Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive66

We are losing content editors

Within the past 48 hours three of our most prolific featured writers – User: Tim riley, User:SchroCat and User:Cassianto, with around 70 FAs between them, have either left Wikipedia or have signalled their imminent intent to do so. They were also regular FAC reviewers, apart from their involvement in other aspects of the encyclopaedia. Their departure is a huge blow to the FAC process.

The immediate cause of their departure appears to be frustration and despair at the machinations within the ongoing infobox dicussions on the Noel Coward talkpage, but there's more to it than that. These three, and their articles in the music and performing arts fields, have been regularly targeted over the years by editors, not always the same ones, pushing a pro-infobox agenda against their individual and collective conviction that such boxes are not always necessary or advantageous – a position upheld many times in the FAC process. It is worth noting that there are many featured articles in fields other than music/p.a., that do not bear infoboxes and which never receive any attention from the infobox lobby – they always turn to the work of these three or their co-writers such as myself.

As if enough wasn't enough, the "curators" of the encyclopaedia have opened up a new line of attack, this time against editors' liberal interpretation of MoS with regard to quote boxes. This usage is, again, widespread and features in many FAs. But guess where the curators have focussed their attentions? Here it is: make what you will of it. More walkouts may be confidently predicted, if this is the atmosphere in which content editors are required to work. Brianboulton (talk) 15:35, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

• For me, although the Coward thread (and its flawed and biased early RfC close) and the ongoing silliness over IBs is deeply depressing and eroding of enjoyment, it's having to deal with the wall-of-text MoS fetishists, so desperate to prove themselves capable of something that is utterly divisive and ridiculous. There are people so intent on controlling the MoS to their own narrow POV (normally driven from an American style guide) that were the ultimate killers of any enthusiasm I had for the project. A couple of very small groups—one IB related, one MoS related—are targeting the work of a very small number. It's odd that with over 5.2 million articles on Wiki, most of which are in dire need of bringing up to a basic standard, these two groups manage to go feral on the FAs (that is, the articles that have been through two community review processes, are written to high standards, and use professional levels of English in their production. I am not sure if, for example, the MoS merchants understand the difference between their own levels of use and formal English, or whether they just don't care and want to ensure a bland level of 'passable but not excellent' across all articles but, for me, the targeting by these groups is too much to continue. – Gavin (talk) 15:48, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

If there's one thing I will never understand, and never did, it's that the infobox sparks such rancor. Wikipedia or anywhere else on the internet, as a reader I find an infobox contains enough to tell me if I want to continue reading, if this is what I was looking for. Back when I was improving the Audie Murphy main article, an editor tried to convince me not to use an infobox because they personally did not like infoboxes. Not because it had anything to do with policy. That editor was just adamantly opposed to an infobox on all military articles. And I don't want to argue the point here, because everybody has their own style. What I don't understand is why this particular bone of contention has become so poisoned that it drives away some of Wikipedia's best, perhaps on both sides of the issues. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Maile66 (talk • contribs) 15:53, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

What both groups have in common is a lack of interest in expanding content by writing text and, one strongly suspects, a lack of interest in reading articles, so that they don't realize how poor the average WP article actually is. There's no question that these attitudes are held by a much larger proportion of the editing base than was the case in the 2000s. It's a big problem & I don't know what can be done about it. Johnbod (talk) 16:11, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Wikibreaks are often the right call. If two of these editors feel the need for a wikibreak, and especially if they're convinced (and they sure say so) that their not-in-my-club editorial peers are just "drive-by" "non-readers" and "idiots" "destroying" "their" "beautiful articles" [all direct quotes from these threads], they surely need to take a break; both they and the encyclopedia will be better off. I've done it myself several times, and it was refreshing.
(I have no idea what Tim Riley's situation is, only the SchroCat–Cassianto one.)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:29, 3 September 2016 (UTC) Diffs and personal views redacted, in the interests of peace. 16:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

And this attitude, complete with half-truths, non-truths and fantasy, particularly from this particular editor, sums up the reason for my resination from the project. Perhaps mcandlish, you could focus your attention on a bigger picture (any picture, really), rather than continually try to smear editors who happen to have differing opinions to yours? I'll also add that if you could avoid making personal comments on the mental health of other editors: "See our nice article Psychological projection; the matches that started this little fire are in your own hand." This sort of disgusting comment is well beyond WP:CIVIL. – Gavin (talk) 11:46, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Providing diffs and direct quotations is not "smearing". Observing that you were blaming others for your own actions isn't a comment on mental health, just an observation of action and result. What's the fantasy I should retract? You're welcome to scapegoat me here to score a point, but you already said this dispute has little to do with your decision [1], and I've maintained in here twice that it would be preferable for you to take a break than quit. I don't want anyone to quit. I had no dispute with you at all until 26 June when, all in one post, you referred to me as "obnoxious" "twattish", a "bloody MoS nutter", etc., etc., all because I said that decorative quotation boxes should be replaced with {{Quote}} per MOS:BQ, in an FAC, and dared to ask Cassianto to stop making uncivil comments on my talk page. The whole things seems silly to me, and I hope you come back after it seems that way to you, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  13:05, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I really do have no wish to continue any 'discussion' with you. Your assertions are meaningless, your advice pointless and your comments disruptive. I will step away now as I feel this thread could be constructive without me having to point out your many untruths and slurs. – Gavin (talk) 14:28, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Since you won't specify what the alleged untruths and slurs are, I just self-redacted a bunch of stuff as a guess.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:07, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Replying to McCandlish: There is an honest division of view about the universal use of infoboxes in Wikipedia, recognised in the guideline that leaves them and their content to editorial consensus. This guideline has proved unworkable, since consensuses are changeable and manipulable, so nobody feels inclined to accept them. Thus, this guideline is the root cause of many of the infobox disputes and ought to be modified, not to give one side or the other "victory" but to make it work better. Another thorny issue is that of box content; MoS defines them as summarizing key features of the subject, but some editors use them to record non-essential trivia, another casus belli. I opined on this particular issue here, some years ago, and it's surprising how much of that reasoning still holds good. Still, that's all background stuff; here, you depict SchroCat and Cassianto as a tagteam "dominating hundreds of infobox-related discussions", and provide dubious links to support this assertion. I have looked at some of the discussions on article talkpages. I see that very few of them were actually started by the renowned tagteam, nor is there evidence that the supposedly combative pair have systematically visited articles containing infoboxes to aggressively request or demand their removal. They are in the main reluctant participants in these debates, rather than warriors. The fact that in discussion they frequently break the bounds of decorum has to be seen in the context that they, together with Tim, were specifically and almost exclusively the targets of the pro-box people. I have made the point elsewhere that there are many WP articles, featured or otherwise and across a range of subjects, which lack infoboxes; why are the pro-box squad's attentions always turned towards this mini-group? This looks less like a principled effort to press the cause of infoboxes than a deliberate strategy of hounding and provoking and prodding certain editors. Perhaps their skins ought to be thicker, their patience more enduring, their terms of exchange politer, but people will often lash out when they think they are being singled out. Better to cure the cause than the effect. Brianboulton (talk) 15:39, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree on the MOS:INFOBOX problem. SchroCat put it aptly elsewhere that, in combination with WP:ARBINFOBOX, it creates a "consensus loop" such that consensus is never really achieved. This kind of thing is one reason MoS regulars are so frequently opposed to including frequently demanded "un-rules" that amount to "keep arguing about it at each article"; a guideline should either state a clear rule (even an arbitrary one) or remain silent, and should state a clear rule (or set of contextual rules – I don't mean to be simplistic) if remaining silent continues to enable dispute. I also strongly agree on infobox content often being problematic. I was, after all, the proponent of the landslide-consensus RfCs at VPPOL to remove the religion and ethnicity parameters from {{infobox person}} as loci of endless dispute (and for which plenty of "infobox fans" are very angry at me).

I redacted the diffs in question, and don't want to argue about two parties, so I'll hardly be pasting in more diffs here to prove a point, especially if the concern is the editors might really quit for good rather than chill out for a while (though I didn't say anything about who "started" disputes; it's recently been re-impressed upon me that one can still be unconstructive in a discussion even if entering it late). The allegedly "pro-box" people are not "always" doing anything. A new "have the cake but eat it too" complaint against Gerda, for example, is her adding I-boxes to completely random articles at the rate of about one per day (it was said; I have no checked). Either there's "targeting" or there's not. Various disputes seem to involve the same half-dozens parties, both sides combined, simply because they're the most apt to argue over these matters. I agree of course that people are apt to overreact when they feel put-upon. Editors prone to a dismissive attitude toward "outsiders" should keep this in mind next time they want to start labeling people that way or feel like grossly demonizing others for seeking compliance with a clearer guideline, like MOS:BQ. I know the editors more into infoboxes than I am feel very singled-out, too.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  16:39, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for starting the discussion, Brian. I've respected both FAC and MOS processes for many years, and MOS people haven't had a problem with my work as a closer in the past, so would anyone object to my being one of the closers if we could somehow turn all this mess into a coherent discussion that's focused on the most important points? (It could be an RfC if you want it to run for 30 days, but I don't think people are in the mood to wait that long.) It's unfortunate to see all these divisive discussions happening at the same time, and sad to see quite a few people getting depressed about it. I'll keep an eye on the RfCs that have already started, and I might close one of those, but what I'd really like to see is a discussion where people think a bit about whether what's happening is corrosive to FAC or MOS culture, and if so, come up with some rules of thumb that would make things go smoother in the future. - Dank (push to talk) 17:04, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

Closer of what, though? This isn't a proposal for specific changes within FA's scope, it's a generalized and one-sided venting, subject to a lot of refutation, and commingling too many unrelated things. This isn't a user-behavior forum, either; we have noticeboards for that. If we were going to examine an actual issue here with an eye to a resolution, I would suggest that it be explicit clarification that the deference to primary/sole editors' wishes that some FAC reviewers sometimes individually decide to show at FAC is an personal choice, and does not grant a right-to-control against other editors in perpetuity. Quite a lot of editors are clearly confused on this point, as if FAC was the Immunity from WP:MERCILESS Bureau. This feeling is the proximal cause of all of this dispute. In virtually every such case, it can be traced directly to a "you didn't do the work, so you have no say about anything here" argument being advanced either explicitly, or by "revert without explanation until The Other gives up and leaves our space" action. Obviously, it has, aside from all this drama, the terrible undesirable side effect of erecting barriers to entry that impede any further improvement. If you weren't already in the Private Club you likely never will be once that FA icon gets placed; you're just another damned "drive-by". That attitude needs to be buried in a deep hole. It's anti-policy, and we all know it.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Replying to McCandlish: This discussion will end when people have no more to say, or when hell freezes over, whichever is the sooner. The FAC talkpage is a general discussion forum, at which all who are interested in the FAC process can, as you put it "vent" their concerns. This thread is not one-sided; all including you are welcome to have your say, as you certainly are. I am not sure what you are objecting to in "the deference to primary/sole editors' wishes that some FAC reviewers sometimes individually decide to show at FAC". Many points that arise in a FAC review (or in the peer review that frequently precedes it) are 50:50 issues, with the quality of the article unaffected either way. In such circumstances, of course I would defer to the nominator's preference. It would be different if significant matters were waved through, but that is why the FAC process is moderated by co-ordinators who are the sole determinants of whether or not an article is promoted. There is no right-to-control in perpetuity entitlement for FAC nominators, although there is a slight degree of discretion provided to them under WP:OAS. You wave WP:MERCILESS around as your weapon of choice, but every rational editor knows that this is not a licence to edit indiscriminately, a sure way of beginning edit wars. "Anyone can edit" has to be considered along other core policies, which include respect for fellow-Wikipedians and that Wikipedia's policies and guidelines are not carved in stone – something for you particularly to bear in mind in your interactions over MoS issues. It is absurd to summarise the position as "you didn't do the work, so you have no say about anything here". The articles I have shepherded through FAC have been collectively edited thousands of times since; very rarely have these edits resulted in disputes. That is because, in the main, editors attending to these articles do respect the efforts and expertise of the main content creators, and why not? There is a way of doing things collegially and collaboratively which is generally successfully, another of heavy-handed assertiveness which leads to endless disputes and eventually editor loss. Brianboulton (talk) 15:39, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I've been considering replying to some of the points made in this discussion, but in this post and the other paragraph Brian added in the same edit Brian has said everything I would have said. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I won't address all this right now if at all (point-by-point is a blunt instrument). In short: The problem is, I have multiple diffs of people directly stating that another editor has no right to have any say at all because they weren't among the major editors of the article (I think it would have a deleterious effect to post them right here, since it might seem like singling people out for some kind of special opprobrium, and put us back into arguing about whose emotions justify what). I am not pulling this concern out of nowhere, and virtually no one ever says this sort of thing except at an FA or sometimes a GA. I think you're mistaking my concern for a "down with FA" viewpoint, but I'm seeking a simple statement in FAC documentation reminding people that they don't have more editorial rights than others, even if the FAC process internally may sometimes lean toward their preferences. It's fine if it also reminds people that we're more careful with FAs. I'm not trying to change FA process, just incorrect perception and the disputes arising from it. Now is probably not the ideal time to address this in detail.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  17:00, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

• I have seen some of the diffs that you refer to, which reflect a perhaps natural desire to protect work into which a considerable amount of physical and emotional energy will have been invested. That doesn't make them right. They are the opposite side of the extremist coin from that which asserts that principal editors have no rights to steward their articles. This is equally wrong, as the principle of stewardship of featured content is established within WP policy. I think it would be useful step forward if this fact was incorporated into the statement that you are seeking. Brianboulton (talk) 00:02, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

@Brianboulton: That sounds right to me; I play that role myself on a bunch of billiards/pool articles, among others, and arguably at MOS itself, since changes to it can potentially affect millions of articles.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Frankly all of the editors you point out act atrociously in that discussion, digging their heels in with pointless fervor over an infobox, being needlessly sarcastic, snippy, and combative to every opinion that ran against theirs. I also tend to hate the idea that editors will try to treat their retirement as a way to sway things to their point of view; thanks for your contributions, but no one is forcing you to stay. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs^(talk) 17:40, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

We have a page about that, at WP:HIGHMAINT (and it used to be pretty much an outright attack page against people saying they're quitting, though I managed to get it moderated through a lengthy RfC – it's way better for the behavior to adjust than for the editor to quit).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

