue to grow and become embedded by the very process at work in this thread: a kind of throwing up of hands and soldiering on attitude. Guideline improvement is as real and pressing an issue as article improvement, in fact, they are complementary parts of the same thing in encyclopedia building. One doesn't exist without the other, so the only question is that of QUALITY: guideline quality, article quality.

Third, pointing out that "that's the way WP works" without doing something about it on a personal level is not in the interests of WP. In a WP environment, each editor must apply personal judgement and then provide input, but this is not enough. In FAC/FARC, inputting on individual articles does not improve the encyclopedia, it only informs that article. Properly, efficiently, that input should be directed to the guidelines governing that and all other articles. Fighting things out piecemeal on a per article level is largely misspent energy and self-defeating, if those conclusions aren't applied in a scalable way.

Finally, a good test of any system or process is to judge the results. Sticking with the hard example of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, what is gained from promoting this is patently absurd coverage? Surely, a newly starred FA should serve as some sort of practical example for best practices in articles, as a model for other articles? Buth then, what about Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt? What about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie? What about Jennifer Lopez and... We have a lot of work to do on every actor article to get the balance of information right. Because the precedent or "rule" or example established by such unbalanced, unencyclopedic weighting of relative importance applies to at least other actor romances of equal or greater star power. Are we to argue over every such article, on every such specific type of detail? The productive approach would seem to be work on a guideline that addresses, across ALL subjects, the fundamental principle of "necessary detail". Incremental, practical, usable guideline improvement IS article improvement.

If we lose site of common sense and well-proven real-world practices (like improving instructions to improve output), things will get worse, not better... (Avoiding a rapid in-breeding program is also a good thing.) --Tsavage 14:44, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

• Why don't you all just get your heads together, and write the perfect FA as an example "pour les autres"? Would you like me to suggest some possible titles? Giano | talk 20:01, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're getting at, it's not clear. Speaking for myself, I AM working on the "perfect FA example", right here. It won't come from a magical universal article, it can come from perfected (FA) guidelines... --Tsavage 17:02, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect filmography orders

these articles all have their filmographies the wrong way round (should be oldest-to-newest not the other way round). clearly the result of a lazy copy-paste from imdb: Uma Thurman Julia Stiles Lindsay Lohan Katie Holmes Karen Dotrice KaDee Strickland

as this goes against all guidelines and policies relating to filmogs on wikipedia, can i list them for FARC, to prevent them being used as "reference articles" for all upcoming actor articles? i already put a notice on each of their talk pages to fix it, but dont expect anybody to actually take any notice and make the change. Zzzzz 11:54, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Um, certainly not. Listing them on FARC for something so easily fixed is clearly not helpful. If there is consensus that that is the way it should be, just go fix them, but make sure the consensus is clear and link to it. - Taxman ^Talk 12:41, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

if i was willing to fix them myself i wouldnt have put a notice here or on their talk pages. basically i'm too lazy to be bold. is anyone else willing to make the changes? see Wikipedia:Manual of Style (lists of works) or Wikipedia:Filmographies. Zzzzz 13:00, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Just leave a message requesting the filmography fix on the talk. This isn't a major violation of the FA critieria, if it's a violation of them at all. At best, it's a minor but easily fixed pet peeve. Any old fan can just fix the articles up as necessary, but they won't find out unless they happen to be watching the FARC talk. Leave a message on the article talk instead. Johnleemk | Talk 06:44, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Nominating without suggesting improvements

User:Taxman added the following note in version 15:02, 15 April 2006:

"Listings that haven't given detailed suggestions for improvement on the article's talk page and left enough time for them to be addressed will be removed."

And calling such listings "improper".
It seems to me that what's improper is to somehow confuse the ability of observation of problems with that of finding solutions for them. Which is the difference between the patient and his doctor; the first observes the problem, the later solves it.
It is already an important contribution to claim that an article is unworthy of its featured status, as long as the reasons, objectively, are being given. The contributor aught not be asked to provide the solutions (suggestions for improvement) for the article's problems or else shut his mouth up! since what the contributor seeks is to acknowledge and consider the impropriety of the article's featured status and not that of its very being! The distinction between questioning the article's featured status and questioning its quality must be acknowledged in here: A bad article cannot be featured. A good one maynot be featured as well, if the later is still below the standards of featuring. And so we must give it a little thought before scaring the volunteer contributor and show him and her, a certain police face that doesn't originally exist at all, in Wikipedia!
The conclusion is: contributors may freely list articles in here, without having to find solutions or "suggest an improvement" for their problematic aspects. Of course if they can and want to do so, it would be most appreciated. Afterall, a volunteer needn't really "be bold", not only because he's got nothing to loose, but also because he will not offer his time where there is some police to oppress him!
Thank you, -- Maysara 00:44, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Has it struck you that the Featured articles are written, with infinitely more effort than a listing here requires, by volunteers also? It's rather a bigger worry if they are made to stop offering their time because of poorly motivated policemanly listings on FARC, such as we have seen quite a few recently. I have reverted your reversion of Taxman's useful html note. Please note that he wasn't making up the rule by his addition, merely pointing to the fact that such a rule already exists. Please refer to the instructions on WP:FARC and you'll see it. Thank you. Bishonen | talk 01:09, 16 April 2006 (UTC).

Hello there, Bishonen

(1) I can't see how listing a good feature article here could upset the contributors to that article, I can't see how you yourself reached to that conclusion, since, one could possibly contribute both to the article itself and its talk-page, and at the same time nominate it for removal here as well, and he or she might find support for that (which usually is the case if you see the talk-pages of the nominated articles - that is, there is always a REASON for nomination, and let alone the bad-faithed ones for a while). On the other hand, let's just assume as you did, that the contributors of that mentioned article are so childish as to be upset if they found an objective and genuine reasons for the article's nomination in here - I wonder, is this really a sufficeint reason to prohibit its nomination? Well, I don't think so, because: if the nomination is an objective one, it will lead to debate about its featured status and whether it is worthy of it or not. The results are based on that debate and the debate is based on the nomination; That the childish might don't appreciate debate about what they have been "infinitely" or finitely contributing to, is simply, beside the point. Debate is debate, and in the end, it is free debate between the contributors that determines the consequences, and not the personal conception of anyone about how things should go. This was what I meant by "police". If the nomination fails, then, this also is the result of debate. But that an article may not be nominated because it might be upsetting for the article's contributors, seems to me as a "police" sort of behaviour. Of course my discourse is confined to the genuine and objective nominations; since one needn't speak at all of an evidently bad-faithed nomination.

(2) That the contributors to the article itself are also volunteers doesn't make any difference for all the reasons mentioned above. Most everyone here is by definition a volunteer. I stressed upon the condition of voluntary time-offering only in opposition to Taxman's prohibitive note which I considered improper not only because of its logic but also because I thought it comes in contrariness to the spirit and nature of this project (that is, Wikipedia), and that it is entirely based on such voluntary time-offering and not on being childish and unappreciative of constructive and objective debate.

(3) Providing no "suggestions for improvement" is not particularly associated with "poorly motivated listings on FARC". That is, a listing may certainly be not poorly motivated but at the same time provides no more than the reasons of nominating which are supposed to be themselves the motivations of nomination.

(4) Thanks to you I now realise that the note added by Taxman is in fact the first step of the nomination procedure. But I can't see how this makes me erroneous in conclusion and not just in acknowledging the original and right source of the note added by Taxman. We do not yet deal with Wikipedia's project-pages as of any sort of dogmatic and stiff scripture. Thus, my second error is that I haven't edited the original and right source as well - an error that is itself based on the first unacknowledegment of mine. But now, thank you for telling me.

(5) It should be noted that my arguments are quite irrelevant to potentialities and possibilities that are outside logic and definite knowledge, for such varieties, I presume, are beyond any truthful, sure, and fruitful knowledge of any possible epistemology of a Wiki of such size and teleology: My concern is that the first step of the nomination procedure applies an unnecessarily prohibitive and restrictive controller (hence the "police") that can't be possibly "useful" as you claim. The reason of which, as I tried to demonstrate in my earlier post, is that it restricts the legitimacy of nomination to those who are capable and willing to "give detailed suggestions for improvement", and prohibit those who are capable and willing only of observing an objective deficiency in featured status' standards or criteria, from demonstrating their objectives and reasons within a legitimate nomination. The problematicity of this, and only according to the nature of my argumentation, is that the effectiveness and consequences of the concerned prohibitive first step of the procedure, are indeed lacking in practicality and discernment, quite contrary to what You, Bishonen, believe protective, improving, and enhancing conditions of preservation as regards the very procedure and activity of the FARC: This is due to the fact that the restrictive and prohibitive controller is no guarantee of any of your hopes and considerations. Yet, it (the controller) continues to be harmful as it naturally and according to its very purpose, reduces the possibility of nominations that are still, potentially useful in the manner I described earlier (that is, nominations without suggestions). It is such variety of potentialities and possibilities that I described as outside logic and definite knowledge, and that fruitful knowledge is quite unattainable with them.

Thus, the prohibitive controller seems to be irrelevant to its purpose, since it guarantees non of its success or application, while at the same time, from another, more broad point of view, runs contrarily to Your general hopes of improvement, by being restrictive and prohibitive of another activity that is yet equally preserving, improving, and enhancing (nominating without suggestion - It should be conceivable that a listing of a nomination without suggestions may itself lead to the emergence of such suggestions through debate and external interest coming from watching the FARC-page, for example, apart from the article itself).

Moreover, the very introduction of the controller, even if its fruit was certain, remains problematic as it comes in an evidently unjust contrariness to the nature and spirit of Wikis in general: essentially, to protect and preserve FARC by such a controller, is not different from restricting editing in Wikipedia, in the most general and broad sense, to those whose knowledge of what they're writing is being somehow verified! because this will lead to more accurate or peer-reviewed information. Or to prohibit debate in the talk-pages without "giving suggestions for a different content and information", since thus, the talker provides no remedy to the problem, just as in here! And actually, in the most realistic sense, a similar behaviour would lead to just undo Wikipedia since Vandalism is not only a possibility threatening a potential improvement, but is in fact an actual reality that is potential of destroying the thing itself that is Wikipeida. We just never do such things because the their harmfulness immediately becomes clear before our eyes as we just try to imagine them.

It is particularly this sort of attitudes that brings-about the police face, which, regardless of how much finite or infinite volunteers will be upset, leave, or keep coming farther, cannot be based on any natural tendency of an imagined Wikipedia administration. It is founded on absolutely nothing and whereever it is found, there will must necessarily exists a corresponding error, such as that found here in our debate. The vitality of such issues as we're discussing now, for Wikipedia, is that they pertain to the practice of contributing and not merely to the truth or accuracy about some information in some article here or there, thus, they are most closely related to that which You yourself and Taxman seek in here, the welfare and continual improvement of Wikipedia, because they correspondingly pertain to the means and conditions throughwhich Wikipedia will constantly evolve and unfold, and not just where it is right now, in merely this moment of its growth and nourishment.

It is therefore advised, if I may advise You, Bishonen, and the other readers, to avoid restriction and resolve to encouragement: There is no need to prohibit the people so unnecessarily while we could just encourage them to act in accordance, because, what is it really, in Wikipedia, that they are supposed to accord with? It is merely some current consensus that itself may be and can be "reverted" in a blink of an eye. And this possibility should not scare us; it is something that we want and look for. We are talking about something, we must realise, that is quite so big in that we are supposed not to grasp so entirely and finally or even to think it graspable in such a way. Our personal conceptions about every single thing in that so big a thing are nothing but a tiny strip in an overwhelming flow. The force and correctness of our contributions don't even lie in their being preserved at all future times, but rather, they manifest themselves by that our contributions may be merely for the sake of a further contribution by another. It is in that sense that the quality of the organism of Wikipeida, so to speak, is more essential than that of its current productivity.

Thus, nominators may be encouraged to "give suggestions for improvement" instead of being compelled to do so or otherwise refrain from listing their nominations. (a similar case may be found in a recent Wikipedia proposal, here).

