Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive68

yet another reference question (short & long versions)

• Short version: Can I Oppose for eliding any and all specific page numbers in references?
• Very, Very Long version: So I just finished re-formatting Lead into the format that I think is clearly and objectively superior: {{cite book}}s etc in a separate section at the bottom of the page, {{sfn}} in body text. [I would go farther than that and use various {{harv}} formats in Notes, but that is irrelevant to this question.] Before that, it was all <ref>{{cite book | lotsa distracting/confusing text here }}</ref> all splashed like buckshot across body text. That is a common referencing method, and it is quite inferior. First, it's a maintenance nightmare for editors to search and find all those {{citation}}s everywhere in the body text. It is a confusing jumble of metatext mishmash blobs that break the actual displayed text up into near-incoherence when you look at the raw editing version; a n00b does not deserve to face that. Second, it jumbles all the displayed cite text into an unorganized blob of cite info in the References section, making spotting errors in them an exercise in serious eyestrain. Third, the absence of {{sfn}} (or something comparable) makes it prohibitively difficult to add specific page numbers. If you have four cites each from five different books, are you gonna shove twenty {{cite book}} templates in body text to somehow add page numbers? Or use named references and skip the specific page numbers? Or do something ugly/confusing like put a page number between {{cite book}} and the closing </ref>? So now today I see Amargasaurus. OK, so it's clearly better than Lead was, because all the templates are moved to the bottom of the page. Make that "much better". One major problem addressed, check it off the list. But two still remain: handing specific page numbers for specific cited facts, and the unorganized mess in the References section. I don't think I can Oppose for "No organization system for references", but how about "no page numbers for specific facts"?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:43, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, you could give it a go, & see what happens. This is rather a science thing, where the preferred style is to cite whole papers without page numbers, as more or less required by WP:MEDRS or whatever the page is. It makes some sense in a research-paper environment, but not in a thick-textbook one; this seems split between the two. But since much of the referencing now seems to be your work or in your style, it might seem odd. Johnbod (talk) 16:01, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I understand the preference for a citation system with less clutter in the body, but I don't think an oppose should be based on just not liking the choice of citation style, as long as it is consistent and contains the information needed to verify the references. The guideline at WP:CITESTYLE is explicit that many different citation approaches are acceptable. However, not providing page numbers (or some similarly specific location detail) for long sources definitely could be a valid reason to oppose. Readers (including reviewers) should not have read a lengthy source in its entirety to verify a fact that is isolated to a single page. That said, if the source is short (no more than a few pages) or a link is provided that goes directly to the supporting material, then page numbers might be redundant, and there are occasionally legitimate reasons to cite an entire work of moderate length (such as a journal article) if the entire source is about the specific claim. This would need to be looked at on a case-by-case basis, and I haven't reviewed the Lead article in particular, so I'm not commenting on it specifically. --RL0919 (talk) 16:17, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

On the point about page numbers in long sources, I asked FunkMonk about this for the Steller's sea cow FAC, since I've not reviewed all that many science articles. That article has long papers without page number citations, which seemed odd to me, but I gather it's not that uncommon in science articles. I didn't oppose over it as I think it's a matter of convenience, and technically the information to enable the reader to verify the information is present, but in my own articles I prefer to give exact page numbers when I cite journals. Also pinging Dunkleosteus77, the nominator. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:22, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I don't think you have to cite specific page numbers for journal refs (but definitely for books)   User:Dunkleosteus77 |push to talk  17:06, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, I think the rationale for this style in professional science is that the point being referenced is in the abstract, so page numbers are not needed. But the way WP editors often use papers is to support points that aren't in the abstract, but for example basic points that the paper mentions for background, or references to other work mentioned in passing. So I've always been uncomfortable with this style. Johnbod (talk) 18:44, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

I think most professional papers I've read almost always give the entire page range of an article, even for papers without abstracts (most 19th/early 20th century zoology articles I've seen don't have abstracts). FunkMonk (talk) 19:30, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that most historical articles that I've read give the full page range in the bibliography, but only the actual page(s) being referenced for regular citations.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:52, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

Belated point - we're not talking here about giving the full page range along with the publication details, but the specific page(s) in the article where the referenced point occurs. Johnbod (talk) 14:27, 26 March 2017 (UTC)

History (and art history) is very different, which was my point. Check out some medical FAs. Johnbod (talk) 12:07, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

Yes, you can oppose on the basis of missing page numbers. They should be there to enable easy verifiability, and look-up-ability. Sandbh (talk) 23:09, 4 March 2017 (UTC)

To the point raised about not using page numbers for journals: in Amargasaurus we have journals with 43 pages for Whitlock (2011); 26 pages for Leanza et al (2004); 22 pages for Bailey (1997); a couple more with 13 pages; a couple more with 12 pages... etc.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:14, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

There's the related issue that most e-book formats don't have page numbers, you can only cite down to the chapter. I wouldn't oppose over that either.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 19:48, 5 March 2017 (UTC)

@Sturmvogel 66: yes, as you mentioned, the bibliography should have full page ranges, butthe individual cites should have page numbers, if available.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:28, 6 March 2017 (UTC)

I put a revised version of Amargasaurus in User:Lingzhi/sandbox2, without categories or {{good article}} because it's in userspace. Note that this formatting has the advantages: 1) allows page numbers, 2) by extension, allows reviewers and readers to check for page numbers and request verification etc. 3) puts all sources in easy-to-find, much-easier-to-visually-scan-for-errors alpha/date order. 4) I dunno, maybe something else too.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 02:07, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

• Isn't it better to resolve this before spreading mixed messages at arbitrarily chosen FACs (e.g. Amargasaurus) about what's acceptable or not? It is frustrating for nominators to be guinea pigs for "experimental" criteria there may or may not be wide agreement upon. After all, there is a long precedent for (moderate length) journal articles not being broken up. Since 2013, I've only been asked to split journal articles that were in the 60+ page range, and this isn't exactly within a time period where the criteria have been lax. Of course, I'm not saying this is optimal or can't be changed, but there should be consensus before it is enforced. Nominators are understandably reluctant to make drastic changes if reviewers can't point to parts of the FAC/MOS guidelines that confirm their suggestions. FunkMonk (talk) 08:47, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
  • You raise several points. To WP:WIAFA first: It's very easy to point to the relevant part of WP:WIAFA, since 1c contains the word "verifiable", which in turn points to WP:V, which asserts that "other people using the encyclopedia [must be able to] check that the information". If a source is 60 pages long, how can other people check it? Some pdfs are not machine-readable (so CTRL-F doesn't work); some books are not scanned in amazon or google books; and for those that are, not every page is scanned. If I download a non-machine-readable pdf, am I required to read all 60 pages to find your point? Now that is truly an undue burden. Stealing from Johnbod's comments above, in Wikipedia we use sources in different ways and for different reasons than the professionals in a given field do when referring to their own books and journals. We really do need to be able to drill down to at least the specific page... As for standards having been unquestioned for a very long time, at least one and maybe two or three editors (depending on how you interpret various remarks) have opined that they were always uncomfortable with the status quo, but were reluctant to wade into the lion's den. As for an undue burden on the nominator, I spent several hours (maybe... four? maybe more? not sure) playing with the Python program that converts all those refs in seconds. [Which proves that I'm a crappy programmer to have taken so long, but that's irrelevant]. I mentioned that to say that I have already done the heavy lifting; the nominator only needs to 1) copy/paste my version to mainspace 2) restore the categories and 1 template I removed and (most importantly) 3) track down the relevant page numbers. I have already washed the vast majority of the nominator's dishes; few remain. If the nominator is frustrated about being forced to spend 1 hour tracking down page numbers, then alas, the nominator does not have my sympathy. We have already established in many previous FACs that I am an a**hole; this new evidence is purely lagniappe. In my defense, I would say that I am not asking anyone to do anything that I have not done myself, many scores of hundreds of times over (as in User:Lingzhi/sandbox for example, please do look at the references. Not finished yet though).   Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 14:25, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
    • I pretty much agree with Lingzhi, it is hard to verify vast page ranges, and when I have reviewed for GA/FA, have pointed this out. If page numbers are given, then use specific page numbers. If the source is a PDF without visible page numbers, use the PDF page number. If the source is a Kindle e-book (for example), use a Kindle location number. A reviewer shouldn't have to read a whole chapter (or more) to verify one sentence in an article. Simon Burchell (talk) 14:33, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
      • Thanks for your suggestion. What I like is that the references are sorted alphabetically, this is just like we are used to in scientific articles. But I also have concerns about this approach. (1) It is very committal, you have to provide extra info for every reference cited. In many (if not most) cases, we don't need this in science articles like this dinosaur one. The required information is often already given in the abstract, and if not, such papers follow a common structure, which makes it very easy to quickly find any information without reading the paper. This is why we usually don't give page numbers in science. (2) It brings a lot of additional complexity to the article. Adding references is always one of the largest burdens for new editors. And this complex approach makes it even more difficult; can you even do it using visual editor? If somebody adds a reference in the standard way, the reference will end up in the wrong list (because the approach is so committal). Please forgive me, but because of these reasons, and because I don't want to use something radically different from other dinosaur FAs (we also have to think about consistency), I now decided to provide page numbers for long papers using rp-templates in the Amargasaurus article. These are not ideal either, but in my opinion still the best choice, since they are very easy and quick, much less committal, and newcomers can simply ignore them. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:48, 11 March 2017 (UTC)
        • I refactored, hope that's OK. I think adding the {{rp}}s was at least "a step", and taking any step at all is progress. As to whether it was a step in the correct direction is arguable. And it certainly was not a step far enough, at least in my book. To explain: I would think that page numbers would be necessary in many if not most cases. I'd be willing, forex, to compromise and let the eleven references to ^abcdefghijkNovas, F.E. (2009) slide, because it's only 3 pages. But if our goal is not to confuse newcomers, then man that rp template is a step in the wrong direction. The display is odd/confusing; "p. 106" is much easier to decipher as "page 106." As the {{rp}} template doc says, "This is a relatively uncommon method of citing page numbers, usually used when other methods produce undesirable results. It is used in about one out of every 300 articles at the English Wikipedia." It.... is confusing. As for whether {{sfn}} can be used in Visual Editor, I would be deeply dismayed (but not shocked; most "improvements" are not) if VE cannot handle it. <strikethrough>User:Iridescent is the only editor I've ever seen musing about the shortcomings of VE. I know nothing about VE. Does anyone know? </strikethrough> As for consistency, past FAs could be changed to adhere to 1c. There doesn't have to be a rush to do so (even though it would take only a few minutes). But in the end, your method could be used (though it is distinctly less preferable!) because it does provide page numbers. I would just want to see it applied more thoroughly. As for "committal", I don't understand, what do you mean?.... And as for "our field doesn't need to do it that way", we have already said that Wikipedia's needs differ from those within the field.... OK, I temporarily enabled VE (will shut it off immediately of course), and added an sfn to my sandbox. It worked fine, although it did mysteriously add a line break after the template. I then removed the line break; all is as should be.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:04, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
          • Regarding VE, you want Fram for the negatives and WhatamIdoing for the positives. VE can kind of handle {{sfn}}, although it edits v…e…r…y slowly, and it's completely unintuitive how to change the text within the individual footnotes and references. (Here's an example of a medium-length FA in VE mode that makes copious use of the {{sfn}} and {{efn-ua}} templates, if you want to get a feel for what it's like.) Where the shit is going to hit the fan isn't VE—which is a great benefit to casual driveby editors but is unlikely ever to catch on among the broad editor base—but when the WMF forces this steaming heap of bugs as the replacement for the standard Wikitext edit window. (If you go here and check "New Wikitext mode", you can see for yourself how slow and cumbersome editing articles with complex markup will be in the WMF's New Order. Try editing something like Lead using it, and unless you're on a super-fast computer with a super-fast connection, watch your browser scream in protest.)

