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FAC archive sizes by month from April 2004 to December 2019

I posted some notes about FAC sizes last January; here's an update.

On the right is a stacked area graph showing the size in kB of the monthly en-wiki FAC archives for both archived and promoted FACs. Data is drawn from the pages listed at the featured log and the archived log. The green is the size of the archived (not promoted) pages, and the purple is the size of the promoted pages, determined by using Dr. pda's script.

Two caveats:

  • Any restarted FAC will only include the most recent iteration of the FAC
  • Talk pages of the individual FACs are excluded. Most FAC talk pages are empty, but there have been periods when some material was occasionally moved to the talk page.

I don't think either of these materially affects the results.

I argued last year that this graph shows "that the decline in reviewer activity is real but less than would be implied by the raw promotion/archive numbers. Fewer reviewers are active now, working on fewer articles, but they are putting more effort into each review." I think the new graph continues to support that conclusion; in fact, if anything, the slope is slightly upwards since a low point in 2015.

The second graph shows the average size in kB of the individual FAC pages for both archived and promoted FACs -- the number is calculated by dividing the archive size for that month by the number of FACs that month.

Last year I said "the big jump happened in mid-2008, and FACs have been getting gradually bigger since then. The later data is a bit more erratic, probably because there are fewer FACs, which magnifies the normal statistical variation." Again, that still seems to be true. The "archived" line on the graph is particularly erratic because there are fewer archived FACs than promoted ones.

I haven't commented on the process thread above, and doubt I'll have time to, but to me these graphs are reassuring. FAC is not dying, as Brian and others have feared was the case; the level of effort the community is putting in here is stable, and has been for some years. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:07, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your ever hard word, Mike.
Other data at WP:FAS shows that, in fact, FAC and FAR are in serious decline. These graphs show overall volume; they cannot show that there are far fewer, but much larger (excruciatingly so) FACs filling that volume, as prose is being pulled through at FAC.
It has been six years since enough annual FAs to fill the 365 TFA slots have been produced.
That FAR is moribund cannot be disputed, and since there are still plenty of FAs for TFA, that is a bigger concern. In the last two days, I have been engaged in two discussions of very poor, older FAs, that were used in a WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument for content. Older FAs need to be cleaned up, but it's pretty clear from the long discussions above that no one cares. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:16, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
How about fixed life-spans for FAs? Something along the lines of all FAs are automatically demoted after XX years (10?) unless they are taken through a confirmation FAC. It would ensure nothing runs too out of date. This wouldn't stop articles being listed for FAR if they degraded at a faster rate. - SchroCat (talk) 20:41, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
I have some other ideas, but was hoping to see if we got more feedback after the holidays pass before putting them forward. (Even if we went to fixed life-span now, we would still need to deal with the very old FAs whose editors/watchers are gone :( And I wonder aloud ... if we institute a fixed life-span, does that just further the kicking of the can down the road? The FAR rules are outdated, because they were based on a time when we were processing the addition of the inline citation requirement. Now we have a whole 'nother problem, and may need a whole 'nother process. I'd like to hear others' ideas before I spread mine. I am much less worried about FAC, as it seems to be doing fine of late. The page/number of nominations is now manageable, and reviewers seem to be taking some of these discussions on board, without too many hurt feelings. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:46, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Automatically demoting old FAs will be disastrous for Wikipedia. There is simply not the expertise for reworking them. Almost anything vital on Wikipedia that is an FA will be demoted and tinkered to death by drive-bys. We'll be left with short articles on encyclopedically trivial topics—for which there are well-worn templates and for which it is easy to claim that the article is comprehensive. These currently constitute an overwhelming proportion of the submissions. The vital articles off the top of my head include: Evolution, Bacteria, Charles Darwin, Group Theory, Angkor Wat, El Greco, Lion, A Christmas Carol, William Shakespeare, indeed most of Awadewit's articles, ... Attachment theory. Even the ones that are being maintained such as Major depressive disorder or Schizophrenia, Australia or India are better off without being demoted. Whatever state the old FAs are in, at least they are somewhat immunized from tinkering. Major disaster, in my view. Why can't people simply update old FAs themselves, rather than flooding us with new-fangled trivia that no one reads? Is the dubious bronze star such a big deal? Perhaps there should be a bronze start for significantly improving old FAs, even a gold star, a diamond star, ... if the bling is what is driving people. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:25, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Because most people edit in areas that interest them. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 22:33, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
(The above comment made by Jo-Jo Eumerus was in answer to a post that has subsequently been edited to remove the point he may have been responding to). - SchroCat (talk) 22:38, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
It is not just a matter of lack of expertise. If articles I had written were demoted, I would never be able to renominate them, no matter how good they are. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) As I already said in my comment, if an article is taken through a confirmatory FAC process then it doesn't have to be delisted. I'm not sure that removing articles that have fallen out of date would be "disastrous" at all: it would show that we have standards that we constantly update and evolve, and that we ensure that articles keep pace with those changes. The vital articles you list, btw, include A Christmas Carol, which is in excellent shape at the moment as I only took it through FAC in September 2018, and it is still up with the current standards. I do not know if it will remain in an up-to-date state in another eight years, particularly if I have left the project before then when the last vestiges of enjoyment have evaporated. I know of at least one of "my" FAs that I do not think would pass now, although I may be wrong. What would be "disastrous" about removing out-of-date work that has not gone through a confirmation process? At least if FAs have an automatic shelf-life, it would ensure constant standards being applied. If you don't like the idea of a straight delisting, perhaps an automatic "confirmation FAC" process is opened on older articles. – SchroCat (talk) 22:36, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
F&f, there are too many old FAs for people to pick them up and fix them. (By the way, who has taken over Brian's articles on their watchlists?) I think we need a systematic process to figure out which old FAs are really in trouble. I regularly pitch a fit over at schizophrenia, and it gradually gets cleaned up, so I, for instance, can say it's OK. Who's watching Lion? Cas? Germany is a mess again, I hear. We don't know until we get a systematic way to look at each FA, say, more than five years old. Schro, on those "do not think would pass now", generally in a review process of the type I'm thinking to propose, people are pretty lenient. We only want to weed out the truly bad. I have a pretty good idea of where we will find most of the older, no-longer-watched deterioration, but we need a systematic process. If there is interest, I'll post my ideas when I have time ... Worried, Schro, that what you are proposing could be demoralizing, and cause the opposite effect of what we seek, which is to re-invigorate the process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:47, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Tim riley and I have taken Brian's old solo efforts onto our watchlists. We can't guarantee to have caught them all, but we think we may have. - SchroCat (talk) 22:50, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
SandyG Yes, I agree there are very poor ones. Will look forward to hearing your proposals in due course. My own view is that a system of credits that gives more credit for vital articles should be instituted. There is no reason that Evolution should offer the same reward as an article on a trivial fly by night topic. SchroCat, please pick up an honorary gold star from me on A Christmas Carol. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:59, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the thought but—and this may surprise you (and a few others)—I don't actually care that much about the gold stars. I don't watchlist most of the FAs I've been involved in, and don't even have a record of them all. I don't do it for the purported 'glory' of getting anything to FA, much less seeing it on the front page, but simply because I enjoy the research and writing involved; once that enjoyment has evaporated I'll be gone. - SchroCat (talk) 23:08, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Credits for what? Multiplying by zero is still zero... there are no rewards for an FA except for a shiny star and the feeling of accomplishment. So .. there's not much incentive to take on "vital" articles... and much disincentive (I say this as someone involved in improving a small pile of "vital" articles, some to FA, some to GA, some just plain improved without the stars/circles) because a "vital" article attracts insanity .. usually at the worst possible moments. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:19, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Can we swap credits for cash? That may work! - SchroCat (talk) 23:21, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Don't get me started ... are you too young to remember when that was happening? Who can remember the name of that program ... ? <barf> SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:17, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) It's possible that it could be demoralising, but the flip side is that we keep our store of high-quality articles fresh and that the stock is "pure" (for want of a better term). Why would people be demoralised about keeping articles up to standard? For most of the regular (and current) FA writers, we probably have "our" FAs watchlisted (I don't: I only have a small number of "mine" watchlisted to avoid accusations of OWNership), but for the current FA editors, we're probably fairly sure that the ones we took through FAC are decent(ish) enough. If our number of FAs was cut by a third tomorrow because out-dated articles were removed in an agreed manner, having been through some due process and given a chance to clean up but are still short of current standards, I'm not sure that would be disastrous or demoralising: it would focus everyones attention not just on creating more content, but on ensuring that standards are maintained. Everyone's mileage differs, obviously, but I think most FA writers would be happier with "their" work in a smaller but better pool, than in a large mass with disparate stadnards. - SchroCat (talk) 23:04, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Schro, why ever on earth are you worried about ownership? You have a policy page backing you up; WP:OWN#Featured articles. Unwatched FAs deteriorate.
OK, to address the impasse between what you are saying and what F&f is saying, we need examples. It's never good for me to be the one to offer examples. Let's see a sample really bad, really old FA that might fit the bill for demotion, compared to a "wouldn't pass today, but no reason to demote" example, so we can all get a gauge of what our standards are. The idea is a sorta/kinda sweeps, where we wouldn't be looking at the tough standards of a full FAC, rather a process to locate the truly bad and evaluate them per an abbreviated FA standard. I could snoop around tomorrow for samples if no one offers one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:25, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
There are certainly decayed FAs; anyone who's tried to schedule for TFA knows that. I suspect examples won't get people fired up to work at FAR or to improve old FAs, though. Like SchroCat I don't do it for the star: I enjoy the research, and the learning that comes with it. That makes me much less interested in FAR than FAC, and I think many others feel the same way. I think we have more or less enough editors at FAC to keep going with FAC generation, but we have nothing like enough active editors to keep old FAs in shape, and I don't think exhortations are going to fix that. I suspect there is no answer to the problem -- that is, we will never have enough willing resources to keep old FAs up to snuff. I would be sceptical of any plan that doesn't acknowledge that. That might mean accepting the status quo, or automatically demoting FAs after ten years, or putting a little year date inside the bronze star as an indication to the reader of the freshness of the evaluation, or something else I haven't thought of. It won't mean actually cleaning up any significant fraction of the old FAs, unfortunately. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:52, 1 January 2020 (UTC)
Mike, working up the number of old FAs we have requires a severely abbreviated process, that would involve !voting, subject to consensus. Those that don't have clear consensus in the !vote/sweep --> FAR for further deliberation at a slower pace. I'll work a sample on Schro's below. This will give us ideas to start. I'll be back. Oh, and we would need bot writers to extract the stuff we need. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia, SchroCat Perhaps there is a way to use ORES automatic assessments to flag FA's that are below a certain threshold? Qono (talk) 18:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Are there any metrics to show how flexible it is? I mean in terms of different styles of English (language variants, commas, etc are a particular are where AI can trip up badly - I've seen some absolutely terrible things pop up when using Word's grammar checker or Grammarly - both are best avoided for good writing). - SchroCat (talk) 19:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@SchroCat: When it comes to gauging article quality, ORES "bases its predictions on structural characteristics of the article. E.g. How many sections are there? Is there an infobox? How many references? And do the references use a {{cite}} template? The articlequality model doesn't evaluate the quality of the writing or whether or not there's a tone problem (e.g. a point of view being pushed). However, many of the structural characteristics of articles seem to correlate strongly with good writing and tone, so the models work very well in practice." With that in mind, while it is a useful tool for a range of purposes I'm not sure it would pick up on FAs that fall below FA standards because the issues aren't likely to be structural. Though perhaps it might be a useful litmus test to see if it finds major issues. Richard Nevell (talk) 19:49, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
”Is there an Infobox?” There’s a red flag right there! Given what you’ve said, I think you’re right in saying it may not be much use. The articles I have seen demoted (and it’s not an area I go into much) seem to be because the text has become bloated or second rate, not because multiple additional sections have been added. Some functions may be partly useful, but I think we may have to keep it to a human level to determine it. Thanks for the info tho - most interesting. - SchroCat (talk) 20:02, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Without meaning disrespect, I'm not persuaded by the protestations of abnegation. If people really don't care, then please institute a system of credits, which rewards differentially for one year. The credits will have to be thought through, but off the top of my head say, a diamond star for Evolution, Galaxy, Restoration Literature, Feudalism, Roman Empire, Plate Tectonics, a Gold for Charles Darwin, John Bunyan, .... a bronze for ... and see the results. My guess is that you won't have to work on fixing anything. Please will fix it themselves. It will take me time to dig out those old decrepit FAs though. It is best that people do not offer their own. Better to pick those whose major authors have retired. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 00:36, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

But this misses the point that both I and Mike Christie have said (and I know there are several others who feel the same way): the stars and titles means less than nothing to us. We enjoy researching and writing articles. If an article doesn't go through FAC because of one unfavourable review, it's not the end of the world, and we'll move on to the next one because the review has almost passed us by already (hint hint) and WP is left with an FA-level article that "only" has a green cross, not gold star – but many of us simply don't care about the star, just that something we've worked on has been reviewed to be final point it can be, and that the article has been taken as far as it can by us. And yes, that's part of the reason why FAR is in a parlous state: too many of us are happy to work in our own silos without looking at other areas, but creating little false stars or names to work towards is not going to float many people's boats. - SchroCat (talk) 01:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Well, if you profess such noble instincts, then there's no reason for you to oppose my proposal. I'm suggesting rather that the system of rewards is such that the best articles are not being written, in part because the best people are not contributing. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Noble? No, more selfish (speaking for myself, at least). And I'm not opposing anything: I just think it'll be a waste of time that most FAC regulars wouldn't care about. But who knows, I may be entirely wrong about it, and they may all think it's brilliant. Time will tell. (And "the best people are not contributing" at FAC? There's a lovely kick in the teeth to cheer people into the new year) - SchroCat (talk) 01:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I am always mindful that an overwhelmingly large proportion of the work on Wikipedia, especially in technical topics, has been done anonymously. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:37, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Entirely possible, but not really germane to creating FAs, or keeping them at that level for any extended period. - SchroCat (talk) 09:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

While it is true that we work on improving articles on subjects that interest us, the one-at-a-time and two-week rules preclude us from doing that at FAC. Given that I am allowed only five, maybe six articles a year, I can only nominate the ones that I feel are most likely to pass. This, and the increasingly demanding requirements are what is inexorably driving FACs to favour larger articles. I would like to be able to nominate Next Nine to help out the people improving the astronaut articles with an aim to creating a featured topic, but FLC has rejected it and it is simply too big a risk to nominate it at FAC. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Hawkeye, the backlog is down. If we can re-invigorate the process, get more reviewers, you can run through more FACs than five a year. I don't know why FAs are getting longer, but maybe I need to start Opposing more often. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:47, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Although this isn't the cause of the increasing length of articles, the 10,000-word limit was removed from the guidelines last year, which will make opposes based on length more difficult. A. Parrot (talk) 00:57, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
A. Parrot, thanks. Although those specific words were removed, that guideline page still has recommendations for when to split based on size, and we still have 4. length at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:44, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
(Caveat that I strongly prefer longer articles) However, I would not necessarily consider Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style. as a criterion that justifies length-based opposes. Summary style-based opposes, yes, but I can certainly imagine lots of room for debate about when a topic should be covered in the main article vs. when in a sub-article (see some discussions at Talk:Donald Trump for an example) and as even WP:SUMMARY alludes to it creates certain maintenance problems. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I thought the automatic demotion idea was bad at first, but I thought about it more and started to like it. For those that like to keep status, you could have Neil Armstrong (x2). If you brought an article back up to FA that you didn't do at first, you could give yourself the star there too (if that is important to you). This mitigates the problem of FAs that have been sitting for 10 years and then not being at an FA standard for TFA and encourages users to upkeep the article. If the article is truly still a FA, then a renomination at FAC should require little to no discussion and a re-promotion. With all that said I think the idea might be opposed on ideological grounds, but on a process basis it seems like a good way to retire (or at least not depend on as heavily) FAR/FARC, maintain a high standard for articles over a long period of time (think like a hundred year plan), and reinvigorate subject matter experts to research newly published material to update articles. I think I would support a five or ten year auto-demotion, unless there are factors I missed. Kees08 (Talk) 15:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I would never be able to nominate another article at FAC ever again. I had five articles promoted in 2010: James Whiteside McCay, Admiralty Islands campaign, Harry Chauvel, Battle of Bardia and Thomas C. Kinkaid. There's nothing wrong with any of them, but that would be my five articles for 2020. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 19:04, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I had eight promoted in 2010 and I'd protest automatic demotion as I've been pretty good about defending them from "stylistic tweaks" and additions of cruft over the years. Looking a couple of them over, all I really see needful is tweaking the prose somewhat (I'd like to think that I'm a better writer now) and updating them to reflect changes in the MOS.
In this scenario, I do not think renominations of featured articles would count towards the one-at-a-time nomination limit. If there are truly not any issues, then the review would be really short and painless. Kees08 (Talk) 20:47, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't care about the FA star per se, I like having other people outside MilHist review and help me improve the articles. And I do really like the prospect of capping a decade+ of work with a 500+-article Featured Topic in a couple of years.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 20:07, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
The featured topic issue is the biggest one I could think of, and I am not sure there would be a good way to handle it. May make the idea a non-starter, though I like the idea of some way to actively verify articles are at FAC standard. Kees08 (Talk) 20:47, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Samples to evaluate for new review process

I'll put my money where my mouth is and stick "my" first two FAs in the mix: Peter Sellers and Ian Fleming. I am not sure either would pass FAC now, and I think Sellers may fail an FAR (or, at least, not without a lot of very heavy spade work during the reviews), but I will leave it to your eye to judge where they may fall. (If these did ever end up in a formal review, I'd be prepared to work on Fleming, not so much on Sellers, but there may be others who were prepared to take my slack there). - SchroCat (talk) 00:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Working up a sample review, I'll be back. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:23, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Peter Sellers (Media biographies)
    • Nominator(s): Cassianto, SchroCat
    • BLP: No.
    • Promoted August 19, 2012
    • Size at promotion: Prose size (text only): 57 kB (9537 words) "readable prose size"
    • Size now: Prose size (text only): 59 kB (9967 words) "readable prose size" (no significant change)
    • Diff since promotion
    • Maintenance tags: None
    • Lead: Pass
    • Last edit by nominator(s): November 9, 2019
Vote
  • Retain: No dramatic increase in article size, which would warrant a closer look. No maintenance tags, no obvious issues in the lead, active nominator recently involved. Not a BLP, no need for a closer look. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Vote
  • Demote: No one actively watching its FA status, multiple maintenance tags, evidence of deterioration in the lead, almost half of the current content was not vetted at FAC or FAR, summary style that was put in place at FAR has been lost to sprawling content that could be better summarized. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:36, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Tourette syndrome (Health and medicine)
    • Nominator(s): SandyGeorgia
    • BLP/Health: Yes
    • Promoted November 2, 2006
    • Size at promotion: Prose size (text only): 38 kB (6071 words) "readable prose size"
    • Size now: Prose size (text only): 38 kB (5860 words) "readable prose size" (no significant change)
    • Diff since promotion
    • Maintenance tags: None
    • Lead: Fiddled about by WPMED project, shortening sentence length, re-ordering the order of Tony1's beautiful narrative and forcing citations into the lead. Sandy from Georgia mostly reverted the damage.
    • Last edit by nominator(s): December 29, 2019
Vote

