Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Archive 16

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Random Featured Article

I noticed the random featured article link is going out to another site which appears to be nonfunctional, at least with the latest version of safari for the iPhone. I am also surprised its a feature which is not part of the Wikipedia site, but some tool that a single person is solely responsible for. Maybe we should remove that link until it can be maintained on wikipedia's servers 75.158.88.133 (talk) 04:16, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

That link is to a tool hosted on the toolserver, which is wikipedia-run, but is being phased out in favor of the new Wikimedia Labs. In the meantime, I have changed the link to point to an equivalent script on a wikimedia server (http://tools.wikimedia.de/~dapete/random/enwiki-featured.php). Thanks for pointing this out. Maralia (talk) 13:00, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Should Ucucha step down?

Hello all. I'm fairly new to Wikipedia, but I have noticed that roughly half of FAC promotions/archives are done by Ian Rose and the other half are done by Graham Colm. Ucucha has not edited in a month and has not promoted or archived a FAC since late August. Thus, I have posted the following on Ucucha's talk page:

Hello Ucucha. I'm AmericanLemming, and I've noticed that you haven't edited in a month and haven't promoted or archived any FAC since late August. I understand that you might be busy or that something has come up in your life that limits your on-wiki time, but still, you're a FAC coordinator. If you find that you are no longer able or willing to serve in that capacity, it might be for the best that you step down.

I in no way mean to disrespect the tremendous effort you have put in at Wikipedia, both in writing articles and in serving as a FAC coordinator, but I do think you owe it to the community to either return to active involvement in promoting and archiving FAC candidates or step aside and let someone else do the job. I would greatly appreciate a reply. Thank you.

I will also raise my concerns at the FAC talk page. AmericanLemming (talk) 15:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Of course, I am perfectly willing to allow Ucucha to address my concerns himself, and the process of removing or adding any FAC coordinators should not be done in a hasty manner. I am not sure how the community should replace Ucucha, if the community decides that that is the best course of action, but we should think this through.

In summary, I think Ucucha's inaction should be addressed at some point, but I think to be fair to him we should give him some time to defend himself. And any process of replacement should take place after we have given due consideration to the process and potential candidates for such a position. AmericanLemming (talk) 15:53, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Jumping in while I have a minute this morning, Sydney time... Obviously I'm interested in Ucucha's (and Graham's) take on this but I don't see a particular need for Ucucha to step down. I think the FAC process of promotions and archiving can comfortably be kept up by a couple delegates/coordinators operating at any one time. Ucucha has certainly taken a back seat in the past year or so but he's always been available when Graham or I have been away (the August involvement was when Graham was travelling). Ucucha has also always been there to take care of any issues with his various bots/scripts. So he has my confidence and support to remain as a FAC coordinator, even 'in reserve'. I think that if we have a resourcing issue in FAC it's lack of reviewers rather than lack of coordinators. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:02, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree with you that it takes a lot more reviewers than delegates to keep the process running. Anyway, seeing as he is still somewhat active at Wikipedia, it really would't make sense for him to step down, I suppose. However, I guess my concern is with the visibility of his position; new editors post on the talk pages of the FAC delegates asking questions and may be confused when they don't get one from Ucucha. And I think even experienced editors may wonder where he is if he never promotes or archives FACs. Thus, perhaps his title should change to "reserve FAC coordinator"? That way he can contribute when he has time or when he is needed by you or Graham to fill in for a few weeks, but editors will know not to expect to see him regularly or get replies to their questions. AmericanLemming (talk) 23:38, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Funnily enough I was considering the question of messaging the delegates as a group a little while ago, and there may be a simple solution that I just need to test out. In the meantime, posting here or at WT:FAC is generally a good way to get the attention of active coordinators. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:08, 29 November 2013 (UTC)

Following up on this, see coming announcement below. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:15, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Pinging FAC coords

Hi all, as an alternative to pinging or leaving messages for the FAC coords individually, we now have the {{@FAC}} template notification that pings them as a group. The FAC instructions have been updated accordingly. Let me know if any questions/problems. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:16, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

This may very well address my concern's regarding Ucucha's habitual unavailability. Anyway, I'll wait to see what he thinks of my proposal to recast him as a reserve FAC coordinator next time he's on Wikipedia. I'm in no hurry; I just thought his inaction should be addressed at some point, and starting the conversation now will get it addressed sooner rather than later. AmericanLemming (talk) 03:42, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Incorrect & misleading title.

The title is Featured articles. The content is 99% a list/ grouping of the current? English? Featured articles (as of when?, is it comprehensive (automatically maintained) or regularly updated?). I am looking for information about the various quality levels of Wikipedia articles, and naturally EXPECT an article "Featured articles" to put the term in context. This does not. No references, nothing. I suggest this article's title be changed to "Featured articles - list by subject area". It would be nice for it actually to reference a substantitive article about featured articles, but perhaps that is asking too much.Abitslow (talk) 23:38, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

It is not an article, it's a project page, which is updated frequently. Graham Colm (talk) 07:04, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

New program evaluation of contests released - featured articles

Hi everyone. The Program Evaluation and Design team at the Wikimedia Foundation has released a new program evaluation about on-wiki writing contests. Thanks to everyone who shared data, and we hope you'll share with us in the future. You can read the report here:

• Program evaluation: on-wiki writing contests

It reports that on-wiki writing contests are successful at meeting their goal of improving the quality of Wikipedia articles, including featured articles. We hope you'll participate and comment on the talk page, too! SarahStierch (talk) 18:52, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

The Day We Fight Back

Please lend your ideas, expertise, and general awesomeness to this project (especially your section), which is designed to bring together all the main page task forces to create a themed main page as part of the User talk:Jimbo Wales/Archive 155#The Day We Fight Back campaign (sites like Reddit are participating too). See The Day We Fight Back for more information. :)--Coin945 (talk) 16:34, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Do we have an FA on a documentary?

I'm writing an article that I hope to bring here on a television documentary and it would be nice to have something to compare it to. Does anybody know of nay examples offhand of FAs on documentaries? I've had a look at the list and all the TV stuff seems to be fiction (not that there's anything wrong with fiction, it's just not much help for my situation!). Thanks, HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 21:31, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

I took a stab with catscan. I see, as possibilities, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (film), Fuck (film), The Sinking of the Lusitania (rather more a piece of fiction), U2 3D (maybe). I may be missing something in the intersection, since a lot of the "documentaries" seem to be films/fiction/TV shows, or in the "filmed deaths" category. Chris857 (talk) 21:52, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Lead length

Opinions are needed on this matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Standard lead paragraph length. Flyer22 (talk) 01:53, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

It is now a WP:RfC; see here: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#RFC on four paragraph lead. Flyer22 (talk) 13:00, 28 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 5 March 2014

Stormy388 (talk) 08:39, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. — {{U|Technical 13}} ^{(t • e • c)} 11:52, 5 March 2014 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

Just to let people on this project know, Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948, a featured article, has been nominated for deletion - see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Doug Ring with the Australian cricket team in England in 1948. StAnselm (talk) 01:00, 18 March 2014 (UTC)

The result was keep.--DThomsen8 (talk) 18:58, 30 March 2014 (UTC)

Shortest featured article?

Is there anyway to tell which featured article(s) is/are the shortest (in bytes)? Or maybe there's a bot that can generate a list? I'm curious to see the shortest FA length since a GA I worked on has failed an FA nom three times for being too short, despite being extensively covered in every detail. –Dream out loud (talk) 20:46, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

See User:The_ed17/Featured_articles_by_prose_size and User:The_ed17/Good_articles_by_wiki_text. Nikkimaria (talk) 22:14, 6 April 2014 (UTC)

Template:Featured article needs attention?

Is it just me (and my computer) or is Template:Featured article, also known as the star that appears in the top right of every featured article, too low? I assume it's a result of the recent typography update. I can post a screenshot if necessary. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:17, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

I've noticed that as well. Template:Good article and all the protection templates have the same problem; they're too low now. AmericanLemming (talk) 06:28, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Pre-FA review

I am considering bringing 2000 UEFA Cup Final riots to FA but I suspect that PR wont give me the feedback I might need so I would like to ask the more experienced FA participants if they feel this is ready or if they can point out areas where it needs improvement. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 10:20, 7 April 2014 (UTC)

Since there have been no comments, I assume that there are no problems and it is ready for FA status. I intend to nominate it next week unless anyone can state if it isn't ready. The C of E God Save the Queen! (talk) 13:14, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

That would be a wrong assumption. This page is not a peer review page or even a substitute for one. It is also not a high-traffic page, so I doubt many people have even read your comments, let alone the article. Your best bet would be to put it up at WP:PR then ask some of the experienced people that you see at WP:FAC to read it through before you nominate it. A very quick look makes me think that the prose needs a considerable polish: "with threats of expulsion of national football teams from European competition being given out", "to which the Turkish police moved in to stop fights breaking out", and "where several Galatasaray fans entered the area shortly afterwards which precipitated a fight between the two sets of supporters, which led to the two Leeds fans being stabbed" strike me as sub-FA-level prose. Also "The stabbings caused widespread anger throughout the United Kingdom" - really? Bencherlite^Talk 13:26, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

RFC potentially affecting FA biographies

Please see Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Biographies#OPENPARA RfC. GiantSnowman 13:59, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Automatic archiving

There are 45 threads on this page and the oldest have not been responded to since November 2012. I've therefore added automatic archiving to this page. Threads with no responses in 90 days (that's 3 months) will be archived. --LT910001 (talk) 08:39, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

Another video game? Really?

