A1: FOUR recognizes the development of an article through four major editorial stages: 1.) A new creation, 2.) a developing article with at least one interesting encyclopedic fact (WP:DYK), 3.) a fairly thorough and high quality article (WP:WIAGA), 4.) complete article passing all quality standards (WP:WIAFA). Taking one brand-new article through all three of Wikipedia's major content milestones is a major achievement, and this award exists to recognize that effort and encourage others to do the same.
Q2: What counts as a new article for the purpose of WP:FOUR?
A2: Any article that would have been a redlink before you created it, or any article that was a redirect with no content history before you wrote it. Articles that are redlinks because they were deleted count so long as you created your version from scratch. If a redirect has content history that you did not create, it does not count.
Q3: Are articles split from other articles eligible?
A3: Generally yes, as long as you made significant editorial contributions in the process of shepherding it through the relevant DYK/GA/FA nominations.
Q4: What about expansions from existing stubs?
A4: Regardless of the quality of the stub, expanding an article does not count as creating a new article. You are improving an article that already exists – an achievement not to be downplayed, but not the purpose of the Four Award.
Q5: If an article was featured as a bold link on WP:ITN or WP:OTD, rendering it ineligible for WP:DYK, can it still qualify for WP:FOUR?
A5: No. ITN and OTD have different criteria and quality standards for their selections than DYK, so those processes are not considered substitutes for DYK the purpose of the Four Award.
Q6: Are articles nominated for DYK after becoming GAs eligible?
A6: Yes. The timing of the DYK does not matter.
Q7: Why doesn't this award include articles that went through three of the four stages?
A7: Because it's the Four Award. Its purpose is to recognize the effort involved for one person to bring one article from brand-new through all three of Wikipedia's major content milestones. Allowing only three stages to be recognized would be counter to the point. The WP:TRIPLECROWN recognizes when an editor has achieved several milestones on different articles, and may be of interest to users whose articles do not meet the FOUR criteria.
Q8: Why don't we have a five award for WP:FAs that make the main page through WP:TFA, or become part of a WP:FT?
A8: The Four Award recognizes advances in editorial quality. Being selected for TFA is one way an article is recognized for achieving FA status. Being included in a WP:FT is another. Neither TFA nor FT represents an advance in editorial quality past FA, so they are not considered as part of the Four Award process.
Q9: Is it possible for collaborators to all receive WP:FOUR recognition?
A9: Yes. In order for multiple editors to be awarded WP:FOUR recognition, there needs to evidence of collaboration throughout all of the processes. As WP:DYK, WP:GAN, and WP:FAC all allow co-nominations, the most challenging aspect is during the article creation stage. Evidence of collaboration can be provided for the creation stage in a number of ways. A common way would be multiple editors providing substantial content to a draft, which would then be moved into the article mainspace. The responsibility is on the nominators to provide the reviewer evidence of the collaboration throughout the entire article development process (evidence above and beyond just being a co-nominator would need to be provided).
Q10: Are articles nominated for featured lists status eligible?
A10: No. The featured list editorial process is different from the featured article process. FOUR is meant to recognize the article-development process, not the list-development process.
This page was nominated for deletion on 15 August 2013. The result of the discussion was keep.