(6) In consequence, I suggest refraising the first step of the procedure into a note that is no more within the context of the procedure but that still perhaps appears on top of it as a note of encouragement, as follows:

"If possible, it is preferred to give detailed suggestions for improvement on the article's talk page and leave enough time for them to be addressed before resolving to the following procedure:"

Most appreciatively, Maysara 01:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm hard pressed to think of a case where it would not be "possible" to comply with this very reasonable request. I wouldn't call those who can't or won't post on the talkpage in advance "childish", though; I don't believe in attacking fellow editors. Did you see Taxman's original edit summary? 50% of those listing articles here don't post on the article's talkpage in advance at all. Bishonen | talk 02:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC).

(1) Childish, is an analogy that I have used in confinement to the description of those who would find it upsetting to find an article that they have contributed to, listed on FARC in an objective and reasonable nomination. This analogy, I consider, is fairly realistic, and if it should be an attack against anyone, it should be considered so as against the children; either childish children, or children who yet manifest a greater level of intellectual intensity, openness, and hardness of spirit, than most grownups.

(2) As I obviously unsuccessfully attempted to demonstrate earlier; there shall be no necessary correlation between discussing and debating the featured status of an article in its talk-page, and in nominating it here. Again: a nominator might find not the slightest support in the article's corresponding talk-page, but still he or she may find such support, along with "suggestions for improvement", herein. I have already also attempted to demonstrate the problematicity of resolving to restriction, unnecessary as this is, rather than encouragement. I shall speak no further on the issue, perhaps apart from prevailing the ontological characteristics and foundations of Wikipedia and Wikis in general, so as to demonstrate how contrary and discordant they are, to all unnecessary restriction; a labourious pursuit which fruit I hope to bear in a near time.

(3) If you look up the matter now, more calmly and attentively, you'll find that Taxman's 50% assessment, pertains only to Taxman's conception of FARC and its procedural and functional properties, and not to those conceptions which I attempted to suggest later on, and in a consequent disagreement to Taxman's conceptions, as they prevailed, so far, in the force, legitimacy, and preservation of the already consensus. Taxman's 50% assessment ceases to be 50% when the percentage is being calculated differently. Thus, you cannot reach for my suggestion without having to depart from the already established consensus, precisely, about the first step of the FARC procedure. The problematic point is: I say it aught not be necessary, such as restrictive and prohibitive, and may be encouraged, thus, cease to be procedural. Current Consensus says, it should continue to be procedural and consequently, necessarily restrictive and prohibitive. I have already given the reasons why I believe current consensus should change, or, I'd say, elevate. --Maysara 23:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

If I could weigh in here briefly,

Maysara, I'm not nearly smart enough to even parse half of your very impressive obviously college educated sentences which go on for so very long in their proudly voluminous paragraphs, but I think perhaps the central point of the problem is this:

Many featured articles were basically written by one or at most two people, and it's simply polite to try to communicate to those authors on the article talk page before hoisting the article up for public flagellation at FARC. Having the politeness codified as part of the rules is sensible; enforcing that rule is sensible. Nominating for FARC is by its nature a negative act, comparable to filing a user conduct RfC in some ways, and it is not unusual for the Wikipedia processes to erect certain bars to the initiation of such acts. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 03:16, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I entirely agree with Bunchofgrapes on the issue of flagging well ahead of time that a nomination is likely, and the reasons for it. Tony 06:14, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

As do I. Raul654 06:28, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

It seems that You, Bunchofgrapes, have given more attention to the aesthetics and assessment of my discourse (such as associating it with "impressiveness" and "college education!), rather than the rational of my suggestions, their truth and fruitfulness; the cause of which is perhaps my little eloquence, which itself has cost me to endure a frequent misunderstanding by others, and inability of mine to convince them, somehow, though, eloquence, simplicity, clearness, and truthfulness, are bound together, each to the rest.

(1) "Politeness", "Flagellation", "codification of politeness", "enforcing the later", and "Sensibility therein"! NON of which is supposed to be relevant to a healthy human society.

(2) Nominating for FARC is "by its nature", that is, for its purpose, a 'positive' act: It directly aims at preserving the standards and criteria of the featured status, and not just to, again, so childishly, DISTROY the featured status of this or that article (which came to be known as bad-faithed nomination). Nothing is negative, however, in doing that which is potential of being useful. The only negative thing in here, is to feature, and continue to feature, an article that perhaps should not be featured, that should be improved, before attaining such status. This is negative. And it is a positive condition, when a featured article becomes no more so through debate and consensus. The quality of any given article does not matter as much as the standards of what is a featured article in Wikipedia. Hence, the procedure throughwhich these considerations are being decided and determined, is even of greater importance and vitality than these considerations themselves. If you think listing an article here is equal to "flagellate" it, then, I think, you consequently just do not assume good faith.

(3) I can't see what impoliteness there is in the fact that nominations are being undertaken by one, two or few nominators, and how it becomes polite when undertaken by "many", and what would be the definition of "many", in here. Moreover, I can't see how this is possible; since a "many", some "many", can well manage to transform the article itself through forming a "block of consensus" as frequently found sometimes, and as THIS consensus withwhich I am currently confronted, here, is forming. Because it happens that such impolite nomination can receive an overwhelming number of, removes, when listed here. The nominator who achieves this, is certainly not impolite. Again: advise or encourage the people; do not compell them, through your personal conceptions of what is polite and what isn't. Because you're obviously confusing polity with piety! - Be BOLD (in this way)!

(4) You simply reproduce the rational of the status quo by making use of the expression, "sensible"; as if my arguments were not sensible as well, or at best, less sensible! However, that you already preach the sensibility of your argument, is an indication of its poverty and neediness. I am only suggesting to take that which is so uniquely sensible to you, outside the procedure, because it renders that procedure, quite unjust and unintelligent, yet, it continues, and will always continue, to be sensible, as most everything can be so. That the status quo is sensible does not by any degree negate any of my arguments, or contribute anything to the debate - and I am doing my best not to be eloquent!

(5) If I shall be erroneous, then, at least, my error is one that I can intercept and consequently repair. If really turning the first step of the procedure into a note of encouragement would result in unfortunate consequences, I would then know and fix it. But if you are erroneous, right now, your error is of the kind that cannot appear or manifest itself. We simply do not know, and cannot know, whether someone wanted to list an objective, reasonable, and useful nomination, one that YOU yourself would have responded to with a "remove", but he didn't because he couldn't think of or didn't have the time to write "suggestions for improvement". It is only the type of thinking as that of mine manifested here now, in our debate, that can foresee such errors and their consequences. I too want the improvement of Wikipedia. And I am only concerned with how much of this improvement can be applied intentionally and in what way, by "enforced codifications and rules", sensible or insensible, or by encouragement. Moreover, my rejection and refusal to the current situation is not based on its immediate result so as to the condition of FARC. My objections are so in principle as my argument should have shown. Unnecessary restrictions should always be opposed. The case here is a perfect example of why and how unnecessary restrictions can be harmful. In that sense, even if your application scores, mine fails, I would still believe it unnecessary restriction. For, I am not concerned with Wikipedia right now, at this moment of its development. I am concerned with its constant and functional, mechanismic properties and their philosophy. If an intentional intervention for improvement will harm those mechanisms, functions, procedures, operations, and everything related to the practice of wiki-editing, management, and government, even if it was currently successful, I will still hold it responsible for a potential hidden harm that will most certainly hinder the progress and evolution of the Wiki from a "wider and longer" perspective. These vital functional and procedural properties safe and secure, I will have no problem even if the corresponding quality and status of wikipedia are not to my personal liking or satisfaction. The being of the wiki is more important than how the wiki is doing right now. And I am only afraid that, also through consensus, Wikipedia might become open to "anyone", but as long as they comply to the "rules, codifications, and enforcements", which then will be also called, "politeness and sensibility", of this or that police, in the future! --Maysara 23:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Maysara, if your problem is with the wording "suggestions for improvement", that can be changed. I concede that people don't need to solve the problems of the articles, but they do need to be specific about what the problems are and give time for them to be addressed. That's the real thrust of what I added. But the difference between detailing an article's deficiencies and listing suggestions for improvement is rather minor. It is you who have taken the leap to saying it is requiring the lister to actually do the fixing. It does not say that. And as far as the justification for adding the guideline and making it clearer, there has been substantial consensus about the need for prior notice on talk pages for a long time, just no one had put it in the guidelines. I decided to do it because it was getting ignored so much. - Taxman ^Talk 15:46, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Taxman! Heeere You Are! :-)

Well, I took no leaps my friend: The "difference between detailing an article's deficiencies and listing suggestions for improvement is" NOT "rather minor." I don't know what can I say further; there will be only the description of what neurological activity is being required here and there, and how different they are, not only in quantity but also in quality, within the brain, in order for me to convince you. And if the difference is rather minor, does this mean that "detailing an article's deficiencies" and "leaving enough time for them to be addressed" in its talk-page, is not significantly different from adding "suggestions for improvement"(?) If so, I wonder, why, then, the procedure is written in such an unclear way, initially? What I'm assured of, is that there were no leaps on my part.

Take a featured article on, umm, say "neurology" for example. Can't just a reader who knows nothing about the issue find it not sufficiently referenced, for example. How is he supposed to suggest actual references? And how redundant it is if you ask him to post into the talk-page, and to give "some time" for the consideration of the problem. When I nominate an article on FARC, it means that I'm seeking a reconsideration of the already decision of featuring it, not to do anything with the article itself. For some reason, this point is unclear to so many of you. It is therefore no wonder that the nominator is always one or a couple of persons; there is no reason for them, to accept the featured status and wait until they get a potential support. They challenge those who already took the decision of featuring it, not those who edited and continue to edit and watch the article itself and its talk-page:

"1. The article is featured NOW. 2. It ought not be. 3. Because of the objective this and reasonable that. 4.remove its featured status (the nomination, along with the possibility of its listing, without finding a police to stop it) 5. And then let's talk again if it is to be improved." -that's how they would naturally think, and I can't see how this is being considered erroneous and is actually prohibited!

It is only if the future nominator was so magnanimous and humble, or perhaps unsure or ambivalent, that he will open the door to the possibility that someone in the article's talk-page might convince him that the article is not unworthy of its featured status and consequently post there first and wait I don't know for how long. But, still, back to the Neurology example, say, a GREAT AND HORRIBLE scientist of Neurology, who will find more than just the references problem, like, UNBELIEVABLE mistakes! Is she really prohibited from questioning and challenging its featured status without talkin first (here we will believe that she is really a great knowledgeable person in the field, between ourselves!). And, as GREAT scientist as she is, busy and all, she has found time to write the justification of her nomination, and some other details that helps non at all in "improving" the article itself, of course, nor did she had time to make "suggestions" for such and improving; is she still prohibited from listing that doomed article that was somehow so ironically selected for today's feature article?! No no no, THAT, is one hill of leap that I wouldn't have my legs involved in! :-) But if she's allowed, as she naturally WAS before the "enforcement" of such "rule and codification of politeness and sensibility", another GREAT and, now, HORRIFIED scientist of neurology, male in this instance, for variation! and who was not as much busy as the earlier, and who was also interested in Wikipedia and the welfare of Wikipedia, and was watching the FARC page just as you are, all people in here. What do you think will happen, then, Taxman? NO, it is not impossible that he didn't know about the existence of such article, or didn't have interest in it before. So, what will happen? A "suggestion for improvement" will burst out? or an actual improvement that now brings the article at least closer to its featured status, instead of having it featured in its UNBELIEVABLE wretchedness, and with it, the consequent wretchedness of what WIKIPEDIA considers to be a standards of featuring? This, I call a good leap! (accordingly, your deletion of the two listings is simply an error, a police-like leap!)