It is true, David, that some of the editors concerned have behaved badly at times during the various infobox discussions; they sometimes went over the top and made extreme statements, but that's what people tend to do when they feel targeted, endlessly prodded and provoked, forced to make the same arguments over and over again. And I can't recall Tim behaving in the way you describe. It's also worth remembering that in the whole sorry saga, the only two editors formally sanctioned were members of the pro-box lobby. And these retirements shouldn't be dismissed as a sort of debating ploy – shades of Talleyrand (or was it Metternich?). My concern is that content editors are being driven away, per Laser brain below, and "thank you and goodbye" does not seem an adequate response. Brianboulton (talk) 20:33, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

This is indeed a sad period in the history of Featured content development. I've expressed dismay in several venues that any editor has to waste time on these arguments. I do not blame the principal content editors on these pages for getting upset. Anyone who asks us to believe these editors are displaying inappropriate ownership or to believe they should not feel targeted are being unrealistic and are forgetting that the upsetting aspect of these situations is the behavior, not the content. My only plea is that editors who are getting upset (on both sides of any given debate) have some faith that the imminent authorization of Discretionary Sanctions in the infobox area will alleviate the behavior issues. --Laser brain (talk) 17:41, 2 September 2016 (UTC)

• Two separate points, first, I like and respect you LB (though I may have been snippy with you before, I do not recall), but I have to call "Bullshit" on your well-intentioned "Just have Faith in sanctions" comment. Some people, as we know from years of experience on WP, just never stop until they are simply banned. Before that happens, they have left a long stream of destruction in their wake. "Close your eyes and hope" is the same as "Give them room to continue destroying things". Second, I recently saw a long discussion to define Primary versus secondary sources. I say we concentrate on having a similar one about when IB are and are not useful, and then insert limitations in MoS. IBs are useful when there are relatively large quantities of meaningful information that can be summed numerically or categorically. The classic example is "Battle of...", where you have troop strengths involved and killed (crucial and numeric info), units involved and commanders and leaders (crucial and categorical info). IBs are NOT useful when you have so little categorial information, such as on Noel Coward, where you have what, the place where he was born, died, etc.? Not crucial info, easily listed in lede.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 01:46, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

I hope Laser_brain is correct that DS will be authorized for infobox-related discussions, but I'm not that hopeful. ArbCom rejected my last request for this, and I'm not sure the current one at ARCA is going to get anywhere. I've been drafting an RFARB in case it does not, approaching the "infobox wars" as a site-wide "topic" and behavioral morass. The original WP:ARBINFOBOX only addressed editwarring and disputation over infoboxes at the individual article level, which is why it has not been even slightly effective in curtailing the battlegrounding. ARBINFOBOX actually made the situation worse, since it's led to endless recycling of the same arguments on a page-by-page basis. However, Lingzhi shouldn't get his hopes up about what DS would mean (even if one admin already seems to be indicating how they intend to use it). But this isn't really about infoboxes at all. More on that later.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  09:51, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

If I can make a general comment on the theme of this thread: two months ago, we lost a contributor of well over 50 featured articles and hundreds of GAs; a similar issue seems to have been a contributing factor. Rather than a dispute over quote boxes or infoboxes, this was a dispute over citation formatting. If I may add: the closest I personally have come to wanting nothing further to do with the project in many years was when I ended up in a dispute about citation formatting, and my faith in the project was rocked when I saw the response when the issue was taken to one of the noticeboards. I feel that these recent retirements are part of a much broader trend, but precisely how to characterise that trend I do not know. Josh Milburn (talk) 03:23, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Did that incident involve an ongoing effort by a persistent core group (with drive-bys coming and going)? Or was it a one-off deal by editors who do not have histories arguing as a group on that issue?  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:43, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

In my case, a single editor. In the other case, I really don't know; I wasn't honestly aware of it until the retirement. Josh Milburn (talk) 03:49, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

The general trend is that WP was a "what?! I can edit an encyclopedia?! live?!" gee-whiz thing in 2005, even 2010. As that novelty factor has worn off (along with the opportunity to set the initial stage of an article on much of anything noteworthy now that we have millions of articles instead of thousands), those still here are those who treat it as volunteer work, not an Internet fad. And few people do that kind of work forever, in any field, for any project. It is essentially statistically impossible that editors drift away for various reasons, in all aspects of the project, but that FA would be immune to the effect. If anything, given the intensity of the work required, it's probably naturally higher than the average attrition rate, though I'm not sure how we could build up accurate stats about it. Most editors who leave rather than fade out do so in response to some drawn-out dispute, in which they've been angrily and fully participating but didn't "win". Given CITEVAR, I would think that citation style disputes are not often among the reasons, though honestly CITEVAR's fans actually cause more disputes than anyone else when it comes to citations, often supposing that not one character of "their" cites can ever be changed by anyone without a full-scale RfC at the article's talk page. This is not a constructive, collaborative, encyclopedic attitude, just territorialism.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  10:05, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

With respect, I think you make a lot of claims there which require supporting evidence. On "citation style disputes are not often among the reasons": in the last couple of months, I have seen three disputes relating to citation styles (despite CITEVAR, which has sometimes been invoked in completely ludicrous ways) which seem to have led to considerable bad feeling. One involved an article I brought to FAC, one involved the editor I mentioned above (Sasata) and one is ongoing on the Jane Austen talk page, involving a number of FAC regulars. (And, to be clear, I'm certainly not saying that all three were a case of "experienced content editor" versus "inexperienced MOS enthusiast", just that it is something which leads to upset.) This doesn't prove that citation styles are a major reason for editor drop out in the grand scheme of things, but it does perhaps provide an explanation of why I am mentioning it here. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:56, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

@J Milburn: I whole-heartedly agree on the CITEVAR problem. It has been PoV-forked radically from the ENGVAR / DATEVAR model, and is used to generate rather than start disputes. But I had thought of them as localized; sorry to hear it's a bigger issue than I was aware of. It's also another form of style dispute, but not MoS connected in any way. If anything, there's a nasty schism between CITE and MoS regulars; my and Peter_coxhead's attempts to patch up some of it have been strenuously rebuffed, and the RfC at WT:CITE on the difference between "citation style" and cite formatting nitpicks was so confusingly closed it has probably made matters worse.).— Preceding unsigned comment added by SMcCandlish (talk • contribs) 05:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, it's worth noting that you misunderstood Josh Milburn's point about CITEVAR. SarahSV ^(talk) 00:36, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Typical example of why we need WP:CITEVAR, from Today's Featured Article: [2] This in the face of WP:CITESHORT. This is a blockable offence. Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:58, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

Blockable perhaps if they persist, but definitely should not be tolerated (on top of it, they're using semicolons to bold text, which is semantically wrong). You hould have left a link to WP:CITEVAR and WP:CITESHORT in your edit summary to educate the masses. Curly Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:06, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I confess I'm not sure I fully understand what you said. Hawkeye, Curly: That's exactly the kind of thing I'm troubled by. I just encountered something similar on a featured article I wrote (tragic given my contribution to this discussion). I don't know why people make these kinds of changes to well-developed articles with a clear, consistent style. No policy is being enforced, no error is being corrected, no content is being added; you're just firing the starting pistol for a style war. Maybe big hidden comments are necessary... Josh Milburn (talk) 23:29, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

MoS

• I think aggressive MOS-enforcers are doing great harm to the project. What is more important, content writing or stylistic consistency? The Bird Wikiproject was also decimated some time ago for the same reasons (enforcing small caps in bird names), and there are barely any FAs coming out of the project anymore. FunkMonk (talk) 17:02, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

False dichotomy; no one is impeded in writing content by others later tweaking the extant material for consistency. Why is someone who cares about guidelines being followed "aggressive" and an "enforcer" (especially given which direction the incivility usually runs)? Last I looked, this isn't a mafia sim. ;-) But anyway, the entire "bird caps" thing was very unfortunate, and a lot can be learned from it and hopefully has, both by AT/RM/MoS "regulars", and by people considering fait accompli campaigns against guidelines and policies. The vast majority of MoS consists of contextual tweaks agreed, after reasoned discussion, to be in the best interests of readers, after all. Discourse goes much further than combat. People sometimes get unreasonably worked up over style matters (just like they do over what "fringe" means, why "important" and "notable" aren't synonyms, and many other matters here). That one was a disaster that took about 8 years to unfold, and spun out of control when a few people from one wikiproject tried to advance a style preferred by many journals in one particular field to apply everywhere even where there are explicit conventions against it, with the result that people started capitalizing things like "Mountain Lion". We're still cleaning up this mess even now [3]. Activity is picking up in the wikiproject again, now that the three editors who stormed off have found more productive things to do than come back as anons to call people names. I really, really hope nothing like that ever happens again, and I've actively headed it off in several cases. (Details elided per WP:BEANS, but another involves capitalization, and not all MoS people back me on the matter. The idea that there's some cabal of lock-step MoS pundits is pure conspiracy theory; it's a wonder we ever agree on anything other than "just do what it says because the whole point is to play by the same rulebook and stop fighting page by page".)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  18:06, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

Both examples cover over-enthusiastic MOS-enforcement which lead to content-writers leaving Wikipedia, and thereby less content being written. So they are very much related. Yes, we know you think you were right in these cases, but that doesn't solve the problem which is the focus of this discussion; content-creators being driven away by overzealous standardisation. If all we want is a lot of unsourced stubs that are nicely consistent in style, that's what we'll get if there isn't room for flexibility. But is that really what we want? It really has to be a choice at this point, it is getting out of hand. We can have both style and substance, but it should be clear that the latter trumps the former when it comes to an encyclopaedia. As for "heightened activity" in the bird project, apart from articles about extinct birds (all nominated by me) there has only been two nominations of living species since July 2014 (when the project consensus was overruled), and one of them was "just" a renomination of a former FA. Before that, there were nominations about every month. As for "trying actively not to repeat" the mistake, it seems to me the exact same behaviour is what has driven the three above-mentioned writers away. So clearly nothing was learned, and we have a problem that needs to be solved, which goes beyond repeating "they could simply have followed the guidelines!" over and over. FunkMonk (talk) 18:14, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: All guidelines and other rules impose standards and reduce "flexibility" in one way or another. There are no style rules interfering with people writing content, nor reducing the substance of it. There are a few content writers getting incensed about style matters that don't match their preferences, and attacking others over it, but the same thing happens over what constitutes a reliable source, who can be considered notable, why primary sources can't be used for most claims, why we can't add all kinds of "interesting" trivia, why we don't use the official name of something if it's not the most common, and every other rule we have.

MoS gets the finger pointed at it because everyone with a style peccadillo can find someone else with an unrelated style nit-pick that didn't go their way, and convince each other they're co-victims of an oppressive regime. It can feel that way, and I'm not sure what to do about that. It's a factor of MoS being broad. If V, RS, NOR, FRINGE, MEDRS, CITE, AT, and N were all folded into a single "WP:Sourcing" page, the same thing would happen. Everyone with any issue with any of those things would all blame WP:Sourcing for their woes and claim its regular editors were a conformity-fascist cabal censoring them and nit-picking them to death. So, why don't we just have no guidelines on anything at all? Wouldn't that keep more content editors? It's not clear to me what line you would draw, what compromise you would form, between the "no rules ever" and "all rules all the time without exception" extremes (neither advocated by anyone), other than the WP:POLICY, WP:IAR, and WP:COMMONSENSE system we already have. Some don't want there to be a style guideline. Others love that we have one but are upset about a particular item in it. Others want all style (and other) matters to be a strictly wikiproject-by-wikiproject matter. Others seem to want FAs to be exempt from rules. They're all mutually incompatible and unrelated but can all be overgeneralised to "MoS is the problem", a false picture of agreement among people who don't actually agree about anything relevant. It like blaming "the damned government" for everything.

"Over-enthusiastic MOS-enforcement?" "Overzealous standardisation?" It's really not helpful to mythologise this stuff.

Some history, in bullet points

Bird caps: WT:MOS came to agreement to just leave WP:BIRDS local consensus alone in 2008, tested again in 2012, and had a line-item in MoS saying to leave capitalised birds as-is, for years (and their editorial pools overlap, BTW). Someone with no connection to BIRDS or MoS did an RM on a bird article to lower-case it, per WP:NCCAPS, not MoS. (Many "style fights" get blamed on MoS when they're actually WP:AT / naming convention guidelines / WP:DAB matters; those editor pools also overlap, but are not identical and there are strong, long-running tensions between them, even "AT vs. MoS" bickering.) In the RM, WP consensus agreed to lower-case, if we take site-wide processes like RM and RfC as site-wide consensus. (If we don't, we shouldn't have them.) BIRDS regulars participated, MoS people did not. The RM decision survived move review. Rather than accept that an iffy consensus to permit a divergent style had changed (in titles, at least), someone from BIRDS sought to change guidelines more directly to get what they wanted, but did not achieve consensus for this, in an RfC that ran a long time and was "advertised" at CENT and VPPOL (and even had ornithology forum meatpuppets). Finger-pointing at MoS ensued, and two BIRDS editors quit (one had already quit a year earlier for other reasons, but came back briefly to express anger about this matter and "quit again"). But MoS people din't force anything on anyone, and tried for 6 years (2008–2014) to prevent such a melt-down. A compromise proposal during the RfC (and a previous one) was torpedoed by parties from WP:BIRDS. When it was re-proposed after the RfC, it was ignored. So, it wasn't about forming consensus, it was about WP:WINNING. When MoS editors weren't stepping up enough to implement the lower-case change, some BIRDS editors maligned them for it. When they did step up, they were castigated for that. Pure demonization. There was no "enforcement"; it was wide discussion (in which one side would not compromise at all) after years of actual refusal to "enforce". The discussion concluded to prefer (in prose as well as titles) regular-English practice found in encyclopedias, dictionaries, and newspapers, not specialist practice from journals. This is how decisions are supposed to be made here; anger that consensus didn't go one's way doesn't mean the consensus is wrong. Quote boxes: I (not alone in this) argued at an FAC that it's not compliant with MOS:BQ. I got personally attacked for it by two editors I've virtually never interacted with before, and they are two of those claiming above they're quitting because MoS people are so mean to them. Kettle, meet pot. I picked 100 random articles about a year ago, and converted decorative quotes to the standard {{Quote}} template per that guideline in 98 of them and removed inappropriate real pull quotes from the remaining two. A total of zero of these changes were reverted or challenged. When I did this (in the course of a lot of other copy-edits) with one FA two weeks ago, it turned into a protracted dispute (admittedly one of my edit summaries was unnecessarily critical of the content). It's as if an FA is supposed to be immune to any guideline it does not already comply with. An RfC was opened (by someone else) at WT:MOS; the stats research in it shows that MOS:BQ-compliant block quotes utterly dwarf the use of all decorative quote templates combined, in mainspace (décor quotes are very popular in user and project spaces, though, like userboxes and so on). Rather than participate it the RfC like normal, it's being subjected to attempts to hijack it into a vote on one template, and there are multiple reports of canvassing now. "Give me decoration at all costs!" WP:Don't spite your face: This disruption is effectively derailing the one good thing that could have come out of that RfC, a change to the default style of block quoting on Wikipedia to make it stand out more, and obviate most "I want quotes that 'pop'" disputes. Infoboxes: Lame dispute all around. Not an MoS dispute; MoS is neutral on them. Not a style dispute at all, say the participants, but a content one, and treated that way by ArbCom in WP:ARBINFOBOX. Otherwise, discretionary sanctions (DS) under WP:ARBATC (MOS and AT) would already have been applied years ago. [Note, by the way, that MoS regulars do not avail themselves of ARBATC DS against the other editors who personally attack them again and again. Doesn't square with the legend of a nefarious conspiracy of uncivil conformity obsessives, does it?] Most of the ARCA and other noticeboard reports about "infobox warring" indicate that the behavioral problems are primarily coming from a no-infobox direction. But let's blame editors trying to add features to articles, and blindly defend those trying to remove them, even though the latters' claims that adding a template is "destroying" articles are clearly hyperbolic. Maybe some add-a-box people are being problematic, but so are their opponents, and it's time to stop picking sides here. FAC should be infobox-neutral since the guidelines are. It's the disruptive behavior that needs to stop. "I write more or better than you" is not an incivility free pass (nor is "I'm adding content and you just don't like it", of course).