I recently was given a four award for Duckport Canal, but it turns out there'd already been five haphazardly-referenced sentences about it at Vicksburg campaign#Duckport Canal. Does converting the article from a redlink to its very first encyclopedic content in the instructions mean that those five sentences render Duckport ineligible? Hog FarmTalk22:53, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would say it does not render it ineligible. I think that part of the instructions is poorly worded and needs to be removed or revised. My guess is that it was put in there to stop people from making article splits just to get the 4A cheaply, but in my experience it only causes confusion for good-faith editors such as yourself who have created a brand-new article on something that just so happened to be mentioned elsewhere. ♠PMC♠ (talk)23:19, 15 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I would say it counts. A new article was created, even if the information already existed in another article on Wikipedia. I'm OK with ediors making splits to create an FA: if the new article shouldn't exist, it will be deleted at WP:AfD, and if there are continuous problems then editors can discuss that issue when it is raised. I might be biased, though, as if Duckport is disallowed then Types Riot is probably also ineligable, as it was originally a redirect to Colonial Advocate. Z1720 (talk) 02:00, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I had this whole response typed out making a guess about the origin of the rule and then I thought to look at where that phrasing was first added - May 2009. The archived discussion from that time seems to indicate that it was added to clarify that turning a redirect into an article qualifies, but expansion from a stub does not, even if the stub was literally just "The Types Riot was a riot." I don't think anyone at that time was worried about whether or not there was content at the redirect target. I'm tempted to boldly tweak the wording to make that a little more clear - does anyone object? ♠PMC♠ (talk)03:40, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Totally in favour of clarifying the above rule. From what I see above, there was information about the Duckport Canal in the Vicksburg campaign article, and Duckport Canal was a redirect to that section of the Vicksburg article. Likewise, information about Types Riot was in the Colonial Advocate article, and Types Riot was a redirect to that section of the Colonial Advocate article. In both of these cases, I think the articles would be allowed in FOUR because both of these articles are transforming a redirect into an article. Is there an aspect that I missed? Z1720 (talk) 17:47, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have tweaked, subject to y'all's approval. Two less-common cases I think we should clarify, even if just in a footnote or something: if you recreate an article that was previously deleted, is it eligible? Are splits eligible? Personally I'm in favor of being pretty relaxed about it, so I'm a "sure why not" to both, but I didn't want to assume. ♠PMC♠ (talk)21:40, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
PS Several of mine are neither converted redlinks nor splits; I simply wrote a new article, with mostly or largely new prose. Not sure if this means that I will get my epaulettes torn off. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:51, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I take "redlink" to mean anything that didn't previously exist as an article, ie it would have been a redlink if someone had linked to it. I would have to be sending the gazpacho police to my house to take my 4As first, as I tend to do the same :) Maybe I'll put a note like "please follow the most charitable interpretation of 'new article' since this is supposed to be fun". ♠PMC♠ (talk)22:57, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
As a side note regarding split articles, 4A was created and solidified in 2009, but the GA rule was not added to DYK until 2013. The current 4A FAQ was never updated, so it reflects 2009 DYK rules, making it a bit dated when discussing DYK credit for split articles. It feels like we're leaning somewhat more lenient here in order to encourage people to stick with articles, so I will update the FAQ to say that splits are okay so long as you're the one who did the split and then got all the relevant DYK/GA/FA credits. To be honest I can hardly imagine a situation where someone could take a big chunk out of another article and get it through GA and FA without significant editorial work, so I'm not inclined to be overly strict about it. ♠PMC♠ (talk)23:16, 16 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I have revamped the FAQ quite a lot. Could people have a look and advise if there are any suggestions or objections? I'm also tempted to stick the FAQ on the main page rather than hiding it on the talk page. ♠PMC♠ (talk)00:07, 17 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Particularly at this stage in Wikipedia's history, I agree with being charitable when interpreting what counts as a "new article" or "new content", so a split with substantial new content is okay and certainly a few sentences about a topic within a larger-scope article isn't disqualifying. I think that means I agree with everyone in this discussion, and the FAQ/rule changes that have been made.Recreating a deleted article from scratch is different to a refund creation or something where you use the existing content, but from my perspective I don't really want to be investigating whether a recreated article is "new content", because as a non-admin that's not always information I can access. — Bilorv (talk) 10:53, 20 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Well, it ought to be obvious, if people are doing things properly. If a deleted article was undeleted, the original diffs will be restored to the history, and the original author will show as the first diff. (See for example Martin Rundkvist, linked above in earlier discussion about recreated deleted articles). If the article was built from a copy of a deleted article that wasn't undeleted for some reason, the reused content must be clearly attributed somewhere, or else the author is technically committing a copyright violation. So in either case, it would be obvious that the nom wasn't the original author. ♠PMC♠ (talk)01:26, 21 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Gog the Mild, I'm confused by "no mention of brand new articles". The FAQ explicitly addresses this in Q1 and Q2. Q1 lists "a new creation" as step one, and Q2 provides more detail. ♠PMC♠ (talk)00:32, 23 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]