Discussion of samples

@FAR coordinators: samples above. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:36, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

This is something akin to what I have in mind. We aren't looking to FAC review them; we're looking for obvious fails. We need a bot to extract data, and then we have a !vote. We appoint coords to determine consensus, we need Hawkeye7 to add bot processing or something to articlehistory to accommodate the new process, and an archive for the records. Different editors may examine the diff since promotion and find issues, which are discussed during the sweep. BLPs get a closer look. If anyone sees anything awful, they mention it, but we will define standards to be not as strict as full FAC. When consensus is not clear, the article goes to FAR, which is a much slower, more deliberative process, and stars can be saved. We announce, by bot, on FA talk pages, that we will be doing this several months before we start, which will be a motivator to get people/WProjects to clean up their FAs. If we are successful, we even end up with very few demotions! It's all in the prep work. We look at only articles promoted more than five years ago, and we count a FAR as a review, so exclude anything that passed FAR in five years. We define the category of each article, so we can take care with BLPs and direct different reviewers to area of interest. Declarations would be Retain, Demote or Send to FAR, with no consensus going to FAR. Any other ideas ?? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

On second thought, we don't need to define a new process. A bot can extract each old FA directly to a FAR page (Wikipedia:Featured article review/Germany/archive2), and then if there is no consensus, that file gets transcluded to FAR for further reviews. If they pass, we put them in the FAR keep archive for regular bot processing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:04, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Oh, and medical articles get flagged as BLPs do, because medical content should have a BLP-style policy governing them. So there :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:52, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Oh, and graduate the number to be dumped in to the process daily, by taking one category of WP:FA per day, so that we don't have to suddenly review thousands of FAs at once. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:19, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I worry we have too many processes. We still have Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles (if this is historical can it be marked as such?) and User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page. I'd much rather more eyes on the latter somehow and then 'sink' or 'swim' determined and sent to FAR at that point... Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:43, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
A simple solution would be to ask TFA coordinators to look out for articles in poor condition when we schedule and refer enough to FAR to keep the process busy. After all, we're constantly looking at the latter page when we're scheduling. That way, FAR is acting on fresh information rather than trying to work through a long backlog, which won't necessarily be up to date.--Wehwalt (talk) 10:27, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Problem with that would be that it only would take in articles that haven't been on the main page (usually). So we'd be missing the whole "appeared on the main page" subcategory. Ealdgyth - Talk 14:01, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Oh sure, clearly. But the idea would be to get something going that doesn't require a lot of structural change and doesn't flood FAR.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:33, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
@Cas URFA (Unreviewed featured articles) is not a process-- it is a page where I tracked data, and since I stopped, is pretty worthless. Yes, mark it historical. The Dweller page has long been a well-intended problem, diverting resources from FAR in the same way that WP:QAI did. It has nothing to do with promoting or demoting FAs. IMO it has nothing to do with what we're dealing with here, and when TFA coords avoid running "bad" TFAs, the broader community is deceived about the overall quality of the FA pool, and is disinclined to engage FAR to help solve the problem. The Dweller page is a problem.
I edit conflicted with Ealdgyth making the same point. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:06, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) @SandyGeorgia: how about we do away with the two weeks' courtesy period between making a comment on the talk page of an FA and nominating it at FAR in cases of clear article degradation. I sometimes find some, make comments and then forget about it. I am sure this happens to others as well. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:38, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Well, the broader question is do we need an overall update to the FAR instructions and process? I don't think tinkering with one minor aspect at this point will help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:08, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
NB: I like Wehwalt's idea as one presumes their experience is enough to identify articles with gross failings that really should go to FAR. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:38, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
The TFA Coords are not encountering the worst of the worst: FAs that ran TFA years ago and are no longer watched by any editor with FA experience. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:09, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
The reason I talk about removing the two week grace period is so that when someone comes across an FA that they feel significantly fails, they can nominate it. As I said, the two-week waiting period is preventing some of these obvious-fail referrals being made. Yes I will have come to a select bunch of FAs that have not been on the main page, but I reckon others aren't. I just reckon this is the biggest barrier to a more aggressive reviwe of bad FAs. The reason I am cool on a bot is that it would swamp FAR. And I am not thrilled about the idea of bypassing FAR. Actually I am not that worried about the bot - we could have 100 articles there :) Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Cas, we wouldn't be "bypassing FAR". We would create, explicitly, a FAR page for each old FA. For the majority which will pass, they will get handled just as a FAR keep. For those that clearly fail, with consensus judging no valid objection from anyone, they would get handled as a FAR demote. Anything in between gets transcluded at FAR, for regular FAR processing. Only the in-between would end up at FAR, and we could put extra coords in place to help if needed. We can also graduate the process to introduce different segments of FAs over time. I originally suggested by FA category, but that would swamp, for example MILHIST all at the same time, so we would probably do better to go by date of last review, starting with the oldest. If we feel it worthwhile to separate these "sweep" FARs from regular FARs, then we would have to add a new parameter to the articlehistory template. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I can see an obvious issue in that by FAR-ing every article, we'd be generating a vast amount of work and frustration. Even if we limited it by focusing on a single category at a time, that would still mean that (e.g.) when we came to do the coins, horses, plants then Wehwalt, Ealdgyth and Casliber would respectively suddenly have 50+ FARs appear on their watchlist. There would also be an obvious issue in that there are quite a few ultra-niche topics where the author(s) are no longer active, like Yellowmonkey's 1950s Vietnamese politicians, Awadewit's 18th-century literature or Brianboulton's 19th-century sailors, which would be at risk of being delisted through no fault of their own just because there's nobody about who's in a position to review the sources. It would probably make more sense to create an ad hoc FAR-lite process where the articles are listed for a set time (a month?) and if nobody raises any objection, it defaults to "keep".
Stating the obvious maybe, but any bulk FAR is going to be a honeypot for Mattisse, Rlevse and ILT socks, and will need robust clerking with checkusers on permanent standby if it's not to get really messy. ‑ Iridescent 15:45, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Mattisse has behaved fairly well for years; we should leave her out of it. Socks and quid pro quos at FAC and FAR have always been a problem. The single largest problem I faced during my tenure was an undeclared COI from one of our most prolific FA writers. I had to write the arbs. We can handle these issues. We avoid the Wehwalt coin example by bringing old FAs to the process by date promoted, gradually, rather than all at once. Default to keep is a given in my proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:50, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
My votes are 'retain for all three, with some kind of warning on the Germany talk page about page size. I worry that the FAs on vital topics, with an expansive scope, for which you will find an article with similar size and scope on Britannica, are slowly disappearing from Wikipedia, replaced by those on specialized topics or hobby topics. It is all well and good to say that the FAs represent the best work on Wikipedia, but my worry is: on what? Someone like me has very little interest in reviewing articles on specialized- or hobby topics, barring ones written in exceptional prose. When I look at the FAC offerings, there is very little that is not. Neither topic heft (scope and article length) nor exceptional prose matter. I will stick around this time for a little while, but eventually, if nothing changes, my interest will flag. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:34, 2 January 2020 (UTC) PS Physics and astronomy are some of few areas that seem to have retained their vital articles. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:42, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Then in this case, F&f, Germany would go to FAR because of a strong difference between voters and no consensus. In other words, Germany would end up where it should be now anyway. I can't abide by an FA that is being used an example of geography FAs that has no FA writer watchlisting and tending it, and half of its content unvetted. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:53, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
As for Bob Dylan and Elvis Pressley, I have read the leads of both, twice. I have also read the leads of four TFAs in similar categories from exactly one year ago: Bradley Cooper, Talk That Talk (Rihanna song), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and San Junipero. Let's say we demote Dylan and Elvis. A year ago, or thereabouts, we promoted the latter four. By reading only the leads, which is what most viewers read first, can someone tell me what will have been lost and what gained? I'm asking because I'm attempting to understand. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:19, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Elvis has been dead for 43 years - that is a lot of time for a legacy to develop and for there to be examinations of his effect on culture and music. None of that is in the lead and it should be. If I were reviewing it at FAC today, that would be a red flag for me straight away. For Dylan, there is non-standard (non-MoS compliant) use of quote marks and (again) little in the way of legacy. This was from a very quick look, so there may be more that comes up, but seeing those flaws in the lead would make me question the remainder of the article. (Skimming down the Dylan article, I see some major flaws. The section Bob Dylan#Tempest comprises 13 paragraphs; all except one start "On November 4, 2014", "In 2013 and 2014" or similar - a pattern that is repeated in the next section too.) - SchroCat (talk) 17:48, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

OK so something will be gained by demoting Elvis and Dylan. What do you think will have been the net loss, if any, to the state of FA articles, if we consider the latter four articles to have replaced them? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand your question. The latter four haven't "replaced" anything. They have been promoted because people have worked on them. If people work on Dylan and Presley they can be re-promoted - but if that's not what you mean, please clarify. - SchroCat (talk) 18:16, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
I'm trying to understand the aggregate change over time. Let me simplify it: if E. and D. were the only two music/media-related FAs. If we had demoted them and promoted the other four at the same time, how do you think the overall representation of music/media in Wikipedia FA articles will have changed? In other words, don't answer that my telling they were promoted because they worked hard, etc., but by reading the leads, and if needed skimming the rest of the articles. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:29, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
"how do you think the overall representation of music/media in Wikipedia FA articles will have changed?": it will have risen by two. (And I haven't said they were promoted because people "worked hard, etc": someone, or a small number of people, made a dedicated push to get the article into shape to go through the various processes) - SchroCat (talk) 19:10, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
OK. Thanks. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 22:44, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Anyone else willing to compare the leads of Bob Dylan (a candidate for demotion) with those of Bradley Cooper, Talk That Talk (Rihanna song), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games, and San Junipero—all in the media/music category, all promoted in the last year or two—anyone willing to say how they are different as samples of text @Tim riley:, @SandyGeorgia:, @Casliber:, @Iridescent:? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:06, 2 January 2020 (UTC)
Why are you focussing on the lead only? An FA is determined by the whole article, not only the brief summary at the top of the page. - SchroCat (talk) 23:24, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I have understood your answer. I'm asking the others for theirs. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:57, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

  • What, the 4-2=2 answer? You may have understood that, but you didn't answer my question of why focus only on the lead? That's the bit you have to try and explain to me - I'm obviously dense and write on shitty "hobby" subjects* in a style that displeases you, but if you could explain why the lead and not the rest of the article, I'd be grateful. - SchroCat (talk) 00:02, 3 January 2020 (UTC) (* Adding: on checking it seems that “only” a quarter of the FAs I’ve been involved in writing are vital articles. My profuse apologies to you, F&f for cluttering up the FA lists with inappropriate “hobby” topics. - SchroCat (talk) 11:46, 3 January 2020 (UTC))
Because the lead is one of the few places in any article where in theory you can find a few paragraphs of pure descriptive or narrative prose, no tables, no etymologies, no statistics, ... It is the essence, the ultimate expression of precis writing, of WP:Summary Style, in that article. It gives me a clue into how the sources themselves might be being condensed and integrated into the article. I'm trying to understand where WP:Summary Style, which is supposed to be the WP House style, stands with respect to what is going out and what is coming in. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 02:31, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for the explanation. I'm unconvinced by it, but at least I can see what angle you are looking at it now. - SchroCat (talk) 07:38, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler:, yea, how's that working out over at WP:MEDLEAD? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:12, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
It would be more accurate to call it a summary style of a summary style. ——SN54129 13:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
FWIW, I tend to agree with @Fowler&fowler:'s view of looking at leads to get a quick idea of an article. It won't always be an accurate gage but I suspect it will be mroe often than not. I also agree about the importance of a good lead. Concern about a high proportion of narrow vs broad featured articles is why I have run the Core Contest several times - to promote improvement of broad articles. However, one thing I find is that to buff an article to FA standard requires a high degree of enthusiasm..and it is very hard to make people this enthusiastic about something they are not enthusiastic about. I really don't like holding up broad and narrow articles as competing with one another as people write about what they want to write about. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:40, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Aye, people won't write on topics that they don't care about. I don't think it's realistic to expect this to change in the future. Incidentally, part of the reason why I write on narrow topics is because writing about the broader ones (->taking in all the sources needed) takes up more time than I can afford. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 20:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

As an example that the screening method I suggested above was only intended to pick out the truly bad, it won't pick up everything: to wit, I would not have expected anyone to notice this, even though I hinted at a problem in these discussions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 8 January 2020 (UTC)

We have a winner !

heading added by me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Hi everyone. I'm afraid in this long thread I got a little lost about the exact workflow that is being proposed to possibly replace/change FAR, and how deep in the hole the Bob Dylan article is thought to be. But I just want to say I'd be very happy to do some work to clean the article up. Thanks, Moisejp (talk) 07:27, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I have worked on Bob Dylan over the years, trying to maintain it at FA quality. Like Moisejp, I would be interested to learn about the concerns regarding this article and would be willing to work on it. Thanks, Mick gold (talk) 09:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

@Moisejp and Mick gold: good to see you are here! And I am resting my case on your participation here, although curious about how you noticed the discussion.

In discussions that gave examples about how to launch a new process to review older FAs, Dylan came up; I hope you don't feel singled out, as that is always a problem when samples are given. But, as both of you have been long involved at that article, and were involved in the FAR, it is encouraging to notice that, if we start pointing out older FAs that need attention, we are likely to see improvement in articles rather than mass demotions. So, thanks for showing up, because that is my main point :)

Perhaps others will engage at Talk:Bob Dylan to give some suggestions, as it was not our intent to single Dylan out for a FAR. Dylan turned up because of its size, and whenever a lot of content has been added since the last review, the question is how well that content has been vetted and conforms with prose quality, reliable sourcing, etc.

The discussion above got a bit sidetracked into focusing only on leads, possibly because that was one aspect I listed on my samples of things where we can get a quick indication of problems. It was intended to be a sample, to show some of the quickest things to look at to be able to identify the FAs most in trouble. Others might suggest other things to add to my sample, but we should keep it short and simple.

But first and foremost, by launching a process like this (with whatever screening criteria we decide to use), and giving notice months in advance on talk pages of FAs, we will re-invigorate FAC and FAR, get more people in here (hello Mick and Moisejp), and see the added benefit of article improvement. If we notice every old FA talkpage, we invigorate the FA process overall! And I don't believe we will get a huge backlog, because a number of our reviews will turn up (to use the Wehwalt coin example), "no change in article size, no problem in the lead, nominator still actively involved". Quick Retains, done in three days, only looking for the real problems. And we will have provided the possibility for articles to be cleaned up before the process with our talk page notice (which would have to be carefully worded to avoid panic).

My concern about the new TFA trend of scheduling only "perfect" TFAs months in advance is that we never drop a doozie on the mainpage; Raul did, and on no notice, and then he let the process work. We have lost our greatest recruiting tool; when people see an FA that they can improve, that sparks involvement. I joined Wikipedia in Dec 2005 as an IP, and by May 2006, got involved at FAC and FAR after discovering two dreadful FAs (Asperger syndrome and Hugo Chavez). It was the dreadful part that encouraged me to become a reviewer. Reviewers don't join FAC if they think everything is perfect and above their level of accomplishment; they join because they see something they could do better. Shining a light on bad FAs (via mainpage exposure) and getting more people involved at FAR actually builds our pool of reviewers and increases interest in the process, and gives it more credibility. Showing that we are doing something to address the older, deteriorated FAs also increases credibility. IMNSHO.

