Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 3

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Featured articles discussion archives:
pre-12/2003 and renaming poll • Origins dispute • up to January 1, 2005 • up to January 1, 2006 • up to May 1, 2006 • up to Aug 7, 2006 • up to January 31, 2007 • up to August 23, 2007 • up to September 19, 2007 • up to April 10, 2008
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

Featured Articles

copied from [1]

Currently there is no direct way of knowing if an article I'm reading is a top notch Featured Article. To know if it is I have to check out its talk page, a waste of time. I propose we keep a small star (like the barnstar) or symbol on the top right hand corner of an article, so that a reader may get an instant knowledge that the mentioned article is the crème de la crème of Wikipedia. Nichalp 19:26, Jan 2, 2005 (UTC)

Good idea. Maurreen 00:52, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I also think it's a good idea. It would certainly more useful than, say, {{stub}} — after all, it's very obvious to a reader when an article is a stub, but it's not always so obvious how thoroughly an article has been reviewed. The Featured Article process is our only real system for identifying and vetting high-quality articles, and I think it would be sensible to convey the results of this process to readers directly, rather than hide it away on a Talk: page. — Matt Crypto 01:49, 3 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It always struck me as odd that the featured Article (candidate) notice was on the talk page, where very few people see it. I would wholeheartedly support the FA & FAC messages being addd to the top of the article page directly. Same for featured images -- Chris 73 Talk 03:31, Jan 3, 2005 (UTC)
Hmm, — Matt Crypto makes an interesting point -- the "Featured Article" process is a current Wikipedia process for vetting high-quality articles. I wonder if the "featured article" process could be extended/expanded/whatever to deal with the "how can I trust Wikipedia" issue. It's just a thought..! -- Dwheeler 05:46, 2005 Jan 4 (UTC)
I think this is a great idea. It might take a bit of work to get it ready, but I reckon it would make maintenance of FA easier. It would also make finding articles suitable for WP:FARC easier. Smoddy | Talk 14:54, 4 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This has been discussed before at Wikipedia talk:Featured articles and Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/archive1#Brilliant_prose. One of the oft-cited reasons seems to do with no having self-references in Wikipedia. Evil Monkey → Talk 08:06, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
A "no self-references" argument doesn't seem very strong here; for one, it would be implemented as a Template, making it easier for downstream users to avoid any reference to Wikipedia. Moreover, we have plenty of messages that we're quite happy to slap on articles whenever there's a defect in it, for example, {{wrongtitle}}, {{NPOV}} etc — and even informative messages like {{wikiquote}}.
One argument I've heard before which is perhaps more persuasive is that we don't want to litter up articles with too much cruft and extraneous meta-data. While a full-sized {{featured}} box might be too intrusive, perhaps we could whip up a non-intrusive, more subtle marker of some sort. Any ideas? — Matt Crypto 09:55, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This idea has been discussed and rejected before. In general I am strongly opposed to cluttering articles with templates, but in this case as long as it is something small and discrete (i.e. not this) I think this would be a good idea. Such a template would be of use to readers, which is the requirement for adding something to the article namespace. My ideal would be to have a star, or some other symbol, placed in the white space on the top right of featured articles, with the star linking to featured articles. Unlike a template, however, this more subtle marker would require work by a developer. - SimonP 18:04, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
Templates mar the beauty of a FA which has passed the rigours it is subjected to. A small symbol like a star which floats left can certainly do the trick without eating up too much space. Nichalp 19:08, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
Well we could put FAs into a category:Featured Articles, and perhaps go one step further and replace the FA category name with a smaller version of one of Alexandre Van de Sande stars in the category block at the bottom of the page. -- Solipsist 19:50, 5 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Actually they are already categorised though by their talk pages in Category:Wikipedia featured articles. Evil Monkey → Talk 20:15, Jan 5, 2005 (UTC)
I want the reader to know that the article in question is a quality article as soon as the page loads - right there on top; not after he has finished reading (notice at the bottom). Nichalp 20:43, Jan 6, 2005 (UTC)
See this is what I mean. (Note the article in question is not a FA. I concocted the image with a random page with a barnstar). Nichalp 19:23, Jan 20, 2005 (UTC)
Image:Featurednichalp.png


Sorry I missed this on the Village Pump, but nobody seems to have pointed out that readers don't know that an article is reliable and high-quality just because it was once voted a featured article. They only know that it was those things at the time of the vote. Anything could have happened to it afterwards, for instance Sneaky Vandalism. (And, I don't like to say this, but there might be kids out there who would be more excited by the idea of inserting Sneaky Vandalism into an article if it was specially marked as being reliable.) Marking FA articles with a star of excellence is an instinctively pleasing idea, and would certainly be a sop to author pride; but it'll hardly speak to the "how can I trust Wikipedia" issue unless articles are protected when they become featured. And that is not the wiki way.--Bishonen | Talk 23:18, 20 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Speaking of protecting featured articles, has anyone considered protecting them for the day they're on the main page? Bernard Williams was up yesterday (thank you, Raul!), and what a hectic day it was. It was vandalized several times, I would guess by casual passers-by: a fan website for Mel Gibson was inserted; Williams' wife was called the bearded lady; sections were deleted, and so on. I didn't realize it was on the main page until I started to wonder why there was a sudden interest in moral philosophy from people who appeared barely able to spell. :-) SlimVirgin 01:23, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
Slim, the issue is brought up now and then. I paste in a few comments from the current WP:FAC discussion of Morality and legality of abortion:
I think it would be great if all main page articles were protected for their day of glory, and a couple or days afterwards while they are still mentioned on the front page. Serious "would be" editors can always make comment on the talk page or return later. Giano 10:05, 17 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I agree. The level of vandalism on Main page features is unacceptable and unnecessary. Filiocht 12:46, Jan 17, 2005 (UTC)
Also agree, its been a long time since I've seen a FA that was improved much while on the main page. FA's are simply much better now. - Taxman 13:04, Jan 18, 2005 (UTC)
I'm on the fence about it myself. Restoration comedy got vandalized too, but I can certainly see the point of not having them protected: to have passers-by click on the featured article and then discover that they can edit it has to be an excellent way of drawing people into a first-time editing experience, which, even if it doesn't improve the article of the day any, may be the beginning of a contributing career. Conversely, finding that "This article is protected" would be a chilly and unwelcoming first encounter. (Unrelated P.S.: Some people do know more about philosophy than about spelling, though perhaps your visitors weren't in that category. ;-).) --Bishonen | Talk 04:38, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)

No no no, you all miss the point. The featured article is supposed to exemplify all that makes wikipedia great, and this includes being editable by our viewers. →Raul654 04:48, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)

? You figure I missed that point? I was trying to express it. Ah, well, back to the drawing-board.--Bishonen | Talk 18:58, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
This may well be what makes Wikipedia great, but it is also what makes it unsustainable. The refusal ever to freeze any article in a 'complete' state means that open-ended editing tends towards article degredation to exactly the same extent as it brings about article improvement. It is frankly dispiriting to put a lot of time and effort into researching and writing (and/or rewriting) articles only to find that they get hit with random vandalism, POV pushers and well-intended 'improvements' just as much as they benefit from genuine improvements. If the long-awaited commercial CD version ever actually hits the streets with only those articles that are well-written, appropriately illustrated, NPOV and accurate, it will be the smallest encyclopaedia in the history of the genre. Filiocht 11:55, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
Raul, I'd say protecting an FA for one day wouldn't violate the spirit of Wikipedia. It looks a bit odd to say 'here's an article representing the best of Wikipedia" on the main page, then have half the text missing and comments about pigs in the intro, as dear old Bernard experienced. I agree, though, that protection for any longer would be difficult, partly because of the Wiki-spirit violation, but also in part because protecting it is saying "this can't get any better," which is never going to be true. It's the dynamic nature of Wikipedia articles that gives us a vibrancy that the Encyclopedia Britannica can only dream of. I agree with Filiocht that it's depressing to put a lot of work into an article and have people come along and trash it. One the other hand, it reminds us that we don't own the articles that we write. Once we press "save" after our edits, the author dies.
Bishonen, your point about philosophers and spelling is well taken; even as I was writing that sentence, I had the thought: "Hang on, I know a lot of philosophers who can't . . . "  :-) SlimVirgin 17:57, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
I would dispute the fact that FAs are more harmed than helped by being on the Main page. In my experience, it has been the reverse. Being on the Main page, focuses attention, editorial and otherwise, on that article. The main effect of which is, essentially, just to "speed up" the editorial process. I don't see why this should be a problem. On the contrary, this seems like a good thing to me. As Filiocht points out, an article may, theoretically, reach a point where it is nearly perfect, and where any given change is more likely to make it worse not better — however for such an article it may be just as unlikely that anyone would want to change it, or if they did, that any such change would "stick". And by the way, I don't think that many of our FAs are anywhere near that point. Paul August ☎ 20:10, Jan 21, 2005 (UTC)
I think it is an undeniable fact that if there were no reversions by the people who care about a page (usually those who researched, helped and copyedited them) after 24 hours on the main page an article would not be a creditable featured article at all; so how does that help Wikipedia.? These articles (representing the best work of the best of Wiki editors) just need to be protected while they are very high profile, interested editors with a worthwhile contribution will always pass comment on the talk page or return later. If this project is not prepared to protect it's most dedicated editors' work, while using it as an advert, for just 24 hours then it is doomed. Giano 22:30, 21 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Yes, if there were no reversions, then the articles might get worse, but there are reversions, so I don't understand your point. Paul August ☎ 03:38, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
The point is:Why should people have to spend days standing guard over a page they have already completed to the best of their ability, just in order to maintain that page at an acceptable level. Dedicated editors who spend ages researching and writing a page will eventually become tired of seeing their work sabotaged and leave. Giano 08:23, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The claim that articles come back from the main page worse than when they started is total nonsense. Look at the before and after diffs for the last 3 feautred articles on the main page - 1, 2, 3. Now, tell me with a straight face that they are worse after being on the main page than they were before. I don't think you can. →Raul654 20:49, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
OK Raul I take your point. Now lets take a random 10 pages that have been on the main page and take out all the reversions that occurred on the "Main Page" day. How good do the pages look now? - answer with a straight face please. Giano 22:31, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Back to my suggestion> I wanted to build a consensus but its deviated to protecting the FA. Nichalp 20:09, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

