Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/archive 4

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ahem

Will someone else *please* look at V for Vendetta? Like the ship, I seem to be the only one commenting, and it's not good for any FAR to overly rely on comments from one reviewer. Can someone see if I'm on the wrong track? SandyGeorgia :(Talk) 14:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I have given my reviews. — Indon (reply) — 17:52, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Template and bot proposals

Just to make sure everyone active here will follow this discussion about bots and templates for closing FACs and FARs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:23, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Palladian architecture

Can a few reviewers weigh in in the FARC vote of this article, and declare "Keep or Remove"? It's been over a month, and only two people (one of them being me) have currently voted. LuciferMorgan 08:44, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Has anyone listened to me? LuciferMorgan 13:59, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Main page and promotion timing

On review of recent promotions, our instructions say, "Articles that were recently promoted should not be listed here (three months is typically regarded as the minimum interval between promotion and listing here, unless there are extenuating circumstances)."

But we don't spell out a guideline between time on main page and listing for review. This came up with Wikipedia:Featured article review/V for Vendetta (film), and I'm wondering whether we should be reviewing Gerald Ford so soon after it was banged up by its time on the main page vis-a-vis current events. I thought we had once discussed how soon an article could be reviewed after appearing on the main page, but I can't seem to find the discussion in archives. Is it too soon for Gerald Ford? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm quite happy for listing here immediately after (although not during) a main page appearance. It's often main page exposure that brings to people's attention the unsatisfactory state of a FA; sometimes it's just the opening that has been fixed up, which disguises an overall failure to meet the criteria. Is there a reason for waiting? Tony 16:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
No opinion one way or the other - just trying to determine if we have consensus. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I think we should just leave it up, as a) it appeared in the news rather than on the main page proper and b) the current event was the subject's death, which does not require on-going changes to the article. People have obviously engaged it, but nothing about it should be inherently unstable or unreviewable. Marskell 08:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't matter what anything thinks - judging by the Palladian architecture fiasco Featured Article Review is an utter joke. 3 inline cites? Give me a break. It's full of opinions, and opinions need citations. If that ends up being kept we might as well scrap FAR right now - the fiasco is totally pathetic. LuciferMorgan 01:41, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Very unusual problem

I know it is frowned upon here at FAR to bring an FA here immediately after it has received FA status, however I found an exception to the rule and wanted to get community feedback before I posted the article here.

The article in question is B-movie. The article written by User:DCGeist was well-written and looked good when it was nominated by another user on December 22. I offered my support for the article to receive FA status on December 27. The article eventual was named an FA January 10. It's last vote of support came on January 7. Prior to that, the last vote of support came on January 3. The problem comes from the fact that during the day of December 7 (at the tale end of the articles FAC), the original author did a complete re-write of the entire article , increasing its length by 300% to bring the article over 127 kilobytes in size and putting it into the top 130 largest articles in all of Wikipedia. I feel this gigantic novela about b-movies to be a complete violation of FA criteria 4) It is of appropriate length, staying focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style). Additionally, a large number of copyrighted images were added to the article late in the FAC process bringing the total number of copyrighted images to 17. This is clearly in violation of Wikipedia: Fair Use rule 3) "The amount of copyrighted work used should be as little as possible."

To see all 205 changes made to the article after the second to the last support vote until the FA star was given (January 3 and January 11), click here: [1]

Given these facts, I believe this article should immediately be brought up for review even though it has just gained FA staus. It is important to the high standards Wikipedia has set for itself not to let the process be corrupted. Thank you for listening. --Jayzel 04:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

B-movie is a dreadful violation of WP:SIZE (to which my 56k modem can well attest — I had to wait several minutes for the page to load and the diff you provided stopped loading several times, necessitating a number of refreshes). Although the article seems quite good overall (though, the lead could use some work), it clearly needs to be split up into a number of smaller articles (like Saffron). As for bringing the article to WP:FAR at this early date, I would suggest WP:NOT a bureaucracy and WP:IAR most certainly applies here. I think it ought to be listed. Mikker (...) 05:26, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I was curious, so I dumped the article body in Word, which reports about 15,300 words. In skimming the article, its quality is a small miracle, and I'd happily see every article like this (well, almost) if they were as cogent as this. A web page speed report shows that in terms of download time, the main factor is the images, not the text. I personally would leave the article as a whole alone—preferring good works to policy diktat—but I can see that pragmatically, at least some images need to be removed. I hope that any reviews of this article will be respectful of the effort and achievement represented here. –Outriggr § 06:00, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
After several miserable edit conflicts, where I lost my paragraphs, Outriggr, a prose size analysis shows something different: the prose size is what is in excess. Have you got Dr pda's script? And, considering the article changes, we certainly need to get Jkelly to look at the Fair Use issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Retract that: I ran Dr pda's numbers again, and there is a problem in both areas, in fact. This must be a bear to load on a dialup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
(Doh! You got me this time! I'll paste this anyway.) I think we're talking two different things. I was trying to say that downloading this amount of article text is not particularly a problem in terms of "transmission time"; it's the images that slow the page download, and slow transmission was mentioned above as a concern. And you're referring to the article length in relation to policy, which Dr pda's tool helps to measure. Sorry 'bout those edit conflicts. I had one meeself. –Outriggr § 06:47, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, in spite of many edit conflicts, we're on the same page now. The images and prose both add to the download time, but it's the prose that goes against guidelines at WP:LENGTH, which tell us to take care with how much a reader can digest. Both are too long! And, some of these sections are so long that any argument against summary style doesn't make sense - some of the sections are articles in and of themselves, and should be in daughter articles. Of course it's easier to plop it all into one giant article then to figure out how to make it flow in encyclopedic-sized chunks. The article needs to use summary style. Sheesh, we're going to see the elac police come back after FA again if we start churning out 3 times the recommended prose size :-) And we really need a Jkelly opinion on that much Fair Use. Problems here, and troubling that it grew in a way that didn't fully engage the FAC process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Other editors have already noticed and inquired, Jayzel, so I had already looked at the numbers and the diffs.