Can't we just agree that these disputes are disruptive without trying to paint some heroic tale of struggle against dark forces? Real life in this project is far more complicated than that.
 — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

As I said, what is needed is some amount of flexibility. No one said there should be "no rules", but the thing is, most of the MOS guidelines are just that, guidelines, not rules. Anyhow, you still fail to address the issue at hand; writers leaving the project due to enforcement of guidelines as rigid rules. Again, we know you think you're right, but maybe these results should make you rethink the issue, because repeating "there are guidelines" over and over doesn't solve the problem, and has lead to nothing so far. For the record, I have no stake in either the infobox or capitalisation debates, I simply think we should let the writers who create our content have the last word when it comes to style issues, which are infinitely less crucial to this project than good content. FunkMonk (talk) 06:09, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

@FunkMonk: I beg to differ; "writers leaving the project due to enforcement of guidelines as rigid rules" is a mischaracterization of reality. What's really happening is some editors are trying to control every possible aspect of an article, pretending they're defending "content" from "damage" while engaging in pointless style disputes out of over-proprietary sentiment, then (in the case of 2 of the 3 at least) engaging in so much incivility that they're leaving under a cloud right before further action was taken against them, but complaining that it's everyone else who's being a WP:JERK to them. This is what I mean by spinning crappy behavior into heroic legend; let's just not. No one questions whether the editors in question produce great content; some of them, at least, just have great difficulty getting along with people if anyone ever disagrees with them about anything they wrote much of. And everyone gets stressy about repeated, protracted disputes (which they start plenty of, e.g. deleting i-boxes from articles that long had them); they're not exceptional in this regard. If it hurts when you hit your head with a hammer, then stop doing it.

Guidelines are guidelines and can't be "enforced" by someone. The most that can happen is an RfC (or RM or whatever process applies), and consensus will either agree to apply the guideline or that an exception would be made. They are in fact rules; they're covered at WP:POLICY. They're just not no-exception rules like our legal policies are. People here are not arguing for particular, contextual exceptions, they're arguing for the rules to just go away. Re: "let the writers who create our content have the last word when it comes to style issues" – we have a policy (not guideline) against that. The dichotomy you are drawing is false; most 'style issues" are not just style issues at all, but WP:CCPOL or other policy matters reflected in "style" (which isn't one thing, but a catch-all for a large number of unrelated things). Even when they're not, they're often not really style issues (e.g. infoboxes are something MoS is neutral on, and both ArbCom and the parties involved in "infobox wars" say they are content disputes). Can't have it both ways. Ultimately, this comes down to a desire that rules not apply to FAs, that they be exempt from things, to satisfy the nit-picks of individual "authors" (rarely actually the sole substantive editor). Wikipedia is not that site.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  20:12, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

You accuse others of mischaracterisation while doing exactly tithe same yourself. I'm sorry, but your comments are drifting further and further from the truth in this and other forums. Perhaps the phrase "Silence is golden" is one you should try out for a spell? – Gavin (talk) 20:21, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

"Begging to differ" is akin to denying facts in this case. No one is arguing for "rules to go away", because, and this can't be repeated often enough, guidelines are not rules. Policies, however, can be characterised as rules. More importantly you are still not addressing the issue at hand; writers leaving the project due to guidelines being arbitrarily enforced as rules. Please, no more defensive history lessons, address the issue and propose a solution, which isn't just "if they don't like the "rules" (read: guidelines), they can leave". FunkMonk (talk) 19:53, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Nope. See below: SV and several others are in fact arguing to make rules go away, for FAs. See also WP:POLICY; both policies and guidelines are rules in the operational sense. Think of it this way: IAR can't apply to guidelines if guidelines aren't rules. >;-) Even some essays are rules (BRD, AADD, etc) because the community consensus interprets them as such. No one's asked anyone to leave. People aren't leaving the project because compliance with style or other rules is being sought; they're suggesting they're going to leave because they're stressed out from disputes over such matters, which naturally raises the question: why are they disputing so hard against guideline compliance? If they disagree with the guideline, they can seek consensus to change it just like everyone else can. If MoS was a policy not a guideline these disputes would still be happening, so the "it's just a guideline" thing is a red herring. Proof: Parts of MoS have in fact become policy, at WP:AT, yet they are still the source of daily dispute at WP:RM.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:42, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

If I had to sum the problem up in a few words, it would be: death of a thousand paper cuts. --Rschen7754 18:11, 3 September 2016 (UTC)

@Rschen7754: Editors who try to keep MoS stable feel the same way, since nearly everyone wants to change all sorts of things in it for personal reasons, and we get attacked constantly for objecting, while admins turn a blind eye. No other guideline is subject to as many subjective demands for destabilizing, random alterations, or as much incivility toward those who work on it. There's a reason most MoS regulars quit (the entire project), and it's the same one others do: recurrent disputes and verbal abuse are draining.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:14, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

The difference is that without a "stable" MOS we still have an encyclopedia, without articles we dont - the solution is to stop trying to restrict what other editors are doing by creating more arbitrary rules. It is called live and let live.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 06:10, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

We wouldn't, though. We'd have an incomprehensible mess of writing, not really much different from browsing random websites. Given the time drain that constant fighting (with no rules, just opinions) over style would cause, productive writing would shut down rapidly, as would source checking and other necessary processes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:05, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

MoS and featured-article criteria

• The MoS is a guideline, not a policy, and not a particularly stable guideline either. One solution to the problem of fanatical enforcers arriving at FAs is to remove the link to the MoS from the featured-article criteria. Instead, a small group of FAC regulars could write a short FA style guide that copies those parts of the MoS that coordinators and experienced reviewers do expect featured articles to comply with. That would be very helpful for first-time nominees too. Pinging Brianboulton, Laser brain and Ian Rose. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:52, 5 September 2016 (UTC)

This is an excellent idea, there is no reason whatsoever that an FA should be required to follow that particular set of guidelines slavishly.·maunus · snunɐɯ· 20:14, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

"It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation" would be the obvious split, since that's the formulation which works perfectly well at WP:WIAGA. In practice, this is what already happens, since (aside from a few zealots) those are the only parts of the MOS which are taken as more than vague "best practice" suggestions on Wikipedia, whether at FAC or elsewhere. ‑ Iridescent 20:31, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

I could be onboard with this. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:14, 6 September 2016 (UTC)

So could I, subject to a little more thought on the points listed. Brianboulton (talk) 09:02, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Same here, so long as the resulting document is our servant and not our master.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:10, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• • WP:POVFORK is never the answer. Given what it is and does, MoS is remarkably stable, and has gotten more so now that a particular agent provoacteur was indeffed back in February. Either MoS regulars like me are the devil because we won't let every random person change MoS to say what they want, or we're the devil because we somehow don't protect its consistency and stability enough? Cant' have it both ways and I refuse to be the whipping-boy for either caricature, much less both at once. FAC regulars cannot with a straight face argue that MoS or its regulars or random editors who seek compliance with it are, simultaneously, an over-stabilizing consistency force and a destabilizing source of lack of consistency. The worst that happens when an MoS rule actually changes is that some text gets twiddled to comply (well, and people who profess to be tired of style disputes fire up a bunch of style disputes that everyone else just WP:DGAFs about). It has no substantive effect on the content of RfAs. The entire nature of this "start a new anti-MoS" idea is directly in line with statements at this page and WT:MOS that there's some separate "FAC community" outside the ambit of the WP editorial community's concerns and expectations, and everyone not in this club is just rabble who "rarely create quality content". It perfectly underscores my repeated observations that this has nothing to do with style or content and is simply territorial. PS: Think carefully about what happened to WP:Esperanza while you mull over this "let's make our club more special and exclusive" idea.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  19:50, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
    • A thought experiment: if the Manual of Style and its subpages were blanked (with an appropriate notice added) for a year, what would happen? Would the sky fall in? Would new styles and formats gradually form as people diverged from copying older articles and stopped correcting articles that hadn't yet been corrected? I know it will never happen, but it would be one way to find out whether we truly need the Manual of Style in its current form. Maybe replacing the current bloated MoS with a stripped down version for a year is a proposal that might gain more traction. Do that and see what actually happens. Carcharoth (talk) 21:48, 6 September 2016 (UTC)
      • @Carcharoth: Of course "the sky would fall in". The bulk of editors' (including FA editors') time would be spent arguing endlessly, article by article, hour by hour, about almost every imaginable style, punctuation, spelling, layout, image usage, accessibility, date formatting, tone, linking and overlinking, name and title formatting, quotation handling, section ordering, lead content, dialect, and similar matter. MoS evolved, beginning shortly after the project became publicly noticed and editors started pouring in from all over the world in large numbers, because these disputes were constantly recurrent, repetitive in their details, disruptive to the content, and extremely unpleasant for everyone all the time. And now we have millions of articles, not just a few thousand, yet a decreasing rather than growing editorial pool. A renewal of unending conflict over this stuff would leave virtually no time to do actual source research and write real content. Consider how much style conflict there still is, then multiply that by probably two orders of magnitude. Never mind that a large number of "style" disputes are actually policy, content, and topical control disputes masquerading as style disputes.

        FA editors in particular should be grateful for MoS's stabilizing effect, otherwise every FA would be descended upon by every editor with an idea in their head about "the right" way to do anything. MoS is what prevents this from happening. The effect on the encyclopedic output for readers would be project-fatal, probably, since there would be nothing preventing the degradation of the articles into completely random approaches, reducing WP to a mirror of the blogosphere.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:01, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

I think it is important to consider what you expect the end result of a change to be. Changing the FA criteria to limit the areas of the MOS that need to be complied with would have a particular effect: it would mean that articles could be promoted to FA without full MOS compliance, and falling out of MOS compliance would not risk the status of an existing FA. But the MOS would still be a guideline that applies to all articles, including FAs. So I would expect that a change along these lines would eliminate one type of argument regarding MOS compliance of FAs (most notably ones that might occur on FAC pages), but there would still be lots of room for MOS-related disputes on FA talk pages. Maybe that result is sufficient, but if you were expecting more, then additional changes might be needed. --RL0919 (talk) 14:19, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I don't know where all the current hooplah is headed, but as a copyeditor, I'll follow whatever rules people agree on, at FAC and elsewhere. I won't participate in any votes. But RL0919 makes a good point: if you choose not to argue some MOS point at FAC, how do you know you won't be arguing about it later? I get that there's some kind of movement going on (not limited to FAC people at all) to "throw off MOS shackles" to some extent. At FAC, that movement seems to be taking the form of decoupling FAC's fortunes from MOS's fortunes. But I'm concerned about the cure being worse than the disease. When I'm copyediting at FAC, I try to catch all the main-text MOS violations, and I make the edits myself. You'd think that would land me in a world of pain, given all the yelling about MOS ... but it never does. What I wouldn't want to see is an individual editor having those problems thrown at them piecemeal, over the lifetime of an article, without copyeditors around to help and without a FAC coord available to make judgment calls. - Dank (push to talk) 15:22, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

I want to clarify: I am not (and I'm intentionally avoiding the MOS-compliant {{em}} for emphasis) saying that I'm in favor of any supposedly MOS-compliant edit made at any time. Wars of various kinds can be fought with benign edits as easily as with bad ones; you have to consider the bigger picture and the greater good. I'm just saying that such edits, in general, are inevitable, and we have to look at what's going to be the least burdensome for our FAC nommers. Reducing the size of MOS would be a start. - Dank (push to talk) 19:32, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Also, in case this isn't already clear: MOS compliance, as the term is used in article reviews, usually doesn't mean consistency with whatever the MOS pages happen to say today, it means whatever writers and reviewers think it means. Obviously, that opens up some wiggle room, but the common understandings of MOS are more stable and compact than the MOS pages are. - Dank (push to talk) 12:09, 10 September 2016 (UTC)

Sure. The MoS "drill-down" pages primarily exist for gnomes and to use for settling disputes over minutiae. It's not even really expected that editors read the main MoS page, just absorb the gist of it by osmosis, and occasionally refer to it by shortcuts. This system has worked well except for one tiny wrinkle: When you get editors who believe that their version is perfect and must not be touched by anyone else, it becomes impossible for the gnomes to do their job without conflict with the owner types. FAC's unfortunate habit of encouraging the latter sort of behavior is the source of most style conflict at FAs, by inculcating a belief that FAs are part of a special club immune to guideline compliance. Loosen the death-grip, stop fighting against all changes just to oppose change, and most of this rancor will evaporate overnight.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:01, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