To respond to your original point - in general, metadata (such as the featured tag) should be kept seperate from the articles. We do make temporary exceptions such as VFD tagging, but permanent metadata in articles is just a bad idea. That's what talk pages are for. →Raul654 20:40, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)
Its not necessary to use metadata to FA's. The star could be hardwired into the PHP code so that only sysops may display the status (like how protection works). This would give the article the visibility that I am advocating. Nichalp 09:56, Jan 23, 2005 (UTC)

Somewhere else I saw a simalar discussion. It mentioned that other wikipedias put a small star at the top of the article to show that it is a featured article. They put a star just like the other wikipedias on the Diamond page as an example. Tarret 14:26, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Two cents on the world AIDS day

What about making "today's article" about certain things, i.e. AIDS, UN, Homosexuality and so on, fall on it's official day?

They'd have to become features articles first, and for that someone needs to volunteer to write good versions of the articles. In any case, WP is generally reluctant to cover too many anniversaries or holidays on "Today's Featured Article" as they restrict the number of other articles that get to be showcased on the Main Page. —Cuivienen (Return) 04:24, 28 January 2006 (UTC)
In the case of our homosexuality article, it'd probably take an act of divine intervention -- it's been one of the crappiest articles on wikipedia for as long as I can remember. Raul654 04:28, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Minor suggestion

Can I suggest that the 'Physics and astrophysics' heading be changed to 'Physics and astronomy'? There's not always a clear cut difference between the two terms, but all the astro-related articles in here look more like astronomy than astrophysics to me. Also, to the layman, astrophysics may sound somewhat daunting and technical - astronomy sounds more approachable. Worldtraveller 20:32, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. I have made the suggested change. →Raul654 20:41, Jan 22, 2005 (UTC)

The medal

Wikimedal

The Polish and French Wikipedia use the Wikimedal - a more Wikipedish puzzle-piece medal logo for the FA. Maybe we could use it also here instead of the star? Or do you like the star better? Ausir

I like what we have already! - Ta bu shi da yu 04:26, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Me too! — mark ✎ 00:06, 5 Feb 2005 (UTC)
  • Support I support the Wikimedal -- it just says "wikipedia."Zantastik 07:01, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Why not paste this to Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals? – ClockworkSoul 14:20, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)
This has been pasted there, I will provide the link soon to the debate. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 19:04, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

The award has been accepted, and it can be seen at Wikipedia:Barnstars_on_Wikipedia#The_Featured_Article_Medal. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 2 July 2005 16:09 (UTC)

Category counts

I want some way to see at a glance how large each category of articles is. And also some automated way to find the number of FAs.

Visiting the FA template gives a slightly inflated view of the total number, b/c some non-article pages have that template tag. Counting up to 500 every few weeks is a pain. If everyone who adds to or subtracts from this page updates the count, there will still be occasional errors... the one advantage to having per-section counts is that it is easier to check that each section's count is correct when adding to it.

I'd love to see a clever software solution to this - for isntance, a way to generate a number for a[n invisible] numbered list which shows up in mouseover text. +sj + 07:52, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article of the day?

Hey what happened to the article of the day today? 20 minutes ago it was about some Argentine book however now it is about Witold Pilecki... Josquius

The featured article changes every day at 00:00 UTC (7 pm US eastern time). The current featured article, starting at 00:00 UTC last night, is Witold Pilecki. The book you are talking about (Tlon Uqbar Orbis Tertius) was yesterday's featured article. If you saw yesterday's featured article after 00:00, then it was probably a result of caching issues. →Raul654 18:29, Jan 24, 2005 (UTC)
That is a strange time zone to use for the central time...hmm...Anyway I'm in England here so it was really only around noon US eastern time yet it changed --Josquius 22:17, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)
UTC (Coordinated Universal Time, formerly known as Greenwich Mean Time) is a fairly standard time to coordinate things by. →Raul654 07:17, Feb 4, 2005 (UTC)

Main page featured article warning request

Hi! Please see: Wikipedia talk:Tomorrow's featured article#Current main page featured article warning. Thanks. Hyacinth 03:32, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Worth it to have a main page template?

Is it worth it to have a template like the FA templates that says something like: "This article was 'today's featured article' on XXX", or is the bolding of articles in the list of featured articles enough? It would be good for articles that are defeatured, since being "today's featured article" can never be taken away. – flamurai (t) 23:44, Mar 13, 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like instruction creep to me. →Raul654 00:54, Mar 14, 2005 (UTC)

What happened to Concorde (aeroplane)?

I would have sworn that Concorde (aeroplane) has been a featured article in the past, but I can't find any evidence of this. Was it? If it never has been then I suppose I'll have to nominate it. Tempshill 06:59, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, it never was. →Raul654 07:28, Mar 26, 2005 (UTC)

Bath

Bath under Geography_and_places was added on 9 April. When was it nominated? I could not find it in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log. Also see Wikipedia:Peer review/Bath/archive1 from February. Petersam 21:54, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Bath – All featured article candidate discussion is linked to from the talk page of the article. violet/riga (t) 22:00, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Looking further into it, Rad Racer promoted it but didn't place it into the log. I've added it now. violet/riga (t) 22:04, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Spoken tags removed

I've gone ahead and removed the spoken tags from this article. They are irrelavant to this listing, so I've gone ahead and removed them. →Raul654 02:46, Apr 17, 2005 (UTC)

Would you care to elaborate on why you think they are "irrelevant"? Once about half of the featured articles have been spoken, it will be extremely useful to have the icons in order to decide which one to record next. This is why I added them, and hence I will add them back because I think you have not given any real reasoning why you have removed them. — Timwi 02:54, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Better organisation

With over 600 features articles, I think that this page is getting a bit too messy. Why don't you make a new hierachy or organisation? 500LL 09:55, Jun 3, 2005 (UTC)

"Vampire" discussion

How come that the discussion leading to the featured article status of Vampire is not archived anywhere? It is nowhere to be found on the featured article candidates index or on the sub pages of the featured articles log, and those go back as far as "October 2003 and before".

I have posted this question on talk:Vampire as well. Salleman 06:21, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

If memory serves, it is a hold-over from the brilliant prose days (this list used to be called 'Brilliant Prose', and you could just add articles there as you pleased with no voting). →Raul654 07:05, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
This is something of a misrepresentation. In the very early days, there was no voting, but the candidacy procedure now known as WP:FAC did, in fact start during the Brilliant prose days. In late 2003, early 2004, Muriel Victoria had the idea of running all the older BP articles through a voting process, the results of which can be seen at Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - History and religion, Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - Science, Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - People and culture and Wikipedia:Refreshing brilliant prose - Others. The BP candidate discussion of Vampire can be found here and reflects the much smaller community that existed on wikipedia 19 months ago.
While it has become increasingly the done thing to sneer at BP on these pages, it must be acknowledged that it was a genuine attempt to drive higher standards on Wikipedia and that it led directly to the creation of our much-beloved FA process. Filiocht | Blarneyman 08:55, Jun 10, 2005 (UTC)
An exhaustive explanation! Thank you so much! I'm doing most of my work on mythology and folklore articles, and the vampire was the only legendary creature with a featured article. Sadly, this doesn't make me any wiser. ☹ Salleman 15:22, 10 Jun 2005 (UTC)

New Category

I have a question: I wish to create a category of FA's called "Awards and Decorations." I know there are some decorations stuck under the military and war section (Medal of Honor), chivilary (Order of the Bath) and culture and society (Hero of Belarus). I was wondering if anyone would have any problems with that? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 19:07, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I think that would be a good idea now that the Order of Canada is also featured. Falphin 02:45, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • I created it. I just wanted to let folks know I did it before I changed anything. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 05:16, 27 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Grammar

User:Kmill changed:

That means roughly 1 in 940 articles is listed here.

to

That means roughly 1 in 940 articles are listed here.

