Wikipedia talk:Featured articles/Proposal

Comments

Thanks for the opportunity to take an early look at this; one of my interest on Wikipedia has been trying to figure out how to improve the content-quality processes.

I don't see a name in your proposal for an article that is proposed, agreed to be good enough, but ultimately not chosen via TFA, so I'm going to call those Selected Articles. If I have it straight, the idea is WikiProjects put forward Proposed Articles, some of which make it to Selected Articles, and some of those then make it through TFA to the main page and are Featured Articles. Selected Articles can be reproposed the next quarter if they don't make it to the main page. So Selected Articles for a given quarter are the pool for TFA for the following quarter (plus a one month gap).

If you reading from the top, you will have a way to go for the full argument, but I am using Proposed Articles for those articles chosen (by the WikiProjects) as the "best in their field which havn't yet been on the Main Page" and Featured Articles for those which actually appear on the Main Page. I don't think the distinction is as important as it might seem in practice, but this is a point on which I must convince people, I admit.

I have some general comments in several areas about your idea. Rather than go in rigorous detail, it might be more productive to hit the high points and see which arguments you feel need to be addressed. So here's my first take.

1. Who actually judges whether a Proposed Article is good enough? Anybody who wants to go to the talk page of that article? What would make this a different process than today? Anyone can comment today, after all. This is really a two part question: who comments? and who makes the call on pass/fail?

   I think there are two separate calls to be made, both of them by the WikiProjects. A which is the best article in the field which has yet to appear on the main page? B is that article good enough to appear on the main page, or at least improvable in a fairly short space of time? It might be that a project doesn't feel that any of its articles are good enough for the main page – they might well not care, if they feel its more important to work on expanding stubs for example – but that is still useful information for the community as a whole.

2. I believe there's a huge range of quality in Wikiprojects. All are well-intentioned; some just have fewer active, knowledgeable and capable members than others. Are all Wikiprojects created equal with regard to the quality of the resulting projects? Or is it TFA that filters out this problem by not putting weaker Selected Articles on the main page? If so, I would be concerned that this adds a quality analysis element to TFA discussions, which is not there at present.

   Absolutely agree. TFA should not be making qulity decisions, otherwise in will simply end up as an FAC-Mk.II! TFA should be making the same sort of decisions it makes now, but working from a different set of articles.

   I think is important to responsabilise the various actors, both the WikiProjects and the "style-specialists" (for want of a better term). I don't think the WikiProjects would be propose bad articles, because that would be awful publicity for them: the projects would want to show off their best work. If there are then editors who feel strongly that an article is not fit for the main page, I think they should be politely told to "improve it then, 'cos otherwise it's probably going on the main page anyway." See also my reply to your next point.

3. It looks to me as if you're attempting to strengthen the content-expertise part of the review by giving primacy to the Wikiprojects, and making the featured article criteria secondary. But what does secondary mean? If an article is technically accurate but badly written (I'm sure you can think of good examples) then would you want to give primacy to the Wikiproject's assertion that it's correct, and ignore the weaknesses of style and presentation?

   I don't think we should ignore weaknesses in presentation, but I think these will be addressed fairly effectively in the proposed system. It's important that the projects proposals are made public on a centralised page well enough in advance (I've suggested one month) for editors to take a look at them and see if there's anything that needs improving. However, if no-one can be bothered to correct an "error of presentation", we can only assume that no-one thought it important enough! Or that it was a simple human mistake as will always occur.

   As for prose style, it is a very subjective assessment. The current FAC system lets through articles which I would reject on the basis of prose style (Toa Payoh ritual murders comes to mind as a recent example) but, at the end of the day, who am I to make that call? I think the proposed system would lead to featured articles with a variety of prose styles, as is the case with the current FAC system and as it probably should be.

4. Isn't it wasteful of reviewer effort to have Selected Articles crossed off the list at the end of the quarter, so they have to start again as a Proposed Article if they want to get to the main page?

   I assume that most WikiProjects will want to keep the same Proposed Article(s) until they appear on the main page, which is why I specifically mention the possibility in the proposal. They certainly should be forced to change them each quarter. If they want to change them each quarter, I'm not going to stop them, but I don't think I'd want to be working on a WikiProject that spent so much energy on choosing its best articles.

5. How does this connect with the phenomenon of writers who do good work who are not connected to any active Wikiprojects? I could name several who I think fall into this category, though I'd have to go check that they are really not active in any projects. But let's take me, if I can be a bit immodest; I've written a lot of featured articles, most of which would be covered by the middle ages Wikiproject. I am not a member of that project, though I've occasionally posted updates to its pages. (It's not very active.) Could I get my articles to Selected Article status? How would I do it?

   Your question raises several points, all of them important. To answer your direct question first: when WP:MA is choosing its Proposed Articles, you submit your own into the discussion and try to convince your peers that there are among the best articles in the field.

   There is also the question of "when would WP:MA be choosing their Proposed Articles?" This is actually very technical, and something that will need discussion, consensus and a certain acceptance that we probably won't get it right first time (hence mechanisms for adjustment). On the other hand, there are abundant data at WP1.0 and a body at WP:COUNCIL which already exist, so I'm optimistic that we could find a consensus system. We might also see a certain consolidation of the WikiProjects, which might be a Good Thing anyway. For the current proposal, the important points are that the system should be based in part (but not completely) on the number of articles "looked after" by a WikiProject, and that WP:TFA should be able to place articles on a wide range of subject areas on the main page.

   I must add that I think that the current FAC system is "over-individualistic", and that this is one of its greatest weaknesses. If I'm reading the statistics corectly, nearly a third of current featured articles (784/2421) have not been assessed for the importance of the subject matter by a WikiProject. Not even that the subject matter is of "Low" importance. I find that very worrying, and I think it is a serious proviso on the more extravagant claims that WP:FAC improves the encyclopedia. WP:FAC does improve the enclopedia, obviously, but does it do so in the ways that the Community wants it too?

   Finally, let's remember that we can't choose our volunteers, and all are welcome if they subscribe to our guiding principles, but I think we are justified in encouraging them (and only encouraging them, not forcing them) to work in participative structures rather than branch out on their own. Individualism is something that must be tolerated (otherwise we would be a sect), but hardly something that needs to be encouraged on WP, at least in my experience of editing here!

6. What about the many current FA writers who don't care about whether their articles get on the main page or not? Do you feel they should or should not propose their articles? I feel those who don't care about TFA would feel they had lost access to a quality imprimatur that was valuable to them. In my case (and I've heard this from others) the FA tells me I've reached a certain level; it's like a ratchet mechanism. I don't stop when I think the article is good enough; I stop when I get the article promoted. I would have nothing to strive for with regard to article quality under this system, surely?

   The loss for these editors (because it will be a loss for them) needs to be weighed up against the cost of maintaining the current FAC system. I like your phrase "a ratchet mechanism", because it seems to me that WP:FAC really has worked as a ratchet: not merely in the quality of the articles it has produced, but also in the resources it has circumscribed to produce and assess them.

   It seems to me that we are tying up (at any one time) 30–50 full-time volunteer equivalents at WP:FAC. One might say that this is not a problem if we have over 100,000 volunteer editors, but we should remember that the editors we're tying up are often (usually!) among our best editors and most committed volunteers in their given subject areas. I think it is reasonable to ask ourselves if the current FAC system really is a good use of Wikipedia's volunteer resources, or if we could get an equivalent result in a different and more productive manner.

   We should also remember the writers of high-quality articles who would rather walk barefoot over brazen embers than submit to the WikiTorture of an FAC. I know a couple of editors who I've had to convince them to allow their article to be nominated for GA, by reassuring them that the process is "nothing like FAC". The commitment required by the FA nominator is already a great imposition, and the utility of the review comments often leaves much to be desired.

7. There is already a rating scheme for WikiProjects with A class as the highest. I think the scheme originated with the editorial team assessments; I know someone who knows the history, if it's interesting. Anyway, what's the difference between a Selected Article and an A-class article? Would it be reasonable of a WikiProject to say "All our A class articles are Proposed"?

   I also know someone who knows the history: I was part of the team that developed the idea on WP:CHEMS, and showed that it was viable. Walkerma, who deserves (at least joint) credit for coming up with the idea in the first place, then took it over to WP1.0 where his work is as much a loss to the WikiChemists as a gain to the rest of the project!

   My proposal would not be viable if it were not for the work that has gone on at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment, but I think that is actually one of its strengths. The selection of articles for the main page comes out naturally as part of something else we should be doing – keeping our eye on the quality of articles within a given field – rather than needing a separate Process that ties up volonteer resources.

   To answer your specific question, I think it's reasonable to ask the WikiProjects to choose between their A-class articles. Possibly some WikiProjects would prefer to circulate their proposals through their list of A-class articles, but I hardly see that that's a problem, so long as the project realises that it may leave itself open to constructive criticism on the quality of one article or another.

I'd like to suggest that you pick whatever you think my best arguments are, rather than my weakest, in order to advance the conversation to the interesting points as quickly as possible. I think your best argument is that content is, at times, woefully under-reviewed at FAC. I don't have an answer for that one.

I think your strongest argument is the question of editors who are working outside the WikiProjects, possibly in fields where there is no WikiProject at all. I have a reply, but I will give myself a bit of time to consider my wording carefully.

