Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/New steps to FA

Steps to FA

Some ideas for discussion.

There are a number of problems surrounding the FAC and Peer Review process for new nominators:

1. Moving an article through from Peer review to FAC review can be a big leap, as the FAC process is generally more rigorous and can be a bit of shock to first time nominees.
2. Peer reviews requests often receive little feedback
3. Peer reviews are used for a variety of purposes (not just for attempts to get an article to FA status)
4. Peer review is sometimes skipped entirely and the FAC review used as a high level peer review
5. Individual WikiProjects run their own peer review processes

Recently a second review Requests for feedback has been proposed to deal with requests for review at a level below that of Featured Article candidates.

Remember, RFF is intended for new articles where the majority of content was contributed by a single editor. For example, if you check Google Groups and Homerun (film), although the articles have undergone many revisions, over 90% of the content is contributed by me. Just as Good Articles is designed to be more friendly to short articles, Requests for feedback is designed to be friendly to new editors. Besides being an article development process, where we can point out and fix any loopholes in the article (such as lack of references), RFF is also an editor development process, as the feedback is intended to help the editor learn their strengths and weaknesses and therefore improve their editing skills. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:14, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that the vast majority of editors requesting feedback from RFF will be new (or inexperienced) editors and the articles either brand new or substantially new. There is perhaps a gap where somebody may request feedback on an article they are "thinking" of improving, but these will be the minority and can be dealt with on a case by case basis. Yomangani 13:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

The following proposals attempt to address the problem of "smoothing the hump" between Peer review and FAC (to a level where some consensus may be reached). Note: these proposal include use of Requests for feedback which is not yet an official process.

Infobox

Proposal for revision to the info box shown on the Wikipedia:Peer Review page. The intention of this change is to remove the air of apparent ease surrounding the path to FA status.

The path to a featured article

1. Start a new article
2. Research and write a great article
3. Check against the featured article criteria
4. Apply for GA status
   1. Get creative feedback for GA status from the relevant project (or Requests for feedback)
   2. Review and edit your article in light of the feedback
   3. Apply for GA status
   4. GA status
5. Get creative feedback for FA status from the relevant project (or general peer review) ←
6. Review and edit your article in light of the feedback
7. Apply for featured article status
8. Review and edit your article in light of the comments made by the reviewers
9. Featured articles

Imoeng, I moved your comment up here to the relevant section, hope you don't mind Yomangani 13:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to comment on the path list. My opinion is, the whole list is optional, I mean, an editor doesn't have to go through those processes if he/she can make it all the way to the Featured Article process. So, I'd say delete the "Optional" thing and simply put it as a process. And right now, I still believe all the feedback pages have different scale, so its like

1. WP:RFF (for newcomers and new articles)
2. WP:PR
3. WP:GA
4. WP:FAC

Based on this, it is very recommended that the editor should go through each step one by one, although the editor has full power to select which process he/she is on at a particular moment. Another problem is WP:RFF and its "newcomers and new article status". It is quite hard to explain that category on the list. Cheers everyone -- Imoeng 12:25, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I've altered the steps as you proposed, as all the stages are indeed optional, but I think your ascending order of stringency is wrong: it should be RFF,GA,PR,FAC. Yomangani 13:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Of course I don't mind. Oh, yeah, thats right, so RFF is for GA and PR is for FAC. It should be alright, I reckon. Cheers -- Imoeng 08:00, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I definitely support this change to the path list. I've always thought it a little short. However, we just need to be sure to provide a stipulation that emphasises that paths 4-6 are optional. The revision is a good idea, so kudos to those behind it. Ryu Kaze 23:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I originally had "Optional" in front of step 4, but, as Imeong pointed out, most of the steps are optional. It doesn't say that any steps are mandatory. Since experienced editors are likely to ignore the infobox anyway, it would only be first time nominators that would be likely to follow it and it won't do any harm to encourage (not force) them to go through a slightly more rigourous process. That said, I don't have particularly strong feelings either way. Yomangani 23:44, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This is what I'm now proposing to update Steps box: The path to a featured article