            On the more general issue of page numbers, I'm firmly in the camp that if a page number, section number, paragraph number etc exists it should always be included in the reference. Citations on Wikipedia serve a different purpose to citations in academic literature, and it's a disservice to our readers to force them to read an entire paper if they want to verify the accuracy of one fact, which may only be mentioned tangentially in that paper. (With my cynical hat on, forcing "each page number gets a separate reference", would have the added bonus of making it obvious from a quick glance at the reference section if anyone is pulling the all-too-common stunt of ripping off a single work top-to-bottom, and spicing the reference section with a couple of references to passing mentions in other works to try to mask the fact.) ‑ Iridescent 07:59, 12 March 2017 (UTC)

            • {{sfn}} is sometimes used in FAs, just like manually created parenthetical citations are also sometimes used in FAs. There is no FACr rule about which of the multiple varieties of WP:Inline citation styles you have to use. Articles need to be consistent within themselves, rather than consistent with other articles. I recommend that you use the WP:CITEVAR that the article benefits the most from.
              I wouldn't recommend using {{sfn}} with the visual editor (if that's a particular desire for an article that you're creating), because the approach used by that template is officially unsupported. You can add and edit those templates, but it's not easy (because the numbering is displayed wrong).
              Iridescent, there is no plan to replace "the standard Wikitext edit window" (a claim that presupposes that we can even agree on which of the dozen or so editing systems is "the standard" one). As for speed, editing in the visual editor is faster for me than using other websites, such as browsing Amazon.com (anyone know a dev there? It seems to be worse every time), so I've got no complaints with it. But speed depends on both your computer and your geo-location, and even the number of tabs you have open in your browser, so different people have different experiences. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 12 March 2017 (UTC)
• Just going to put it out that I don't think not putting individual page numbers in citations for journals runs contrary to WP:V. It's a standard way of citation used by most of science for decades (thus appropriate level of clarity, per WP:V), and used here for years. Hell, go to Science or Nature and the citations are hyper-abbreviated. The information is verifiable. It may take some time to find the fact (if for some reason you're unable to use cntrl-f, are unaware of how journals are structured, or are unable to use headings or any other navigation tool like an index) but difficulty of verification does not make something unverifiable. If you wish to advocate for page numbers, or withhold support from a FAC because they aren't used, well, advocate away, but to my mind citing WP:V misses the point. (Also I would argue that citations can be used to support concepts, ideas and explanations, and that these can run over pages or chapters, so focusing on just citing facts misses some of what we would be citing in an article, but that's another point). Sabine's Sunbird talk 03:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
  • I believe Iridescent explained the diff b/w Wikipedia and journals well above ("Citations on Wikipedia serve a different purpose..") I would suggest that there even more differences, but those are enough for the present... Having said that, I actually partially agree with the latter part of your comment above (about concepts vs. facts). I see that as a solid justification for specific page ranges rather than specific pages, in some particular cases. Forex, paragraphs in academic English quite commonly evolve from "general to specific". In the beginning of the paragraph (just for example) there might be a general concept that might be cited to a page range – heck, maybe even a whole chapter, but usually not that much. Let's say 6 or 7 pages. So call that the "wiggle room rationale", and accept it as valid insofar as it goes. But then as the para progresses we move into supporting details, and the page ranges shrink dramatically down to one or two pages. Therefore it's an unacceptable leap in logic to take the wiggle room rationale and apply it to the whole darn article.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 04:25, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
    • What Iridescent explained and what WP:V say are not the same. What WP:V says is Readers must be able to check that any of the information within Wikipedia articles is not just made up. This means all material must be attributable to reliable, published sources. Additionally, quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by inline citations.. To take that and say that the role of wikipedia's verification policy is to Citations on Wikipedia serve a different purpose to citations in academic literature, and it's a disservice to our readers to force them to read an entire paper if they want to verify the accuracy of one fact, which may only be mentioned tangentially in that paper. is a fairly novel bit of exegesis. I'm not suggesting that Iridescent is making that leap, to be clear, and it may be that citations serve dual roles (verifiability and helping students) but WP:V is absolutely about verifiability first and foremost. I would also argue that Iridescent is completely wrong, in my opinion students need to learn to examine sources and research rather than being spoon-fed and coddled (allow me to shake my walking stick) and I also disgree for any number of other reasons that aren't pertinent to this discussion. My point is that inline citations to journals are verifiable sources by long and upstanding precedent. If you wish to argue that we should do more, fill your boots,but it isn't related to verifiability itself, just ease of verifiability. Sabine's Sunbird talk 04:51, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
      • I took Iridescent's statements to mean, and I agree wholeheartedly, That "What's verifiable for professionals is NOT always verifiable for Wikipedia". Our verifiability must be more specific, for two reasons: professionals are (indirectly) paid to read those whole darn articles. Time spent reading yields money (in terms of increased expertise). Wikipedia is for a non-professional consumers who probably don't need anything verified at all, but when they do, they want to be able to access that verification quickly Not only that, but they do not have the background knowledge base to be able to search for the correct info. the readership is different, therefore the definition of verifiable and verified are differnt.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:10, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
        • That's an even more novel exegesis of WP:V. Failure to be able to verify information due to lack of knowledge does not mean the fact isn't verified. I couldn't make head nor tail of a mathematical, physical, linguistic or artistic citation if you showed me the damn sentence you were citing. That doesn't mean it's not verified. Speed of verification is also not a criteria for WP:V, or it wouldn't allow print sources. I have referred to sources in the past that were I to guess I'm dealing with one of maybe six or seven copies of the book in the whole country. It is still verifiable. WP:V allows it, explicitly. I can't imagine a situation where wanting to know the exact vertebral arrangement of a particular dinosaur is so urgent it can't even wait for a quick skim of a reference, let alone the outlay of a purchase of an article from a publishing company or a visit to a library that might have a copy of the book in question. But regardless, ease or speed of verifiability is not the same issue as verifiability. Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:25, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

(←) I call bullshit. If a fact isn't verifiable/verified to the reader of no expertise but high intelligence then it simply isn't verified. An intelligent layman can usually (not always) verify a fact in a different field if you give that person the very specific page. No page number, it's unverifiable/unverified.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:35, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

• Here is a a cited fact. I assume you understand it and don't need any expertise to do so. Cesàro's theorem is a subtle example. The series 1 − 1 + 1 − 1 + ... is Cesàro-summable in the weakest sense, called (C, 1)-summable, while 1 − 2 + 3 − 4 + ... requires a stronger form of Cesàro's theorem. May I doff my hat because I have no idea what it's talking about.EDIT on reflection that's an complete misunderstanding of what you said. At any rate I strongly disagree with your rather reaching conclusions, and am not sure it is widely shared, seeing as how pretty much every article about the sciences use the standard citation style. Sabine's Sunbird talk 05:46, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
  • You keep arguing from journals in the field. OK, let's say that you provide a specific page number and I still can't verify the fact. It happens sometimes. believe it or not, that's even more reason for us to give specific numbers. Why? let's say there's a fact about some rare disease cited to The Lancet or JAMA or whatever, and I go to that page, and gosh darn it, it's Greek to me. Where does the reader appeal then? Easy: expertise. The Lancet or JAMA can say, hey, we've got world-class editors in the field. Trust us! And what can Wikipedia say? Hey, we've got User:Essjay. We have no expertise, and so when we appeal to the authority of experts, we have to target our appeal very very very directly. JAMA can say "It's there, no really, believe me, trust me." We cannot say "It's in this page range somewhere, turst us.".  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 05:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
    • In a rare situation of ambiguity a footnote would be absolutely appropriate, and such a footnote might often quote the actual text with a pg reference (I'm not remotely against those for quotes BTW). That's an exception, not the rule. You're proposing changing the criteria for science FAs. That's an enormous amount of work for no gain you've been able to articulate beyond some hypothetical layman desperate to confirm a fact without doing any work. My primary point is that such a reaching conclusion is hard to get to from the spirit of WP:V or a legalistic reading of it either. My secondary point is that it is unnecessary anyway, for anything but the remote of hypothetical situations. Sabine's Sunbird talk 06:14, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
      • Absolutely agree with Sabine's Sunbird, mission creep for the sake of it. I've no plans to reference any of my FAs to fit with this over-prescriptive idea Jimfbleak - talk to me? 07:20, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
        • If we don't cite specifically, it isn't verified. Wikipedia is not a journal in a specific field. Our readers are not in the field, either. Finally, we are not experts; we are User:Essjay.... For the record, I am not talking about mass FAR/FARCing all science articles. That would be WP:DISRUPT and WP:POINT. Going forward, an evolved position.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:38, 14 March 2017 (UTC)
          • If we don't cite specifically, it isn't verified. Yes, it is. The onus is on you to demonstrate that it isn't, and you haven't. WP:V does not require what you demand. (Also I don't think Jim was suggesting you would FAR/FARC his existing FAs, he was alluding to the one's he'll submit in the future (like one a month or so)). Sabine's Sunbird talk 07:55, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

(←) Quite frankly, I think the onus is on you to prove that it is. Remember, we are not (or should not be) playing by the rules of the specific field. That is the problem between us: You think we can follow the rules of the field. I think we are not in the field, and we are not even professional, so we need to be held to a higher standard than the field holds itself to. You and I are operating under different paradigms. You are operating under a professional paradigm. I am not, and I say we cannot.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 08:48, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I think that for wikipedia to actually function we need to have flexibility regarding things like this. Some things need specific page numbers, others don't - they may be too uncontroversial to merit wasting time on specific references, they may be the general argument of the referenced paper, etc. We don't need a hard rule on this, and it is unhelpful to oppose a review on this basis unless the nominator is asked to provide page nyumbers for a specific citation and fails to do so. ·maunus · snunɐɯ· 09:01, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Of course there's always the possibility of flexibility on individual cites, case-by-case. Forex see the discussion of wiggle room, above. And of course not every sentence necessarily needs a cite. That isn't what's being discussed. As I said above, we are examining two different paradigms: professional authorship (within the specific field) and volunteer authorship (and not having bona fides in any field; not even in the field of encyclopedia writing)  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 09:09, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

I am not sure I agree that that is what we are discussing and in any case I don't think it makes sense to set the expectations higher for non-professional volunteer writers.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 13:56, 14 March 2017 (UTC)

Break (page numbers in references)

Lingzhi opposed per 1(c) at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Amargasaurus/archive1, because the article uses large page ranges for journals and books (e.g. for books, 15–49, 259–322, 430–453. WP:CHALLENGE, part of V, says: "Cite the source clearly and precisely (specifying page, section, or such divisions as may be appropriate)."

The article was promoted anyway. Any thoughts? Pinging Sarastro1 and Ealdgyth from the discussion at User talk:Sarastro1, and the nominator, Jens Lallensack. SarahSV ^(talk) 07:19, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

My thoughts are that 1) Nope, I didn't canvas. On my honor, such as it is. 2) I am quite weary and very mildly bitter-ish. I am giving up FAC reviewing, tho I know I'm a drop in the bucket. I unwatched this page, but was brought back by ping. I have already made every argument I can currently think of above. Thank you for you time & trouble etc.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 07:27, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

The problem does not exist for books. For journal articles, the large page ranges have been fixed in the Amargasaurus article by using rp-templates to provide precise page numbers, even before we got the oppose. So we have the same oppinion here. User:Lingzhi opposed anyway because in his opinion every source larger than three pages has to come with precise page numbers. And this is just not feasible in science articles. I don't think it is a good idea to force this as a standard when many science writers think it makes no sense. We would cause a lot of dismay, and there are more important things than precise page numbers for a 10-pages journal article. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:36, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

There are two issues: (1) page numbers (I would have opposed too if I'd known); and (2) that an oppose on the grounds of a policy violation isn't acted upon.