The other argument, which you haven't made directly, is that my proposal would not guarantee quality in the main page article. Obviously I personally don't believe that WP:FAC guarantees quality either! But it's important to look at why. There's general consensus that the main page article should reflect the best work on Wikipedia, but "the best work" is a subjective criterion (as I mentioned above in reply to your question on prose style). Far too many editors (I don't count your good self among their number) seem to fall into the trap of thinking that, because it's a featured article, it is the best work on Wikipedia. This is a trap because it's a circular argument: how can a process determine which is the "best work" if its result is then defined to be the best work? Feedback and auditing are impossible in such a system, beacuse there are no criteria external to the system. By placing the choice in the hands of the WikiProjects you make feedback and auditing possible, because you can compare the results of the different selections against any set of external criteria you wish. You might even be able, if you have the time and the inclination, to prove that the WikiProjects apply different criteria of article quality than WP:FAC does at present. Whence the real question: would such quality criteria be less valid than those applied at present by WP:FAC? Or do we have to accept that WP:FAC is the guardian of the sole valid quality criteria for articles in an online encyclopedia?

Thanks again for the chance to look at this; I look forward to seeing your thoughts on my comments. Mike Christie (talk) 01:14, 13 February 2009 (UTC)

Short of time

I will be responding to your comments, but I'm a bit short of time for the next two or three days. I don't know how keen you are to open the discussion up to a wider audience, but I think it might be good for your chances of success if you and I can either reach agreement or at least identify where the main difficulties are going to be. I should have a bit more time starting in the evenings this week.

I'll add a comment or two now too, until I run out of time. Mike Christie (talk) 12:47, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Low activity WikiProjects

Taking your suggestion to focus on the later points, I'd like to revisit the question of editors who produce good FAs who are not allied with active WikiProjects. I haven't dug into the background of these editors in particular, to see if they have worked with WikiProjects, but of the most productive editors on the FA list I would suggest that we look at the following:

• User:Mike Christie
• User:Awadewit
• User:Mav
• User:Brianboulton
• User:Ealdgyth
• User:DrKiernan
• User:Ceoil

I make that 139 articles by six editors. Would Wikipedia have all those articles under your system? And would they be as good as they are now? And would your system produce additional good quality articles in sufficient quantity to replace them? The goal of both FAC and your proposal is to improve the encyclopedia, after all. I know you feel FAC uses its resources inefficiently to that end, but it does generate a lot of high quality articles along with the problems you allude to. (If you don't think it does generate a lot of great articles, let's talk about that next as that would really be a point of contention.)

For a specific example, I'd suggest we look at Æthelbald of Mercia, which was the first medieval history FA I wrote. I have no academic training of any kind in history, and WP:MA was unresponsive (I don't recall if I posted there asking for comments on this specific article, but if not I did post notes on some later work, without result). So I would have been hamstrung by your proposal. What happened at FAC was that one of Wikipedia's top editors, qp10qp, got interested in the article -- he had studied Anglo-Saxon history and was able to give some very good feedback. The article was much improved as a result of his comments, and though it's not my best work I am not embarrassed by it. Qp10qp is not a member of WP:MA; he mostly edits European history topics of the 15th and 16th centuries. I feel your proposal would leave me in the wilderness.

It's possible that dismantling FAC would drive some of those resources to the WikiProjects, increasing the workforce there. But there are only 20-40 people whose effort is central to FAC; there are at least fifty WikiProjects which would need to become active to take on more than a fraction of the currently nominated articles.

Perhaps there is a physical optimization model we can use as an analogy for this process. (This analogy isn't original with me; nor is it perfect, so please improve it if you can.) Think of content processes as a nozzle; the water pressure is a function of the number of nominators and the width of the nozzle is the stringency of the quality process. Tough standards lead to reduced flow but, in theory, higher quality. FAC is a single nozzle with all reviewers concentrating on one flow. Your proposal divides the flow into hundreds (at least) of pipes before the nozzle is reached; hundreds of nozzles, with variable width and variable pressure. Surely the quality will be variable too? And some pipes, like medieval history, have the nozzle closed down entirely. You can see why I'm not keen about this!

OK, I have to go work on getting my house ready to sell. I'll try to get back here later today and see what you think. Mike Christie (talk) 13:22, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Well I certainly hope you won't be left in the wilderness, even if you are selling your house! ;)

There are over 1500 WikiProjects that submit assessment data to WP1.0. If we were to ask for one high quality article from each project, we would have enough Main Page articles for more than four years! Now it's probably a good idea not to go for such a simple system of placing all WikiProjects on the same level, not least to ensure the subject-area balance of the main page article and to avoid abuse, but I can't really see us being short of articles, nor do I think we're placing an unnecessary strain on the projects. Some WikiProjects will not be producing main page articles for the forseeable future, as is the case at present.

I suspect (and hope) that my proposal would lead to a greater overall activity in the WikiProjects. I have a sneeking suspicion that several of the current "lone wolf" FA-writers will suddenly find a great interest in WikiProject activities! ;) That would be a Good Thing, to have these committed volunteers with undoubted writing skills participating in a more structured manner in the improval of Wikipedia content, even if all they did was to answer queries from less-experienced editors (and I suspect they would end up doing much more). WikiProjects scale with the growth of Wikipedia, "featured article writers" (in the sense you are referring to) don't.

Another point to look at is the position of "transversal projects". Would WikiProject Accessibility (just to take one example) have the right to propose articles for the main page? Personally, I don't see why not. We could reserve a small number of slots for such projects, maybe say five a year so that each "quarter" is divided into ninety slots for the various subject areas. Disilusioned "lone wolf" FA-writers could always set up WikiProject:Wonderful Articles on Obscure Topics (WP:WAOT, or something like that) to take advantage of such a system. But that doesn't mean that the entire system of promoting the best work on Wikipedia should be hostage to a few individual editors, however talented, who might just possibly (we don't know yet) not find their feet in a WikiProject or three.

To take your hosepipe analogy, I cannot guarantee (nobody can) that no nozzles will be closed, at least for certain periods. Ensuring that that doesn't happen will be an important point in the allocation of quotas for Proposed Articles, but I think it's a resolvable problem, and the work it would involve would be a fraction of the effort currently expended at WP:FAC. Physchim62 (talk) 14:49, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Article quality

I addressed this above, but I must admit that I have a fairly fundamental problem: I'm a chemist, and I've worked professionally in quality control, so what is obvious to me is maybe not so obvious to others. I'll have another go at expressing myself clearly.

The term "quality" is meaningless without reference to the method that determined it.

Current featured articles are "high quality" according the FAC system, but you cannot say they are objectively "high quality" because you have no objective criteria. They are only "high quality" on a system which defines featured articles to be high quality, a perniciously circular definition.

FAC attempts to get round this by producing ever more exacting criteria of the "box-ticking" type: for example "are all the references in the correct format". This is perfectly laudable in coming up with a QC system, but only if the criteria actually correspond to the criteria of the end user.

Let's take your article Æthelbald of Mercia, as it is a fairly typical FA. When I say "a typical FA", I mean that it covers a small, well-defined, often fairly obscure subject in great depth. Super, nothing wrong with that. Such articles often become featured articles because they're relatively straightforward for reviewers to check (and therefore pass). Now let's take the article Mercia, as an example of style, not quality, as it seems severely under-referenced at the moment. Imagine that the reference problem was dealt with and it came to FAC. Already, the article will have a harder time of it: it covers a much broader subject area, and some reviewers would um and arh, worrying if it were sufficiently comprehensive. But would that make it a lower quality article in terms of its value to the encyclopedia?

What – horror of horrors – if a WikiProject proposed a well-written article about a general and important subject area which had references in a whole variety of different styles. Is that necessarily a worse article than today's FAs? An FAC reviewer would turn their nose up at it, because it doesn't meet the criteria, but are the FA criteria actually the criteria of our end users? In any case, it's far easier to clean up a bunch of references than to write a good article, and pretty much any experienced editor with the inclination could do it if they felt it was important enough, regardless of their knowledge of the subject area.

Finally, let's consider what FAC lets through while it is going into its ever more meticulous examination of MoS-compliance. The non-standard grammar in Susianna Kentikian is something I've already ranted about at length, so I'll spare you any more of that one! The authors of Toa Payoh ritual murders missed out on a chance – the writing is wonderful and they could have earned good money selling it to a Sunday supplement, but is it really an appropriate style for an encyclopedia?

Then there are the FAs which are not just embarrassing but positively dangerous. One recent Main Page article named three individuals who had been arrested on suspicion of a very serious crime, then released without charge: their exact identities have no encyclopedic value, and so there's already a clear breach of WP:BLP. As the individuals concerned live in a EU jurisdiction, the Foundation could have found itself attacked by that jurisdiction's data protection authorities. I tried to get that one demoted from FA, but I was told I couldn't open an FAR while the article was on the Main Page. After all, we can't have criticism just at the time when an FA is most visible! I tried to remove the offending material, but the articles authors said that the facts were referenced and the article had passed FAC in that form so there couldn't be any problem with it! They threatened by with a three-on-one revert war, and I decided against kicking up a bigger fuss as it risked provoking just the sort of bad publicity for WP that I was trying to avoid. Such are the consequences of FAC losing sight of the larger scheme of things, and defining itself as the ultimate arbiter of article quality. Physchim62 (talk) 15:51, 14 February 2009 (UTC)

Why I like FAC

OK, I scanned the page and I didn't see this mentioned anywhere but may have missed it:

• One of the best functions of FAC is it serves for me as a reference point similar to Flagged Revisions; high traffic articles which are eroded over time can be quickly compared with a point in time where they had the broadest consensus of support (FAC). This is invaluable and I don't see this possible anywhere in this proposal. More in a sec. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:19, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Wikiproject members generally review each others' articles anyway, and the outside review of FAC is very good for picking up jargon and getting fresh eyes in a concerted push.

• Many editors of the group cited above have edited alot elsewhere on many pages across wiki; their efforts aren't solely at FAC.