B movie is now likely the record holder for the longest FA - longer than the previous longest FA that the ELAC (Extra Long Article Police, um, Committee) were complaining about, and longer than World War I, which was defeatured. Overall size is not the issue: prose size and failure to employ summary style is the underlying problem. Well-referenced FAs may have a large overall size, with KB chunked up by references, but a manageable amount of readable prose. In this case, the excess size is not in references, it's in prose. (See WP:LENGTH for article size guidelines, and how to calculate readable prose.) B movie's prose size is a possibly FA record 86KB, and a good chunk of that text was not reviewed on FAC. The excess was added after January 3rd, after most of the Support votes registered. The article size increased dramatically after it garnered FA support; here are the changes between the 3rd and now, a few days after its promotion.

I consider you a solid reviewer, and when I saw your early Support, I passed on reviewing the article: the title didn't attract my interest, and FAC was overloaded because Raul had not promoted/archived for over a week. I always check size: I did not review this article. Others may have checked, but the article grew dramatically after the 3rd, when most Support votes were in.

Following the substantial article rewrite (after the 3rd), there was one Object, one Support, and one mention that "my god, this is a long article" (with no vote) - it's likely no one saw that comment or realized the article had been transformed; the size increase was not noticed by a reviewer until the 9th, unfortunately just before it was promoted. The FAC room was backlogged, and the article rewrite wasn't noticed.

FAR instructions call for a 3-month lag between promotion and review, unless there are extenuating circumstances. I concur with you that the circumstances are extenuating: the article that was promoted is not the article that was reviewed and received Support. I believe there will be consensus to review the article before 3 months elapse, but it might also be useful to allow a month from closing so editors can employ summary style, bringing the article into line with guidelines at WP:LENGTH. If others think we should bring it up immediately, I'd go along with that as well, but feel that our time would be more productively spent if editors first worked on employing summary style before the article is again reviewed. I support review either now or a month after it was promoted; in either case, the article should come to FAR ultimately, and you're not the only one in line to bring it to review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:22, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hey, guys! Yo, Sandy, what up, bro. Y'all got a hardcore session going on here. I'm loving seeing the nitty-gritty stats breakdown on l'il ol' B movie. (By my admittedly non-tech-educated analysis, I have the article expanding from 35 KB when it was nominated [Andman8: 01:21, December 22, 2006] to 77 KB at the point the third-to-last Support vote was entered [Quadzilla99: 07:23, January 3, 2007] to 113 KB at the point the last Support vote was entered [Anthonycfc: 01:39, January 7, 2007] to 125 KB at the point FA status was affirmed by Raul654 [16:29, January 9, 2007] See, e.g., [2]. Did I get that right, or are the figures I'm looking at not really relevant? Tech question, Sandy: What is meant by "listy prose that isn't captured." Which prose is that? Perhaps my ad hoc data chart on 1938 movie running times? Can you explain to a relative layman why it's not captured? Sorry to vex you about this--I've never seen these stats before and it's fascinating. Am I correct that "Wiki text" = "Prose size" + "References" + "Coding [unstated; including image callup code]" and that "Images" is on top of that? So that would one would add "Wiki text" and "Images" to gauge the size of the article in terms of download time? And the figures I cited above are what you list as "Wiki text"?).
I'm sorry the article has made y'all so miserable. Jayzel--I'm listenin' and I'm lovin' ya: not only were you "duped," now B movie has "corrupted" the "process." It's kinda funny--so many people are jumping into line to bring the article to review, yet not a single one of y'all has yet made a concrete suggestion about how to compress the article. (I do understand the concern about how much prose in the last few days was not vetted by multiple independent reviewers—but, just anecdotally, if you examine my history, you should know that I was seeking more precise and well-founded detail and the best possible sourcing during that period.) How 'bout if I support review now? You think someone will actually have something constructive to say? Or let's take it straight to FARC--that little brown star is drivin' Jayzel c-r-a-z-y. Much love. Dan. (P.S. Did I really set a record?!?)—DCGeist 09:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I've just kind of been lurking here, but, yeah, folks have made "a concrete suggestion about how to compress the article": split it up and summarize per Wikipedia:Summary style. The "History" section seems to be the main bugbear, so you could create a new article called History of the B movie or History of B movies and move the text there. Then you summarize everything in the main article. — BrianSmithson 09:44, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Um...forgive me for not doing one of my excruciatingly elaborate (i.e., amateur) KB analyses, but the "History" section is the article. I'm going to guesstimate (Sandy, help!) that, including references, it's 95% of the throwweight of the article. And, in fact, you are the first one to actually make a viable suggestion. Let's think about this: (a) move virtually the entire article to a secondary sort of title (History of the B movie, say), (b) reserve B movie for an article that would be...what?...75%...66%...50% of its current size, and (c) link sections of the compressed B movie to matching sections of the full-size History of the B movie, which could even be expanded. (Or, as Sandy hints, if the ELACs don't like that, seperate articles by decade.) This is not irrational. This could serve the Wikipedia reader. I would be willing to bust my ass to do this. But let me ask you, Brian, how motivated do you expect me to feel, given that the immense effort that went into the article keeps getting characterized with crap like "duped" and "corrupted"? You know, I think the article as it stands serves the Wikipedia reader very well. With or without its star. And I'll do what I can to protect it (I mean its intellectual integrity; its FA status is comparatively small beans) against the Wikilawyers. Thanks, though. You clearly do care more about the end product than about policy-mongering. And I reiterate, I support immediate review. Let's see who both (a) has a vision of how to improve the article's utility for our readership and (b) is ready to do high-quality work toward that end.—DCGeist 11:16, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, I see your point about the history practically being the article. Yeah, in that case, you could move some of the longer sections of the "History" section to create now articles. For example, B movies in the 1930s, B movies in the 1940s, etc. (Dunno: Maybe 1930s B movies is a better way to write it; at any rate, be careful to redirect one to the other.) Then you'd summarize the part you moved into maybe 50–60% its original size (at a guess). But, yeah, the main article is supposed to be somewhere around 30-40 KB of "prose" (so, excluding refs, image captions, sources cited, etc.). Keep in mind, this is just me talking out my you-know-what, so perhaps you or someone else monitoring this discussion can propose a better way to split the article per WP:SS.
And don't take the comments here too personally. The folks who hang out at FAC and FAR are very committed, and most really want to make sure that Wikipedia's FA's do really represent our best work. I don't think you had any intention of "corrupting the process" or "duping" anyone, of course, but take those comments in stride. If you're committed to working out any kinks on the article, I'm sure everyone will be pleased with the final result. And, besides, you might end up with several FA-worthy subarticles to submit for the star in the bargain. — BrianSmithson 11:36, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Dr pda data