If you're responding to what I just said (and you might not be), then I think you're making more of it than I intended. Since this is Wikipedia, consensus (where you can find it) is always part of the process; that's all I'm saying. It's also worth mentioning that I find myself a bit stressed and confused over how my various jobs (involving prose, particularly) intersect on Wikipedia these days. Until I figure it all out, I can't say everything I want to say. - Dank (push to talk) 13:15, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Honest question - does the problem we're dealing with have to do with fa criteria? Are these "fanatical enforcers" showing up at fac and opposing noms that are professionally written? --JFH (talk) 15:31, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Yes. But most importantly, they change articles that are already featured to whatever their preferences are, in spite of those article obviously having been approved by the FA reviewers. FunkMonk (talk) 19:47, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

My concern is that in the already featured case, changing fa criteria will have no effect. It's more likely that people target fas to push style concerns because they are the best articles which people look at as examples than that the criteria require mos compliance. But I am willing to be convinced otherwise if more experienced people know of the fa criteria being used to enforce compliance. --JFH (talk) 20:38, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

Some of the above is circular reasoning. Of course if FA reviewers decide to ignore various points of MoS compliance and promote an article anyway, this will increase later efforts to seek compliance at the article, because these articles are used as the models for others, thus spreading the non-compliance if it is not addressed. Increasing the amount of FAC "looking the other way" is simply guaranteed to increase, not decrease, the number of style-related edits at FAs, and (as long as the special pleading of FAC editors continues), the amount of style-related dispute at FAs. This will remain true as long as FAC is wrongly perceived as the "certified as MoS-compliant and somehow forever immune to any further MoS changes" bureaucracy. It isn't either of those things; the only MoS-compliance matters ever raised here are those that people happen to notice and bother to comment about (and don't get so much blow-back about that they just give up); meanwhile, no process like this seals any article in a vacuum chamber forever.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:01, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Fanatical enforcers? It seems to me that the problem is often the opposite. With little or no enforcement of MOS compliance at FA time, there are still style issues left for later. And when the MOS gnomes get around to them, some of the FA "owners" think they should be exempt from these guidelines because they were supposed to have been enforced earlier, and they got through that. Maybe if this proposal takes MOS compliance out of the FA criteria, that will actually make it easier for MOS compliance fixes to happen? The MOS is, after all, still a guideline, and we try to follow those, don't we? Dicklyon (talk) 00:58, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

MOS Gnomes who do not produce content are WP:NOTHERE and can be blocked or banned. That is the best answer to the problem. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:40, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

Hawkeye7—that's an offensive thing to say. If there weren't gnomes, en.WP would be very messy indeed. You have the luxury of sitting back while others sift through to make articles consistent in style, and compliant with well-worked-out guidelines. Thus WP gains more authority. Tony (talk) 11:34, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

I should be more appreciative of their efforts. Hawkeye7 (talk) 08:09, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

Imagine the havoc if the FAC writers were all wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone en-dash. Choess (talk) 15:34, 1 October 2016 (UTC)

WP:NOTNOTHERE. See you at your next RFA. Primergrey (talk) 13:33, 29 September 2016 (UTC)

It's a classic pair of childish false dichotomy fallacies. The implication of the first is that if you devote any time to MoS/AT's stability, or to seeing these guidelines and policies complied with, you are not a content creator. This is absurd, since all the MOS/AT regulars have created many articles, and most of them have at least GAs under their belt (e.g., I wrote about 99% of William A. Spinks, which has been GA quality for years, but I hadn't bothered to seek GA promotion for it until recently, at someone else's prompting, because I don't care about collecting GA/FA badges, and I see no evidence that our readership notices them or cares). The implication of the second is that if you are not a FA "author", or FAC regular, you're not really a content editor, since only FAs matter. This is a view not held by over 99% of our editors, since less than 1% of them spend any time working on FAs. Most of us are convinced that providing basic, reliably sourced, and intelligible coverage of as many notable topics as possible (e.g., upgrading stubs to B-class so they are proper articles not placeholders) is far more important that spit-shining GAs into FAs. (Not to mention that the proprietary behavior of too many GA/FA-focused editors drives most everyone else way from trying to improve GAs and FAs). The difference is that almost all editors at least respect the work that FA-focused editors do, while an increasing number of FA regulars denigrate the contributions of all other editors as second-class and sub-par, often in incredibly insulting terms. It's no particular wonder that a handful of FA regulars have quit; at least two of them spent so much time savaging other editors at every opportunity that it was inevitable that WP become increasingly a place of unpleasant conflict for them, conflict of their own creation. This is remarkably similar to the exeunt of a few editors in one of the biology projects who devoted so much time and escalating hostility to pushing, as an advocacy matter, an off-WP wannabe-standard for nomenclature, then pushing it beyond even the biological order to which is might apply, that WP:WINNING on that front became their #1 priority instead of collaborating on a free encyclopedia with the readership, not a favored group of specialists, in mind. Interestingly, it's the MoS/AT people who are actually learning from this, not their opponents. E.g., I have personally headed off, at least three times, various other parties' plans to repeat the capitalization-of-common-names-of-animal-species fight when it comes to domestic animal breeds. You're welcome.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:45, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Proposal

There seems to be consensus to consider changing the opening line of point 2 of the FA criteria.

Point 2 currently begins:

2. It follows the style guidelines, including the provision of—

The proposal is:

2. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation, and includes the provision of—

Point 2 continues:

Extended content

a lead: a concise lead section that summarizes the topic and prepares the reader for the detail in the subsequent sections; appropriate structure: a system of hierarchical section headings and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents; and consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes (<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1.</ref>) or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1)—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. The use of citation templates is not required. Media. It has images and other media, where appropriate, with succinct captions, and acceptable copyright status. Images included follow the image use policy. Non-free images or media must satisfy the criteria for inclusion of non-free content and be labeled accordingly. Length. It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style.

Should anything be added to or omitted from the proposal? I would prefer that we left out "words to watch". Is mentioning the lead twice unnecessary? SarahSV ^(talk) 21:29, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• "Quote boxes and especially {{cquote}}s provide visual summary cues that have considerable marquee power to command attention, frame a debate and add weight to one side of an argument, thus creating potential for violating UNDUE and/or WP:NPOV. The use of quote boxes is recommended only when sufficient images cannot be located. The use of cartoon quotes is always and everywhere strongly demurred, and flatly forbidden on text that supports any side of a controversy."  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:20, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• Lingzhi, this isn't a proposal to extend the FA criteria. It's about changing the first few words of point 2. The question is whether we should add other MoS subpages to the proposal or leave any out. SarahSV ^(talk) 23:30, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• What definitely needs to be said has been said. Please do not attempt to chase it away on a technicality. [I do seem to recall you used cquotes on the FAC about the Palestinian boy who was a casualty of war... (Update: found article, no cquotes, sorry).]. I stand pat here.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 23:36, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

• I guess I'll be blunt and say that this appears to be a knee-jerk reaction to a current dispute. For such a far-reaching change, the input stage for this seems to be awfully rushed. For what appears to be a dispute over 1 or 2 sections of the MOS, we're eliminating about 70% or so of the MOS that is not in dispute. It's true that sometimes my featured articles do lag a few revisions behind MOS and / or the latest citation practices, but this goes too far. --Rschen7754 00:28, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
• Similarly to the above, I don't see how the proposal deals with the problem as I understand it. Unless someone can show me that the "fanatics" are being driven by FA criteria or using it to demand compliance, it doesn't seem likely that this will do anything. Also, consistent style is a good, even if it shouldn't be the only good. --JFH (talk) 00:53, 8 September 2016 (UTC)
• Agreed with the above as well. I would oppose this change because we're tossing out so much. Our MoS is supposed to be a force for greater consistency across the pantheon of English Wikipedia articles. Any serious publication has some sort of house style, or explicitly uses an established style guide published by others. People are going to quibble over things, and eliminating most of the MoS from the FA criteria won't eliminate the quibbles. Imzadi 1979 → 01:02, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Possibly a better way of proceeding is by modifying criterion 2 to read "generally in compliance with applicable style guidelines, modified by practical experience and, if necessary, the thoughtful use of WP:IAR to better the reader experience" That sort of thing anyway. That's basically the issue. I merely offer the critique, I'm not making a proposal here.--Wehwalt (talk) 01:17, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I also thought of something along the lines of "major execeptions to formatting and layout suggestions in the MOS guideline should be justified by reasoning"·maunus · snunɐɯ· 05:39, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I could get behind something like this, depending on how it was phrased. --Rschen7754 05:55, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

It might make sense to use something similar to the boilerplate at MOS. "It follows the style guidelines, using common sense, and recognizing that occasional exceptions may apply, including the provision of—" (I still don't see how this fixes any problem but it's an improvement). --JFH (talk) 15:18, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

I would advise against the "including" part of that. Giving a list of examples can be read to mean what you didn't include, you meant to exclude. Make it broad and flexible. No one saw the quote box thing coming. It may not be the last unexpected brush with the MOS we will have.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:59, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

KISS solution: 2. It deviates from the style guidelines only when doing so is justifiable. This recognizes that we have a MOS and anyone writing needs to be aware of what it says and to comply with it unless there's a good reason not to, but makes it explicit that it's a guideline not a policy, while avoiding a list of suggestions or exceptions. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I can think of no part of the MOS which is an absolute no-exceptions requirement—even the supposed irreducible core like Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout will have potential (albeit very rare) legitimate exceptions. ‑ Iridescent 21:09, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

Agreed. And it ends any talk of forking or walled gardens or whatever.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:20, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

"including the provision of—" and then lead, structure, and citations are part of the existing criterion as well as Sarah's proposal. Are you suggesting we cut that part? I tend to agree that "including" is vague, though it might be overwhelming for someone unfamiliar with the mos to say they just need to follow the whole thing (with exceptions). --JFH (talk) 21:59, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

(ec) Iridescent: what does this add that "It is a generally accepted standard that editors should attempt to follow, though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply" doesn't already say? If the issue is that MoS is being treated like policy rather than a guideline, how will this help? I'm not sure that's what the problem is, though; it seems more as though the problem is that contentious arguments break out over FAs, and just saying something is a guideline won't stop that. Nor will it help to say "FA standards don't require an infobox (or whatever) on this article"; the arguments, as I far as I can gather, were never over whether something met FA standards; they were over whether an article should have an infobox. I don't see how this would resolve those issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:02, 8 September 2016 (UTC)

MOS doesn't require an infobox either, so I'm not sure that this is the best example. As I see it, it gives the FAC delegates the discretion to ignore opposes over MOS, when the deviations are justifiable. --Rschen7754 02:58, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

I thought the FAC delegates already had that discretion? Carcharoth (talk) 05:05, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

@JFH absolutely, since the current "you must follow all of it but without exception but these are the parts we care about" wording is just confusing.@Mike Christie, the wording you quote is the definition of "guideline", which at the moment officially applies to the MOS everywhere on Wikipedia except at FAC (where MOS compliance is theoretically compulsory in all matters). Back when Raul added the "complies with the MOS", the MOS was a brief list of dos and don'ts, not the bloated mess which exists today which is so complicated that its own navbox needs to break MOS:COLLAPSE to avoid being unusably long. @Carcharoth, in practice the delegates turn a blind eye to deviation from MOS, but breach their own rules every time they do so as the criteria are explicit that they should be failing FACs for non-compliance. What I suggest would bring just law into alignment with custom. ‑ Iridescent 08:01, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

Are we talking about coord discretion, then? Or maybe the coords' role in finding consensus? Hm. - Dank (push to talk) 11:56, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Well, you may think this is splitting hairs but the FA criteria don't mention the delegates/coordinators anywhere, the criteria are primarily to give the reviewers standards to review against; the coords don't promote or fail a nom on their own, they judge the consensus of reviewers. That doesn't mean abrogating responsibility for article quality; we don't just count supports or opposes but look at the arguments behind them, and it's also not unusual to find the coords, upon checking the article themselves, voicing concerns with referencing, or prose, or whether there's been sufficient commentary on a controversial subject, and so on. For myself, I'm the first to admit that I spend less time on MOS considerations than I do on quality prose, solid referencing and proper image licensing, because I consider those somewhat more important, and I suspect I'm not alone. That doesn't mean ignoring the MOS or encouraging same, but it does mean recognising that MOS is, as many have noted above, there to guide and not to dictate. There's a balance to maintain, and when we see accomplished editors leaving wholly or partly over MOS conflicts, then it appears that the cart is before the horse. I don't think there's anything to be gained from setting up a competing "FAC MOS", or necessarily from watering down the style reference in the FA criteria (happy to hear more discussion though) -- "style guidelines" is the operative term, and remembering that might result in a little less conflict not only in FAC but, just as importantly given recent events, outside FAC. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 14:03, 9 September 2016 (UTC)

To address all of the above, no approach like this (though a "It deviates from the style guidelines only when doing so is justifiable" restatement of MoS's own lead isn't particularly objectionable) is going to do much, because FAs naturally attract perfectionist attention, and when two perfectionists disagree they will fight. It is inevitable that people will strive and argue about FAs' content, formatting, and everything else. If FAC coords already consider that they have the authority to pass an article despite MoS compliance issues, then nothing would change. FAs aren't immune to guidelines, so other editors will continue to push for compliance with them (as they should; otherwise when a newer guideline develops, e.g. MEDRS, FA authors could try to keep it non-compliant just by citing the FA badge on the article). If FAC people, like anyone else, are convinced that a particular MoS line item is just wrongheaded in general, or needs a clarification for a particular context, they know where the MoS talk page is. Most of MoS was created through incremental change motivated by such concerns.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

• Apologies to those who have supported this: it is one of the worst proposals at FAC I have ever seen. It is supported by no reasoning as to why applying the MOS to FAC is problematic (any more than writing in a consistent style per se is problematic for all of us—but we seem to manage with effort); it ducks around the logical conundrum that the MOS applies to all articles anyway; and it would cause mayhem on FAC review pages (a key social function of MOS generally is to resolve stylistic disputes, corralling them generically onto MOS talkpages for all to view and, if they wish, to participate in). To an outsider, it might look an attempt to strike a blow at centralised style guidance as a cohesive force on the English Wikipedia; centralised style guidance is a critical practice in all serious publications, much because without it, publications lose some of their authority. Tony (talk) 00:52, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