However, my objection is on the presence of unnecessary restriction and prohibition any way, not on its actual utility, although the later is also quite very problematic as I tried to demonstrate.

have a great time, transforming that great project! Maysara 23:38, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

As painstakingly laid out, Meeso/Maysara's point is IMO absolutely "right". I understand the general intent of this...incremental development of the FARC criteria/instructions, and it may be of some use in cases where changes can be made quite easily, in a few minutes, perhaps. However, where more work than that is required — which seems to be the case in the majority of nomination claims — this addition simply adds a restriction that undermines the FARC process itself. This is not a sex change procedure, where perhaps some extra last minute reflection can't hurt, this is a quality control process that now says to the would-be nominator: "FIRST, go away for a while and give it some more thought." An editor in good faith invests time and effort in reviewing the FA criteria, evaluating the article, and preparing to follow the FARC nom instructions, and is told to GO AWAY for a while?!? That is what it amounts to... In perhaps screening out a few ill-conceived FARC noms, this will also quite likely deter some people from using the process, which means, it is a barrier to participation in a specific editorial quality review mechanism, and that cannot be good. And a confusing one, because this "need to protect FAs", which may not even be noticed by some of the more devoted, is entirely inexplicable (and, of course, unexplained) to...others. Of course, this is all speculation. Let's see what happens... --Tsavage 04:41, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Maysara, you are again making the leap from providing suggestions for improvement to something else. Saying an article is not properly referenced and needs some higher quality references is a suggestion for improvement. Thinking that person needs to provide the said references (or even know what they would be) is something else entirely, and does not need to be part of providing suggestions. In any case the point is moot since the wording has been standardized on detailing an article's deficiencies. And your obfuscated writing style does far more to detract from what you are trying to get across than could be gained from it. And Tsavage, where you're missing the point is that anyone that invests that time to create a nom can just as well place that on the article's talk page before nominating here. They are not being told to go away, they are being told to put their comments in a better place. Nothing is lost and a more welcoming atmosphere to allow possible greater improvements is created. So no loss, potential gain is better overall. If the deficiencies are legitimate and not acted upon, then the FARC nomination will proceed more smoothly in fact. This is not about protecting FA's, it's about improving them. The goal of the FA processes is to produce very high quality articles. Detailing a FA's deficiencies, suggestions for improvement, and discussion about them so they can be addressed is part of that. - Taxman ^Talk 18:45, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

I think most FAs have at least one unofficial maintainer -- I know I watch music of Maryland, for example, and currently have some plans to make changes to it. I'll get around to it in the near future, but if someone puts it on FARC because Maryland history during the Civil War is glossed over, that will put me on the defensive (perhaps someone will argue that I shouldn't feel that way, which is true and also irrelevant, and anyone that has made a FA and says they wouldn't feel defensive is lying), which would be to the detriment of the article, FARC and all users involved. A simple note on the talk page that Civil War history seems undercovered would be met with a polite claim that improvements are forthcoming, and is there anything else you'd like to see while I'm at it? And if I were to not respond, or not solve the issues raised, then FARC can go ahead just fine and I have no reason to complain. Tuf-Kat 23:26, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

The ones that end up being demoted are the ones where the unofficial guardian has left or is no longer interested, and no-one else takes up that role. This page is such a focus of negative energy. I have been meaning to polish glass a bit - it is really not so bad - but... -- ALoan (Talk) 00:07, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

template advising of impending nomination?

Does anyone disagree that such a template would raise the awareness of would-be nominators of the proper process before nomination, and reinforce that actionable reasons should be included in the notice? Articles to which the template has been added might then be auto-listed at the top of the FARC page, with the date of listing. This might help the FARC process to become more orderly and productive.

I don't know how to construct a template, but the following text might be included:

Impending nomination as a Featured Article Removal Candidate (FARC)

Notice is hereby given that this article may be nominated as a FARC after [insert date two weeks hence] because, in the opinion of the Wikipedian who has posted this template, it fails to meet the following FA criteria:

[Insert criterion numbers]

Contributors to this article are asked to consider making the following improvements to bring the article up to current FA standards, thus avoiding nomination:

[Insert suggested improvements]

Contributors may wish to consult Wikipedia:What_is_a_featured_article? and the related project pages and links to access further information about the standards expected of FAs. The FARC process is described at Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates.

Tony 06:35, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a bad idea. I do think that potential FARC nominators should drop the primarily author(s) a note ahead of time to give them the opportunity to fix any problems. I'm not sure it should be a requireement, and if it were, I am very much against using boilerplate text to do it. Raul654 06:53, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

You could have been more polite in your rejection of the idea, and you might have supported your assertions with reasons. Tony 07:57, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the addition of a new requirement (in my capacity as FA director) because I prefer to keep the whole FA process free of you-must-do-this requirements as possible. Dropping the primary author a note ahead of time is a courtesy; it shouldn't be a requirement. Furthermore, I am opposed to the boilerplate text (on a personal level) because it seems impersonal and uncourteous. Raul654 08:06, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Also, apologies if you took my comments as impolite - they were not meant to be. Raul654 08:07, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I see what you mean about the impersonal thing; however, the FARC page intro is quite explicit about the need to give notice, and it's hard to see how the wording can be ... sweet. In that case, perhaps the guidelines at the top of the FARC page might be more helpful, without being prescriptive. I suspect that some nominators might welcome suggestions as to what information they need to provide on a talk page, if they're inclined to give notice.

Or do I misunderstand? Is the general intention that a request be made on a talk page to fix certain things in an article, without explicitly mentioning that FARC is around the corner? Either way, there seems to be more grief created by sudden nominations that would be the case if explicit notice were given. Tony 08:47, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of the intention, I think that having specific criteria numbers would be nearly useless, since many of the criteria are (purposely) quite vague. Having someone put down that they feel the article no longer satisfies criterion 1, for example, would meet the letter of this requirement, but would be of little help in actually determining what needs to be improved. Kirill Lokshin 15:15, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I have to object to a template at least for listing the reasons because it would be much more valuable to have specific written out reasons for why the article doesn't meet the criteria. And it's more polite I think. Having a way of tracking pending listings may have some value in coordinating work on articles, but maybe that should be a function of WP:FAR, or at least coordinate there. - Taxman ^Talk 15:40, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

This is a very good idea. It gives the primary authors, and those willing do-gooders who monitor this proposed category, to have a less panicked time to address concerns, rather than abruptly nominating an article. The requirement of this template plus the specified time limit (x weeks/months) will allow for speedy removal of nominations made in haste. FARC is not FAC. FAC come from proponents willing to work on the article. FARC come from casual observers making quick judgments with no intention on following up with the article. I can understand why this sort of instruction should be avoided in FAC, but FARC is another story - what is a one-month, broad-based (ie. primary author(s) plus those willing to monitor the associated category and help avoid nominations) warning going to cost? --maclean25 08:13, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

No template, please. Let's try to interact like human beings. Henry^Flower 14:19, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd appreciate it if you didn't imply that my suggestion is tantamount to some kind of inhuman interaction. Say that you don't agree, by all means, but don't be rude to me, please. My proposal was well intentioned, and I don't expect off-hand remarks like that. Tony 15:25, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Agreed, but lets just see how this goes for now with comments left on the talk page. Your idea was clearly well intentioned, just not the best solution yet I think. - Taxman ^Talk 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Of the current nominations on FARC, how many of the nominators contacted the main contributors of the article or posted a summary of the article's short-comings on talk page before making a nomination? Would not a template allow that human communication to occur through the warning (that can be seen by the general community). The current system assumes that nominators are familiar with this process and actually interact to improve the article. However, reality is that casual readers see a mistake or something they don't like and FARC-it (some stick around to elaborate, some don't). --maclean25 15:39, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Almost all of the current listings have. It's relativley new that we're enforcing the guideline, but a lot of us feel the process will be more valuable if the guideline is followed. It will take some time to work. If somone notices a problem with a FA, they don't need to fix it even if that would be nice. What we are saying is they need to be polite and let the article's authors and contributors know specifically what is wrong with the article so it can be fixed. - Taxman ^Talk 19:36, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

Backlog

There is a bit of a backlog. I've been super busy lately, but I'll definitely be able to get to it within the next thirty hours or so unless someone else does it. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 19:21, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Blue Whale

This is a featured article that has had some issues listed on its talk page that may threaten its featured status. If you can help please see Talk:Blue Whale#FARC Proposed. --maclean25 06:57, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

• As a follow-up, the issues were resolved and the proponent withdrew the nomination. --maclean25 06:11, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Taxman's extreme intervention and behaviour!

User:Taxman has been systematically and rigidly removing the listings of other contributors on FARC; a behaviour that is based on no reasonable justification and can no more be accepted. On an apparently blinded and oppressive reliance on what the administrator calls "guidelines" and guidelines-following, Taxman has shown an intense and extreme behaviour towards other contributors who also care for Wikipedia and want its development and provide their free time for it. This is entirely unacceptable and Taxman is not the only one who cares for Wikipedia in here. There can be no reasonable justification for such an extremely protective behaviour by anyone against another contributor. Taxman continues to slap those contributors on the face as they find their listings removed under his/her protective, unfriendly, and exclusive orientation and attitude. Very much worthy of mention is his/her last ridiculous removal of a recent listing by User:Tobyk777 who was quite ultimately just and righteous in again listing a previous nomination, and whose care and interest in the quality of Wikipedia's FA has been met with our admin's total dismissal, it seems, as if by some law!
I'm afraid that such behaviour marks the beginnings of what I called earlier, a potential Wikipedia police: a class of users, perhaps from among the admins, systematically forming "blocks of consensus" about such functional and administrative polices and guidelines. I must encourage YOU, whomever reading this, and particularly other admins, to acknowledge this particular case and meet it with appropriate and sufficeint treatment if possible. That Taxman is already an administrator is something that I must admit quite problematic; it is THE free encyclopedia and consequently everyone contributing to it must simply acknowledge that restriction aught be avoided, and resolved to only in necessary circumstances. And I think administrators above all other users should particularly acknowledge this, and also, moreover, to promote the awareness of this. I here should also link to the "Ignore all rules" Wikipedia page, since, it seems, it's about time to consider the loses we might get, Wikipedia will get, if rules are being carried out in such rigidity and pointlessness (apart from just carrying rules out in such rigidity). If one wants to be so extremely protective, one aught not be given children to care for; Wikipedia is a child who will never gets sufficiently mature as to care for itself. Parents, therefore, equally free and open, will always be needed, and more parents thereafter.
Thank you, --Maysara 15:49, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This matter has been discussed at great length, starting around last April (when we were debating if and how to add a reference requirement) and proceeding intermittendly for a year now. In short - we are seeing a lot of FARC nominations wherein the nominator is given no time to address criticisms prior to it being nominated, especially in regards to the citation requirement, which was retroactively imposed. This is not acceptable.

While I'm not keen on adding requirements to the process, nominators should have the curtousy prior to nominating to leave a note on the talk page and/or contact the article's primary author, to give him a chance to fix any problems. People are simply not doing this, and so I see nothing wrong with Taxman cracking down on nominations that don't. Raul654 15:54, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm about to violate my Wikibreak status, but what the heck. I agree with Raul654 and support the new requirements for FARC. This was discussed extensively here for over a year. And while the "Ignore all rules" is a nice thought, that is not a Wikipedia guideline or policy. Some rules are needed and Taxman is merely enforcing a needed rule. Anyway, raise the issue on the article's talk page. If it is not addressed, bring it back here.--Alabamaboy 16:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

For the record, I'm not keen on adding hard requirements either. But as has been explained twice now to Maysara, there has existed quite a strong consensus over quite a long time that editors should leave specific messages about an article's problems on it's talk page before nominating at FARC. That guideline has been ignored so soundly in the face of the consensus that it is a good idea that I felt it was worth enforcing. In fact since this was just explained to you Maysara, making another long purposefully convoluted and aggressive post here is not terribly helpful. I agree with the spirit of what the rest of the editors here are saying, and ecourage Maysara to move on to improving articles instead of complaining about processes. - Taxman ^Talk 21:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, I am also one of the wikipolice (presumably I am also the opposite of "just and righteous" - fortunately, I don't need to pass through the eye of any needles today). We have discussed this a lot, but let's go around the block one more time:

• It takes a lot of effort to get an article through FAC (try it some time), and none at all to nominate an article at FARC.
• The nominator at FARC is under no obligation to try to improve a nominated article, unlike a nominator at FAC.
• It is unfair to expect articles that became featured two years ago to comply in all respects with current standards without at least indicating in advance where they are thought to fall down and giving some time for them to be improved to meet the new standard.
• Listing an article at FARC is not an attempt to "improve" Wikipedia (the encyclopedia as a whole gets no better or worse when an article becomes or ceases to be a featured article - the best you can say is that weeding out the weakest featured articles improves the average quality of the other featured articles). Nominating an article at FARC it is really an attempt to demonstrate a consensus that an article (on which someone, at some time, spent a decent amount of time and effort to meet the featured article criteria as they then stood) no longer meets the criteria as they now stand. Wikipedia would be "improved" much more if nominators actually edited the articles to make them better, or at least indicated their areas of concern to other editors so they could be resolved.
• Ignore all rules - which I see is going through an anorexic period - is not a licence to do as you please. Try reverting four times, or putting your own favourite article as a featured article without going through FARC first, and see how far IAR gets you. IAR simply means that writing the encyclopedia is more important than worrying about the minutiae of due process.
• What is so difficult about posting a note on the relevant talk page a few weeks before a FARC nomination? What disaster is going to be averted by de-featuring the article now, today, rather than waiting a few weeks?