There's no reason not to provide page numbers for books. Some of the book references do have precise page numbers, but others are like this one: Upchurch, P.; Barrett, P. M.; Dodson, P. (2004). "Sauropoda". In Weishampel, D.B.; Dodson, P.; Osmolska, H. The Dinosauria (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press. pp. 259–322. SarahSV ^(talk) 07:42, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Upchurch et al. is actually an edited volume, so its chapters are technically journal articles. And in this case, precise page numbers have been added using rp-templates. So everything is fine here. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:46, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. Can you do the same for journals? (A few inconsistencies still to fix: one of your book cites, Thunder-Lizards: The sauropodomorph dinosaurs, is missing the editors and publisher, and some have location and others don't.) SarahSV ^(talk) 07:51, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

We did this for all long journal articles. For the inconsistencies – thank you for noting these, I will fix them later today! --Jens Lallensack (talk) 07:55, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks again. Upchurch is only used twice that I can see, both times p. 304, so you could add the page number to the citation, rather than using {{rp}} (if you want to; it's up to you). I don't know how to do this with templates, but manually I write the page range in brackets, then the precise page number. So I would write:

Upchurch, P., et al. (2004). "Sauropoda", in D. B. Weishampel, P. Dodson, H. Osmolska (eds.). The Dinosauria (2nd ed.). Berkeley: University of California Press (259–322), 304. SarahSV ^(talk) 08:01, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

This would be a possibility to think about. I'm not entirely sure, however, as this would be non-standard, an ad hoc notation invented by us. Does this comply with the MOS? Would you also do this with multiple page numbers (e.g., "(259–322), 304, 306–309, 401")? --Jens Lallensack (talk) 08:27, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Jens Lallensack, yes, I do it with multiple pages too, although mostly for journal articles; with book chapters, I usually omit the page range. With some journal articles, I use only the page range, if they're short and the relevant text is easy to find. But otherwise I add the page range in brackets, followed by the precise page. The easiest method is to use short refs after the first mention, or move the long refs to the References section. That way, you can always write Smith 2017, 1, whether it's a book or journal article. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:29, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I think I will try that next time. The most important thing is that the approach is easy and flexible. --Jens Lallensack (talk) 20:16, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

• I think the big mistake here was to arbitrarily bet everything on whether the Amargasaurus article would pass or not. As I suggested in the former discussion, we should discuss the issue generally first and gain consensus, clarify the guidelines, and then we can try to enforce it on individual nominations. That's a much more stable and productive approach, and is how we are told to deal with content disputes in article texts anyway. As I also mentioned before, precise numbers for short journal articles has never been suggested in any of the 34 FACs I have ever nominated (and I haven't seen it mentioned in articles I've reviewed either), only when they were in the 60+ page range. I've been specifically told by several reviewers that broken up page ranges were not required for shorter journal articles. That doesn't mean it's the optimal way, but calling it a "policy violation" and implying it is a breach of precedence is simply incorrect. FunkMonk (talk) 08:35, 7 April 2017 (UTC)
• This was not going to be an uncontroversial close in either direction. I see it as a subjective case and we have to look at the consensus. There were folks firmly in the camp that WP:V is being breached any time we don't provide precise page numbers, and there were folks arguing that providing a page range is meeting WP:V (and by extension, that something being difficult to verify doesn't mean it is breaching WP:V). I agree with FunkMonk that this should be discussed and decided in a centralized location so we're not using individual nominations as test cases for the scope of WIAFA and V. I have great respect for folks on both sides of this argument and I'm sorry that folks are throwing their hands up in disgust over it. --Laser brain (talk) 11:16, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

To repeat what I've said elsewhere, and to clarify my thinking: First, I closed the FAC because there was no clear consensus over whether the oppose was an accurate reflection of WP:V. This is not to say that it wasn't, but that there was no clear agreement either there or in this discussion. I have my own opinion, but I think in this case I am better remaining neutral. Some users say that policy requires one thing, others that it requires another. Neither side has any divine right to be correct, it requires more discussion. Secondly, I think it was unfair to have the discussion on that FAC, which was fairly arbitrarily chosen for an oppose. There are plenty of FAs which use that model, for better or worse, and I think we need a central agreement before we weigh into individual articles. Otherwise, every article, every FAC becomes a battleground.

On the other issues, I have been accused of "dodging behind the flimsy pretense of lack of WP:CONSENSUS"; I don't think any such consensus exists and before I start imposing new rules I want to be doubly sure. I have been told "Because that's a policy issue, one oppose on that basis is enough"; in all my years at FAC, I have never seen a coordinator decide arbitrarily on policy, at least since Raul was around. The reviewers, or the FAC community, decide on how policy is reflected. And in all these discussions, there was no consensus on the requirements of policy. Also, Sarah suggested "arguably the coordinator could archive even without an oppose if the text isn't verifiable". Again, I've never seen that before, it is not my understanding of this role and I suspect it is the view of few. We do not decide what is a FA, and if one of us has major concerns we always recuse and weigh into the FAC. I do not have, and do not want, a supervote. Above, Sarah raises the issue "that an oppose on the grounds of a policy violation isn't acted upon." I respectfully disagree that there is consensus that there has been a "policy violation". Maybe there has been, maybe not; I have my view but there needs to be consensus.

Neither side is automatically correct, and the varying practice in many FAs shows that there is disagreement. I think a good starting point would be more discussion, less insisting. Finally, the coordinators can only act on reviews given; we can request more views or recuse and weigh in, but it is unrealistic and unfair to expect us to pass or fail every article personally based on our own reading of WIAFA. Sarastro1 (talk) 11:23, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Sarastro1, when I talked about a policy violation, I thought only the large ranges for books had been given, but the nominator explained that {{rp}} has been added to all the book cites, so that's okay. Speaking generally, though, I do see the coordinator as having the right to decline to promote even when there are enough supports, and you can certainly delay promotion and ask for more eyes. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:38, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

There is no single use of the specific page numbers in scientific articles themselves. In some they are used, mostly those referring to books, and in many it's just listed as "...Sauropods are found in Argentina (Upchurch, 2004)." and then the bibliography at the bottom of the article. It's good Wikipedia takes a more specific and thus reliable approach. I agree specific page numbers should be listed, as it shows the author(s) of an article has/have actually read or accessed the source. Separating Refs from Bibliography makes this even clearer. If the page range is too large, especially for individual single facts, not based on tables or so, the range should be restricted or alternatively another source found if the former is not accessible. Only for online non-pdf scientific publications (that are shown on 1 page without page numbers) I use "Upchurch, 2004" without page numbers. In all other cases (books, offline publications and online pdfs) I always refer to the specific page number when writing an article. Tisquesusa (talk) 13:11, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I see the moral force of the argument that including page numbers for lengthy journal articles is a good thing. I tend to use {{sfn}} for long productions, and generally do so; in older papers cited for taxonomic purposes, which are not OCR'd if they're in Biodiversity Heritage Library, I wouldn't want people to have to struggle through 40 pages of "Plants I collected on my summer vacation in Fernando Po" to find the one relevant line. On the other hand, I don't think the practice is solely an idiosyncrasy; modern scientific papers tend to follow a certain commonality of format even across disciplines. I'm not a paleontologist, but if you handed me a 30-page paper by Titmouse and Percheron and told me to verify the statements "The original specimens of Steatosaurus were collected behind the Home Depot in Tacoma", "Its teeth show venom grooves", and "Steatosaurus probably hunted by falling on prey and injecting it with venom", I'm pretty sure I could guess which section each came from and locate them without doing more than looking at section headings and skimming a few pages. If you handed me a 30-page paper on Harold Fairhair and told me to verify the statement that "Harold's son Lester was invented by a medieval abbot for purposes of litigation", I think I'd have more trouble. (And, yes, I do fire up JSTOR and read humanities papers on esoterica like serjeants-at-law on occasion.)

Arguing that these articles are unverifiable because examining the sources is highly inconvenient for the reviewers strikes me as potentially dangerous. It seems you could equally well argue that we can't expect the non-expert reader to verify facts in sources that exist only in print, or exist in foreign languages. I think it's perfectly OK for individual reviewers to say "Look, I'm a volunteer, I don't want to cope with your bizarre citation formatting system/references to incunabula in rare book collections/sources in Old Church Slavonic/lack of page numbers, I'm not going to waste my time trying to review this article." If providing page numbers makes it easier to get an article reviewed, hopefully more editors will take the time to do it. However, opposing an article that's verifiable by other editors because you find it unduly taxing to do so goes a bit too far, in my opinion. I don't think WIAFA can be interpreted to absolutely mandate the use of page numbers in these cases, although that doesn't debar their use from being good practice. Choess (talk) 13:18, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

I think we need to provide smaller page ranges for journal articles. I'd go so far as to say that for MOST subjects (including science topics as well as humanities or arts), anything larger than a 10 page range is going to be too big to be considered "verified". There will be exceptions, of course, but those would be less than 5% of the time. For myself, 10 pages still seems a bit large, I'd myself consider 5 pages the max for most things. As the Bird project found out - we are a general encyclopedia - so we cater to the general reader. Most of them won't have the knowledge to be able to navigate a scientific paper easily. Nor will they likely have the ability to easily navigate a history paper either, or most types of academic writing. Just like I can't assume that someone will know what "foaled" means for horse articles, we shouldn't assume that readers will know how to navigate a scientific paper. Make it possible for them to find the information easily whatever the subject matter of the article is. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:54, 7 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The Core Contest

Right folks, I am setting this up to run May 15 to June 30 again...with the usual Amazon vouchers up for grabs. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:32, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks much Cas, good project. - Dank (push to talk) 15:21, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

First 2.5 paragraphs of the lead

The Wikipedian editing community has effectively lost the ability to determine what readers see on the first screen of many articles when viewed on mobile devices. In this discussion, this image was offered as both the reality and the hope of how many articles already appear and will appear on mobile view, with many of the infobox fields filled in from Wikidata. How we got to this place is complicated, and it's not what I want to talk about, I want to talk about what I plan to do about it. As a rationale for why readers would rather see an infobox than text from the lead, the WMF reading team said it's "for people who feel overwhelmed while scrolling through the often dense and opaque lead sentences." Actually ... they have a point, particularly for longer articles (like FAs) with 4 lead paragraphs. When I'm reading or reviewing, I sometimes don't know why the subject of the article is important, what the main point is, even after I've read the first 2.5 paragraphs; I have to wade through at least two more long paragraphs before I find out. That's not the only reason our text is getting pushed below the Wikidata infobox, but it's part of the reason. I'm guessing there will eventually be some on-wiki fighting over this issue, and before that happens, I'd like to have a strong argument available that Wikipedians are on top of this issue and already have some ideas. So when I do prose reviews at FAC from now on, I'm going to be making some edits and some suggestions about moving the "payoff" information into the first 2.5 paragraphs in the lead, and making those paragraphs tighter. This is probably something that would have been a good idea all along, but IMO the stakes are higher now. - Dank (push to talk) 18:21, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Is there a document we can study explaining what the WMF has found?--Wehwalt (talk) 18:38, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

There's no one document that I know of. One nice thing about the WMF, even when I don't agree with them, is that they generally have people who can patiently walk us through any issue. But I don't want to ping a bunch of people on this, because we might get that fight I was trying to avoid. I'll email some people for help on this. - Dank (push to talk) 18:48, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay, I've emailed two people who are sometimes on opposite sides of these issues to see if they can enlighten me. I'm hoping to eventually get something short and readable that will answer people's questions. - Dank (push to talk) 19:04, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Ideally, a basic summary of the topic should appear in the first sentence (or two). I am sometimes frustrated having to read through a couple of paragraphs of text before something actually explains what the article title means. Simon Burchell (talk) 19:17, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Agreed, and we should fix that too ... but not quite what I'm getting at. See for instance the first 2.5 paragraphs of Everglades National Park. One reader might think the point is that this is a big park; another might think the point is species preservation. Another might not give a hoot about either of those things, but the fact that this park protects the source of South Florida's drinking water might seem like a big deal. Different readers are looking for different things, and sometimes it takes 2.5 paragraphs to get all the main points in. - Dank (push to talk) 19:33, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Infoboxes were meant to provide a quick summary, so it's interesting to learn that mobile readers are fed up having to scroll past them (I'm reminded of alt text; the people it was meant to help complained about it being too long). So now the WMF wants to provide a summary of the summary.