But the first one was correct, wasn't it? Joe D (t) 29 June 2005 20:21 (UTC)

Yep. The number 1 is singular, thus it should be "is listed here." BrianSmithson 5 July 2005 12:19 (UTC)
I disagree. Imagine if it said "Roughly 1% of articles is listed here." "One percent" looks singular, but it's actuall a fraction (1/100), so it's plural. The phrase "1 in 940" is also a fraction. Compare "One half are listed." It's a singular half, sort of, but we use plural for ratios and fractions. – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 19:48, August 5, 2005 (UTC)
I guess if we really had only 940 articles and one was featured the singular would be correct, but we have lots of 940 articles and thus lots of featured articles. Perhaps it would be best to change this sentence to something unambiguously plural (or singular). "That means that for every 940 articles one is listed here." --MarSch 09:47, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Vanilla Ninja

Why was the FAC Vanilla Ninja promoted despite two objections as to the articles overall quality? I'm somewhat distraught by the fact that two such reasonable (and very basic) objections are stubbornly argued against and ultimately ignored instead of simply being amended. Does this have anything to do with the fact that the band isn't extremely renowned? Would Backstreet Boys or Beastie Boys be treated in the same fashion? Do we have lower standards for our music articles?Peter Isotalo July 2, 2005 09:18 (UTC)

I think its a matter of consensus. As the community made it a FA, it is valid for the main page, regardless of whether the US knows of them or not. Its nothing to do with how well known they are. The community decided the two objections weren't sufficiently important to prevent it becoming a FA, and Raul654 had the final say. He decided, again, that the objections had either been met or did not absolutely need to be.
The objections given were that theres too much information on music videos there, and that theres not enough discussion on their music. Additions (albeit small) were made for the second one. The objections were met. The first objections were deemed, by the community, to not be enough to deny the article FA status. Once articles become featured, they are treated neutrally in selection for a main page appearance. I find your claims of musical notability insufficiently backed up. Hedley 2 July 2005 13:27 (UTC)
I'm very sad to see that you insist on using rhetorical feints such as implying that I'm opposed because of Vanilla Ninja's lacking noteriety. I have never claimed it as a reason to not feature the article and it degrades us both when you try to state otherwise. I'm actually not sure I've seen anyone opposing the article due to obscurity. What a few editors have stated, including me, is that very obscure (sometimes even unacceptably crufty) topics are heavily favored over the coverage of very general topics. I don't think this has anything to do with a sudden rush to combat systemic bias, but rather that Wikipedians seem to have a hard time writing FAs about more general topics like music, physics or geography. There can't possibly be any lack of knowledgable editors, yet none of these three major articles seem to have been even considered as FACs.
I would really like some outside comments on this and I would certainly like to hear why Raul ignored no fewer than three very amendable objections. Both mine and Monicasdude's objections seem to have been either completely ignored or very unsatisfyingly amended, and why someone couldn't be bothered with creating five stubs for the individual bandmembers as per Themanwithoutapast's objection is completely beyond me.
Peter Isotalo July 2, 2005 16:00 (UTC)
There were ten supports to four objections, which is a rough consensus. One objection was regarding refereces and the objector did not reply to the reasoning given. One objection (yours) was a matter of opinion regarding content, and that is not really a big reason for it not to be featured. One is regarding links to band members which is not a criteria for being featured (though I agree that they should be present). The final one is mainly about a description of the musical style, which is a fair comment but, since so many others are supporting it, I think it's just a minor point (which should be fixed). violet/riga (t) 2 July 2005 16:15 (UTC)
Further more, linking to band member articles would be a self-references (Maarja Kivi et al redirect to the article), and I amended the minor point is a description of musical style. Hedley 3 July 2005 00:26 (UTC)
Since the article has now been nominated for FAC removal, I would like to point out that it's a bit uncouth to speak of "rough consensus" concerning an FAC, since it's been very clearly stated that all actionable objections have to be dealt with, not that a half-assed consensus should be reached. If an FAC can't go by without the nominators and supporters respecting slightly differing opinions on article quality, then why should we call it "the best of Wikipedia"? /Peter Isotalo 10:56, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Music heading

I've added sub-categories to the music section. I think it improves organisation, and finding the articles users are looking for. More populated categories could maybe do this also. Hedley 3 July 2005 00:34 (UTC)

I've removed this because, to be frank, I don't want subsections here. Some things are hard enough to categorize without further complicating it by adding subcats. →Raul654 July 3, 2005 01:00 (UTC)
I'm doing most of the FA work on no:, and it isn't at all hard to use subsections. They also make the page cleaner. Frankly, this FA page is a mess. 130.67.41.231 18:14, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Contested Featured Article

I was looking through the featured articles: war section and stopped off on the Attack on Pearl Harbor page, which has a featured article tag but no featured article vote page. A little digging into the history turned up a user who simply tagged the article as featured. I was under the impression they had to go through the FAC process. What do I do about this? TomStar81 5 July 2005 01:45 (UTC)

Attack on Pearl Harbor/Archive01 was also tagged with the Featured article status. Well, what I can suggest is put it through the FAC process, but I am not speaking for Wiki-policy. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 5 July 2005 01:48 (UTC)
The oldest featured articles are hold overs from a time when we didn't have a FAC process (the "brilliant prose" days), and that is one of them. When we switched over to the mechanism we have today, we did a per-article vote and weeded out most of them (but not this one). →Raul654 July 5, 2005 01:50 (UTC)
(In short, it's fine the way it is) →Raul654 July 5, 2005 01:50 (UTC)
Oh, ok. Is there a list of articles that fit the above criteria? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 5 July 2005 02:01 (UTC)
Try this old version →Raul654 July 5, 2005 03:17 (UTC)
Thanks. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 5 July 2005 03:54 (UTC)
Ah - as Raul654 says, this was one of the former Brilliant prose articles that became Featured articles in March 2004. The vote should be recorded somewhere, but I can't find it right now (in my defence, it was a while before my time).
mav went through, adding {{featured}} to the relevant articles, on 15 March 2004. Standards have moved one somewhat since then; these articles come up fairly regularly on Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates. ----

Additional Criterion

What do people think of the idea that featured articles should be interesting to a wide audience? Superm401 | Talk

No. If that is the case, then some FA's we have now will fail that new criteria, especially if it focuses on areas/subjects/nations that few give a darn about. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 20:56, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
I doesn't seem very realistic to include such criteria even if certainly like it. We'de just wind up with FAs that are most concerned with history (especially WW II), geography and Star Trek because of the ususal overrepresentation in the editor community.
I think you're misunderstanding me. I'm not saying that the articles should be of interest to many editors on Wikipedia, or even readers of Wikipedia. I'm saying they should be of interest to a wide segment of the general population. I understand that this is difficult to determine, but I don't see this as a problem, because many of the criteria are already subjective.Superm401 | Talk 16:16, July 10, 2005 (UTC)
I think we should try to encourage people to concentrate on higher-level articles, though. If an FAC about a pretty obscure aspect of a more general topic appears, it would be prudent to check the higher level articles first. If it's pure crap, I would recommend not supporting the article. That should be taken literally by the way. Not supporting rather than actually objecting. It's not like we have a shortage of FACs overall...
Peter Isotalo 13:47, 10 July 2005 (UTC)

No, because (A) as I have previously said, the philosophy for the featured articles is (and always has been) that any VFD-surviable articles can be featured. Furthermore, (B) this is a horrible idea because it's just begging for trouble. What people find interesting is extremely subjective, and varies greatly from person to person. Making it a criteria just begs for inactionable objections to subject content. →Raul654 23:26, July 10, 2005 (UTC)

I know that's the philosophy. I'm asking whether the philosophy should change. What you are giving me is a status quo argument. If there's a valid inactionable objection, that just means the article shouldn't be featured. Not every good article needs to be, in my opinion. Superm401 | Talk 04:12, July 14, 2005 (UTC)
I agree with Raul here. One thing I like about FA is that it is a motivation to make good articles really great. If the philosophy changes, then there would be no motivation to make articles on obscure topics really great. (I loved AYBABTU anyway). I think the "if it survives Vfd, it can be an FA" rule should be set in stone. Borisblue 11:42, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Featured Article in no category

There have been some notable deletions on the featured Cold fusion article, such as its removal from all categories. This should probably be remedied, although User:Noren has been re-deleting my attempted reversions. --brian0918™ 20:20, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

There should be a category called Featured Articles, stick the articles in there. Though, what categories should this article be in? Zscout370 (Sound Off) 22:38, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
There is a category for featured article (Category:Wikipedia featured articles) -- it's part of the {{featured}} template and is attached to the talk pages of all featured articles. →Raul654 22:40, July 11, 2005 (UTC)
I added it to Category:Nuclear physics. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 22:58, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
To my mind, Brian0918 began this process by removing Category:pseudoscience and Category:pathological science. There had been a heated discussion of categories months ago on Talk:Cold_fusion, resulting in what I understood to be an compromise agreement that including both these two, plus Category:protoscience and Category:nuclear fusion, added up to a reasonable NPOV portrayal of the topic within the category section. I do not believe that including the credulous protoscience category while removing the more skeptical pseudoscience and pathological science categories would be NPOV. As such a compromise now appears impossible, I think the correct course of action is to exclude all of those in accordance to Wikipedia guidelines. --Noren 18:17, 12 July 2005 (UTC)