• Formatting is essential as the 'pedia adopts a more polished look. Yes it is annoying and time consuming but really essential if it is to move forward as a reference work. FAC and DYK are great places to show editors the ropes and for them to generalise and smarten up other articles. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:26, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, but my opinion is that FAC is one of the processes of WP which works the best. The benefits from a concerted meat-grinder and what one learns in self-reflection are invaluable and the single most valuable thing I have learnt here. Casliber (talk · contribs) 09:23, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• Once again, thanks for taking your time to comment. Let me try to address your points first.

• It's a fallacy that Featured Articles have "broad consensus support". Consensus from whom? Those who knew about the nomination and chose to comment on it? How many editors is that for the average nomination? How "broad" is the support?
• FAC regulars notoriously review each other's nominations as well, this may be how we come to have one-fifth of Wikipedia's "very best work" was written by just ten editors last year. The difference with my proposal is that the "cuddly-group" review (which on many WikiProjects is actually pretty harsh, and I hope this proposal will persuade other projects to make sure it's serious as well) will be followed by a public period where it is admitted that there might be imperfections which ought to be sorted out before the Main Page finale. Because FAC pretends to give some sort of "objective quality" stamp at the end of the review, it is very difficult to pick up and correct faults that the review has missed.
• Wikipedia needs a polished look, that I'm happy to admit, but how polished and at what expense? More below.

• One common point I pick up from my discussions about FAC is that everyone seems to think it needs more reviewers: so do I for that matter, but how is it supposed to get them? By concentrating every more on the intricacies of the MoS? Surely not! The idea of quality which is promoted by FAC, and which has a monopoly of the Main Page slot, is becoming ever more detached from that of other editors. Maybe that is another, more politically correct reason why one-fifth of Wikipedia's "very best work" was written by just ten editors last year.
• FAC is very well set up to pick up MoS faults, or faulty links, or fair-use abuse, but is that really what the project wants keeping off its Main Page? What about serious BLP violations? What about a downright hoax? FAC simply isn't set up to catch those problems. That's why I think it needs replacing with something more inclusive, less concentrated on a single set of criteria, so that we get more eyes checking the articles which are most visible. Physchim62 (talk) 13:39, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Does this solve what you're trying to solve?

You make a very good point above about FAC not scaling but WikiProjects scaling. There have been previous proposals to get WikiProjects involved in the featured article process, partly for this reason, but more specifically to address content review, which is the other point you've made that I agree with. I'm not sure that your proposed system would improve on FAC in those areas -- I still need to understand why you think it would -- but at least we agree that those would be good problems to solve.

• :)

However, you've also made other negative comments about FAC which I'm having trouble reconciling with your proposal. You've said, for example, that an article can pass FAC and still have fundamental content problems, poor grammar, misspellings, and inappropriate tone. I agree that this can happen; I don't think it happens very often, but your essential point is that the system cannot guarantee this won't happen, and you're right about that.

What is better about your proposal in this regard? You say that if someone spots a grammatical error, they are free to fix it but cannot hold up the "Proposed Article" from becoming featured. So how is that different from FAC? If a WikiProject proposes a weak article (and we can be sure some will, even if your proposal does supply additional motivation for them to do quality work) then without intervention by volunteers the errors will carry forward to the featured article. This applies to content, grammar, MoS, spelling, tone, and so on. I would have thought your approach would allow a much larger loophole for all of these errors except content. You may have an argument that your approach would lead to fewer content errors, but in that case you'll have to forgive me for pointing out that if those same WikiProject participants were to participate in FAC, they could also verify the content there. And of course many WikiProject participants do exactly that.

• We have to be very clear that we can never have a 100% safety guarantee. At present, FAC "pretends" to review across all criteria, but in practice it doesn't. My proposal "pretends" to review across all criteria, but in practice it won't. The two seem to be at a level there. However, the key to improvement seems to be not in having more eyes checking in the same way, but to have more eyes checking in more ways. In that, I think my proposal is an improvement on the current system.

  But does your proposal really supply more eyes? You aren't magically conjuring eyes from nothing; you're referring to people in existing WikiProjects who would, you suggest, start proposing their best articles; but then each article has substantially less eyes on it. This is a bit of a sticking point for me; unless I am misunderstanding something it seems really clear to me that articles will be proposed that are at least as bad as the weakest articles that go to FAC, but there are fewer people to fix the problem, and no way to deny featured status to those articles on the basis of those problems. Am I missing something? Doesn't this mean worse articles will pass than pass now? Mike Christie (talk) 02:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

I think Mike summed it up pretty well.Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 01:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Does this solve what you're trying to solve? (bureacracy arb. break)

Another point is that FAC is bureaucratic. I take it you mean that the process is onerous for the nominators -- or are you talking about the work Sandy and Raul do? Speaking as a frequent nominator and an intermittent reviewer, at first blush your proposed approach seems rather more troublesome than FAC to me -- more pages to monitor, multiple groups to track in the areas I'm interested in, conscious searches required of me if I want to go look for interesting articles to review in areas I am not active in myself. Nominating a FAC takes me about a minute, and thereafter I do nothing but respond to comments and work on the article. Doesn't seem very bureaucratic to me. Or are you talking about the featured article criteria, with the opaque "1a" and "1b" references (as in "Oppose: 1b concerns")?

• Holding reply: I accept the valid criticism of the style! But there is (I believe) substance behind my comments. I'll reply to your other points first, then come back to this one.

Elsewhere on WP
Editor finds problem with article either
Editor fixes problem	Editor asks for help/opinions	Editor does nothing
Problem is fixed	Problem may or may not be fixed	Problem is not fixed
WP:FAC
Reviewer finds problem with article
Reviewer tells nominator to fix problem either
Nominator fixes problem	Nominator disagrees with reviewer either
Reviewer checks that problem has been fixed	Nominator can convince reviewer that here is no problem	Nominator cannot convince reviewer
		Raul or Sandy has to arbitrate
Problem is fixed	There is no problem	Usually, the nomination fails: The problem may or may not be fixed

• There are at least three senses in which FAC could be described as "bureaucratic". This is probably a style fault with the proposal as it is currently written, but I'll deal with them here as you have brought up the question.
• Firstly there is the question of the absolute resources used by WP:FAC. These are substantial, and the Community is justified in asking whether the result is worth the effort. I don't deny that it will always take a lot of work to ensure that our main page articles are of the highest quality, but is WP:FAC the best way of organising that work?
• A more literal sense of "bureaucracy" can be seen in the charts to the right, which attempt to stylise the article-improvement process at FAC and throughout the rest of WP. You will see that it takes more steps to fix a "problem" (whatever that may be) on FAC than on the rest of WP. There is an additional level of bureaucracy in Raul and Sandy having to check that the nominations are running correctly, that the desired checks have been made, etc.
• The third sense of "bureaucracy" comes from the criteria applied during the review. Of course, any reviewer can oppose a nomination for any policy- or guideline-related reason: in practice, they don't, or very rarely. The review is of the type "have the sources been checked by a sources expert? have the images been checked by an image expert? Has the style been checked by an MoS expert?" Tick, tick, tick, OK, the article can pass. And let's not hang around longer than we have to otherwise the whole system will collapse!
• I obviously feel very strongly – whether you agree with me or not! – that the current system of organizing WP:FAC conditions the quality criteria used. There is an emphasis on criteria which can be answered in a yes/no manner, to the detriment of criteria which rely on shades of opinion. I don't pretend that "shades of opinion" never come into a FAC review, but the current system does nothing to encourage them. You can take a look at the "oppose" I made on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/John Wilkes Booth this morning, to give you some idea of the comments I would like to see more of. Under my proposed system, this would become a comment on the article talk page, and I might even take it upon myself to make more of the revisions myself, knowing that they could always be reverted and discussed later if necessary. Physchim62 (talk) 09:45, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

  OK, I understand what you're driving at now. Your table doesn't reflect my own perceptions, so let's look at that for a moment. To start with, a common experience I've had is that an editor will stop by an article I'm working on and decide that it's under-referenced, or needs an infobox, or needs expansion. They add a template to say so, and move on without helping the article. Functionally, the main difference between this and the review process at FAC is that there is no deadline for a response. This is a new column in your "elsewhere" section titled "Editor tells article editors to fix problem". You're also missing a column in the FAC section titled "Reviewer fixes problem"; this is quite common, though by no means the rule.

• The diagram is only meant to be schematic. To address your point, the editor who simply leaves a tag "does nothing", and the FAC reviewer who fixes the problem themselves is "fixing the problem according to the normal WP scheme of things". With regards to that FAC reviewer, is that reviewer fixing problems on the articles where the rest of the project would like them to be fixed, or is that reviewer fixing problems on articles which have only been written to gain the star for their author(s)?

• I also don't understand what you're seeing in your system that lets you argue it would give a better outcome. Assume that the identical article is submitted to both FAC and your system, and let's assume it has a couple of minor problems in most categories -- prose, grammar, a dodgy image, a couple of poor sources, a non-optimal organization, some straying from the point, and a couple of unsourced sentences. I would argue it's the burden of the nominator (under FAC) or proposer (under your system) to get the problems fixed. If they are not fixed, then at FAC it's reasonable for the reviewers to point out the problems, but under your system they would only be fixed if readers decide to take the time to fix them. That's much more time consuming and usually would not happen.

  For myself, I have not seen the "tick, tick, tick -- OK, the article can pass" approach that you mention. Certainly image and sourcing get checked off in that way, but the result is rarely a support !vote. Those comments just verify that there's no good reason to oppose on sourcing or images, which is a useful service to other reviewers. Most (not all) comments seem to me to focus on real issues -- prose, readability, coverage and so on. If there were a "tick the box" mentality, it would surely be focused on ticking the criteria; that might not be such a bad thing, since it would indicate all criteria were checked. So I don't understand this criticism.