I noticed today's FA is on "Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow", a video game. I do not know off the top of my head how many video games have been the subject of featured articles, but I can tell you that as a member of the Wikipedia-reading public that there seem to have been a lot of these in recent years and that they seem to be the result of a niche interest in the subject generally. I find it unlikely that there aren't enough articles on a wider variety of subjects that qualify for featured article status... So while I acknowledge that video games are a significant part of the world-experience for a number of Wikipedia users, I wanted to encourage consideration of other subject matter for future Wikipedia featured articles. That is all. Keep calm and carry on. KDS4444^Talk 16:58, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

I think you mean for this to be brought up at WT:TFA, but it appears that one video game article has run per month in 2014. Given the proportion of video game FAs to overall, I am not sure that is overkill. As always, however, the answer is to encourage people to write FAs in other topic areas as their interests dictate. Resolute 17:30, 6 May 2014 (UTC)

Also this particular article wad nominated per the usual WP:TFAR process snd was up for debate for what I believe was a few weeks.--67.70.140.89 (talk) 22:44, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

RFC regarding Anarcho-capitalism (a featured arcitle)

Please see this RfC re including content on the Anarcho-capitalism page re its relationship with mainstream/traditional anarchism. – S. Rich (talk) 18:26, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

Size

Hi, as far as I know there isn't a size limit to FAs, but what would be people's opinion on the lowest FA? I have a few articles at GA which I would like to take further, but their size is an issue to me, as the majority of FAs are larger. Some I feel I have got all all the available info, and it still feels small in comparison to other FAs (I know it needs a lead expansion). Is there any chance of such articles becoming FAs? Thanks, Matty.007 14:25, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

I wouldn't worry about length per se. Only two of the FA criteria relate to length. Criterion 1b states that the articles needs to be comprehensive, "neglect[ing] no major facts or details and place[ing] the subject in context". Criterion 4 states that articles shouldn't be too long "stay[ing] focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and us[ing] summary style." The former states that the article length should be appropriate given the article's scope and the amount of information available in reliable sources, while the latter says that articles on extremely broad topics should avoid being too long.

Anyway, if you've found everything that's available in published sources about Clarence Chesterfield Howerton, for example, you've met the comprehensiveness requirement, while the excessive length requirement doesn't apply. Almost all of the lost film FAs are really short, 750-1500 words generally. One of the shortest FAs ever was promoted just three days ago; it's Si Ronda, a lost film from the Dutch East Indies. It clocks in at a mere 644 words. The nominator, Crisco 1492, has 31 FA stars under his belt, many of them for really short articles on lost films such as these. I've mentioned him here in the hope that he'll pop in and offer you additional advice on getting really short articles to FA status, but I wouldn't worry about length if you've found everything you can on the subject. AmericanLemming (talk) 22:01, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

• Hmm, I've got to head out soon but I'll give a couple comments. First, reviewers will generally ask you to ensure you've really gone through as many possible sources as you can. Thus, before going to FAC, make sure you've had a look at JStor (WP:RX really helps if you don't have access), GBooks, and GScholar (GNews archive works for Major Mite, because he was US-based, but for me that's never been worthwhile). Targeted searches in Google (i.e. using "-blogspot", "-wikipedia", "-facebook" etc.) help too; I've often been able to find proof of international showings (always in Singapore) of the films I write about using this. If there are specific databases or archives which provide access to sources you want, search them. I use two (niod.x-cago and delpher) but neither will probably be very useful for the Mite article. Finally, don't be afraid to hunt print sources as well; often the oldest are not online. — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:32, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

And of course, it should go without saying that you need to ensure that the prose really shines. The shorter the article get, the more glaring the mistakes are. Something that wouldn't even be apparent in a 6k word article will seem pretty obvious in a 500 word article — Crisco 1492 (talk) 23:34, 18 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much to you both for the help. I've found a few more books in Google which I will try and use but I think they are small (minute?) points, I'll keep searching though. Thanks again, Matty.007 11:33, 19 July 2014 (UTC)

FA preparation hub

There is the list of FA criteria and several essays. Is there a central "How to prepare a page for FA" somewhere? Would be very grateful if users could point me in the right direction/s. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 08:41, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

LT910001, are you still interested in this? I don't know of any centralized page like that; what I've always done (I've got a few FAs under my belt, with one more that will likely pass within a couple days) is get the article a peer review and typically a copyedit on top of that (you can request one at WP:GOCE/REQ, or just ask on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject). Tezero (talk) 02:51, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

TFAR delegate

There is a discussion of the resignation of the coordinator of Today's Featured Article at this page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:19, 24 November 2014 (UTC)

Further, please see Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article#Proposed TFA coord team. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:29, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 November 2014

Paraceratherium should be italicized. 174.124.253.214 (talk) 23:31, 27 November 2014 (UTC) L

Thanks for spotting this. Graham Beards (talk) 06:58, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

Intro paragraph redundancy

This phrase seems unnecessarily redundant to me: There are 4,240 featured articles out of 4,510,669 articles on the English Wikipedia (~0.1% are featured). Thus, about one in 1,060 articles are listed here. 4,240/4,510.669 = .1% = 1 in 1000; why say it three times? How would you feel about editing it to read, "Of the 4,510,669 articles on the English Wikipedia, about .1% (4,240) have achieved featured status"? Ultrauber (talk) 04:47, 10 May 2014 (UTC)

I noticed this, too. I support the change. Tezero (talk) 14:05, 11 August 2014 (UTC)

I made the change and it was reverted by Graham_Beards, who claims it was not discussed. Uh ... Ultrauber (talk) 16:41, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

That's because this discussion is six months old! I was looking for something recent. Please do not alter that wikimarkup without a full agreement from the FA coordinators (I am one of them). This is not an article, it is project page. The markup is cleverly done and is dynamic in that it calculates all the numbers apart from the count, which we adjust each time an article is added or removed from the list. Your changes caused problems on other data pages which link from there. Graham Beards (talk) 16:54, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for clarifying! With that out of the way, I would still like to discuss cleaning up the wording. It's ridiculous to say the percentage and the fraction and the raw data, when all mean essentially the same thing: featured articles are rare. If they are essential calculations to other pages (what pages?), then they can be included in a comment. Ultrauber (talk) 18:59, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

This wording has served us well for years; I see no good reason to change it. Graham Beards (talk) 19:07, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

That is no good reason to keep it, either. It's rather embarrassing to have such clunky wording on a page as prominent as one describing what featured articles are—a common question newcomers may have. Per WP:DRNC and WP:SQS, it is counterproductive to assume that an article must be left untouched because it hasn't been changed "for years." The change I am suggesting amounts to essentially a copyedit that clears up the phrasing. My edit is not designed to break a wording that has "served us well." It is designed to make that wording serve us better. I would like to hear from the other FA coordinators on what should be a minor issue. Ultrauber (talk) 20:53, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

What about doing it as a table, not part of the text? It could probably be quite attractive.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:41, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

Hmm, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. How would you present the data in a table? It's just 2 numbers... Ultrauber (talk) 21:55, 27 November 2014 (UTC)

I've probably come in a couple of comments late but, once again, this page isn't an "article", so as long as it gets the point across I don't sweat the wording. In terms of repetition of the ratio, I certainly think it's worth retaining the "1 in 1000", which just sounds more impressive to me than fractions. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:29, 28 November 2014 (UTC)

I am fully sympathetic to Utlrauber's concern about the wording but a) casual readers don't come to this page, b) it's for recordkeeping only, and c) the markup is complex, so I'm not bothered if we just leave well enough alone. Ultrauber, perhaps you can be enticed to use your prose skills in reviewing at FAC? (See Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:12, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, it appears that there is significant consensus against this change and I accept that it may not be necessary. Thanks for chiming in! Ultrauber (talk) 18:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Tally

For changes made to the tally here, please see discussion at WT:FAC, here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:59, 29 November 2014 (UTC)

Stabilization of Featured articles

Where should a discussion about stabilization of Featured articles take place? My suggestion involves stricter editing rules, similar to top medical articles, as described here:

"The editors of Wikipedia’s Ebola page say they earned a place as one of those credible sources. To protect against misinformation, potential editors must suggest adds or changes to the article on a separately maintained page, where editors, frequently Dr. Heilman, review them and decide whether to incorporate them." - Source: "Wikipedia Emerges as Trusted Internet Source for Ebola Information", The New York Times, Noam Cohen, October 26, 2014

A combination of permanent semi-protection and peer review on the talk page, before addition of new material or significant changes, would help to stabilize and maintain the quality of Featured articles. It would ensure that they only improve.