So, if there is any support for this idea, do the samples of what we would quickly look at above work? Should we launch a formal discussion of whether we should proceed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:11, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Sandy, can you sketch out in a couple of sentences a summary of what you're proposing? It sounds like (a) a lightweight FAR nomination process, plus (b) a lightweight FAR !voting process, and perhaps (c) encouraging TFA coords to let lower-quality FAs go on the main page, though that last should probably be a separate proposal, if that's indeed your suggestion. For (a) and (b), I think a specific proposal, even if only a draft, would focus discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:16, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Mike, yes the TFA thing is a whole different matter. On sketching out a proposal, I learned from the master (you :) to first let discussion run to generate more ideas. I am trying to grow up and be like Mike Christie :) Think of it more like a GA sweep. I know what I want it to look like, but I don't want to put that out until others have time to digest and put forward other ideas. And <ahem> I have my hands pretty full elsewhere just now, and am likely to retire once-and-for-all at any moment; I'd really like to see a leader emerge in this effort, that won't be me. If I am the only one who cares, there is no point in outlining a process. Since it will be a subset of FAR, I don't think Cas should be the leader (he was just elected arb and he does a lot of FAC reviewing), and I don't think Nikkimaria should be a leader (for the same reason, she is doing a ton of work at FAC), and I don't know if DrKay would take it on. We need for a leader to emerge, who feels strongly about this as I do, and is willing to see it through for about a year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:33, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I think any broad review creating a new process and thowing up potentially several hundred articles as once is highly risky, and risks driving off more editors. I really think that a first step of waiving the two week grace period at FAR is a start and ask if we could try this first for three months before judging what we need to do next. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 14:42, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

If we put up "no waiting period", we are equally likely to flood FAR. I've got scores. And you've got pretty much no FAR reviewers to look at them (I recuse from anything I promoted). Let's ask our sample @Moisejp and Mick gold: what their reaction would be to a carefully worded bot post on talk letting them know that an FA sweep would happen in, say, three months? We don't have to throw up hundreds at once; we can decide how to graduate the process by date. If we had, right now, a bot-generated list of all FAs whose last FAC or FAR review was before 2015, organized by date, we could look at how we might organize the flow. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:47, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: @Casliber: SandyG: I couldn't agree more with you about featuring adequate but not perfect articles as TFAs. I'd like to step back a little first. Much of what I will say will be well-known to you and many regulars. Like you, I joined Wikipedia in 2006. When I became aware of Featured Articles, which was a little later, I was paying attention mainly to Geography-related articles. I was vaguely aware that vital Geography-related articles were being routinely submitted to FAC and fairly routinely promoted. Peru is one example. I remember a couple on Bangladesh that Tony1 and I helped improve to adequate, but not perfect state, and their being promoted. At that time, it was not uncommon for entire WikiProjects to be working on these Geography-related FACs. Sometime after I joined, the FAC process was more or less hijacked whereby it was not enough to use tertiary sources, whether well-worn textbooks, encyclopedias or topic-area-companions (e.g. Oxford Companion to ). Instead, the FAC submissions were using sources that were not easily available to the lay contributor: journal articles, research monographs, even primary sources. Concurrently, an increasing trend began for highly focused submissions, lying somewhere in the broad spectrum between highly-specialized- and quirky/hobby ones. One reason why well-worn textbooks became useless as sources is that they made no mention of these new highly focused topics. With that, vital articles began a slow march out, betokening also a slant toward Anglo-American topics, sub-topics, and sub-sub-topics.
In other words, today, Tuberculosis, Tourette's Syndrome, Major depressive disorder, Bacteria, Apollo 11, if unwatched, will be in trouble a lot sooner than short articles on hurricanes, subspecies, coins, battleships, American city neighborhoods, ... As long as the current FA criteria are in place, I don't see anything changing. The only solution in my view is to do away with the single Featured Article Criteria—for the new submissions, that is; and instead, create two classes (a) Featured vital article and (b) Featured focused article (sorry, I can't come up with anything better at this time). The current FA criteria could be transferred verbatim to (b), but with a page-size upper limit of 5,000 words. For (a), the sourcing would require the use of only tertiary sources, i.e. well-worn undergraduate or entry-graduate level textbooks, other encyclopedias or companions on the broad topic area, rounded out by reviews or surveys of the literature in journals, and occasional necessary references to newspapers, but not to journal articles. There would be a page size requirement for a minimum of 5,000 and a maximum of 9,000. I understand that people write about what they want to write about, but people did want to write about broad topics in 2006, before they began to be intimidated by the increasingly exacting criteria. Without this change, I fear FAs will become the knowledge-equivalent of little constellations of faint stars, known only to the aficionados or specialists. )( No slight meant to Casliber to whose contributions we are all indebted.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:52, 3 January 2020 (UTC) Updated Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
@Fowler&fowler: What do you mean, the sourcing would require the use of only tertiary sources? It has been a requirement since at least 2007 that Wikipedia articles should rely on reliable, published secondary sources wherever possible, and that, conversely, Tertiary sources...generally lack adequate coverage of the topic to be considered comprehensive. Now, that's no reason not to use them (and even at the time, OED, EB, for example, were specifically mentioned as generally equal to secondary sources in most cases), but since that's what the guideline said in 2007, what were people doing at that point in time relying predominantly on tertiary sources? (I doubt they actually were, but it's an interesting claim.)
As for the increase in specialist articles being the result of narrower sourcing, journal articles et alia: [citation needed]. The reason for the shift towards more focused topics is clearly that, at some point, the low-hanging fruit had been plucked and editors who wanted to create (rather than polish) articles had to search deeper. For example, who would write an article on the Battle of Wakefield if there was no Wars of the Roses to be written? But by that token, once has been written, so the other gets written, and subsequent generations of editors are literally (reduced to, if like!) wring articles on, effectively, one—single—day of the entire topic. When the fruit hung not so low is when that change started. ——SN54129 15:56, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I think one of the strengths of WP that all articles subjects are treated equally, and that doesn't matter whether it is a broad topic like philosophy or the earth or life, or whether it is a niche area like a tree frog or a US highway or a even the biography or a minor criminal. To somehow give extra weight to one type or article over anither (particularly with only rudimentary criteria) would be to weaked WP immeasurably. (And I say that as someone who would like to see our article stock of popular culture and memes etc to be decimated). - SchroCat (talk) 09:35, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
@SchroCat: Well put. I take back the extra weight bit, and the shinier stars bit. I'm suggesting merely that for the broader topics, it should be enough to restrict to the tertiary sources (undergraduate textbooks, encyclopedias and companions, reviews or surveys in journal articles) but avoid entirely the journal articles and research monographs. In other words, not having the latter should not constitute an objection. Otherwise, it will become impossible to both write or judge such articles for most people at FAC. Witness the Big Bang article at FAR. There's not a snowball's chance in hell that anyone at FAC can reasonably review that article: it has a strange combination of quirky speculation (by Hawkings, Dalai Lama, and whatnot) and the latest journal articles in Cosmology, but not enough in between. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:25, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Hence, my continued support for the crit 4, length. Five years down the road, when original writers are gone, we need well-managed size on big topics, using summary style. The classic example during the (dreadful five) Catholic Church FACs was the counter-example of Islam, which had taken a very deliberate, aggressive summary style. But it was not a featured article, and the example we had then is gone now-- Islam turned into another sprawling mess.
Does no one have any further feedback on the idea of an FA sweep (or even a suggested name for it)? SIZE came up not as an issue of opposing FACs, rather as an indicator pointing to a large amount of new/added text not vetted in an FAC/FAR review process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I understand your points, and agree with the progression you mention. But I disagree that people don't want to write on broad topics, or that TS would be in trouble any sooner than other articles if unwatched. For example, I wrote a broad medical article last year that I won't bring to FAC because of problems in the Medicine project that forced me to write a lead that I would be embarrassed to present here. Besides the problem is those older FAs that already are unwatched. You are giving us apples and doorknobs by mixing what FAC can be going forward with what FAR needs to be right now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
:) Yes, I am addressing only the FAC going forward. The mechanics of FAR I'm not too knowledgeable about. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:05, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Notice that the lack of a star on that article I wrote has not caused it to deteriorate (beyond what was done to the lead as I was writing it) since I gave up on perfecting it to FA status. The idea that taking away the star means we will see a quality decline does not hold up, IMO. Per the Dylan Winner! example here, we are more likely to see improvements if we do ... something. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Here's the lead of bacteria when it was promoted in 2008. Look at the bloat now. With User:TimVickers gone, I doubt that the article is up to snuff. Maybe Graham Beards would have a look. We probably have a similar situation at tuberculosis (I have a memory of working on it with TimVickers, but don't quote me, could be wrong.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
My speculation is based on the greater likelihood of tinkering of a vital article. For example, India unwatched, and especially demoted, and without resort to WP:OWN#Featured_articles will go downhill in a New York minute. A sleepy, more specialized, FA, such as Political history of Mysore and Coorg (1565–1760), on the other hand, doesn't get any visitors. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:53, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Bacteria has been on my "to do" list for some time (too long). I encourage my students to use Wikipedia, and this is the main reason why I am concerned with the deterioration of some of the articles to which I refer them. Incidentally, and I am sure this is true of many of our readers, I have never had a student who knows what a Featured Article is, or that we have a FAC procedure! (Until I told them). I will work on Bacteria out of a great respect for Tim and for my students first and foremost. Graham Beards (talk) 16:06, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

To keep focus on a few articles, WP:GAR has a list of articles that possibly need reassessed at the top, which are then reassessed once there is room. It helps keep a list of articles, can provide advanced notice to those interested, but still allows for focused discussion on a few articles at a time. Kees08 (Talk) 16:19, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

That is good. I've never referred students to Wikipedia (in part because the students have been graduate students and my field of specialization is a little different from that in which I contribute on WP), and I'm not sure that a Featured Article on a vital topic such as Evolution, Bacteria, or Charles Darwin needs to be pitched at the level of a college student, let alone a graduate student. I'm thinking more of the informed lay reader, the high school senior perhaps. I agree that the FA star may have no meaning for the vast proportion of such readers. However, a reasonably well-written article on a vital topic will attract more viewers and readers. And therefore more tinkerers. That's a given. Bacteria and Evolution attract 2K viewers a day, but my sleepy little FA, which is vital only to my eyes, probably one or two every other week, I've never checked. (India gets 30K to 40K viewers a day, but the reasons have more to do than its just being a vital article.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 16:46, 3 January 2020 (UTC)
Please do not patronise me. Graham Beards (talk) 17:08, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

Hmm. It was meant in the sense of "That is good" not "That's good." At any rate, if I've caused offense, I apologize I like what Casliber has said above. I think I've said all I wanted to. Have other things to attend to, in particular Tim riley's PR. Good bye Graham Beards. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:39, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

My thinking was that the increased thoroughness of reviewing was what has led to narrower rather than broader articles predominating FA stock - it is much much easier to write the former, as balancing broad topics in articles can be challenging. I hadn't thougjt about it source-wise before Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:05, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

On a narrow-field FA, you've probably been down that narrow field before, know the sources, how to organize the article, you're basically familiar with the sources and have them at hand. A broad field one is possibly harder on each of those counts.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:30, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I've already said this, but to put it under the rubric of "broad field," if broad field FAs were restricted to sources (which I called "tertiary") such as undergraduate textbooks, Encyclopedias, and Companions, Reviews and Survey articles of the secondary literature, the occasional first-year graduate textbook, and the better-known newspapers, it would be entirely possible to writ excellent FAs. The tertiaries have been vetted for balance and even organization. However, once you allow the use of what I call "secondaries," (scholarly articles from journals and research monographs, espousing scholarly and therefore very reliable POVs by WP tenets) the article becomes very difficult, if not impossible, to write, or rewrite. For there's a scholarly article for every UNDUE assertion. The task of balancing now has to be done by you, using ... what else, tertiary sources. An endless progression-regression begins. But using only the tertiary sources whether or not you are an expert in the broad field, not only protects the article somewhat, but if the original creator retires, the article can be more easily picked up by other editors. A secondary-literature-rich FA, such as Big Bang, currently at FAR is beyond the pale of most editors. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 18:35, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't agree with any of this. Have you read WP:MEDRS? Graham Beards (talk) 22:06, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for that statement of excruciatingly good intentions. I hadn't read it. It explains why 25 of the 30 FAs in medicine were written more than ten years ago, when it was a statement of only bearably good intentions. Then, instead of "academic and professional books written by experts in the relevant fields and from respected publishers," it had merely "widely recognised standard textbooks written by experts in a field," the modest ambition I had stumbled upon above. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 23:54, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Ummm, the reason there have not been any medical FAs in the last five years was provided already in this thread, and that's all I am liberty to say in this phase of dispute resolution. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:25, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
From the perspective of the last promotion on January 15, 2015 all but five of the 30 FAs were written before this notable edit of 21 November 2010, when my modest ambition, and other modest ones that attract ordinary people, were discarded. I'm pointing out an interesting fact that supports my general thesis. The edit itself wouldn't have done it, but I'm speculating that it betokened a changing climate of opinion. (It is not a mathematical proof. I'm not that invested in this thesis.  :) ) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 01:32, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Your thesis is not completely informed; FA writers have generally left the medicine wikiproject beginning around 2015. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:50, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Very quickly: I have a hypothesis about FAs that are "broad field" (in Wehwalt's felicitous formulation). It's more of an intuition really. Anyway, since you countered with another explanation, here are some more details: on January 15, 2015 (the date Pancreatic cancer was promoted), there were 36 FAs on medical conditions/major-body-organs out of 4,448 FAs overall. Per your explanation, nothing has been promoted since 2015 for a reason that has nothing to do with my hypothesis. So, I thought, I'd examine the period between 21 November 2010 (the date of that fateful edit I have chosen as a symbolic transformational event above) to 15 January 2015 . On January 15, 2015, all but six of the 36 medicine FAs had been promoted before 21 November 2010. On that latter date, there had been 3093 FAs. This means that between 21 November 2010 and 15 January 2015, the total number of FAs increased by 1,400, i.e. by 45%, but the medicine FAs (which are mostly all broad field) by 6 (from 30 to 36) i.e. by 20%. Assume now that other subject areas were also showing the same rates of growth for broad field FAs: 20% in those five years.

It is entirely possible that another hypothesis also explains the data: e.g. a handful of very knowledgeable people were writing these FAs and for whatever reason most left after 21 November 2010. But FA writers are thrown up by the milieu. What the second hypothesis does not explain is: why the milieu was able to throw up enough FA writers for an 45% overall increase, but for only a 20% increase in the broad fields. The medicine data is too small. I should increase the sample size. But everyone in the household has gone to bed, even the animals. So, I'm not about to burn the midnight oil for this. But it is a tantalizing thought that a change in the climate of opinion about what standards should be, what sources should be—exemplified by that edit of 21 November 2010, has caused this change. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 04:56, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

There are only so many ways that I can tell you that I cannot talk about this now, per dispute resolution, but your hypothesis does not explain what has happened to all the medical FA writers. I am not sure you are advancing anything here by continuing this discussion. Yes, there is another hypothesis ... errr ... situation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:34, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
(belatedly) @Fowler&fowler: alot of tertiary sources are dated, or not very good, or both. Writing medical articles, much as like writing broad articles, I find a much much harder slog than narrow biological articles. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:01, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Amen to MUCH harder, and requiring constant updating-- never ends. None of those before 2010 medical FAs F&f notes are static, most have been to FAR, some more than once, and in many cases, are more up to date than medical textbooks. (And, as if our medical content is not bad enough, I cannot even imagine if we wrote it to tertiary sources that are dated by the time they come to print. MEDRS is the really thin line making some of our medical content not woefully dangerous.) And I can't even imagine what it would be like to write an FA, then unwatch it ... a medical FA becomes a project for life. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:01, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone have any feedback on an abbreviated review proposal for older FAs

.... given above, and lost in other discussion? Is this idea worth pursuing? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know too much about the bots and the transclusion, but I'm leaning more to greater demotion. Germany and Big Bang, upon reconsideration, should both be demoted. I'll leave you to extrapolate it to a process. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 19:26, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, F&f, but for those with short attention spans or just coming to this discussion, I don't want to leave the impression that demotion is automatic. We will give notice well in advance on article talk pages that an abbreviated review is pending, and demotion could result if FAs aren't at standard. I suspect we'll see lots of efforts to bring them to standard.
For the process to work, we need someone to lead/shepherd it.
If there is no interest, I reiterate that the bronze star no longer has any value, due to the many deficient FAs out there. Why is anyone motivated to review FACs when they are promoting something to a dubious status? FAC is re-invigorated by assuring the overall pool is worthy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Hi Sandy, sorry I didn't have a chance to answer your questions above until now. About whether a notice on the article's talk page—in this case, the Bob Dylan talk page—would be useful, for me personally I likely wouldn't see it, because I haven't been active enough on the page recently, and I don't really watchlist stuff, but maybe that's just me. Would it be possible to notify the main active users on their talk pages? I don't know if bots would be doing this work and if it'd be too complicated for bots to identify these editors. And about your other question of how I found this particular discussion, it's easy: I regularly read FAC:Talk, and I alerted Mick about this thread. Thanks, Moisejp (talk) 19:41, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Moisejp! If there is support for the proposal, and a leader emerges, we might discover if a bot can extract not only the FAC nominator names-- which wouldn't be useful in this case because of the subsequent FAR-- but also the top five here, which would pick up both Mick gold and you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:44, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Either is doable by bot, I think. I'd think though that rather than Top Five, we'd want to notify all editors who have contributed more than N percent of edits/text of an article. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 19:48, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes, Jo-Jo, that is much better. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:53, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I was thinking that I could have the FACBot select the most deficient featured articles. By the same token, in the recent sweep of unassessed MilHist articles, the MilHistBot identified several articles that it believed were FAC-worthy. But there is no way to nominate them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:00, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I'm not convinced we can identify "most deficient" by bot. But it would be grand if a bot would extract a list by date of all FAs that were promoted before (or have not had a FAR in the interim) 2015. It would be amazing if it could also pull the diff of the promoted version, the prose size (per Dr pda) of the promoted version, the date of the promoted version, the prose size of the current version, and maybe even the nominator name from the FAC, and the top editors (with more than say 20% of content added). Oh, and then a list of the maintenance categories the article is in :) I don't ask much do I? But not worth doing the work if no one comes forward to shepherd this process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:42, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
  • While I agree with the concept of an abbreviated review process to quickly examine older FAs, I'm still not sold on the idea of basing it on the lead only. Quite often the lead isn't the place where bloating or unsourced material takes place - it's lower down the article. Dylan is a case in point: the lead is more or less OK (non-MoS compliant quote marks, which some will ignore, and little in the way of legacy, which is easy to miss out), but it's lower down the page that the problems with the prose crop up (although I see clean up work is already underway there). Quite often the bloating lower down articles is unsourced (doesn't look to be a problem with Dylan, but may be with Presley), and the first thing I do whenever I see a new FAC is to skim down the article to check that, at a very minimum, each paragraph ends with a citation. Skimming down Presley shows 4 or 5 paragraphs without a closing citation, as well as the Discography/Filmography sections that have none at all.
Long story short: Lead review may be a start, but I don't think it's enough to be able to rubber stamp a 'retain' status for the 10-year + articles. - SchroCat (talk) 20:05, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I put up sample criteria; looking at the lead was only one. Expand it to include others, but keep it short and simple. The idea is, what can we look at that will give us a quick idea of whether we should look deeper. On most articles, someone will look deeper if an active involved FA nominator is not still on board. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:38, 4 January 2020 (UTC)
I support a faster-moving review process for old FAs, and this might be an area where I feel better able to pitch in than with FAC. A. Parrot (talk) 01:21, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Is it possible to get a bot-generated report of FAs with maintenance tags? Not that the old FA report isn't helpful but this report would highlight the worst problems. --Rschen7754 01:48, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

There is one linked somewhere at the long discussion higher up on the page, but it's not very useful, because many of the tags are for minor things. Good luck finding it up there! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:51, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Found it! [1] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:52, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Maybe we could devise some criteria leading immediately to review or demotion, along the lines of what would completely sink a new FAC for such articles? Some issues on that list are definitely greater than others (e.g. CS1 errors can be fixed with minimal work or even by bot), and concerns about referencing and prose without corresponding tags are not included. Those require human eyes, but how? ComplexRational (talk) 02:10, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
I outlined a whole process in the Samples section above. It has been done before, for 500+ articles, but this time, we would have double or quadruple that ... because we have let this go for too many years. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:14, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Regardless of the merits of cleaning the pool of FAs, I can't say that I'm that excited about this proposal. From the perspective of someone who has renovated several articles at FAR in the past, I find myself of two minds. On one hand, I'd feel obligated to clean up some of the articles, or all of the work I did for all these years to push FAs to higher standards (through both reviews of candidates and article edits) will have basically been for nothing in the end if the promoted ones wind up B-class anyway. On the other hand, I would feel used to a certain degree, as I'd be called upon to do a bunch of work that I frankly have neither the free time nor the required sourcing for, under the impression that there are a bunch of us ready and waiting for this task. Such a base might have existed 10 years ago, but not now. If the lesser FAs are as bad as the claims above (can't say that I track all of the FAs that closely), the thought that the current editor base can save most of them from delisting is off-base. According to this, from 2017 to 2019 the delist rate was 75% (54 of 72). My hunch is that an FA sweeps program would have similar results and not do that much to stimulate interest from those whose FAs aren't on the chopping block. For me, I would probably end up working on a few FAs that I really care about and let the rest go, as sad as that sounds. That's all I have the ability to do, and I suspect most will act similarly. Also, I have to say that this sounds like process for process' sake. If there's an article or group of articles that fail the FA criteria, nothing is stopping interested editors from getting the FAR process started right now, which doesn't require any sweeps. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:45, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • As someone who put in his fair share of time at FAR, your opinions are well considered, and yes, it would be a shame to lose your FAR saves or have to go fix them yourself.
    On the other hand, I don't believe the 2017 to 2019 delist rate is representative. FAR has been underutilized for about (?) five years now, and I'm not sure we're seeing a representative sample of articles appearing there. More interesting is the period when FAR was very actively reviewing WP:URFA, and we had about a 50% save rate. In the current case, we won't know even how many FAs are abandoned (FA writer no longer watching them) until we see data. And we would certainly end up processing a lot of them, whose writers are still actively watching, as Speedy Keeps.
    Re, process for process sake, at minimum, we need some way to identify those FAs that people might bring to FAR, as we did when we generated WP:URFA (Unreviewed featured articles) back in 2006 (or 7?).
    As I've said several times, if the FA community doesn't care that the star has lost value, I have little interest in FAC reviewing, because we are working to promote articles to a meaningless class, devalued by the older, unwatched FAs. To motivate people to review at FAC, there has to be value beyond one day on the main page. That value should be a star that is worthy on every article of representing our best work. And I continue to believe we need a recruiting tool to re-invigorate FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:52, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I have been writing a longer comment for this page which I likely won't post. I will instead post this excerpt from it, in an attempt to be brief(er!). It bears on this "quick review" topic, so I'll place it here, but is not limited to it. I am likely a minority view and expect to be treated as one. (Thus, as always, I lean toward shutting up and disappearing, which I likely will after posting this.)