I think my real concern is the lack of time that FARC leaves to improve an article to avoid de-featuring. Pass-by voters often simply say "remove per nom" and often don't come back. There are many instances of a struggling featured article being brought back up to standard, but it does take time (for instance, I wanted to help glass recently, as there is the core of a decent article there, but have not not had enough time recently). Would it help to have a formal pre-FARC period before a FARC-proper? We could add a separate section to the FARC page, and a {{preFARC}} template to the talk a page, and require potential nominations have to sit there for at least, say, 4 weeks before they become an actual FARC... -- ALoan (Talk) 17:16, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

I think two weeks is sufficient for fixing an article that is fixable. As for drive-by voters, if an objection is made, and it is clearly fixed, then those objections simply are no longer valid (thats how I've approached it, at least). If an article is not referenced, a hundred people vote to remove, the author pops up provides definitive references yet no-one bothers to come back, then the article will not be de-featured. --Jeffrey O. Gustafson - Shazaam! - <*> 17:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

The specific time needed to fix up an article would vary depending on the concerns levied and the difficulty of fixing them. Sourcing material on obscure topics could well take a while to allocate some time to go to a research library to get the needed materials. If an editor is actively working on implementing fixes to issues brought up on the talk page, significantly more time, if not an indefinite amount, should be extended. If no effort or response whatsoever is forthcoming, less time is reasonable, to a minimum of a couple weeks seems fine, at least allowing some time for people to see the request that don't edit every day. Though a follow up message to give people another chance to see the concerns would be a minimum of courtesy. Not doing that amounts to just doing the minimum necessary and violating the spirit of what we're trying to do. Jeffrey, for the record, I also find the method you've outlined for making a decision based on a FARC discussion to be well thought out and very reasonable. - Taxman ^Talk 21:06, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

While I would like to see the minimum of requirements added, I do see some value in having a place where potential future nominations would be listed to facilitate some work on those articles. I'd have to say I wouldn't agree to a requirement for that since it is extra work, and the current guideline I'm enforcing is not. It is just asking the same comments to go to the article's talk page first instead of an instant FARC nomination. - Taxman ^Talk 21:11, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

This is the most impertinent piece of rubbish I have yet to see on Wikipedia. (IMO) Taxman (with the possible exception of Raul) has doe more to improve standards of FAs than any other person. That someone whose name is still a red-link feels able to come here and level such charges in the name of improving the site beggars belief. This whole FARC business is distasteful to many Wikipedia editors in the first place. Taxman has identified for your benefit those pages which have a need to be here, concentrate on those. If you are intelligent enough to spot a flaw then, first attempt to fix it yourself, if that is beyond you, then contact a principal editor of the page concerned. If (after a very long time) s/he then chooses not to indulge your whim, then, and only then, may you bring a page here. Now be off with you, learn some manners and wikipedia good sense at the same time. If you want to earn some respect here - then try writing an FA instead of attempting to gain it by rubbishing other people's hard work. Giano | talk 18:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

*points both Maysara and Giano to WP:CIVIL* Johnleemk | Talk 18:38, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Ah Johnleemk, I wondered when you you were going to come creeping out of the woodwork Giano | talk 20:08, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Giano, please contribute to the debate peacefully and in a civilized manner. That my name is still in red-link is simply irrelevant (especially to my intelligence as you undermine it), second it is no indication of my contributions so far. It could hurt me when you speak like that. And it also makes Wikipedia looks like an unfriendly and intense place for others, when they are supposed to be encouraged to express themselves freely. If you disagree with me so much to such an extent as to so openly dehumanize me, perhaps you still shouldn't have published your thoughts and feelings in such a way here.

If you are kindly convinced and will remove your post (or the parts you think should be removed), also please remove that reply with it.

Thank you, -- Maysara 22:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

• Certainly not, because simply you do not seem to have a clue what you are talking about. Giano | talk 06:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Giano, come on. He's not helping anything, but your responses aren't above reproach either. I appreciate your backing of me, but it doesn't have to extend to disparaging anyone else, even if you're right. - Taxman ^Talk 12:41, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• This horrible FARC page is becoming all together far too stupid for words. Why intelligent people need to be down here, justifying laudable pages, and exchanging words with idiots is beyond me. I shall take myself off to do goodly works elsewhere on the site, and frequent this dank dungeon no more. However, being me, before I go I shall leave some parting shots! Wikipedia is not a dating agency to meet exiting new friends - as Maysara seems to think - if one wants that then go to MSN or whatever it is the kids of today do. We are here, as presumably intelligent people, to seriously write an encyclopedia, and if ALoan and Taxman want some free advise (they probably don't) leave this basement of mediocre thought and re-join the rest of us up above and edit something worthwhile. This whole business of FARC- ing pages for imagined reasons is nauseating, and will ultimately (and rightly so) put worthy editors off the place far more than people like me not suffering fools - (fools are dispensable - sad but true!). So I bid you farewell FARC page, and shall not come back downstairs or even acknowledge this page's existence until there are some serious rules about the calibre of the editor admitted down here; and if those rules are not forthcoming soon - then that will be Wikipedia's funeral in the world of academia, because intelligent people tend to shy away from fools and idiots - again sad but true! I shan't bother to comment on the "essay" below Giano | talk 18:00, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• Giano, just cool down a little. Neither one of us should be a horrible beast - take it easy; it was just a very usual disagreement that could happen and does happen even between people who love each other. I can't see why are you so upset and angry like that! It is no war, no body is gonna get hurt (although sometimes "some wards" might hurt!) I am not asking you to do anything, I'm not asking you to change or anything. I'm just asking you to contribute peacefully and constructively because this is the natural purpose of contributing. I might believe that you're "unintelligent" as well but I can't see how this is relevant to our occupation here in Wikipedia, and thus I'd never bring it up in here even if my belief in the quality of your intelligence is of the utmost certitude! No one can dismiss other people because he or she thinks them unintelligent or whatever else; in fact, this is what's meant by the "free" encyclopedia, that "anyone" can edit. If you don't understand this then I think you should. User:Taxman -and he/she is an administrator- should pay attention to this as well, since, in his/her attempt to cool things down, he/she described me as someone who is "not helping anything". These dismissive expressions and attitudes aught not be resolved to as long as the debate is being appropriately progressing in a civilised manner. People will always assume things about the person of each other, good or bad, but these are irrelevant to their activities and general, commonsensical rules of social behaviour and intercourse, especially through the internet, and in a project of such breadth and cultural diversity. I make my point about something, you respond by making yours, that's it. Who I am and who you are, of what quality our "intelligence" differ, is simply irrelevant and aught never be brought in here and interrupt other people and the course of their positive and constructive debates and contributions. So please, just try to calm down and reconsider these issues over, if you truly care for Wikipeida as you say. Because you and I have already released a considerable amount of text so far, that initially has nothing to do with actively contributing to Wikipedia itself, and that surely might have been upsetting, and capable of being so, to many other naturally peacefull users, in the future, as far as this project may live. What is more threatening so as to bringabout Wikipedia's "funeral", is not WHO is contributing to it, but, rather, HOW they do contribute.

However, no harm done, because no harm can be really done! I personally am generally quite happy and contented at all times with Wikipedia; I can only hope that I might be wrong and that everything on FARC is perfectly alright; that would be good for Wikipedia, and not at all a sign of an inherent unintelligence of mine. It's already a great thing that "anyone" can be able to contribute and access such a historically significant project and experiment as I like to call it. This makes me happy at all times; no disagreement can upset my relation with Wikipedia or with myself. Because first, without such disagreement there may be no progress as well; and second, because any disagreement would not possibly result in the deconstruction of the idea and the being of Wikipedia itself. I will then always be happy with Wikipedia. It might be a little unfortunate that somepeople are unable to understand and appreciate these facts, and thus make no use of such a great opportunity to prove to the world, to ourselves, and to our oppressors, that free humanbeings can do it! I can't really explain that thoroughly in here. But I am optimistic and I believe that Wikipedia will always be fine, regardless of me and what I personally think or want of it; the idea is that you and me, such individuals, in Wikipedia, are nothing, and everything, at the same time!  :-)

The following are some links I think might be very helpful and useful: Criticism is Feedback, Forgive & Forget, Principle of Constant Respect, Wikipedia:Etiquette, Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers.

See you later in our further, sure to come debates on FARC! Maysara 20:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• My dear May-Sara, after reading your latest offering let me assure you I am completely calm, in fact I am comatose. Believe me - truly - "our further, sure to come debates" will not occur. This page is definitely off my watch list from now. Giano | talk 20:38, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

(1) I initially can't see what's the problem in having the FARC page FULL of listings although this has never been the case before(?) It should be noted that the process of listing is already quite complicated on the technical level. It might not be so to you and me but generally it's more complicated than just submitting a new page for example. We must be able to imagine the undertaking of all steps of listing when done by a good-faithed simple nominator such as User:Tobyk777 I'm sure, starting from his/her interest in FA status and standards; this quality of interest in the thing that I assure you quite very valuable and significant, if not so manifestly currently, but surely increasingly so in the future. The user who is actually undertaking these steps is not joking or fond of wasting his or her time in such a way; he/she is doing it because he/she is doing a constructive action that the human intellect values the most, and that consequently gives play to the mind in a relatively profound way, as it contributes to transform a certain reality or to render some changes therewith. Taxman's intervention is oppressive and aggressive because it dismisses these humanly attempts by other contributors and users in a way that must correspondingly lead to a consequent frustration and disappointment; for the action that was once started in good faith and for good reason, for the good, did not reach an end or after doing so, was repelled and dismissed, thus, bearing no fruit at all. The argument that was mentioned earlier by some, about how it could be frustrating and upsetting for editors to find their articles listed here, its justification, is based on the very same reason.

In view of this, it may be just possible to care not so much about the creation of moral and social rules for FARC procedure (and let alone bad faith for a while!), and deal with problems only when they occur (as we quite successfully do with vandalism), instead of avoiding potential problems by building a thousand barrier against the conceptions and tastes of the many contributors, yes, in their individual approaches, such approaches that only make Wikipedia more beautiful and more intelligent! The effort required for listing a nomination is one that wants to be acknowledged, that is to say, an effort whose achievement wants to be tackled and tested, regardless of the consequent result. Its success is in promoting itself, in inspiring debate, not to win it particularly; that what an objective nomination is.