  It really seems to me that a core flaw in your approach is that you are scattering reviewers and hence reducing the effectiveness and coverage of reviews, while also disallowing any third party objections to promotion. Surely this can only lead to reduced quality? I'm willing to concede that there are occasional foolish objections at FAC; I've been subject to one or two at my FACs. But is the cure more painful than the disease? Mike Christie (talk) 11:49, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• I don't think I'm scattering reviewers: I prefer to think I'm going looking for reviewers in the places where they already exist. I'm asking those reviewers to do the same job that they're doing at the moment, but to be more careful about the highest levels. Why more careful at the highest levels? because if they miss something at those levels, there's no guarantee that it will be caught before the article goes on the Main Page, so they'd better be careful! There's no guarantee at present that serious problems will be caught before they get to the Main Page, as I have ranted at length, but my proposal gives an incentive to more editors to be more careful in the work they're already doing, instead of placing Main Page status in the realm of a separate body (WP:FAC) that most editors rarely deal with. Is there any guarantee that the WikiProjects will do their job? No. Is there any guarantee that WP:FAC does its job? No.

I should stop there and let you respond. Let me reiterate that I like the idea of bringing WikiProjects into the process, both for content expertise and scaling. I don't think you've got the formula right yet, though. FYI, in case you're interested, I think one previous suggestion that was made was something along the lines of accrediting certain WikiProjects, meaning that they would be given authority to evaluate an article as FA for the content-related areas -- NPOV, completeness, accuracy, source reliability and so on. I don't recall how many people really liked the idea but it was certainly mooted. In that model FAC would restrict itself specifically to style, grammar, MoS-compliance, image issues and so on. I don't think that discussion ever got as far as figuring out how accreditation could actually work, though.

• Wikipedia:Scientific peer review was formed (with quite some enthusiasm from myself, I might add) for exactly that reason. It's fairly moribund at the moment, unless something comes through the projects. No other subject areas tried the same thing, and hindsight suggests (no more than suggests) that the other subject areas were the wise ones!

-- Mike Christie (talk) 23:57, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Does this solve what you're trying to solve? (2nd arb. break)

One of the great things about FAC is that it brings together specialists in so many areas. In many of the proposed WikiProject reviews, there would be a lack of reviewers in the specialized areas—images, sources and MOS. If a 10-member WikiProject reviews an article with 110 sources and at least one fair use image, what are the chances that the WikiProject will have members who are adept at determining source reliability or knowlegeable in copyright status? Sure, they might learn quickly, but the initial drop-off in quality could be large. Also, there are always chances for bias to show through. For example, in a small WP about a foreign subject—in which the majority of editors are not native speakers, I could see articles with not-quite-professional-quality prose making it through. Dabomb87 (talk) 00:13, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Without malice, may I turn your argument on its head and say that the worse thing about FAC is that it doesn't bring together specialists from different areas? :P If you drop a note about an FAC at WT:CHEM or WT:CHEMS about a chemistry or chemicals related nomination, you can be fairly sure that one (or more) of the "duty WikiChemists" (for want of a better term) will come along and give their opinion: we're not ISO 9000 compliant, but we do try to make at least an initial response to queries within seven days! If an article comes along to FAC and you want the input of Wikipedia:WikiProject Ethiopia, you just have to hope that the "duty editor" isn't on holiday, and has the time to reply, because there's only one of him at the moment! My suggestion would allow the solitary active editor at WP:ETHIOPIA (see here for why I chose this example) to plan his work to his RL schedule, and calmly choose his best article(s).
• All of the above assumes that you know "who" to contact to get an expert opinion. At present, if no one contacts an editor knowledgeable in BLP (for example), a BLP review won't be done and the article will pass without that aspect even being considered. Does that really mean that there are no BLP problems? Of course not, it simply means that they haven't been considered in the quality assessment: maybe there are, maybe there aren't, nobody knows.
• The problem comes when you want to add on "new experts" to the system which already exists. How do you guarantee that their opinions are taken into account? Under my system, most WikiProjects would be submitting articles less than once a year, if that! Would they have a voice at today's FAC against the "regulars"? If they have no voice in what represents "Wikipedia's very best work", it would be impolite even to invite them.
• I'll stop there, I haven't addressed all the points, but I'd like to take a moment to polish the proposal ;) Physchim62 (talk) 14:29, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Sorry, I didn't address your points about sources and prose – I had WP:CHEMS things to do (our Tuesday IRC meeting), and it was my birthday! :) WkiProjects ought to have some expertise as to what are good sources in their area. I'm not suggesting that there will be a 100% guarantee, just as there isn't at the moment, but I can hardly see that as a serious criticism of the proposal. If a WikiProject has a "laissez-faire" approach to sources (or to copyright, BLP etc) in their best articles, that is a problem with the WikiProject that needs to be identified and addressed by the Community as a whole. My proposal specifically retains such tools as Wikipedia:Peer review, Wikipedia:Good articles, and of course the various transversal WikiProjects such as WikiProject Accessibility, as aids both to individual editors and to other WikiProjects.
• Nor do I see the "prose-style" issue as a serious criticism. Currently, WP:FAC lets through articles with a variety of styles, so would my proposal. At this level, it is a shade of opinion. In my essay, I cite Toa Payoh ritual murders as an example of professional-quality prose which is not appropriate (in my opinion) for an encyclopedia. Even if a WikiProject dares to face the inevitable criticism from the Community and proposes an article with un-copyedited prose, it is easier to do a copyedit than to write new encyclopedic material. Physchim62 (talk) 11:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Does this solve what you're trying to solve? (3rd arb. break)

• Fair enough. If you don't mind I'll throw in a couple of extra comments based on your last couple of paragraphs above.
• It's evident from your comments that FAC can give the appearance of a clique. I don't quite know how to prove a negative here, so I'll simply say that if there were a clique I'd think I'd be in it, and I'm not. Hence, yes, WikiProject contributors do have a voice at today's FAC if they want it. An oppose from a new contributor, with actionable reasons given, is completely valid; a support from a first time contributor would ideally be accompanied with some indication that that contributor is familiar with the criteria, but would certainly be accepted. (If you really don't believe this I will see if I can find some examples.)

• No, I'm not suggesting that WP:FAC is any more of a clique than the WikiProjects! In practice, both are a little bit cliquey (sp?) but both are reasonably good at accepting newcomers. My objection is to the idea that WP:FACr provides the only set of criteria to determine the best work on Wikipedia. New reviewers are welcome on WP:FAC if they subscribe to WP:FACr as an objective set of quality criteria, but not if they don't. To avoid confusion, when I review on WP:FAC, I do so according to the current criteria.

• Per your comment about not contacting someone for a BLP review: surely this is an argument for a centralized forum? Wouldn't it be more likely that a BLP problem would slip through your net than through FAC?

• My proposal has a "centralized forum": indeed, such a forum is an essential part of my proposal, to ensure that distinct criteria are brought to play on an article. At present, WP:FAC provides a forum but it doesn't promote its use. There are, of course, other centralized fora for discussing policy issues in relation to articles. If I were to ask for a BLP review on an article at FAC today, what would be the response of WP:BLP/N? I would imagine that their response would be to leave it to WP:FAC! What would their response be if I came to them and said I've got problems with an article and if nothing is done the article will be going on the Main Page in three weeks time? They would take the request rather more seriously!

• It sounds to me as though what you'd like to see is some certainty every featured article gets reviewed for all the criteria. If nobody specifically does a BLP check on a BLP article, it can't be featured. If nobody specifically reviews the article for image compliance with fair use and so forth, it fails. If it isn't checked for reliability of the sources, it fails. And so on. Is that close to what you're looking for? Mike Christie (talk) 02:22, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

• Not at all, such a situation is impossible! I want people with various quality criteria looking at the article. The more people we have reading the article, the more likely the serious problems will be spotted. A serious problem being a problem which a large proportion of editors think is a problem, such as copyright, BLP, spelling, grammar, etc. If an article gets on the Main Page under my proposal, but with an MoS fault, that would mean either (i) that nobody could be bothered to look for the fault; or (ii) that the fault was found but was considered inconsequential. At the moment, we have featured articles not being reviewed for faults that most editors consider more important than reference style, and other FAC nominations being refused for exactly such inconsequential style faults.

unproven assertions....

• You seem more than a bit anti-FAC.. Bad experience in the past? Article was failed, perhaps?

• I've had this sort of petty ad hominem argument before from WT:FAC regulars, so let's get this straight. I was part of a team nomination for Acetic acid, which passed; I helped out on Raney nickel, preparing it for nomination, and it passed; I've had one of my pet articles nominated three times by other people – I was only even aware of the nomination on one of those occasions, when it failed for issues unrelated to its encyclopedic content. I've also commented at other chemistry-related reviews of articles which I haven't significantly edited.
• On the other hand, it's fair to say that I'm anti-FAC. I do feel that the current system is pernicious for the project: that is an extreme viewpoint, but it's one I hold and it's one that motivates me to try to find something better. The opinion comes from reading today's featured article on a fairly regular basis, and seeing what comes out of the FAC process. It also comes from a certain tangential involvement in article assessment by WikiProjects, and seeing how the influence of FAC is diverting precious volunteer resources into marginal areas. If you believe featured articles are good simply because they're featured articles, then you need some home truths pointing out to you.

• Many of your assertions are just... assertions. Nothing more. Unproven assertions.

• WP:FAC itself is based on the unproven assertion (actually the falsifiable and falsified assertion) that featured articles "exemplify Wikipedia's very best work" (from WP:FAC), or that they are reviewed "for accuracy, neutrality, completeness, and style" (from WP:FA).

• Furthermore, you base an entire "let's abolish FAC" program on those unsupported assertions.