Once an article is featured, it should not be possible to destabilize, vandalize, and/or degrade it so it loses its status, as currently happens all the time. Editing here shouldn't be a constant game of whack-a-mole. We should see our work as contributing to a stable encyclopedia, not as a continually chaotic waste of time. This creates editor burnout (admins are not the only ones who experience burnout), and we don't have an unlimited supply of qualified editors willing to put up with the unending frustration of seeing good content removed and good articles degraded. It's a waste of time.

If this is not the place for the discussion, where should it happen? -- Brangifer (talk) 00:43, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

The claim "potential editors must suggest adds or changes to the article on a separately maintained page" is false, with no basis in policy. And rightly so. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 00:47, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

"Potential editors" are those without an account that is so many days old and made so many edits. Semi protection does not allow them to change the page directly. The "separately maintained page" is the talk page of the Wikipedia article in question. Semi protection is policy. This is what the policy looks like when written in English Wikipedia:Protection_policy#Semi-protection

The proposal appears to be that all FAs should be semi protected. When it comes to medicine most of them already are semi protected. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:45, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

That is indeed my proposal. It's common practice on controversial articles, and the importance of Featured articles warrants it. I think it should become part of policy for Featured (and possibly Good) articles. I don't see this as a particularly controversial proposition. It makes sense that we would be more protective of better content.

And, Doc James, kudos to you for being an exemplary representative of what's best at Wikipedia. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:04, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

In that case, the wording is ambiguous; I read it as "someone who would potentially edit the article". Nonetheless, there is no policy allowing (much less requiring) all FAs to be semi-protected, as suggested by the OP, and nor should there be. I would expect such a proposal to be 'highly controversial. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:03, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

WT:FAC is where discussions are usually best followed. I do not support BullRangifer's proposal (deficient FAs are passed, all more frequently of late, and anyone should be able to edit them. In Medicine, we have scores of outdated FAs, for example). WP:OWN#Featured articles is sufficient, and we also have Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive60#FA edit notices. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:31, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

I have pondered this often about some sort of stabilisation - I am in two minds whether what we have now is sufficient. Probably doesn't matter where we have the discussion as long as it has a central alert as it marks a fundamental change in ethos for a subsection of articles. Personally I have a lower threshold to semiprotect FAs if they've had unconstructive editing. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:27, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Splitting into subsections

As I was asked to do by User:Graham Beards, I'd like to propose that some sections are split into further subsections for easier orientation. For example, I'd like to split "music biographies" into "people" and "music groups", to provide a list of artists seperate from bands, or similarly, created separate sections for albums, songs, genres etc. Are there any drawbacks to this that I'm not aware of or do you think it is a good idea?----MASHAUNIX 23:00, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for discussing these proposed changes. I don't see any improvement in your suggestion. The page is not long and is not really part for the encyclopedia. Most readers do not know it is here. Splitting the sections further will only increase the time needed by the FA coordinators to add newly promoted articles to the list. Graham Beards (talk) 23:18, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

PS. @FAC coordinators: I would like to see input from other editors active in our FA process about this. Graham Beards (talk) 23:38, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

I'd like to link the traffic of this page for the purposes of this discussion.----MASHAUNIX 01:45, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Could I please get some feedback on this? I realize this isn't an actual article, but that doesn't mean it wouldn't be good to make navigation through it easier, especially considering it gets quite a lot of traffic (as per above). I don't see any major issues with it either. I'm ready to change my mind upon someone showing me what they are, but it's frustrating to get no response at all.----MASHAUNIX 03:27, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

For example, I'd like to split "music biographies" into "people" and "music groups", to provide a list of artists seperate from bands, or similarly, created separate sections for albums, songs, genres etc. Are there any drawbacks to this that I'm not aware of or do you think it is a good idea? I am not in favor of this idea. The way the page is currently set up is standardized (only bios are separated, and further Warfare is separated because it is a huge category. I don't see the necessity to create an exception to separate People and Music Groups, or to separate that category at all. It is by no means one of the largest categories, and splitting this page unnecessarily will make it harder to find articles, and much harder to maintain. Summary: no splits needed at this time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:56, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. If most of you think this would make navigation harder rather than easier, that's fine by me.----MASHAUNIX 15:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)

Heraldry and vexillology

I was looking at this when it struck me as odd that National Emblem of Belarus is in one category but heraldry in another. Flags and coats of arms are often covered together, so I think it would make sense for us to remove heraldry from "Royalty, nobility and heraldry", and have two sections: "Royalty and nobility" and "Heraldry, honors and vexillology". That would leave two scouting articles out of place that should probably be moved to "Culture and society". DrKiernan (talk) 10:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

That sounds reasonable to me, so I defer to your judgment on this, other than to caution that when making category changes, you have to scrupulously count each cat before and after to make sure nothing went missing or gets counted twice. And, then you have to mirror the change over at WP:FFA. Laser brain, Graham Beards, Ian Rose, Nikkimaria, Casliber, Maralia, Bencherlite (and maybe Bencherlite will make one of those pingie-thingies when we have a new FAR group). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:24, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Agree about combining flags and heraldry; indeed, GA uses 'Flags and heraldry'. Same with moving scouts to Culture. Maralia (talk) 21:17, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Also agree with these changes. Bencherlite^Talk 09:10, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

No issue. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:49, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

Fine with this. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:22, 22 December 2014 (UTC)

WikiCup 2015

Hi there; this is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2015 WikiCup will begin on January 1st. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. At the time of writing, more than fifty users have signed up to take part in the competition; interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! Miyagawa (talk) 21:39, 29 December 2014 (UTC)

New FAC and FAR Coordinators proposed

• Pls see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#FAC and FAR Coordinator proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 19 December 2014 (UTC)
  • For result, pls see Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#New FAC and FAR coordinators. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:12, 12 January 2015 (UTC)

Featured Article promoted in 2013, nominated for deletion

2012 tour of She Has a Name, Featured Article promoted in 2013, has been nominated for deletion.

Please see discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2012 tour of She Has a Name.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 23:23, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Use of paintings

If paintings are going to be used in featured articles, they need to be accurate. Pedro I of Brazil is currently actively misleading people by using a copy of the painting that is not accurate, but which the nominators think looks nicer. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn't, but it's a violation of WP:OR to reject an image created by a group noted for good colour fidelity, and replace it with one with a blue cast taken from some random internet site because you'd rather the image looked differently.

We can't actively mislead readers as to what a painting looks like. One can reject the image alright if you think there's problems, or one can replace it, but if the painting's notable enough to be the lead image, it's our responsibility as an encyclopedia to depict it accurately. I'm 99.9% sure the non-Google-Art-Project image being edit warred to is inaccurate. The Google Art Project meets the criteria of a reliable source, whatever random place the other one's grabbed from doesn't.

Adam Cuerden ^(talk) 19:34, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

redirect appropriate?

Would it be appropriate to redirect the term 'list of featured articles' to this page? This is the current result of the search. If not this then how about the term 'list of wikipedia featured articles'? Neuroxic (talk) 02:05, 25 October 2014 (UTC)

I agree, this would make it a lot easier to search for this, and I don't see any downsides.----MASHAUNIX 23:00, 11 November 2014 (UTC)

If no one else is concerned I'll go ahead with it then. Neuroxic (talk) 06:12, 24 January 2015 (UTC)

splitting media section

The media section is simply too large.

This may not be a problem on its own, but I feel the page would be better organized if the section was split into a film, tv and miscellaneous (media) section.

This would certainly make finding featured examples of flims, tv episodes, tv shows and others easier.

Neuroxic (talk) 09:11, 15 February 2015 (UTC)

Discussion regarding the WP:Overlinking guideline

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Linking#Relax duplicate linking rule. A WP:Permalink for the discussion is here. You might also want to check out the Comments please on avoidable links and Nested links sections lower on that talk page. Flyer22 (talk) 21:22, 26 February 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 7 April 2015

107.147.19.198 (talk) 22:22, 7 April 2015 (UTC) Hello, I was wondering if I could edit? There is some things that need editing.

Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone will add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Kharkiv07^Talk 22:25, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

Permit WP:Red links in WP:Navboxes?

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Red link#Guideline revision urgently needed; subsection is at Wikipedia talk:Red link#Revision proposal. A WP:Permalink for the matter is here. Flyer22 (talk) 20:18, 17 June 2015 (UTC)

Number of FAs

The page says 4546, whereas the category says 6635-1. Any good reason for this disparity? If not shall we insert a suitable expression based on {{PAGESINCATEGORY|Featured articles|R}} in place of the number? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 15:45, 29 June 2015 (UTC).

The category is not accurate; it has something to do with articles that have no WikiProject assessments on their talk page, or something. This page is accurate. --Laser brain (talk) 15:56, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Only the summary function is inaccurate, the actual category content is OK. You can check the "real" category content directly with Catscan2: category and WP:FA are in-sync at 4,546 articles (the category for FA-talkpages Category:Wikipedia featured articles is off -1 at 4,545, but that's just because the nomination for R. V. C. Bodley is closed, but hasn't been bot-processed yet). GermanJoe (talk) 17:23, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

Thanks both. As German Joe says, the category claims it has 4510 articles but loading them up with a tool indicates the number that we have on the description. A severe case of category lag perhaps. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:51, 29 June 2015 (UTC).