(2) I am convinced that it is the common dualistic relation between freedom and oppression, that is responsible for such behaviour as that of Taxman here. Unlike the simple user whose knowledge and interest in the administration and government of this project is so little, the user who became an administrator or who's about to become so, has delved deep into the properties and the decision-making processes of his or her administrative occupations: they now know how simple and on what requirements the creation of whatever in Wikipedia is founded. In that, thus, they possess more freedom than anyone below them. The definition of below here, in Wikipedia, is simply those who possess less knowledge about administrative, functional, operational, and procedural information. The administrators or they who are in "their level", now possess more freedom: they impose templates, they even create them first out of nothingness, they warn, they remind the people with the laws; this or that consensus of nowadays, they revert, etc. This is not said to demonstrate anything of any negative character about administrators or what they do, for, they do these things in good faith and for good reasons as well. They also repel the intruders and block the most earnest of the vandals! But this is said to demonstrate that in some cases, when one has reached a certain level and quality of contributing, and when one begins to attribute himself to the project as do nationalists to their countries: this space given them, this freedom we all know in Wikipedia, inspires in them a natural inclination of a certain inward movement (these should be henceforth called "Wikipedianists", I don't think the term has been used before? please not to be confused with Wikipedians! the Wikipedian is only a citizen. The Wikipedianist is like a nationalist citizen!). They become protective. They become convinced that the multitude, those who possess no sense of duty towards the project, and who only so whimsilly make an edit here another there (including those who pay the effort of listing in FARC! and of course, obviously, those who has their names still in red-colored link!), are so naturally prone to error and to "not follow the guidelines" since they have not the original and most genuine interest in the wellbeing of the project; they are outsiders and visitors; they are inferior. Thus, suspicion lurks about that multitude and about anyone, anything, coming from their class. The Wikipedianist thinks that way; this is his self-consciousness and consciousness of the multitude as regards Wikipedia. The first thing that he will do almost so automatically afterwards, is to either be rigid, or assume bad faith. He will then be inclined to dismess and reject their contributions, he will find their being and presence upsetting and detesting as they come from an inferior class, and he will constantly be in favour of, making laws and enforcing restrictions.

The details of this condition are irrelevant to our discussion nowhere, and they are quite very interesting and useful to know and be aware of, especially by administrators, I suppose. My argument should not imply that Taxman is actually a Wikipedianist, according to the definition setforth here. Same as to my discourse using the police expression. I have no intention to categorize anyone in anyway, and my apologies to ALoan, along with Taxman as well, if it has appeared otherwise. But the actuality of Taxman's behaviour, and the general needless strictness of the FARC procedure as discussed earlier in another section, are already harmful and threatening; enough is that both are quite evidently, unnecessarily exclusive.

(3) I will not undertake the redundant action of posting the nomination of User:Tobyk777 in Wigwag's talk-page because I don't believe users should do so, because I don't believe users should be compelled to do so if they are to nominate, and because I think this situation is a living and actual occurrence of the disadvantages and harms of unnecessary restriction, as considered by me. That the issue has been addressed before here should only activate your attentiveness and encourage your consideration and carefulness rather than provoking your constraint. That I have received little indications of "credence" for my arguments so far (with which I am more than satisfied and truly delighted), should inspire in you the same positive qualities of social behaviour and intellectual attitude as to what I say, rather than just the opposite.

Have a great time, -- Maysara 22:14, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

New thread on Wigwag + reform suggestion

I'd like to comment on a couple of things in the last thread, having briefly discussed it with Taxman.

• First, I agree with Jeff that two weeks is more than enough to leave on a talk page. Consider that you get two weeks sitting on FARC (in practice, three) and thus you have 4-5 weeks to make an article an FA that is supposed to already be one. I certainly, definitely, absolutely, think that the allowance cannot be "indefinite." If editors cannot, in five weeks, answer FARC concerns it only underscores how far the article is from FA standard to begin with.
• I also disagree with "the encyclopedia as a whole gets no better or worse when an article becomes or ceases to be a featured article". FAs are a very important face of the encyclopedia and it's not just a matter of improving the average. If FAs are the elite category, then the FAs in general are only as good as the worst member. The worst FA is the bar on what is considered best on the Wiki.

However, this is also a good point that gets rephrased regularly: "The nominator at FARC is under no obligation to try to improve a nominated article, unlike a nominator at FAC." The problem in part is that you can throw things here and then leave. Taxman removed Wigwag, and, though I actually think it should've stayed, I understand why.

So while agreeing that there needs to be metrics to remove, but that there are also problems as it stands, how about:

• FARC ceases to exist. Everthing must go to Wikipedia:Featured article review. No two weeks on the talk page but when it is sent to WP:FAR, there is a note presented on the talk page.
• Keep and remove cease to be votes. On WP:FAR you comment...
  • A there is nothing here a good copy edit can't fix. (If that is consensus and if someone declares it fixed and it is seconded and thirded etc., it is removed)
  • B this needs work but is still an FA. (ditto for removal)
  • C to still qualify as an FA this needs to be revamped (ditto for removal again, but...)
• If C is a plurality after two weeks and the issue has not been resolved it gets sent to "Featured articles of concern". This section becomes serious and time-bound: pages don't sit for half a year--they're either addressed and sent back up to review to be approved and removed, or they cease to be FAs after a subsequent two weeks.

OK, this is a rough sketch from just some guy and while it looks like instruction creep I think it might work better. Marskell 22:22, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

• approve: This is much better, much reasonable; I think that the WP:FAR's nomination procedure is a very reasonable one, even written better and in a nicer language. I wonder why the procedure of FARC had to be different and not just applying the same process: Truly FARC should get with FAR; this will also facilitate the organization of the process of attempting to "improve" a listed article instead of asking the nominators to post on talk-pages and wait, and then again post on FARC if they don't get satisfactory response. An EXCELANT suggestion, Marskell!! But wouldn't this require some changes, additions to the original nomination procedure of FAR so as to adapt to the new function of FA-Removal that will now be added to it?

Most appreciatively, -- Maysara 00:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• FAR isn't really all that active -- I was maintaining it, but no longer am due to a lack of time. That's not a reason not to follow this suggestion, I'm just pointing out that someone will need to actively maintain it. Tuf-Kat 00:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• • Well, Tuf-Kat, according to Marskell's suggestion, this page, FARC, will be no more. All the activity maintained here will be just transferred there; unless by "maintaining" you mean some infrastructural, operational technical aspects. FAR is likely to be busy as nominators start listing in there, now more easily and reasonably (which is itself likely to increase the number of nominations, perhaps), instead of in here. Thank you, -- Maysara 02:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
    • I'm not talking about making nominations. I do mean "infrastructural, operational technical aspects", which are important things that no one likes to do. Someone has to take charge of moving articles between the active and "concern" sections, marking and archiving discussions, keeping the FAF page up to date, that kind of thing. It's nice to hope that nominators will do all of that, but they won't. Tuf-Kat 02:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Given that the activity that goes on here will be moved there I think it will be maintainable. There's a critical mass of editors that watch this page obviously. This springs in part from Taxman's comment "I do see some value in having a place where potential future nominations would be listed to facilitate some work on those articles." Well, we already have that page, WP:FAR, even if its not particularly active now. Marskell 08:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Since when has FARC been a vote? Johnleemk | Talk 12:35, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Oh, we all know that FARC is a poll to test consensus, just like FAC, but polls often end up looking quite similar to vote.

Perhaps I am being dense, but could we not simply require that articles are listed at WP:FAR for a decent period (say, a couple of weeks) before they are nominated at FARC, as an alternative to that discussion happening on the article's talk page? Presumably a template is added to the talk pages of articles that are listed at FAR, so the regular editors know there is an on-going discussion? -- ALoan (Talk) 13:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

FARC is not a vote, sure--but "remove per nom" is a vote in all but name.

Yes, I had thought of your idea ALoan, as an intermediary thing, but FAR is not well trafficked. By merging FARC we're emphasizing "only remove after review"; part of the idea is things don't actually get nominated for removal anymore. They get taken to review and if that review fails to correct problems after one month then the page is de-listed. And one page rather than two is actually simpler. Marskell 13:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

After consideration, FARC should be more like what FAR review should be, :) but still have the ability to remove FA's that don't meet the grade. Merging the two would probably be beneficial and seems pretty obvious in hindsight. Removing from featured would then just be a consequence of a review that more work needs to be done than is getting done. That amounts to pretty much what we've wanted FARC to do, but having separate pages (FAR and FARC) makes that hard. Merging also eliminates the need for requiring a review period on FAR before taking it to FARC, which on separate pages would probably just get ignored. On the same page it could work, and if the review doesn't help, nothing is worse off, the article is just removed like it would have been anyway. I'm a little concerned that the process Marskell has added isn't optimal, but that can be tweaked, and we may only be able to find the best option by trying it. The original FAC process was a mess too. And since you've proposed it Marskell, you're elected to maintain it. We don't need to get too formal about it, but some greater buy in from people in the FAC and FARC community would be good before we took the leap. - Taxman ^Talk 15:15, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Good! Regarding what's optimal and people buying in, I wasn't thinking it would get done tomorrow. I'll start a user page soon, present it here, and people can tweak away. Marskell 15:32, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Wait, a new page? I thought the plan was to merge FARC into WP:FAR? Or are you just talking about an example set up to then add to WP:FAR? - Taxman ^Talk 15:46, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The proposal is to replace FARC with FAOC, but to keep FAR. It seems to me that the proposal doesn't address the basic problem, which is that people are happy to (in essence) vote aye or nay on FARC, but they aren't willing to actually try to improve articles on FAR. Henry^Flower 15:55, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• Will someone kindly bullet-point the reasons that the current system is unsatisfactory or needs to be modified, before a major change is agreed to? Tony 16:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

To Tax: UserMarskell/blahblahblah. Just a page for editing. Yes, merge FARC and FAR with everything on one page.

To Henry: I think it specifically addresses that question because it will cease to be a vote (or votish). It will much more resemble peer review. List actionable concerns, address actionable concerns. No one will actually vote aye or nay. The closest to that will be "is/is not an FA" as it stands during the first two weeks. During the second two weeks there will be no voting(ishness) at all. Comment that you've addressed x concern and that's it. If the x's are not addressed after two weeks (month total), it goes. Thus the featured article of concern section will NOT simply be a duplicate of FARC as it stands.

To Tony:

• The current review period prior to the nom is a) often not applied leading to arguments as just occured with Wigwag b) often useless due to dead talk pages. By hitching removal to review we avoid both problems.
• It's very easy to make a frivolous nom and then leave. Would the guy who nominated Yom Kippur War (receiving a dozen odd speedy keeps) the day it was on the main page have bothered to make his POV point if he were taking it to a review page instead?
• It addresses what to my mind is the oddest part about this page: a "successful" candidacy is one in which we lose an FA. Marskell 17:43, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how your FAOC would work. If I say that the article is poorly written, and you say that it isn't, what happens then? Henry^Flower 17:51, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

If debate over a criterion is literally one versus one then the status quo prevails. That will be no different with this suggestion versus any other, including FARC as it stands. If by contrast I say "I have addressed 2A" (from Wikipedia:What is a featured article?) and five people come along and say "no, you haven't" than the closer will assume it remains unaddressed. Note that no article is truly doomed based on our well written criterion by itself unless it is truly truly horrible. Marskell 18:12, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That sounds just as votish as what we already have. Henry^Flower 19:13, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Commenting on specific criteria is the same as keep or remove the entire article? How so? Anyhow, you can read an outline below. Marskell 19:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

And try this: look at the latest nom on the town in BC and the fact that immediately the comments regarded whether it was an appropriate nom rather than the details of the article. Tell me it wouldn't work better on the page proposed below... Marskell 19:23, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

People vote keep or remove for the entire article on the basis of specific criteria. I don't understand your second point at all. Are you saying that if we have more complicated rules, then no-one will mention it if the rules are not followed? It seems to me a recipe for more procedural bickering, not less. Henry^Flower 19:38, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

"People vote keep or remove for the entire article on the basis of specific criteria" No they don't. Absolutely and completely (if we're talking about the majority) they don't. They don't "vote" that way here any more than people "vote" on RfA because they've "studied the contributions." People look at the intro, read for two minutes, and say "remove per nom" or "keep per x". The fundamental point of this suggested reform, is that keep or remove, are gone. General comments, not directed at a criteria, cease to be operative. We're not voting. And this is not more complicated: the details below seem long but think about them in practice. If nothing else, we'll save time not having to go over "was the review period covered on the talk page?" which appears to happen with a majority of nom's now. Put it this way: comments will cease to be inductive ("ya, read around for five minutes and I think "remove per nom."") Instead, it will demand deduction: "I followed the link and I think Joe did/did not fix the TOC/fix that source/remove the POV/copy-edit properly/whatever." I added one line after posting which sums it up well: all comments in this section should be notice of action taken or comments on action taken. That is, do not vote, act.