• Plenty of other systems would work to "abolish FAC". For example, the main page space could be taken up by a feed from Special:Random (to be representative of WP articles), or by a "featured stub" (to encourage article improvement). Instead, I am working to propose a system which respects the current criterion of exmplifying "Wikipedia's very best work", but in a 'better' way than WP:FAC. I make no apology for pointing out the weaknesses in FAC: after all, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is a very strong argument, so I have to show that FAC is at least "sub-optimal". I think those weaknesses are structural, rather than superficial, and that the only way forward is to replace FAC and not simply to amend it.

• having said that, if you can get Wikiprojects more involved in FAC, then good...

• I don't think I can get the WikiProjects more involved in the current FAC system than they already are, but it is a valid question to ask "why not?". I'll try to put a more substantial reply to this point as a response above, and in the proposal. Physchim62 (talk) 13:32, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

• Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 06:14, 17 February 2009 (UTC)
• Hi again: I wasn't being petty to point out the undercurrent of personal acrimony and in your comments. Your bitterness is evident in every section of your essay (but especially here)... Nor do I always or even usually think FAC is our best work. I have been a recurrent critic on WT:FAC, and most likely a nontrivial pain in Sandy's ass.. I am extremely aware of fan-club passes, of near-fan-club passes (fan-club plus one or two other cursory swipes), and (more significantly) of the problems that we have with extremely specialized articles (such as the more difficult math or physics articles). But I think the problem is not the fault of the system. It is always and everywhere caused by a lack of competent reviewers. I'm not saying the reviewers we have are incompetent; I'm saying we have too few.
• I'm sorry that you're so bitter, for unknown reasons. I wish you well.
• Best regards, Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 14:42, 17 February 2009 (UTC)

Judgment ability of some WikiProjects

I would question the neutrality of some WikiProjects in picking/judging main page content, especially some nation-state WikiProjects. I can think of one nation state WikiProject where none of them have ever opposed their own FAC or advocated demoting their own at FAR, even when a large part of the article is unsourced, but usually we get a large group of strong supports/keeps without even probing for any improvements. Usually there is often a large disparity between the views of WikiProject members and passerbys. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 01:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

In the same FACs/FARs, there were people from outside who were critical of the pieces of writing in question, sometimes on grounds of nationalist POV/tone among others. And in one case of FAR regarding this same project, there were ten delist recommendations, all by people from outside the nation-state and its associated ethnic group, and five keep/holds, all by people inside the nation-state or its associated ethnic group. The article was delisted and remains largely unsourced and filled with peacockery from ethnic sources, and prompted a retaliatory FAR, which did not last long at all. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 01:29, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

For similar reasons, I would be opposed to any notion of WikiProjects choosing TFAs; I'm not aware of any that vet articles well to FA standards. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:32, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

No offense, but I find this proposal ridiculous. Most projects have no assessment system; it's drive-by, random assessments. You say 1500 WikiProjects 'submit' assessment data to 1.0. I say that people are assessing their own articles and most projects are totally inactive. Example: WP:NOVELS, a WikiProject which one would think would be active, has exactly one active editor there (not me, Kevinalewis). At least WP:FAC has reviewers; how 'bout going along with the old adage of if it's not broken, don't fix it? I mean, what makes this better than what we have? What guarantees are there that this will even satisfy point #1 on your list? What guarantees that the article will be good? What guarantees that every project has a subject expert? Honestly, this will severely lower the quality of articles we have here. —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 01:48, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

For every example of a "bad" WikiProject, I can find an example of a "bad" featured article: believe me, it's easy, there are far more featured articles than there are WikiProjects! You're falling into the trap of assuming that the current process produces some sort of "absolute quality": it doesn't, it merely produces articles which pass the process. Are those the articles we want to be representing Wikipedia on it's Main Page? In many cases not, that's my opinion and I make no apologies for shouting it from the rooftops, however much that might upset the people who are most involved with the current system. Physchim62 (talk) 02:11, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

But how many of the bad FA's are from early '07 and before? —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 02:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I never said that the current crop of FAs are good/perfect, but most of the really bad ones are from 2006 and before, of which hundreds remain. Some Pulitzer-Prize winning books have quite a few errors, and they were uncorrected even 10 years later in a revised edition (I don't mean historically disputed facts about massacres but simple errors wrt military ranks etc). As I said before I encourage everyone, including you, to nominate a few at FAR, to force people to fix them or to remove them. As for your proposal, it would only end up the same way it is now, except that only the insiders would be on the judging panel. As I noted above, there have been some articles where the insiders/nationalists have voted 100% for the articles even though it was unsourced, and everyone else voted against the article. One of the insiders then went on a harassment campaign. YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

On another note, I did notice a few times (I don't read the TFA regularly) that some TFAs were displayed two years after they had been promoted, as a result being way under modern standards, as mostly they were not revamped in the intervening period. Which TFAs were you mainly worried about btw? YellowMonkey (click here to vote for world cycling's #1 model!) 02:20, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Of the three I specifically refer to in my essay, two were promoted in mid-2008 and one was only started last December 15! FAs are getting worse, not better. I did a FAC review this week, a relisting: I still had to point out grammar and spelling errors! I also pointed out material that I felt was irrelevant to the article: the nominator said that the material had only been included at the behest of a previous reviewer. It is patently obvious to me that no one at WP:FAC is actually reading these articles in the way that our users will read them: calmly and from start to finish. How do you propose to change that under the current system? Physchim62 (talk) 02:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Arb. break (quality criteria)

What FAC? I can think of several reasons for the presence of grammatical errors in a relisting. For example, perhaps the earlier nom was quickly brushed aside for obvious flaws that were larger than mere grammatical infelicities. Perhaps the errors that you saw were introduced in later revisions. And so on—coming up with further reasonable scenarios would probably not be too difficult. I'd also be interested in seeing the info you judged irrelevant. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 11:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

(ec) "obvious flaws that were larger than mere grammatical infelicities"??? If you're not careful, you end up proving my own points for me! When I worked in QC at a chemical factory, the first thing we did to any raw materials coming in or any products going out was to look at them; ask ourselves "does this look right?" It saved us a lot of pointless tests later if it failed on that simple criterion (although we still had to figure out why it didn't look right). The first step in quality control of an article should be to read it, calmly and from start to finish, just as our users are likely to be doing. Only then is there any point in going deeper into the analysis. WP:FAC is simply not reading the articles, not in the way that our users do or that I do on a fairly regular basis for TFA. That is why it is failing its quality control function, and using up a lot of resources in its failure.

As for you point about irrelevant material, if you were really interested you could quickly find my comments. But aside from that, let's look at the wider question: who's to say if I'm right or wrong? Who wins, the reviewer who wanted more material about one aspect of the subject, or me who felt that such material was irrelevant? WP:FAC does not have a satisfactory mechanism for resolving that sort of dispute; it is down to Sandy or Raul when the nomination is closed, and, even with the best will in the world, Sandy and Raul are not experts on every subject and are extremely busy people. Under my proposal, the WikiProjects win in that sort of conflict: you have to convince the subject "experts" that the material needs to go in. It's not a perfect system, but it's better than the present one. Physchim62 (talk) 12:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Physchim62, I'm finding it hard to believe that "FACs are getting worse, not better". I'm sure you can point out the three you are referring to and indicate their problems; but I can also easily find three old FAs that are far worse than three promoted in the last few months. We both know that such a small sample is not statistically useful. I know you observe FACs and I'm not dismissing your opinion, but I believe that most of the regulars at FAC are not personally invested in the idea that FAC is improving, but are making an honest judgement call. I can't dismiss their opinions either. I think if you want to convince people that FACs are getting worse you need to do something more detailed, such as taking a month of FAs from the last few months and comparing them with a month of FAs from two or three years ago. Mike Christie (talk) 12:17, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

After noting the validity of Mike's remarks, I would suggest that I am not proving your point in any way. If an article has serious problems aside from grammar, it may be failed because of those problems, and the review concluded with a friendly note saying "fix your grammar while you're at it, please." Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 12:54, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

You obviously thought the article had serious other problems: you wrote "Oppose because Wikipedia is the buffoonish Internet-culture laughingstock held up to ridicule throughout academia, and freshman-level sourcing is, like, an awesome reason why." However, that was late in the day, after the article had been at FAC for nearly three weeks non-stop (including the relisting), so you probably didn't spot the grammar problems either. Physchim62 (talk) 13:10, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Ah, was I being colorful again? Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 13:13, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

To do the experiment that Mike suggests, we would first need to agree on the criteria for "quality". The main number one problem with the current system is that people identify FAs with quality without asking themselves how that quality was (supposedly) determined. I wrote a piece for a separate discussion entitled "Grade deflation", and I think the same principles apply here, although I shall try to explain them in more detail.