The following are in Category:Featured articles but not in Category:Wikipedia featured articles:

1. G4S  Fixed
2. List of Melodifestivalen presenters  Fixed

The following are in Category:Wikipedia featured articles but not in Category:Featured articles:

1. Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:58, 29 June 2015 (UTC).

Federal Bridge Gross Weight Formula seems to be a legitimate FA, from before the entirety of the current system was in place, perhaps. Maybe it's a candidate for de-FAing by today's standard, maybe it needs a gold star. I will leave that to the FA mavens. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 23:25, 29 June 2015 (UTC).

Tks Rick, looks like the FA star was swept away accidentally when a user removed an EL -- I've restored it now. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:59, 29 June 2015 (UTC)

setting to turn off display of featured article star?

This page currently says "On non-mobile versions of our website, a small bronze star icon (This star symbolizes the featured content on Wikipedia.) on the top right corner of an article's page indicates that the article is featured, unless the appropriate user preference is set." Which preference is it talking about? I am aware of a gadget (under Preferences>Gadgets>Appearance) that allows the user to "Mark navigation links to featured and good articles in other languages" (which may not actually be working because it doesn't affect the sidebar like I thought it would when I tested it) but none I am aware of that allows you to turn it off for the page itself. Am I overlooking it or is this a mis-statement? Jason Quinn (talk) 12:32, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

Given no response and that I believe it to be an error, I made a change over this. Jason Quinn (talk) 07:16, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Turning off images will (obviously) do the trick, but I would like to think that our readers can work out "if I disable images, I won't see images" for themselves. (Although given that I had someone a couple of days ago insisting I explain that magazines are written by writers, nothing would surprise me.) – iridescent 08:05, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm not sure what you mean. Are you disagreeing with the new wording or pointing out another way for the images to disappear? Or, if you are objecting to mentioning the preference to toggle the images, the point of that is not to explain what toggling does but to point out that such a feature exists. Maybe that is expendable; I kept it in part to maintain some continuity with the previous wording. Jason Quinn (talk) 09:18, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Redirected FA titles

Currently 18 FA-articles are listed under an old, now-redirected, article title. I would like to change those to their actual new title, both at WP:FA and WP:FANMP: it would make comparing categories and FA-pages to look for inconsistencies a lot easier, if all titles were current article titles. Otherwise redirected titles appear as difference in such comparisons (categories use current titles of course). Just checking: Is there any technical reason to keep the old article titles in those 2 FA pages? GermanJoe (talk) 11:53, 4 July 2015 (UTC)

Silence means consent ;). OK, it's unlikely to break anything and helps managing the list -> I have changed those links on WP:FA and WP:FANMP. GermanJoe (talk) 17:44, 10 July 2015 (UTC)

Main Page redesign underway

A redesign of the Main Page is underway to give it a modern look. However, in order to see the formatting, you must enable the "Show the new version of the Main Page currently under development" gadget under the Testing and development section in your preferences.

In the current redesign draft, the order of presentation of content is being modified, with Today's featured article alone at the top. Your input is welcome. The Transhumanist 13:20, 28 August 2015 (UTC)

Good Lists

There is a proposal to set up a new classification level, Good List. Please add your comments there. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:19, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Very far from done with Oviri (Gauguin)

Excuse me, did I miss something? I was very far from done with Oviri (Gauguin), yet it somehow got promoted? Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

• Best wishes in all things. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:51, 16 October 2015 (UTC)

  To you too, man :) For the record Lingzhi was making valuable suggestions, all of which were being taken on board, slowly maybe, and none of which I disagreed with. I think the material issued were deal with, though I was (perhaps selfishly, as his time analysing is helping me a lot) looking forward to another round with him this weekend. Either way: his comments are all moved to the talk, with my commitment that they will be dealt with there (most already had, post promotion, and before I saw this). Ling, I very much valued and appreciated you time and input, and am fine with a FAR, it will amount to the same thing; article improvement. Ceoil (talk) 16:45, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

All articles can be improved. In my view the article was ready for promotion and there was a consensus to do so. I admit, and apologise for missing, Lingzhi's last comment at the FAC. I thought the last comments were some days before I promoted the article. Often I promote FACs that have remaining unresolved issues and add a comment about continuing the discussion on the article's talk page. I hope that this can be the case here. I am sorry if I have upset anyone. In my defense, there were ten FACs, which I had to go through before promoting on the occasion in question, my attention must have become less than ideal. Apologies. Graham Beards (talk) 17:39, 17 October 2015 (UTC)

I was a bit gob-smacked, but I see now I did not understand the way Graham runs the process. So move along, nothing to see here. Thanks. Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:46, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Should WP:TAFI return to the main page?

Please weigh in here: Wikipedia talk:Today's articles for improvement#TAFI on the main page?.--Coin945 (talk) 18:28, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 November 2015

On "Computing" section there is Scene7 page that should not be there. Scene7 is not featured article. Abstractray (talk) 11:35, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Actually, it is. It had been cut down to two short paragraphs by an editor who thought that the company did not deserve a long article. I've reverted the changes and invited more discussion of this at the article talk page. Bencherlite^Talk 11:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding WikiProject: Philosophy FA

Admittedly, I am new to the non-editting aspects of Wikipedia; however, I would like clarification, if not rectification, of a problem. Within the 'Philosophy and psychology' section of the Featured Article page, there are only a selection of the FA WikiProject: Philosophy pages. In total, the section has 12 pages (including those from WikiProject: Psychology). By contrast, the Category:Philosophy articles by quality displays 41 FA articles, while Category:Psychology articles by quality displays 16 FA articles. What is the cause of this gap? Shouldn't this section be updated to correspond to these projects?

Thanks, Tradereddy (talk) 15:13, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

This happens because an article can be of interest to multiple WikiProjects, but can only be placed in one section of the FA page. Candide, for example, is a featured article and is tagged for WikiProject Philosophy, but is placed in the Literature section of the FA page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 24 December 2015

OK Computer was released in May 1997, not June. In the "OK Computer, fame, and critical acclaim" section, in the 3rd paragraph down it states it was released in June, this is wrong. Comfytacular (talk) 01:27, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

@Comfytacular: this is a talk page for discussion about Wikipedia:Featured articles, a list of all of the Featured Articles. The other page isn't protected, so you should be able to edit the OK Computer article directly. Imzadi 1979 → 01:59, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Image size discussion at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#Fixing images below the default size. A WP:Permalink for it is here. The discussion concerns whether or not we should keep the following wording: "As a general rule, images should not be set to a larger fixed size than the 220px default (users can adjust this in their preferences). If an exception to the general rule is warranted, forcing an image size to be either larger or smaller than the 220px default is done by placing a parameter in the image coding." The latest aspect of the discussion is the 1.4 Amended proposal (2A) subsection. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 07:06, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

This discussion has progressed to a WP:RfC: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Images#RfC: Should the guideline maintain the "As a general rule" wording or something similar?. A WP:Permalink is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 21:47, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Might be a silly question, but...

Where (and how) does one go about finding collaborators for working an article to Featured status? I've been doing some reading on Robert Smalls, and I'd really like to see this article featured on the project. Hallward's Ghost ^{(Kevin) (My talkpage)} 17:58, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

For that particular article, I'd ask at WP:MILHIST, since that's where you're going to find people interested in naval history. I'll warn you now that that is almost certainly not the article you want to use for your first WP:FAC run; of the seven references not a single one appears to be a reliable source, the article has an inappropriate tone, and manages to skim over his political career in one paragraph. To get it to FA would probably require a WP:TNT complete rewriting from scratch. (If you want to get his story onto the main page, I'd strongly recommend taking on USS Planter (1862) first, which will be much easier to improve and tells the same story.) ‑ Iridescent 18:13, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

I like your suggestion regarding USS Planter (1862), and the tip regarding MILHIST. As for the concerns regarding the rewrite, I actually was thinking that would be part of the "fun" of it--blowing it up and starting from scratch. I'll think on it before I present anything to MILHIST. My actual primary interest is in English literature, but Smalls' story just really caught my imagination as one that deserved more exposure, and as an article that could be made worthy of being Featured on Wikipedia. Hallward's Ghost ^{(Kevin) (My talkpage)} 18:17, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Another silly question, but…

In the “Literature and theatre” section, shouldn’t “Famous Fantastic Mysteries” come before “Fantastic (magazine)”? Mark Froelich (talk) 06:36, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

Not silly at all Mark -- thank you very much for pointing it out :-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:22, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

I have a question

I am interested in nominating an article for FA, but the article in question was featured in 2005. Is it ever acceptable to nominate an article to be featured again? Regards, --Ches (talk) 14:35, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