1. Start a new article
2. Research and write a great article
3. Check against the featured article criteria
4. Get creative feedback for FA status from the relevant project (or general peer review) ←
5. Review and edit your article in light of the feedback
6. Apply for featured article status
7. Review and edit your article in light of the comments made by the reviewers
8. Featured article status

(Steps 4 and 5 are optional but recommended) If nobody objects I'll synchronize it with Ryu Kaze's changes to the FA info. Yomangani^talk 23:41, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't think the indentation alone emphasises the optional nature of GA. I think there should just be a little note beside of GA that says "(optional)", as you thought about doing before. Those who are unfamiliar with the process might believe it's protocal to go through GA first, and we want this to be as accessible as possible to the uninitiated. Otherwise it looks and sounds fine to me. Ryu Kaze 00:14, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Explanation of FAC review process

New nominators need to know what to expect from the FAC review, so there needs to be a more in-depth explanation of the process either on the Featured Article Candidates page or linked to it. A couple of pages that attempt to do that are WP:REVIEW and User:Jengod/Some_common_objections_to_featured_status_and_how_to_avoid_them

I've added a more thorough explanation now to Featured Article Candidates per your comments on WP talk:REVIEW. Ryu Kaze 23:06, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Relisting peer reviews during peer review

In order for editors to receive as much feedback as possible, editors should be encouraged to relist articles (their own or those of others) in the appropriate place, whether that be the related WikiProject review process or WP:RFF. For example, a video game article listed on WP:PR should be relisted at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Computer_and_video_games/Peer_review unless the editor had specifically asked for it to remain in WP:PR (for a style or non-partisan review); a request for 'general comments' should be relisted at WP:RFF; and a request for FA status feedback received in WP:RFF should be relisted at WP:PR.

I'm not so sure I'd encourage the relisting of articles that other editors are working on. At least not without asking them if that's what they'd want first. While they technically can do so at any time, and while it would theoretically provide maximum feedback, it would also cause the respective editors to be pulled in multiple directions at once, possibly when they aren't prepared for it. As a result, they may not be able to respond to feedback received as efficiently as they otherwise would. Ryu Kaze 23:07, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

This was an area I was struggling with - sometimes requests don't receive any peer reviews for days when if moved to a project review they might get some feedback (although most of those that receive poor response are in niche areas anyway, so it may not help). I hadn't thought of confusing editors mid-review because I was really concentrating on the "ignored" peer reviews. Maybe just adding a note saying "Have you thought of listing this request at Project X too" would be a better solution. Yomangani 23:51, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

That sounds good. Ryu Kaze 00:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. (It might be worthwhile to note that we should hopefully see some more active project reviews cropping up, as running one is given considerable attention in the new WikiProject guide.) Kirill Lokshin 02:18, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Relisting at Peer Review during FAC review

Reviewers could be encouraged to suggest relisting the article at WP:PR (or the appropriate project peer review) if it has not received a peer review before applying for FA status and is clearly well below the standard required.

This is a good suggestion, and I think a lot of reviewers tend to do this anyway. I personally do so. Sometimes nominators can pull it up to standard without doing so, though, so it's, of course, at their discretion whether or not they take a step back or plow ahead, and is always a case-by-case thing. Ryu Kaze 23:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

It should be noted that a fair number of the FAC nominations that have received comments that they should be taken to peer review are actually better suited to be sent to Pages needing attention, Requests for expansion, or Cleanup. This is because peer review has historically had a poor record at taking articles lacking in basic research and structure and finding editors that desire to expand the articles in such bad shape. Sending articles in need of major expansion and rework to the places designed to handle such issues will allow peer reviews resources to be better allocated and give articles needing more help than peer review is designed to handle a chance to receive the help they need. --Allen3 ^talk 21:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