To an insider, it looks like that, too, knowing that SV has always been pretty explicitly anti-MOS. Dicklyon (talk) 01:02, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

• FAs are supposed to be represent WP's best work. That means the crisp, logical, orderly presentation prescribed by MOS, tempered of course by IAR. EEng 02:48, 12 September 2016 (UTC)
  • Hang on, you don't need a Manual of Style to write an article with "crisp, logical, orderly presentation". You just need to know how to write. There seems to be some underlying presumption here that writers can't write well unless they are following a manual of style. That is not how it works. The normal model of publication is that a writer (while knowing some of the basic style that may be needed) will generally concentrate on what writers do best which is, um, to write (to pull together sources and consider balance and content and how to present a topic). Normally what happens after that, is that after submission for publication, copyeditors will edit a submission to conform with a publication's manual of style. The same piece might get tweaked in different ways if submitted for different publications, and the readers of the different publications generally don't give a flying fig which style is used (if they even notice). There is nothing sacrosanct about conforming to a particular style, or switching from one to another if publishing in different places. It would help to get back to recognising that. Carcharoth (talk) 23:23, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

By crisp, logical, orderly I mean stuff like consistent date formats, appropriate ENGVAR, not using made-up abbreviations, and so on. I don't need MOS to write well -- MOS has nothing to do with writing well, but it does have to do with smoothing out inconsistencies and bumps where two good writers would otherwise made different choices. EEng 00:46, 20 September 2016 (UTC)

• The concerns of FA writers and of broader encyclopedists are sometimes orthogonal. I can write a piece that is crisp, logical, and orderly, but in a bombastic activist exhortation style, or a marketing style, or a tabloid exposé style, and none of them will be encyclopedic; even slight hints of any of those approaches are a serious problem (thus some of the issues at the Thorpe affair article). MoS gives us many things, including encyclopedic tone and presentation, a consistent approach to many, many things that people are prone to fight over incessantly if not given a rule to follow, a great deal of clarity and avoidance of reader confusion, and above all the collected wisdom of how to comply with the core content policies in an applied by avoiding stylistic pursuits that subtly violate them. These are all tools for crisp, logical, orderly presentation in an encyclopedic direction.

  I see FAC editors [and I don't mean to generalize - only a few of them are "voting" here] making two incompatible arguments in this discussion, the reasonable one that, being a guideline, MoS has some COMMONSENSE and IAR exceptions that come up sometimes in FAs, versus the unreasonable view that MoS should basically just not apply to FAs because FA writers are better than everyone else and deserve complete control as "authors". Everyone here already understood that the former view is accepted fact; those making the latter argument need to rethink, because policy is against them at all of WP:EDITING, WP:OWN, and WP:NOT. This is not a personal website or publishing project. It is certainly true that there's nothing sacrosanct about MoS's particular rules (other than a few being technical necessities); MoS's purpose in a nutshell is to provide a set of operational parameters so that the work gets done instead of the same parameters being fought about 10,000 times in article after article. The principal value of MoS is as a system, not as a pile of disconnected parts. It's important to have a set of game rules, even if some of them are arbitrary or not what some people would prefer, otherwise the game cannot be played. FAC people who want their own magically special "anti-MoS" are people showing up to a basketball court in martial arts gear and trying to turn the venue into a dojo in mid-game, and surprised that the basketball players are resistant to the idea; they'll probably also be surprised that the community (the audience, if you will, in the arena metaphor) aren't going to go along with it either. Those who just want MoS to not apply to them are showing up to a basketball game and deciding to try to play it by kicking the ball back and forth, surprised that fouls are being called on them by those who, naturally, are there to play by the rule set adopted by their basketball league.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

• This section opens There seems to be a consensus. There is not. As per the comments above, of course the MoS applies to FAs; being featured doesn't give an article special exemption from abiding by agreed styles. If FAC editors feel that some particular aspects of the MoS are unhelpful, then they should argue for them to be changed.

The crux of the problem is ownership. As the number of editors falls, and many articles are edited by two or three at most, naturally the sense of ownership increases. This does not make it right. ("MoS editors", whose numbers have also fallen, are not immune from ownership as regard the MoS.) Peter coxhead (talk) 18:39, 12 September 2016 (UTC)

Peter, first, the MoS is a guideline, not a policy, and it does not apply to all articles. The GA criteria, for example, require compliance with only certain MoS subpages. Raul included the MoS in the FA criteria in 2004 when the MoS was a very different document. That's what's being discussed here.

When I wrote that "[t]here seems to be consensus to consider changing the opening line of point 2 of the FA criteria," I was referring to the section above this one. My proposal was that FA reviewers write an FA style guide. Instead, Iridescent proposed that we add to the FA criteria: "It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation". That (or something like it) gained the support of Ealdgyth, Brianboulton and Wehwalt, which is why I proposed it in its own section.

I still prefer the idea of an FA style guide. The MoS is bloated and unstable, and a couple of editors engage in aggressive "enforcement" of their view of it, which doesn't help. See Talk:Thorpe affair for a recent example. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:45, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@SlimVirgin: the MoS is a guideline, not policy – a set of guidelines, actually, but of course this is correct, and like all guidelines the MoS is open to interpretation and waiver in some special cases. [I]t does not apply to all articles – absolutely wrong. You are confusing two different issues – how far articles need to abide by the MoS before they can be given GA or FA status, and whether they should ultimately be brought into conformance with the MoS. We can sensibly discuss the first issue – there could be guidelines as to how far an article needs to abide by the MoS before being given FA status. However, GA or FA status doesn't put articles outside the MoS, and doesn't in any way prevent later editors bringing them into conformance, provided this is done sensibly.

The MoS is certainly bloated; I don't see the evidence for it being "unstable". Almost all the recent changes I've seen are essentially tidying and sharpening.

As for the Thorpe affair debate, I do despair at the time wasted on Wikipedia by such arguments. SMcCandlish has some valid points to make about the use of quote boxes in an encyclopedia: they can be used purely as decoration, as images sometimes are, which is not appropriate; their use can selectively emphasize some aspects of an article and hence make it less balanced, less true to all the sources. If everyone, including Stanton, had focussed on such issues and ignored more trivial ones, more light and less heat would have resulted.

On a personal note, I constantly see Oxford commas and commas after short introductory phrases being added to and removed from articles I watch. I'd like to see stronger advice to editors, new and old, not to keep making such trivial edits where there isn't universal agreement on usage. But this is an argument for stronger guidelines, not weaker ones – but guidelines that recognize the inevitable diversity of style in an international encyclopedia open to editing by everyone, and concentrate on major issues rather than trivial ones. Peter coxhead (talk) 09:16, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

The principal source of instability, bloat, and rigid-rule wording at MoS is not around any longer. The Thorpe affair article isn't an example of "editors engag[ing] in aggressive 'enforcement' of their view of [MoS]", it's an example of good-faith edits, which were reverted, then a discussion ensuing (yes, with much more heat than light - exactly like the present discussion and its fork over at WT:MOS, all a continuation of the discussion at the Thorpe article and of the "infobox wars", and of general "down with MoS" fist-shaking). Some of the changes were restored, some not. That's how WP works; it's WP:BRD in action. Its nice when it works this way with much less friction, of course, but that has far more to do with the personalities involved than the substance of the changes.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  21:30, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

@SMcCandlish: just a quick comment on the BRD issue. BRD works best when the boldness relates to one particular issue with the article, then both the reversion and the discussion can be "clean". It's always a problem when you're faced with a long series of changes, some of which are minor and unproblematic, but others needed prior discussion. Reverting the lot is (not unreasonably) seen as somewhat aggessive, but step-by-step editing to restore some of the changes can be very time-consuming. I believe there's a good case for edits to FA status articles being done slowly. (None of this justifies ownership attitudes in response to any kind of editing.) Peter coxhead (talk) 10:06, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

I'd like to counter-propose that the time used for step-by-step weighing of editorial changes is what we're really here for, aside from adding entirely new content and sources. Such careful consideration of editorial options is what FAC, GAN, PR, and content-oriented RfCs really are, after all. It's not edits that waste people's time, even complex edits; unnecessary territorial arguments about edits and editors do that. It consumed probably 20× more editorial time and energy (on many people's part) to deal with repeated, sloppy and confrontational mass-reverts (by two different parties against two other different parties) at that article, than it would have to just fish out exactly what one objected to (for one or more rational, articulable reasons) and put back the earlier version of that particular material, with an edit summary giving said reason(s), and leaving the other edits alone. There's basically three ways it can go: Loads of time spent over-analyzing every change someone wants to make, even typo fixes, before they're "allowed" to make any of them; loads of time wasted arguing about a "right" to mass-revert even in the face of objection to this tactic, and increased editorial tension and focus on editorial behavior instead of content; or reverting, with clearly rationales, exactly what it is one objects to and is willing to argue about on the merits, if it comes to that. Clearly, the last of these is the practical one, and it's why most editors edit boldly and both practice and expect selective reverting.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  05:33, 16 September 2016 (UTC)

FA editors need to be aware that SMcCandlish ☺ has never been here to improve content, just to push his own version of MoS. A few years back an MoS instigated by a sockpuppet, and championed by him, drove away some of the best and most active contributors to the Bird project, some never to return. He won't give up, so expect other FAC contributors to walk rather than face the relentless onslaught from him and his cronies. And yes, I'm still bitter Jimfbleak (talk) 12:15, 8 October 2016 (UTC)

I've already addressed this fantasy at #false_dichotomy and #some_history.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:46, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

Source review

Is there a requirement to become a source reviewer? I say it because I saw @Jaguar:'s article, Super Mario Galaxy, and I am pretty sure they are all WP:Reliable sources. Maybe if it's possible could we exchange source reviews (I also requested one for Allen Walker)?Tintor2 (talk) 00:33, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

Requesting Image review

I have a FAC at the moment, Eega. I've opened it on 1 September and things are mostly positive till now. A source review has been completed. I request a image review; anyone interested can please visit the candidate here and review the images. Cheers! Pavanjandhyala (talk) 06:23, 12 October 2016 (UTC)

List-defined references

Despite several tens of FAs, I've never used list-defined references. However, my next one was started by a different editor who will eventually be a co-nom, and I've inherited an existing list-defined system. I have no problem with this, except I don't know whether I should have the list in a particular order. Alphabetically by author? Alphabetically by ref name? or perhaps it doesn't matter? grateful for any guidance, Jimfbleak (talk) 15:18, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

If the question is about Bee-eater then "it doesn't matter" or "as how you two like it" are the correct answers. Generally, in that kind of list I add the most recent citation at the top - see Lake Tauca or 1257 Samalas eruption for example. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 09:41, 23 October 2016 (UTC)

GA

It's going to increase the work for FAC coordinators (and sorry in advance for being a pain in the ass) but could you guys remove the articles from GA when you promote them to FA e.g. Taylor Swift is listed in both WP:FA and Wikipedia:Good_articles/Music#Other_music_articles. Or maybe we could somehow make FACBot do this if it is possible but I think it has to be done by someone. – FrB.TG (talk) 21:52, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I raised this a while back and I think Hawkeye7 tweaked FACBot to make it work... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:05, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I can confirm this is what happens, as the bot has just removed The World Before the Flood (promoted a couple of days ago) from GA. It sometimes takes a day or so for the bot to do its thing. ‑ Iridescent 22:11, 1 November 2016 (UTC)

I see the problem. It was looking for the GA template in order to fold it into the article history. In this case, this had already been done manually, so it didn't do this, and didn't remove it from the GA list. I have added an additional instruction to do this. Hawkeye7 (talk) 00:14, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Hawkeye, sorry for being so demanding, but could you also tweak it to update the GA count while removing a recently-promoted FA e.g. two albums articles are promoted and the total count of albums are say 5000. The bot, removing the promoted articles, can also reduce the total to 4098. – FrB.TG (talk) 08:02, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

TFA coordination

For personal reasons, which I have explained to my fellow-coordinators Crisco 1492 and Dank, I am stepping down from my duties as a TFA coordinator with immediate effect. I have enjoyed this role very much, and am sorry to have to give it up. I don't intend to retire altogether from Wikipedia, and hope to continue to review articles and help in other ways, albeit to a limited extent.

I have posted this notice here because the TFA talkpage has a very limited readership. I hope that the community will agree a replacement quickly, as the pressure on Chris and Dan will meantime be intense. Brianboulton (talk) 18:05, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Very sorry to see you step down ... you're one of the rare ones who can always rise above the things that drag us down. FWIW, I'm not in a rush to make a decision on a replacement. - Dank (push to talk) 18:11, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Yes, thanks for all your work! Johnbod (talk) 18:13, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Glad to hear you'll still be around. Thanks for your stint at TFA, and I look forward to reading more of your articles. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:15, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

I'm very sorry as well. Deeply so. Thank you for your work. I hope you stay active as much as you are inclined to. Other than ruling myself out, I have no strong opinions at present on someone to step into your rather large shoes.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:17, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

What they said. You did an excellent job at what's always been a generally thankless task. ‑ Iridescent 18:19, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Brian, very sorry to see this. Thank you for everything you've done in that role. SarahSV ^(talk) 18:22, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent, and selfless, service at TFA. Happy to know you'll still be around the neighborhood. — Maile (talk) 19:10, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for excellent scheduling with a close look at variation of topics, always open for extra wishes, selflessly postponing "your own" article for an anniversary, - and thank you for staying around! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:24, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Take care and thanks for devoting time to this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 20:15, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Not the sort of news I wanted to wake up to but I can only hope this allows you to devote more time to writing and reviewing, Brian, if you can manage it. You've set a fine standard at TFA with your fellow coords -- thank you! Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 20:31, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks for your great work, and I am also very glad you are staying around. Dudley Miles (talk) 20:34, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Well done and thank you, Brian. Bencherlite^Talk 20:40, 25 October 2016 (UTC)

Many thanks for your work and amiable attitude towards editing and editors, —Noswall59 (talk) 22:43, 25 October 2016 (UTC).