If the article in question is still featured (i.e., still listed on WP:FA) then there's no need to nominate it again; articles don't lose their featured status solely due to age. In that case if you'd like to nominate it to appear on the front page, then suggest it at WP:TFAR. If it's no longer listed on WP:FA, then it's not a featured article anymore and would have to be nominated here and reviewed again to regain featured status. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:40, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Hi, if the article attained FA status in 2005 and subsequently lost that status then it could be nominated again if work has been done to correct the issues that led to it being downgraded -- easier to determine the specific situation if we know which article you're talking about though. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:41, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Ian Rose and Mike Christie, the article in question, Hey Jude, is still an FA, but I'd like it to be re-featured. I will therefore follow Mike's advice and suggest it at TFAR. Thank you both. --Ches (talk) 15:00, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Ian Rose and Mike Christie - have I done this correctly? This is the link, although I'm not sure if it is meant to appear on the TFAR page or as a separate section? Thanks, --Ches (talk) 16:23, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Hi Ches, I'm afraid I had to hit the sack on my side of the world before I saw your reply with the article name, and understood that you're talking about being featured on the main page rather than achieving "Featured status" ( (which has to come before an appearance as Today's Featured Article). As has been pointed out at your TFA nom, it's extremely rare for a Featured Article to get two goes on the main page. There are plenty of FAs that haven't appeared though so you may still find one you'd like to nominate... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:20, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for your advice, Ian Rose. I'll have a look around for articles that haven't featured yet. I had to Google "hit the sack", by the way. :-) --Ches (talk) 22:24, 27 February 2016 (UTC)

Attribution

A question: if an FA candidate article contains text copied from another edition of Wikipedia (either verbatim or by translation), and does not attribute this text in any way, would this be a violation of CC-BY-SA license, and would non-attribution preclude the article in question from becoming an FA? GregorB (talk) 14:33, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Graham Beards (talk) 15:01, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Thanks - I must say I'm not entirely unfamiliar with CC-BY-SA and its requirements as applied to Wikipedia, so at least the answer to the first question actually seems obvious to me (i.e. "yes"). It's just that this is a matter of dispute in an article on an another edition of Wikipedia which uses text from English Wikipedia without attribution. Generally speaking, would you - if you had a FA candidate which contained unattributed text - vote against it for this reason? GregorB (talk) 15:13, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I would not vote against the article because there are some methods to attribute the other contributors. Ideally, the original edit that copied text from another Wikipedia article (English or not) would have linked to the revision that was its source in the edit summary. If not, or in place of that method, there are templates that can be used on the talk pages to make that linkage, even if that were done at a much later date. Imzadi 1979 → 18:34, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

Of course, one could always add it later, but what I meant to ask is: could the existence of this attribution - in the talk page or elsewhere - be seen as a reasonable FA requirement? GregorB (talk) 18:39, 28 February 2016 (UTC)

I would say that it's a requirement of copying content between articles, period. That's not a featured article thing, it's an article thing. Imzadi 1979 → 14:52, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Media information requested

To whom it may concern, Krystel-Ann here 24 years old, looking for a leg up in the film and television industry. I am currently studying at WAAPA, Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, recently joined the Australian Union, would like extra information on how to apply for more TV , Film Media roles. Any information necessary will help, look forward to seeing the feedback, thank you, Kind regards Krystel-Ann Marie Evans Krystel-Ann Marie Evans (talk) 14:13, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

@Krystel-Ann Marie Evans: I think that you're in the wrong place. This talk page here is for discussions related to Wikipedia's featured articles. You might try asking at our WP:Reference Desk, but honestly, I don't think that Wikipedia is the place to answer such a question. We write an encyclopedia here, not provide employment advice. Imzadi 1979 → 14:55, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Creating a bot to identify out-of-date information in Wikipedia entries

There are a mass of entries in English and Chinese Wikipedia that include out-of-date facts or references. And there are some existed software tools or algorithms relative to natural language pattern matching to solve this problem. We would like to measure the usefulness of these tools and algorithms and create a new bot to identify those information based on the result of measurement. During the work of measuring existed tools and testing the new bot, we will try to collect abundant Wikipedia entries and create some new cases. And the modular software can be used by Wikireview and other contributors of Wikipedia.

URL of detailed proposal is here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Searching_for_out-of-date_information_in_wikipedias

Please give us your advice in the discussion board of the proposal: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants_talk:IdeaLab/Searching_for_out-of-date_information_in_wikipedias

Li Linxuan (talk) 16:31, 31 March 2016 (UTC)

How?

How can I make Let's Marry a featured article? !Moscowamerican (talk) 23:04, 17 April 2016 (UTC)

Hi Moscowamerican, you would want to improve the article so that it meets the featured article criteria. You can seek feedback on how best to do that by requesting a peer review, or by first nominating the article as a good article if you think it already meets those criteria. I would advise you to improve the article first, though. For example, bare URLs are generally not considered adequate as citations. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:30, 18 April 2016 (UTC)

wow,thanks a million! Moscowamerican (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 03:51, 19 April 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/April 28, 2016

Some problems with this blurb. Take a look and see what you think. --John (talk) 06:32, 27 April 2016 (UTC)

Water fluoridation

Hi folks! They could sure use a few eyes over at Water fluoridation. Please have a quick look at the history and please drop by Talk:Water fluoridation#April 28, 2016 to share your thoughts. Many, many thanks. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 10:10, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

All I can say is "wow". --Laser brain (talk) 18:49, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

Claiming FA contributions

Jonas Vinther, now Doctor Papa Jones, claims by way of a FA star on their userpage (first version) that they are to be credited with having raised Gary Cooper to FA status--there is no other way such a star can be read. Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Gary_Cooper/archive1 contains one single comment by them: "Having spend a lot of time on this article myself, I believe it's worth FA-status".

As the article history indicates, this is rather an overstatement, and I note that the substance of their edits (see here), except for this one, have been reverted one way or another in the editing process, mostly by Bede735, the FA nominator who undoubtedly deserves full credit. I find this seriously troubling and invite your opinions. Drmies (talk) 16:55, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

• I haven't looked at all their GA claims, but in Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville, they have not a single edit, though they have a review at Talk:Harriet Leveson-Gower, Countess Granville/GA1. They also categorize themselves as a "Million Award" editor on their userpage, but their name is missing from Wikipedia:Million Award. I would appreciate it, Doctor Papa Jones, if you could explain. Drmies (talk) 17:00, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • It was I who brought Gary Cooper to GA-status, by completely transforming the article on a subpage. This explains why I have few edits to the actual article. And by the way, I don't claim to have brought the article to FA-status; I simply list the article as one I have significantly improved, which I have, so saying Bede735 deserves full credit is only true when talking about the FA-review. And if you think I'm lying about the Million Award, click here and see for yourself. You're making a big deal over nothing! Best, Doctor Papa Jones • (Click here to collect your prize!) 17:30, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
  • Thank you for pointing to that user space and for the Million thing--I stand corrected. Your edits in the Cooper article are this, besides this and this, which I already linked. Bede started cleaning up as soon as you were done with that first series (here, for instance--your references). This is basically "your version"--now compare that to this here, a few hundred Bede-edits later. Compare the "Early life" section, for instance: twice as long, and better. Compare your "Early Silent Films" to their "Silent films, 1925–1928"--ditto. I'm not saying you didn't do anything for the article, but clearly Bede did the legwork that got it to FA; you didn't participate in the FA review, did nothing to address comments by peer reviewers, and only commented "yeah it's good and I worked on it". So the problem is that you placed an FA star that I believe you don't deserve on your user page which--typically--means you were instrumental in bringing it up to FA status. Drmies (talk) 19:31, 28 April 2016 (UTC)
    • I have removed the FA-star from my userpage. Best, Doctor Papa Jones • (Click here to collect your prize!) 20:33, 28 April 2016 (UTC)

• Meh; users claiming credit for writing articles they didn't write goes back pretty much to the invention of the article assessment scale a decade ago; those who actually need to know (of which there are few, mainly those involved in notifications in relation to TFA scheduling) are aware that WP:WBFAN is the 'real' list of who was responsible for what, and that to check who was responsible for any given FA you check the bot-generated box at the top of the talkpage. Practice has always been to turn a blind eye to it unless people try to use their supposed achievements as evidence of their superior abilities in discussions. @Drmies, if you think exaggerating one's input to a single FA is a serious offense, I hate to think what you'd have made of User:Mattisse/Contributions/FA. Is it possible that the Wikicology case is making you unduly sensitive towards people exaggerating their on-wiki abilities? For what it's worth, there's nothing in WP:UPYES to say that claims made on one's userpage need to be true, providing they don't cross the line into "material that is likely to bring the project into disrepute, or which is likely to give widespread offense". ‑ Iridescent 19:08, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
• My feeling about this is pretty well summed up with "meh" as well. I've seen some pretty serious scraps erupt on Wikipedia over claims of achievements and levels of contribution. They always end in bad feelings on all sides—I'm not sure who's winning in that scenario. We should maintain focus on the reader. --Laser brain (talk) 14:45, 30 April 2016 (UTC)

Bot problem

This change by Edokter on 16 May replaced all the middle dots (unicode character b7) with asterisks (unicode character 2a). This caused a catastrophic failure of the FACBot's FANMP (Featured Articles Not on Main Page) process. It couldn't find any articles and zeroed the page. (It rebuilds the FANMP page each time because, in theory at least, the delegates could promote multiple articles at once). I have corrected the problem. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:22, 23 May 2016 (UTC)

The page seems to be working fine, suggesting the bot ignores markup (as it should) and only modifies the link. I don't know why is emptied as a result while it continues to add articles to the main list. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:46, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

It seems the bot has already adapted. Your revert could have broken it again. -- [[User:Edokter]] {{talk}} 10:55, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

The Bot adapted after being non-working for a week because I changed the Bot to handle the asterisks. I see that you want the first entry in each category to contain an asterisk too. [1] Modified it to do this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:35, 24 May 2016 (UTC)

Deletion discussion

Editors here may be interested in Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering. DrKay (talk) 18:48, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

How many featured articles are there on English Wikipedia?