(Which fails to pick up chunks of B movie because it has listy prose that isn't captured - prose is higher than the 84 shown) - comparison with ultra long FAs, that were discussed on ELAC:

B movie

  • Wiki text: 127.1 kB (19486 words)
  • Prose size (text only): 84 kB (13569 words)
  • References (text only): 15 kB
  • Images: 477 kB

World War I (recently defeatured)

  • Wiki text: 95.0 kB (14441 words)
  • Prose size (text only): 69 kB (11406 words)
  • References (text only): 2 kB
  • Images: 360 kB

Ketuanan Melayu (Size was considered on review - unlike B movie, where size increase occurred after support was garnered)

  • Wiki text: 107.5 kB (16228 words)
  • Prose size (text only): 81 kB (13048 words)
  • References (text only): 11 kB
  • Images: 131 kB

And for comparison to a LONG FA, Bacteria, size all in references, not prose (conforming to WP:LENGTH)

  • Wiki text: 84.6 kB (11403 words)
  • Prose size (text only): 39 kB (5820 words)
  • References (text only): 21 kB
  • Images: 375 kB

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Interjection

To get back to the original question—should it or should it not go to review—I'd suggest waiting for the talk page to exhaust itself. Jayzel, you could make a list of ways to compress and better summarize; if after two or three weeks it's not budging, come back here. Marskell 13:11, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Agree that a month from promotion (around Feb 9) would give involved editors time to figure out how to address the problems, but definitely believe we should review it then; much of the article wasn't vetted, there may be a new article structure, and there are Fair Use questions. The talk page, at this point, reflects DCGeist's reluctance to correct the issues; perhaps that will evolve over the next few weeks. Editors may want to install Dr pda's script, in order to see how it measures different pieces, and what it misses. I also don't think it's "Jayzel's job" to list ways of compressing the article. He voted Support on a reasonably-sized article - it's not up to 'nominators' to fix the issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
May I say that I agree with Sandy on this one. Tony 15:31, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I too agree with Sandy. Let me add that there is good news for DCGeist as well as bad: he's done most of the hard work in writing the content of B movie which now simply has to be split up somehow into several sub-articles, many of which can become FAs themselves. Indeed, the series of articles thus created could quite possibly become a Featured topic. Lastly, I should note that the WP:SIZE issue isn't simply one of whether the article violates WIAFA, it's also (perhaps more importantly) an issue of usability. Not only do poor buggers like myself with ancient technology (the 56k modem — thanks Telkom) suffer badly when trying to access the article, the prose length is a deterrent to actually reading the article. Therefore, the article needs to be fixed irrespective of whether it's FARed or not and irrespective of whether it is an FA or not. Mikker (...) 17:18, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking similar, recalling the comment that Saffron isn't so much a featured topic, as one long article cut into three FAs, so there's potential here - another reason for allowing time for it to be fixed. Fair Use should be addressed, though, and we should still revisit whatever is left of the core article, as it wasn't vetted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:35, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, all. I've read through the article and have some ideas to begin trimming it down. I will suggest them to DC and see if he is fine with them. If he is, then I will drop my request for review. It's up to others what to do about all the copyrighted images, however. Regards, --Jayzel 02:22, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Sounds like progress Jayzel: hopefully within the next three weeks, the article will be down around 40KB prose size, and will have Fair Use clearance, prior to review. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:30, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
40 kilobytes of prose?? Yikes. My suggestions to DC bring the overall size of the article down to 97k and 70k prose. I'll keep at this. We may just have to spin most everything into seperate articles. We'll see. --Jayzel 04:51, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
A prose size of 70KB 1) is still massive, and 2) is hardly a reduction - it's at 86 now. (We battled back the Extra Long Article Police because their methods were too forceful, but they objected to any article over 40KB *overall* - in other words, about 25 - 30KB prose, depending on images and references. They were taking on any article that passed 50KB overall - in other words, B movie would have to be cut more than in half for them, had we not fought for a definition based on prose size rather than overall size.) With the exception of that article listed above whose name I can never remember how to spell, I don't recall seeing any article pass FAC recently with more than 50KB prose, and people start complaining at about 40KB. Also, the person who added all those images should really be calling in someone to give an opinion - not our job, and I don't speak Fair Use :-) If that amount of images had gone through FAC, someone there would have noticed - now we need to find someone knowledgeable - the two names that come to mind are Jkelly and Meegs - maybe Petholmes works in Fair Use as well, not sure. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:04, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Some of the FAC numbers for comparison: it was 25KB prose when nominated, and 47KB prose on January 3rd, so the Support votes came somewhere in between the 25 and 47 - now it's at 84. If it got all but one of the Support votes when it was under 47 a week ago, it's hard to understand why it can't find it's way back to that size. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm relatively new here at FAR, but I thought I would add a word or two about this article. In my view, while the article is quite long, it is also fascinating; and I would hate to see it demoted or even pruned simply because of length. To me, this is an excellent example of what Wikipedia does best: encyclopedic articles on subjects that Britannica et al wouldn't really bother with, or would dispose of in a few short paragraphs. While I agree that the article could possibly be broken into 2 or even 3 smaller articles, I wonder if that would weaken it. I wonder, too, if readers would search out the other segments.
I have messaged the author, and am looking at the article in more depth today. I do support Jayzel's suggestion--in a limited manner--that C, Z and Psychotronic movie can be altered or deleted. I say limited sup[port, because each section mentioned has valuable information about the subject.
I wonder if it is possibly to split the article into pages, without creating separate articles (eg: "article continues here" at the bottom of each of the first two pages. That way, the integrity of the article wouldn't be compromised, while the issue of KB per page (which I see as the central point of the argument against extreme length) is addressed.
As to the image use, I can see where there could be arguments against using them, since the images are not used solely to illustrate discussion of the image subject, but rather as examples of the article subject. That's a fine line. My personal feeling is that they contribute greatly to the quality of the article, and I would be sorry to see them excised. Jeffpw 13:10, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
I am traveling, and only have dialup access, tying up the only phone line in a house where I'm a guest. I forgot to print the Monte Hall problem to read on the plane out; I tried to print it to read on the plane back, and gave up after waiting a minute for it to download (the math images really slow down the load time). So, I decided to experiment with B movie from a dialup. When I gave up and canceled the download - after waiting 5 minutes for the article to load - there were still 9 images remaining to load. This is absolutely unacceptable by any measure. The Extra Long Article (police - committee) stated that 50% of the world has dialup access only. I didn't verify that, but if it's anywhere close to true, we simply cannot have articles that take more than five minutes to load carrying the star indicating our best work - particularly when that size was not reviewed on FAC. Again, the article garnered support when it was a reasonable size; it should be able to find it's way back to something in the range of 40KB prose, without being weighed down by so many images. That's all my time of tying up the phone today, sorry I haven't yet read Monte Hall. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Diez's closures