1. The Manual of Style (MoS) is an internal document: we can make it as complicated as we want and we can make compliance as obligatory as we want. Neither of these objectives are without consequences for other areas of our activity. If we make MoS compliance obligatory for all articles across WP, for example, we are going to be deleting a lot of articles, with the consequent loss of goodwill from the people who spent their time writing them and also the loss a lot of content which wasn't doing anybody any harm. The MoS has become steadily more complicated over the years, as we have found new problems and wanted to record the solutions to them: with a more complicated MoS is more difficult to ensure its compliance.
2. The "quality criterion" of FAC has not changed over the years. It can be paraphrased as "complete content and complete compliance to the MoS (as well as all policies, obviously)". Yet it has become ever more difficult to ensure compliance to the MoS, both by editors and reviewers.
3. The number of people looking at featured article candidates does not seem to have changed over the years, so the same reviewer effort is going into each featured article, assuming that the reviewers four years ago worked as hard as they do now. [at this point, we can do a numerical check quite easily if necessary]
4. If one accepts that many editors view featured articles from four years ago as worse than those of today, how can that be? The effort in writing them and reviewing them seems to be the same. The only option left is that the criteria have changed.
5. How could the criteria have changed? It is facile to show that the MoS (and fair use guidelines etc.) are more complicated now than they were four years ago. So, if the same amount of effort is going into reviewing each featured article, a larger proportion of that reviewing effort is going on matters of style and a smaller proportion on the criteria of "complete content", or indeed on any content criterion one might wish to make.
6. In which case, the featured articles of today are (on average) worse by the standards of 2005 than the featured articles of 2005, simply because the weighting of the quality criteria has changed. Some articles which were deemed not-up to scratch in 2005 will now be featured articles in 2009 because we're applying different criteria. The full mathematical proof, which must take into account the non-symmetrical nature of the quality distribution, can surely wait: if you're impatient, try looking up some standard textbooks of quality analysis, which ought to include the proof.
7. However, if we accept the above without formal proof, we are left with the corollary, that articles approved in 2005 by 2005 standards must be of lower quality (on average) when compared against 2009 standards with articles approved in 2009 against 2009 standards. The reverse would be inconceivable, simply because the standards have changed.
8. To come back to the question of Wikipedia policy, have the standards changed in the right direction? Is encyclopedic content less important in 2009 than it was in 2005? What about all our problems with "fair use" images and irrelevant (when they're not simply incorrect) statements about living people? Do our current featured article criteria really reflect our notion of article quality, and are they applied in any case? These are the positive points of my proposal. Physchim62 (talk) 14:18, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

I think there are two problems with your reasoning. A fairly minor issue is that the MoS is (in the eyes of most FA writers) simply not that big a deal. As I recall, there was once an effort to form a MoS task force to address FACs that only needed MoS cleanup, since it is agreed by all (including FAC regulars) that the MoS is hard to master. Anyway, I believe the outcome was that there were no takers; or perhaps we couldn't find a candidate if we went looking. The reason (pardon me if my memory is inaccurate here) was, I think, that most articles with MoS problems have more serious problems too. And I really think that a big majority of FA writers feel that MoS complaints are the easy ones to correct; a FAC that gets only MoS objections is on the fast track to promotion. If you ever see a FAC that needs MoS fixes that are baffling the nominator, post a note to WT:FAC and I am confident help will arrive. MoS may annoy nominators, but it is the easiest problem to solve. You follow up by saying reviewing resources are being diverted into MoS critiques; that hasn't happened on my FACs, but even if that's true I would be astonished to discover that it was causing an increased number of failed promotions.

I glad to see we seem to agree that, while important, MoS-compliance is not the practical problem for ensuring a high quality of TFAs.

Agreed. It seems to me we agree on quite a few things. Mike Christie (talk) 12:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

More importantly, I don't think your argument in points 4 to 6 goes through as you have it. I understand that a different distribution of validation effort caused by modified criteria will change what passes through the filter, but even if you assume that the increased complexity of MoS is matched by an increased allocation of effort in validating MoS (not a given) there is another problem, which is that standards depend on the quality of the reviewer as well as on the criteria used to do the review. I don't think you can measure the effort by wordcount at FAC, and even if you could measure it the value isn't directly associated with the effort. You argue for "the only option left" at one point, but isn't it also possible that there are now more reviewers insisting on reliable sources, clear prose, and complete coverage? My point is not that this is the case (though it may be), only that your conclusion seems too sweeping given the data.

I said "the only option left is that the criteria have changed." You don't have to subscribe to the "strong" version of my argument – that the criteria have changed in such a way as to make current FAs worse than those in past years – to agree that the criteria have changed. Indeed, anyone who claims that current FAs are better than those of previous eras is implicitly saying that the criteria for promotion have changed, at least in their practical application.

Again, agreed. It's the "practical application" that has changed; perhaps FAs are now better because we're checking the important criteria more rigorously, despite the "unimportant" MoS having expanded more than the other criteria. Mike Christie (talk) 12:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

For what it's worth, my own impression that FAs are better now than they used to be is gained from periodic looks at interesting FA subjects on the FA page. I have sometimes noticed that an article seems a bit weak, or incomplete, or otherwise falls short of the best I've seen; in such cases my impression is it's more often an old FA than a new one.

I wonder if we are going about this debate the wrong way. You're arguing from your data to a conclusion, and I'm disagreeing with your conclusion and searching my data/experience for material to rebut you with. Should we instead by debating your data, not your conclusions? For example, your comment that FAs are worse now than before; or that MoS-focused criticism is prevalent? We can't be expected to agree on conclusions until we agree on the data. Mike Christie (talk) 01:53, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

To look at the data, we would first need to agree a set of quality critera! In what way are your criteria more valid than mine? Or mine more valid than yours for that matter? It is a fundamental problem with WP:FAC – an insoluble one in the current system, IMHO – that it pretends to be some sort of "gold standard" of absolute quality.

Article quality is a little bit like real life: most people would agree with what is "bad", but you will have as many opinions as to what is "good" as there are people you ask. If been very careful not to pretend that my proposal would produce "better" articles, because "better" is in the eye of the beholder. Physchim62 (talk) 10:29, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Your comment that FAC "pretends to be some sort of 'gold standard' of absolute quality" doesn't match my experience. To fit that into my comment about conclusions vs. data, I'd say that's a conclusion; the data there are the expressed opinions of those who frequent FAC. You say we can't gather data without agreeing on quality standards, but here we're just looking at opinions. So if you were to ask, I think you'd find most FAC regulars would say that it's not any kind of absolute standard; instead it's just a heuristically discovered and locally optimized set of criteria. Using that metaphor I see you as claiming it is only locally optimized and that global optimization requires a large change. That's perfectly reasonable and I think most FAC regulars would accept it as theoretically possible -- which they wouldn't if they did indeed think of FAC as an absolute standard. Mike Christie (talk) 12:32, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't share your optimism as to to the ability of self-criticism of the "FAC regulars", let alone as to the opinion of the FAC process among editors who are only rarely involved in it. I don't want to pick on SandyGeorgia in particular, but his quotes were the easiest to find. He said above "I'm not aware of any that vet articles well to FA standards", implying that FAC standards are objectively the ones to aim for. Also, in the Signpost "Featured articles (FA) recognize Wikipedia's best work on the main page and serve as a model for Wikipedia's articles." implying that FAC represents "Wikipedia's best work" and that it should serve as a role model. I think the "gold standard" quote comes from YellowMonkey, but I can't immediately find the diff so apologies to all concerned if I'm wrong. The idea that FAs represent Wikipedia's "very best work" is also omnipresent in any of the pages or templates that deal with featured articles. How is this so if, as you admit, FAC only represents a local standard? Why should FAC's local standards and practices have the monopoly of what goes on the Main Page?

Let's look at how FAC only constitutes a local standard. On issues of image copyright, it only requires that articles follow the "hard policy" at WP:NFCC, an approach I shall call "minimalist" without any derogatory sense to the term. On the other hand, with regards to sourcing, FAC practice goes far beyond what is required by policy at WP:V: this is an approach I shall call "maximalist". Why should FAC process adopt a minimalist approach to image copyright and a maximalist approach to sourcing? Wouldn't the opposite approach be equally valid? Who is to choose? And why should that choice have a monopoly over main page space?

Before anyone says that FAC should adopt a maximalist approach to all criteria, as it pretends to do at the moment, we should look at the evidence that it is perfectly able to ignore the most basic rules of grammar in claiming that a particular article satisfies "professional standards of prose". My conclusion: FAC cannot look at everything, at least not in the way that it is structured at the moment. I won't even address that problem here within the current structure: I shall leave it for those who wish to conserve WP:FAC as it is. I shall only note that if FAC is incapable of finding grammatical errors, it is also incapable of finding errors which would be much worse. That is the price it pays for pretending to review every criterion all at once and then giving a single "seal of approval". Physchim62 (talk) 14:23, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Comment on the "big idea" of the proposal.

I thought about this for the last day or two, and I just have to express that I think it's a fundamentally a very bad idea to shift power to WikiProjects as far as FAC is concerned. There are very few projects capable of objectively reviewing their own work as far as content goes, and those who do tend to be the specialized/"experty" WikiProjects (usually sciences and related fields like PHYS, CHEM, MATH, etc...). I know I wouldn't trust Wikipedia:WikiProject Barack Obama to be judge, jury, and executionner (I don't mean to single them out because they aren't capable of being objective, it's just that the nature of that particular Wikiproject makes it especially prone to groupthink/bias/POVpushing/etc...). But, and I'm speaking from experience here, what the "experty" projects tend to to is that they usually forget that not everyone knows what Second-Order Perturbation Theory is. We need "regular folks" to review our stuff to make sure that non-experts can understand it. There is also issues with images (freeuse/copyright/...) and MOS compliance which very rarely (if ever) gets picked up before an article reaches FAC.

By "shifting power" to Wikiprojects you are, IMO, simply removing the reviewing process in its entirety. Wikiprojects can and do review their own work. Saying that Wikprojects should do their own FAC-like review removes the entire point of having an FAC-like review. On the experty projects, you have expert comments, but few general comments. On general projects you have general comments but few expert comments. If WP:CHEMS submits an article to FAC, it's not because they want WP:CHEMS to review it a second time. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 12:40, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you on this and other points, but I was dragged out of the office for a couple of days (to Majorca, it could have been much worse!).

I'm not removing the general reviewing process in its entirety at all – indeed I'm making it at least four times longer than at present – and I'm certainly not suggesting that the projects do their review in the same manner as WP:FAC works at present. At present, if WP:CHEMS submits an article to FAC, it's because it wants it to appear on the main page, not because it thinks that FAC will improve the article in any significant way. It may well be that FAC will find some faults that WP:CHEMS missed, but the time involved in a FAC nomination would be far better spent (for WP:CHEMS) improving other articles about chemicals were it not for the fact that FAC has a monopoly over the main page slot. You run into the law of diminishing returns: the last leg of article "improvement" takes much more work by many more editors than each of the previous steps, and the resulting "improvement" is less clear, more subjective. At some point you have to say stop.