If you know the answer, please reply at the Village Pump. Kaldari (talk) 22:52, 15 September 2016 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 30 September 2016

Busyfash83 (talk) 20:57, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. EvergreenFir (talk) 21:20, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

WT:FAC#New Featured Article coordinators

Just a pointer. - Dank (push to talk) 15:23, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Stand-alone lists being nominated as Good Articles

FYI

 – Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Request for comment on stand-alone lists being nominated as Good Articles

--Redrose64 (talk) 23:01, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that one of the three proposals in this RfC involves creating a separate "Good Lists" rating and process independent of the GA process. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:21, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

TFA History Link

Just a small note for FA contributors. TFA History Link is a user script which adds a link to the top toolbar for viewing Special:History/Today's Featured Article in a Recent Changes format. It is primarily designed for Featured Article contributors, reviewers and recent changes patrollers to quickly see TFA revisions. The source can be found here. Lourdes 11:27, 13 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiJournal of Medicine promotion

The WikiJournal of Medicine is a free, peer reviewed academic journal which aims to provide a new mechanism for ensuring the accuracy of Wikipedia's biomedical content. We started it as a way of bridging the Wikipedia-academia gap. It is also part of a WikiJournal User Group with other WikiJournals under development. The journal is still starting out and not yet well known, so we are advertising ourselves to WikiProjects that might be interested.

Engaging Wikipedians

• Original articles on topics that don't yet have a Wikipedia page, or only a stub/start
• Wikipedia articles that you are willing to see through external peer review (either solo or as in a group, process analogous to GA / FA review)
• Image articles, based around an important medical image or summary diagram

Engaging non-Wikipedians

We hope that an academic journal format may also encourage non-Wikipedians to contribute who would otherwise not. Therefore, please consider:

• Printing off the advertisement poster and distribute in tearooms & noticeboards at your place of work
• Emailing around the pdf through contact networks or mailing lists (suggested wording)

If you want to know more, we recently published an editorial describing how the journal developed. Alternatively, check out the journal's About or Discussion pages.

Additionally, the WikiJournal of Science is just starting up under a similar model and looking for contributors. Firstly it is seeking editors to guide submissions through external academic peer review and format accepted articles. It is also encouraging submission of articles in the same format as Wiki.J.Med. If you're interested, please come and discuss the project on the journal's talk page, or the general discussion page for the WikiJournal User group.
T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 10:33, 19 January 2017 (UTC)

Re-running TFAs

Please see this post about re-running TFAs, and comment there if interested. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:57, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

17% of FAs have cleanup tags

A list of articles needing cleanup associated with this project is available. See also the tool's wiki page and the index of WikiProjects.

Just a heads up that 17% of FAs apparently have cleanup tags of some sort. This is low compared to the rest of the encyclopedia, but I thought it was rather high for articles that are expected to be representative of Wikipedia's best.  czar 07:34, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Tks Czar. They are indeed meant to represent WP's best and when promoted they probably did, but standards have changed over the years, and even recent promotions are not always maintained. There is the FAR process, which starts with DIY fixes if possible and continues to full-scale review as necessary... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 07:55, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

I had a quick scan through, and not all of them are up to date; nor is it obvious where they are all tagged. It would be helpful if a few people could check which tags actually exist, and of those, which are necessary. Sarastro1 (talk) 11:10, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

The list is updated weekly on Tuesdays. If the article is not tagged now it is because the tags have been addressed in the last week. DrKay (talk) 17:44, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

RfC on how to deal with a shortage of featured articles for the main page

Please see here and comment there if interested. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:10, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Looking for examples of book FAs

Are there any examples of non-fiction, non-biography book articles that have ever reached FA status. Couldn't see any easy way of finding them in hte list of FAs. I'm looking for good examples of the way such articles should be written. Thanks, SpinningSpark 16:26, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

The popups gadget makes it fairly easy to find these. Here are a few: Aradia, or the Gospel of the Witches, Letters Written in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, Fuck: Word Taboo and Protecting Our First Amendment Liberties, and Freedom for the Thought That We Hate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:06, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, that's very useful. I tried popups years ago, but found it too intrusive to leave permanently on. I'll try to bear it in mind in the future if I have a similar question. SpinningSpark 19:22, 12 February 2017 (UTC)

FA statistics question

Hi all, I'm writing an article that includes discussion about the difference between an FA vs a B vs Stub articles (medical focus). Are there any statistics on:

• Average length
• The average number of references
• Number of reviewers

I'd be interested in either raw info, or comparison between quality ranks, or comparison within an article at different years. I thought I'd ask here just in case someone already knew before I start analysing a random sample from scratch! Thanks in advance. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 05:24, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

There's nothing global, but there are some recent discussions that include numbers you might be able to use. This lists all nominators and reviewers for a six month period ending in January 2017, and shows the outcome (archived or promoted). There's also this, which looked at the first half of 2016, more or less, and included the length of the nomination text as a data point, though not the number of reviewers. The main conclusion in the associated discussion was that prior experience in nominating a successful FAC is by far the strongest predictor of whether a nomination will succeed. You might also be interested in this discussion of the gradual decrease in FAC productivity over time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:06, 20 February 2017 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Thanks! Very useful data. Those promoted in 2016 had 6.6 ± 1.7 reviewers (mean±sd). T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 03:04, 21 February 2017 (UTC)

Record number of articles promoted at once?

This isn't particularly important, but I have this page on my watchlist, and I noticed that Sarastro just promoted 8 articles with a single edit. Is that a record? AmericanLemming (talk) 15:36, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

That's nothing out of the ordinary—the delegates regularly promote in batches of eight or so (a couple of recent examples [2], [3]). Here is the simultaneous promotion of 10 articles back in 2011. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

This was quite common once upon a time. For some reason, there are a few more reviewers around at the moment. The rate of promotion has been up for a few months. Sarastro1 (talk) 16:03, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 13 March 2017

50.195.166.123 (talk) 15:23, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format. Sir Joseph ^(talk) 15:41, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

RfC on the WP:ANDOR guideline

Hi, all. Opinions are needed on the following: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#RfC: Should the WP:ANDOR guideline be softened to begin with "Avoid unless" wording or similar?. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 23:14, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Move from GA?

I posted ZETA (fusion reactor) to GA over two months ago. In that time I have received only minor comments about a few copyedit issues and a question about page numbers. As the purpose of moving to GA was to eventually bring the article here, is there any reason not to do so now? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:33, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

Hi Maury, speaking as both editor and FAC coord, I think it's always a good idea to get as many eyes on an article as possible before nominating at FAC. I'd try a Peer Review first, pinging relevant wikiprojects (perhaps including MilHist, even though I note the article isn't tagged under that project). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:05, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

It has been to PR, but the response was so slow I didn't even know anyone had looked at it until, and I'm not joking, five years later. My experience with MILHIST A-class has been superb, but I'm not sure this topic has any overlap. Maury Markowitz (talk) 02:11, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

I know PR can be frustrating, which is why I think one has to ping projects and editors to join in. Yes, I don't know that MilHist ACR is necessarily the place for it, but some MilHist editors might be interested in commenting at a PR, e.g. Hawkeye7. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:57, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Hardly a record; one article has been at GA since last October. As a rule, MilHist articles get reviewed faster than most. But this one is not in the scope of the MilHist project. I would advise bringing it to FAC once the GA is finished (and you have a slot). I'll give it a review there. Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:26, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

Featured articles by length

Came upon this page listing FAs by length, but it's nearly three years out of date. The lengths of many of the pages have changed since then, more than 700 new articles have achieved FA status since then (5,002 vs. 4,297). Anyone know if there's either a) a more current list somewhere, or b) a relatively straightforward way of generating one? Thanks! --Usernameunique (talk) 08:38, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

Is this not something a robot could be doing weekly? Maury Markowitz (talk) 15:35, 28 April 2017 (UTC)

It could be, if anyone wanted it. Isn't there an SQL query to retrieve the information? Hawkeye7 (talk) 03:39, 30 April 2017 (UTC)

@Maury Markowitz and Hawkeye7: Speaking for myself, a weekly update would be pretty cool---both because the numbers would stay fresh, and because new FAs would also be listed. Not sure how to create a robot or run an SQL query, however. --Usernameunique (talk) 01:06, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