That's a very good point - the articles likely to get turned away from FAC for being too far off the criteria are probably in need of more attention than they are likely to get from peer review. Did I hear somebody say "can of worms"? Yomangani^talk 22:22, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

GA VS FA

Again at the moment the guidelines on GA are very unhelpful in comparison to FA. To quote from the "What is a GA" page "These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (15kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria." If that's what a GA is then there isn't really much point in seeking GA status prior to FA for longer articles, except, of course, that GA and FA do not seem to be assigned this way in reality. Bmorton3 22:38, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I personally agree, but that's just because I have a more fast-paced approach to trying to get an article to FA. Some find a more relaxed pace to suit them better, so to each their own. I do agree, however, that there needs to be a more fixed idea of what it means to be a Good Article. Is it just a preliminary test to see if an article's on the right track to FA, or is it a plateau of honor and recognition in its own right, with FA not necessarily being the intended goal? If it's the former, how exactly does GAC prepare one for FAC? Are there times when one might as well suggest that an article be taken on to FAC instead? If it's something highly dignified in its own right, what does this recognition entail? Why are the criteria so similar to that for FA if GA is not necessarily intended to be a forerunner for FA? Does the description of GA misleadingly suggest that specific length has a role in FA (aside from the obvious matter of adequate comprehensiveness, though that's not what GA says if that's what it means; it mentions length only). I think these are questions that answers need to be sought to, and more clearly defined ideas for what it means to be GA established. I can see how these processes might be alienating to newcomers due to the high degree of overlap and the low degree of clarification.

This revision should, of course, be performed with reference to FA, as FA came first and is the standard by which other articles are often measured. Care should be taken that FA doesn't have to be revised to accomodate GA, as that would undermine the point. If GA needs to be revised such that it seems inferior to its current status in order to find its own voice and emphasise its differences from FA, then so be it. Ryu Kaze 23:27, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

I tried to pull back from a wholesale review of the GA/PR/FAC process as I didn't think it was likely to build any sort of concensus. FA has it easy because it is "the top of the tree", but GA has to find itself a place somewhere in between AFD and FA, and it looks like it is struggling. From what I've seen some people look at it as a place for failed FA candidates, some as an irrelevance ("FA or nothing"), some as a tiny step away from FA, and then there is the strange size issue: too short to be FA strikes me as similiar to judging somebody by the number of edits they make - it's supposed to be quality not quantity. See...I've wandered off at a tangent, the topic is too big for my little brain. Yomangani 00:02, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Path, GA, etc.

GA is evolving, there is still some disagreement among the GA group. But I don't understand the objections to suggesting a path through these steps in general. Maurreen 23:39, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The primary problem with GA is that there is no agreement on what a good article is good for. There are at least three competing philosophies competing for a share of the GA pie: the articles short of FA status camp, the high-quality short article camp, and the add self-recognition templates to articles camp. The resulting disorganization from competing interests prevents GA from actually achieving any of the competing groups goals. Until WP:GA figures out what its mission in life is, it would be better to keep GA out of the FA steps list. --Allen3 ^talk 00:23, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

It's a fair point, but isolating GA from the process isn't necessarily going to help. The ideas behind including it here were a)attempting to divert some substandard FA candidates away from FAC and b)remodelling the simplistic "Steps to FA" (which didn't give a newcomers a realistic view of the process) Yomangani^talk 00:41, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

I support the proposed remodel of the "Path to FA" chart if only because it helps infer that the path isn't as simple as the present chart makes it seem. That said, I do think GA is in desperate need of figuring out just what exactly it's supposed to be. Ryu Kaze 02:05, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Some concerns over the "Steps to FA" box even appearing on the WP:PR page have been raised by Raul and Tony over at Wikipedia_talk:What_is_a_featured_article?#Aftermath. What do you think about dropping the box? I think the lead box does a fairly good job of explaining the purpose of and alternatives to peer review, but currently the FA infobox distracts from it. Yomangani^talk 22:29, 21 August 2006 (UTC)