I often find leads and infoboxes annoyingly long when I'm a reader. As an editor I enjoy writing them, but when I arrive at a page as a reader looking for a basic fact, it's irritating to have to wade through the undergrowth. I was looking for a figure last night that should have been immediately apparent from the infobox or lead of the article, but I couldn't find it. I ended up having to Google it instead. This takes us back to the Foundation wanting to develop search. We've created this massive database, but it can be hard to find things even when you know which article to look in. SarahSV ^(talk) 19:55, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

Before we get into another very involved discussion, can we just clarify if it should take place here, or at somewhere like WP:LEAD? Unless we invent a new FA criteria specifically about this, it strikes me (like the earlier citation discussion) as a site-wide and not a specifically FA issue. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:10, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

It's relevant because we require an FA to be "comprehensive: it neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context", and the lead to summarize it and prepare the reader "for the detail in the subsequent sections". A nomination with a lead that readers might find more useful might not pass at FAC. SarahSV ^(talk) 20:21, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

I brought it up here because I can actually do something here that will make a difference, and because I wanted comments. (And the comments are helpful, thanks.) - Dank (push to talk) 20:25, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

This old page might be what you're looking for. mw:Reading/Features/Article_lead_image#Moving_1st_paragraph_above_infobox CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:LEADSENTENCE: The first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what, or who, the subject is. So there's your summary of the summary. Hawkeye7 (talk) 23:57, 3 April 2017 (UTC)

(I was emailed by Dank). On mobile, to avoid the infobox obscuring what the article is about, the WMF added to the top a very short description, taken from Wikidata. This has now been disabled (or will soon be disabled, I haven't checked the current status) because taking this from Wikidata had some problems (vandalism, no easy way to change it or track it, ...). The same description is also used for other things like short descriptions in search boxes, related articles, ... At Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Blockers to having short description on mobile this is now being discussed (the section right above it is the RfC that lead to the disabling of this feature). Possible solutions could be re-enabling the Wikidata descriptions but with some added functionality, creating a "short description" template on enwiki (in every article) which takes over this functionality, not bothering with such descriptions, or for mobile displaying the lead or the first sentence above the infobox instead of below (not an exhaustive list, just some ideas). This is of course not FA specific. Fram (talk) 06:43, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I'd be against any attempt to codify "first sentence must be a hypersimplification of the subject", which appears to be what's being proposed here. Yes, the first sentence should tell the nonspecialist reader what, or who, the subject is is just common sense, but with many—perhaps most—articles, whatever the topic, it's not possible to explain notability and significance in a single sentence. One can say "Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch post-impressionist painter", or even stretch it out to the current "Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art", but "Vincent van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who spent his entire working career in France, who was unsuccessful throughout his lifetime and his ideas were largely rejected, but in the 20th century the advent of Fauvism led to a generation of art students viewing him as an important figure for the first time, while as the cult of the outsider and the notion of the tortured genius became a trope of western culture the book and film Lust for Life popularized him among audiences who traditionally had little interest in painting, and consequently he is one of the few 19th-century artists with whom general audiences are familiar"—which is as condensed as I can make that—is a ridiculously long sentence. There's a reason TFA blurbs are 1200 characters, not 120; while it's easy to summarize what something is in a single sentence, it's a lot harder to summarize why something is notable which is what Wikipedia is all about.

Without wanting to state the obvious, at least part of the reason people are complaining about having to scroll excessively while using the mobile interface isn't that the articles are badly written, it's that the design of the mobile interface is absolutely atrocious, with enforced giant fonts, huge swathes of white space, images wandering away from the paragraphs they illustrate, and no way for the reader to disable it other than a tiny link at the very end of the article. Most Wikipedia articles—long and short—are perfectly readable on mobile devices in desktop view; I'd be willing to bet that if the WMF did one of their much-vaunted A/B tests on the matter, they'd find that if they served up desktop view by default to viewers on mobile devices, with a prominent "switch to mobile view" button, almost no readers would actually click that button. ‑ Iridescent 13:42, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I know *I* always read the desktop view on my tablet. (I don't usually bother with veiwing it on the phone, since I mainly use my phone for... phone and texting. No real internet usage except for quick quick things) Ealdgyth - Talk 13:53, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Excellent points. Johnbod (talk) 13:56, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I agree with Simon (above): "Ideally, a basic summary of the topic should appear in the first sentence (or two)." "Summary" to me means enough to give the reader some kind of clue what the article is about ... not the significance, notability, or why they should care. - Dank (push to talk) 14:05, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Surely we already do that whenever it's possible, from the shittiest stub to the longest FAs? The exceptions to "the first sentence summarizes the topic" are those cases like Biddenden Maids where it's genuinely impossible to describe the topic in a single sentence. (I just did a dip-sample of Special:NewPages and whatever their other faults, every single article complied with this particular rule.) ‑ Iridescent 14:25, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

You'd have thought so... However, I have fairly recently looked up a couple of subjects (can't remember what exactly) while researching other articles - in one case a battle that didn't even say where it took place (not even what country), in another I wanted clarification of some term or other, and ended up wading through three paras of technical jargon before it actually told me what it was talking about. Simon Burchell (talk) 16:28, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

I've had similar experiences. "What it is" and "Why I should care" are different things. "Mercury(I) iodide is a chemical compound of mercury and iodine" complies with LEAD, but "Mercury(I) iodide is a highly poisonous chemical that was used worldwide to treat syphilis and many other diseases during the 19th century" is why you should care. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:18, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing this up, Dan. I have deep experience with mobile UX and the foundation's efforts can be generously described as inept. They fail, by a wide margin, to understand what questions users are asking as they arrive on a page. The question "Who is Vincent Van Gogh?" is answered in the Google search results before they even tap the link to proceed to Wikipedia. So, including the Wikidata description in the mobile article view was stupid to begin with. Tapping the Wikipedia link in the Google search results takes the reader to a giant text rendition of the subject's name, a redirect notice, and the self-portrait. Even on my generous 6" mobile screen, that's all I get before I have to start scrolling. I have to scroll through several more screens-full of infobox and images before I even get to prose. The type of question I'm probably actually seeking at this point (something like, "Did Van Gogh paint Starry Night Over the Rhone"?) is buried under headings that are collapsed by default for no known reason and that are difficult to navigate and ignore several basic heuristics of mobile UX. There's a point in here somewhere... I believe FAC, GAN, and ACR should be places where we're encouraging editors to emphasize context and notability in addition to "what the subject is". I'm reminded of the "best known for" troll. --Laser brain (talk) 14:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Thanks Andy. Agreed about emphasizing context and notability. (I'm not familiar with the mobile interface, I'm in the grumpy old man generation.) Btw, I just went through and retroactively changed "two paragraphs" to "2.5 paragraphs". I've been looking at the FACs that are up now, and I just don't think I'd win the argument to move the central points up into the top two paragraphs, whether it's a good idea or not. I think I might be able to get that info into the top 2.5 paragraphs without raising too much of a fuss, we'll see. - Dank (push to talk) 18:49, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Two-and-a-half cents: I am using Wikipedia mostly on the pc, but sometimes also mobile (telephone). The infobox imho is one of the key characteristics of an article and certainly of a good/featured one; it needs to be filled in as completely as possible, something I do actively. It is a nice, familiar lay-out summary of the important facts. "Having to scroll through before reading an article" would mean that the infobox is not appropriately summarising the main facts? The general set-up of the mobile version at this stage is more problematic in other areas (navboxes and portals not showing up, tables automatically expanded and especially no easy revert button access to fight vandalism (a cumbersome process of first going to the desktop version, then history, etc, to revert just an edit that shouldn't be there)). When reading articles on a tablet (also mobile version, but more "screen"), the "issue" of "first having to scroll past the infobox" isn't there anyway.

In terms of leads/intro sections; I try to fit the intro length (+TOC) to the infobox length, to have the nicest lay-out. Agreed that it would be bad the general basic information of what the article is about is not in the first couple of sentences. In general I avoid using refs in the intro, only sometimes at the end. DYK-eligible facts (interesting of a particular subject) should be summarised again in the intro imho. Of all the articles I have read (and not written), I have hardly seen a bad intro section, but it may have to do with the topics. Just some cents and hopefully sense. Cheers, Tisquesusa (talk) 00:10, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

As an aside - I suspect one way we could improve mobile usage is figuring out some way to cut down on the clutter in the first sentence. Too many people insist on inserting pronunciations, alternate names, names in other languages, etc before we get to even the birth/death dates, much less what the subject of the article IS. (And I'm as guilty as anyone else at least on the alternate names...). That might help some... Ealdgyth - Talk 16:23, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree. We're not being allowed to select the text that mobile readers will see first, and one of the reasons offered is that our wording choices take too long to get to the point. Well ... they're right, they do take too long, sometimes. We need to look at ways to shift some of the alias and spelling information away from the first sentence and into hatnotes, infoboxes, or other places that are prominent in the desktop view, for those few readers who need that information right away. - Dank (push to talk) 20:53, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

yes, that is a problem--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:02, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

A logical place to put pronunciations, alternate names and similar material is in a footnote. I suspect the reason this practice is not more widespread is that some people find it difficult to work out or remember how to insert footnotes, especially the need to use a different footnote naming system to those used in references. A sort-of-example is the note in the lead of 1961 Cal Poly Mustangs football team. There are better examples, but I can't find them right now. There is a case for some material being kept right up front, such as the original language name of something where our name is the foreign-language alternate. Also, if some phrase is a common redirect, there is also a case for that being included up front. It is possible to reduce some of the first sentence and WP:LEAD bloat, but not by much. There is potential for a lot of arguing over where the line is drawn. I agree that it is important to consider not just what desktop viewers see, but also what mobile viewers see, but there seems an inevitability about the atomisation of Wikipedia content into forms that can be repackaged for different platforms and layouts. Carcharoth (talk) 14:12, 6 April 2017 (UTC)

Carcharoth: A logical place to put pronunciations, alternate names and similar material is in a footnote—can't agree with that. Pronunciations are defintely one of the things I and quite a few others expect to see in the lead, and users can't be expected to know that they are in a footnote (the^[a] says nothing about the content of the footnote), and there are accessibility issues. Cluttering up the opening line is a legitimate concern, particularly when there are multiple pronunciations given, which is usually a stupid thing to do in the first line, but for many articles moving it out of the lead would be a terrible idea. In most cases (e.g. Boise, Idaho) it's straightforward and unobtrusive; in others (e.g. Vincent van Gogh) it's another story.