Here's the TL;DR: I don't try to maintain FAs because I don't understand what this place wants (and sometimes, to be honest, I find myself groaning at what I perceive it wants).

Three articles were given above for the quick-FAR idea. I would vote to Keep them all (based on what we all admit is a cursory review for the purpose of this discussion). Once again I'm at odds—this time with a former coordinator, and my wikifriend, SandyGeorgia—argh! Obviously I'm out of sync, horribly so! And it's really hard to understand where I've gone wrong. I think that the Germany candidate needs a small amount of tightening (four hours' work?), esp. in "Culture". I'd expect it to be a long article, with a five- or six-paragraph lead. Returning to the purely factual plane, for the life of me I can't see maintenance tags on Germany, as is claimed above (Maintenance tags: Considerable)—except for the hidden categories about potentially dated statements. (It hasn't been edited since we started; rev).

Featured Article Reviews often appear arbitrary in their selection and in their criticism, and almost always feel like faits accomplis. (By which I mean, "it's here; demote it".) I can't imagine what FAC and FAR look like to someone without 13 years of experience. To give a fresh example, an article with 400 footnotes has been nominated for FAR because it "lacks inline citations". Is my perception faulty? What is even happening? What can a reasonable person say—a person who thinks they might be a good FAC/FAR participant—when these sorts of claims about FA(R/C)s are made—claims which I think in various guises are fairly common? If they are not meant to function as only rhetoric, I must say that they do function as rhetoric to me, and it leaves a bad taste in my mouth about these processes. I start to think that the FAC criteria are not real in any useful way, but only "understood by a community". In a deeper sense, this is obviously true, but I'm referring to the parts that aren't spelled out—the rituals that are understood by a few dozen people, perhaps. I argue that FAC has slipped into ritual, into "always be skeptical of the article", into seeing what it wants to see, almost.

Above I've shown two claims made about current Featured Articles, and why they ought to be removed, that I'm going to say are not opinions, or analyses, but are just false. The point is that I've had this same sensation, of being at odds with FAC and FAR claims about articles, many other times. And so I stay away. And I have this conundrum where I would go ahead and dedicate four hours to Germany, or whatever other FA, in a way that I thought would help it maintain its FA status. But see above: I don't do so because I truly don't think I understand what y'all want, why y'all are here, if Hubbard [the FAR] doesn't have "enough citations" and Germany ought to be removed.

I really hope nothing in this message comes across as personal because I appreciate you all as Wikipedians. I typed this up not knowing if I'd ever submit it. It has no purpose, other than to represent a point of view that other people, who do not speak on this subject, might also hold. (FAC-Talk is, in truth, limited to a few dozen people most of the time, at best.) If I'm alone, erase all of this. Not even joking. Outriggr (talk) 07:29, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, I wouldn't "Keep" Germany after working with it. The largest concern is the lack of a coherent sourcing strategy, even in the "history" section (Fowler&Fowler's "broad sources" approach is what's needed here), and the sheer amount of the article that refers to ~2011. Some items can age without a problem (e.g. "land use" data from 2008), but, this type of article can't be an FA without updates every few years, in truth. You win this one, @SandyGeorgia:!! Outriggr (talk) 05:52, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
@Outriggr: just don't take on the Irish, wee laddie! The problem with Germany is the classic lack of an FA watcher. A solid indicator of articles that deteriorate. If we noticed talk pages, and no one cleaned it up before the "sweep", this is an example where I would strongly vote for speedy demotion-- rather than sending it to FAR-- because the community has already cleaned it up once. Without an FA writer watching them, articles deteriorate. Even after all the work that went into its last FAR, no one kept even the basics up to date there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:28, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
No no, it's a valid post. I often muse on this when different issues get highlighted in a series of articles I've posted at FAC. And can see the rationale for the POV too. I am too tired to muse futher on it as it is late here in Oz and I need to sleep, but don't erase it. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 13:03, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
That's been my experience as well. I think it's in part because many of the FA criteria are subjective; for example, different people will consider different styles of text as "well-written: its prose is engaging and of a professional standard;" and what for one person is "major facts or details " might be "unnecessary detail" for another. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 13:12, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Oh, Riggr dear, thanks for the post and don't you dare disappear on us! In the vein of refining the idea, your post is very helpful. In the vein of contemplating how both FAC and FAR work, your post is also very helpful. I know you think outside the box, and expect no less of you :) :)
The maintenance tags are picked up from the maintenance categories (as a bot would do). Yes, they are mostly "as of" dates. But "as of" dates are highly significant in place articles like Germany, and some of those statements are dated to 2008 (recalling from memory of many days ago when I looked). That gives us an indication that we need to look deeper. It also gives anyone working on the article a quick idea of things to work on.

The other thing is that, shortly after we bot notify every old FA talk page, and explain our criteria, those issues are likely to be cleaned up prontisssssimo. So that by the time that article appeared in the <whatever we are calling the review process>, it would likely no longer be the Remove vote that I indicated above. If it appeared as it does right now, no improvement, I would vote to Remove. If it is cleaned up, win-win. Please take my examples as examples.

(I looked at L. Ron Hubbard and those citation needed tags look valid; if there's no problem, they should be quickly cleaned up, but with such a controversial figure, one would expect citation.)
Even with several expeditions off topic in sections above (eg MEDRS), the idea is to flesh this out before formulating a proposal (the Mike Christie effect); your musing helps flesh this out.
Now, my musing goes a different way. I like reviewing FACs (well, we know that from history :) :) But, we are all volunteers, and can all be doing different things. I am not seeing the value in spending my time helping articles get a star that will be meaningless in five years. I've been at FAC and FAR since 2006; on some of these articles that have no main FA writer watching them, we will be on our third FAR in my lifetime. Articles that we clean up, but there is no one to keep in shape. Is that a good use of our time? I sometimes wonder if 50% of my total edit count is not from when Gimmetrow, Maralia and I manually added articlehistory templates to Every Single FA on the project, and from adding and cleaning up citations at FAR !!!!
And, how can we re-invigorate FAC and FAR? By finding a way to clean up the older messes. How can we attract and retain reviewers? By giving meaning to their work. Why would I keep reviewing FACs if I come back in five years and find scores of articles we all worked on at FAR deteriorated once again? I do wish people would continue to think outside the box of ways to do that: mine is but one, quickly formed proposal, and clearly, if no one comes forward to shepherd the process, or if reviewers don't want it, it won't happen. (A. Parrot ???) But please don't take my examples as the only way to proceed. Best to you, my friend, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
@Outriggr: I couldn't agree more with you. I had originally voted to keep all three, just as you have, for pretty much the reasons you advance. I then changed my vote because I happened upon the Big Bang FAR, a hyper-secondary-source-infested article, which no mortal other than some advanced graduate students in cosmology and their advisors will be able to decipher. In fact, the FAR nominator has emailed the author of a textbook "Space time and geometry" to vet the article! I mean is this what WP FAC has arrived at? Make a set of excruciatingly good intentions, which form the rules known in its nitty-gritty only to a small Pythagorean cult, the sages of last resort, who reply in oracular haikus, every now and then. Make them outlandishly stringent by making the model example, Medicine, whose FAs constitute 0.67% of the total, and arguing that our FAs have to reflect the latest information hyper-real-time, otherwise, Lord knows, a dying patient will go to the podiatry instead of oncology. Make your last stand there. On the other hand, a statement of bearably good intentions, which says, it should be possible to write FAs on broad field topics using "undergraduate textbooks, Encyclopedias and Companions (in the broad fields), Reviews and Survey articles of the secondary literature, the occasional first-year graduate textbook, and the better-known newspaper and largely eschewing the latest journal articles and research monographs," which applies reasonably to broad field articles Geography (and Germany), History, Art, Architecture, Literature, Mathematics, ... has no hope of consideration. Meanwhile, while the focus is on FARs etc, articles two to the penny are appearing at FAC on battleships, back to back, one Italian, the other French, one using "she," the other "it," both 1,500 words long. We all have dozens of such pages written for fun that we wouldn't dream of importuning FAC with. Thus, while the Professor at Caltech, who has been emailed for a final judgment on Big Bang, is considering drafting a reply, actually drafting it, or ignoring said email, battleships galore are passing in the night unwatched except by a small coterie. Go figure. I have advanced degrees. I have taught graduate students, undergraduates, mentored high school summer students interns, and what else have you. If I don't understand this, who will? Whom is this FA enterprise for? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 14:44, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
So, I guess you are saying that if we don't even know what FAC is, we sure can't FAR. (I believe we use different kinds of sources for different kinds of topics, and we don't want to discourage those who write on less-broad topics.)
Should I give up yet? (If "once an FA, always an FA, no further review" is our end result, why review FACs?)
F&f, do you agree that there is a shortage of reviewers? Do you agree that what we should be discussing is a way to generate proposals to renew these processes? Or do you just want to eliminate the FA process as invalid? If that's where you're headed, WP:FAS seems to agree; I am hoping we will find ways to change that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:06, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Of course not. I certainly don't want you of all people (the mainstay and I mean it sincerely) to give up. I guess I'm a little frustrated. I don't know all the rules, and I have not read many of the links. I'm saying that the FAC criteria have the effect of discouraging broad field submissions. The broad field articles that remain await judgments at FAR that are in turn influenced by the FAC criteria, (even though I'm sure technically FAC and FAR criteria are ostensibly different): a likely fail for Germany and a pass for Big Bang. I agree that we need more reviewers. But I think the lack of reviewers is tied to the impression out there that broad field topics, that an average Wikipedian is more likely to contribute to, topics for which there are entire WikiProjects, are out of bounds at FAC. You are right, a proposal is needed. I don't have that kind of time though, and as is painfully obvious, I don't know all the fine details of the rules. I certainly don't want FAs to go. I just want them to be less lopsided, to cut the broad field articles some slack. I will certainly be reviewing at FAC, in as NPOV fashion as I can muster, but you have to understand that I get progressively frustrated, and eventually irritated, when submission after submission seems caters to the conceits of a few. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:20, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Both FAC and FAR review according to WP:WIAFA. Is it your suggestion that we can't fix the older, deteriorated FAs, until we fix something that you perceive as ailing at WIAFA?
Then, are you saying that we leave the older, deteriorated and unwatched FAs out there regardless? Or do you see a way to allow for a discussion of what to do about the older unwatched FAs independently of the matter of WIAFA? We have hundreds to potentially thousands of unwatched-by-FA-writer FAs. What do you suggest? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Let me mull this over. Thanks for the clarity. I have to run now, but let me throw this out for discussion. There are a limited number of reviewers. The more time they spend on current FACs the less they will have for the old FAs you describe. How about putting a freeze on FAC submissions and decisions for a month (say, or whatever time is appropriate), and let the reviewers focus on the old FAs and review them in an accelerated or abbreviated method to be decided by you? That will be much more satisfying for me. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:43, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Looking around for the strongest possible oppose button :) No, we do not devalue the work of current FA writers in favor of FA writers who have left the project. And if we decide to do some sort of review, it will be a slow marathon, graduated, rather than a sprint. And if we decide to do this, I believe many more reviewers will engage. How would you expect an editor like Hawkeye7, waiting to submit FACs on work already done, to feel if FAC is stopped so we could go review articles for departed editors? Would that motivate you to help? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:54, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
(With reference to Fowler&fowler's argument) Do we have any data on why people don't review FACses? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 15:24, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
@Jo-Jo Eumerus:, since no one else has opined, I'll offer my six cents.
First, we have me as an N=1 example. I am motivated to review because the overall pool reflects excellence. If the overall pool is crap, I don't feel motivated to review. Unless we respect the overall value of an FA, then I believe I am only supporting individual editors in achieving mainpage recognition. I am interested in what happens beyond mainpage day. I do not know if I am representative of a typical FAC/FAR participant, but I loved the work at FAR more than FAC, because it was selfless. It was good editors coming together to preserve the work of a departed editor. Think Brianboulton ten years from now.
Second, I believe that the length of current FACs is extremely offputting, and they should be shut down sooner, particularly if they appear ill-prepared. But the coords can't shut them down sooner unless reviewers are pointing out the ill-prepared. Who wants to engage a FAC review that is longer than the article ??
Third, I believe we did not know how good we had it in the day when we had highly specialized reviewers covering different aspects of review (images, sources, prose, etc). It looks to me like now we've got Nikkimaria trying to do a whole lot of everything. And I believe reviewers are afraid to take on the technical aspects. We have been pinging for days trying to get a topic-expert source reviwer to User:ComplexRational's Island of stability FAC, to no avail. I fear that part of the problem is that the entire FA process has lost prestige, and people who would once be glad to show will no longer. Hence, my concern about the overall pool. We need to rebuild the prestige of the bronze star, and focus on ways to "train up" new and better reviewers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
  • "articles two to the penny are appearing at FAC on battleships". What is the problem with that, exactly? (Amd I speak as someone who hasn't written any articles about battleships, or any other ship of war). - SchroCat (talk) 15:39, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
To both: I have a hunch that awaits verification or refutation, but it is the spirit, not the letter that should be considered. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 15:58, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
? That certainly goes nowhere near answering my question, and I'm not sure it covers Jo-Jo Eumerus's either... - SchroCat (talk) 16:08, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
I really don't see any good outcome to going down the old road visited by TCO, when they criticized what they called "cookie cutter FAs" that follow a set pattern and, according to him, were easy to write (dubious). @Ealdgyth: for another opinion, but we have visited that topic ad nauseum, and the conclusion is always that we support and value all kinds of work; ships, video games, etc. If we want to encourage broader topics, that can be done separately from discouraging narrow topics. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
Please recall that I was not originally discouraging narrow topics, only encouraging broad ones (in my post to you and Casliber. But that got buried under an avalanche of exacting red herrings. The ad nauseam discussion probably reflects the ad nauseam reality that broad field FAs are a critically endangered species. Everyone quotes this rule or that. But there is no willingness to address the looming extinction. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 17:11, 5 January 2020 (UTC)
I don't think that the FAC rules discourage broad-scope FAs, their very nature does. Mastering the sources for a narrow-scope FA isn't too hard, or involve too much time, but broad-scope articles could magnify that burden by an order of magnitude or more. Having taken a few art and music history classes over the years, my mind boggles over the commitment in time it would take to bring something like History of Western Art to FA-level quality. Just the sheer amount of reading involved, much less mastering all of the academic debates and then deciding which ones are important to cover in the main body vs footnotes vs ignore as too technical, etc. A collaboration might work, but much depends on how the collaborators divide up the responsibilities.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:23, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I'm kinda with Riggr on this: I haven't a clue what's expected. During the early to mid-2010s I took a fair number of articles through FAC; a handful are vital articles; some need more clean up than others. I've spent the past few nights trying to locate sources (back in the day I'd go to the library and bring home books, but the local library emptied 90% of deadwood sources from the stacks a few years ago), which in itself is time-consuming and potentially expensive. So, no, I'm not personally excited about looking at all older FAs, but understand the need for it.

But what are we looking for beyond the obvious? Like Riggr, I'd keep the three examples mentioned above, for lots of reasons that are maybe not germane here. Being a little self-indulgent but to go way back to very original issue, what exactly do the TFA coords want to see for the main page, what's the GOCE role (apparently being discussed/hashed out off-wiki), and what are we supposed to "fix" when sprucing up old FAs?

The answers to these questions are important, because "we" (and that in itself is very big can of worms because there aren't enough of us), need to know what needs fixing. Before I begin plowing through the 3000+ pages of reading that's required to keep as FA one of the articles I've meant to clean up for a long time, am I looking for more modern sourcing? (I would say yes). MoS issues, i.e whether or not ellipses in quotations use brackets? Template issues, i.e inboxes & cite templates, circa templates & so on (!!!)?

The nominators, reviewers & coords involved with the Beaune Altarpiece in 2014 achieved consensus to promote, yet by the end of 2019 the goalposts had moved.

So we need to know what our criteria are across the board, impose them across the board, and somehow find enough people to review.