I reverted all of these closures; I'll likely be removing a couple of these today or tomorrow anyhow (though not Dalek, quite yet) but I thought it best to rv. Diez2 has said he won't do it again, and I'm sure it was just a bit WP:BOLD in an effort to help out. Marskell 13:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I do not have any problems with other people closing FAR/FARCs once they have familiarized themselves with the process. I must stress that FAR/FARC is not a vote and that decisions are made by consensus. Joelito (talk) 13:51, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I have been tempted to segment and move down completely uncontroversial and clear cut FARs to FARC myself, in order to help out when Joelr31 or Marskell aren't available; I have always concluded it's best not to. The advantages to having only one or two people moving/closing FARs FARCSs far outweigh the disadvantages, and help avoid problems like the ones we just saw. I don't support the idea of anyone else closing or moving. The precedent established on FAC works - it's a delicate process, and if we open the door to anyone else moving/closing, we start down a very slippery slope. If the consensus here is that we need another person involved (I don't think we do), then it should be a person agreed upon by consensus - and if that becomes necessary, I nominate Yomangani. <grin> SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with both, in a sense. I don't have a problem with the idea of others either (all of us are "just another editor" at the end of the day). But there are advantages, as Sandy says. People know Joel and I at this point, and the process, despite occasionally testiness on reviews, has been personalized in a positive sense ("how are things coming here?" etc.); I like the attention we manage to give reviews.
Also, Joel and I know each other and are on the same page with closing (I can't think of one he's closed I wouldn't have closed the same). With only two, I know someone won't swoop in and close a review when we may have been on the cusp of consensus (e.g., Dalek). Finally, people know who to yell at when something goes wrong :)
And yes, this is absolutely not a vote. That was part of the problem with Diez's closing: he noted 5-3, 3-0 as if it were a simple nosecount. Marskell 19:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree with the above. Additionally, Dalek is unique in that an editor is making active measures to address criteria concerns. LuciferMorgan 21:53, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Something I've noticed about FAR

It seems many, if not most, contributers whose articles get listed at FAR don't take any action to save them. I was really surprised about Panavision. The article creator has been online for the entire FAR process, but has done little to improve it. It seems that this is typical. Can anyone think of a reason for this? Do they feel the removal from FA is a fait accompli? And do you think there's anything we can do to encourage people to improve articles that are listed? Sorry if this has been discussed before, but I like working in this area, and would like to improve the results we achieve in terms of keeping articles at FA status. Thanks, Jeffpw 22:15, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