I've struggled with balancing reader expectations with the "clutter" issue, and have tried one solution at Ukiyo-e: moving the pronunciation to te end of the opening paragraph. If it ever came to a proposal to abolish pronunciations or move them to a floating box, though, you can count on a strong oppose from me. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:23, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

Pronunciations belong in the infobox IMO. Only common alt names should be in the first sentence. Others should be in the infobox or body. My 2 cents. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:26, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

Doc James: There are far too many articles for which an infobox is inappropriate—genres of art, for example. You won't find infoboxes at novel, comics, Japonism, etc., nor would a reader likely visit the article to consult one, as they would with a politician's bio or a rock album. A great many readers (including this one) expect pronunciation to appear where the term is defined. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:11, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Okay preferable in an infobox and other places if there is not one or it is not supported. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:01, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Doc James: "preferable" for any reason other than personal aesthetics? There are many (including myself) who expect to see this information quickly in a predictable, expected place. That would be where the term is defined. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:35, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

In my opinion we try to put way too much into the first sentence of the article. This makes our content less understable. The first sentence should be a simple definition. Rare alternative names and pronunciation does not belong there. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:40, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

I agree about "rare alternative names", but pronunciations (when not obvious, as in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) are basic info. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

This is the bottom line for me: the Foundation has made a major mistake in pushing all article text down below the (sometimes Wikidata-filled) infoboxes on small mobile screens, because most readers don't get past the first few screens of most of the articles they click on. For those readers who were expecting to read an article in Wikipedia, they're not getting that (without knowing that they're not getting that), they're getting something that most of us aren't involved in and that doesn't measure up to our standards. Those readers will judge us, and judge Wikipedia, accordingly. The catch is that I don't think it's a good idea to even discuss the problem widely until more Wikipedians have the knowledge that Featured Article and Good Article writers generally have on the subject. Otherwise, we're just going to knock heads with people at the Foundation who claim that they had to do what they did because (translating) leads don't get to the point fast enough, leads are hard to read, and Wikipedians don't understand the issues. So: there's a serious problem, and the only solution involves educating Wikipedians about prose. That's maybe my least favorite job, and I'm not even sure how to get started. I think for now I'll just start keeping a log at User:Dank/Leads of the relevant discussions I see at FAC. - Dank (push to talk) 14:02, 8 April 2017 (UTC)

1. Perhaps the WMF could make infoboxes something that can be swiped in from offscreen?
2. Something really needs to be done about Wikidata being imported into Wikipedia; this is not the first time this issue has come up, and from the attitudes of the people there, you can be sure it won't be the last. I've never been one of those WP:DISINFOBOXers, but I've stopped using infoboxes entirely because I don't feel I can trust those people not to pull another fast one. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:27, 9 April 2017 (UTC)

We at WPMED are working to update our infoboxes to more human useful information such as you see at gout. The previous stuff we have moved to the bottom of the article (those who do medical coding might complain but their numbers are few). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:28, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

• It seems like at this point this conversation is inviting general comment. I think that starting with infoboxes on mobile devices is a good idea and that the Wikipedia community should take discussions about curating the infoboxes more seriously. There have been discussions at WikiProject Medicine about this since 2014 or earlier. In those discussions, WP:MED participants were not aware of anyone discussing this elsewhere or sooner. Some reasons to expect that infoboxes should be first include the following:

1. Infoboxes contain the content most likely to be translated. For languages without well developed prose leads, which means 90 of the top 100 languages in 90%+ of all cases, information in the infobox is the content most likely to migrate across languages.
2. Infoboxes contain the content most likely to have quality control with citations. The reason for this is that the future of infoboxes is to be backed with citations in Wikidata, and pulling infobox data from Wikidata is also a path to much faster translation than already happens.
3. Other products, like Knowledge Graph from Google, have copied this format. Wikipedia did it first but when Google started doing it we can take for granted that they did as much market research on the matter as anyone can imagine doing if unbounded by cost concerns. The wide use of this model of online publishing is supporting evidence that it works.
4. English Wikipedia has social problems with citations in the lead. Sometimes these are used, sometimes not. For projects which plan translation, like WikiProject Medicine or anyone else who edits Wikipedia with intent to reach non-English audiences, guidelines like WP:CITELEAD are destructive because intentionally omitting citation information from the lead is in opposition to the goal of translating the lead with citations into other languages. Anyone who has translation in mind as a goal necessarily has to support content backed by citations, and too often even in featured articles, there is willful omission of citations in the lead. To the question of "Which should come first, prose or an infobox?" I have to answer that infoboxes come first because CITELEAD harms the prose text outside of English. I know that many people would not see a relationship between CITELEAD and infoboxes but from my perspective it is an important connection that precludes any consideration that prose might serve some English readers more.

Thanks for raising the issue. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:07, 10 April 2017 (UTC)

"Infoboxes contain the content most likely to have quality control with citations"—how do you figure? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:37, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Curly Turkey It is the nature idealistic intention of Wikidata to have every claim matched to a citation. For example drug side effects are still reported as prose with citations sometimes in English Wikipedia and rarely in other languages. In Wikidata the plan is to match drug data with pharma databases and use that to guide all information sharing in all languages of Wikimedia projects. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:18, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Bluerasberry the first sentence is incorrect -- very incorrect; they have no V policy and people there argue like crazy that they should not have one. I understand the plan in the 2nd sentence but we are a long way from being able to do that, and people in WD are still doing bizarre bot runs that add data to incorrect fields. The third sentence is also a long, long way from being real world. Jytdog (talk) 20:33, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

Jytdog I corrected the first sentence. I confirm what you say about sentences 2 and 3 - neither are these things in practice, nor are they to be in practice in the near future. I am not aware of the crazy arguments to not have a verifiability policy but I do know that there are conflicts over what a policy should do and not do. In medicine, I think it would be foolish to not sync up with existing databases for simple statements of fact, especially when so many statements of fact translate so well.

I will back up and say that my statements are all presumptuous about the future quality of Wikidata. I am assuming that good quality information will be there soon, and that it will be better quality controlled than here, and when that happens in those circumstances I prefer an infobox before prose.

If I spoke too boldly then I would help dial back any discussion elsewhere which has gone too far. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:45, 11 April 2017 (UTC)

It's going to take me a little while to gear up for this fight, because I spend most of my time on well-developed articles. I'm rusty on what leads look like in general, and how easy they are to fix, but I think it's an important first step to do what we can before we confront the Foundation people who were involved with this change. In the meantime, if anyone runs across people who are offended by what's happened on mobile screens, please let them know it's probably temporary; I don't want us to lose any Wikipedians over this. Also ... I hesitate to bring this up, but I don't see a way around it. I've never recommended that Wikipedians read up on the science or practice of writing ... that can lead to a lot of arguments for not much gain. Most of the writing we see at FAC is already pretty good, and for the stuff that isn't good, studying up probably wouldn't make a lot of difference. But now we're faced with a problem that comes down to this: the people who made this decision apparently lack some basic knowledge about effective writing, and it's probably not going to work to say "This looks better to us"; we need something to back that up. I can highly recommend the short book The Sense of Style by Steven Pinker (except for parts of Chapter I, which are great but not particularly relevant to Wikipedia). It's a quick survey of the consensus of cognitive scientists and linguists on what makes text easy or hard to read, written in a very non-technical style, with copious footnotes. If people want to talk about other texts, that's fine too. If anyone wants to start a relevant discussion group, please let me know. - Dank (push to talk) 14:39, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

@Dank, I'm not sure how relevant style manuals and "how to write" guides would be in this case. Quite aside from the subjective nature of "good writing" and its cultural specificity (try applying the recommendations of an American writing guide at a British publisher and see how long you remain employed), as Laser brain alludes to up above the issue here is that we're in uncharted territory for which manuals and guides don't exist. One of the fundamental assumptions in writing—both in general, and on Wikipedia—has always been "start with the basics, and then expand on that with either a narrative structure telling the story if its undisputed or a thesis/antithesis/dialectic structure giving the various interpretations and coming to a conclusion".

However, the means by which people access material has changed radically in the last couple of years. While there will always be some people following links (here or elsewhere) and arriving at articles with no background knowledge, and thus we still need to write leads on the assumption that we're writing for Giano's hypothetical "bright 14-year-old with no prior knowledge of the topic but who's eager to learn", most readers are either coming from links within other Wikipedia articles (which, if they're written correctly, should have already given the reader enough context to have a rough idea what the link they've clicked on will tell them about), or from Google searches which may only give one sentence summaries but that one sentence can often be enough. (To take one example just because it's fresh in my head, Selina Rushbrook has a decent claim to be the most obscure article on Wikipedia, and the lead was written on the assumption that no reader will have the slightest idea as to who she was. However, aside from people clicking "random article", most readers will either be coming from a Google search—in which case they'll have already seen Selina Jenkins Rushbrook, née Selina Ann Jenkins, was a petty criminal, prostitute and brothel keeper from Swansea, Wales or from the incoming links from Prostitution in the United Kingdom and Swansea Docks in which case they already know she was a 19th-century dockside prostitute from Swansea. Thus, while the lead still needs to cover "where was she from, when did she live, what did she do?" for the benefit of readers who have arrived at the article by other means, the priority is more focused on "here is a brief synopsis of her life so you can decide whether the full article is something in which you'd be interested in reading".

By the nature of Wikipedia, at FA-related pages it's easy not to notice this change in how traffic is generated, since everyone here is used to viewing articles from the editor and reviewer perspective, where we're reading large numbers of articles on topics about which we know nothing. But Wikipedia exists for the readers, not the editors; most of our readers are wanting to find out more about topics which already interest them. The real discussion to be had is "what information are readers likely to be looking for, and how is it best provided?", and there isn't an easy answer to that. For straightforward "where is Vincent van Gogh buried?" queries, increasing prominence for the infobox or one-line summaries is a positive, but that's a trade-off with increased inconvenience for "why is Vincent van Gogh considered important?", since every line added at the top means more gubbins that reader has to scroll through before they get to the text.

TLDR summary—as with virtually every discussion containing the word "infobox", the only correct answer is "decide what's included on a case-by-case basis since any attempt to mandate a solution will lead to either inappropriate simplification of complicated information, or inappropriate complication of basic information". The difference now is that readers may be looking for a different style of information now, and we need to be receptive to comments if and when people start saying that the existing format for leads is oversimplified. ‑ Iridescent 18:15, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

I can feel my fingers twitching, but I'll hold off. - Dank (push to talk) 18:28, 14 April 2017 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for March

Here are the lead reviewers for the month of March (by date of archival/promotion of the FAC, not by date of review).

Reviews

• 16 reviews: Dank.
• 10 reviews: Jimfbleak
• 9 reviews: FunkMonk

One reviewer did eight reviews; one did seven; three did six; four did five; four did four reviews. 97 editors provided a total of 222 reviews.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 21 reviews: Nikkimaria.
• 6 reviews: Sturmvogel 66 and FunkMonk

One reviewer did five reviews; one reviewer did four; and two did three. A total of 26 reviewers provided a total of 77 reviews. Special mentions: Ian Rose and Casliber, who both did ten reviews divided between the two types of review; and Syek88, who just began reviewing and who posted six reviews.

I should also mention that with 34 FAs promoted in March we have promoted more than we used up at TFA for the first time since October 2015; the last time before that was August 2014. I'd like to think that the discussions here over the last couple of months have encouraged more people to review. Let's hope this is the start of a trend.

Actually, Mike, the trend has been under way since the beginning of the year -- from January till now we've been averaging around a promotion a day. I think that as well as the rejuvenation of the birds project that's seen an upswing in solid nominations from that area, the discussions here may indeed have had a positive impact on things. You can take a good deal of credit there, for instigating much of the discussion as well as contributing many reviews of your own. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:25, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:11, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for not doing more image reviews lately; I had to catch up with my to-do schedule in meatspace and Wikipedia. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:15, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Discussion at WT:TFA about scheduling TFAs without the consent of the primary author(s)

There's a discussion at WT:TFA about scheduling featured articles for the main page without the consent of the primary author(s) that readers of this page may be interested in. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:55, 5 April 2017 (UTC)

The discussion has run for a while, and the TFA coords have some suggestions, including a request that, going forward, if FAC nominators don't want their articles to run on the Main Page, they should mention that in the FAC nomination. Suggestions are welcome. - Dank (push to talk) 20:40, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests

Folks, there are some requests that could do with more eyes and more discussion. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:04, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

5K

Looks like we are going to hit 5K FAs anywhere in next week...-The Herald (Benison) • ^{the joy of the LORD}_{my strength} 17:04, 15 April 2017 (UTC)

That milestone (which oddly enough I hadn't really noticed approaching) has now been achieved... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 09:27, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

So ... do we celebrate? HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 14:35, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

This came to mind...Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:54, 16 April 2017 (UTC)

Interesting, but does anyone knows why there are only 4960 articles in Category:Featured articles? @Ian Rose: Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 18:18, 17 April 2017 (UTC)

The job queue takes time to update the counts? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:06, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I don't think so. The category is added by placing the {{Featured article}} template on the article, so either the template is missing from circa 40 articles or the count on WP:FA is incorrect. Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 13:42, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

WP:AWB should be able to resolve this. Sadly, I don't know how to use it. Graham Beards (talk) 13:56, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

This has been discussed before. There is no problem. There are 5005 articles linked on the WP:FA page. There are 5005 articles that transclude Template:Featured article. There are 5005 articles in Category:Featured articles. The "problem" is the 4960 count. It's wrong. There's some technical flaw that means the article counts on those display pages are wrong (for all categories containing large numbers of articles). DrKay (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps not directly related, but can someone explain what Category:Featured articles on Mathematics Portal is for and why it is a subcategory of Category:Featured articles? There are 44 articles in it; some are FAs and also in the main category; others are not FAs (the category name notwithstanding). --RL0919 (talk) 16:05, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