Novel (to me) vandalism from FA

Back on June 16, the Book of Kells was on the main page, and got its fair share of vandalism, as I expected. However almost all of it was caught quickly and dealt with. Yesterday one piece of vandalism on that day was brought to my attention that had not been dealt with. The article had a red link to Abbey of Kells. An anon editor followed that link and wrote an article claiming that "Abbey of Kells" was an early 20th century baseball player. It was actually somewhat clever. I put the thing on VfD, Capitalistroadster saved it by writing a new article. I'm taking this as a warning to put all red-links from an up-coming main page FA that I am concerned with on my watch list. Dsmdgold 14:50, July 12, 2005 (UTC)

Cute, although it's definitetly not the first time we've had someone write patent nonsense disguised as a legit article. It happens. There's not really a whole lot we can do to prevent it while keeping wikipedia openly editable. →Raul654 15:35, July 12, 2005 (UTC)
Yes. But, whenever we decide to nominate and article for FAC from India Collaboration of the week, we take care that all redlinks are inked with atleast oneline stubs. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 08:50, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia_talk:Summary_style#templates_to_make_summary_style_explicit

Please take a look. --MarSch 10:43, 16 July 2005 (UTC)

I could still use some input --MarSch 15:30, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

Featured articles in other languages

Please take a look at Wikipedia:Featured articles in other languages (WP:FAOL). It is a project aimed at better highlighting the excellent featured articles in other languages and showing where the English versions are lacking. It's currently at a discussion stage, so please feel free to make some comments on the talk page. violet/riga (t) 17:33, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

Computer & video game featured articles

We've been keeping track of computer & video game featured articles. These are found on this page mainly under the Sports and games section. Would it be ok to place a See also link in that section? If nobody objects I'll add the link in a few days. Jacoplane 12:12, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

No, it's not OK. I apologize for not seeing this comment earlier, but Quadell's comment below made me miss it. This is not a page for advertising wikiprojects. →Raul654 21:58, August 10, 2005 (UTC)
Ok fine, if you had replied earlier I wouldn't have added it. thanks for answering anyway. Jacoplane 22:48, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Why not? One neat advert per section could work well. Pcb21| Pete 07:42, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

RSS feed?

Is there any way to get an RSS feed set up for Wikipedia featured articles? Or articles as they're featured on the main page? – Quadell (talk) (sleuth) 19:39, August 5, 2005 (UTC)

Featured article date (archived from village pump)

(Moved here from village pump archive and inserted in date order Hiding talk 20:20, 30 August 2005 (UTC))

We surely have (too) many lists already but I think that this one would be useful:

  1. To provide an index of our best stuff,
  2. To provide the date of featured publication (to allow comparison of then vs now).

Lacking a list (scratch #1) could we at least provide within the featured template the date of featured publication. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to you comments. hydnjo talk 23:07, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured articles does not count? --cesarb 00:02, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Oops! Yes of course, it was so obvious that I ... Well anyway what does anyone think about a date stamp in the featured template? Again, thanks for your comments. hydnjo talk 02:43, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
Strike previous comments by myself. hydnjo talk 00:08, 12 August 2005 (UTC)
Probably a good idea. Articles change over time, so it would be worth checking some that got FA status a while back to see if they still qualify. it would also make it easier to see which one have been FA for a long while but still haven't made the front page. Grutness...wha? 04:50, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
What needs to be done to make this actually happen? I dare not mess with the template. ;-) hydnjo talk 18:01, 10 August 2005 (UTC)
  • I have added the Main page publication date to the talk page of the featured articles of the last few days. Please take a look and comment. Thank you, hydnjo talk 03:48, 13 August 2005 (UTC)
  • OK then, thanks for your comments and encouragement (I guess).  :-( hydnjo talk 01:12, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Strike prior stupid comments suggestion by myself. hydnjo talk 02:38, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
Looks good, although it's almost certainly better done using templates. Unfortunately, I don't have the skill to come up with one that would do the trick. Grutness...wha? 01:46, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
  • Neither do I. Using any of the existing templates (eg:{{Now}}), etc. would be corrupted by an edit. So, until some kind soul steps in, I'll just do it manually.  ;-( hydnjo talk 02:47, 16 August 2005 (UTC)
I'm not sure this is relevant, but 5 ~'s (like signing, but one more) expand to the current date. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:32, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
The problem with 5 ~'s is that it includes the time of day with the date which would not be appropriate for the Main page FA date. Also. the problem with using something like {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTYEAR}} as parameters within the {{Featured}} template is that the date would be volatile (vandal blanking and reverting would result in displaying the wrong date - I think). I just don't know how to make the initial date "stick" so I'm adding it manually for now. hydnjo talk 17:32, 16 August 2005 (UTC)

Chronological listing?

Is there any article with a chronological listing of the featured articles? The recent featured articles are mentioned in the front page, but if someone wants to know what he or she missed, this would be helpful. Blueaster 19:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)

There's a promotion log here - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log →Raul654 20:01, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
That's not very user friendly.I myself find it hard to see the additions.It would be a great addition for FA's.

We should Patrol Wikilinks on Featured articles more vigilantly

For instance, I'm currently doing the slow process of reviewing every link in Tasmanian Devil and checking to make sure it's not a disambig or redirect (I am using some automated methods) but anyway...

Right now, I've found six redirect/disambiguation wikilinks about a little more than halfway down the article. This number is unacceptable for Featured Articles. [/sarcasm] It's a really slow and arduous process... we really need a bot or something for this. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 20:24, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

What's the problem with linking to redirects? Pcb21| Pete 21:59, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
In the ideal world, no wikilinks would point to redirects: they would all go to the right place. Pragmatically, they make things a lot easier for someone who just moved a page: direct links to the article won't be double-redirects (as opposed to links to redirects: they will be double redirected and must be fixed). But most importantly, it takes the reader to the right place. Not everyone knows that they're viewing a redirect. They might link to the redirect's URL, and that's just plain bad for pagerank. We have the ability to make links point to the right place on Wikipedia: let's exercise it. — Ambush Commander(Talk) 22:24, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

More stylized

Check the French featured articles fr:Wikipédia:Articles de qualité, it's more stylized, with icons, and with a good organization of articles by topic (check also the translated version of the same page to english. shouldn't we apply the same (with some modifications) to the featured article page? CG 08:07, August 12, 2005 (UTC)

But wouldn't that break the TOC? — Ambush Commander(Talk) 15:39, August 12, 2005 (UTC)
I agree that it looks very good and some aspects of it could be brought over here, especially considering that this page is linked to from the Main Page. violet/riga (t) 16:00, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

How about something like Wikipedia:Featured articles/redesign? violet/riga (t) 16:58, 12 August 2005 (UTC)

There has been many redisign pages for the FA. But every time it seems that discussions freeze and no change are applied. The Wikipedia:Featured articles/redesign is nice, but I prefered a lot the French version of the FA page. It's not the color of the page that I'm focusing on, but the categories of FAs that should be more complex, for example, "Geography and Places" should be split into "Countries", "Cities"...
I'm proposing that the first step would be that every user posts a redisign for the FA page, and the second is to make a survey on what new design to choose. CG 10:34, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
That's not so much a new style but a new sectioning system. We're bound to have a different problem to the French wiki since we have far more featured articles. Raul has been against subsections (I believe) and, while I too believe that the categories might be revised I don't think we should have such narrow categories. Perhaps we should use the core categories (shown on the Main Page) as the top level section and then subsection them after that, but the problem there is that many of the articles could appear in more than one of them. violet/riga (t) 11:26, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
How is an article being in more than one category on the featured article page a problem? We already do it for the category pages. Scott Ritchie 20:31, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
Um, not only would it look stupid having the same article listed on this page more than one (lists != categories), but it would make doing a count particularly hard. →Raul654 20:33, August 14, 2005 (UTC)
Could you give me an example? CG 09:59, August 15, 2005 (UTC)
Attila the Hun is currently under History. That article could also appear under a Royalty section. violet/riga (t) 10:03, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
OK for now, but when the FA will reach over 1000 articles, creating more sections should be necessary. CG 14:43, August 16, 2005 (UTC)
Creating more sections will only exarcerbate the problem, making this page longer and adding potentially section into which a single article can fit. What we have now is fairly good, with little redundancy between the various sections. →Raul654 21:58, August 22, 2005 (UTC)

WikiProject:Featured Article Drive

FAD, haha, get it? :D

Anyway, it's been made. Anyone interested in joining? The current effort is The Godfather. -- A Link to the Past 16:08, August 13, 2005 (UTC)

FAs without an FAC page

How can there be articles that are on the FA page that seem to have not FAC page? For instance I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand (Talk:I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand) has a red link for the page Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/I_Want_to_Hold_Your_Hand? So does Ralph_Yarborough. Is this because these articles were made FAs before there was an FAC process? Semiconscious (talk · home) 05:54, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

There are a very small number of hold overs from the brilliant prose days that never went through the FAC, however, that article is not one of them. I checked the archive, and sure enough, it was there - Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/I Want To Hold Your Hand (notice the capitalized T in 'to' is different than the article title) →Raul654 05:57, August 22, 2005 (UTC)
On the other hand, I believe Ralph Yarborough is one of those brilliant prose holdovers I mentioned. →Raul654 06:01, August 22, 2005

(UTC)