For what it's worth, I've asked Novem Linguae (courtesy ping) to take a look at making an 4A promotion script, which should hopefully take a lot of the annoyance out of doing these. They told me they're busy at the moment but will try to look at it later in the fall. ♠PMC♠ (talk)19:28, 12 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I've done the majority of promotions for the last couple of years, and it's all I can really do to watchlist the page and not let it fall off the bottom. That means that when nominations are made within 7 days of each other it doesn't hit my radar. I've appealed for help a couple of times but few others are promoting. I don't enjoy the task but I believe it's important for editor retention. The same is true of Triple Crown. I think there'd be more time invested making a script than saved from following the well-detailed instructions (although I'd use the script if someone made it). We just need more people watchlisting the page and lending a helping hand. — Bilorv (talk) 19:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The reason we can never get any traction with doing these is that the process is unbelievably tedious, so no one wants to do any. It takes like five solid minutes to do a single one, and that's if you don't make any mistakes. You have to do a bunch of fiddly templates in a fiddly table (and no cheating by forcing VE, because the templates aren't friendly to VE) and then edit like three other pages to increment numbers or set flags. A script will make that so much easier - enter the dates in the prompt box, hit enter, and it does all the other work for you. Boom. A tedious bore becomes a 30-second data entry adventure. There's no reason not to encourage a willing editor to bash up a tool for it. ♠PMC♠ (talk)19:26, 14 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Though checking the nomination can be trivial when you see 99% of the edits to the article were made by the creator, reviewing each criterion fully is a significant proportion of the time taken. I think it takes me 10 minutes or so to process a nomination. — Bilorv (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The fact that it takes you, the most active and therefore the most experienced promoter, at least ten minutes to do just one of these, is a strong argument for building a script. Any time saved on that will be valuable, both for you and for encouraging other people to step in. Although to be honest it feels like you may be overscrutinizing. People tend to self-select for this one pretty fairly; I don't think I've seen ever seen anyone make an invalid 4A nomination. I just went back and looked at the last ~150 or so edits to the nomination page and I don't see a single one where the edit summary indicates a decline. It's all "awarded", "processed", "done", etc, so it's not as though there's a rash of bad-faith or even mistaken nominations. Spending 10+ minutes to confirm each one feels like going past the point of useful returns. ♠PMC♠ (talk)21:54, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not launching a campaign against a script that I said I'd use. I just offered my thoughts. I think there are other factors to the backlogs, like the fact that you never get positive feedback on Wikipedia for helping out, just criticism that you're doing the job wrong (e.g. "overscrutinizing"). — Bilorv (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Bilorv, I apologize. I didn't mean that as a criticism of you or the hard work you do. I meant it in the sense that I think you're making it harder for yourself than is necessary to get the job done. Our time as editors is valuable, it's the only currency we have here. The time you spend dealing with 4A nominations is valuable time. You could be doing anything at all on-wiki or off, and you are choosing to take on tedious work so that people can get their awards, which I think is a great kindness on your part. I want to be clear as a 4A recipient that I appreciate you and any other editors who take time to do these things. It's because I value your time and effort that I don't think you should have to spend it triple-checking things that don't seem to need to be triple-checked. That's all I meant. ♠PMC♠ (talk)21:19, 17 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Hello friends, it's occurred to me that we should update the instructions page to be more clear about our current practices here, which lean a little more charitably and less strictly than in the past. Specifically, I think we should be explicit that articles which were converted from redirects, split from other articles, or recreated after deletion, are all acceptable. We've had discussions on this page agreeing to this and I updated the FAQ in line with these ideas in 2022, so I don't anticipate any objections, but discretion + valor etc.
I'm also going to remove the note about the Morotai Mutiny because TonyTheTiger apparently gave Ian the 4A for that one in 2011, so it's stupid to have a note saying it's disqualified. ♠PMC♠ (talk)05:12, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I solicit the Guild of Copy Editors for an article I'm pursuing a 4A for, does that significantly affect eligibility? I wondered if there would be an argument that "someone else wrote this" if I did. I currently have Eternal Blue (album) listed there, and PMC personally knows I've been working on this one for a while. My plan was to get this copyedited, attempt FA again, and if successful nominate it here. If that's a problem, I'll withdraw it and fix complaints at FAC myself. mftp danoops15:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