Thanks for all your good word. All the best, Simon Burchell (talk) 09:32, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Brian -- I'll reply to your feedback RE: my FAC nomination tomorrow or Saturday. I've read the Thorpe stuff and think you did a great job! IMO, someone is being purposely disruptive. The guy makes valid points about "tag teams" (which I know from experience are correct), but your article is solid. I remember my parents discussing the Thorpe affair when I was very young. It was something that stuck with me, and reading your article made me understand why my mum and dad only ever discussed it in whispers. I checked out another article of yours, Tichborne case. It's good stuff. I came across this story years ago (albeit in a condensed form) in Jorges Luis Borges' Universal History of Infamy. To conclude, I honestly believe that Wikipedia is better without two of the editors who recently quit, but you shouldn't go. You're actually very good!! Singora (talk) 17:32, 27 October 2016 (UTC)

Brian's contribution to the project has been just enormous and for many years, least not as coordinator - he has lead by example and been a rock of sense in often troubled water. I personally owe him more than most in the time and effort he has given in a series of massive and detailed reviews. "To a limited extent" worries me, as I don't see how Brian might in any way be succeeded in his varied and crucial roles. I think it should be acknowledged that he is resigning from a tinderstick role, lets be honest, and I have regret there. On the positive, the standard of his FAC submissions always set a bar for the rest of us to aim for, and now there may be more time for those. Ceoil (talk) 23:41, 28 October 2016 (UTC)

I have nothing to add to the above messages but my name. Josh Milburn (talk) 15:39, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Me too. I've been gone for a few days and am sorry to see this on my watchlist but I understand. Be well Brian, and thanks for all the effort and energy you've put into the project. Victoria (tk) 19:42, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your excellent and critically important work here and everywhere in this encyclopedic journey and occasional insanity; your excellent input is greatly appreciated...Modernist (talk) 22:25, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

Brian, FAC wouldn't be what it is without you, and that goes for your article writing as well as your previous coordinator duties. I dearly hope that you do continue to be involved with the process, as your work has set a great example for all of us to strive for. Thank you for everything, and I'll hopefully see you around. Giants2008 (Talk) 18:43, 30 October 2016 (UTC)

I am touched by the warmth and kindness shown shown in the above messages, and am deeply grateful to you all. You make me all the more determined to return to regular editing as soon as I can. This may not be in the immediate future, however. Singora, I may not be able to complete my review of your current FAC, but please deal with my points as you think fit. Brianboulton (talk) 13:42, 2 November 2016 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for October

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

Reviews

• 10 reviews: Dank.
• 6 reviews: Funkmonk, J Milburn
• 5 reviews: Cas Liber
• 4 reviews: Brianboulton, Gerda Arendt, Johnbod, Jimfbleak
• 3 reviews: Sagaciousphil, Aa77zz, Edwininlondon, Wehwalt

12 reviewers did 2 reviews; 50 reviewers did a single review.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 12 reviews: Nikkimaria.
• 4 reviews: Jo-Jo Eumerus, Coemgenus
• 3 reviews: J Milburn

4 reviewer did 2 reviews; 9 reviewers did a single review.

I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. As an FYI to anyone interested, I have the data in Excel and can email it to anyone who'd like to dig through; it records the nominator, date of nomination, archive number, month of archival/promotion, name of reviewer and type of review, so the data could be used to report on a couple of other things. The data goes back to the start of August this year. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:47, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks again, Mike. - Dank (push to talk) 16:32, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Reconstructed dinosaur images in FAs

I'm reviewing Giganotosaurus, and the article includes some images by Wikipedians that reconstruct how the dinosaur looked. These are not sourced in such a way that a reader can look at the sources and determine that the image is correct. Is this acceptable in a FAC?

The nominator, FunkMonk, has linked to a prior discussion of this here, and to the Dinosaur Wiki Project's image review process: Wikipedia:WikiProject Dinosaurs/Image review. I've little doubt that these are accurate images, but it appears to me that they fail the sourcing requirement. What do others think? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:26, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

To summarise the previous discussions at the "no original research" talk page[4][5], the conclusion was that these are not considered original research, per WP:OI and WP:PERTINENCE, but it is appreciated if sources used are listed in file descriptions. As noted back then, if that consensus is overturned, this should be a wider discussion about user-created images, that would not only affect dinosaur restorations. FunkMonk (talk) 10:38, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Not thinking about the images per se, but just the question of whether this needs to be a broader discussion ... not necessarily. FAC has a "high-quality sources" standard that other processes don't have, so it's possible we could arrive at a different answer here. - Dank (push to talk) 10:49, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

In that case, FAC would have standards beyond the MOS and the No OR policy pages (linked above)? Shouldn't that be specified somewhere then, and what these standards are? Another thing to note is precedence; every single featured dinosaur article (40+) has such user-made images, few have any sources in the file descriptions. FunkMonk ([[User talk:FunkMonk|talk]s]) 10:53, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

To me the issue is really WP:V; it's not that I think the images are incorrect or inappropriate; I just think it should be possible to verify that they're correct, and at the moment I don't think that's the case. As for going to another forum -- if we agree here there's no problem, then there's no need to raise this elsewhere, so let's see if others think there's an issue first. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:13, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Like Mike, I'd want a reconstruction (whether described in words, e.g. "the dinosaur was 2.1 m tall with red feathers..." or in picture form, e.g. a drawing or diagram of the same creature) to be verifiable with reference to reliable secondary sources. There are some great user generated images, but I've always presumed that these were based on academic interpretations etc. Hchc2009 (talk) 11:43, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

The images are pretty much always based on either published skeletal restorations or photos of fossils, the problem is that the artists don't necessarily state which references they have based their images on in the file descriptions (and it is very hard to enforce, many artists are not really active editors, they just upload images). But the images go through a review here[6], where the references are often listed. Some of the reviewers are actual palaeontologists or published palaeontological artists who check against the literature, so it is not just random editors. So we can see if they match the published literature, but we can not necessarily see what exact source they have based their images on. FunkMonk (talk) 12:03, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

I'd be cautious about allowing unsourced reconstructions passing through to FA status. Hchc2009 (talk) 12:09, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, it has been the standard practice so far (again, 40+ dinosaur FAs with such images). So the question is whether we should retroactivley overturn this, or follow WP:OI and WP:PERTINENCE, which seem to allow user-generated images to be unreferenced as long as they don't demonstrably show OR. FunkMonk (talk) 12:14, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

If sources are located during the review that support the image, I'd think it would be fine to just add those sources to the image page -- we don't need to know which sources the image creator used, so long as we've found reliable sources that support the image. Have the images in this article all gone through that process? Can we just take whatever sources were cited in that discussion? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:31, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Ah, that seems like a good workaround... I'll look into it later today. If an exact source was never provided, is it fine if I add references that would have given the artist essentially the same information? FunkMonk (talk) 12:34, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Sure -- anything that allows a reader to look at a source and say "This image is accurate" is fine, no matter where it comes from. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:40, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely. I'm far less worried about what the original artist did, or didn't, put in the image file, and more about ensuring that someone checking the image today has a reliable source to refer back to and verify the depiction against. Hchc2009 (talk) 19:37, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

Here's an attempt.[7] How does it look? FunkMonk (talk) 21:36, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

That looks fine to me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:03, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

Nice, I'll do the same to the rest of the images later today. And I'll start a section about this in the Dino project talk page. This is the first time a distinction between what restorations go in "regular articles" and featured articles has been brought up, I think. FunkMonk (talk) 09:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

I suppose it has to be said sooner or later ... we just had a bruising election in the US that may well be causing short-term anxieties, and continue to be a problem for years. Wikipedia doesn't work well if people aren't operating on a fairly even keel. So I'll keep an eye out over the next few days for examples where consensus seemed to be purring along for a long time and suddenly (for no apparent reason) seems to be hitting a rough patch. I'm not saying the concern isn't valid, I certainly see Mike's point, I'm just saying we need to be extra careful for a little while. - Dank (push to talk) 12:27, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

I pop in here occasionally, having an interest in two FAs. It occurred to me that there is nobody on the planet today that knows exactly what any dinosaur looked like on the outside. Any reliable sources cited must also be original research? The illustrations in the dinosaur articles look entirely reasonable to me.Nimbus (Cumulus nimbus floats by) 23:25, 9 November 2016 (UTC)

That is correct, though such restorations should of course match what is known about their appearance from the fossils (proportions, skin impressions, range of motion, etc.); things like colour are usually just educated guesses, apart from a few cases. FunkMonk (talk) 09:00, 10 November 2016 (UTC)

• I started a section about this issue at the dinosaur project:[8] FunkMonk (talk) 13:14, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

Image review for Aries FAC

Can someone please do an image review for Aries (album) for the FAC? Erick (talk) 13:22, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Done - For hopefully future nominations, you can also add such requests to the grey box on top of this page. In this way all are in one place and won't get overlooked by reviewers. GermanJoe (talk) 14:07, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Brianboulton has retired

Those of us who know Brian through his work at FAC, but who, like me, don't have his talk page watchlisted, may want to know that he has apparently been forced to retire for medical reasons. His daughter posted a note on his talk page earlier today. I hope he is well enough to receive the good wishes being posted on that page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:44, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

Here's a link, if you need it. A big loss for all of us. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 04:28, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Election

Perhaps FAC could consider running an election for an additional delegate or two; it'd boost the process. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A02:8108:1BF:AB8C:E5E4:E46F:CA2D:27F2 (talk) 13:42, 12 November 2016 (UTC)

Stay tuned to this channel. - Dank (push to talk) 14:13, 13 November 2016 (UTC)

What Dan says but, FYI, what really "boosts the process" is more reviewers... :-) Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:42, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Delegates are not elected; they use a process of apostolic succession. Hawkeye7 (talk) 06:30, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Operation Infinite Reach

Hi,

Just wanted to ask if anyone was interested in conducting a source review and/or a source spotcheck for this FA candidate. It's a very interesting subject, and so I promise you won't be bored.

Thanks very much for your help,

GAB^gab 19:35, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

At Garage rock article

I would soon like to nominate the Garage rock article for FAC. Currently there is a split proposal and discussion on the talk page there. We welcome you to participate in the discussion. Garagepunk66 (talk) 07:37, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

I'll see if I can help out. My own music genre article, Viking metal, has been languishing in the nominations queue due to lack of editor interest, so I understand how it is waiting for an article to reach promotion.--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 05:48, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

From today's featured article

There's been an objection raised at WT:MAIN#From today's featured article that that phrase, one of the first things people see when they pull up the Main Page of Wikipedia, isn't actually right. [As background: Today's Featured Article text is almost never an excerpt from the Featured Article, although when I co-write these things, I do use as much text from the article's lead as I can.] There was little discussion at Talk:Main Page. Should the wording change, and if so, to what? If you want to see how TFA text differs from article lead text, you can pull up any of the dates at WP:TFAA, click on the history, and get a diff between the first substantial edit (which will be a copy of the lead) and the final edit. (I'm not going to vote.) - Dank (push to talk) 16:24, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

The other objection, the one I raised at the beginning of that discussion, is related. As things stand, users can mistake what appears on the Main Page for the article itself, and fail to click through to the actual article. If the will was there, that problem could be ameliorated. Awien (talk) 17:53, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Agreed, I'm not dismissing that, I just wanted to tackle the other question first. I'm hoping we can get consensus one way or the other here before heading back to Talk:Main Page. - Dank (push to talk) 18:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Other than potentially tweaking the Full article link, it seems to me that the other questions are too intertwined to tackle separately. Awien (talk) 18:14, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't think the wording has changed much over the years. This is the first comment we've gotten on it. Is it really possible people would mistake it, or have? It ends with a link to the full article.--Wehwalt (talk) 18:46, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

As I said, I brought it up because I just encountered a couple of instances. Awien (talk) 19:05, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I already commented in the other thread, but I'll repeat it here: I find the basic premise for a need for change to be completely unconvincing. For the existing setup to cause problems for a hypothetical reader, that reader would need to (1) be unfamiliar with the near-universal "brief summary, click for the full item" principle by which almost every major website operates; (2) fail to notice the "From" in the header, the bolded link at the start of the blurb, and the "Full article" link, (3) actually want to read the TFA in full (since if they don't want to read it, it doesn't matter if they don't know where to find it), and (4) have such an interest in the topic that they want to read about it right now, but not enough of an interest that they've ever looked it up before and thus know where to find it. Yes, such a reader might exist, but I'd venture that they're a minute subset-of-a-subset of Wikipedia's readers. ‑ Iridescent 19:16, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

We seem to be discussing Awien's point first, which is fine ... if we can resolve it one way or the other, then it will stop muddying the water on the other point. - Dank (push to talk) 19:28, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

(Edit conflict) The purpose of featuring an article is to get our readers there. In my most recent instance, something about the present setup meant that a highly-educated Anglophone, a heavy consumer of the news, on a good computer, interested in the topic, thought that the blurb/synopsis/excerpt was the article. Last time we had this discussion, others admitted the same thing. Apparently adding "From" to the heading wasn't enough (who pays much attention to headings anyway?); why would a person click the bolded first word when they think they're already reading the article? Links are mostly for supplementary material. As for the link at the end of the blurb, it would be less likely to be missed if we eliminated the unneccessary brackets, amplified it with a verb, and separated it from the clutter of other, less relevant links. So what about our less educated, more needy, less sophisticated, non-Anglophone users who may be less conversant with our conventions? Or aren't we interested in them? Awien (talk) 19:49, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I see this as a non-issue and it's actually dangerous to make changes like this in response to anecdotal feedback and without any substantive user research. This is how you get in trouble in the UX world—someone doesn't like how something is worded or where something is placed, so you change it, but then you mess up the silent majority who were fine with the current design. I'm not saying Awien doesn't have a valid point, I'm just saying it's not one we should accommodate for without better information. --Laser brain (talk) 19:52, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree with Laser_brain, this is a solution in search of a problem. We know that an article is read many, many more times than usual when it's on the main page. People are getting the message that there is more beyond the blurb. We shouldn't make changes based on hypothetical misunderstandings. --Coemgenus (talk) 20:34, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Agree with Iridescent, Laser brain, Coemgenus. It's all very well to say that the "From" and "Full article" indicators, which always seemed very clear to me, might not help every single reader, but the premise that a paragraph could routinely be mistaken for a complete article doesn't convince me. In any case I don't see the justification for mucking around with the main page as it stands. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 21:45, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

- Currently "from" is incorrect (as ApLundell noted) because what we have isn't an excerpt but a partial synopsis. This could be fixed by doing what so many magazines do, post a certain number of words of the lead, followed by the link to the article. That would make it more obvious that you have to click to continue. Reduces people's workload too.