I created the redirect. This is a general problem when articles that have been through WP:FAC, WP:FARC, WP:PR, etc, are renamed. -- ALoan (Talk) 10:06, 22 August 2005 (UTC)
  • That makes sense. Thanks for getting back to me on this; I noticed this last night and thought it was curious. Cheers! Semiconscious (talk · home) 17:52, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

templates

How about making a template of each section of featured articles. It would allow for easy inclusion of relevant FAs into things like wikiproject pages and user pages. --MarSch 15:37, 22 August 2005 (UTC)

I have templatized the math FAs. How do you like it?--MarSch 16:02, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Computer and video games section

I think there are enough CVG articles to split it off (this is counting the NES and Commodore 64). Comments? - A Link to the Past (talk) 07:19, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

There are already two seperate sections for computing and games. I don't see how a third overlapping section helps. →Raul654 07:27, August 23, 2005 (UTC)
Move Commodore 64 and NES to this new section then. - A Link to the Past (talk) 07:38, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Status of Hinduism

Does anyone know what is the status of the article, Hinduism - featured, featured status removed, featured status removal failed? There's no tag to that effect in its talk page. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 09:41, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

This page is the authoratative list. If it's listed here (which it is), then it's a featured article →Raul654 16:15, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
Here's where the tag disappeared. Blame user:Mano1 →Raul654 16:30, August 24, 2005 (UTC)
Thanks Raul. :-) -- Sundar \talk \contribs 03:49, August 25, 2005 (UTC)

Links to portals from this page

Tuf-kat recently added a link to the "Gallery of featured articles on music" [2]. I've removed it, for several reasons - I think it implies (incorrectly) that the gallery is a featured article (it's not nor can ever hope to be), it adds to an already pretty lengthy page (as well as the precedent it adds - just imagine if every section had a similiar), and I find its utility questionable →Raul654 20:28, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Transclusion of mathematics featured articles

Why have mathematical FAs been moved to a template (without discussion, as far as I can tell)? I see that Wikipedia:WikiProject Mathematics has the template added, no doubt to cut down the onerous task of adding a few FAs occasionally to the project page, at the expense of the ability to look out for obvious vandalism of articles in the definitive list of FAs by doing RC on Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Featured articles. Am I the only person to object? --RobertG ♬ talk 15:38, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what this comment is asking about. All the mathematics articles are in the article namespace, where they belong. No one has moved any of them →Raul654 15:46, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

The Mathematics section of the FA page has been replaced by a transcluded template; see here. I also think this is a bad idea, for the same reasons as RobertG. No harm in a maths FA template being created for use on the portal page, but no pros and several cons to using said template on WP:FA. Worldtraveller 15:52, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Oh hell no - flatly unacceptable. I would have reverted had I seen it earlier. →Raul654 15:55, August 30, 2005 (UTC)
No need for template I would say. And MarSch: this is one of those rather important things for which one should consult others before proceeding. Oleg Alexandrov 16:00, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Yes :( unfortunately I have asked, only 4 topics up, but when receiving no reply I've gone ahead and transformed one topic. (It's not as if I changed everything.) This transformation was a few minutes ago and I have again asked for comments. Please tell me what objections there are. --MarSch 16:07, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, MarSch, I didn't spot the discussion above when I first objected. Like Worldtraveller I think the template for use on other pages is not a bad idea, it's just its use here that causes problems. --RobertG ♬ talk 16:41, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

MarSch - your changes make it especially hard to update this page (to bold main page articles, add new featured articles, or remove de-featured ones), or to patrol it for vandalism. In addition, it's an unnecessary use of templates for something of questionable utility. →Raul654 19:08, August 30, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your explanation Raul. Templates would make it harder to do all those things, except that this is simple to remedy by including the edit link to the template along with it. The vandalism objection is a matter of taste or getting used to I think. Yes, there will now be several pages that need to be watched, but you can still see all of them right here. In addition I'm hoping that several wikiprojects templatize their own FAs and include the template on their project page for exposition. The increased visibillity will likely increase vandalism-spotting. I intended this page to be the only one to have an edit link to the templates, so that this is still the primary place for updates. The difference is that those updates are immediately available to those interested on project pages or their user pages.--MarSch 11:09, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Does anybody still object? --MarSch 12:24, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes - as you say, "Templates would make it harder to do all those things", and the edit link doesn't really alleviate the inconvenience of having 28 subpages to maintain rather than 1 page. Subject area FAs can be useful, but wikiprojects don't correspond to subject divisions here and it seems a bit odd to lay a burden on those who maintain the FA page for the convenience of some wikiprojects. Worldtraveller 13:42, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
I don't say that. I say that i would be true if there wasn't such a thing as an edit link (temnplate). Thus I am saying templates do not make it any more difficult. I don't see why it matters that they are electronically separate pages, since you can manage them from this page as easily as any other subsection. Thus there is _no_ burden. Instead inclusions of these templates on project pages or portals would ensure more eyes, thus less work. --MarSch 16:08, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
But just think about a practical example - say that 8 new articles are to be promoted, all coming under different subsections. Currently, Raul would change the FAC tag to FA on each of the talk pages, remove the nominations from the FAC page, and add all the articles to the FA page under the appropriate headings. If the FA page was split into templates, he'd have to open up 8 separate browser windows or tabs to add one article to each subsection. Alternatively, if I wanted to maintain a template for astronomy FAs for the astronomy portal, I could easily do that myself, adding articles to it as I notice them. Laying a large burden on the maintainer of the FA pages would only save me a very small burden, so I don't think it's a good idea at all. In addition, note that I wouldn't even want to use a physics and astronomy FA template on the astronomy portal, due to the lack of correspondence between the FA subsection and the portal scope. Worldtraveller 16:30, 8 September 2005 (UTC)
If that is the way Raul edits this page, then it would add a significant burden. I'm convinced. --MarSch 13:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
Yes, Worldtraveller's description is accurate, although he forgot to mention I also have to add them to Wikipedia:Goings on :) →Raul654 18:41, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

Template:featuredcontent

I've created the Template:featuredcontent to link between the different featured content of wikipedia (articles, lists, pictures...). But should it be placed in the top of the article, or in the bottom like currently? CG 15:10, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

There are too many damn featured-related templates on this page already! I'm tempted to consolidate and/or delete quite a few of them. →Raul654 15:50, September 3, 2005 (UTC)
The fact that two of these aren't even active yet makes me think this template is premature, and I agree with Raul654 about the page is very crowded with templates all ready. In the end it is just repeating information found in the main text. MechBrowman 02:11, September 5, 2005 (UTC)
That's one reason I prefer the redesign. violet/riga (t) 15:56, 3 September 2005 (UTC)
It's beautiful.—encephalon | ζ  17:19:41, 2005-09-03 (UTC)

Have any articles been featured more than once?

I have had deja vu a few times with the main page and was just wondering. I suspect not but I thought I would ask. Dalf | Talk 05:11, 5 September 2005 (UTC)

I think that's because the pic for the Gas metal arc welding article appeared twice, once as an FA, and once as a featured pic. Borisblue 05:14, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
Its not that specifc article because I noted that diffrence (having saved a copy of it when it was featured picture to use as my computer backgroun). Though I think maybe other pictures have been used on the main page multiple times to lead me to this conlusion. That and I was involved over at Cat for a few days reading the talk page when they were fighting over so called smiling cat pictures. So that article seems very farmilliar to me as well. Dalf | Talk 22:28, 6 September 2005 (UTC)
It depeneds on what you mean by 'featured'. There have been one or two articles de-featured and then later promoted back to featured article status (hubble space telescope, for examle). However, none of these articles have been featured a second time on the main page. →Raul654 22:36, September 6, 2005 (UTC)

Flags

Should national flags be in culture of geography? Currently they appear in both.--nixie 00:20, 7 September 2005 (UTC)

I have remedied this with my previous edit (all flags are in the culture and society section now). →Raul654 18:12, September 8, 2005 (UTC)

mark featured interwiki links?

User:Diderot is marking interwiki-links like {{Link FA|fr}}. Is this a good idea?--Hhielscher 11:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I don't know. But, interwiki bots are putting these in unintended positions. For example, {{Link Fa|sv}} is put at a different place (than the desired position above sv: link) during lexicographic sorting of the interwiki links. -- Sundar \talk \contribs 11:38, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

The Media category

Just having a look at the media category, and I was wondering whether or not it needs dividing into more specific categories, or perhaps will do at some point in the future as more articles are added to it. Currently, it contains 10 television-related articles, 7 film-related, 7 on actors and actresses, 3 on superheroes, plus All your base are belong to us, Blackface and Felix the Cat. I'm aware that there's a fine line between being more specific and simply going overboard with sub-division, but the number of articles on television, film and actors compare with the number of articles in the categories for Chemistry (8 articles), Law (6), Philosophy (6), Education (4), Food and Drink (4) and Psychology (4).

Of course there are some who would make the probably valid point that this is more of a sad reflection on the fact that there are too many people like myself adding articles on things like television rather than more serious, heavyweight subjects, but that's not really a debate for here. As I said, this might perhaps not be so much of an issue now, but I can see the need for separate Film, Television and probably Actors & Actresses categories before too long.