While there is probably no one single reason, an obvious reason is lack of incentive. One of the benefits of FA status is that it qualifies an article to be highlighted on the Main Page. My personal experience reading comments at WP:FAC and Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests suggests that this might even be the primary motivation for many nominators to put the work into an article that is needed to achieve FA status. Once an article has made an appearance, current practices remove this benefit to allow other FAs their day in the sun. Without the possibility of regaining the benefit that prompted the effort needed to achieve FA status, an author may see no reason to fight for an article that has already had its 15 minutes of fame. --Allen3 talk 01:12, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Very true Allen3. Jeffpw, the fait accompli reasoning may explain some of it. Some editors object to the notion that their article needs to be inline-cited (a common reason for review)—either in principle, or because they believe there should be a "grandfathering" of older FAs. Also, look at the very psychological dynamics of the process: the FA editor put in a significant volunteer effort to produce one of Wikipedia's ostensibly "best" articles—and they find some random user criticizing their effort in a featured article review. How would you respond? The degree to which any such FA editor can "assume good faith" in this circumstance varies tremendously by person. Those that don't AGF either get pissed off or simply aren't involved. (IMO, there are sometimes objective reasons, in the tone of FAR commentary, that can make it difficult for the FA editor to AGF.) –Outriggr § 03:51, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
It's interesting you mention the "grandfathering" clause, Outrigger. I have pondered that, myself, and think a good case could be made for that. be that as it may, that's not the policy and articles need to be consistent in their quality. It just surprised me that so many easy fixes are ignored. Had Panavision been ref'd at the beginning of the process, rather than while it was at the vote point in FARC, its fate would never have been in doubt. Similarly, Marilyn Manson (band) was under discussion months before it was listed, and the article creator did nothing about the problems. I admit referencing is dull, but it is now necessary. Let's hope that with the new, more stringent criteria, FAR will become less and less necessary. In the intervening time, perhaps we can do more to stimulate those affected by the submission to edit more on the article. I'm going to start dropping a personal note on talk pages, in addition to the template we send out. Maybe that will help. Jeffpw 15:43, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
In many cases the amount of work needed to keep an article at FA status is rather large and is simply not worth the time required to do it, the marginal improvement attained by adding inline refs or copyediting is frequently rather low. Unsurprisingly many editors are uninterested in doing it. The main page issue is probably quite important as well. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:01, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Admittedly speculative, as none of my own articles have been FAR'd, but I have to think some of the problem is insufficiently detailed or specific FAR rationales (which, to be fair, are often fleshed out by users other than the original nominator). A disturbing number of them start and end with some variant of "needs more inline citations", which by itself is plain beancounting; nobody likes to be asked for a {{shrubbery}}. Articles with low citation density do tend to have other substantive problems - especially since those without inline citations are usually older articles that have been suffering from edit drift - so sending low-citation-density articles to FAR produces relatively few 'false positives'. But I imagine that authors would be more inspired to commit to the project of updating their older articles if provided with concise but specific criticisms, rather than a generic comment that gives no indication of the nominator having read any of the article besides the references section. Opabinia regalis 03:25, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I am slightly shocked when editors don't save their featured article, because I cherish the articles I work on extensively and would want to assist them all I could, not that any of them have ever been featured. But several reasons occur to me why editors mightn't be up for the task. I like to bury myself in one article at a time and not split my efforts, and so it may be that the editors in question are busy elsewhere. Or it may be that they no longer have the books they used for the article and so can't provide the cites (perhaps they left university and no longer have access to an academic library; and don't forget how much money it costs in some countries to hire books from libraries). Someone above said "I know referencing is dull": Nooooooooo! I loooooooooove it! Buuuuuuuuuuuuuuut, it can take a long time. I may spend an entire evening checking one phrase: maybe the authors aren't prepared to come back to these articles and invest that much time again. Referencing is enjoyable as a form of discovery, but probably not as a penance. qp10qp 07:31, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Regarding grandfathering of older articles, this has been discussed and rejected. It simply doesn't make sense to have hundreds of older articles held to a different standard. As for this page becoming less necessary: it will, but not yet. The citation problems list has declined by a third in seven months. Still roughly a year-and-a-half to get through it.
Why don't people work on their FAs? I think the various answers above explain it. Interest waxs and wanes; sources get lost; after the main page day it seems less important; it's just damn annoying to take care of those fact requests, etc. Marskell 10:04, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, qp, your expertise would be greatly appreciated here and in the FAC room. Sandy has already raised the benchmark for referencing standards, and there are so many nominations at these two places. Tony 13:22, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
I don't know if I raised the standards for referencing: I might be the first editor who seriously started checking and upholding them <grin>. A problem with the new cite.php method is that people see lots of little numbers and think an article is well-referenced; I see few editors checking refs on FAC review. Anyway, I don't see any sense of fait accompli in the review stats; what I see is either editors don't engage and status is lost, or editors do engage, and status is almost always kept. On those that don't engage, there are many reasons. Recall that there was a time when many voted against adminship for anyone who hadn't written at least one FA, so that may explain some FAs and subsequent lack of interest. A large number of the defeatured FAs were brilliant prose promotions and had no original author. A large number of original authors have moved along. And, unfortunately, some reviews reveal a lot of what may have been original research - in the past, without strict referencing requirements, people could just write "what they knew" (or what they thought they knew), and they probably know that referencing it today would be hard, since they may not have strictly used references the first time through. Also, FA authors have to deal with being accused of ownership. Another factor is that few people consult the original editor before bringing an article to FAR, to see if the timing is good - the editor may be busy. (When I want to nom an article that does have a committed, involved editor, I try to give advance warning, and wait and see if deficiences are addressed - I left a LONG message on Stuttering a while back, and nothing has been done.) The reasons are as varied as the articles and editors; what concerns me is how quickly articles deteriorate when no one is watching them. Anyway, when editors genuinely engage, articles are most often kept. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I think the process is a little opaque and not easy to understand on first encounter. It comes across as very nitpicky and procedural. On initial glance, on many reviews, it seems an almighty amount of work is needed to rescue the article. Just my two pennyworth. --Dweller 22:32, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