- Taking out "from" isn't the answer because then the heading would be saying that what follows is the Featured article, which it isn’t, it’s the blurb. Imperfect as it is, leaving it in is the less misleading option.

- Re the link at the end of the blurb, last time we had this discussion the consensus was to replace “More” with a sentence, “Read the full article” if memory serves, or anyway something similar. The person who made the changes ignored the consensus, decreed “shorter is better”, and went with “Full article…”. I don’t know when that got put in brackets, but doing so makes it seem like an aside rather than the crucial link. If we do nothing else, what harm could conceivably be done by using the consensus version, and taking away the brackets?

- Just what would substantive user research be, and how would we obtain it? Last time we talked about this, people admitted in the discussion that they hadn’t realised that the actual article is elsewhere, and I have just encountered a startling instance of that. Unless you think I’m lying or mistaken, that’s a real indicator.

Awien (talk) 22:12, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

"From" is true, or near as dammit. We don't write TFA blurbs from scratch, we write them by tweaking or trimming the article lead to fit the limitations of the front page -- all the info is indeed "from" the article. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

I asked my son to show me Today's Featured Article, and he found it correctly. So Awien's experience isn't universal. I think more such experiments would be more helpful than trying to guess what happens. Art LaPella (talk) 18:07, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

It’s an interesting thought, Art, but neither my experience nor your proposed research can be statistically significant, and anyway, how are we going to poll the people of Burkina Faso or New Guinea? We already know that it happens that people fail to get to the article, so we have a choice. We can say “Tough, they’re readers we don’t care about anyway”, or we can say “If there’s a little tweak that might help, let’s do it”. The little tweak I’m proposing is to give the link a bit more prominence by changing (Full article…) to Read the article / Continue reading / Continue to the article / Find the full article here or similar, all of which are in common usage. As far as the brevity criterion is concerned, btw, with Read the article, there’s a net saving of 2 characters over (Full article…). Cost-benefit analysis would say might help, can’t hurt, go for it. Awien (talk) 19:10, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Awien, is there some possibility the individual of whom you speak, who had the misunderstanding, could participate in the discussion? We might benefit from the first-hand scoop. If you filter an experience through another person, you may get a slightly different perspective.--Wehwalt (talk) 19:44, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

Sorry, but I wouldn't want to put him on the spot again. It happened, it was a simple oversight: he failed to notice the link. That's why I took a fresh look at the whole setup. It's clear there isn't a snowflake's hope of making any significant changes, so I dropped that idea, but tweaking the link doesn't seem to me to be enough of a big deal to require interminable discussion. Awien (talk) 20:50, 5 November 2016 (UTC)

For comparison, see our French sister project which I mentioned before. The link is much more prominent as a full sentence without parentheses or ellipsis, and stands out even more by virtue of having a line all to itself. Awien (talk) 00:20, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

I’m still thinking about this, and it occurs to me that one factor in some people’s not following the link to the article could be habituation. If you read the text of the blurb without following any of the links it contains, that makes a dozen or two blue links you’ve ignored by the time you get to the one to the article itself (today, Emma Stone, 20 of them). In other words, it could seem like just another digression to be ignored. The solution remains the same, of course: maximise its prominence. Best, Awien (talk) 14:25, 6 November 2016 (UTC)

Well, who would have thought that the suggestion to change (Full article…) to Read the article or at least Full article would be such a threatening or revolutionary change as to meet with such resistance. Signed Sisyphus, the editor formerly known as Awien (talk) 13:54, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

Hyperbole aside, I'm not sure my point to you sunk in: Making such a change in response to circumstantial and anecdotal feedback would be inappropriate. It's the front page of Wikipedia. Would you email Google and tell them you don't like where their search box is located and expect them to change it in response to your opinion? It's not that your opinion is invalid or unwarranted, it's just that you can't make changes like this without substantial evidence that the change is helpful and needed. --Laser brain (talk) 15:29, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

I agree; Awien might be right, but I think more evidence is needed, not more argument. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:31, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

The problem is that statistically significant evidence is impossible: who and how are we going to poll? Plus, it's impossible to prove a negative: there cannot be diffs that show how many people didn't click the link because they failed to notice it, it's a logical impossibility. As I said, all we can do is decide on principle on the basis of cost/benefit analysis. Signed Sisyphus, the editor formerly known as Awien (talk)

Regarding there cannot be diffs that show how many people didn't click the link because they failed to notice it, if there are a significant cohort of readers who don't realise that the TFA blurb isn't the entire article I'd expect to see a fairly regular parade of complaints—on and off Wikipedia—along the lines of "Why is the Featured Article so short? It barely covers the topic", yet thus far the only complaint of this nature has been a single comment by your anonymous friend. I find it far more likely that if people aren't clicking through to the full article, it's because they know that Wikipedia FAs are generally quite long and they don't want to invest the time reading something they don't think they'll find interesting. (When a blurb makes the article look interesting to general readers, we have no trouble getting readers to click through.) ‑ Iridescent 17:59, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

How few readers who fail to click on the link is too few to bother about, even though what might help is totally harmless? Awien (talk) 19:23, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

Around the Web: full-sentence links devoid of brackets or suspension marks

BBC: Find out more

New Republic: Read more

Telegraph: Read more about: XXX

Los Angeles Times: SEE THE STORY >

National Gallery: View the entire National Gallery Collection online

Apple: Visit the Apple Support site for quick answers, manuals and in-depth technical articles. (Etc., all links on main page follow this format).

US Geological Survey: Learn more

Awien (talk) 15:58, 26 November 2016 (UTC)

FAC mentoring

So, I did see Wikipedia:Mentoring for FAC and I was thinking of asking someone if they were willing to advise on Lake Tauca, an article which I do plan to bring to FAC. How does that mentoring work? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 20:19, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Like this; post a note and see if someone is willing to be a mentor. I'd be happy to mentor you on that article if you like. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:49, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Yes, I'd be happy with that. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:58, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Great -- I'll follow up on your talk page, probably this evening. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:29, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Would this be OR?

OK, let's assume you have three well-sourced (WP:RS) explanations for regions of heaviest famine mortality in Bengal in 1943: one says "It's Muslim inheritance laws", one says "it's the Boat Denial policy", and the third says "it's jute growing districts". The problem is, there is a very (very) high degree of overlap between the regions that fit into all three categories. Would it be OR or perhaps even WP:SYNTH to consolidate 2 or 3 or 4 sources into one table with a column for each of the three explanations? No one has done this before, at least as far as I can find. [The table could become more detailed, as the "seriousness of the mortality" and the "percentage of Muslims" both lie along a defined continuum.. and the former is divided into 86 geographic areas...]. Tks in advance.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 03:35, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

I would say yes, it's OR. The basic spirit of WP:SYNTH is that sources should not be combined to create a thesis that no source explicitly stated. It might be basic enough, considering it's just the intersection of sets, that it could be passable but I think that requires a rather good knowledge about Bengali demographics and policy to come to so I don't think it's a very basic conclusion. I'd say it's not really in the spirit of synth or NOR. Wugapodes [t^hɔk] [ˈkan.ˌʧɻɪbz] 03:46, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

A way around the synthesis problem—as long as you can rustle up an outline map of the area and a copy of Inkscape, or are prepared to flutter your eyelashes at Wikipedia:Graphics Lab/Map workshop—is to have a row of maps side-by-side showing the mortality rate per area, the Muslim/non-Muslim ratio, and the size of the jute industry, and allow the reader to draw their own conclusions. That way you're making the correlation clear to the reader, without implying causation if the sources don't agree on the cause. ("Muslim inheritance laws" in particular sounds particularly dubious as a primary cause, given that there were so many other Islamic parts of the world which were affected by shortages, war damage and expropriations during WW2 but didn't descend into famine.) ‑ Iridescent 14:10, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks!! Inheritance laws divided the lands between multiple brothers into smaller and smaller chunks until many people didn't have a large enough chunk to grow enough to survive.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk)

Sure, I get that, but it begs the question why equally-Islamic places like Tunisia, the southern Philippines, Somalia etc—all of which had a terrible time in WW2—didn't descend into famine in the same way. ("Blame the uncaring colonialists" doesn't explain it on its own, either, as other equally-Muslim parts of British India like Swat or British Baluchistan didn't suffer the same problems.) ‑ Iridescent 15:09, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

IMO, the inheritance laws were not enough by themselves to push anyone into starvation; however, under the scenario of rampant inflation plus boat denial plus "priority distribution" plus inter-province trade barriers, those with small landholdings were the ones left without a chair when the music stopped (to put it grimly). Then disease was spread by refugees to other areas ... The other major group was those who had also been struck by recent floods/droughts/pests/spores etc., e.g. Midnapore, 24-Parganas and Rangpur, but that's another story. Tks!  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 15:34, 2 December 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Request for comment on stand-alone lists being nominated as Good Articles

An interesting discussion on the GAC page; a lot of people are commenting on how FAC connects up with other areas of Wikipedia, so the voice of FAC regulars may be beneficial. Josh Milburn (talk) 08:53, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

My mistake

I tried to nominate Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125, added the string to the talk, looked at preview, clicked on "initiate", created Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Mit Fried und Freud ich fahr dahin, BWV 125/archive1, included it to WP:FAC - and never saved on the article talk. Help? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 19:41, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Fixed! DrKay (talk) 19:47, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thank you! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 20:52, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Stale FAC nomination

I nominated the Leo Frank article for FAC on August 12 and is still open, the oldest open FAC currently. There are a few reasons why it has been open for a while, some of it being my fault for not responding promptly at one point while I was in a busy period at work, as well as Brian's retirement and perhaps the complexity of the article given a prior GA and some long feedback.

I also noticed above that User:Sarastro1 was nominated for FAC coordinator, and he gave some feedback before becoming disillusioned with my responses. While I did not implement all of this user's suggestions, I did make several changes based on his feedback and gave a response to the remainder. I certainly didn't intend to be dismissive and would like to figure out at this point what needs to be done on my part to earn a promotion. Tonystewart14 (talk) 01:19, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

I skipped reviewing this a week or three ago because it looked like there were issues still being resolved. I haven't read through the review in detail, but would be willing to provide a review if that would help settle things; but can a coordinator comment on what's holding this up? I'd have expected a nomination this old to be archived, so presumably there is still some hope of a resolution? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:26, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Mike. FWIW, User:Maunus registered his support for promotion, so I believe the article should be able to be promoted and I'm willing to make improvements as needed to make it happen. Tonystewart14 (talk) 23:00, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Sorry for delay, I thought I'd saved a response here last night -- I'm now going to post it at the FAC itself to keep things in one place. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:17, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

New Featured Article coordinators

The FA coords have been discussing bringing some new people on board. Ian and Andy probably have something to say about their plans for FAC. For Today's Featured Article, Brianboulton has (sadly) retired from Wikipedia, and the TFA job will continue to get harder as the pool of available Featured Articles shrinks. Chris and I would prefer to pull in two more coords, Jimfbleak (to a permanent position) and Mike Christie (to a position with at least a one-year commitment, from him and us). Unlike in the above-mentioned "apostolic succession", whatever honor comes from their selection doesn't come from Chris and me ... my own process was almost mechanical, going down the list of past nominators at WP:WBFAN and past FACs at WP:FAL to gauge who was likely to have the most energy to devote to a big project like this one. No, any honor here comes from your support. The way we'd like to structure this is in two discussions, and the second will be a more traditional Wikipedia-style consensus process. The first discussion will run for a week and isn't meant to be official, it's meant to tell us what the community thinks about our choices, and to give Jim and Mike the support they'll need to do their jobs effectively. Both of them turned down the opportunity to say something about themselves here, but it's hardly necessary ... they're so omnipresent as reviewers and nominators that all of you who are familiar with FAC will be familiar with their work. Ian and Andy, did you want to jump in here? Thanks also for participation from the active @FAR coordinators: Nikki, Cas and DrKay. I've intentionally kept this introduction sparse, but we'll be happy to answer any questions about what we see as the process. - Dank (push to talk) 14:59, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks Dan. Graham Beards retired after several years of sterling service as a FAC coord in March this year, and Andy and I feel this is an opportune moment to bring a new person onto the team, in parallel to the proposal for the new TFA coords (who we incidentally believe are excellent choices). Our preferred choice as a new FAC coord is Sarastro1 who, like Mike and and Jim, has extensive experience as both nominator and reviewer, and who we feel will be well able to judge consensus on nominations and also field questions on the process as required. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:31, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

I love all of these selections. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 18:00, 23 November 2016 (UTC)

Three excellent additions to the team. Bencherlite^Talk 00:09, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you, Dank. I have nothing further to add except that I believe all three selections would are excellent additions to the FA team. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 04:02, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

My vote can be purchased for beer. I'm a cheap date.  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 10:13, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

Please, folks, indicate your support or opposition to the candidates, here, this week. Possibly people are waiting to see if anyone else wants to say something introductory (unlikely), or are waiting for something official next week. Per WP:BEANS, all I'm going to say is: because of the wacky, weird ways Wikipedia works, this may turn out to be the real deal, so please register your opinion. The last time we brought in new TFA coords, we had a show of support in the 50s; we may need to extend this round. I know it's Black Friday, but still, I think we can pick up the pace. I'll create a heading, if that helps. - Dank (push to talk) 18:04, 25 November 2016 (UTC)

Support or opposition for three new coords: Jimfbleak (TFA), Mike Christie (TFA), and Sarastro1 (FAC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

It's been two weeks, so I'm boxing this up, but anyone is welcome to unbox it if there's more to do. Gratz to the new coords. - Dank (push to talk) 15:27, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