Ask for a new report at Wikipedia talk:Database reports Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:49, 1 May 2017 (UTC)

RfC regarding the WP:Lead guideline -- the first sentence

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Lead section#Request for comment on parenthetical information in first sentence. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 06:05, 2 July 2017 (UTC)

Romania

I was thinking that maybe you can add Romania as a featured article because it has a lot of information and the most people don't know so much about Romania, a country in Eastern Europe and with this you can change it. some french and english people think that romania is full of Roma and thinks like that so i hope that if you feature Romania people will know more about the beautiful country and if just one time Romania is featured and not the 352 war article it will mean a lot for me and the other Romanian people. --Hereismarius (talk) 17:52, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC: Red links in infoboxes

Opinions are needed on the following matter: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Infoboxes#RfC: Red links in infoboxes. A WP:Permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:43, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

"Featured articles are considered to be the best articles Wikipedia has to offer"

Why are Simpsons season synopses like this for example "the best articles Wikipedia has to offer" whereas articles like this are merely considered "good?" And it's not just that one, there's like a bunch of Simpsons season pages that are featured whilst guys like Oliver Cromwell get a "need more citations" template? The examples go on and on: season 4 of Family Guy is apparently one of "the best articles Wikipedia has to offer." - Phone Charger (talk) 22:05, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

"Best" does not mean "most important" -- articles go through community assessment at FAC to determine if the are "the best", based on prose, style, comprehensiveness, structure and referencing; "importance" is not among the criteria. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:11, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

You know, I noticed that Family Guy Season 4's "prose, style, comprehensiveness, structure and referencing" are that of the finest Western poetry. It all makes sense now. Cheers. - Phone Charger (talk) 23:11, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Neither The Simpsons (season 8) or Family Guy (season 4) are Featured Articles; both are WP:Featured Lists. As for why Henry VIII or Oliver Cromwell aren't featured articles, it's either because nobody has taken the time to improve them to the required standard, or having improved them they haven't nominated them. If you want to see them as FAs, the onus is on you to get them up to standard... Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:24, 19 July 2017 (UTC)

You should maybe actually visit said pages and see the little star up there that says "THIS IS A FEATURED ARTICLE." The fact that I have to explain this to you is disheartening. Cheers. - Phone Charger (talk) 04:50, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

If you hover over the little stars, they are both Featured Lists, which have somewhat different criteria. But still, almost all articles or lists with a star have been more extensively vetted than those without. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:52, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

A discussion about WP:FA at the Village Pump

There is a discussion about reforms to the featured article process ongoing at WP:VPI#Change FAC to A-class style review. Interested editors might want to comment there. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:44, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 October 2017

i want to be able to edit this i will keep this up to date ive been studing them Luke2034 (talk) 18:19, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

 Not done Thanks for the offer, but the people listed here are responsible for keeping it up to date. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:27, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Audie Murphy

Well, the latest is the permanent block YahWehSaves from Wikipedia, largely due to his history of diddling with Audie Murphy. If that were the only one. Please see the latest good-faith edits, which Chris troutman more or less reverted and left a message on the article's talk page. I have been reminded on my talk page that my ongoing involvement with the article makes it a COI of me to give it Full Protection. But if there's one article out there that needs Full Protection, it's this one. Audie Murphy is just one of those beloved legendary figures in American history that editors are just tempted to insert their edits to feel a part of it, or whatever the motive is. I believe the latest edits were good-faith, but they were just a crap shoot of moving words around in sentences, adding absolutely nothing to the article. Can we please consider giving this article indef Full Protection? — Maile (talk)

Our featured articles receive so much work from many of our most-experienced editors. I have long believed that all FAs should be fully protected upon promotion. Because Wikipedia is a playground for those with an unhealthy need to express their narrative, the quality of our FAs (as well as our A-class articles) are under threat. I reject Jimbo's assertions that most edits are constructive and reverting bad edits is easy. It's only reasonable that editors like Maile66 seek to protect their hard work and I question our business model when we, as a community, refuse to support our most-dedicated contributors. I support fully protecting the article about Murphy, as well as all the others. Chris Troutman (talk) 17:06, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

One of the reasons I've kind of slacked off activity at FAC (besides Admin work elsewhere) is that I've started to feel like all that work, by nominator and reviewers alike, is building a castle of sand. Continuous editing that amounts to kicking down the sand castles and recreating whatever they want. It's kind of like, in some cases, of lying in the rear without doing the work involved, and coming along later and changing things because it's working on an FA with no interference. Audie Murphy aside, This was the kicker on my participation waning. And under Wikipedia guidelines, other editors can come along and justify just about anything. — Maile (talk) 17:20, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

And ... in the latest edits on Audie Murphy ... the editor is continuing to edit, disregarding the request to discuss it on the talk page. One sentence at a time, he's rewriting the article. Please assist. — Maile (talk) 17:36, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Now the same editor is going after related articles in the FT. He's just having a field day inserting his style. Where does this stop? — Maile (talk) 18:55, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

If you don't think a particular edit is high-quality enough to merit changing content in an FA, just be bold and restore the article to its former state. For the world tour article, the editor who introduced the quote in question hasn't edited in a number of months. I doubt that anyone would take offense if you removed it at this point; I certainly wouldn't, as it does seem like putting a nasty word into an article for no good reason. I've often found in my own editing that waiting a few days after a shaky edit is made to perform fixes does wonders for avoiding drama, as the editor will most likely have moved on to another article. As for Murphy, with edits like that I try to look at each copy-edit and see which ones are improvements in the writing and which aren't. Sometimes they all are and I'm very happy; other times things need to be changed back. Try to keep an open mind with copy-edits, but don't be afraid to bring back the previously exiting prose if the edits decrease the quality of the article. Giants2008 (Talk) 19:21, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

RFC proposal to add full protection to Featured Articles

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

RFC withdrawn. For the limited time, this proposal ran, it was snow opposed. Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 13:42, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

---

RFC proposal to add full protection to new FAs, and retroactive upon request to older FAs. Thereafter, the article could be edited with a talk page request, or re-assessed for its FA status. There is a precedent set by Arbcom for giving select categories of articles a permanent protection level. ARB Extended Confirmed decision

Presently, FAC nominators and reviewers work extensively on honing an article to FA quality. It is an admirable process with credible results. Achieving FA, it becomes a target, more so if it's TFA. Nothing is in place to prevent the sand castle effect, where anyone can instantly knock it down. Vandalism, or good-faith "just because". Wikipedia policies can be cited to excuse many edits.

Revert too much, and you face charges of "ownership" behavior. Or bogged down in an endless edit war, or talk page war. We all have our stories:

Texas Revolution reached FA April 2015, and within a month was hit by vandalism that never really abated for the next two years – sources removed, POV inserted, content re-written. Several months after achieving FA, it was invaded by a sock farm that was not shut down until April 2017.

Audie Murphy - The most visible disruptions, before its May 2014 FA status, came from an editor with an agenda who had been at it since 2011, and was not finally blocked indef until October 2017. Highly visible article attracts much editing, not all of which is FA-quality.

King Kalākaua's world tour was injected with one reader's political agenda on racism, the very month it was TFA. It was discussed on the talk page. They cited Wikipedia policy for what they did. It's still in the article.

Please comment below. — Maile (talk) 16:11, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Comments

Support

Oppose

• Totally oppose. Applying page protection in a pre-emptive measure is contrary to the open nature of Wikipedia and is generally not allowed if applied for these reasons. However, brief periods of an appropriate and reasonable protection level are allowed in situations where blatant vandalism or disruption is occurring and at a level of frequency that requires its use in order to stop it. The duration of the protection should be set as short as possible, and the protection level should be set to the lowest restriction needed in order to stop the disruption while still allowing productive editors to make changes. is official Wikipedia policy, and a WP:LOCALCONSENSUS at FA would be immediately struck down; if you want to get a core Wikipedia policy revoked, you'll at minimum need a widely-publicized site-wide RFC and even then it would almost certainly be blocked by the WMF. (We had to fight tooth-and-nail just to get the right to protect FAs, given that Today's Featured Article has long appeared immediately below the "Anyone can edit" strapline.) "Featured" doesn't mean "perfect", and locking non-admins out of 5000+ articles, most of which have no significant history of disruption and all of which could still be improved in some way, would be an awful signal to send. Protection is a last resort when all other measures fail, not a labor-saving device because we get annoyed with peasants who dare to touch our precious articles. If you want to be able to lock a page into your preferred version, go to Citizendium. ‑ Iridescent 18:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• I might be willing to support semi or ECP, but automatic permanent full protection seems a bit over the top, as for many topics updates will be needed in future and it's much easier to do that directly rather than try to go through edit requests. Nikkimaria (talk) 18:24, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose as a non-starter. The FAs I've contributed are mostly about highways that are still active designations. That means things will change about those topics from time to time. If nothing else, we'll periodically want to update traffic counts to keep them relevant. I can't imagine that I'm the only FA writer who has topics that will need updates, so this proposal as written is simply not going to fly. Imzadi 1979 → 18:28, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose Protecting an article just because it is FA is WP:OWNership: you're saying "stay the hell off my patch". Also, an FA is still a work in progress. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 21:27, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, what Redrose said. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 21:59, 8 November 2017 (UTC)
• Strong oppose – Sorry in advance if this comment displays a level of ownership that goes against the Wiki spirit, but it can't be good for the project to leave non-admins (such as myself) in a position where we can't edit the FAs that we have significantly contributed to, or ones that we have on our watchlists. If the goal here is to preserve the quality of FAs, then this is a flawed idea, since many editors would find themselves completely unable to protect articles from crappy edits. I suppose that admins could be called in to make necessary updates, but that would be a big timesink for them, not to mention that there's no guarantee that an admin wouldn't introduce problems themselves (we've all put typos into articles at some point, for example). Giants2008 (Talk) 19:32, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Point well taken. — Maile (talk) 19:41, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