All of that is difficult these days. I have no solutions, but wanted to tip my hat at Riggr and ended up saying too much, again. P.s feel free to move this post if it landed in the wrong section. Victoria (tk) 16:59, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

I hope we would explicitly define the criteria to exclude the kind of GOCE nitpicking that occurred at Beaune Altarpiece; again, we are not looking to review FAs that still have an active nominator watching them. I am proposing a way to identify the truly deteriorated FAs, where typically no FA writer is involved, and once identified, either a) quickly demote them, or b) send them to FAR if there is consensus they can be repaired in a slower-paced process. We would, I hope, have Coords empowered to explicitly disregard MOS nitpicking and maybe even prose nitpicking such as occurred at the alterpiece. The intent is not to do a new FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:05, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

My answer to the question Sandy poses is that Cas's proposal -- make it quicker to go to FAR by eliminating the waiting period -- is probably the right first step. It doesn't introduce a new process or roles, and it's actually a simplification of an existing process.

However, I don't think it will fix the problem Sandy is pointing to. I'd like to see all FAs kept at a high quality level, or demoted if they can be shown to no longer meet standards, but I believe this is absolutely impossible for resource reasons, and things are going to get worse, not better. Imagine that we have half a million FAs. We will have no (or, to be optimistic, a few) additional editors capable of assessing/writing/fixing those FAs. Those FAs will all decay over time, and the efforts of everyone who is reading this discussion will be only a tiny fraction of what would be needed to keep them at FA standard. We're at that point now, with only a few thousand FAs. Every edit to an article either improves or degrades that article, and the combined efforts of all well-intentioned editors currently lead to an overall improvement in the quality of the encyclopaedia, because there is still so much to do. But to quote my favourite economics aphorism, if something can't go on forever, it won't. There's a point at which Wikipedia will, on average, no longer be improving. We all work on what we care about; Sandy cares about the quality of past FAs, and so do many others, but it's not a fully solvable problem even now. Making FAR easier will help, but the effort needed to clean or fix old FAs is not available and is not going to be available. I'd have more faith in an approach that takes that into account, rather than just tweaking FAR, which is already under-resourced.

I don't mean this to sound pessimistic. On the contrary, I love Wikipedia and think it represents one of the finest collaborative achievements of the human race, and will get better and better for decades to come. But we don't have infinite resources, and shouldn't worry too much if some particular task can't be taken on with the limited tools we have. We should figure out what we can do with those limited tools. If Sandy's exhortations lead to a temporary improvement in the quality of old FAs, that's a good thing, of course, but it's not a long term answer, because nothing is. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:46, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

Alt descriptions on images

Setting aside controversy over whether we need these as part of WIAFA, who is good at alt descriptions these days? I used to rely on Eubulides, who is now gone. SUM1 changed the image at TS, and I struggle to add alt descriptions.[2] Can anyone improve? All of the other images there have alt decriptions, mostly written by Eubulides, so I don't want to leave one image without. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:48, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

I think RexxS is probably the best bet. And just for the record, this was the last discussion around requiring them - April last year.- SchroCat (talk) 17:59, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Schro ... I think since TS had them on all the rest, I might as well fill it in on the new image. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:06, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
If you need some help on alt texts, give me a ring SandyGeorgia - I'd be willing to write some. Shearonink (talk) 19:16, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
THanks Shearonink; I am in the midst of a major update/citation conversion, but will let you know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:21, 12 January 2020 (UTC)
@Sandy and SchroCat: I've left a couple of suggestions at Talk:Tourette syndrome #Alt text. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 01:08, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Eubulides gave up in disgust (understandably) after a big disagreement when a visually-impaired person said (very possibly correctly) that the style of alt descriptions he had put so much effort into promoting was all wrong, and not helpful to VI people. I think that left the community unclear what should go in these. RexxS, do you have a link to that? Johnbod (talk) 01:48, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Actually, it may be in Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Accessibility/Alternative text for images/Archive 4, which I think contains Eubulides' final edits (this is back in 2010). Start near the bottom. Johnbod (talk) 02:02, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Hate to be reminded of the loss of Eubulides :( Thanks, RexxS and Shearonink! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:06, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
PS, Johnbod, I think/suspect there were other reasons Eubulides left. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Well, no doubt, but it coincided pretty exactly with that, as does the decline in use of alt descriptions. Johnbod (talk) 16:28, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
I also think that Eubulides had more than one reason to leave, but the big disagreement must have played a major part. I too miss him. The fact that alt text had become compulsory for Featured Articles probably led to an increase in their use across the board, and the relaxing of that requirement probably contributed to their subsequent decline. Nevertheless, I take the view that although adding good alt text to an image improves the article, FAs don't have to be perfect. I'd always strongly encourage editors to add alt text if they are comfortable doing so – and alt text is required by the MoS (cf. FAC#2) – but compulsion doesn't seem to be the way to get the best results in this case (as in so many others). --RexxS (talk) 17:22, 13 January 2020 (UTC)
Rexx and I might not always agree but in this case I don't think I can put it any better. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:09, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
No doubt. I stopped following the question after 2010, largely because I was no longer sure what alt text was supposed to be like. Are we sure than the current advice/examples in fact represent best practice? Johnbod (talk) 02:48, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Judging from the discussion you linked above, and by the results of conversations I've had there, I have very little confidence that the advice and examples should be considered best practice. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
To really get this right, we would need a small working group of vision-impaired users to develop the advice and examples. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 04:27, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
I have deep experience with accessibility and I'm here to tell you that the alt text composed by most of our editors is outrageously poor. This is a good start, and if everyone read the content of even the first link in the list, we'd be a lot better off. --Laser brain (talk) 04:42, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Several pointy-bearded men from somewhat olden times (I'm going to stick my neck out and say before photos were invented) look into an arch from the right (viewer's right that is, but also their right) at a woman looking at another bearded man (different beard style and closed eyes) from the left while another woman's head floats behind gasping and a man that looks like Mark Twain peers towards the viewer near a swooning woman while another man with a moustache and a knife falls out of the archway by some trees. Near the gasping woman are some small binocular-type things and a note saying HIP DOG or something like that. Also there are curtains. The scene is in America though it doesn't specifically say so; definitely on Earth though.
An animal that is kind of like a Cornish Pasty or a World War II helmet made out of tiles with legs and a head. The head isn't like a human head though - there's no hair. In fact, forget human heads completely because the head pokes out of the front instead of being on top in the normal human head location. The front legs wouldn't look out of place on Thing (Ben Grimm) from the Fantastic Four, the back ones are more like mini elephant legs. It's all beigy/sandy/browny, but looks dusty and it could be a completely different colour after you'd jet washed it. Actually the best comparison would be a sea turtle with legs instead of flippers and not in the sea. Oh wait, you know Koopa from Super Mario? Imagine if that was based on a real animal instead of made up and didn't wear shoes - that's totally what it looks like. And it is striding over some green grass looking annoyed. It's not a video though, so I'm only guessing at the striding. // It's entirely possible that rigor mortis has set in, which is to say that the animal has left the earthly realm, although I understand that this species lies (lays?) on its shell when it has died, as if to say, "by Akupara, I tried".
A red bulbous floating thing. No idea what purpose it could possibly serve except as a prop to the weak and unbalanced. Most likely superfluous to requirements. Looks like it would fall over if not supported.
I'm sure I can sort something out for you; just ask Yomanganitalk 13:46, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Yomangani, I really wish you would figure out how to enjoy life a bit more. Cornish pastry ??? It was nice of you to bury a shout out to "Sandy" in your alt text, though. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:52, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
BeigyGeorgia just doesn't have the same ring to it. I appreciate my shout out also, and am willing to edit war over it. Outriggr (talk) 10:18, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Island of stability

Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Island of stability/archive1 is stuck at the bottom of the list; what does it still need? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:56, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

As there was a new reviewer making comments a couple of days ago, I suspect that has just nudged it back a little. (I may be wrong of course, but I think the practice is to let reviewers make their comments without being cut off mid-flow). - SchroCat (talk) 14:03, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Yes. --Laser brain (talk) 14:12, 15 January 2020 (UTC)
Ah, thanks; I missed that! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:14, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Largest CCI ever

Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dr. Blofeld

AN thread

Featured articles:

  1. Rod Steiger
  2. Carl Nielsen
  3. Irataba
  4. Shah Rukh Khan
  5. Florence Nagle
  6. Castell Coch
  7. The Tower House
  8. Bramshill House
  9. Philip Seymour Hoffman
  10. Keswick, Cumbria
  11. Enid Blyton
  12. Mughal-e-Azam
  13. Deepika Padukone
  14. Priyanka Chopra
  15. Mother India
  16. John Le Mesurier
  17. Abuwtiyuw

@FAR coordinators: @TFA coordinators SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:21, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Incidentally, if my understanding of this incident is correct, the concern is really only about their early contributions. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:35, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
That's my understanding too (this refers to "he was discovered to have copied content in his early editing days, in what was likely a common misunderstanding of copyright law"). Many of these articles were also co-written with others (not that that necessarily stops a small amount being copied in, but it does make it less likely. Keswick was with Tim Riley, Blyton was with Eric, Le Mesurier was with me and Cass, Hoffman with Loeba, for example). I've checked Le Mesurier, and the only thing it flagged as a violation turned out to be a copyright violation by Apple, who have copied a chunk of the lead without indicating the source. - SchroCat (talk) 08:32, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Abuwtiyuw will be OK too, as it wasn't started by Blofeld and I remember berating him about many of his additions being too far away from the sources. Yomanganitalk 08:45, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
Look how many pages need to be cleared at the CCI: Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dr. Blofeld CCI cleanup#Subpages. Can FAC participants help clear any of them? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
I'm not quite understanding whether the FAC participants are supposed to be doing anything? I worked with Dr B. on two of those in the above list, Castell Coch, in a three-way collaboration with Hchc2009, and The Tower House, with multiple collaborators. The former is showing up on Earwig as 12.3%, Violation Unlikely, and the only match is a, lengthy, book title. The Tower House has a higher reading, 32.4%, Violation Unlikely, but again the majority of matches are titles, e.g., the Holland Estate, Ashby Brothers of Kingsland Road, Burke and Company of Regent Street etc. The majority of the other matches look like standard wording, although there's possibly a close paraphrase or two in the descriptive sections. I'd appreciate any advice on any steps I should be taking. KJP1 (talk) 16:09, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

OK, I think I've figured out how FAC can help. But someone should check me on this.

The problem is not that specific articles need to be checked, but that specific edits need to be cleared. All of the edits are listed in subpages that all have the same prefix, e.g.; we find an edit for FA Shah Rukh Khan in Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Dr. Blofeld 44, the 44th subpage. Instructions about how to check and clear each edit are here.

So, next, how do we find the edits on those FAs?

Go to each FA, click on "What links here", click on the dropdown to restrict to Wikipedia space, click to see up to 500, search the page for Wikipedia:Contributor ... and you find which subpage contains edits for that FA. Then you check the edit, and clear or mark it per the instructions. So, people who worked on articles with Blofeld may have the sources, and may be in better position to clear certain edits, if they just find them by using What links here and searching on Wikipedia:Contributor ... So, the first edit I located, using that method, could be investigated, as an example. If it clears, you mark it as such. If it can't be cleared, you mark it as a problem that the CCI people then have to scrub. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:09, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

Given any infringements are from his earlier years (given what Money Emoji has said), and given that several of these have been cleared already, is there any indication that there has been any infringement during his "FA years"? - SchroCat (talk) 22:52, 16 January 2020 (UTC)
The first one I happened to check (above) was an edit to an FA, in 2009. The addition was uncited, so can't be compared to a source to see if it was copyvio. Since the first FA I checked did show an edit to an FA, I suggest we could at least check the rest. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:15, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Brian Boulton has passed away

I received an email notice from his daughter. I assume others have as well. He was definitely one of the nice guys. I remember Ceoil once referred to him as an angel. ♦ Lingzhi2 (talk) 22:02, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

I winced when I read this. A colleague in every sense of the word. - Dank (push to talk) 22:06, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
This is a gut punch; I so dearly loved our Brainy Brian. May he rest in eternal peace and his family know how much he was loved and appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:10, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
I owe him a great deal. And much like Browning's Grammarian, he kept at it to the end. A deeply felt loss.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:24, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
I greatly appreciated his kindness and courtesy.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 22:32, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
He touched all of our lives and his articles touch the lives of so many. Still, this is devastating news. Condolences to his family and so many belated thanks to Brian for the help he offered me and apologies for the many times I was grouchy and cranky, peace be with you. Thanks Ling for posting this. Victoria (tk) 22:49, 10 December 2019 (UTC)
Oy. This is sad news. And to think that this was only a month ago... Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 00:03, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Devastating. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:52, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Wow, Brian is one of the many people around here whom I have never actually met, but has helped me become a better writer, and frankly a better person. He will be missed.Dave (talk) 02:35, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Definitely a fixture here, and definitely a great positive. He will be missed, condolences to his family and friends. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 03:39, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm deeply grateful to have worked with Brian at FAC and peer review and elsewhere. He was incredibly erudite, incredibly productive, incredibly steady: a great editor. Finetooth (talk) 03:54, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
This is very sad news. His contributions here were enormous. I really appreciated his help. Moisejp (talk) 04:16, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I am so sad. Brian was so giving of his time and talent - it was such a pleasure to have worked with him. Ruhrfisch ><>°° 04:25, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Brian for all the source reviews you conducted to keep the FAC process moving. Unfortunately, those were my sole interactions with BB. Mr rnddude (talk) 05:16, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Brian was unstinting in his help to other editors, a great guy Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:15, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm sorry to hear this. I didn't know him well, but he was extremely conscientious and helpful in any review of his that I saw. Vanamonde (Talk) 07:13, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

I was shocked when I learned of it, and left a message on his talk page. Should we perhaps move the above to there, where his relatives will be more likely to look? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 08:40, 11 December 2019 (UTC)

Very sad, FAC will not be the same. FunkMonk (talk) 08:58, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
Very sorry to hear this. Brian was a thorough and knowledgeable editor who helped me out at FAC on more than one occasion. Kosack (talk) 10:59, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
I am very sorry to hear about this. It is a very sad loss. Dudley Miles (talk) 11:28, 11 December 2019 (UTC)
There ought to be a fitting epitaph borrowed from some Antarctic explorer but (to quote Brian instead), most of them are "Zzzzzzz" when not exploring. Yomanganitalk

Dear colleagues; please know that Brian’s family have posted a message of appreciation at his user talk page, yesterday at 13:03, also informing us of the creation of a new account: Brianboulton's Family. With kind regards;
Patrick. Pdebee.(talk)(become old-fashioned!) 13:53, 13 December 2019 (UTC)

All of us who interacted with him can testify that he had a positive impact on this community and wikipedia at large. His legacy lives on here.Iry-Hor (talk) 21:10, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
This is just heartbreaking. There are very few editors (if any) who have done more for the FAC process, or Wikipedia in general, than Brian. I'd go even farther than FunkMonk and say the site won't be the same without him. Giants2008 (Talk) 22:38, 13 December 2019 (UTC)
I'm sad to hear this - I didn't work closely with Brian, but he reviewed a number of my articles at FAC over the years and he was always pleasant to work with. Parsecboy (talk) 17:18, 17 December 2019 (UTC)
  • Sadness has conquered my heart after I got this news. I hope he had a happy life and it's sad to hear another great editor has to go away from us. I've never known him or worked with him but I hope his soul will rest in peace amen. Cheers. CPA-5 (talk) 12:03, 23 December 2019 (UTC)
Holy crap! How did I miss this?! Terribly sad about this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 10:26, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Like Casliber, I missed this last month as well (I left my condolences on Brian's user talk page). A couple of suggestions: (1) the tributes and condolences being expressed here (at WT:FAC) will at some point disappear into the archives. Maybe at that point (or before?) they should be copied over to Brian's talk page where others have also left condolences (I am not sure if the family will necessarily find their way here even though there are links from there to here and pings made here). (2) While reading condolences left at another recently deceased Wikipedian's talk page (see here) I was reminded that sometimes the Wikipedia community create more lasting memorials (e.g. naming an award or process after someone - see 'The McLellan Quaich' at the aforementioned talk page). I suspect the best tribute to Brian would be to ensure that FAC and other reviewing areas remain healthy (see discussions further down the page) and to do some reviews! But am making the suggestion here in case there is any desire to do something along those lines (there is also a memorial userbox mentioned on Brian's talk page that some people have started using). (3) Could someone put something fitting at Wikipedia:Deceased Wikipedians/2019 (the main 'deceased' page has this)? (4) Along similar lines, maybe something could be written up for The Signpost (I left a note here). Carcharoth (talk) 13:54, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

I just found this out now. I only saw Brian and his sources during my first successful FAC, but he was very thorough with his spotchecks and easygoing with me, and looking at other FACs he was the same. The FAC community is now worse off without him, and I send my condolences to Mr. Boulton's family, friends, and loved ones. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 00:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

Bot report

The FACBot complained about Wikipedia:Featured article review/Tropical Depression Ten (2005)/archive1. The status was "removed", a status the FACBot did not recognise. I informed the Bot that this means "delisted". The nomination has been processed and "removed" can be used from now on. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:56, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping an eye on that one, Hawkeye! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:04, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Where we write (and where we don't)

Percentage Growth in FA Categories, 2008–2019, Legend:

Considerably above average, Above average, Average

Below average , Considerably below average, Disastrous

Featured Article Category as of Feb 23,
2008 		Sep 16,
2008 		Sep 16,
2010 		Dec 1,
2011 		Jan 1,
2015 		Jan 1,
2020 		Pct chg
Feb 2008
to 2011 		Pct chg
Feb 2008
to 2020
Art, architecture and archaeology 65 72 117 128 175 271 97% 317%
Awards, decorations and vexillology 24 26 28 27 26 24 1.3% 0%
Biology 130 155 261 326 456 625 151% 381%
Business, economics and finance 16 19 22 44 73 116 175% 625%
Chemistry and mineralogy 29 31 34 37 40 46 28% 59%
Computing 17 17 17 18 16 14 5.9% −18%
Culture and society 40 48 61 65 77 104B 63% 160%
Education 30 34 36 38 40 40 27% 33%
Engineering and technology 35 37 38 40 43 49 14% 40%
Food and drink 11 11 9 13 17 21B 18% 91%
Geography and places 148 158 181 185 213 232 25% 57%
Geology and geophysics 9 12 18 20 23 29 122% 222%
Health and medicine 31 36 42 43 51 52 39% 68%
History 146 154 189 201 239 308 38% 111%
Language and linguistics 17 15 13 13 12 15 −24% −12%
Law 29 34 41 49 65 72 69% 148%
Literature and theatre 108 134 161 191 258 316B 77% 193%
Mathematics 13 14 19 17 18 18 31% 38%
Media 159 171 221 231 324 424 45% 167%
Meteorology 61 78 111 126 147 168 107% 175%
Music 153 182 232 254 331 398 66% 160%
Philosophy and psychology 12 13 12 12 12 14 0% 17%
Physics and astronomy 67 82 98 101 127 153 51% 128%
Politics and government 62 67 98 117 166 217 89% 250%
Religion, mysticism and mythology 36 44 73 84 105 121 133% 236%
Royalty, nobility and heraldry 75 90 94 108 124 173 44% 131%
Sport and recreation 119 162 268 298 365 449 150% 277%
Transport 47 74 107 128 171 213 172% 353%
Video gaming 72 96 127 137 180 222 90% 208%
Warfare 145 173 318 366 537 729 152% 403%
Total 1,906 2,239 3,046 3,417 4,431 5,695 A 79.3% 198.8%