That should be called "Selected articles on the Mathematics Portal" or similar. DrKay (talk) 16:15, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

I've left a quick note on the Signpost suggestions page. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:23, 19 April 2017 (UTC)

Help requested

The ongoing FAC reviews of Oregon Caves National Monument and Preserve are not being transcluded to the article's talk page. I thought I had followed all the installation instructions, but I'm a bit rusty and must have goofed up. When I try to install the FAC template again on the talk page and look at what I've done in preview mode, the template seems eager to create archive 2. This would create an even bigger problem, I fear. I'm flummoxed. Can anyone sort this out for me? I would appreciate it. Finetooth (talk) 17:51, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

@Finetooth: Actually, we don't (to my knowledge) transclude the FAC review to the article talk page. It looks like it is translcuded here, though, so it is all good. We transclude GAR, though, but not FAC. RileyBugz^{Yell at me} | _Edits 17:54, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Was this edit what you meant? Woody (talk) 18:09, 22 April 2017 (UTC)

Yes. That's it @Woody:. "Transclude" was the wrong word. Your fix is what I was hoping for. If this ever happens to me again, I'll just imitate what you did. Thanks a bunch. Finetooth (talk) 01:54, 23 April 2017 (UTC)

Laser brain

As I think a few people are aware, Laser brain has retired from Wikipedia. He also requested to be removed as a FAC coordinator. I would like to place on record my thanks for all that he has done over the years at FAC, and hopefully we will see him again in future. Meanwhile, Ian Rose and I feel that the current workload at FAC is manageable and neither of us feel that we need to appoint another coordinator at the moment. Sarastro1 (talk) 12:14, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Echo all the above. Andy has been a tremendous asset to the project as editor, admin and FAC coord, and I hope very much that he returns some day. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 12:56, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Me too - very sorry to see this. All the best for the future. Johnbod (talk) 16:20, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

As am I. Very sorry to see this. I wish him the best.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:28, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

I hope Andy comes back after a few months, or longer if necessary; this place is the better for people with common sense. Either way, best wishes for the future. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:45, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Ditto - the above all say this better than I could. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:59, 29 April 2017 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for April

Here are the lead reviewers for the month of April (by date of archival/promotion of the FAC, not by date of review).

Reviews

• 28 reviews: Dank.
• 10 reviews: Syek88
• 9 reviews: Cas Liber

Two reviewers did seven reviews; two each did six and five reviews; four did four; eleven did three; twelve did two, and fifty editors did a single review. 86 editors provided a total of 205 reviews.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 21 reviews: Nikkimaria.
• 4 reviews: Wehwalt, Coemgenus, Jo-Jo Eumerus, and Cas Liber.

Two reviewers did three reviews; two reviewers did two reviews; and twenty-one reviewers did a single source or image review. A total of 31 reviewers provided a total of 70 reviews.

Special mentions: Cas Liber, who appears on both lists; and Aoba47, who did three image reviews and six regular reviews but didn't quite make either list. I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:49, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

Archive URLs automatically

I highly recommend that all FACs without archive links have the nominator run the article through iabot (Internet Archive bot), which will |archiveurl=s to all its reference templates with a single click (for example).  czar 20:44, 5 May 2017 (UTC)

No. I mean it. There just isn't anywhere else equipped to handle this.

I have no choice but to post here. There simply is no forum on Wikipedia that is equipped to handle Bengal famine of 1943. The FAC coordinator said wait months. Wait months... for what? For whom? All the editors who are likely to go to the article's talk are pushing different POVs. Look at the article's talk page. I am currently fighting off "Churchill is Satan" with one hand and "Hail Britannia" with the other. The FAC coordinator's suggestion amounts to this: "Dear Lingzhi, please do spend the next nine months trying desperately to fight off non-serious editors (but serious POV warriors)."

Does that sound like a meaningful way to handle an article? Or does it perhaps sound frightfully demotivating instead?

• So then, what.. Send it to GA? Um. Yeah. What exactly could they do with it?
• Send it to MILHIST A-review? No, Fowler/Fowler & friends will shoot it down there again. More importantly, most of the MILHIST A-reviewers are already here at FAC.
• Send it to PR? In theory, maybe, but I have been to PR a few times and saw mainly Newly Minted Editors making well-intended suggestions. It is seriously undermanned. It is lesser quality than FAC by design.

No, the answer is FAC. In FAC everyone has to try their best to hide their POV. In FAC we have the best reviewers in Wikipedia (including those pulling double duty from other content review forums).

I am very content to let the article sit in FAC for 3 or 4 months, if that is what it takes. But no other forum is equipped to handle this.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 06:55, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Ling, I don't think you have any choice but to let the article sit for a period, probably best to take place in PR; this one wont be undermanned. My personal concern is that you are facing a war of attrition, and will personally be taken though a slow (cf I'm travelling), circular, exceedingly verbose, grind, but that's irrelevant for here; its more for the noticeboards. Ceoil (talk) 07:07, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

My advice: take it to PR and see what happens. I had a PR with no response in a month - yes, it's "under-personned". It doesn't hurt to try. --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:12, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

• You don't have to send it anywhere. Collaborate with Fowler and defend your version at the article itself. Frankly, I don't see what you're going on and on about. You've spend one year building an article in relative isolation and are now unwilling to consider the possibility that your version is less than perfect. You have to prove that you've done a good job and whinging about non-serious editors, serious pov warriors, and boldface neutral editors, while presenting yourself as a wounded "defender of the wiki" hero is not going to get you anywhere. There are people willing to work on the article so stop talking about PR, GA, FA whatever and start collaborating. (Not that you're going to pay attention to this but my advice is as perfect as your work on the article was!)--regentspark (comment) 11:26, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  F&F is a POV editor who will burnish the image of Britain. From top to bottom, the article will read as a public relations brochure. And dat's da name of dat tune, as people used to say. If it is in FAC, there are neutral eyes on it. Not so right now.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 12:06, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  Quite honestly? It's not FAC's job to step into a content dispute like this. Lingzhi, you spent a long long time basically editing in a sandbox where you didn't have to deal with other editor's views. Now that the article is in mainspace, you're either going to have to deal with other editors views or you're going to have to just abandon the effort. This is the problem with doing a major rewrite of a contentious article in a sandbox - it doesn't really avoid the whole contentious editing part - it just puts it off until the sandbox becomes live. It's not FAC's job to put a seal on one side of an editing dispute, especially when there really haven't been efforts to deal with other editors concerns. To me, it looks like you're hoping that if you get a shiny FA star, it'll let you beat others off without having to work with them. That said - I do find the idea that every sentence should be brought up on the talk page of the article to be a bit much - it would probably work a bit better if only problem sentences were brought up on the talk page. But ... the solution to this is not to immediately assume that all editors are POV pushers - it's to buckle down and do the hard contentious editing work that was avoided by using a sandbox. An FA star isn't going to keep the article from having to deal with people disagreeing with the content - and quite frankly, it isn't *MY* job or any other FAC reviewer's job to step into that minefield and rescue you. Yes, this is a bit harsh, but that's the way I see it. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:24, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  (ec)Lingzhi, the real work on Wikipedia is not the writing of an article but, rather, it is defending what you've written, whether that defense be against editors pushing a POV or well-meaning editors who just want to see if an article is balanced. By going out and writing the article off-wiki, you've positioned your version as the version to argue against, and that's a strong statement already. But, the real work begins now. You're already getting an informal peer review and you should approach that in the spirit of wikipedia. Collaborate, argue, curse, insist, whatever, but engage with other editors and not just insist that nothing more needs to be done. If you don't like the agenda Fowler is setting (which does seem onerous to me), propose something else. If you don't want to do that, then you're going to have to move on to other articles and let the article evolve to wherever it ends up - POV or non-POV. The reality is that this is not going to FAC, it cannot go to GA or a formal peer review as long as there are editors discussing changes to the article. That's just the way things are right now and you're going to have to figure out how to deal with that. --regentspark (comment) 12:30, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

  I'm sorry, Lingzhi, and I know you've posted about this situation in several places (including my talk page) but it smacks of someone trying to impose their position via the defence of a gold star. Ealdgyth and others above are correct and, sorry, but you assertion regarding Fowler's POV strikes me as basically an aspersion. This may be a case of two big beasts locking horns but you do not have an overpowering strength based on policy etc and you've rather brought the situation on yourself. - Sitush (talk) 13:52, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The Core Contest

A heads up that the Wikipedia:The Core Contest will start on May 15. We now have a panel of judges – Casliber (talk · contribs), Megalibrarygirl (talk · contribs) and Katherine (WMF) (talk · contribs). Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 01:39, 10 May 2017 (UTC)

Withdrawal

Resolved

I reverted this edit twice, to ensure appropriate closure, but I'll leave alone and let others here take care of procedural matters. This editor's recent behavior is concerning, IMO. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:46, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Per WP:G7, I see no reason why the page could not have been speedy deleted after the only author and creator of it blanked it. DrKay (talk) 19:50, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I'm not opposed, I just wanted to make sure proper procedures were followed. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 19:52, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

There is only one explanation for reverting Ceoil's edits there. Please stop harassing Ceoil. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.205.198.216 (talk) 20:06, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I apologise that this sorry mess made it here. Ceoil (talk) 20:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Not sure what to make of all this drama, but should the FAC withdrawal be noted on the article's talk page? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:14, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

@Juliancolton: Yes, I agree, the user has every right to withdraw the nomination. But should the nomination page be closed appropriately and the article's talk page updated to reflect this decision? ---Another Believer _(Talk) 21:20, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

User:Another Believer, User:JJBers: I get that you'd like for the FAC coords to be able to make the call here ... but it's not necessary to revert (and this is turning into an edit war). Ian's probably asleep, and Sarastro hasn't edited today, but they'll see it (and see this discussion) when they get back, and they can do whatever they like with it then. WP:G7 allows any user to request a deletion of a page that they created and that no one else has edited; that's established policy, and it says that blanking a page is considered a request to delete the page. - Dank (push to talk) 21:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I find it hard to believe that two blind reverts of my withdraw can be dressed up here as a "procedural" matter, and Another Believer can present as aw shucks. Look at the diffs [1], [2]. This was part of a concerted troll, including logged out edits, and the article became unstable. The heck was he renominating on my behalf; going to meet reviewers concerns, validate source material, etc. Please. Ceoil (talk) 21:39, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I really didn't know if A7 applied to FAC's, and the person who reverted me explained the reason why it could be removed, and I'm fine with that. —JJBers 21:45, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

WP:G7, not WP:A7. - Dank (push to talk) 23:19, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

Wait, are you accusing me of the logged out edits/trolling? That was absolutely not me. Look, I don't care if this nomination is withdrawn. I simply assumed the page needed to be closed/archived appropriately. I'm over Ceoil-related edits and moving on to less stressful ways to improve Wikipedia. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 14:24, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

We don't generally see withdrawal requests before any comments have been made by reviewers. Any time comments have been made, we go through the normal archiving process, so we have a record of the commentary. In this case, it seems to me that although the nomination was perfectly legit, the procedure should be similar to what's employed for an out-of-process nomination, namely that 1) the review page is removed from the FAC list (which it has been, finally), 2) the nomination template is removed from the article talk page, and 3) the review page itself is TNT'd via a deletion request, as Dan mentions. This ensures that if and when the article is renominated we do it with a clean slate. I think Ceoil had a perfect right as nominator to pull the unreviewed nom from the FAC list without involving the coords (who are obviously expected to take care of withdrawal requests that involve the formal FAC closure/archiving procedure), I'd just suggest in future completing the process by performing the other two steps I note above (which I'm happy to take care of now). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:25, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks. The nomination page has been deleted, so I am marking this section as resolved. ---Another Believer _(Talk) 17:47, 8 May 2017 (UTC)

This was all very unfortunate. Thank you Ian for the clean up, and Julian for the deletion. Hopefully this a situation like this wont reoccur, but will be more thorough if so. Ceoil (talk) 21:45, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Help me Wiki-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope

Greetings, I come to you with a special request - the CMLL World Lightweight Championship FAC is currently sitting as the oldest of the FACs. I believe it has sufficient support and has passed the image review, but it is in need of a source review. Some of the sources are in Spanish and that may be what is putting people off reviewing it? I am hoping someone could do me a huge solid and do the source review. I also want to note that Laser Brain did an excellent source review on my successful CMLL World Heavyweight Championship FAC and I have incorporated every comment he made into the sources for the Lightweight article as well to hopefully help make a source review easier to undertake for someone.  MPJ-DK  02:13, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

What exactly does a "source review" entail? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 02:24, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

The ones I have been involved with looked at a few thing, 1) for anybweb source does it actually cover the statements in the article, 2) do they quality as Reliable Sources and 3) are the formatting of then citations appropriate and list all possible information. Am I missing anything guys?  MPJ-DK  02:30, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I can do #1, can't do #2, might consider #3. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 03:11, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

I've taken a look in regard to #2 and #3 – see my comments on the FAC page. Brianboulton (talk) 21:29, 7 May 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you Brianboulton I appreciated it. It seems that Siuenti has not responded in days, he/she was commenting on the talk page instead of the nom page but never got around to checking a single source for content and it is now 5-6 days since the last reply. I would really appreciate it if someone could check the web sources to ensure they're covering the cited facts since that is all it's missing to get the final checkaroo.  MPJ-DK  21:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think I've done all I can – checking the foreign language source content is simply beyond me. I hope you get the help you need. Brianboulton (talk) 22:03, 13 May 2017 (UTC)

Out-of-process nomination?