Withdrawal of RFC

• WITHDRAWING RFC. Giants2008 has a really valid point here. As much as I would like to see full protection on FAs, it doesn't make sense for someone not to be able to edit an article they brought to FA status. It would also exclude some really excellent editors here at FA. Can an uninvolved person please close out this withdrawn RFC? — Maile (talk) 21:31, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Subcategorisation of media

There are now about 300 FAs listed under the Media section (before you get to its subsections), which seems very unwieldy to me. Would it not be wise to partition them into sections for television shows, television episodes and films? If there are no objections, I can re-organise them as such. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 23:48, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

Done. — Bilorv_(talk)^(c)(e) 04:21, 30 December 2017 (UTC)

More citations in article leads for the sake of translation

This is not the sole forum to raise this issue, but I wanted to share something about the use of featured articles.

I advocate for citations after every sentence in wiki articles. Part of current practice is having fewer citations in the leads of articles on the presumptions that typical readers find citations make text less readable and less friendly and that any reader will be able to find the sources of facts in the bodies of articles.

I am helping to organize a wiki translatathon (translation event) as described at

• Wikipedia:LaGuardia Community College/Translatathon April 2018

The Wikimedia Foundation presented the mw:Content translation in 2014 and this tool has greatly matured and become among the easiest wiki activities in which new users can engage since about 2016. At this translatathon event we will introduce multilingual editors to Wikipedia by having them translate good content, mostly English, into their native languages.

We will be recommending the leads of English Wikipedia's featured articles as suggested translation topics. A problem with this is that this often means that when content goes from English to another language, the citations will not go with the content, because the current custom is to expect fewer citations in the leads of featured articles than is allowable in the body of the text.

I wish that the featured article process would expect citations in the lead in the same way that we expect citations elsewhere in the body of the article, regardless of whether that repeats citations. The citations are not burdensome here, and they are extremely valuable in the context of translating the content to other language Wikipedias. If only we could translate the leads of English articles to other languages then especially minority languages could be better established sooner. Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:50, 16 February 2018 (UTC)

The FA process only implicitly allows duplicate citations to be omitted from the lead because it requires candidates follow the Manual of Style. That's the correct place to raise this issue. I don't think it was anticipated that people would be translating just the lead of articles and thus missing the citations—it actually strikes me as an odd activity to get people engaged in. --Laser brain (talk) 14:24, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Laser brain hits it right - it's not a FA criteria - it's an MOS issue. This is not the place to raise this sort of issue. (And ... frankly, you're unlikely to get much traction on changing this... as we can't even get consensus that list articles need citations at all) Ealdgyth - Talk 15:31, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Links are difficult to read

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Featured_articles&action=history

Geography and places: + sub-headings - makes the links easier to distinguish from each other

the bot placed two at the wrong location

• 19:49, 24 February 2018‎ 23h112e (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (254,836 bytes) (0)‎ . . (→‎Art, architecture, and archaeology: moved one link to correct sub-heading)
• 19:41, 24 February 2018‎ 23h112e (talk | contribs)‎ m . . (254,644 bytes) (0)‎ . . (→‎Art, architecture, and archaeology: moved a link to make the list alphabetical)

23h112e (talk) 20:32, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Updating examples - yes or no?

I've noticed many examples in the grading template are outdated and link to old versions of articles (i.e Water fluoridation). I was about to replace the links to some of them with their new versions as these articles have kept the same class, but I first want to know: is there a reason to keep the old links? Is it these versions in particular that are perfect examples, or would an update in that area be suitable?

I've said my peace Double Plus Ungood (talk) 05:56, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

The template is designed to link to the version of the article at the time of promotion, so that comparison with current and past versions can be made more easily. DrKay (talk) 08:14, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

OK, thanks! Double Plus Ungood (talk) 03:50, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

RFC on citations in FA lede

Hey! FYI, an RFC has been opened at Talk:Winter_War#rfc_AD71249 concerning citations in an FA lede. Manelolo (talk) 17:51, 5 March 2018 (UTC)

Can I request a front-page placement LONG in advance?

On 25 January 1958 Sir John Cockroft announced that (we really think) ZETA had produced fusion. Can I suggest the article for the front page that day next year? Is there a limit to how far in advance these things are planned? I just wish I had submitted in time for the 60th anniversary... Maury Markowitz (talk) 19:49, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

You can request one year ahead, WP:TFARP, but no guarantee if something more important comes up for the same day. - I thought you meant really LONG ;) --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:00, 6 March 2018 (UTC)

So did I, then I looked at the backlog... Maury Markowitz (talk) 23:04, 7 March 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost

The Signpost has now been published after a long delay. There are some articles in it that may be of interest to Featured Article/List writers and reviewers. Don't hesitate to contribute to the comments sections. All Wikipedia editors are welcome to submit articles on any topic for consideration by the editorial board for the next issue.Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 06:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Can any article become a feature article?

I mean the question in a philosophical sense. As in can we theoretically convert any existing good article into a featured article?

I am asking this because there exists subjects about which only few sources exist, and even if you exhaust all of those sources, you end up with a relatively short article. It seems to me that FAs must be of a certain length, which makes me wonder if it is fair to say that "for some subjects, there are so few sources available today that it is unlikely they can have their own featured article". But I would like to know other people's opinion about this statement. huji—TALK 01:03, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

I have a question

Hi, I do have a question regarding the article David Meade (author). My question is here. I do would like my question answered on the article's talk page. Thanks! --LovelyGirl7 talk 02:26, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Notice

    — The Transhumanist    13:16, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

Utility of the Failed Featured Article Candidacy status

Hi. I am working through Wikipedia:Good articles/mismatches and have come across eight articles that passed Good Article review and then later failed Featured Article candidacy. The status of the {{article history}} template of these articles is set to FFAC. The issue with this is that this removes the articles from Category:Wikipedia good articles even though they are still considered Good Articles. I left a message at Template talk:Article history#FFAC/GA which may solve the issue if someone takes it up (sorry well outside my expertise). If that fails I was thinking to just change the status back to GA, so the category is still displayed. I couldn't find any practical reason (i.e categories) for keeping FFAC, but thought I would check here first. Another option (one I just thought of while typing this) may be to manually add the category. Not sure if that would work, but if it does that could keep the FFAC heading and potentially be in the correct category. Either way I would like to know the importance of the FFAC satus before changing too much. AIRcorn (talk) 21:11, 5 May 2018 (UTC)

• Update There is now the option of FFAC/GA for the |currentstatus= in the {{article history}} template. This will list the article as a failed featured article candidate and a good article. It should be used if an article is promoted to Good status, but fails its Featured attempt. See here for an example.

@Aircorn: This must be old stuff? The current FACBot doesn't do that any more. See here where a current GA failed at FAC and the bot set the status back to Good Article. Ian Rose, Sarastro1, any thoughts? --Laser brain (talk) 19:49, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

The articles I came across were

1. 1st Filipino Infantry Regiment
2. Aleister Crowley
3. Battle of Warsaw (1831)
4. Far Side Virtual
5. Gallipoli Campaign
6. International airport
7. Mikhail Petrovich Petrov (general)
8. Ralph Townsend

I just assumed it was a missing status as there is also a FFA/GA for Former Featured Articles. I will leave it up to editors here to decide if this is useful and whether it should stay or be removed. AIRcorn (talk) 20:09, 7 May 2018 (UTC)

Animals (mammals to be specific) and 9/11

Some other animals that should be a featured article are tigers and bears, as the tiger is endangered and we're doing our best to save them. As for bears, I guess we should list the grizzly bear and/or the polar bear because of their importance. Also the September 11th attacks should be a featured article as they were an important moment in US history, the deadliest mass murder in US history, and how it permanently changed US history. Also, only 3 of the 4 hijacked flights were listed. The one that was not listed was United Airlines flight 175, and that one definitely needs to be listed to fill in the gap. Tigerdude9 (talk) 17:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tigerdude9, "featured article" is a designation based on article quality, not the importance of the subject covered. WP:VITAL, conversely, provides lists of articles by perceived importance. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:07, 12 May 2018 (UTC)