Discussion of FA category growth/stagnation

Please check my math because working in table format stinks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:42, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

  • So only business and war are booming. What a surprise! Quite a lot of this can be traced to one or two individuals working in a particular area. We don't rate FAs by any notion of "importance" (perhaps understandably) but I'm very conscious that, with many exceptions, there's been a long term trend to "smaller" topics within subject areas. Thanks for doing t5his. Johnbod (talk) 23:02, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
    • I think the reason for that is smaller topics can be researched easier and more thoroughly with less effort. I’ve written six FAs, and they weren’t easy to write but because I work mostly in video gaming, I only really needed the internet and didn’t have to go to a library or access materials easier to obtain at educational institutions than elsewhere. As someone with limited time to edit Wikipedia, it makes a difference on what kind of quality work I can do. Red Phoenix talk 23:12, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
  • This very pleasing news indeed; 403% growth over 12 years represents 13% growth per annum. Business is often booming when there is a war on. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:03, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    But take care with doing averages that way; for example, all of Health and Medicine's growth came before 2015, while it flatlined after 2015. So its growth in the earlier period was better than the overall implies, while growth in five years was zero. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Yomangani thanks for checking and fixing errors. I can see that on some of them, I got the wrong keystrokes on my calculator (that is, I hit the ÷ button instead of the − button). I have corrected those now back at the talk page of WP:FAS also. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:48, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Does anyone feel like I should switch Video gaming and Literature and theatre to yellow, as they are so close to the average? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

  • These stats are fascinating and I'm glad to see some concrete data behind trends I've casually observed. Thanks, SandyGeorgia! I've had a hilariously poor experience overall editing in those lowly areas, so perhaps there's an evident causation... --Laser brain (talk) 15:05, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    I happen to love looking at the stats, to guide our discussions about what we do right and what we do wrong, ala, how to encourage participation. What stands out to me (besides how much individual editors drive this data) is that a strong WikiProject (MilHist) can make a huge difference, as can WikiProjects that act in ways that discourage FA production. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    Do you have an example of such Wikiprojects? Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 17:30, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Some of the categories are a little fuzzy round the edges (which is unsurprising). I looked at Food and Drink to see which of "my" FAs are there and found four (all female cookery book writers: Elizabeth David, Hannah Glasse, Jane Grigson and Maria Rundell); the other female cookery book writers I've written about are under Culture and society biographies (Isabella Beeton and Elizabeth Raffald) and one under Biographies (literature and theatre) (Eliza Acton, who was also a poet, which explains it). There will be others that don't naturally sit in specific categories, although it probably won't make too much of a difference to the overall picture. - SchroCat (talk) 15:49, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    @SchroCat: Should Beeton and Raffald be moved to Food and drink? (I frequently complained that the hardest part of the "job" was deciding where to put articles at FA.) Was Acton more a cook or more a poet? Adding three articles to Food and drink would change the growth percentage considerably. (A reminder to all nominators to keep an eye on where your noms land at WP:FA, since it is often a hard decision.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:00, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    Only Raffald was actually a cook (which doesn't help things): they were all cookery writers, however (although Beeton was less a cookery writer than plagiarist and publisher, so could also be in the business biographies). They are all most notable to us for writing about food, so they should probably all be together, and I would think Food would be the best place for them. - SchroCat (talk) 16:07, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    We call that Soylent Green. Yomanganitalk 16:10, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
    OK, I doubt that the @FAC coordinators: will care if I move them (and then I will footnote the charts above). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:14, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Most supports ever garnered in a FAC?

@FACaeologists. Does anybody know? The question occurred to me during the political discussion, but this is rather just idle curiosity. A concomitant question could also be, what's the FAC with the highest number of supports that still failed? ——SN54129 11:57, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

The Tottenham Outrage had 16 supports and one "strong oppose", which is a good benchmark to start on for successful ones. - SchroCat (talk) 12:24, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Crikey, yeah, that's the kind of thing. Also, it should've been 17: I see that I commented but neglected to support promotion. Now that was a Stratford Outrage :) ——SN54129 12:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I have data back to April 2009 and Tottenham Outrage has more supports than anything in that period. I don't currently have it set up in a way that makes it easy to answer your question, but the second FAC for Jill Valentine is a good candidate, with eight supports. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:46, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I'm sure there are plenty before 2009 that got more supports, we were kinder and more supportive in those days (laxer you say?). This has 19 (including one "super duper"). Yomanganitalk

Those are the most supports I was aware of between 2006 and 2012. All were before I was FAC delegate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 17 January 2020 (UTC)

PS, Jo-Jo Eumerus, you once asked which FAC failed with over 20 supports. I mistakenly claimed I had archived a FAC with that amount of support but could not recall the name of the article. In fact, I was the reviewer swimming against a strong tide of fan support for Preity Zinta and Raul654 was the one who archived it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:55, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
The "Oppose" on Tourette's was struck, so it was promoted unopposed. Yomanganitalk 15:13, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Yep, I caught that later. Isn't it odd that I had trimmed, trimmed and trimmed to sub-articles, yet it got an oppose at 6,000 words (which is about where it is today)? While articles frequently pass 10,000 words today.
Now, next question: FAC promoted on least supports ever. I cannot recall which, but it was a Moni3 FAC, during her heyday of writing diverse, well researched articles on difficult topics. At one point, I got totally agitated that reviews were lacking, the page size was growing, and reviews were taking too long. So, I picked the strongest FAC on the page at the time, and promoted it with only two supports. Moni3 was quite upset and felt she had been cheated out of review, and there was quite some pushback. But surprise ... reviews picked up, as nominators realized they would only get as good as they gave. Perhaps someone can remember which article that was. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
This one? Yomanganitalk 15:40, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I bow down to the one and only Yo-man! (How did you find that so fast?) Sheesh, no wonder Moni was peeved; she deserved better for that :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:43, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
If you want to go back into prehistory, Platypus was kept in the move from "Brilliant prose" to FA with with minus one vote (2 votes to remove, 1 to keep) so that will take some beating. I seem to remember we couldn't find when it had been accepted as "Brilliant Prose" either. Yomanganitalk 15:31, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
<Groan> To this day, most of my edit count (and almost all of my deleted edits) are from the time Gimmetrow, Maralia and I built all of the article histories for every single FA; sorting out what happened at Refreshing Brilliant Prose was a nightmare. I am pretty sure we never could figure out the Platypus. Look at the miserable images in here! Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-24/Dispatches. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
[4]. ?! DrKay (talk) 17:35, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Weird. An IP adds an FA, and it is sorta/kinda kept in RBP. Well, it was demoted, then re-promoted in 2006, so it is now a legit, albeit not recently reviewed, FA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:06, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Which reminds me; it appears that we still have not replaced Gimmebot completely? I was recently working at Talk:Coropuna, and had to build the articlehistory manually, since the FACbot did not incorporate the peer review when it archived the FAC. Are regular editors here building their own articlehistories, or what is happening? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Yep, this is sad. Gimmebot processed all DYKs, GAs, FAs, and PRs into articlehistory. It is clear, at least in the case of peer reviews, that those are no longer processed into the article milestones. Are FA writers doing this themselves? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
FACBot does fold {{oldpeerreview}} templates into the article history. If you find a case where it has failed to do so, report it and I will investigate. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:05, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Hawkeye7; I had to do Coropuna manually. [5] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:12, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Well that was easily corrected. The FACBot was looking for the {{oldpeerreview}} template. I told it to look for {{Old peer review}} as well. It is now adding the peer reviews to the article history. [6] Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:16, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Hawkeye7! Are you able to get it to work back through these? Will it burp at them being out of order now? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:18, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
No, but if I ran it right now it would add the peer review as the last entry. I would need to do a bit more if you wanted it inserted in chronological order. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:27, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
I think there may have been a couple more since then promoted on two supports. I'll look over the weekend and see what I can find. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:22, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
I seem to recall one FAC that had two clear supports and another set of comments that were very positive but the reviewer didn't want to write support; if I remember rightly, Brian suggested that this was as good as a support and I concurred (I feel like he was reading my mind). See if you can find it...! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2020 (UTC)
Not sure I found that one yet, but here are a couple. Amphetamine was promoted at its fifth FAC, with only two supports as far as I can see. Annunciation (Memling) was promoted at its first FAC, with two supports on content and one support restricted to referencing -- does that count as a two-support promotion? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:42, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Ian, is this the one you're thinking of? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:48, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
And here is an example from April 2009; perhaps whoever promoted this took Deckiller's comments ("Looks better—I'll support after a third-party user goes through the article") as a support. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:21, 18 January 2020 (UTC)
Too many for comfort; amphetamine was the exception, though. It has always been dreadful, and had one support and one support with reservations. So, I thought the time I did that was the only time it had happened. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 18 January 2020 (UTC)

WP:NOT

It has come up throughout several discussions elsewhere about policy WP:NOTPRICE that "even FAs have prices". Among the WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS examples given are FAs passed on sock support, FAs that should go to FAR anyway, and FAs where pricing is actually in accordance with the NOT PRICE policy. Nonetheless, perhaps FAC needs to keep a better eye on WP:NOTPRICE in reviewing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:03, 14 January 2020 (UTC)

Sales catalogues. An article should not include product pricing or availability information unless there is an independent source and a justified reason for the mention. Encyclopedic significance may be indicated if mainstream media sources (not just product reviews) provide commentary on these details instead of just passing mention. Prices and product availability can vary widely from place to place and over time. Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare the prices of competing products, or the prices and availability of a single product from different vendors or retailers.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:04, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Do they cite examples of FA usage?--Wehwalt (talk) 09:56, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
There are discussions all over the place, that have been going on now for about four years, and I wasn't aware until recently. Here is one recent bit I can put my hands on: Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 11#Featured article samples We should perhaps be reviewing more carefully for NOTPRICE. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:25, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Here's another bit in an four-year old essay (that I have now corrected, since it incorrectly stated that there was no policy). Redirects were altered to point to the essay and away from the WP:NOT policy for four years, with editors being potentially misled that there was no price policy, and FAs used to support the reasoning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:30, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
PS, Wehwalt, IMO the coin examples comply with NOTPRICE, along with Mike Christie's magazine collectibles :) We may have a problem in some of the gaming and TV articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:41, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for that.--Wehwalt (talk) 16:34, 14 January 2020 (UTC)
Wehwalt I've been looking at some of the samples in the discussions above, and the problems appear to be mostly in the computing realm, where we did not take care at FAC review that prices were not sourced to "product reviews" (as opposed to mainstream mention of the significance of the prices). My sense of your articles, and Mike Christie's is that, when prices are given, they are in accordance with the specific wording at WP:NOT. But it would be handy if you could go through and double check sources in the coin department. Too many for me to look at :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:33, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
In the articles on sf magazines the prices are mentioned in two different contexts. It's usually in the bibliographic sections, such as this one, and it's sometimes also relevant to publishing/business issues -- see the last paragraph of this section, for example, though the specific price is not quoted because details are in the bibliographic section. The latter use is clearly OK. I think the former is OK too, because the sources I use, which are historical survey works, do often include this in their own accounts. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:58, 22 January 2020 (UTC)
I did not make my original inquiry out of concern about any particular articles, but to see if there was any indication we were dealing with a widespread problem. There doesn't seem to be any.--Wehwalt (talk) 08:15, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Perhaps not all that relevant, but in articles on art auction prices etc have never encountered any objections that I can recall. Johnbod (talk) 02:23, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
- Again not directly relevant, but we did have an interesting, and productive, discussion on painting prices here, Talk:Cragside#Millais paintings. KJP1 (talk) 09:18, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

TFA proposal

An alternate TFA proposal is getting good feedback over at WT:TFAR. Worth having a look, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

I just offered my thoughts at WT:TFA#Alternate TFA proposal ... the part that probably needs to be repeated over here is this bit: Doing blurbs back through 2016 has been going smoothly, so I'm guessing I can stop doing blurb reviews as soon as FACs are promoted ... it will probably work fine to go back and cover them after 6 months or a year. I'd like to see where this proposed RfC is going before I wind up being overextended. - Dank (push to talk) 15:51, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
If there's an RfC, I hope most of the people affected will be voting (but I won't). If I do anything drastic without explaining why ahead of time, people will feel blindsided, so I probably have to say: at the end of the RfC (if any), I'll be going on a sabbatical from TFA (not stepping down) if any of the following happen: 1. There are no blurbs left to do. (A current proposal at WT:TFA would attempt to get rid of blurbs entirely.) 2. The RfC causes a lot of unhappiness that's not easily fixed. I'm not going to be part of anything that feels oppressive. 3. It feels like I'm being fired or the whole FAC community is being fired from the job of creating blurbs. (That's a possible result, of course, because we don't know who will show up to vote, and the Main Page can be a hypercompetitive place sometimes.) I won't be stepping down; I get that Wikipedia works in cycles ... people want one thing, then later they want another thing. I took this for granted as a given when I signed up as an editor, and also as a coord. I wouldn't mind getting a break from TFA, at all.
One more thing: we're just a handful of blurbs away from finishing up all the blurbs from 2016–2019 FACs that have never run at TFA. The top of the page has a key to what the symbols mean. The Main Page people have had a very positive response to the level of consensus apparent in the 2019 blurb reviews, which were done immediately after the FACs were promoted. The 2016–2018 blurbs represent at least some level of consensus, because at least 80% of the FAC supporters were also FAC nominators around the same time, so they were pinged around the same time as the FAC nominators were pinged (just for different FACs). Still ... if we're trying to make the case in the future that there was support for that particular blurb text, it wouldn't hurt for people to look over the list of blurbs, pick a few articles you're familiar with, and weigh in with your thoughts or edits. - Dank (push to talk) 19:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
Crikey, I was going to save my Rwandan Civil War article until the 30th anniversary in October, but if TFA may be scrapped before then, I should probably run it sooner.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:31, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Proposal to reduce restrictions on FAR submissions

Based on the discussion and declarations below, I have changed the FAR instructions to: 5–7 days should elapse between notification of concerns and taking an article to FAR; the FAR and FARC stages last 2–3 weeks typically; and nominators may not nominate more than one article every two weeks or have more than 4 active nominations at any one time, without the consent of a coordinator. DrKay (talk) 17:46, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
There seems to be some traction in the discussions above for reducing the restrictions on submissions at Featured article reviews. I sandboxed a proposal, and ran it by the @FAR coordinators: , and am putting this forward for consideration. One question is, do we reduce the two-week wait period between notification on talk and submission to FAR to nothing, five days, seven days? Please remember that Polling is not a substitute for discussion, and let's hear opinions.
My thought is that, if this doesn't help address the concerns I raise above about older, outdated FAs, then we could later examine some of my other proposals above. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 6 January 2020 (UTC)
FAR instructions, current and proposed
Current Proposed
This page is for the review and improvement of featured articles that may no longer meet the featured article criteria. FAs are held to the current standards regardless of when they were promoted.

There are three requisite stages in the process, to which all users are welcome to contribute.

Raise issues at article Talk:

  • In this step, concerned editors attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. Articles in this step are not listed on this page.

Featured article review (FAR)

  • In this step, possible improvements are discussed without declarations of "keep" or "delist". The aim is to improve articles rather than to demote them. Nominators must specify the featured article criteria that are at issue and should propose remedies. The ideal review would address the issues raised and close with no change in status.
  • Reviews can improve articles in various ways: articles may need updating, formatting, and general copyediting. More complex issues, such as a failure to meet current standards of prose, comprehensiveness, factual accuracy, and neutrality, may also be addressed.
  • The featured article removal coordinators—Nikkimaria, Casliber, and DrKay—determine either that there is consensus to close during this second stage, or that there is insufficient consensus to do so and so therefore the nomination should be moved to the third stage.

Featured article removal candidate (FARC)

  • An article is never listed as a removal candidate without first undergoing a review. In this third stage, participants may declare "keep" or "delist", supported by substantive comments, and further time is provided to overcome deficiencies.
  • Reviewers who declare "delist" should be prepared to return towards the end of the process to strike out their objections if they have been addressed.
  • The featured article removal coordinators determine whether there is consensus for a change in the status of a nomination, and close the listing accordingly.

Each stage typically lasts two to three weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process. Nominations are moved from the review period to the removal list, unless it is very clear that editors feel the article is within criteria. Given that extensions are always granted on request, as long as the article is receiving attention, editors should not be alarmed by an article moving from review to the removal candidates' list.

To contact the FAR coordinators, please leave a message on the FAR talk page, or use the {{@FAR}} notification template elsewhere.

Older reviews are stored in the archive.

Nominating an article for FAR-

The number of FARs that can be placed on the page is limited as follows:

  1. For articles on the Unreviewed Featured Articles list, no more than three nominations per week and twelve per month.
  2. For all other articles, one nomination at a time per nominator, unless permission for more is given by a FAR coordinator.

Nominators are strongly encouraged to assist in the process of improvement; they should not nominate articles that are featured on the main page (or have been featured there in the previous three days) and should avoid segmenting review pages. Three to six months is regarded as the minimum time between promotion and nomination here, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as a radical change in article content.