My personal reasons for not bothering to "fix" my FAs are simple. I think that the FA process has evolved into a big joke over the past six months to a year. I feel that there's an emphasis on form over substance, and specifically that the FA interpretation of WP:V has reached a ridiculous level. Consider the near impossibility of passing a broad-scope article through FA; even articles on specific topics won't make it through the FA gauntlet unless they have a reference section rivaling the entire article text in length. What is now required for an FA is access to a library of literature on a given topic and the time and will to meticulously verify every factual statement, even those that would be obvious to anybody acquainted with the field. I don't consider the notion of verifiability to be a bad thing, on the contrary. I feel it's important to verify that statements are true when they are challenged. However, I think that a good concept has been taken to a ridiculous extreme (perhaps because of certain high-profile events that WP:V doesn't actually do anything to protect against), to the point that it becomes burdensome to people who are genuinely knowledgable on a subject.
In my perception, I have the option of embarking on many hours of work doing detailed research to verify tens to hundreds of statements that I already know for a certainty to be true, or just laugh off the FA process and devote my energies elsewhere. I really did like writing featured articles simply for the satisfaction of doing so at one time, and I used most of my Wikipedia-related time engaged in this process, but no longer. Perhaps my view is that of an infinitesimal minority. Maybe this is the new course of Wikipedia, and it's for the best to enforce levels of verifiability unheard of in any other field. Perhaps that other project with its acknowledgement of professional and expert level knowledge in various fields will provide a less frustrating way to write free, accurate, and correct articles. Who knows? These are just the inane ramblings of someone who believes that FAs are no longer attainable goals for most writers and most subjects. Is it any wonder that so many of our users do absolutely nothing here but revert vandals and play politics? I don't think it's so crazy to assert that there are exceedingly few people who would rather perform the underappreciated task of referencing every tidbit presented as factual in an article than go on the valiant, nay heroic, quest against the vandal agressors. This latter pursuit being rewarded with praise, badges of recognition, and adminship within three months with sufficient diligence. (see also: WP:ARD)
It may be exaggeration to say so, but I think this particular situation with WP:V dogma potentially harms the "encyclopedia" goal of Wikipedia more than anything a mischeveous teenager with a gay friend and time to burn can possibly accomplish. By setting the standard for what we consider a superb article at a level that makes it utterly frustrating for many people with both the literary ability and topical expertise to write a great encyclopedia article, I think we can quickly turn Wikipedia into nothing but a big bureaucracy and social experiment masquerading as something else.
Ho hom, that was rather rantish. I hope I offered some kind of interesting insight for someone. If not, feel free to ignore these crazed ideas of mine. :) -- mattb @ 2007-02-01T23:48Z
Nicely said (and you know matt, few will give you that). The only part you forgot is that the people "with both the literary ability and topical expertise to write a great encyclopedia article" are being replaced by people who write amazingly tangential fan articles on topics completely (and easily) referenced from the Internet at large—and that the factors you've mentioned play an important role in this shift toward less and less encyclopedic featured articles. Not that many seem concerned about this ongoing development. Process trumps goal — happens in all large systems, maybe. –Outriggr § 02:13, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
There are lots of good FAs being produced, and if my comment read anything like an overall dismissal of current FAs, I didn't intend that. –Outriggr § 02:27, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course. My comments aren't intended to ignore reality or belittle the handful of people who ARE working hard on producing quality, highly-relevant encyclopedic articles. As you said, however, the norm these days seem to include FAs on mostly obscure topics... How useful is extensive "in universe" documentation on fictional topics? How about my favorite FA of recent times, Stephen Colbert at the 2006 White House Correspondents' Association Dinner... I perceive a problem when the "best" Wikipedia has to offer is extensive coverage of a comedian's trip to a correspondants' dinner and everything you could possible (not) want to know about a fictional cartoon species. Not meaning to downplay the efforts of the respective authors of those articles, because you certainly can't expect people to contribute outside their realm of interest and knowledge; plus I'm increasingly of the view that a deletionist POV is simply counter-productive. However, with things the way they currently are, I should expect that we'll see a whole lot more pop culture FAs and very few on topics that one might traditionally use an encyclopedia for. Anyway, I'm not even sure why I keep talking about it... While several people have agreed with my views in the past, a lot more seem to be indifferent or unwilling to try and make the non-trivial changes necessary to curb this trend. Certainly talking about it here won't accomplish anything, but again, I merely seek to provide views that I hope would be useful to someone. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T03:42Z
I'm not convinced that there's a practical problem here. The actual number pop-culture FAs seems small, relative to the total volume going through the process; it's just that when one does show up, people immediately notice. The FAs on more staid topics generally get fairly little attention from the community at large, even though they significantly outnumber the other type.
(Then again, maybe I'm just not noticing it; admittedly, my attention is more focused on the traditional encyclopedic material.) Kirill Lokshin 04:01, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Could be... We're all coming from our own unique perspectives, and I haven't seen any hard statistics on this topic. If someone is interested enough to compile them, I'd be happy to be proved utterly wrong by them... -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T04:14Z
The distinction isn't always clear-cut; does Jaws for instance, count purely as a pop culture article or as encyclopaedic content? At which point do bands stop being "traditionally" encyclopaedic? You may want to look here for discussion that encompassed this issue (overshadowed somewhat by cries of cabalism).
As for making the non-trivial changes to curb this trend, have you got any suggestions? The problem with a volunteer project is that people will tend to work on that which interests them, and that is frequently the less traditionally-encyclopaedic topics. I also think there's slightly too much emphasis on articles being featured; just because an article isn't the "best we have to offer" doesn't mean it isn't very good. Trebor 10:02, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course I agree with your latter assertion, but you have to admit that an FA badge is almost the only recognition you're likely to get for working hard on improving any particular article. Again, compare with the Legendary Vandal Quest I mentioned above.
I actually do have some suggestions in mind, but I'm not sure how practical or feasible they are given our userbase and the mentality of some of the high level decision makers. I wrote/ranted about this before, but the gist of it is that I think there should be much stronger organization of article writing. Something like Wikiprojects, only with a more "official" emphasis and organization in order to try and sustain them (in contrast to what happens to WikiProjects left on their own, which die whenever the most active editor or two disappears). I think that WP:V should somehow be tempered with practicality. If, for example, we could develop strong and officially supported interest groups like the Wikiprojects, their review and stamp of approval may be considered a form of verification. Think of it like academic peer review; if a group of editors who work heavily on a topic and know each other to be relatively competent in the area find that a particular article is in their estimation, accurate, I think that should count for something. Despite what some WP:V dogma pushers seem to believe, this policy (albeit a good one in principle) does nothing to make Wikipedia accurate. It cannot practically prevent a Seigenthaler debacle, only exposure to many eyes can do that. Back around the publication of the well-publicized Nature article comparing the accuracy of Wikipedia and Britannica articles, I was a little surprised that Wikipedia articles might even be nearly as accurate as those in a print encyclopedia, but I quickly reconciled it in my own mind. Regardless of what you may say about the fairness of the results published by Nature (and there is certainly something to be said in this regard), I think you can come to the conclusion that many eyes made those articles accurate, not WP:V. Sure there's background noise from inexperienced or downright incompetent folks, but when a number of people with significant knowledge and experience in an area watch an article, the content tends towards correctness more often than not. The current interpretation of WP:V as regards what constitutes an "excellent article" is, I believe, totally overblown and effectively ignores the very thing that has always given Wikipedia articles some semblance of accuracy: the editors. Let me put it another way, a person who might be considered an expert in their field is fairly likely (given sufficient lucidity of articulation) to be able to produce a complete and correct general encyclopedia article on their topic of interest. This same person is not very likely to be able to easily provide a reference for every assertion that they could make. That's the very embodiment of general knowledge, only very specific knowledge is likely to have mental associations with a discrete source. I suppose this touches upon the idea behind Citizendium, that you must have some concept of experts to avoid the tedium of demanding references for every statement. I think that expecting the same concept from Wikipedia is unreasonable (if it were reasonable, Citizendium wouldn't likely exist), so I don't advocate the acknowledgement of individual experts. However, as I stated above, I think that we could try to apply the principle of "expert opinion" to a group of editors rather than to individuals. In this manner, the process is somewhat self-regulating, that is, the more knowledgable persons in a particular interest group will help drown out the flawed or incomplete views of the less experienced, and in this way, the group as a whole could produce something like an expert opinion.
Obviously, developing such groups requires a high level of organization, and it certainly won't happen if things are left totally to random development (thus my notion of "don't just do whatever"). However, as you can see, my basic ideas aren't entirely trivial to implement, and I'm not even sure if they are in line with some of the fundamental notions of Wikipedia. I'd certainly like to see some sort of firm effort in this regard, but I don't really think that an idea of this scale could possible gain enough momentum to succeed without some kind of endorsement from the higher-ups (and this doesn't seem likely to happen). -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T14:30Z
The "many eyes" approach seems to have worked well for the mathematics articles; there are 12,000 of them, and over 70% have timestamps later than Nov 1, 2006. When I look through a list of unreferenced math articles, it is surprisingly difficult to find articles that are entirely non-notable or original research. CMummert · talk 14:57, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Quite so, and many blatant errors can be picked out by anyone with a little experience with mathematics. Of course, something like a subtle mistake in a proof probably takes a more skilled editor to spot, but there again you have the notion of many eyes. The many eyes concept overarches every other facet, rule, regulation, guideline, and consensus regarding article editing, and I think that it is a sad mistake to put emphasis on citation over the very spirit of Wikipedia. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T15:11Z
And people shouldn't forget that Wikipedia is not paper. The number of pop culture FAs is disproportionate (a function of Wiki demographics, methinks) but this doesn't harm the traditional topics. Marskell 11:14, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Nobody here implied that pop culture articles are in themselves harmful, only that the disproportionate topical coverage of FAs may be partially as a result of the standards making promotion of broad-scoped articles much more difficult. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T14:30Z