Could a co-ordinator look at the nomination of Cher, which has apppeared at the bottom of the nominations list, with an intro dated January 2017? Is this simply a matter of getting the procedure right, or is there more afoot? Brianboulton (talk) 06:51, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

It looks as if it was created in January and transcluded (in the wrong place) this week. The last time this happened, it ended a little badly so I'm inclined to archive it. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:16, 12 May 2017 (UTC)

Sorry for delay in replying, I quickly checked yesterday and also thought it was just a very late transclusion, nothing particularly untoward, unless I've missed something in the background. Despite it being an extreme case of the syndrome, I don't really have a problem with treating it like other ones and placing in the queue in transclusion order, especially since it's attracted commentary since then... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 03:29, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

printed sources and source verification

So this is in regards to an ongoing discussion I am having with Siuenti who is a first time source reviewer, basically taking on the task of verifying that the sources support the claims in the article, specifically the CMLL World Lightweight Championship FAC. It is my contention that it is a generally acceptable practice to Assume Good Faith on printed sources and accepts that they cover what the article claims. Siuenti seems to disagree, discounting printed sources as failing Verifiability since the user cannot verify the books and magazines cited in the article. Oh and for some reasons WP:BEANS was brought up, which I'm not sure how it applies as well as WP:COMMONSENSE, which seems to tell me that I need to ignore WP:V, but again not sure?? Anyway for anyone already thinking TL;DNR - Do we accept printed sources on Good Faith for FAC?  MPJ-DK  23:11, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Because if you do, anyone who doesn't like Wikipedia or has some kind of agenda to push has a free pass to insert whatever they like into featured articles. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 23:18, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

• The use of printed sources in Wikipedia in general is not really the discussion here, no one here can make that determination. This is about how printed sources are handled as part of the FAC review?  MPJ-DK  23:20, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

The use of online accessible sources should definitely be encouraged, and as part of a review a motivation to add online sources would be good. But drastically being against any use of offline book sources is not the way to go. So add online (back-up) sources where possible, while keeping the book source too. Tisquesusa (talk) 04:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Who is drastically against any use of offline book sources? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 04:28, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Really? How are you not against it? Your whole complaint is "Well I cannot read the source" and thus have not done a source review weeks later. Can I please have someone else please review that the sources match the content they are supposed to source, that was the task Siuenti took on over a week ago but has not even done one validation on yet and it does not look like it is happening.  MPJ-DK  11:00, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Oh I know how you are "drastically against it" by claiming that printed sources fails WP:V.  MPJ-DK  11:01, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Did I claim that all printed sources fail WP:V? I didn't mean to Siuenti (씨유엔티) 04:41, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Just provide excerpts or email photos of a selection of pages. Or the reviewer could try to get the books at a library. No need to reinvent the wheel. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 11:28, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Never seen that done in any FAC I have participated in.  MPJ-DK  11:30, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Book sources are widely used and are not unverifiable - though verification may involve a trip to the library. Many books, or book excerpts are available via online sources such as Google Books, Project MUSE and Questia. All of my FAs have involved a mixture of print and online sources. We should steer well away of saying "if it's not online, it's not verifiable, and not a reliable source". There has long been the assumption of good faith with regard to offline sources. Simon Burchell (talk) 12:03, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Funny that, the policy page has a section specifically allowing offline sources. So in terms of policy these are fine, even if harder to verify. As to how to perform a source review in these circumstances, I'd probably try to hunt down free versions and if that doesn't work, ask whether anybody can access them. AGF as a last resort. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:56, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely - there is also Resource Request, which is often quite helpful. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:35, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

So yeah, if anyone can actually access them and photocopy them or whatever, I'm happy to review them. However I can't review people's faith, and there is a strong incentive here for people with other agendas to abuse WP:AGF. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 20:36, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

We should certainly steer away from assuming bad faith, no matter what the forum - as Ealdgyth says below, if all the sources you can access look fine, there is no reason to doubt those you can't... Simon Burchell (talk) 08:51, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

Please note that on the review page I have provided 3 alternate, web-based, sources that all agree on the facts and all agree with the facts in the article - as a way to show that I do actually have good faith here, that the contents of the article is not pulled out of this air. But again that has been rejected by Siuenti with demands of photocopies and other implications of incompetence etc. on my part. 10 days after the review started Siuenti has not yet made a single review of the available sources, only complaints and implications that I am fabricating facts, cannot translate Spanish etc. I do wish this could take a positive step forward, I am trying my best to move this along myself.  MPJ-DK  10:57, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

As someone who has done a LOT of source reviews (and in fact started the whole thing back in 2008 or so)... the point of a source review isn't to check every source against the article. It's to see if the sources are generally from reliable publishers/etc. Yes, we do occasionally do a spot check of an article against its sources, picking a few at random and making sure that the article text they support is actually present in the source. However, a good way to discover if you need to do that with printed sources is to check the online sources. Earwig's tool is great for this. If you turn up problems of copyright violation in the online sources, then you should move on to requesting the offline sources for a more thorough check of all the sources. Otherwise, you just need to make sure they are not using sources that are from unreputable publishers, make sure they aren't using self published books (lulu.com, createspace, etc), and that the publishers aren't know for fringe publishing (i.e. unless its an article on a fringe theory, they shouldn't be using sources from publishers who specialize in fringe theories - if a publishers backcatalog is all on UFOs, you may have a problem.) A good thing to do is to use WorldCat to see how many libraries have the offline source - if its only held by one or two libraries its either REALLY rare or its probably fringe. If it's a journal article - is it from a reputable periodical publisher? One way to tell on journals - is it in the various aggregators of journals - JSTOR, ScienceDirect, PubMed, etc. Hope this helps. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:46, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

• That right there Ealdgytg, is textbook perfect, thank you for expressing what I have been trying (and failing) to put into words. I have also suggested an approach to untie this Gordian knot on the nomination page.  MPJ-DK  22:12, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

  Wikipedia:Offline sources: Even though Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia, there is no distinction between using online versus offline sources. Online sources present a host of problems, the foremost of which link rot. I was unable to persuade the IOC to keep the Rio2016 site up, so we had a race to grab everything we needed in the six months while it was still there. Now that it is gone, I have had the InternetArchiveBot run over the 5,000 affected pages and add archive links. Nearly everything else is lost for good. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:24, 15 May 2017 (UTC)

  So what's WorldCat's take on the sources for this CMLL thingy? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 01:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• http://www.worldcat.org saved you from typing in the address and searching be aware that there are various editions, I am citing the 2000 edtition that I found, older editions exist but predate the creation of this championship.  MPJ-DK  01:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

• So what's WorldCat's take on the SPANISH and JAPANESE sources for this CMLL thingy? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 01:36, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Siuenti, the only Japanese-language source I see is ref 19, which has an online link. The print sources in Spanish appear to all be from SuperLuchas, a print magazine which is linked in a couple of newer articles, so I'd AGF on their existence. As a magazine, it won't have an ISBN number, and Brianboulton's review showed that the publication has an ISSN number that isn't always recorded properly. Personally, I find all of this to be rather passive-aggressive. Since the reviewer seems convinced that the references are faked, maybe they should just say that instead of leading the nominator around (I don't believe this, which is why my support stands). As is, this is turning into a long violation of AGF; it is the kind of nightmare FAC that loses us contributors, and I'd like to prevent that from happening if possible. While I'm here, I see Super Luchas and SuperLuchas as publishers; the nominator should probably pick one and stick with it. These are the kinds of style issues that reviewers should be looking for, not questioning whether print sources should be used in FAs. Many of the best sources are going to be in print, as others have said. Giants2008 (Talk) 13:26, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Good catch, I have addressed that.  MPJ-DK  15:05, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  I want to know if these alleged Spanish references count towards WP:N. Also I want to be able to check the translations, not just their existence. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 21:25, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Foreign language sources should absolutely count for WP:N. Wikipedia is a worldwide encyclopedia, but systemic bias tips coverage towards anglophone sources. The use of foreign language sources gives coverage to topics and points of view that do not appear in English language source, but that are notable. Simon Burchell (talk) 08:30, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  For example, what their editorial standards are. I'm not questioning whether print sources in general should be accepted, just those that appear to be unavailable to verify. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 21:27, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  "Alleged"?? Have I done anything or presented anything during our discussions to warrant such an assumption of bad faith? I have bent over backwards and served info to you on a silver platter, I've presented alternative, online sources that make the same statements to demonstrate that the likelyhood that the printed sources agree with the online sources. What in my actions warrants your repeated implications that I am somehow acting in bad faith, falsifying sources, is not competent to translate Spanish despite working on a slew of Mexican articles etc.?  MPJ-DK  21:37, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  I am not assuming bad faith, but can you not see why I think it's in the interests of the project to double check this kind of thing? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 21:49, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  So "alleged" is a positive thing? I'm sorry but since English is not my native language I may have stumbled upon a version of "alleged" where you don't imply that I basically made it up?  MPJ-DK  21:52, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  I would like you to acknowledge that I believe it's in the best interests of the project to double-check this kind of thing. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 22:02, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  I don't know what you believe, I only know your comments, and those tell me nothing of the sort is true as you ignore the input of people who are fundamental to the success of this project (I am not including myself in that group).  MPJ-DK  22:16, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  Heh, now you are accusing me of bad faith, and that's definitely against the rule that you keep banging on about. Tsk tsk. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 22:39, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  "Assume Good Faith" in lieu of evidence to the contrary.  MPJ-DK  23:11, 16 May 2017 (UTC)