  1. Before nomination, raise issues at talk page of the article. Attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. Articles in this step are not listed on this page.
  2. Place {{subst:FAR}} at the top of the talk page of the nominated article. Write "FAR listing" in the edit summary box. Click on "Publish changes".
  3. From the FAR template, click on the red "initiate the review" link. You will see pre-loaded information; please leave that text.
  4. Below the preloaded title, write which users and projects you'll notify (see step 6 below), and your reason(s) for nominating the article, specifying the FA criterion/criteria that are at issue, then click on "Publish changes".
  5. Click here, and place your nomination at the top of the list of nominated articles, {{Wikipedia:Featured article review/name of nominated article/archiveN}}, filling in the exact name of the nominated article and the archive number N. Click on "Publish changes".
  6. Notify relevant parties by adding {{subst:FARMessage|ArticleName|alt=FAR subpage}} ~~~~ (for example, {{subst:FARMessage|Superman|alt=Superman/archive1}} ~~~~) to relevant talk pages (insert article name). Relevant parties include main contributors to the article (identifiable through XTools), the editor who originally nominated the article for Featured Article status (identifiable through the Featured Article Candidate link in the Article Milestones), and any relevant WikiProjects (identifiable through the talk page banners, but there may be other Projects that should be notified). The message at the top of the FAR should indicate who you have notified.
 This page is for the review and improvement of featured articles that may no longer meet the featured article criteria. FAs are held to the current standards regardless of when they were promoted.

There are three requisite stages in the process, to which all users are welcome to contribute.

Raise issues at article Talk:

  • In this step, concerned editors attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. However, if the problems appear to be pervasive to the point that the article needs to be reviewed in detail, then a concerned editor may move to nominate at FAR instead, supplying reasons why informal review may not be the best way to address article issues first.

Featured article review (FAR)

  • In this step, possible improvements are discussed without declarations of "keep" or "delist". The aim is to improve articles rather than to demote them. Nominators must specify the featured article criteria that are at issue and should propose remedies. The ideal review would address the issues raised and close with no change in status.
  • Reviews can improve articles in various ways: articles may need updating, formatting, and general copyediting. More complex issues, such as a failure to meet current standards of prose, comprehensiveness, factual accuracy, and neutrality, may also be addressed.
  • The featured article removal coordinators—Nikkimaria, Casliber, and DrKay—determine either that there is consensus to close during this second stage, or that there is insufficient consensus to do so and so therefore the nomination should be moved to the third stage.

Featured article removal candidate (FARC)

  • An article is never listed as a removal candidate without first undergoing a review. In this third stage, participants may declare "keep" or "delist", supported by substantive comments, and further time is provided to overcome deficiencies.
  • Reviewers who declare "delist" should be prepared to return towards the end of the process to strike out their objections if they have been addressed.
  • The featured article removal coordinators determine whether there is consensus for a change in the status of a nomination, and close the listing accordingly.

The FAR and FARC stages typically last two to three weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process. Nominations are moved from the review period to the removal list, unless it is very clear that editors feel the article is within criteria. Given that extensions are always granted on request, as long as the article is receiving attention, editors should not be alarmed by an article moving from review to the removal candidates' list.

To contact the FAR coordinators, please leave a message on the FAR talk page, or use the {{@FAR}} notification template elsewhere.

Older reviews are stored in the archive.

Nominating an article for FAR-

The number of FARs that can be placed on the page by any nominator is determined by the FAR coordinators, but is typically:

  1. No more than one nomination every two weeks.
  2. No more than four active nominations on the page at one time, unless permission for more is given by a FAR coordinator.

Nominators are strongly encouraged to assist in the process of improvement; they should not nominate articles that are featured on the main page (or have been featured there in the previous three days) and should avoid segmenting review pages. Three to six months is regarded as the minimum time between promotion and nomination here, unless there are extenuating circumstances such as a radical change in article content.

  1. Before nomination, raise issues at talk page of the article. Attempt to directly resolve issues with the existing community of article editors, and to informally improve the article. Articles in this step are not listed on this page.
  2. Place {{subst:FAR}} at the top of the talk page of the nominated article. Write "FAR listing" in the edit summary box. Click on "Publish changes".
  3. From the FAR template, click on the red "initiate the review" link. You will see pre-loaded information; please leave that text.
  4. Below the preloaded title, write which users and projects you'll notify (see step 6 below), and your reason(s) for nominating the article, specifying the FA criterion/criteria that are at issue, then click on "Publish changes".
  5. Click here, and place your nomination at the top of the list of nominated articles, {{Wikipedia:Featured article review/name of nominated article/archiveN}}, filling in the exact name of the nominated article and the archive number N. Click on "Publish changes".
  6. Notify relevant parties by adding {{subst:FARMessage|ArticleName|alt=FAR subpage}} ~~~~ (for example, {{subst:FARMessage|Superman|alt=Superman/archive1}} ~~~~) to relevant talk pages (insert article name). Relevant parties include main contributors to the article (identifiable through XTools), the editor who originally nominated the article for Featured Article status (identifiable through the Featured Article Candidate link in the Article Milestones), and any relevant WikiProjects (identifiable through the talk page banners, but there may be other Projects that should be notified). The message at the top of the FAR should indicate who you have notified.

Discussion of proposed FAR changes

  • Generally support changes, it would make it easier to delist FAs that are clearly deficient. I support lowering the waiting period to 5–7 days. But I do think that in most cases it's helpful to discuss first before going to FAR even if the page is not maintained or the nominator is no longer active. buidhe 09:11, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Generally support much per Buidhe, and joining in their suggestion to keep a 5-7 day waiting period.. I would tighten the language in "The number of FARs that can be placed on the page by any nominator is determined by the FAR coordinators, but is typically: No more than one nomination every two weeks. No more than four active nominations on the page at one time, unless permission for more is given by a FAR coordinator." To make it clear that there is a limit in the absence of permission granted, I would change "but is typically" to "but is by default".--Wehwalt (talk) 09:39, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
  • Generally support, but will this actually encourage 1. more people to nominate articles for review; and 2. more people to aid in re-working nominated articles back to a higher standard. On its own, this is a positive step, but I'm not sure this addresses the core problems (insofar as I think I've read what the problems are perceived to be). – SchroCat (talk) 09:59, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
  • My own view is that this will have little effect, but there were plenty of people above asking to try it, so for that reason, I brought it forward as a formal proposal. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:16, 7 January 2020 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Followup

Featured article review

Talk notices given
  1. Diocletianic Persecution 2020-05-03
  2. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky 2020-05-22
  3. Underwater diving 2020-09-15
  4. Józef Piłsudski 2020-09-25, 2021-08-07
  5. Supernatural (season 1) 2020-11-02
  6. Supernatural (season 2) 2020-11-02
  7. Kahaani 2020-11-18 2023-02-25
  8. Major depressive disorder 2020-11-20 2022-08-18 2024-11-19
  9. India 2020-11-29 and 2023-11-28
  10. 1968 Thule Air Base B-52 crash 2020-11-30
  11. Tumbler Ridge 2020-12-26 2024-11-19
  12. Glacier National Park (U.S.) 2020-12-30
  13. Ivan Bagramyan 2021-02-21
  14. Bird 2021-02-21
  15. Hamilton, Ontario 2021-02-22
  16. Comet Hyakutake 2021-02-22
  17. Mary Wollstonecraft 2021-03-03
  18. Postage stamps of Ireland 2021-03-11, 2023-03-25
  19. The Joy of Sect 2021-04-08
  20. The World Ends with You 2021-04-23
  21. Defense of the Ancients 2021-06-10
  22. Dwarf planet 2021-08-14
  23. Robert Garran 2021-10-09
  24. Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna
    of Russia     2021-11-27
  25. Hurricane Edith (1971) 2021-12-04
  26. Meteorological history of Hurricane Jeanne 2021-12-05
  27. Meteorological history of Hurricane Gordon 2021-12-05
  28. Hurricane Dean 2021-12-05
  29. Meteorological history of Hurricane Wilma 2021-12-05
  30. Meteorological history of Hurricane Ivan 2021-12-05
  31. Effects of Hurricane Ivan
    in the Lesser Antilles
    and South America     2021-12-05
  32. Tropical Storm Bonnie (2004) 2021-12-05
  33. Tropical Storm Henri (2003) 2021-12-05
  34. Tropical Storm Edouard (2002) 2021-12-05
  35. Hurricane Fabian 2021-12-05
  36. Effects of Hurricane Isabel in
    Maryland and Washington, D.C.     2021-12-06
  37. Hurricane Erika (1997) 2021-12-06
  38. Hurricane Isabel 2021-12-06
  39. Hurricane Kenna 2021-12-06
  40. Typhoon Pongsona 2021-12-07
  41. Hubble Space Telescope 2022-01-08
  42. Dürer's Rhinoceros 2022-02-04
  43. Io (moon) 2022-02-13
  44. Solar eclipse 2022-04-30
  45. Manchester 2022-05-12
  46. Transformers (film) 2022-06-05
  47. Slate industry in Wales 2022-07-05
    Working [7]
  48. Schizophrenia 2022-08-18
  49. Amanita muscaria 2022-08-26
  50. Battle of Corydon 2022-10-10
  51. White Deer Hole Creek 2022-10-22
    Work ongoing December 2022
  52. Mayan languages 2022-11-19
  53. Sentence spacing 2022-11-19
  54. Indigenous people of the Everglades region 2022-11-21
  55. First-move advantage in chess 2022-11-21
  56. King Arthur 2022-11-22
  57. Stephen Crane 2022-11-22
  58. Mark Kerry 2022-12-01
  59. California Gold Rush 2022-12-02
  60. Harry McNish Noticed 2022-12-03
  61. History of Lithuania (1219–1295) 2022-12-03
  62. Władysław II Jagiełło 2022-12-03
  63. David I of Scotland 2022-12-03
  64. Coeliac disease 2022-12-03
  65. Metabolism 2022-12-03
  66. Northern bald ibis 2022-12-09
  67. Hippocampus 2022-12-09
  68. Cane toad 2022-12-09
  69. Boeing 777 2022-12-09
  70. Second Crusade 2022-12-09
  71. Delichon 2022-12-10
  72. Rock martin 2022-12-10
  73. Lion 2022-12-10
  74. Victoria Cross for New Zealand 2023-01-01
    Work ongoing January 2023
  75. Bengali language movement 2023-01-15
  76. USS New Jersey (BB-62) 2023-01-23
  77. West Wycombe Park 2023-01-25
  78. Holkham Hall 2023-01-25
  79. Redshift 2023-01-26
  80. Angkor Wat 2023-01-28
  81. Jack Sheppard 2023-02-02
  82. Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna of Russia 2023-02-12
  83. Guy Fawkes Night 2023-02-14
  84. Marcus Trescothick 2023-02-22
  85. Moe Berg 2023-03-10
  86. Falaise Pocket 2023-03-29
  87. James Nesbitt 2023-03-29
  88. Johnstown Inclined Plane 2023-04-23
  89. Dengue fever 2023-04-30
  90. Wood Badge 2023-05-15
  91. Hurricane Claudette (2003) 2023-05-16
  92. Cleveland 2023-05-16
  93. Buildings and architecture of Bristol 2023-05-20
  94. Oregon State Capitol 2023-06-02
  95. Surrender of Japan 2023-06-30
  96. Felice Beato 2023-08-04
  97. Augustus 2023-08-08
  98. Caspar David Friedrich 2023-08-13
  99. Jocelin of Glasgow 2023-11-01
  100. Hydrogen 2023-11-01
  101. Ancient Egypt 2023-11-18
  102. Acetic acid 2023-12-8
  103. Eric Brewer (ice hockey) 2024-01-02
  104. Adelaide Anne Procter 2024-01-30
  105. Boston 2024-04-15
  106. Borscht 2024-06-15
  107. Khan Noonien Singh 2024-07-03
  108. Taylor Swift 2024-08-02
  109. Nahuatl 2024-08-04
  110. Carnivàle 2024-08-09
  111. Your Power 2024-08-16
  112. Washington, D.C. 2024-08-27
  113. George Washington (inventor) 2024-08-30
  114. Alien vs. Predator (film) 2024-10-26
  115. Mom and Dad (1945 film) 2024-10-26
  116. A Cure for Pokeritis 2024-10-26
  117. Zombie Nightmare 2024-10-26
  118. Gertie the Dinosaur 2024-11-1
  119. Characters of God of War 2024-11-3
  120. Homer Simpson 2024-11-24
Find more: Unreviewed featured articles

Is someone planning to implement this? Separately, I added a new template to WT:FAR, where talk page notices given can be tracked by date. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

@Ian Rose, Ealdgyth, Dank, and Jimfbleak: as Coords who have not entered a declaration here, would one of you be interested in being the decision-maker? This would have fallen in the "olden days" to the director; now we need a Coord who wasn't involved in the discussion to decide and implement, or not, when the time comes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 22 January 2020 (UTC)

Here's a new FAR template for tracking notices given (meaning, that once the time has elapsed, and if no one has engaged to work on the article, anyone can nominate these articles at FAR. The template is at WT:FAR for future additions/reference/etc. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:59, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Can we move this out of your user space Sandy? I think people are hesitant to edit templates in someone's user space - I know I would be. I would suggest that any other FAC/R templates in the same situation be moved too. I am willing to do so, and add a documentation page, possibly a FAC/R-related category. This way, we can find and use things more easily. Just a thought. Outriggr (talk) 07:41, 23 January 2020 (UTC)
Certainly! But I just copied User:Deckiller/FAC urgents and User:Tony1/FAR urgents so maybe we can ask Deckiller and Tony1 if we can standardize all three. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:19, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Another opinion

I guess I missed the above discussion, and I'm not really a participant in FARs, but I do manage some cleanup queues and reports. My two cents are this: I don't think a central crew has enough time or expertise to fix up all the featured articles that need fixing up. FAR is a great way to summon help from interested editors and Wikiprojects, and of course improvement is always preferred over de-listing. But if an FAR is hanging around too long for lack of outside interest to make improvements, the article should simply be demoted from featured status, or the listing discontinued if there is no consensus to do so. I think the waiting period and the limit on the number of nominations just discourage people who have noticed sub-standard articles from reporting them, because it takes a much bigger investment of time and long-term memory. I don't think that helps much to improve article quality, since that work needs to be done by outside editors, but it certainly does mean that more articles will be inappropriately marked as continuing to meet the Featured standard. It's not a bad thing for articles to be dragged into the spotlight here where Featured criteria experts can help answer questions from interested editors rather than relying on a single nominating editor to watch the article talk page. It's also not a bad thing for a marginal article to go through the Featured Article Candidate process a second time, perhaps a few years down the road if there is no current interest. -- Beland (talk) 01:11, 29 January 2020 (UTC)

@Beland: actually you missed the precursor to this discussion, which is all of Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive79, where I tried to argue that we needed an accelerated pace to deal with the huge backlog of non-compliant FAs. There was consensus on this page to first try lowering the waiting period, so that is all that has been done. My reasoning was not accepted, people wanted to try this first, so try it we will. It won't work if people don't start submitting the listed FARs and participating at FAR. Which is why I suggested an accelerated process, but that was rejected. So we need to try this. Read the archive. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:16, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
Also, Beland, in the "more than one way to skin a cat" department, see the discussions at WT:TFA about ways to get greater exposure to all FAs, which may help get the community more involved in cleaning them up. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:20, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
So far, I haven't gotten beyond 2005 and 2006 on User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page, and known 2006 problems, yet there are already two dozen identified FARs needed, with ten more years' worth to look at. Next, I plan to look at this. I don't think this approach will work, but am willing to try. I continue to believe a more accelerated, abbreviated sweep will be needed, but maybe people will surprise me and start nominating FARs and reviewing there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 29 January 2020 (UTC)
That's a huge archived discussion, and I couldn't really digest all of it. I did skim and search around; I didn't seem much support for keeping the waiting period (maybe I missed those arguments), though I did see concern about flooding FAR if people start systematically triaging lists of probably-demotable articles. I think there are two good solutions: 1.) Eliminate the waiting period, but keep the metering rules (possibly slightly looser than they are now) so that systematic review projects don't flood the page. This lets people who spot a problematic article pop it in immediately so it doesn't get lost. 2.) Eliminate the waiting period and the metering rules, and consider the flood a good thing. I think there's an argument to be made for the backlog of featured articles that need demotion review to be surfaced in one place. Even if it's long (as many Wikipedia backlogs are), it can be picked at by editors interested in maintaining the integrity of the classification or who don't care what topic they work on. I don't think it's helpful to smear the backlog across talk pages in such a way that articles can fall through the cracks. I also don't think it's a good idea to have a bunch of articles in a shadow backlog which are just going to get demoted pretty much automatically anyway because there's currently no one around interested in repairing them. Better to post the FAR sooner rather than later and see that no page authors are replying. -- Beland (talk) 01:04, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi there. Probably nobody knows this but I have been a delegate and later the director for Featured Topics for nearly nine years. And while I have no plans on stepping down on that position, I am looking for a new delegate to help out with the project as I feel that only two people working on the nominations is not enough. While not as popular as the other three Featured Content sections here, it still gets activity that requires someone that can be active enough to assist with FTC. If anyone is willing to lend a hand and take part in handling nominations, you can let me know here or on my talk page. Thanks. GamerPro64 06:35, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

FAC reviewing statistics for January

Here are the FAC reviewing statistics for January. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:10, 6 February 2020 (UTC)