Arbitrary break

(reset indent) Interesting points. I'll be interested in watching how Citizendium develops, and whether the idea of "experts" will encourage better quality. I'm yet to be convinced the concept will work as well as they expect, but if it does it may well produce better articles on "traditionally" encyclopaedic topics. Short of changing to a similar system to theirs, I'm not sure what Wikipedia can do to improve its coverage; the fact remains that it's a volunteer project, and volunteers tend to work on that which they're interested in. Trebor 15:20, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

I like the concept of Citizendium, but it's going to suffer heavily from the obvious "second kid on the block" problem. That's primarily why I'd love to see Wikipedia somehow come to terms with the notion of expert opinion, thus my above idea about a peer-review type process. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T15:38Z
Yeah perhaps. It would be interesting to set up some loose classifications for "expert", and see how many we actually have. My feeling is that, out of regular contributors, the number considered "expert" in any field would be fairly low, and obviously that would be a key problem. But the numbers are just guesswork on my part and it would be interesting to see what the reality is. Trebor 15:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, don't get too caught up in the connotations of the word "expert". As I tried to express earlier, we don't need experts, only a handful of people who are competent enough in the subject to spot B.S. Fortunately, for most traditional encyclopedia-scope articles, this doesn't require a bona fide expert (though it certainly helps to have one). For example, one of my areas is semiconductor device physics, design, and processing. I'm not even remotely an expert in any of those fields, but I know enough to tell you whether an encyclopedia-level article on the subject is accurate. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T15:53Z
Completely accurate or just broadly correct. I'd say the actual WP:BOLLOCKS in Wikipedia at any one time is fairly small, going back to the "many eyes" approach. So I'm not sure I'm entirely following your proposal. Are you saying that a group of "experts"' approval means that some general facts don't need to be cited? (I assume you'll agree that specific facts (like quotes or figures) still need a reference.) Because I'm not altogether sure that the effort expended in getting these groups of people together, verifying their "expertise" and then grading articles is any less than finding citations in the first place. Trebor 16:16, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Of course specific figures need a reference, but that's a given since you either found that figure somewhere or made it up (in which case it shouldn't be in an article). I don't think that much effort should be or needs to be expended in confirming individuals' expertise. When you edit a certain group of related articles for a while, it's easy to get a sense of which editors are competent and which are not. Leveraging this fact, tightly knit interest groups should, as my theory goes, be able to provide reasonable confirmation of a related article's correctness. Therefore you aren't relying on the expert view of any person (Citizendium's approach), but are instead engaging the collective view of a group of editors who are familiar with one another's abilities. I hope that makes sense in some way. I'm not entirely sure that it would actually work out in practice, but I do believe that it (or something like it) could be a reasonable attempt to reconcile the somewhat proven "many eyes" method with the need for verifiability. -- mattb @ 2007-02-02T17:26Z
Yes it makes sense, and I'm intrigued by the idea. So how would the confirmation of an article's correctness work? If it seemed accurate and complete, would the group give it a "stamp of approval" (for want of a better phrase) which would go on the article? Trebor 17:31, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm not sure. In the unlikely event that this were ever taken seriously by the higher ups and the masses, I suppose the fine detail would be worked out at that point. It could indeed work by means of a designated group "seal of approval", or it could be integrated with the FAC process. I'd elect for the latter. The real key to this idea's success is that the groups would have to be highly adopted and respected and heavily promoted to new users (and old ones alike). A passive attitude to them wouldn't get us anywhere, and we'd end up with the level of involvement that the WikiProjects generally enjoy.
This might require somewhat a culture change, which may be a good reason why it could never happen. Even simple attempted changes in culture here usually meet with vehement disagreement, and perhaps Wikipedia is beyond the point where it could be organized into a structured system for methodologically producing high quality encyclopedia articles (which is essentially what I advocate; a more sane structure for producing articles, not bureaucracy). I've never been a fan of the laisiez-faire attitude (please excuse my abuse of an economic term) that prevails in Wikipedia culture since it seemingly can only get you so far in the goal to producing something as highly organized as an encyclopedia. However, changing culture is quite near impossible, especially if there isn't a strong will to do so on the part of those who might have the ability. I don't know whether my proposition would require such a culture change or not, but I'd sure like to see it seriously tried out. -- mattb @ 2007-02-03T00:19Z

