Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Featured articles

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[edit] Beginnings

We're just starting, and I'm not quite sure how to organize this. We need a place where people can put their nominations, and we need to have guidelines for what is an acceptable nomination so no one wastes their time. Wrad (talk) 02:51, 10 January 2008 (UTC)

When i initiated this Wikiproject, i had a complete different idea for initiating this WikiProject. My idea was to improve all the Featured Articles (already passed FAC), fight vandalism of the Featured Article. Help the articles during FAR from getting defeatured and also to help the editors during FAC. I think u can understand my objectives. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 16:28, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A comment and a tentative idea

I'm not sure where general comments are to go now, so please forgive me if I have the wrong place here. I've been reading the discussions, and think this project would be a great help to people. In this respect, I'd like to offer an idea I have that has its origins in my professional work as a research scientist in which I had to publish research as well as being on call from various publishers of journals and academic book publishers for my services as a referee or reviewer, and sometimes as a copy editor for submitted material to the publishers for possible publication. Some of the publishers or journal editors/editorial boards had simple checklists that enabled people submitting material and the reviewers determine whether they had satisfied some basic conditions that all material had to satisfy in order to be seriously considered for publication. Now, this situation is a little different, but might I suggest that the development of a simple checklist, or even a progession chart (in the form of a checklist) outlining progress through the FAC process would assist people to see (a) what had to be done, (b) when it had to be done, and (c) what still had to be done. We could formalize it so that we required a visible progression through a number of stages in order to arrive at the right outcome for a given article submitted to FAC (pass, fail, or perhaps some halfway house, like an academic thesis being referred for further work) We could also make it less like an oversimplified box-ticking exercise by careful thought and addition of stages that require interaction and discussion about specific issues in an article (breadth of coverage, and similar matters.)

If there is some kind of one already in existence, then the fact that I felt it useful to make the suggestion perhaps indicates that any existing one is not visible enough at the moment, or perhaps it shows that an existing one it is swamped with excessive detail at the moment. I think that having something tangible and visible, with publically-viewable progress in progression charts would lessen the idea that there is something arbitrary at times in the ways different articles are treated, or that there are different standards being applied to articles from time to time.

What do people think about this? Is it at all feasible? Would it be at all helpful? Have I got a completely misleading cognitive model of what happens when an article is put through the FAC process?  DDStretch  (talk) 19:15, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

I think it's an excellent idea. What sort of things would be on this checklist, specifically? I have no idea if there already is one. I think there used to be one, but it was very simplified. Basically: pass GA status, get a peer review, get it copy-edited, go for FA. Wrad (talk) 19:22, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I think it would be best if one could get a friendly editor (possibly more than one) with more direct experience of assessing or commenting on FACs to work with others to develop a checklist, as otherwise we might just be floundering around with a lack of easy to obtain help. It would be useful if more people could be drawn into the discussion here, and possible pitfalls as well as advantages could be exploreed. That way, we may have a good chance of minimizing any flaws in whatever might come out of this (if anything does.) From my own point of view, I'm just approaching it as one would approach some research design or some practical reasoning, which means I don't have as good a degree of hands-on experience as others would have of the actual issues involved in the FAC process.  DDStretch  (talk) 19:59, 11 January 2008 (UTC)

There are existing guidelines, manuals and other guides which must be followed for becoming a FA. The simple step is already mentioned by Wrad. Amartyabag ^TALK2ME 16:32, 12 January 2008 (UTC)