Just a thought, anyway. I don't often offer ideas in the Wikipedia talk namespace, so please be gentle! Angmering 22:04, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Your idea (dividing this page up into subcategories) has been suggested more than once before, and I have opposed it each time for the same reason - (a) it makes overlaps in categories more common, (b) it makes my job adding and maintaing this page) harder, it could make an already very-long TOC much longer, 'etc. →Raul654 22:15, 17 September 2005 (UTC)
Just for clarification, I wasn't so much thinking of sub-categories as such, more of splitting up the Media category and creating new 'Television', 'Film' and so forth categories. But I imagine you'd probably take the view that there are already more than enough categories to be getting on with as it is. Angmering 22:18, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

Question about categories

I'm just wondering why rifles (Krag-Jørgensen, Krag-Petersson and Jarmann M1884) is placed in the technology category, while other weapons is placed under War? It just puzzled me as I browsed the list to look for interesting things to read. WegianWarrior 10:14, 22 September 2005 (UTC)

In my opinion, a rifle doesn't necessarily imply war, whereas the other weapons listed here (the iowa class battleship, the B-36, and the S-mine) do. →Raul654 01:14, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Or, to state my case another way - if someone gets Candlestick or wrench up to featured article status, it would be absurd to put them in the war category, even though (as anyone who plays Clue can tell you) they can be used as weapons. →Raul654 01:15, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
Makes sence. Thanks for the explonation. WegianWarrior 09:12, 26 September 2005 (UTC)

Featured article icon on vi:

Crossposted from Template talk:Link FA at Zach Harden's request.

All featured articles and future feature articles at the Vietnamese Wikipedia have been marked with the Sao chọn lọc template, which adds a little star icon in the "namespace icon area" (various namespaces at vi: display icons at the top-right corner of the page). This can be accomplished thusly:

Assuming that the Link FA code has already been added to MediaWiki:Monobook.js, the following code should be added to the script, just below the Link FA code:

/* Configuration for "star" logo at the top of Featured Articles */

function StarFA() {
   if (document.getElementById("FA")) {
      // Monobook.css will take over styling from here
      document.body.className += " FA";
      // Iterate over all <h1> elements - this loop is optional
      for (var i = 0; a = document.getElementsByTagName("h1")[i]; i++) {
         // Apply a tooltip to the article title, which includes the little star
         if (a.className == "firstHeading") {
            a.title = "This article has gained featured status";
         }
      }
   }
}

addLoadEvent(StarFA);

Then, add the following code to MediaWiki:Monobook.css:

/* Namespace icon area */
h1.firstHeading {
   background-position: bottom right; background-repeat: no-repeat;
}

/* Featured articles */
body.FA h1.firstHeading {
   background-image: url('http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/8/8c/Featured_article_star.png/16px-Featured_article_star.png');
}

Finally, create a template Template:Star FA that contains the following code:

<span id="FA" style="display: none" />
[[Category:Wikipedia featured articles|{{PAGENAME}}]]

And add transclude it into each page:

{{Star FA}}

This little logo isn't as intrusive as the meta-template that used to appear at the top of featured articles, but it still makes it easy to figure out if the article is of high quality, without having to load the Talk page.

If you are concerned about any potential impact on page loading time, just exclude or comment out the section marked "optional" in the JavaScript code above. If you enough people find this tip useful, I'll move it to a more widely read Talk page like Wikipedia talk:Featured articles.

You can see what this looks like in action at vi:Đệ nhị thế chiến.

 – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 04:53, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

If we do use this template, could we use own our FA star? Zach (Sound Off) 06:18, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
Right now the star that would be shown is this one: Featured article star. – ABCD✉ 22:52, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
I should have been more clear, but ABCD answered my question. Thanks. Zach (Sound Off) 00:56, 7 October 2005 (UTC)
I like this. I'd like it even better if you the icon linked somewhere explaining what it was (configurable from the template page) and if there a general mechanism for adding little icons so that you could have a peer review icon, featured article candidate icon, etc. Lupin|talk|popups 22:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
I suppose we could do that, too; it's just a matter of setting up the necessary template and code for each icon. However, I don't think we should overuse the icon: some article statuses, such as "failed feature article removal candidate," just aren't that useful to the "average reader." I proposed the featured article icon in particular, because we already have Template:Link FA, and the point was brought up that we make it easier for readers to notice featured articles in other languages than to notice the featured articles themselves. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 06:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Prevent Featured article vandalism

It seems that the featured articles are the target of many vandals. If you look at the history of a current featured article, most of it is reverse of vandalism. I'm sure there's good arguments why the article is left open to edit, but little to no useful edits happen on the day that it is featured. Greba 20:10, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Actually, I think that most articles improve substantially after being featured on the main page. At least, my Carl Friedrich Gauss article did. Borisblue 21:00, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
Greba - you are incorrect, as Borisblue says. Almost all featured articles are improved from the time they spend on the main page. Anyway, this question comes up a lot so I've written a boilerplate response -- user:Raul654/protection →Raul654 07:32, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
I figured there were good reasons it hadn't been done before but I couldn't find a place to find the reasons behind featured articles being left editable.Greba 16:28, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
Well, I've read user:Raul654/protection, but I have to register my disenchantment. The huge vomit of mindless IP-address vandalism that has hit U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program since it was on the main page is disheartening — just look at the history. I've been considering getting the whole Panama Canal series up to FA status, but knowing that I would have to deal with this is really off-putting. It's true that there have been some really useful changes made today — and I'm grateful to those few genuine contributors — but they could just as easily have waited til tomorrow.
I accept the point that open-editing is one of the core points of WP, and that the article of the day should demonstrate that as much as anything else. But it should mainly demonstrate that WP is a useful source of information, and a noticeable percentage of people who visit WP for the first time and click on the article of the day are presented with a page that says "GAYNESS" or some such crap.
Maybe locking the article du jour isn't the way. But then at least let's ban edits by IP-address users. I've been putting my 2c into this at Wikipedia:Village pump (perennial proposals); maybe those who agree with me can chime in there. (Those who disagree can chime in here... ;-) — Johantheghost 14:59, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

Featured articles no longer locked?

Didn't the featured articles use to be locked while they were on the main page? Or am I just remembering things wrong? When did this change and why? Just curious. Dismas|(talk) 22:04, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

It depends on what you mean. I started protecting the blurb that appears on the main page (which can be accessed via the archive -- for example, Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 11, 2005) last November after the infamous "felix the cat" incident; it took another such incident on Did-you-know in January of this year to convince others to lock down the rest of the main page
However, it has never been standard procedure to protect the featured article itself (Wario, in today's case). People are always suggestioning we should, and I found myself answering this point so very often that I finally broke down and wrote a boilerplate response -- user:Raul654/protection.
I hope that answers your question. →Raul654 22:12, 11 October 2005 (UTC)
It does answer my question. Thank you! I must have been thinking of something else or imagining the whole thing. Dismas|(talk) 23:29, 11 October 2005 (UTC)

Commercial featured articles

Looking at some featured articles being on corporations or products, I was thinking if this allows some companies to produce a brilliant page on their company in the form of featured article. For instance XYZ Inc decides that Wikipedia is getting good hits (and increasing) so decides to ask its PR team to create/expand an article on its product or the company itself (assuming the company or the brand in question is fairly popular). I'm sure despite some bias they can come up with an excellent article that doesn't look like an ad. Add in images that they can choose to release into PD or other types and you'd be looking at a FA candidate.

At the very least, they could get free publicity in the form of featured photos and even a featured article since they can abide by all the rules and provides undsiputable sources etc. Of course being a community we would edit it, but I've found that if an article is really brilliant, the basic shape of the article remains the same. We could add criticisms etc. but it would still be able to qualify as a featured article with enough depth.

I might sound a little too far fetched, but I think that it's a possibility. If so, would it benefit (more content) or spoil the wikipedia ideals (with sneaky commericialism). As it is there are already articles on popular culture and brands that are much better written than historical or other non-technological areas. Any thoughts on this?

And yes, I've got too much time on my hands right now  ;) Idleguy 11:27, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

(1) What you are describing is Raul's 6th law in action. (2) If a company wants to write an article about themselves that is comprehensive, factually accurate, and written from a neutral point of view, and it passes muster at the featured article candidates - then why should it not be a featured article? →Raul654 15:49, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

FA template on main article page?