At WP:CHEMS, we made a conscious and collegiate decision in 2005 that our objective was not to get articles up to FA-standard (whatever that might be), but simply up to A-class. Of course, editor vanity ensures that a few articles go on to FAC anyway, and there are several editors at WP:CHEMS (myself included) who will help these articles along their way.

I'll come back to some of these points below when I try to explain why simply adding a WikiProject phase onto the current FAC process is sub-optimal. In the meantime, I'd like to address the "WikiProject Barack Obama" point. I don't know which is worse, the fact that we have a WikiProject Barack Obama or the fact that it has over 200 articles assessed! But, on the current statistics and if that project chose to "go it alone" instead of clubbing together with other projects, it would receive a main page slot about once every thirty years… I think that is probably enough time to cope with any quality control issues. At the moment, individual editors working outside the WikiProjects can get an article from literally zero (new start) to FA in a month: nobody seems to worry about that, yet it suggests that very few people are actually reading the article before it goes to the main page. Indeed, I think that the simple errors which appear on the main page and in some FAC reviews are a sign that even WP:FAC is not reading the articles in the way that would be recommendable: calmly, and trying to place oneself in the position of the user rather than that of the editor. Physchim62 (talk) 10:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your [Headbomb's] conclusions, but I'd like to suggest a modification. When an editor working on a WP:CHEMS article submits it to FAC, you're right that it's not because they want another WP:CHEMS review. However, neither may they be expecting a review in which chemistry illiterates such as myself are given free rein (within the bounds of WP:FACR) to criticize the article. More likely they are hoping that what FAC does is award their article recognition as a fine piece of work. Acid dissociation constant seemed to me to suffer from this problem; from a chemist's point of view there was little to improve about the article, but at least one editor was astonished and discouraged by the need to work with people who did not understand the subject matter. Mike Christie (talk) 14:04, 21 February 2009 (UTC)

I reviewed that article, and I'm aware of what happened during it. Most reviewers (myself included) felt the article, which is on a rather simple topic, was completely unaccessible to non-chemists. And we ALL agreed that we did not want to see it the article writing for Aunt Jenny's knitting circle. Many of us reviewers came from technical and scientific backgrounds. So when we, who are mathematically and technically inclined, can't start to grasp the basics of what is being said, then there is a problem with the article. The nominator then unfortunately started to pretty much insult the reviewers for not knowing the subject inside and out instead of saying "alright, I'll try to clarify the explanations". There was a LOT of good will that went into reviewing this article. But at the end of the day, when a master's student in physics, well versed in mathematics and unscared of WP:JARGON like me can't understand even the "main ideas" of an article on a topic like acid dissociation, even after multiple reads, there's an accessibility problem. As sandy said, "[I]t was a particular problem with that particular article". Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

One of the problems with the Acid dissociation constant nominations is that the article didn't come up through WP:CHEMISTRY. It was barely on our radar until just before the nomination, and that is the fault of WP:CHM and no one else. There were various problems with the article – there were discussions on the scientific content going on parallel to the FAC reviews, for example – and at least some of those could have been sorted out at project level.

Note for those confused by Wikronyms: WP:CHEMISTRY (WP:CHEM) and WP:CHEMICALS (WP:CHEMS) are two separate projects, although with a very similar membership. The split is for organizational reasons, as chemical compounds form a large group of articles with very similar editing problems whereas the rest of chemistry forms a similarly sized group of articles with much more diverse editing challenges.

On the other hand, my experience of the reviews was not one of editors trying to cooperate to improve the article, but rather of several FAC reviewers (not all) trying to impose their personal ideas without any self-criticsm as to whether they actually improved the article or not. The debate as to whether we could use the word "to" to express a page range in a work with an idiosyncratic page numbering style was particularly memorable is this respect.

As for the prose, unfortunately far to many people shared Headbomb's innocent misconception that it is "a rather simple topic": it isn't! As a result, they felt they were capable of rewriting carefully crafted sentences while not actually understanding what they were writing about. The result was that the article was in danger of being made worse by going through FAC rather than better.

In short, it did seem like we were being asked to write for "Aunt Jenny's knitting circle" – a very good description of WP:FAC, given that one-fifth of FAs are written by just ten editors – rather than to produce a comprehensive encyclopedic article of a difficult but important subject. I'm certainly not the only one to hold that impression of FAC, and it's hardly surprising that so many editors just say "well sod you then" to the whole system. Physchim62 (talk) 10:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

I think it's worth looking at the individual opposes at the second FAC for acid dissociation constant.

• GrahamColm. Opposed on prose. I believe Graham is a professional scientist, judging by his user page; he has written FAs on scientific topics such as virus.
• Vassyana. Opposed on clarity grounds; said it was a "ground-level chemistry topic" and added "I know what the article is about and have some familiarity with it".
• TimVickers did not oppose but I mention him because his edits were withdrawn after they caused Physchim62 to temporarily oppose on the grounds of inaccuracy. He declined to edit the article after that, and I can't really blame him. He is a professional biochemist.
• Headbomb opposed on clarity. He's a master's student in physics who started in chemistry.
• Vb opposed on clarity. A Belgian physicist.
• Jorfer opposed on accessibility and comprehensiveness. A chemistry education student.
• Arnoutf opposed on clarity but struck the oppose for lack of time to review the article. No chemistry education past high school; Ph.D. in social sciences.
• Proteins opposed on multiple grounds. Professor in the department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan.
• Geometry guy opposed on clarity and accessibility. I believe Geometry guy is a professional mathematician.

I would not call this Aunt Jennie's knitting circle, and to say that the nominators felt as though they were being asked to dumb it down to that level seems to me not a problem caused by the reviewers, who were generally (not universally) polite, detailed, knowledgeable, and specific. I've no doubt that the nominators know more chemistry than the reviewers, but since the seven opposes that stood included four professional scientists, and two more came from university students with a background in the topic, I don't think it's useful to dismiss them as uninformed. If this group (which includes some of the most helpfully-inclined people on Wikipedia) cannot be convinced of the clarity of the prose I find it hard to see why their opinion should be discounted. I supported as I found the prose comprehensible, though hard work (I am no chemist). However, when writers as good as these argue for improvements I am inclined to believe improvement is possible.

A further point: none of these objections to the article acquiring featured status could be circumvented by abolishing FAC. Any of these editors could still go to whatever nomination process page existed and complain about clarity, which is too basic a criterion to be simply a FAC-specific critique. (Unless you hope they wouldn't notice such a nomination under the new system, which would be an unworthy thought on your part.) It seems to me the nature of a Wiki that anyone can comment at any time. Your objections seem to be to the reviewers, not to FAC; and your response doesn't seem to accurately describe the nature of their opposes. Mike Christie (talk) 12:00, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

We should probably paste a copy of this particular discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Featured articles/Science FAC symposium when we're finished! I'm sorry that so many people had to be told that a subject that they probably hadn't thought about since freshman year was more complicated than they thought it was. So be it. I can only cringe at what they would have thought of the discussion at Talk:Acid dissociation constant/Archive 1#Equilibrium constant and the related threads. None of this answers the question as to why being accurate about the science (and the currently accepted external criteria for describing it) is less important than being accurate about the exact format of a single reference. Physchim62 (talk) 13:09, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

It is also interested to see that a recurring theme at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Featured articles/Science FAC symposium is that Science-related (or otherwise expert-y) Wikiprojects seems to considers that one of the biggest problem is the lack of NON-EXPERT reviews, and seems to be mentionned more times than a lack of expert-reviewers. The reason for this is probably that since these article are technical in nature, you have to be technically proficient/knowledgable to have improved the article near FA status in the first place. When a liberal arts major brings Leptons or Seismology to near-FA status, then I'll agree that we have an expert problem at FAC (not to bash on liberal arts major). In fact one of the biggest problems at FAC would be, IMO, the lack of critical eyes on non-expert topics since ANYONE can bring these to near-FA status. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 02:15, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Replacement vs. additional process

Apart from the fact I can see problems with small WikiProjects not able to handle the work, there are also larger projects who can't review objectively or articles that don't even fall within an existing WikiProject. I'd rather see this proposal as an additional system rather than one to replace the current method. - Mgm|^(talk) 09:12, 23 February 2009 (UTC)

I am vehemently opposed to this proposal if it would replace the current FAC process. I am only slightly opposed if it is additional. My biggest problem is that you put too much faith into Wikiprojects. A large majority of them simply are too small, not active enough, or not centralized enough. I would see one or two project regulars making the decisions in many cases, or none would be made at all. Many projects have large lists of members, but very few of them actually visit the project page often or are active in that topic or even at all. I find FAC to be an excellent and thorough (sometimes too difficult and thorough) way for articles to be peer reviewed to be recognized as Wikipedia's best articles. None of the objections given on this page stand up to me at all. Reywas92^Talk 01:25, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Totally agree with Reywas92. Too much faith and responsibility to the Wikiprojects. I don't see too much wrong with FAC in the first place. It drives me nuts when people oppose because of prose (instead of fixing it themselves) or comment only on technicalities (MOS, format, etc.), not on actual content. But I don't see how any of that would be fixed by this proposal. Renata (talk) 02:32, 24 February 2009 (UTC)

Late to the party

I'm (very) late to the party here. Sorry. I'm confused on several counts. First, are we here to discuss selecting articles for Main Page, or here to discuss FA/FAC? They're two different things, but they've been conflated here. Yes, they're connected in that only FAs will appear on Main Page, but discussion of how Raul and Sandy ascertain what goes on the Main Page doesn't belong here and isn't relevant to a discussion of FAC.