The above statement is a bit misleading, so to clarify: this table includes all reviews for FACS that were either archived or promoted last month, so the reviews included are spread over the last two or three months. A review posted last month is not included if the FAC was still open at the end of the month. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:46, 7 February 2020 (UTC)
Reviewers for January 2020
# reviews Type of review
Reviewer Image Source Content Total
Nikkimaria 11 9 3 23
Gog the Mild 4 2 7 13
SandyGeorgia 2 7 9
Sarastro1 2 6 8
Wehwalt 8 8
Tim riley 1 6 7
CPA-5 7 7
Brianboulton 5 2 7
Casliber 7 7
SchroCat 6 6
Fowler&fowler 5 5
Jo-Jo Eumerus 4 1 5
Sturmvogel 66 4 4
Jimfbleak 1 3 4
Factotem 2 2 4
Epicgenius 4 4
Laser brain 4 4
Giants2008 4 4
Dudley Miles 3 3
Buidhe 1 2 3
Parsecboy 2 1 3
Hawkeye7 3 3
JennyOz 3 3
Peacemaker67 1 2 3
J Milburn 3 3
Serial Number 54129 3 3
Ceoil 3 3
Harrias 2 1 3
RetiredDuke 2 2
Cassianto 2 2
Mimihitam 2 2
Coffeeandcrumbs 1 1 2
HaEr48 2 2
FunkMonk 2 2
Nick-D 2 2
Usernameunique 1 1 2
Ergo Sum 2 2
KJP1 2 2
Jens Lallensack 2 2
Llammakey 2 2
Graham Beards 2 2
IJReid 1 1
KeeperOfThePeace 1 1
DBigXray 1 1
Aoba47 1 1
Reidgreg 1 1
Ealdgyth 1 1
Cwmhiraeth 1 1
Vami IV 1 1
Francis Schonken 1 1
Zawed 1 1
Aa77zz 1 1
Praemonitus 1 1
Lord Roem 1 1
Kingsif 1 1
Eostrix 1 1
Smerus 1 1
Векочел 1 1
WereSpielChequers 1 1
Caeciliusinhorto 1 1
Tirronan 1 1
Sainsf 1 1
From Hill To Shore 1 1
Marco polo 1 1
CaptainEek 1 1
Dank 1 1
R8R 1 1
Ian Rose 1 1
A. Parrot 1 1
Super Dromaeosaurus 1 1
Double sharp 1 1
Dunkleosteus77 1 1
Jameslwoodward 1 1
John M Wolfson 1 1
Utopes 1 1
Moxy 1 1
Kaiser matias 1 1
Yashthepunisher 1 1
Lee Vilenski 1 1
zmbro 1 1
Lingzhi2 1 1
AustralianRupert 1 1
Moisejp 1 1
Noswall59 1 1
Kablammo 1 1
Grand Total 29 29 171 229
Supports and opposes for January 2020
# declarations Declaration
Editor Oppose Support None Grand Total
Nikkimaria 1 22 23
Gog the Mild 6 7 13
SandyGeorgia 3 6 9
Sarastro1 4 3 1 8
Wehwalt 6 2 8
Tim riley 5 2 7
CPA-5 7 7
Brianboulton 1 6 7
Casliber 7 7
SchroCat 1 5 6
Fowler&fowler 2 3 5
Jo-Jo Eumerus 5 5
Sturmvogel 66 4 4
Jimfbleak 2 2 4
Factotem 1 2 1 4
Epicgenius 4 4
Laser brain 2 2 4
Giants2008 1 3 4
Dudley Miles 3 3
Buidhe 3 3
Parsecboy 3 3
Hawkeye7 3 3
JennyOz 2 1 3
Peacemaker67 2 1 3
J Milburn 1 2 3
Serial Number 54129 1 2 3
Ceoil 2 1 3
Harrias 1 2 3
RetiredDuke 1 1 2
Cassianto 2 2
Mimihitam 1 1 2
Coffeeandcrumbs 1 1 2
HaEr48 2 2
FunkMonk 2 2
Nick-D 1 1 2
Usernameunique 1 1 2
Ergo Sum 2 2
KJP1 2 2
Jens Lallensack 1 1 2
Llammakey 2 2
Graham Beards 1 1 2
IJReid 1 1
KeeperOfThePeace 1 1
DBigXray 1 1
Aoba47 1 1
Reidgreg 1 1
Ealdgyth 1 1
Cwmhiraeth 1 1
Vami IV 1 1
Francis Schonken 1 1
Zawed 1 1
Aa77zz 1 1
Praemonitus 1 1
Lord Roem 1 1
Kingsif 1 1
Eostrix 1 1
Smerus 1 1
Векочел 1 1
WereSpielChequers 1 1
Caeciliusinhorto 1 1
Tirronan 1 1
Sainsf 1 1
From Hill To Shore 1 1
Marco polo 1 1
CaptainEek 1 1
Dank 1 1
R8R 1 1
Ian Rose 1 1
A. Parrot 1 1
Super Dromaeosaurus 1 1
Double sharp 1 1
Dunkleosteus77 1 1
Jameslwoodward 1 1
John M Wolfson 1 1
Utopes 1 1
Moxy 1 1
Kaiser matias 1 1
Yashthepunisher 1 1
Lee Vilenski 1 1
zmbro 1 1
Lingzhi2 1 1
AustralianRupert 1 1
Moisejp 1 1
Noswall59 1 1
Kablammo 1 1
Grand Total 20 115 94 229

What has FAC become?

Who'd ever have thought FAC would come to this. Utterly shameful. Here we have an excellent and hugely prolific editor who has knocked out more featured articles than I care to count, be nonsensically bludgeoned (and some would say "trolled") by Fowler&fowler, an editor whose delusional aspirations cause them to self-identify as WP's answer to him, given the user name, under the noses, and at the apparent acceptance, of one of the coords. Not once, but twice.

For those not familiar, SchroCat has produced two FACs since the New Year alone, both of which have had the misfortune to be "reviewed" by F&f. The last one, James Humphreys (pornographer), received the first lot of F&f treatment, which attempted to turn it into a piece of politically correct toilet paper rather than a engaging piece of 70s crime nostalgia. The nomination dragged painfully on until a coordinator hurried it in to the vault, but not before a lecture, which most, I imagine, didn't read nor cared about, but that only went some way into ably assisting the current levels of floor wiping morale that we currently have at FAC. Let's chalk that one up as a difficult one-off – we all have them – and move on, shall we?

Not one to be put off, SchroCat returned with a second article, St Scholastica Day riot. Things were looking good, but the optimism didn't last long; guess who should turn up? Yup. More nonsensical and hugely confusing comments by F&f were laid out that were so convoluted that even SchroCat, a man with the patience of a 300-year-old statue, threw the towel in utter exasperation. Still, no worry, maybe the same coordinator as last time could offer a reassuring word to the nominator that yes, there really is no smoke without fire, and that yes, I see the pattern now and I'll do something about it. Er, no. Another another wall of text is issued and the coord recuses, thus negating them from all supervisory responsibilities. You do have to wonder, don't you?

I had two planned for FAC, but actually, I may just not bother. What's the point, life is too short, and I'm afraid I wouldn't be as half as resilient as my much admired colleague and friend. CassiantoTalk 17:54, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Come to this? FAC brawls are not new. Everyone involved needs to read Ealdgyth's advice and try to follow it. Please stop personalizing FACs;[8] if you have something to say about contributors, rather than content, say it somewhere else. If you disagree with a reviewer, move on and let other reviewers or the coords decide. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:20, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
As if further illustration was needed. Thanks SandyGeorgia. CassiantoTalk 18:25, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Ealdgyth should take her own advice. She has handled this whole episode badly and I have lost all confidence in her ability as a coordinator. Describing the editors involved as "dense" as she did here [9] and posting an essay on sources on the FAC discussion page as she did here [10], did nothing to stop F&f's vindictive behaviour. I would like to know why she thought it necessary to add her qualifications in the section header. I'm virologist with an international reputation. Should I be adding this to my reviews?Graham Beards (talk) 19:39, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Graham Beards, I haven't looked closely at what happened there. I'm not familiar with the topic or those sources, and I'm sorry to see SchroCat upset. But in defence of Ealdgyth, what is badly needed at history articles at FAC (and elsewhere) is for historians to weigh in with views about how to recognize the right type of source. This is an issue all across Wikipedia, that people have difficulty choosing the right category of source (I include myself as someone who regularly struggles with that). So I welcome historians commenting as historians on source use, just as I welcome virologists commenting on issues within their expertise. For anyone wanting to help develop detailed advice about how to choose good sources for FAs, please see Wikipedia:Guidance on source reviewing at FAC. SarahSV (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
I agree with you. But if editors claim expertise the least I expect to see is an ORCID ID on their user page. Otherwise any Tom, Dick or Harriette can call themselves "historians" or whatever. And I still think announcing one's expertise in a heading is most uncouth and comes across as pedagogy.Graham Beards (talk) 00:23, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
I disagree. I find that kind of thing helpful. Attacks on reviewers willing to oppose are very damaging. Look at Mike's stats for January: 20 opposes, 115 supports, 94 other comments; December: 10 opposes, 106 supports, 98 other comments; November: 5 opposes, 98 supports, 81 other comments. People are reluctant to oppose, for various reasons, not only personal attacks but also because opposing tends to involve more work than supporting. But fear of criticism is one reason, so we should support reviewers willing to oppose, whether or not we agree with the review in question. SarahSV (talk) 18:34, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Opposing not based on the criteria (which we have for a reason) is neither brave, nor helpful, and only causes people like SchroCat to walk away and not bother. CassiantoTalk 18:54, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Sarah's got it right. Much more could be said on The Demise of the Oppose at FAC and what that has meant for overall quality, particularly in the sourcing area, but I'll rest that for now.
What else needs to be remembered is: 1) if you disagree with a reviewer, state your case, and let the Coords sort it, but don't personalize FACs; 2) without the selfless work of uninvolved reviewers (and the hours Coords have to spend sorting through increasingly long and off-topic FACs) we don't have FAs at all, so please remember to take care of the editors who really give us FAs (and those aren't only those who write them). Just like FAC is devalued without FAR, FA writers can't shine unless they appreciate and respect the role of independent reviewers. We have already seen too many intimidated and chased off. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:05, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
I'm bored of this. If I'm not going to be listened to, I'll go elsewhere. CassiantoTalk 19:06, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Sarah, I suggest you read the three FACS in question Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/St Scholastica Day riot/archive1, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/James Humphreys (pornographer)/archive2 and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/James Humphreys (pornographer)/archive1. Opposing based on personal opinions, not based on the criteria does nothing but harm our FA process. We all know and appreciate the value of actionable and valid opposes. Graham Beards (talk) 19:09, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Yes, our regular discussions on the troubles with FAC very regularly include complaints (many from me) that the review process too often (pretty much usually) fails to probe the content and sources enough. Also that nominators are too often truculent and dismissive of points they can't easily fix, even if they are justified. I've suffered from SchroCat's attitude myself when reviewing his stuff, and now avoid reviewing his articles. He shouldn't be surprised if his highly un-emollient responses failed to reassure Fowler&fowler, who has to deal with all sorts of toxic crap on Indian topics, and is not easily put off. Perhaps they encouraged him to probe even more, I don't know. Johnbod (talk) 20:37, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Johnbod, I don’t doubt what you say, but I do you mean plural reviews? (And nothing show up on the tools which doesn't help). I only remember the Burning of Parliament, where you asked for the inclusion of architectural details that were outside the scope of the article, and the inclusion of a gallery that is outside the scope of the MoS.
As to what toxic behaviour Fowler has faced elsewhere, that does not excuse him bringing the BATTLEFIELD approach here and being a disruptive and toxic troll at FAC.
I didn't want to comment again here, but I was pinged, so I returned. I would ask that people don't ping me again please. - SchroCat (talk) 10:49, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
I can't remember if there were others, maybe it was just watching but not commenting. You're rather proving my points here! Johnbod (talk) 18:55, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
@Johnbod: My method of reviewing, which is in-depth, has been more or less invariant from: 1) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mullum Malarum/archive4 (which I opposed, but whose movie (with English sub-titles) I rented on youtube and helped with the writing of the plot; it was archived); 2) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Muhammad III of Granada/archive1 (which I opposed, thought too short, queried an medieval Andalusian Arabic poem rendered in the Classical Arabic script which I found dubious; had an expert examine it; it was promoted), 3) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Cactus wren/archive1 (in which, I was experimenting with commenting only on the lead from the perspective of a rank beginner, whose lead was substantially rewritten as a result of my input, and which I supported but only for the proportion of the article I did review; it was promoted) 4) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Horologium (constellation)/archive1 (same rank beginner idea; initially opposed, eventually supported; drew a geometric diagram, which was added to the article; it was promoted) 5) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coropuna/archive1 (same rank beginner idea; ended up rewriting the lead; the article was withdrawn by the nominator after consultation with the referees and is currently being improved on Tal:Coropuna) Then there was 6) Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/James Humphreys (pornographer)/archive1 (where too I was initially commenting about the lead (see here, but where the responses of the nominator were entirely different: from glum, to surly, to abusive.) Fowler&fowler«Talk» 21:04, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
Your reviewing techniques leave little to be desired, Fowler&fowler. Anyone here who has a spare few months to make sense of your gibberish on any of the FACs you link to will see that for themselves. CassiantoTalk 21:48, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I’m done with FAs for a long time, so I’ll make this brief: Fowler has already personalised this by being a disruptive troll on three reviews. He needs to learn how to review things properly, what some of our policies and guidelines are, and how not to be quite so arrogant, tendentious and obnoxious in reviews. Feel free to diss me in multiple venues Sandy, I really don’t give a toss. Now, I’m off out for the evening where I won’t have to worry about what idiotic comments Fowler is going to make on that review. - SchroCat (talk) 18:26, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Just as an aside, I always thought these things worked on consensus, so if one (or more) particular user(s) are against the consensus, they can be acknowledged yet not stand in the way of promotion realistically? I don't know. FAC is one of those places which takes an eternity to get anything anywhere, where super-users seem to be able to just add comments and disappear &c. It's not good right now and needs refreshing. The Rambling Man (Staying alive since 2005!) 18:38, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

I view this as a player vs. player, personal issue, not really systemic or par, and thus not for discussion here. Delegates are not parents. Ceoil (talk) 19:52, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
ps, I agree 105% with TRM: "if one (or more) particular user(s) are against the consensus, they can be acknowledged yet not stand in the way of promotion" (within limits obv, such issues generally revolve around prose and stylistic preferences). Otherwise, to all in this ego clash: big boy pants. Ceoil (talk)
Granted, I'm someone not hugely versed in the FAC process (been through it a few times but probably more by luck than judgment), but I'm not sure that's quite the case—coordinators are surely beholden to coordinating the candidacy process itself and when editors are burnt out of the process due to a pattern of tendentious reviewing, it would surely fall to those coordinating FAC to defuse the situation. In the specific situations here, it would probably be practical to draw a line under any drawn-out opposes, register that they've been heard, and assure all involved that this will be taken into consideration when judging consensus without the need to expound it into oblivion. I'm not convinced that the answer to unhelpful walls of text is more unhelpful walls of text. GRAPPLE X 20:13, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
To be fair we are talking about outliers here, but if "defusing", which involves judgement, becomes part of the role, then they are no longer delegates (a ridiculous title) per se, but directors (Raul's old title, also ridiculous). The big danger here is that we legislate for the once in a blue moon, and thus "politeness" rather than improvement or reform becomes impossible. I saw first hand how Tony1 shook this place up for the better back in 2007; his last posts here, and how he was treated last year, because of creeping entitlement, are raw in my mind. Ceoil (talk) 20:29, 8 February 2020 (UTC)
FAC doesn't work on consensus, which is why people are reluctant to oppose on fixable items. An editor who opposes promotion can usually block it. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:19, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
And that was why F&f's oppose was so wrong, especially since it wasn't based on the criteria. CassiantoTalk 21:22, 9 February 2020 (UTC)
Well yes, absolutely. But note that the criteria are frequently of little help and open to abuse:
  • "Prose is engaging and of a professional standard". Generally taken to mean that the spelling and grammar are correct, but some editors demand much more.
  • "A thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature". Generally taken to mean that RS are used, but some editors demand more recent sources, even though they contain no new information.
  • "Neutral". Frequently used to give WP:IDONTLIKEIT some teeth on contentious subjects.
  • "Stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style" has always been in tension with "neglects no major facts or details and places the subject in context". Generally taken to mean WP:Summary style, which summarise the issue as "opinions vary".
Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:31, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
"A thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" is not "Generally taken to mean that RS are used" at the basic level, and this is one of ShroCat's weaknesses. "some editors demand more recent sources, even though they contain no new information" - well yes they will, especially in history articles, and when "more recent" means "published in the last 100 years". Nominators need to realize that very few FAs can be mainly sourced to pre-WW1 sources. For some topics that means either spending time in a very good library (and for some small topics even that may not work), or sticking at GA level. In history, even when the actual basic information existing is pretty limited, and all available in very old sources, one still wants to see that modern historians a) haven't turned up anything new and b) still accept the old facts and their interpretation. Johnbod (talk) 01:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I broadly agree with Johnbod here. The writings of Georgian and Victorian era historians are useful, but they shouldn't be the only sources used. --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 18:45, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
This raises an interesting question on notability. If something was covered in great depth 150 years ago but hardly has any sources today, do we consider it as passing WP:GNG? If so, then there is no choice but to base the article on old sources.  — Amakuru (talk) 19:12, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
@Amakuru: If something has been was covered in great depth 150 years ago but hardly has any sources today, the first question has to be: why not? I.e., why aren't historians of today continuing the research? The answer, usually, is because either there's little more to be said, or because there shouldn't have been that much said in the first place. ——SN54129 19:58, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
I don't see it as a notability issue, but as potentially preventing the FA criteria being met. There's using RS, and there's "A thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" - with quite a gap between those. Johnbod (talk) 19:22, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
WP:NTEMP answers that question fairly definitively. I suppose if you drew the "old sources are primary sources" argument out to its logical conclusion, your example could fail GNG by virtue of having no secondary (that is, recent) sources... but that would be an extremely hard sell. – Juliancolton | Talk 19:36, 10 February 2020 (UTC)
@Juliancolton: I agree that WP:NTEMP wins out here, but passing WP:N and passing the FA sourcing guidelines are very different bars. For example, there are 1700s Protestant church leaders from the United States that have almost no scholarship on them post 1900. A DYK could rely on the Annals of the American Pulpit, but I don't think a FA could. --In actu (Guerillero) Parlez Moi 20:18, 10 February 2020 (UTC)

Query re: notability of a subject

One of the projects I've finally decided to pull off the backburner in life is revisiting previous failed FACs of mine to see if any of them can be salvaged for another attempt, and I was hoping to begin with the concert recording Laborintus II (album). Its FAC in 2014 featured some contention as to whether a specific live recording of a composition could have merit as its own article; the biggest roadblock at the time was a question as to whether sources had been interpreted accurately but before I commit to combing through everything inch by inch I was hoping I could a few opinions on whether notability would still be a cause for concern here. Several of the reviewers at the time are no longer active on Wikipedia for various reasons or I would have asked them directly; as is, I hope a fresh set of eyes would help indicate whether this is a windmill worth my time tilting towards. Thank you. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 15:10, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Having looked over that review it doesn't look to me that anyone argued that the work wasn't notable (the closest was Brian Boulton, who implied that it might not reach his personal threshhold of notability, but that it still met WP:N). The objection was that promoting the article while not doing so for other recordings of the same work was favouring one particular commercial entity over another. This is, I think, nonsense (and the other commenters in the discussion seem to have agreed with me): there is no rule that articles on commercially available things cannot be featured articles, and if that was a rule, there are plenty of pre-existing FAs which would arguably require de-listing. For instance 300 (film) is an FA but not The 300 Spartans and yet nobody is arguing that wikipedia is taking sides on which terrible mistelling of the Battle of Thermopylae (also, incidentally, not an FA) you should spend your money on. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:09, 12 February 2020 (UTC)
Thank you; I felt there might be some doubt over whether it was adequate to stand separately from an article on the composition itself but this is helpful. Gʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ˣ 12:52, 13 February 2020 (UTC)
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