To me, this proposal makes perfect sense. I didn't even know that WP:FAR existed...Another advantage, which wasn't really discussed so much above, is that this process would be inherently less antagonistic. If all FAs come up for review, and if the process isn't about remove vs keep but instead about what can be improved, there's immediately a more constructive atmosphere to any discussion. The assumption should be that if an article has become an FA, there's no reason a bit of work can't ensure that it remains an FA. I think this is an excellent fix to many of the problems surrounding FARC. The Disco King 19:54, 27 April

Yes, in the absence of "I want this gone from the FA list" versus "why are you being such a jerk wanting this gone?" we might actually improve FAs more completely. One critical fact is that nominator is not asking for removal. They're simply pointing out problems. This is indeed "immediately a more constructive atmosphere" (look at most of the recent FARCs if you don't think so). Marskell 23:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

• The only unfixable aspect of the current process that Marskell raises above is the dead talk page problem. I don't think that's reason enough to change the system completely. Why not slightly reword the requirement to post a warning on the talk page, to explicitly exclude such things as requests for proper referencing that are a year old. Then enforce the requirement to warn. It would be simple.

I like the symmetry of an FARC process that is similar to the FAC process.

Tony 00:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I do too, as we can refer to those guidelines. I think once merged into WP:FAR, the final removal process should be one much like the discussion is now on FAC and FARC. But the merging would be clearly valuable as it would avoid the problems we've been having lately of people failing to describe the problems before trying to get it removed. In a merged page, they would all be reviewed first as a listing in the wrong section would just get moved. Much less antagonistic than trying to enforce a guideline like I've been doing lately and has been roundly ignored. - Taxman ^Talk 01:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Update

Check it out: User:Marskell/Featured Article Review. Marskell 19:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

That's about right to me, except the change I would make as discussed above. - Taxman ^Talk 04:21, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I approve as well (I did make a few copy edits). Anville 09:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

OK, there'll naturally be debate about details but in the meantime we need an...

Evil strawpoll

In general, do you believe that merging Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates with Wikipedia:Featured article review is a good idea? (Keep comments short please).

Support

• Support. Solves the talk page review issue, is less antagonistic, and if structured properly will focus people on article details rather than broad generalizations. Marskell 10:05, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support as a way to ameliorate the antagonism of FARC and the lethargy of FAR. Anville 10:19, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support -- ALoan (Talk) 10:33, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support per Marskell and Anville. — TKD::Talk 10:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support Tuf-Kat 10:55, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support - Far more constructive, and more in the cooperative spirit of Wikipedia. The Disco King 12:14, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support, per my comments above. Congrats for the good idea. Extra props for naming the strawpoll evil, as it takes into account what we're really trying to do :). - Taxman ^Talk 14:20, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Not aware that FAR was really active, I recently listed article on FARC with the hope that it would get needed copyedits and fixups and remain a FA. Such intent is more inline with the FAR process than FARC, and is more constructive. -Aude (talk | contribs) 14:38, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support Makes sense to me. Borisblue 00:16, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support: As said before, to nominate a FA for removal is equal to reviewing it. Having it done in one place and only once; that is, listing the nomination with its concerns only once in FAR, totally avoids the quite tiresome and likely redundance of sending it TWICE once in the talk-page and then in FARC (and to wait between them). This saves energy by avoiding duplication (both of debate with its information and decision and conclusion), spares our contributors from an unnecessary requirement of excessive devotion! and, most importantly, facilitates, simplifies, and strengthens the process of "improvement" along with its organization, due to concentrating the debate and discussion in one place at one time. Maysara 07:51, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Posting on the talk page tends to be fruitless, as the articles with problems are usually those that just aren't being maintained anymore in the first place. Bringing complaints to a centralized place may spark someone interested to fix the problems. I'm not sure about the details, which seem to needlessly complicate the process, but on the whole this will be a beneficial change. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:40, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

• Neutral. The proposal has merit, but at this stage, I'd be more comfortable trialling just a change to the notification requirement at the top of the FARC page (two weeks' notice) and enforcing it. I'm a little concerned that the proposal is more complicated than the current procedure. Tony 01:32, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

• nope, the opposite! The current procedure is more complicated than the proposal. Maysara 06:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

If you include the supposed two weeks for the notification on the talk page this is indeed no more complicated; it simply brings the review into the process rather than leaving it on quite possibly idle talk pages. The hassle and occasional acrimony of "enforcement" is avoided. Two more noms today and again the period is being roundly ignored... Marskell 17:12, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Marskell, I think you were misreading the lead: the two weeks refers to the amount of time a nomination normally spends in the FARC room, not the notice given on its talk page. People seem to want to leave the time for notice vague, sadly (see below). Tony 00:08, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps, actually, I'm misreading comments from Taxman or others somewhere along the line. I thought two weeks was the undeclared time. Hence Alabama briefly changing it to that. I don't think it substantially changes the point. Marskell 06:03, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

• Strong Oppose Alabamaboy 16:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC) (EXTENSIVE COMMENTS AND REPLIES MOVED TO COMMENTS SECTION)

• Oppose. Rearranging of deckchairs. Henry^Flower 16:43, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Sometimes rearranging the deck chairs allows everyone to see the sunset. Can you expand on why you don't think it will help and what problems you think there might be so they could be avoided? - Taxman ^Talk 17:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
    • The problem we have is that too few people are willing to maintain and improve FAs. The proposed change doesn't address that, and will add some extra bureaucratic shuffling between different pages. Henry^Flower 13:03, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

• Strong oppose. I'd like to give the current system—with slightly tighter requirements as now, properly enforced—time to prove itself. Tony 04:28, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Mu

Comments

• A couple of comments on User:Marskell/Featured Article Review - it looks pretty good to me, but the instructions are rather long and could be tightened up, I think (there is always a tendancy for these things to get get longer and longer, so it is best to start with them as short as possible and try keep them that way); and regarding "basic review", if we are expecting to review all FAs at least every 18 months, that is a pretty large workload (there are around 1000 FAs, so we are talking about 2 per day, every day, and the workload will only increase). -- ALoan (Talk) 10:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
  • Both points had occured to me. I "over-exampled" things so it can be shortened. I don't think we should throw Basic review overboard simply because of workload issues tho. I was anticipating those would be very quick and painless; literally having an FA read by a few people once a year at the same time is good in itself. We'll let the poll runs its course and then have at it (assuming the merge retains consensus). Marskell 10:50, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Alabama comments and replies

While I am not opposed to integrating the FAR and FARC pages to a greater degree (and have even proposed doing this a while back, this proposal to merge the FAR and FARC pages is moving too fast and without the input of a number of FARC editors I really respect (like Raul654, among others). I am also extremely concerned for several other reasons:

1. The FARC page has functioned well for a number of years and I see no reason for this change.
2. The FAR page is slowly dying, having limited work done on it in recent months; I don't see why a page that fails to attract a considerable amount of work should be merged with a page that does.
3. The main issue people seem to be having with the FARC page is that it seems too harsh to some editors. Taxman's recent edits to the rules have addressed this by requiring that issues with articles be brought up on the article's talk page. Since the two-week wait after raising issues on an article's talk page before a FARC nomination is a new rule, we should give this rule time to work. In addition, I believe that if major issues with an article are not addressed after a few weeks, a FARC nomination may do more to help improve the article than anything else by motivating the article's editors to finally do something.
4. On a related note, the proposed example of what this merged page would be (User:Marskell/Featured Article Review) seems like the worst of both worlds in that it is overly bureaucratic and would make it harder to remove bad FAs, which would mean that fewer FAs would be improved (b/c the article editors would see no reason to make the needed changes).
5. The only reason some editors seem to be supporting this idea is that it would be "less antagonistic." However, the point of FARC is to delist FAs when other methods fail to work. Just as the featured article review process does more to improve articles than the peer review system (mainly because editors are motivated to address concerns to reach a desired outcome), so too does the FARC system drive editors to make needed changes. This doesn't mean the FAR page doesn't have a role but merging it with FARC would seem likely to water down the good things FARC does without improving the process to improve bad FAs.

In short, it will take a lot to convince me that this is a good idea. As I had previously proposed, I support requiring people to raise issues on the article's talk page and think this will do a lot to make the FARC "less antagonistic." But the essence of this discussion is that the FARC page functions well and accomplishes its job. Why change something that is working (especially by merging it with a page that is not currently working too well)?--Alabamaboy 16:07, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

1. I don't see how you think it is going too fast, there has been an example page created, a discussion started and after a lot of agreement, a strawpoll started including the support of Tony, who initially disagreed. Nothing has been done but discussion, so how much slower could it go? And as the one that added the guideline and started enforcing it, I've noted I don't believe it is working or is going to work. I believe the merge would be less bureaucratic, and it would be just as easy to remove FAs that need it in exactly the same amount of time as the current situation. I think the merger would make both processes more valuable and aligned with their goal: improve or weed out FAs. - Taxman ^Talk 16:47, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   Since this thread was started a few minutes before April 27 and there is already a poll to merge the pages, that's pretty fast. Not all editors check the FARC page every day. Heck, I'm even supposed to be on a Wikibreak and only happened to check here because I had a few minutes to pass. Best, --Alabamaboy 16:51, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   The (evil) strawpoll was only started because it didn't make sense to debate details until consensus in the general sense had been established; by all means, we should wait a while. I think we need to define "working": how many get "saved", for example (which is really the only question that truly matters)? I've watched it intermittently for a while and closely for a couple of months and I'd suggested not too many. The typical course of things IMO: an initial criticism of the nominator for not going to talk/not being specific, followed by generalized keep or remove comments plus some random sniping. And the talk page thing isn't getting thrown out: a note is on the article talk as it should be anyway for two weeks and it's in plain view on FAR. Only then does it move to the section where actual removal may occur. You may say "this won't actually increase improvements" but I simply don't follow your implication that it will reduce substantial work on articles. Marskell 16:53, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   Glad to see that there is no rush to decide on this. That said, my other concerns stand. A number of articles have been "saved" by coming here. However, I disagree with your statement that saving articles is the only question that matters. The purpose of FARC is to remove FA listing for articles that no longer measure up to the ever changing FA standard. That is the main reason for the existance of the FARC page and I don't see this proposal doing anything but hurting this mission. While it is nice to help save some FA articles needing improvement, that is a side benefit of FARC, not its main function.--Alabamaboy 17:10, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   I for one plan to make sure it is just as easy to remove articles that are subpar as it is now, but still encourage as much effort to improve them along the way as possible and improve in that regard. I think the merger will do that much better than separate pages can. - Taxman ^Talk 17:48, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   I should point out that while I don't mind defending my vote and reasoning here, it is a bit irritating that those who oppose this are being challenged while those who vote in support are not. This is supposed to be a poll, not a debate. Best,--Alabamaboy 17:57, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   Your oppose was rather long... :). And at the risk of challenging again, you're of course right that removing is the fundamental purpose here. But assuming attrition happens regardless of the process, the main (or at least one main) metric for comparing processes is how many get saved. Cheers, Marskell 18:13, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   Sorry to add yet one more, but since the support reasons have all been laid out, it's more valuable to work out the oppose reasons. And I would hope that even if it is laid out as a poll, working to the best solution is the goal, not polling. - Taxman ^Talk 18:30, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   I understand. Just wanted to point out that usually discussions are not held during the poll but elsewhere. I hope you'll also forgive me for not commenting from this point on but I am technically on a Wikibreak and I don't want to have a relapse and return to Wikiholic status. Best, --Alabamaboy 18:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