It may be a good idea to add some sort of a template to the FA articles. Smaller then the talk one - perhaps just sth like the barnstart with the words FA (like a medal) - but sth should be there to indicate their status, especially considering that now articles do show 'stars' in interlinks to other language FAs ({{Link FA}}) but don't indicate what they are themselves. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 12:03, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Update: Template:featuredarticle looks very nice, I think we should add it to every FA article. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 16:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
I concur. Some type of marker on article page, not just the talk page. Vaoverland 16:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

This, in combination with my proposal above, would be very nice. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 23:29, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

As I've said elsewhere, featured articles are supposed to embody the best practices on wikipedia. This means they should be easily transferrable to other mirrors. The sine qua non for this is that they do not include metadata in the article itself. →Raul654 13:50, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Mirros are fine, but I prefer to concentrate on what's best for 'classic' Wikipedia. Besides, there are many templates like merge, copyedit, NPOV, etc. linking to Wikipedia namespace, so it's the debate about opening an already open door... --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus Talk 23:08, 20 October 2005 (UTC)
If you consider this metadata template too Wikipedia-specific to transfer to mirrors, how about my proposal above, since the span tag it adds to articles will be invisible on other sites? It's equivalent to the featured article interwiki links, after all. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 04:18, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Some good points and some not so good

A brief glance at the types of articles tell one that Wikipedia is good in social sciences but sorely lacks in psychology, philosophy and chemistry related ones. Amazingly even food and drink articles are not upto the standard it seems. Looks like we need more "mental" editors (pun intended) to solve some of those and a few food connoiseurs for creating more food and drink articles of FA status. Idleguy 16:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup

I've been going through correcting any typos and problems with grammar and style that I find in the featured articles. I've done all of WP:TFA up through November, and the first category at WP:FA. If anyone wants to help, you might start at the bottom of the page and work upward. — BRIAN0918 • 2005-10-22 14:40

Version 0.5/1.0

Hi, There is a proposal at "Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team" to declare articles which have passed Peer review "Wikipedia Version 0.5" articles and Featured Articles to be "Wikipedia Version 1.0" articles. There is also a proposal to protect peer reviewed articles from edits by IP users and Featured article from non-admin edits. For each FA a "suggested changes" copy would be created which would be open to all edits. Please voice your opinion of these proposals at the above talk page. Seabhcán 09:04, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured_article_removal_candidates/Fractal

fractal is supposedly no longer a featured article, but I find no support for this in this removal procedure.--MarSch 15:43, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

A Question

Someone has probably already asked this, but which featured articles are not suitable for the Main Page, how is this decided, and where is this information located? Thanks. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 00:22, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

No, unlike most questions, this one is actually new.
(1) the only featured articles inherently not suitable for the main page are Wikipedia (because featuring it would be an obnoxious self reference), and Caulfield Grammar School (because I don't want to throw a gas onto the raging deletionism/inclusionism debate). These things are decided rather informally, by me. (Also, there are a few other featured articles which don't have good pictures and thus aren't ready for the main page, but this is not a problem inherent in teh subject matter). →Raul654 00:33, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
I would say wikipedia would be a perfect main page featured article for the day the English wikipedia reaches 1,000,000 articles. --WS 23:54, 15 November 2005 (UTC)
I second that. jengod 01:21, 31 December 2005 (UTC)

Henry Fonda renomination

Only today did I feel that Henry Fonda's FAC was half-hearted. There was only five votes, two of which were slashed (objections), leaving only three votes, all support. That is certainly not enough to have warranted Henry Fonda the FA label, so I want to resubmit it to the FAC. - A Link to the Past (talk) 10:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Featured Articles returning to the Main Page

There is a request at Wikipedia talk:Tomorrow's featured article to place an article that was previously "Today's featured article" back on the Main Page as the featured article of the day. Because of this request I thought some discussion on whether articles should be allowed to return would be appropriate.

I would recommend a period of 5 years be allowed to pass before an article is allowed to return as the article of the day. This proposal is intended to balance two competing interests. The first concern is that as new articles are brought up to featured article standards they deserve their day in the sun. Conversely, older articles that are seasonally appropriate should not appear once and then get locked away forever. The multi-year period between returns to the front page is intended to allow articles such as Christmas or famous battles to return on the day of the year they are strongly associate with while also preventing then from gaining a lock on a particular date. This proposal would still allow for a set of articles that share a common theme to be cycled on a certain date. Thus a cycle such as Saint Patrick, Saint Patrick's Day, Leprechaun, Four-leaf clover, and Irish people could still be created under this proposal provided all the articles achieved and maintained featured article status.

Is a guideline such as this worth creating? If so, is the proposed 5 year period the correct length or would some other time period be better? --Allen3 talk 15:32, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

The idea of setting a time when articles can be re-featured sounds good. The only thing is that, if I read correctly, some people are now concerned that there aren't enough new articles gaining Featured status, so it might eventually be necessary to make some exceptions to this rule. – Minh Nguyễn (talk, contribs, blog) 20:05, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
No, I do not believe such a guideline is worth creating. We are currently generating well in excess of the requisite 7 featured articles per week. The current system works fine without all the extra overhead this would add. Raul654 20:30, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
It would be nice to set up a way for people who like FAs to read more than one a day; and perhaps we should look for more ways to promote FAs -- for instance, via templates that show three FA blurbs, one above another, for insertion as a sidebar on appropriate pages / userpages. Especially as we get on to 14 or 20 new FAs a week, we should look for more ways to highlight this fabulous content. The age-old idea of publishing a weekly publication consisting of featured content might be a promising path to follow. +sj + 16:12, 1 December 2005 (UTC)
The transclusion used the main page, {{Wikipedia:Today's featured article/{{CURRENTMONTHNAME}} {{CURRENTDAY}}, {{CURRENTYEAR}}}}, points to the articles in the daily subpages of Wikipedia:Today's featured article, and each one includes a reference to the last three main page featured articles. Perhaps a template could be based on the existing daily subpages, like Template:Pic of the day?
If you think people would like to review the newest featured content, there is the promotions list at WP:GO, which lists prompotions as they are made, and the weekly summary in the "admins and featred content" section of WP:SIGN. I'm not sure how either could easily be turned into a template, though. -- ALoan (Talk) 19:25, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

"Editing this article directly"

I was going to try and tighten some of the wording in the introductory section, and I saw a big allcaps comment reading, "PLEASE DO NOT EDIT THIS ARTICLE DIRECTLY!". Does that only apply to adding articles to the list of featured articles? Would it be all right to change the comment to, "PLEASE DO NOT ADD ARTICLES YOURSELF", or something like that? Otherwise, it seems like you might as well just protect the page, and protected pages make me sad. -- Creidieki 18:38, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

The whole purpose of that statement is to dissuade people from simply adding articles to the list of featured articles (which is what the FAC process is for) &rarr;Raul654 19:14, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
  • All right, great. I've made it more specific, so it doesn't dissuade people from editing the rest of this page. Feel free to futz with the wording or whatever. Thanks. -- Creidieki 20:17, 18 November 2005 (UTC)

Reference standards in shambles

I think the promotion of Hugo Chávez in its current state is a really bad call. It sets a chaotic standard for how to reference an article, and it encourages people to simply ignore any future objections that have anything to do with making reference section as big as they need to be, not as big as the article writers want it to be. Worst of all, it completely discourages compromises, of which there were literally none in the case of the Chavez-article.

Peter Isotalo 13:08, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

I agree that reference standards need looking at in this respect. 85 references, it seems to me, is far, far too many. You can have too many references as well as too few, and it seems to me there have been quite a few horribly over-referenced articles that have reached featured status recently. Worldtraveller 19:17, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
A total of seventeen votes were cast in the Hugo Chávez FAC vote. Peter Isotalo was the sole objector. Meanwhile, the other sixteen voters supported the FAC, thus defeating Peter Isotalo's suggestions and objections by a ratio of sixteen to one. So now — and this is just a guess — the above data suggest to me that perhaps Peter Isotalo's views on "footnote orgy" do not represent the consensus view. And — again, just another guess on my part — that Peter Isotalo's views on "footnote orgy" may well constitute an extremist view, considering again that he was outvoted by sixteen to one. So, unless someone here is obliquely advocating that Wikipedia move towards a more completely fascistic FAC process, I regretfully fail to see what purpose this "debate" serves. Saravask 15:39, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

The FAC is neither fascist nor populist - it's somewhere in between. I reserve the right to weight objections and supports as I see fit. There are some people whose opinion I give exra consideration to (ALoan, Taxman, and Jeronimo, who IMO are the best reviewers on the FAC). There are some issues that I consider serious enough to stop a nomination dead in its tracks (copyright issues being one of them). On the other hand, most of the time if an objection is serious, more than one person will be making it, so the outcome of the nom (promoted/not promoted) in most cases will fall in line with what most people have said. In the case of the Chavez article - he's a controversial person, so the fact that it has a large number of references is neither surprising nor a bad thing. Raul654 20:38, 20 November 2005 (UTC)

Wow, you are a little out of the loop. Jeronimo hasn't edited FAC since March.[3] Bishonen | talk 02:27, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
I am well aware that Jeronimo hasn't edited since March - I am the one who added him to missing persons after all. But I am hoping he'll return. Raul654 02:31, 21 November 2005 (UTC)
<Blush> -- ALoan (Talk) 11:28, 21 November 2005 (UTC)

Non-encyclopedic article

I understand why "less than perfectly encyclopedic" article should be included. But shouldn't we have a either (a) a further requirment of encyclopedicness to become a featured article, or else (b) a further requirment of encyclopedicness to become a front page article. As I understand it, one simply needs to meet the minimal requirments to not be deleted to be able to attain both. Its going to be quite embarassing if merely the ability to write well is enough; and it considerably strengthens the deletionist position. As it stands, people arn't even allowed to object to either on the basis of an article not being encyclopedic. Also, we should also try not to include products which are currently under heavy promotion by their producers. iPod is a good article about a pretty influential product, probably fine for FA & front page, but not when Apple has just released a new one. JeffBurdges 22:53, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

