Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria

Lead Length

Currently, Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Lead_section#Length says 250 to 400 words for most FA's. But these are just suggestions. Some articles also have considerably higher word counts for their leads. An example would be India, although its FAR was a long time ago. I wonder if we could get a more precise guideline similar to Wikipedia:Article_size#Size_guideline. Something like a table? Recommended: 250-400. Ok:400s. Acceptable:500s. Above 600:should be trimmed? Bogazicili (talk) 20:09, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

If you check that MOS talk page, you'll find a substantial discussion on that topic from not so long ago. FWIW, the size guideline is also rather controversial, as guidelines go. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 20:39, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

I'd certainly oppose adding anything. Imo many leads are too short (but some too long), & FA ones should on the whole tend to the long end of ranges. I thought the lead of Narwhal (now withdrawn) too short, which the nom disagreed with. Johnbod (talk) 22:55, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

@Johnbod:, maybe many leads are too short because the current wording ("Most featured articles have a lead length of about three paragraphs, containing 10 to 18 sentences, or 250 to 400 words") is too restrictive? I checked Earth, which went through a recent FAR. It has 575 words. So I'm guessing 500's are ok, depending on the topic. I am also asking because I recently changed the lead in Turkey. Bogazicili (talk) 23:42, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

I meant leads in general. "Most featured articles have a lead length of about three paragraphs, containing 10 to 18 sentences, or 250 to 400 words" may well be true, but unfortunately these days "Most featured articles" are on micro-topics where a short lead is justified, if not unavoidable. Johnbod (talk) 03:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Let me ask a different way. If an article has a lead with a word count in 500s, would that cause an unsuccessful FAR by itself? Bogazicili (talk) 11:31, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

The 250-400 words mentioned by MOS:LEADLENGTH is plainly descriptive rather than a recommendation, let alone a prescription; I don't get paid the coordinator big bucks to make these decisions, but I cannot see how not fitting that guideline would be considered a valid reason to oppose promotion or to delist an existing FA. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:00, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Great, thanks! Bogazicili (talk) 20:19, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion in Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)

Note that there is a proposal in Village pump regarding the consistency requirement for short and long inline citations: [1] This would concern FA criteria 2c. Bogazicili (talk) 16:13, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

Maintenance

Hi. Is there a place in the instructions to add, "FAC nominators are expected to continuously maintain articles they nominated"? I just read that yesterday at WP:FASA, about 15 years after the fact. Pardon me if I missed it. -SusanLesch (talk) 21:10, 21 March 2024 (UTC)

There is no such instruction because there is no such requirement for an article to become featured. However, an editor won't get a second star at FASA for "saving" an FA that they previously got promoted and then ignored, which what that statement at WP:FASA is trying to communicate. If you don't like the way it is worded, a discussion at WT:FASA would be more appropriate. --RL0919 (talk) 00:12, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

Capitalization of source titles

Does "consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required." require that all citations use the same capitalization style when the sources don't use the same capitalization convention? Question came up at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mount Hudson/archive1 Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

MOS:TITLECAPS says that titles of works should be given in titlecase, but with the exception that WP:Citing sources § Citation style permits the use of pre-defined, off-Wikipedia citation styles within Wikipedia, and some of these expect sentence case for certain titles (usually article and chapter titles). Title case should not be imposed on such titles under such a citation style consistently used in an article. My reading of this is that either all article titles should be in sentence case, or none should: we don't mix-and-match depending on how they are presented at the source. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:28, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

I understand that this allows us to follow subject-specific citation and bibliography styles. For example, in mathematics, the vast majority of journals use sentence case for article titles mentioned in the bibliography (and title case for journal titles). Some publishers (like the AMS) also tend to use sentence case for book titles in the bibliography, while others use title case for book titles. This is independent of the question how the source itself formats its title (unless it is in a foreign language; many foreign languages do not have a concept of title case, and usually formatting as in the source is best). The FAC criteria ask us to be internally consistent; personally, I think these MoS/consistency aspects get too much attention at FAC at the cost of actual fact/source checking (we should care far more whether an article contains one incorrect statement than a hundred incorrect dashes). —Kusma (talk) 09:10, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

personally, I think these MoS/consistency aspects get too much attention at FAC at the cost of actual fact/source checking I don't disagree with this! The problem is that it is easy to nitpick fine details of the Manual of Style (there are a lot of fiddly little rules to remember, and it doesn't require any subject-specific expertise) whereas unless you happen to have significant knowledge of the field already, it is very difficult to make substantive points about content – generally anyone bringing an article to FAC is more expert on that topic than any of the FAC reviewers!

But regardless of that, I think we agree on what the rules as currently written actually say? In which case, in the linked discussion SchroCat is in the right, and in the extreme case it would technically be valid (if silly) to oppose promotion while this is not "fixed". Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:54, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Generally, I agree with Kusma here: if an article establishes a consistent style (for example, that book titles are capitalised, and article/chapter titles are not), that's fine. It's preferable if they're following a particular named citation style, but I don't think we should police too firmly whether something is indeed the Loughborough University Arts Faculty house style (or whatever). As SchroCat says in the linked discussion, it is however not fine to simply follow what another source does -- MOS:CONFORM is the overarching principle here, I think: in stylistic matters, we adjust the formatting to match our MoS, not whichever house style an individual publication happened to use. As such, I think Caecilius is right that an article would be in error to have, for example, some articles capitalised and others uncapitalised on the grounds that that is how the publication did it (I'd note as well that lots of older articles are often printed with titles in all-caps, and that's definitely not a good move!). As Kusma says, though, foreign-language sources are a different thing, and here the MoS already tells us to follow that language's norms. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:25, 15 May 2024 (UTC)

Citations for individually authored chapters in edited books

Are citing individual chapter authors in edited books a requirement? Or is it optional? I have thought citing the entire edited book is acceptable [2], but that might not be the case [3]2.4.2? I also asked this in Citing sources talk page Bogazicili (talk) 17:23, 6 October 2024 (UTC)