   Taxman has succinctly stated the two requirements at issue: removing substandard articles, and maximising the standards of existing FAs. A third issue, only partly incompatible, is minimising grief among the main contributors to FAs that come into question. But I agree with him that any changes should not place (significant) impediments in the way of the removal process. Tony 01:16, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

To User:Alabamaboy: It is rather inappropriate that you just so easily reject, and more importantly, undermine the collective activity of so many contributors in here, by pointing to the inclination of yours, that some other users to which you have a personal preference and "respect", and regard somehow superior in whatever sense, have not lied their input yet. As if the hitherto our decisions and conclusions, our consensus, has to halt until after the group preferred by you should intervene, or otherwise we're being just "moving too fast"! While the supposed truth is: Your group of respectable users is simply irrelevant to our discussion here because it is personal to you, thus, it concerns you alone. And if you care so much for the input of those whom you particularly and personally respect, you should contact them personaly and ask them respectfully for an input, instead of asking the world so recklessly to slow down and wait for them! Only the actual contribution itself counts, not the potential of contributing. For, in front of the potential of your basically personal little group, there stands the potential of an entire world, or perhaps a universe, in which a superterrestrial creatures who are far more intelligent than human, far more Humanistic than human, have been also contributing to Wikipedia! It is a *WIKI*, dear administrator! Thank you, -- Maysara 08:55, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Putting your bombastic words aside, it is not unreasonable for Alabamaboy to expect at least the input of the official Featured Article Director (Raul654) and a number of other regular participants in the featuring process. Johnleemk | Talk 11:09, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

No need to attack me over this. As stated, I believed the discussion had progressed to a poll too quickly, without the input of a number of editors who have been heavily involved with FARC over the years. I fail to see how my concerns are irrelevant to this discussion. I have a track record of taking part in FARC and have even worked to mediate issues on articles when they are nominated for FARC but have the potential to be improved (such as Ku Klux Klan, which was nominated for FARC but, after mediation between conflicting editors, emerged even stronger than when it first became a FA). My reason for raising these objections was not to undermine any consensus but to raise issues that I feel should be addressed in order to reach consensus. I'm also afraid I don't get the "superterrestrial creatures" comment. Best, --Alabamaboy 18:04, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Alambamaboy that it's moving too fast. I've been swamped, so I haven't been following this proposal as closely as I would like, but I have not yet seen a concise breakdown of exactly what will be changing and how it is to be changed. I haven't formed an opinion yet (beyond the obvious desire not to break something that I don't consider broken) but until I see that summary I'm hesitant to comment. Raul654 18:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Over-specifying?

Re: this edit - I really feel it's overly prescriptive. I feel these things do not need to be defined exactly, and an exact definition is rather stifling. I think allowing a certain amount of judgement is much better - if there is no response at all to comments left on talk pages after a week, say, then why enforce another week of inaction? In the end, I think a whole month between identifying potentially serious problems and removing an article from featured status is too much. Worldtraveller 15:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I understand your point, but two weeks for contributors to be given the chance to fix up an article, followed by two weeks' scrutiny and debate here, seems reasonable. The vagueness of 'some time' was causing grief in a few instances. When people put so much effort into having an article promoted, why should the demotion process be lightening quick? Tony 15:40, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with what Tony says. The problem is that the old "some time" standard leads to situations like with the FARC on Bible Code, where the editor placed a notice on the article's talk page and only waited three days before coming here. Not all editors at Wikipedia check in every day (or even ever few days) so adequate time must be given for people to see the notice on an article's talk page. That said, I'd also be ok if the time span was only one week (I went with two weeks b/c that had been discussed before in regards to this). Either way, though, it needs to be spelled out.--Alabamaboy 15:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Well I don't want to make the process lightning quick by any means, I just don't want to enforce a particular length. Maybe we could say 'leave some time (up to two weeks)' or something, to allow for some discretion to be used. I just used my discretion anyway, listing Venus a week after having left comments, because there had been no acknowledgement or attempt to address them so I don't see the point in waiting another week before moving on to getting general community input. Worldtraveller 15:57, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm open to going with one week but, as previously stated, I think we need a specific span of time.--Alabamaboy 16:04, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Sign up for reform above and problem solved :) Marskell 16:08, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

And any other number of problems created :-)--Alabamaboy 16:34, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree with World Traveler. We should *not* be putting specific numbers of days. That leads to the same bean counting mentality that has infested RFA. Raul654 17:19, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I removed the time reference for now since there is no consensus here to make the change. If more people end up supporting a specific time span, we can insert it again.--Alabamaboy 17:50, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

"At least a..." isn't bean-counting. "Decent" can be interpreted any which way and it doesn't solve the problem that one out of two nominators seem to ignore it anyhow. Marskell 18:37, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Ambiguity is worse than a strict definition of time. Let's propose a time frame and work towards a definition. Ambiguity also leads to editors making judgement calls which leads to unneccesary discussions avoidable by defining a time frame. Joelito (talk) 23:57, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree; don't know why two weeks is bean counting; the fuzzy instruction that persists is causing more trouble than an explicit time frame. Tony 01:57, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposing a time-frame is indeed a good idea as it prevents unnecessary discussions. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:49, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

FARC and FAR merger

There was a general consensus above that this merger idea was sensible. Please see Wikipedia:Featured article review/sub for the latest version of how it might work. I have posted some comments on the Talk page there, and anyone interested in thrashing out the page can head there to make suggestions. Perhaps we could get it up and running on WP:FAR and run it in parallel with this page for a couple of weeks to see if there are kinks. Raul had suggested he was warming to the idea, but perhaps he has a fuller comment?... Marskell 10:27, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree there is general consensus that it should go forward. Unless more specific problems are brought up and agreed upon by more people, then not moving forward is just failing to impliment good changes for the sake of not changing. As to the specific comments on that talk page, I think 2wks/2wks is about right. There's no urgent need to de-feature articles in less time than that and that should give enough time for interested and able people to fix them if it's going to happen. For the process I think we should make the lower risk change first and go with the second option which is like FARC runs now. As to Featured articles first that does seem very instruction creepy, and I'm not sure we should worry about it. If it's not working, and is a duplicate process, we shouldn't waste time with it. - Taxman ^Talk 15:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm still somewhat concerned about this idea because Wikipedia:Featured article review/sub seems to be instruction creep and overly bureaucratic and complex. For example, I don't see why the "Basic Reviews" section will work there when the FAR page (which is essentially the same thing) doesn't appear to work. That said, I do like the idea of splitting the FARC process into two steps, with a "Structual Review" and a "Featured Articles of concern" section (although I prefer the alternative version of the FA of Concern where people can vote on the articles). I wonder, though, why you are attempting to reinvent the wheel here. Why not simply reorganize the FAR page and get more people involved in it and then rename the FARC page and split it into the "Structual Review" and "Featured Articles of concern" sections? This would seem to be a simpler way to implement what you are trying to do without the risk of upsetting what already works with regards to FARC.

Despite these concerns, though, I will support this b/c people have now had time to object or raise concerns (few people did, which speaks for itself). I really like the idea of doing a test-run on all of this and look forward to seeing how this works in the "real" world of Wikipedia.--Alabamaboy 17:07, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, on the hand you're saying it (FAR) doesn't work and on the other suggesting just get more involved there. I'm suggesting by making FARC and FAR one you're nabbing both birds. The principal point is: you must review before removing. Assuming FAR did work the two pages taken together are far more "instruction creepy" than the suggested merger. The Basic review may be dead weight but we don't know until we try; it's no worse than present, where there is no review before removal.

Anyhow, I realize this talk is obviously watched most, but we should probably take the long-winded commentary to the sub-page I've created. Marskell 21:02, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. I'll do the merger myself, but since this is the busiest time of year for me, I'd like a couple of weeks (I'm in the clear after May 23). Raul654 21:05, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, let's say now to round about the 23rd to iron things out on the sub-page. Marskell 21:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Notice of intention to remove nominations

Unless someone comes up with a good reason not to, I intend to remove Goomba and Windows XP from the list later today, since those nominations have failed to meet the first requirement in the procedure. Tony 02:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Don't forget the Air Force One FARC. Johnleemk | Talk 03:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

For Goomba, at least, the problems have been raised quite awhile ago. Anyone editing the article is well aware of the complaints and has had ample time to address them. Christopher Parham (talk) 07:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Minor change to procedure

I've been bold in adding a requirement that nominators specify on the talk page the FA criterion or criteria that they believe an article fails to meet. It seems a reasonable extension of the spirit of the existing procedure, which is to give contributors time to improve their article before nomination. It's in everyone's interests to allow the system to effective provide motivation for improvements before as well as during a FARC nomination, isn't it? Tony 04:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Complaints should be such that their content brings into question whether the article meets the featured article standards, i.e. they should not be exceedingly minor or otherwise spurious. But I think it would be silly to require that specific reference is made to the FA criteria. After all, complaints on the talk page may not even be made with FARC in mind, especially if they are made by new users. Presumably, for the purpose of this requirement, an anonymous user complaining that "This article doesn't describe the last 30 years of the subject's life" would be read as implying that the article is not comprehensive. Christopher Parham (talk) 08:21, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

"It's in everyone's interests to allow the system to effective(ly) provide motivation for improvements before as well as during a FARC nomination, isn't it?" Yes, it is. I'm curious then why you have gone from support to neutral to strong oppose on the merger. This is exactly the problem addressed, and given that Raul's OK with it I think it will likely go forward. Marskell 08:34, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Marskell, Raul doesn't rule the world, and his opinion is supposed to count for as much as anyone else's—WP is meant to be strongly democratic, not hierarchical. Christopher, I really don't know what you're talking about—why is it 'silly' to require specific reference to criteria as part of notice given about an impending nomination? (If you're going to use such a strong word, please explain the context at the same time.) Tony 08:39, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, of course your right. But the point holds anyway. We ought to review criteria before moving to the "keep" or "remove" phase, which is exactly what the reform demands. Having it in one "public" place is arguably less instruction creep with greater possibility of improvement. Of course, a note would still be made on talk, so nothing is lost. Marskell 08:46, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

He's the featured article director. When it comes to featured articles, it is not unreasonable to give his opinion greater weight, especially since he's been doing this job officially for two years (and unofficially since time immemorial). Johnleemk | Talk 10:15, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not getting into a further argument about this; I don't care what job he does, his opinion counts as much as anyone else's in this forum. Tony 13:51, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

No it doesn't. Simply by virtue of his vast experience in dealing with featured articles, whether or not he holds an official position, his opinion ought to be weighted more. (Especially considering it is his responsibility for dealing with WP:FA.) Johnleemk | Talk 15:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

In my capacity as an writer/editor/critiquer, my opinions should be judged by the same standards as every else (notice - I didn't say equally. Not everyone is equal in their ability to write/edit/critique, and we'd be fools to pretend otherwise. That is to say, everyone's opinion, including my own, should be judged on the basis of the merits of the claim, bearing in mind the user's established history as a good or bad judge of article quality). On the other hand, in terms how the FA process works my position as FA director entitles my opinion to special consideration. Beyond that, I care not to specify. Raul654 15:32, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Because why do it? The point is:

"This article is missing a lot of information on X."