  • The answer to A is a flat no. That's not how the featured articles work.
  • As far as B, what appears on the main page, there is a small set of featured articles that won't ever appear on the main page. As of today, that set consists of two articles: Wikipedia (it would be a gratuitous self reference) and Caulfield Grammar School (because it would tremendously inflame the school-inclusionism war that's going on). As for which articles are no-main page, I make that decision. Raul654 23:44, 26 November 2005 (UTC)
Alright, but what are your feelings about frontpaging articles which are being heavily advertised? JeffBurdges 02:08, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Should Coca Cola and Bank of China not have been put on the front page just because they are major corporations who advertise? MechBrowman 02:43, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Exactly. It could potentially be applied to every featured article about a living person, place, purchasable object, 'etc. It's a very slippery slope to go down and I don't think it's worth the headache. I've only excluded those two articles because I felt there was an extremely compelling reason, and "oh no! It could potentially be construed as advertising!" doesn't really strike me as a particularly weighty objection. Raul654 02:49, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Alright, I phrased my objection quite poorly. Clearly putting Coca Cola and Bank of China on Wikipedias front page for a day doesn't matter on iota to their advertising methodology. What I had in mind was specific to time sensitive advertising, i.e. iPod mini shouldn't go up just after they release it. But I'll grant that such distinctions may be more subtle than is apparent. JeffBurdges 12:49, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Time-sensitive articles, such as iPod Mini shortly after release, or 2006 Olympic Games on the day of the opening ceremony, will be rejected for "featured" status on the grounds that the article is too new/too unstable. And without being featured articles, they can't make the main page. --Carnildo 22:19, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
Cool (song) made the main page recently. JeffBurdges 17:51, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Featured article Vandalism

Often I have seen that the featured article of the day is subject to vandalism. Not even a proffesional attempt just deleting the article and typing in a new nonsense text.

Should we not protect the featured article from editing?

It is just an idea and I wanted to share it.

Allard :: 29 Nov 2005 :: 20:15 C.E.T. :: The Netherlands

This idea comes up often enough that our guy in charge of Featured Articles has a canned response to it: user:Raul654/protection. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 19:45, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Stable versions

Hello. Regarding, featured articles, what do you think of Wikipedia:Stable versions (formerly Wikipedia:Requests for publication) -- Zondor 03:26, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

Roy Orbison

I was trying to bold Roy Orbinson because he was on the main page recently. I could not find the article listed. Am I just too tired and I missed it, or is it really missing from the list for some reason? MechBrowman 03:34, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Roy Orbison. The article seems to have been removed and the nomination closed; but the nomination was then re-opened, presumably without adding the article back to the list. —Kirill Lokshin 03:50, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I put him back in the list for the time being. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:04, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
I see thanks for clearing that up, I fixed the number at the top of the page. MechBrowman 04:07, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Whoops. Thank you. —Bunchofgrapes (talk) 04:08, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Editing of Featured Articles

Hey, everyone. Just a question: why do we allow the editing of featured articles when they are up? I think the amount of vandalism that occurs when a page is up front for everyone to edit outweighs whatever additions anyone might have on an already featured article. Then many of us won't spend half the day reverting changes on articles that are prominent. JHMM13 (T | C) 04:43, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

See user:Raul654/protection Raul654 04:49, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
Right, yeh but one of the things noted, "Vandalism (especially to highly visible articles like the main page featured article) is cleaned up very quickly, often in only a couple of minutes." is not so much an advantage. Do you know how many unsuspecting people will cruise through that page in those few minutes? I wouldn't call the idea so bad, but I retract my point about them not being changed too much when they're on the front page. Clearly the consensus seems to be favoring the other side on that argument. JHMM13 (T | C) 05:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)

Some recategorising

I've just been going over the list briefly to compile some statistics (nothing particularly remarkable - 9% of articles here are on politics, 8% history and 8% geography) and whilst counting noticed a couple of oddly classified entries:

  • Apollo 8 might fit better under Transport than in Physics and astronomy? (Saturn V, too, come to think of it)
  • Representative peer might be more appropriate under Politics than Royalty & nobility, as it's a political definition.
  • ROT13 and Speech synthesis may be better placed in Computing (which already includes software) than Technology
  • Diamond is classified under Chemistry, but other gems are in Geology, geophysics, and mineralogy

Just thought I'd mention them whilst I was here. Shimgray | talk | 22:02, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

Not sure I would agree on the rockets going under transport - I think most people would not expect to find space exploration topics under transport. They could go under transport but I don't see why they should not remain where they are. On the other ones I have no strong opinion, although I would note that many articles could easily fit in more than one category, and where they end up will always be slightly arbitrary and not to everyone's liking. Worldtraveller 00:36, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

When FAs about Hollywood starlets take over the main page...

'WP as Entertainment Tonight dept. Is it me, or did this one really smell of press agentry?

[[4]].

I have no idea what the process was by which this moved ahead of the rest of the pack, but the main page sure didn't look very much like independent media to me this morning. What's next? Jennifer Aniston's love life? BYT 14:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

In addition, I found it depressingly poorly written (sloppy commas, "one of the tasks she was given was to reading the lines at auditions" [fixed that one], etc) but I couldn't bring myself to copyedit such puffery. Filiocht | The kettle's on 14:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
I wrote the KaDee Strickland article in compliance with WP:NPOV#A_simple_formulation, i.e. by using quotes about Strickland from the media (in other words, attributing points of view to sources). From all of the articles I have read, the press generally seem to rate Strickland quite highly, so I tried to reflect this in the article. Extraordinary Machine 22:37, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Template:Click on Featured Articles

Something I have seen time and again when introducing new people to Wikipedia, is that they to try read the featured article by clicking on the associated main page image. This is understandable behaviour, as for pretty much every other website out there clicking on a main page image brings one to the associated article. Instead of getting to the article, these readers end up on the image description page, which is quite clearly not very accommodating to confused newbies. Should we consider using {{click}} on all images in the FA blurb? Getting copyright information should still be straightforward, as the image itself should prominently appear in the article. This template has recently been added to Template:WikipediaSister to good reviews. - SimonP 14:51, 24 December 2005 (UTC)

This sounds like an excellent idea, for all images on the main page. -- ALoan (Talk) 22:08, 24 December 2005 (UTC)
This sounds like a fantastic idea. I can't count the number of times I've accidentally clicked on the image instead of the link when casually browsing the main page. Its use outside of the main page should be kept extremely limited, though; total newbies won't understand what clicking on an image does, but anyone beyond that should be expected to realize that clicking on an image will get the image desc page, and we don't want to make such pages too inaccessible. -Silence 14:44, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Citation conversion

The Arbitration Committee has ruled that I can not "convert" a "citation".[5] This is being used to warn other users against converting citations.[6] This has implications for some common peer review and featured article advice. (SEWilco 02:44, 27 December 2005 (UTC))

Sorry: you will have to lay it out for me: what does "convert" a "citation" mean? Do you mean that an author can choose to use bibiographic references, or footnotes, or inotes, or whatever, and another person should not change them? -- ALoan (Talk) 22:07, 28 December 2005 (UTC)
As to the meaning of the above ruling and the above change to Wikipedia:Footnotes you'll have to ask the ArbCom for clarification. [7] As I got blocked for a single change edit, I can not make changes such as these to Gettysburg Address. (SEWilco 04:42, 29 December 2005 (UTC))
ALoan - to answer your question, Sewilco was using a bot to do to citations was Jguk was doing to BCE/CE dates; the arbcom imposed more-or-less the same restriction on him that was imposed on Jguk. Raul654 04:47, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
Jguk was adding details about BCE/CE dates to articles? I didn't notice Jguk mentioned in the case's /Evidence or /Workshop. (SEWilco 05:24, 29 December 2005 (UTC))
And I'd like to note that this is a totally inappropriate place for this dispute to be expanded to. Raul654 04:48, 29 December 2005 (UTC)
As changes in citations are often recommended, this seemed quite relevant. (SEWilco 08:38, 30 December 2005 (UTC))

Hurricane Dennis

When Hurricane Dennis was promoted to this page, it was put in the "Physics and Astronomy" section. I have taken the action of moving it to the "History" section as that is where Cyclone Tracy and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 are located. Miss Madeline | Talk to Madeline 22:23, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. Raul654 22:41, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Twelfth Amendment of the United States Constitution

This Featured Article was recently given a cleanup tag. Thought you might like to know. I'm No Parking and I approved this message 22:45, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

I've removed it - it's clear that it should never have been added. Raul654 22:49, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Featurednichalp.png

Image:Featurednichalp.png is being used on this article. I notice the image page specifies that the image is being used under fair use but there is no explanation or rationale as to why its use in this Wikipedia article constitutes fair use. In addition to the boilerplate fair use template, you must also write out on the image description page a specific explanation or rationale for why using this image in each article is consistent with fair use.

Please go to the image description page and edit it to include a fair use rationale. Using one of the templates at Wikipedia:Fair use rationale guideline is an easy way to insure that your image is in compliance with Wikipedia policy, but remember that you must complete the template. Do not simply insert a blank template on an image page.

If there is other fair use media, consider checking that you have specified the fair use rationale on the other images used on this page. Note that any fair use images uploaded after 4 May, 2006, and lacking such an explanation will be deleted one week after they have been uploaded, as described on criteria for speedy deletion. If you have any questions please ask them at the Media copyright questions page. Thank you.

BetacommandBot 01:32, 8 July 2007 (UTC)