  You have evidence that I "don't believe it's in the best interests of the project to double-check this kind of thing". Interesting. Will you be sharing that evidence with WP:ANI perhaps? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 01:03, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• The lacking ability of a particular editor to find, access or understand a specific source (print or otherwise) is not the same as lack of verifiability.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 08:33, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  One particular editor is asking for a review of sources, while at the same time refusing to photocopy the sources he apparently has in his possession, possibly in a box somewhere, so we can take a look at them. Interesting. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 13:05, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  I agree with other commenters above that this level of verification goes beyond what is normally done at FAC; usually this kind of spot-check is reserved for first-time nominators, and for cases where specific concerns have been raised. However, in the interests of settling, this, Siuenti, can you pick one or two specific points that you would like to see the printed sources for? And MPJ-DK, could you then take a photo of those sources and email them to Siuenti via Wikipedia email? Would that resolve this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:23, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  I would like evaluate the reliable of these sources as well as the depth of coverage they provide per WP:N, so no, one or two specific points is not really satisfactory. But it would be a start. Anyone know how to ask for sources to be reviewed as reliable or not? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 13:29, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  The usual way is to ask the nominator "What makes this source reliable?", and that question is regularly asked at nominations. Ealdgyth has an excellent list of ways that question can be answered that perhaps she could post here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:36, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  It's at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches, but note that it has NOT been updated for the increase in standards at Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria/Archive 9#new proposal for 1(f) Ealdgyth - Talk 13:43, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  The nominator's constant protestations about "good faith" coupled with his own blatant personal attack on myself make me little inclined to believe anything he says without evidence. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 13:54, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  Perhaps a coordinator can comment here, but if your reasons for going beyond the normal sourcing verification approach are grounded in the exchanges you've had with the nominator, rather than in the FA criteria or the relevant sourcing policies, I don't think an oppose would be regarded as actionable. I haven't read all of the FAC, but it is certainly the case that good faith is usually assumed in these cases. I have access to a scanner, so if one of my nominations met with a source reviewer who requested copies of every printed source I might comply, but I'd also complain about it. It would be unfair to nominators if offline sources were consistently treated with more suspicion than online sources without some definite reason for doubt. I have no opinion on the reliability of the sources in question, but you're definitely going well beyond a normal source review here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:04, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  IMO Wikipedia is inviting vandals, spammers and POV-pushers to take it for a sucker by blindly assuming good faith. Not good for the project. Siuenti (씨유엔티) 15:37, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

  But you are the reviewer. It is your job to review the sources, not the nominator's. Sources have to be verifiable, they don't have to be freely available. If you want to buy the book, borrow a copy from the library, search for snippets in Google Books or try to corroborate the facts with alternative sources then that is admirable. If you can't be bothered to do that, you must AGF or admit that you are unable to do the review.--Ykraps (talk) 16:05, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Assume good faith - good faith is a fundamental principal of the the project. See also the fourth pillar. Simon Burchell (talk) 15:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• Just briefly popping in with my coordinator hat on, I'm watching this FAC quite closely and I get the impression that issues there are not especially related to the content. I've already moved a chunk of "commentary" to the talk page and may move more later depending on how current discussions progress. But I do not see anything actionable on sourcing at the moment (and unless anything has changed since I last looked, which is very possible, there have been no opposes). There is no requirement for nominators to provide material to check sourcing unless a spot check is needed and no sources are online or issues are raised with online sources. Neither of these are the case here, and in any case only samples would ever need to be provided. If the nominator is willing to provide one or two to address a particular point, that is fine, but there is no requirement to do so here in terms of the FA criteria. As others have said, it is up to the reviewer to find the sources for themselves if they have concerns (which do not seem to be based on any particular evidence) but others have no issues with sourcing. Sarastro1 (talk) 16:25, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• The guy requests people to review the sources, then refuses to provide access to them. Come on, does this not say anything to you? Siuenti (씨유엔티) 21:34, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

• I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of how source reviews work at FAC. And several people have now made the same point to you, none of whom have any vested interest in the article, the review or this dispute. I would suggest that you read what people have said to you. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:41, 17 May 2017 (UTC)

Participants in this discussion (and other page watchers) may be interested in Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability#Encouraging_accessibility. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:18, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Older reviews needing a little attention

There are quite a few FACs in the lower part of the list that have quite a lot of review but not quite enough to push them over the line one way or the other. There are also a few which would benefit from others chipping in on other reviewers' comments. I'd be grateful if anyone with a spare moment or two could have a look at these articles. And as usual, we have a few articles which are being held up as they need image and source reviews. Any help with that would be equally gratefully received. Sarastro1 (talk) 21:03, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for May

Here are the lead reviewers for the month of May (by date of archival/promotion of the FAC, not by date of review).

Reviews

• 12 reviews: Dank.
• 8 reviews: Finetooth
• 6 reviews: Jimfbleak

Three reviewers did five reviews; two did four; four did three; 75 editors provided a total of 140 reviews.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 14 reviews: Ealdgyth.
• 11 reviews: Nikkimaria
• 9 reviews: Jo-Jo Eumerus

A total of 17 reviewers provided a total of 50 reviews.

I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:21, 7 June 2017 (UTC)

Source reviews...

I'll try to get some non-pop-culture source reviews done tomorrow. Still catching up on things after the birth of the stepdaughter's baby Friday... (I'll spare you all the baby pictures..) Ealdgyth - Talk 14:04, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Congratulations to the new life in the family! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:51, 20 June 2017 (UTC)

Why is the rule on unit conversions being ignored for FA candidates?

I see that today's main-page featured article, Menacer, uses unconverted British Empire units in the main text. Doesn't anyone check for this obvious disservice to the huge majority of readers who are not Americans? I've inserted ugly, obstructuve "convert" notes in two cases. Fortunately the display on the main page contains no such glitches. Tony (talk) 09:00, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Just to be pedantic, "the huge majority of readers" isn't the case; a slim majority of en-wikipedia's readers (52.5% as of 21 March) are in non-metric countries. ‑ Iridescent 09:38, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Being still more pedantic, the UK is supposed to be a metric country, though like Canada we remain a confusing mix. For an audience interested in Menacer, metres might be more appropriate than feet. Or not. Johnbod (talk) 14:19, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

Ireland too, but I think it largely depends on context. That, or Ireland is supposed to be an imperial country but my parents and primary school teachers stuck metric into a bunch of contexts just to confuse me. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:41, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Oh, you're talking about native-speakers, are you? Tony (talk) 13:25, 28 May 2017 (UTC)

According to English-speaking world, David Crystal estimates that non-native speakers outnumber native speakers 3 to 1—not surprising, given English's status as a lingua franca in science, business, and diplomacy, and in many countries English is a language of instruction in schools. It's a plain fact that the majority of Wikipedia readers are familiar with metric, and most of them do not use imperial in any context (even historically). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:23, 21 June 2017 (UTC)

Glitch

Something's wrong with the list of nominations:

1.15 The Getaway (1972 film)
1.16 Comments by Panagiotis Zois

I tried to fix it but had no luck.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:46, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

No, you did right by reducing the header level -- I just saved the WP:FAC page and it should've cleared now. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 10:05, 1 July 2017 (UTC)

RfC arising from Signpost piece, about first sentences of LEAD

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. This arises from this SIgnpost piece.

This was discussed on this talk page in this thread ("First 2.5 paragraphs of the lead") back in April, which was in turn a response to this RfC at Village Pump, which was in turn spurred by this ANI thread. This is important - we should not have clutter in the first 2.5 paragraphs - we have a responsibility to keep these sentences focused on content that summarizes the article. Jytdog (talk) 14:55, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for June

Here are the lead reviewers for the month of June (by date of archival/promotion of the FAC, not by date of review).

Reviews

• 18 reviews: Moisejp.
• 8 reviews: Finetooth, Aoba47, Casliber

One reviewer did seven reviews; one did six; one did five; four did four; six did three. 66 editors provided a total of 153 reviews.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 14 reviews: Ealdgyth.
• 12 reviews: Nikkimaria
• 9 reviews: Casliber

A total of 19 reviewers provided a total of 62 reviews.

I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:54, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Baltimore railroad strike of 1877

Posting here mostly because I don't want to muck up a nomination that could potentially waste a lot of folk's time. This article just passed GA, and I was considering nominating for FA. I've never really messed around with FA, either as a nominator or a reviewer, so if anyone wants to give it a quick look see and offer any feedback or give a quick gauge of it chances of success, it would be much appreciated. TimothyJosephWood 14:11, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

By all means please go ahead – FAC is essentially about fixing comments (issues) raised by other reviewers, though some might support straight away. One thing I would advise is to have references at the end of every paragraph, a convention widely (but not universally) followed by FAs. Your article otherwise looks good for nomination. Parcly Taxel 15:48, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

 Done The only issue I'm aware of is that there was some question as to whether the image of the historical marker ran into freedom of panorama issues. I personally emailed the historical society over that one, but I may have to dig up the email. Anyway, I guess I'll never get a feel for FA if I never try it. TimothyJosephWood 16:05, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

@Timothyjosephwood: You've got to start the FAC page first! Parcly Taxel 16:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Yeah. Took me a second but I think I sorted it out. TimothyJosephWood 16:18, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sylvia Plath/archive1

Can an FAC person please close Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Sylvia Plath/archive1 and have the bot or someone add the closed history template stuff at the article talk page ? Sagecandor (talk) 15:23, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Or leave it open, I dunno, whatever the FAC people think is best. Thank you ! Sagecandor (talk) 02:55, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Lassie (1954 TV series)/archive1

An account that just started editing today put up this up. It smells like a banned user to me, perhaps User:ItsLassieTime. I have no expertise in dealing with banned users, I just don't want anyone to waste time on the FAC if I'm right. - Dank (push to talk) 14:46, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Now blocked. - Dank (push to talk) 15:46, 7 July 2017 (UTC)

Drive-by nomination

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/E.T. (song)/archive1 was started by someone who didn't consult me (a major contributor) or anyone else who heavily worked on the page. Is it best to close as unsuccessful or delete when reviewing comments have already been left? Snuggums (talk / edits) 20:37, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

We don't generally delete pages that have attracted comments, even when the nom is out of process, as the comments could be helpful -- I've therefore archived this one. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:55, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

Fair enough. Thank you for the response and closure. Snuggums (talk / edits) 03:47, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

Mentor request

Hi, I'd like to request a mentor to help with the nomination of Rotating locomotion in living systems, which will be my first FA nomination. The article has had a recent peer review: Wikipedia:Peer review/Rotating locomotion in living systems/archive2. Would anyone be willing to take on this mentoring task? I'd like to nominate the article on August 1 or later, when I will have availability to address comments. Thanks! —swpb^T 16:56, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

I'd be pleased to mentor this. I don't have subject expertise in this area, but I have a lot of experience in preparing, submitting, and reviewing articles for FAC. I'll read through the article during the weekend and prepare some detailed comments that we can address next week. Brianboulton (talk) 17:08, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Perfect! Thank you! —swpb^T 17:25, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Older sources in history articles

In a couple of recent FACs, there has been an issue with using older sources in history articles. This was the most recent one, this was another. The main concern has been that a relatively obscure topic has only apparently received coverage in very old sources, written by non-professional historians. On the other hand, modern sources do not seem to exist. Do we discount these sources as lacking the required quality, or use them as there are no alternatives? It might be helpful to know what others think of this issue so that there is a way forward if the issue arises again. Sarastro1 (talk) 22:05, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

I find them useful for detail often not found in more recent volumes. Their knowledge of small-picture items like the movements of members of a regiment are unlikely to be contradicted at this late date. I would not use them for any big-picture conclusions.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:48, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Absolutely not reliable for issues of interpretation. As soon as you start writing "x because y", modern history is the way to go, because historiography has moved on a hell of a lot since the 1800s. On the other hand, I don't think there is any inherent reason that a work shouldn't be trusted for brute fact – if a regimental history written in 1869 says "in $minor_skirmish, 37 soldiers of the regiment were wounded", they are probably correct. On the gripping hand, if that fact hasn't made it into any modern works of history on the regiment, we should perhaps question to what extent it is a historical fact, rather than "an unhistorical fact about the past", to use EH Carr's terminology – and, by extension, whether its inclusion in an article is WP:DUE. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:57, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

My belief is that this issue defies any simple guidelines that may be proposed, because of how many possible situations may come up. In general, my viewpoint is similar to the others above: old sources are often okay for basic facts that provide detail, but deep analysis of a subject is best done with newer sources by modern historians. What we can do as reviewers is ask questions when we encounter old sources in articles, as was done in the FACs linked above. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:39, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Yeah - they are great for adding detail or a narrative of events, but any conclusions should be limited to "author concluded x" or whatever. Agree with all of above. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:42, 2 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree with Wehwalt. When I wrote this one, I relied on older sources for the details and newer ones for larger trends. It was a good mix and no one objected at the time. -Coemgenus (talk) 11:28, 2 August 2017 (UTC)