"This article is missing a lot of information on X, and therefore fails WIAFA #2."

should carry equal weight. The second merely adds a few words of jargon. It's not clear to me at all how the second is better than the first, it's just another bit of bureaucratic paperwork. Second -- as I understand the spirit of the rule, there ought to be no requirement to give explicit notice of an impending FARC nomination. The requirement is that editors on the talk page be made aware of any problems first, and given a chance to clean them up. That doesn't require any reference to FARC or FA standards whatsoever. Here's what I imagine happening: some discussion goes on at a talk page about problems in a featured article, but they are not fixed. After a couple months of this, the article is brough to FARC. This is an entirely reasonable nomination, and we shouldn't get rid of it. Christopher Parham (talk) 16:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

It's all kind of moot anyway since people that carry more respect will carry more weight with other editors and their opinions will be taken more into account by others anyway, as long as those others know. But for this example it's not like there's not strong support for the merger among a number of respected FAC/FARC regulars. - Taxman ^Talk 15:37, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Taxman. I take Raul654's opinion seriously and his support of merging the FAR and FARC pages into a new beast is one of the reasons I'm tentatively supporting this. Yes, everyone here is equal but in the words of some famous talking pigs, some of us are more equal than others :-). --Alabamaboy 15:44, 11 May 2006 (UTC)

Oh, wait while I vomit; did someone mention 'sycophancy'? In response to Christopher, OK, I've misunderstood the spirit of the first requirement: I thought it was meant to motivate the main contributors to improve their article. What is more motivating than the likehood of a nomination here? Tony 01:12, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The discussions above, and the rationale behind Taxman's removals that started the whole business, suggest that the main point is the ensure that contributors are given time to fix problems. Personally, I find it disconcerting that the threat of a nomination needs to be made explicit in order for complaints about the article to be compelling. My assumption is that when problems are pointed out on a talk page, contributors to the article will move to address them if they are interested in maintaining the quality of the article. If they aren't addressed, one can assume that there is nobody maintaining the article, and should bring it to FARC. In any case, as you can see I've let the material stand, since this system will soon be totally revamped anyway. Christopher Parham (talk) 03:37, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Blug. I'm not reading through every word here. Raul's some dude, just like I am and just like Tony is. Raul's weight (rhetorical weight, I mean) derives from other factors than status; it comes from what we lend to it. While Tony doesn't lend it any extra weight, other people look at what he has done and said and count it more highly. For years, I've argued that our importance derives from what we say and do, not who we are. I.e. Raul = many others believing him sooner than Tony. As for the change to "procedure," it's not minor in any way. It may well be beautifully picky, but it's not simple. In fact, it is a way of setting up yet another Office of Official Complaints, yet another way of creating a smug civil servant who weilds a mighty red stamp. "I'm sorry, but you cannot complain of murder until you fill out the proper forms!" I resent the fetish for forms that disguises itself as a process reform, and I loathe all attempts at users to set themselves up as a front gate to community consideration. Whether it's Raul getting to say by himself or Tony getting to reject nominations because the form wasn't filled out or the forms getting to reject supplicants, all of these are efforts at setting up a single voice above the voice of others. The difference is that Raul, so far at least, is only claiming to have been given weight by us and for his previous actions, while Tony is advocating a unilateral insertion of a choke point. Geogre 12:09, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• Huh? Tony 13:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

• • 1. Raul's worthy because of what he does, not because he has a special hat.
    2. It's not a minor change because it changes access to the removal page to only those with foreknowledge of the whole process.
    3. We don't need gatekeepers or forms that act as gatekeepers.
       1. Proper policy innovation leads to smoothely functioning consensus or fair access to justice.
       2. Improper policy closes off access to consensus or gives differential access.
    4. This makes the form master to the voters and says, "We don't care how rotten the article is, form 22-stroke-9 must be filled out first."
    5. We need to be flexible, sane, and open-minded and remove FA's that don't pass muster, and we need to give FA authors a fair shot at fixing them up to standards, but a form won't help either matter. Geogre 16:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to specify a time date to nomination prodecure

I propose to specify a time date in this part of the nomination procedure:

• Before listing here: post comments detailing the article's deficiencies on its talk page, specifying the FA criterion or criteria that, in your opinion, it fails to meet; leave time for these matters to be addressed before nominating the article here.

I propose to change "leave time" to "leave 2 weeks" since it has been clear that not specifying a time frame promotes the creation of many invalid nominations. These nominations either do not post comments on the article's talk page or do not leave sufficient time for the matters to be addressed. Joelito (talk) 16:44, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Excellent idea, but let's see how this new system works. I'll be the first to complain if it doesn't. Tony 09:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Well it's not really working now, is it? Marskell 16:00, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not working now because there's no person closing off—Jeffrey has left—and there's no specified time. Apart from that, I think it's fine. Tony 16:04, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

The closing volume isn't the issue as it can be handled by others (tho it's too bad if he's gone period). The red "invalid" comments are simply going to create confusion. If there's an obvious remove consensus and one stamp from you, what to do with it? You can complain if it gets removed or someone can complain if it gets kept and then its square one again. The only way the process would work is if they are a removed immediately after the nom as Taxman has done a couple of time. But, as Geogre points out, that's just setting up gatekeepers and would appear annoyingly unilateral. Marskell 16:16, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Ditto there. If the noms are frivolous/erroneous, it's better to contact the editor privately and ask if they can withdraw the nom so the article can be worked on. Otherwise, just leave it. If we get consensus to defeature anyway, then the article obviously has some major problems that would be so difficult to fix that it's better off being defeatured for now. Johnleemk | Talk 16:23, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Why leave the nomination if it does not follow procedure? I am all for contacting the nominator to inform him of procedure but nominations that do not follow procedure should be removed by an admin. Leaving it defeats the purpose of having a procedure. Joelito (talk) 16:28, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Because we want to deal with one another as cordially as possible? I would find it a bit offensive for one guy to stick a big red "Nomination invalid" notice on a FARC nomination I made in good faith. We must never lose sight of the mischief rule in interpreting policy/process. The reason we have this procedure is to give editors time to improve articles. No editor acting in good faith could be opposed to this, and for the sake of avoiding unnecessary friction, it's best if we could get editors to agree to withdraw their noms rather than forcibly doing it for them. It's not like FARC (or almost anything on Wikipedia) is a critical process anyhow; see m:eventualism. Johnleemk | Talk 16:33, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

There wouldn't be any big red invalid nomination. The nomination would be withdrawn, the nominator would be explained the reason for removal and comments/concerns would be left on the talk page of the article. I don't see offense in that. Joelito (talk) 16:36, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm beginning to sound like a parrot... Assuming the merger with WP:FAR goes through, this point will be moot. Two weeks review + two week removal period. See above. Marskell 16:48, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Quantum computer

I just closed a very tough one in Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Quantum computer. There was only one vote in the article citing lack of refs and two comments. Quite a few refs were since added to that article so I decided to keep the article as a FA. I'm not touching the small town FARC though. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 14:34, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Can someone please clear the backlog?

A number of nominations—such as History of Scotland—have been sitting there, damned, for more than two weeks. I'd archive them myself, except that I'll probably get it wrong, technically. Tony 00:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

That one is done - I'll look through the others as well. He'res my checklist before I forget:

1. Remove from WP:FA and update FA count
2. Add to WP:FFA
3. Remove featured article template from article
4. Remove FARC and FA templates from article talk page and put in FormerFA template
5. Close debate here noting if it is or is no longer an FA
6. Move the debate to the archive page

Phew.... hopefully that is all and I didn't miss anything. RN 01:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, RN, that is really useful! Tony 02:07, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

The one for keeping it a FA is less onerous -

1. Remove FARC template from article talk page and put in FARCfailed template
2. Close debate here noting if it is or is no longer an FA
3. Move the debate to the archive page

RN 19:40, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

• I wonder whether we could avoid using such phrases as "FARC failed" when closing off: it's ambiguous; did the article fail the test, or did the FARC process fail to convict, as it were.

May I suggest clear, simple descriptors, such as "Demoted" and "Still a FA"?

The "Gender role" candidate should be falling under the guillotine very soon.

Tony 01:29, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

Quantum Mechanics and expert input

I'm frankly unhappy about the way that Quantum Mechanics was removed as a featured article. There was very little discussion, not all of which was well-informed. Crtically, nobody thought to bring the article to the attention of Wikipedia:WikiProject Physics, where there are a wealth of experts who might have helpd with the article and/or given their opinions.

I am generally a fan of the role of non-experts in Wikipedia, but in many subjects experts are useful—and it might be a good idea to think about how we feel about our work being starred, unstarred, nominated, classified, and rated without anyone consulting us.

All that being said, I don't disagree with the conclusion. Now that I'm aware of the issue, I will see if I can muster some interest in improving the article to featured status again. -- SCZenz 00:50, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

All the more reasons to ensconce in the instructions a specific interval between the posting of a warning and the nomination. Tony 01:32, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would also like to see specific instructions to look for an applicable WikiProject, along with the application of some common sense: "Hmmm... This article on physics is crappy, I wonder where I might find someone who can help fix it...?" -- SCZenz 06:59, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that the problem is that, for many nominators, the goal of bringing an article to FARC is not to fix it, but to get it defeatured. (By the way, I'm also really unhappy with the way Quantum Mechanics was decided. With the lack of input given, I would have liked to see it relisted (like Raoul just did with that Stephen Colbert article at FAC) to get more input rather than demoted based on the few comments (and fewer votes) that were given.) The Disco King 12:39, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree with Disco that the decision wasn't wholly satisfactory. But where were the contributors and the Physics Project poeple during the FARC process? Let's hope that they fix it and put it through FA. Tony 13:07, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Like I said above, nobody bothered to tell us about it. Somebody put a tag on the quantum mechanics talk page, and that was it. Physics is not a small field of study, so not all the articles are watched. Furthermore, the people at the WikiProject are not necessarily the most wiki-saavy, or the most interested in wiki-bureaucracy, so they might not recognize or follow the meaning of the addition of a FARC tag. (The comment, when it was added, was {{farc}}.) I see no evidence, looking at Talk:Quantum mechanics, that any physics expert was aware that the tag was there . So yes, it would have taken extra work to get us involved—like putting a message on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Physics, saying in English rather than wiki-acronym that the page was being nominated for removal. The alternative is to go about your business, labelling and unlabelling articles, which would be fine except for one thing: we are the experts on quantum mechanics, and you aren't.

Forgive me for the diatribe, but I dislike having to repeat myself, and I want to be absolutely clear about the disconnect between this FARC process and the people who could have helped the article. -- SCZenz 13:51, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

Synapse DNA Repair

Since the nominator has withdrawn his concerns and consensus seems to be clear, would anybody mind closing that up? I'd do it myself, but I've voted/commented, and I wouldn't want to seem partisan. Cheers! The Disco King 14:01, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

My bad, I meant DNA Repair, not Synapse. Sorry! The Disco King 14:28, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

FAR

Barring any new objections I will replace the current WP:FAR with the Wikipedia:Featured article review/sub over the next couple of days, placing the few recent reviews on it and archiving rest (some of it a year old). The merge had support, it's sensible and we've waited a month. It won't immediately affect this page. Stuff can be directed there after the replacement. Marskell 09:31, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that the new system should be up for review on this page a month after you take this action. Marskell might volunteer to formally invite people's comments at that time. Is a month long enough? Tony 12:45, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. After a month, some reviews should have had time to be completed, and we should be able to get an idea of how well the new system works. When does FARC get phased out, though? Cheers! The Disco King 12:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, well say I wait another two days and replace FAR. Does anyone mind if this page has a big notice "Please place all new FARC candidates on the re-designed Featured Article Review"? The noms now on FARC will be grandfathered out and this page will empty in a week or two. If after a month there is some enormous problem with the new process we can return to this structure.

The other option would be to have the two running concurrently for a month, but I don't think that will work: people will simply ignore the new FAR as they do the old one.

The last thing is fixing templates and what not and making sure they link properly. Perhaps someone can help me with that. I made this quickly: Template:FAR/sub. Marskell 14:26, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Don't have both running concurrently. Consider this notice: "The FARC process has now been integrated into a modified Featured Article Review process. The ongoing FARCs will be dealt with as usual; please place new nominations on the FAR page." (Insert link.) Tony 15:33, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Excellent wording. Marskell 16:56, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

It begins!

Well, I've gone ahead and done the change to FAR and this page. If WP:FAR isn't on your watchlist, please add it now. I'll place some outstanding issues on the talk there. Marskell 09:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Well done. I've gone and placed and article on FAR. In addition, since Wikipedia:Featured article review is now the process for improving and removing FAs, I changed the link on the main FA page and Template:Fapages to reflect this. While Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates will continue for the pages that are already listed there, we don't want people to mistakenly add new listings to that page.

Anyway, I'm still not sure how all of this will turn out but here's hoping. Best, --Alabamaboy 13:54, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

unexplained retention of Edward Vi as an FA

Hello? Niz, what are you doing? Tony 10:58, 11 June 2006 (UTC)