Curious as to how this discussion relates to FAR? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:35, 2 February 2007 (UTC)

Fair point; this should probably take place elsewhere. Trebor 17:47, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Trebor - with some recent help from you, I'm busy being one of the few reviewers who is actually spending time trying to help those editors who do want to improve their articles at FAR and are actively asking for feedback - this thing popping up on my watchlist is a distraction. Anyone care to actually review some of the articles at featured article review? The Roe v. Wade article has an editor asking for feedback, as do several others. Those who don't want to come to standard need not do so - their choice. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:59, 2 February 2007 (UTC)
If you'd like to move this discussion to another page and continue it there, that would be fine with me. Sorry to bombard your watch list. I suppose this has become slightly tangential, though I think it still has everything to do with FAC and FAR... -- mattb @ 2007-02-03T00:19Z
I think it has plenty to do with FAC, and little to do with FAR. Popular articles at FAC get lots of fan support which makes it easier for them to be promoted, while more technical articles (e.g.; math) get little attention as some reviewers may be intimated by the subject, and may slip through with terrible prose and referencing - so both can slip through the cracks without meeting standards for opposite reasons. The only solution is for reviewers to do a better job at FAC, or not complain about Wiki's "democracy". Meanwhile, here at FAR, we help anyone who wants to keep their star; can't help those who don't. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:25, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Forgive me for saying so, but telling someone that they need to inline cite every third sentence isn't "helpful" in my mind. -- mattb @ 2007-02-03T01:41Z
Can you give me an example from FAR where someone has been told "that they need to inline cite every third sentence"? Thanks, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:58, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Forgive my hyperbole, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that a citation every third sentence is nearly the level of referencing some folks seem to expect (I have seen people come out and explicitly say "one citation per paragraph"). Something like "needs inline cites" is equally useless. Doesn't help the editors, it just sets before them a monumental task without offering any guidance. I laid out my views on application of WP:V earlier, so take it for whatever its worth. I don't mean be confrontational towards anyone here, as my complaint is against what WP:V has evolved into, not people who are just trying to enforce guidelines. Please don't take it personally if I come across as a little cynical on the matter. -- mattb @ 2007-02-03T06:29Z
The level of referencing is one citation for every fact that is likely to be challenged. So depending on the article it might be one citation a paragraph, or one citation a sentence. Given there's no other scheme yet in place, a dearth of inline cites is a valid reason for review. Trebor 10:08, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Which does seem reasonable, but the problem is this application of "likely to be challenged". Someone with absolutely no acquaintance with a topic could potentially challenge every factual statement, and I've seen this play out in FACs under the guise of verifiability. So we're back to my desire to see some recognition of groups of editors' ability to make some general factual statements about subjects that they are highly knowledgable of. I find it ridiculous that I could go to some FAC on a subject I know nothing significant about (say, cellular microbiology) and insist WP:V demands that every factual statement, even those that are totally obvious to someone familiar with the field, be cited just because I'm ignorant on the topic. -- mattb @ 2007-02-03T21:49Z
And, here we are back again at a discussion that belongs elsewhere; e.g., WP:V. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:59, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
There's really nothing outstandingly wrong with WP:V as it stands, merely how it is interpreted by certain people. -- mattb @ 2007-02-04T22:21Z
Full circle again, back to asking for an example relevant to FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:39, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
If you really want a concrete example, look at half the FARs on this page, which exist and are often pushed through solely because of this narrow interpretation of WP:V and WP:REF which holds that an article cannot be featured unless every factual statement is backed up by a citation. How many articles has this process demoted solely because they aren't littered with citations? I realize that this discussion has looped around in a roundabout way, but that's largely because I don't want to be seen as merely complaining without suggesting any kind of alternative solution. I recognize the need for citations and verifiability, but I think the particular method that the FAC/FAR process is advocating is unrealistic and ridiculous. -- mattb @ 2007-02-06T14:06Z
No, I don't need to "look at half the FARs on this page"—I know each one of them quite well; I want a concrete example of an unreasonable request for a citation, backing up your "inline cite (for) every third sentence" statement. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
I already said that statement was hyperbole. In any case, if you don't see the extreme requirements for refs/citations just from what's already on this page, nothing I can link will change your mind, and I'd rather not waste my time trying. We've both been around long enough to make reasonable generalizations, several folks agree with mine, I'm sure several would not. However, I sort of feel as if I'm being patronized just because I'm expressing discontent with the way things are. If you want to brush off my comments, by all means do so. I can't singlehandedly change culture, so the system will stay as is if nobody agrees with me. -- mattb @ 2007-02-06T15:09Z