Next. The "Problems with FAC" which are presented as fact are highly arguable. I for one do not believe that FAC is perfect or above criticism, but of the 5 bullet points presented, I have serious issues with the accuracy of all five of them.

And that's before I start looking at the detail of the proposal, which seems obsessed with the 'selection for Main Page' issue - which is, as I say, merely a tangential result of FAC.

Perhaps I'm offbeam with my comments. I've read the Proposal at speed and with considerable head-scratching. --Dweller (talk) 13:24, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Firstly, welcome to the party! You're not late but early, as the proposal is still a draft.

Of the "Problems with FAC", yes they are highly arguable, each of them. However I really don't want to spend more time than is necessary criticizing my fellow editors. The proposal is meant to be positive, to offer a solution rather than to be blind criticism.

As to the "selection for the Main Page" issue, what else does FAC do? It awards little Brownie points for writing articles which comply with its standards. Fine, but barnstars could do that as well. The Main Page article is important, overall quality is important, but does the current system of WP:FAC get us the results that we would expect from the resources it takes up and from its very own pretensions? Physchim62 (talk) 14:10, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Short answer: yes. —Ed 17 ^{(Talk / Contribs)} 14:23, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Short answer "No", otherwise you wouldn't even bother to reply, nor would people bother to reply to my "featured crud" posts at WT:FAC. There's a problem with WP:FAC that lots of people will admit to; I have proposed a solution, but many people don't like it. Fine. Is WP:FAC just going to stay with it's head in the sand, knowing there's a problem but hoping it will go away? Physchim62 (talk) 14:52, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Hi Physchim. It seems perceive the function of FAs/FAC very differently to the way you do. The Main Page appearance is very nice and all that, but as far as I'm concerned, it's a very low priority issue regarding FAs. If Main Page were permanently replaced with a big banner that says "Welcome to Wikipedia, the encyclopedia anyone can edit" with a search box and nothing else, I'd still see the same need and the same level of importance of FAs and FACs. For me, when an editor sees the bronze star, or navigates one of our lists of Featured material, they can be reassured that the article has been adjudged as very high quality. If they know a bit more about how Wikipedia works, they'll know that it's been assessed against the background of WIAFA. Now, it's probably true that sometimes articles pass that should not, and it's also probably true that sometimes some do not pass that should, but on the whole, the bronze star is our kitemark. Your proposal entirely ignores this and focuses on something else altogether. I'm happy for you to propose revisions to the ways we choose Main Page material (heaven knows, we've not perfected this, despite wonderful efforts by Raul and Sandy) but this page is in the wrong place and the headings (replace FAC) entirely misplaced. If your issue is selection of articles for Main Page, start a debate focussed on that at WT:TFA or Talk:Main Page or at the VP. As it is, you're seemingly proposing the replacement of FAC by something that's not about article quality. --Dweller (talk) 14:34, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

Just to add a note of agreement here: I also wouldn't care if FA were disconnected from TFA. I don't really care about TFA and would continue to work on my FAs. I think many FA writers feel the same way. We don't dislike TFA, it's just not what all of us work for. Mike Christie (talk) 02:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Interesting idea. I would have no objection to FAC warping itself into a transversal WikiProject, let's call it WikiProject Great articles for the sake of argument, so long as it were clear that its criteria were internal to the project itself and – especially – so long as it didn't enjoy FAC's current monopoly of providing the raw material for TFAs. Physchim62 (talk) 02:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Well, I don't think that would be a warping -- I can't see that would be any change to FAC at all. That's exactly what it is already. It's TFA that picks the main page article, not FAC. It may be that TFA and featured articles in general were conceived together; I don't know enough of the history to say. I'd thought your disagreement was with the quality of FAC's output, but if it's with the main page articles then I would say your target is TFA and not FAC. Mike Christie (talk) 10:08, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

To reply further to Dweller, yes, the bronze star maens that an article has been "adjudged as very high quality": but that's all it means! It doesn't mean that it's any better (or any worse) than an article without the star. I could have a British Standard kitemarked lightbulb, but it wouldn't be much good for toasting bread! Nor would a kitemarked toaster get me to work in the morning! I see an awful lot of effort going into trying to ensure that FAs represent Wikipedia's "very best work"; but then an awful lot of effort went into seeking the Holy Grail as well – I'm minded to suspect that FAC in its current form will have about as much success as the Arthurian Knights and their medieval successors. Physchim62 (talk) 03:07, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I don't follow this. In this case, one article has been "adjudged as very high quality", while other articles have not. What else is an article going to do but inform the reader? You're comparing light sockets and toasters, when articles are articles. Either the community features the best quality work, or it does not. I tend to see FAC somewhat like democracy, which cynically is nothing but a string of failures, but it's better than all the other systems. --Moni3 (talk) 13:18, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

I also don't view these Problems with FAC the same way. In order for anything to be fixed, I think it's necessary for people to agree what the problems are before coming to a solution. I think there is room for improvement in any system, but that any system that replaces the old will have weaknesses as well. We just have to decide if the weaknesses we're dealing with now are sufferable. If not, then we have to decide what weaknesses there will be with a new system, and if our current ones are more bearable than our future ones. --Moni3 (talk) 15:09, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea of the WikiProjects playing more of a role in selection of TFA, but am afraid that that gem will be lost in the dustcloud raised by seemingly proposing ditching the whole of the FAC process. Physchim, why don't you start a thread at WT:TFA on that issue? There's obvious drawbacks (like the inactivity of most WikiProjects) but it does have good value. --Dweller (talk) 15:12, 25 February 2009 (UTC)

That's a risk, yes, but not one I'm too worried about. I'm already glad that this proposal has started people actually talking more widely about the problems (real or perceived) of the current system: that has to be a Good Thing. Physchim62 (talk) 02:39, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

My thoughts

I think the proposal is a bit unclear. The text seems to consider "Proposed Articles" and "Featured Articles" synonyms. When exactly is the article considered "featured"? Is it when the WikiProject selects it or when it actually appears on the main page? If the latter, wouldn't TFA then evolve into the current version of FAC? This wouldn't really solve anything, and would just increase the bureaucracy of the process with the added hoops (in the case of many inactive WikiProjects, menial and meaningless hoops) to jump through. If the former, here are my thoughts on your proposal (measuring it against your goals):

• "should offer a reasonable guarantee that the article representing Wikipedia on the main page would be described by most editors as good;"
  • I don't see how a WikiProject-oriented process meets this goal. Your proposed process would just ensure that most of the editors that a) belong to the particular WikiProject(s) that oversee(s) the article and b) actively participate in the selection process for that WikiProject would describe the article as good. There's little mention of what non-WikiProject members can do if they spot deficiencies in an article other than "improve it". How does your proposal resolve your issue of "featured crud" with grammatical problems?
• "should have wide participation, including, where possible, editors with specialist knowledge in the subject area of the article in question;"
  • The proposal certainly does not meet the "wide participation" requirement. I'd much rather have a process where everyone can participate in judging the article rather than just a few editors of a WikiProject. The proposal might help get more specialist eyes on an article, but in all honesty, I don't see it improving much on the process today. The articles that have plenty of specialists (i.e. the sciences) that can comment on them already largely do so, either prior to FAC or at the FAC. The problem at Wikipedia is that there are too few specialist eyes to begin with in many areas (say, humanities); no process is going to resolve this problem.
• "should ensure that all the subject areas covered by Wikipedia are reasonably represented among the articles which are featured on the main page;"
  • Large WikiProjects will continue to have an advantage and be overrepresented with this proposal. In fact, with the added bureaucracy that WikiProjects must implement, the proposal will probably give even more of an advantage to large, smoothly-running WikiProjects.
• "should promote discussion and collaboration between editors and the general improvement of Wikipedia content."
  • Well, I guess so, although so does the current FAC. I would argue that the proposal would move discussion and collaboration to mostly between editors of the various WikiProjects. BuddingJournalist 17:03, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Refuting your "problems" with FAC

• FAC doesn't guarantee that Featured Articles are "good" by any normal definition of the term. FAC doesn't, for example, guarantee that Featured Articles are pertinent, useful, complete, factually accurate, well written or even grammatically correct. The only thing that FAC guarantees is that Featured Articles have passed FAC.

• Unless an article is pertinent, useful, complete, factually accurate, well written and grammatically correct it won't pass FAC. This is like saying that people who pass a maths test aren't good at maths, even though it's not possible to pass the test without being good at maths.

• Featured Articles do not and cannot represent "the very best work on Wikipedia", as Featured Articles are only selected from among the tiny subset of articles which are nominated at FAC. Featured Articles, therefore, represent the very best work which has been nominated at FAC, and some would argue even with that.

• Our very best work gets nominated at FAC. An article that hasn't been written completely single editor or small group of determined editors, but has been built up by casual drive-by addings of various people will not represent our best work. It just doesn't happen.

• FAC placed a great burden – some would say an unreasonable burden – on the article nominator: for this reason, it is unusual to have articles nominated by editors who haven't already been highly involved with writing the article.

• True but can easily be corrected simply by reviewers being nicer and more helpful. It's nowhere near as bad as RFA (And certainly more bearable than speedy deleting which usually gathers loads of complaints to one's talk page).

• FAC is bureaucratic, tying up the full-time equivalent of 30–50 volunteers at any one time.

• "Tying up"? What do you suppose they'd be doing if they weren't reviewing? Nothing. We can't order people around. besides your system doesn't change this.

• FAC encourages the idea that editors own the articles they write.

• There is a huge difference between closely watching an article and reverting all edits saying that I wrote this page. It doesn't encourage ownership.

I would also like to say that this doesn't improve articles, rather bad articles will simply be rejected as nobody will bother improving another's articles at FAC (As with the current one).--Patton^t/c 21:43, 28 February 2009 (UTC)