---

• Support all 3. Johnbod (talk) 18:07, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support all 3. Dudley Miles (talk) 18:18, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• I don't see any good reason why the coordinators should not be allowed to bring extra hands on board when they feel it necessary, but if a vote is really necessary then I support. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 18:31, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support all 3. They're all fully capable of helping to run the processes they've been chosen for. Giants2008 (Talk) 19:34, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support Like Harry, I don't see votes as conveying any form of legitimacy. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:18, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support for all three; good contributors who should be able to handle the coordinator responsibilities. --RL0919 (talk) 22:05, 25 November 2016 (UTC)
• (((+S)⁺⁺)⁺⁺)  Lingzhi ♦ (talk) 00:58, 26 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support these three gullible fools wise old hands per the comments above, and in particularly per the person below, who is about to put it much better than I did in the previous sub-section. Bencherlite^Talk 20:46, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support - let's see how long they last! FunkMonk (talk) 21:16, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:59, 29 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three. Simon Burchell (talk) 10:40, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
• Comment. Thanks all. It's been a week, so now we're going the more traditional route of leaving pointers to this discussion on relevant talk pages (including WT:MAIN). We'll let it run for a week more. - Dank (push to talk) 15:19, 30 November 2016 (UTC)
• Support All excellent people, well suited to being irritated by me. Seriously, thank you all for volunteering. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 11:00, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three. Graham Beards (talk) 14:04, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support, like Dweller, --Gerda Arendt (talk) 14:11, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three. Level-headed long-time editors. Thanks to all coordinators for your efforts to keep these processes going. GermanJoe (talk) 14:13, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support if you need votes to make it official, although IMO appointments like this would be better served by a "if nobody raises any objection in the next month" process—doing it by a vote can have the unintentional side effect of making some appointments appear more or less legitimate than others. ‑ Iridescent 18:41, 1 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 16:06, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all 3, and with thanks per GermanJoe. Ceoil (talk) 23:09, 2 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all of them. I was really looking forward to an additional new delegate here. – FrB.TG (talk) 09:20, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
• Reaffirming my support. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:29, 3 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support all three. --Coemgenus (talk) 01:36, 4 December 2016 (UTC)
• No reason to believe they can't do the work.--Wehwalt (talk) 22:27, 5 December 2016 (UTC)
• Support not an issue at all with any of them. Ealdgyth - Talk 22:52, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Wikipedia:Today's featured article/December 11, 2016

Asking for input on this edit. Maybe once a quarter, someone will drop by TFA and start doing a lot of copyediting, and I'm never quite sure how to handle it; the situation tends to be a little different every time it happens. Let's start here: do you guys like these changes? - Dank (push to talk) 13:01, 8 December 2016 (UTC) Since time is short ... same question for this edit. - Dank (push to talk) 13:08, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi Dan, re. the first, I prefer your version, but would perhaps drop the apparently controversial "rebel" (and not use "Patriot" either -- I think one is as loaded as the other and neither is vital). Re. the second, I don't have a strong feeling either way. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 13:17, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

The Patriot is what I object to. It is a loaded term, possibly always has been. I deleted similar terminology when I renovated the article. The rest I don't really feel strongly about it. The "rebel" is to give the reader a hint of what is going on without clicking on the link, but I don't feel strongly about it.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:06, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

It new version doesn't look like the strongest of the two (the original was, as far as I am concerned, but I am British, so I don't know if American English readers would disagree). Dropping both rebel or patriot label would neutralise that particular problem. All the best, The Bounder (talk) 14:32, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

I've changed the article to "pro-independence", which I think is pretty neutral and accurate.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:10, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

On a slightly more prosaic level, the edit to the first blurb over-simplifies the sentence structure and we now have four consecutive sentences beginning with "he" or a noun. I think in that sense, the original version is better. On the Altgens blurb, I think either version is fine. Sarastro1 (talk) 20:16, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Okay, I reverted both, and added "pro-independence", but feel free to keep discussing. Thanks all. - Dank (push to talk) 20:56, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

(Article's primary author checking in:) thank you, Dank. I've reverted much of the corresponding edit to the article because the phrasing change removed the parenthetical purpose of "the second photograph (showing X) was reproduced ..." The same edit added a serial comma, which is fine, but incorrectly deleted two other commas. —ATS 🖖 talk 21:16, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Top FAC reviewers for November

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

Reviews

• 8 reviews: Dank.
• 7 reviews: Cas Liber
• 5 reviews: Tintor2
• 4 reviews: Sagaciousphil, Jimfbleak
• 3 reviews: Wehwalt, Sarastro1, Singora

8 reviewers did 2 reviews; 36 reviewers did a single review.

Image, source, and accessibility reviews

• 9 reviews: Nikkimaria.
• 4 reviews: Jo-Jo Eumerus, Cas Liber

3 reviewers did 2 reviews; 11 reviewers did a single review.

I'll post barnstars on the talk pages of the top three reviewers on each list; thanks to all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:39, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

Comments / Singora I've just noticed this. I won't tell you how to tell your job, but would encourage you to separate in-depth reviews from superficial "can you please also take a look my my article" reviews. Singora (talk) 06:41, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

MoS discussions of interest to FAC

A couple of months ago, I posted a note here about a discussion at WT:MoS that concerned quote boxes; I thought editors here might find it interesting. At least one editor (SMcCandlish) felt that my note was improper canvassing. I disagreed, so I posted a note at the Village Pump asking for opinions. There was no clear consensus, but a slight majority thought it was OK to post here, so:

I think it would be useful for regular FAC writers and reviewers to know when there are significant discussions going on at the manual of style; criterion 2 requires us to review for compliance with the MoS, after all. Unless there are objections (or people here feel it would be canvassing) I propose to drop a note here if I spot a MoS discussion that would impact FAC. This would only be the occasional discussion -- I think most WT:MOS threads are fairly technical and of no particular interest to people here. If you do object, or feel it's simply unnecessary, please say so; but I think there are likely to be readers of this page who don't watch the MoS because most of the discussions are technical, but who would like to hear about more substantive RfCs or threads. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:55, 9 December 2016 (UTC)

• Out of all the projects that would be concerned with what's going on at the MoS, FAC would be at the top of the list. Whether it were convassing would depend on how it's done and why. Curly "the jerk" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:01, 9 December 2016 (UTC)
• Agreed with CurlyTurkey. My objections were misunderstood. FAC can be a good place to notify of MoS discussions that could affect a large number of articles, since MoS compliance is part of the FAC criteria, and obviously the FAC reviewers who care about that criterion (by no means all of them) need to know what MoS says (and sometimes even why it says something in particular) for that part of FAC review. But that criterion is a small part of what FAC does and exists for. FAC is not the "MoS Campaigning Committee", and needs to stop being treated like one. If you care about MoS matters, just watchlist the MoS pages. "I think some 'authors' who are really proprietary about 'their' articles are going to want to raise hell about this because they oppose 'interference' from site-wide guidelines in general" is not a good reason to notify FAC of an MoS discussion. That's no different from inviting a bunch of Elbonian royalists to come bloc-vote against republican Cascadians in perennial Elbonia versus Cascadia editwars [if I may mince several real conflicts]. It's actually worse, because guideline compliance isn't a subjective content dispute. Another bad reason is "So-and-so may quit if we don't help him get what he wants from his 'enemies' and help him demonize everyone who doesn't agree with him." That's just being an enabler of tendentious disruption and attacks.

  What I was objecting to is actual canvassing: in particular, driving FAC and only FAC editors to go bloc-vote in an RfC about some MoS thing, when it was undeniable that a faction had formed at FAC about the MoS nit-pick in question (based on hyperbole other fallacious hand-waving instead of what the RfC actually said and meant, and the facts behind it), and when several of them were in a WP:GREATWRONGS / WP:HIGHMAINT meltdown over the matter, actively campaigning FAC and verbally attacking anyone who supports compliance with MoS, even proposing several variants of an FAC "anti-MoS". I was only one of several editors to call that out as canvassing; the third to do so in that RfC, I think.

  The appropriate thing to do when more input is sought on an MoS (or other guideline or policy) matter is to notify the site-wide venue WP:VPPOL (or even host the discussion there if it is not already running elsewhere, as was done with the MOS:JR RfC back in February). If it's a really big deal, list it at WP:CENT, too. Either or both will pull in participants from all over the project, with diverse views, rather than soliciting one clique in particular when it is already in battleground mode. I'm glad that little wiki-riot has worn itself out; let's not have another. If FAC is regularly notified of MoS RfCs, that's probably a good thing. If FAC is notified of one or two per year to drum up a sudden influx of FAC factionalism, that's a mistake.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  07:44, 10 December 2016 (UTC)

hemingwayapp.com

A person has complained that a current FAC gets a score of "Poor" at hemingwayapp.com. I will attempt to write this message in the kind of sentences hemingwayapp.com approves of. I am a reviewer at this FAC. The person who complained has pointed us to a page. The page is WP:TECHNICAL. This page is a Wikipedia guideline. It is not in our Manual of Style. The page includes a link to http://www.hemingwayapp.com. The page recommends this script. This is a script designed to help children write better. We are told that the script rejects two-thirds of the sentences in the FAC as "very hard to read". Thoughts? - Dank (push to talk) 18:30, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Heh. We don't write for Simple Wikipedia? We shouldn't write for Simple Wikipedia? Reading requires more than short sentences sometimes. This may suck. You may have to suck it up. Ealdgyth - Talk 18:42, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

(edit conflict) We are not written for children. There are some sentences which could be written better. The way Wikipedia works means somebody changes them. It is rare that a sentence is genuinely hard to understand. When one is, it is probably because it deals with a difficult concept. Difficult concepts should not be oversimplified. If they are we are failing in our educational mission. I expect the delegates to disregard any opposition based on arbitrary scores. Simple English Wikipedia:Proposed very good articles is over there. ‑ Iridescent 18:42, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

(adding) Naming their app (presumably) after the author who gave us the sentence That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all the things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man, and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student’s exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; all this well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing—the stream. is a particularly nice touch. ‑ Iridescent 18:48, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

It's important here to not denigrate the reviewer, who is trying to put across serious points even if they've used a website to get a 'score' of undetermined validity. It's also important to remember the mission, where "every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge." While some topics require complex writing, not everyone is at a college-grade reading level, and I'd argue that we're also failing in our educational mission if someone is finding it hard to understand Devon County War Memorial. You can certainly go too far in trying to simplify text. But don't throw someone off the stage for having the idea. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 19:15, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

If you read what I said there, you'll see I didn't denigrate the reviewer. I denigrate people who attempt to fleece unwary consumers with shoddy products. - Dank (push to talk) 19:22, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

What Dank said. Any app that has its basis the notion that brevity is more important than precision may be appropriate for school papers, but it's never going to be appropriate for a product aimed at anyone over the age of twelve or so. ‑ Iridescent 19:36, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Both of which are certainly true,, Dank and Iridescent. However, I don't want the reviewer to feel targeted—and although I'd emphasize that I greatly respect everyone here, and Dank is a personal friend, my read of the above is that all of you did, even if unintentionally. Jim's idea is sound, even if the execution (in using that particular site) wasn't. Again: y'all are great people and editors. Just please think about the impact your words can have on other editors. We need more FAC reviewers, not less. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:00, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that I didn't mention the name of the article or the reviewer here, so I didn't "target" him here. For clarity, here's what I said at the FAC page, and people can decide for themselves whether I targeted Jim: "The individual points you're making are completely appropriate to bring up at FAC, Jim. These are some of the things that I look for too, both when I'm reviewing at FAC and when I write TFA text, which is a summary of leads from FAs. You've picked out a couple of garden paths, one slightly ambiguous subject, and a word used to mean two different things in the same sentence. Many writing gurus would identify these as potential problems, and they recommend expending a reasonable amount of energy hunting them down and fixing them. I appreciate your work here, and agree with your points, and I suspect Harry does too. I'm not retracting my support, because I know that similar problems are somewhat common in FAs, and overall, I think readers can make out what Harry meant (assuming they know the vocabulary and the subject matter, or they're at least interested enough to find out, by clicking on links and using a dictionary app)." - Dank (push to talk) 20:16, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Dank, in no way am I trying to attack you in return, although I fear that's how you're reading my posts. I'm referring only to the above conversation: the use of "complain," "suck it up," and pointing the reviewer to Simple English if they want to discuss readability. Taken together, even without being mentioned, I'd be pretty discouraged if I were Jim. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 20:22, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Whoa – hang on, both of you! Thanks, Ed, but you don't need to worry about my thick skin. I had a good laugh at the above. I think Dank mis-characterised me above as being dreadfully naive to make a point about the tool, but if you read my original post here (towards the end), you'll see that I merely used the tool (as the first one I came across) to test whether there was validity to my pre-existing feeling that the text in the FAC was unnecessarily complex. I used the tool – off-label – to compare scores with some similar FAs, and it did show a (surprisingly clear) difference, so I took it on from there, with caveats, as you could see. Whether that's a useful process for FAC in general is perhaps something worth discussing.  —SMALLJIM  20:40, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Ed, not to worry, I don't feel attacked. Jim, this isn't a useful tool. To my knowledge, there are no useful tools, yet. But there has been recent, dramatic progress with machine language tools; see for instance yesterday's cover story in the NYT Magazine. We may get good tools some day, and I'm not a Luddite, I'll be more than happy to use them when they arrive. - Dank (push to talk) 21:10, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

I just did a check of this tool on a recently-promoted FA and found that the presence of footnotes had an impact. When I deleted the bracketed footnote numbers, readability went from grade 13 to grade 11. So the mechanics of how this is applied to the text (was it copy/pasted into the app window? with or without footnotes? were image captions, tables, etc. included?) could impact the evaluation. That said, readability tools (whether this one other others) probably should be used at FA more than they are. I don't mean they should followed slavishly, but they can help draw attention to prose that is more elaborate than it needs to be. --RL0919 (talk) 19:44, 20 December 2016 (UTC)

Just for the record, RL0919, I copied the body text from the start of the lead to end of the last text paragraph, from the web page. I pasted that into a text editor and used a regex to remove the reference markers ([1][2], etc), then another regex to remove any line shorter than 100 chars, which got rid of most of the section headers and image captions. After a manual check for anything left over, I pasted the text into the app. There were no tables in the articles I checked, but had there been I'd have ensured they were omitted.  —SMALLJIM  16:41, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

I'm going to do some brainstorming with the FA coords about some of the issues raised here. Jim, I didn't say and didn't think that you were naive, and I'm sorry for all the commotion. Keep doing what you're doing, just stay away from language tools until the tools get better. - Dank (push to talk) 15:50, 21 December 2016 (UTC)

As I already said, that's not a problem, Dank. Thanks for the pointer to that NYT article; an interesting and rather disturbing read. Watch out! – powerful computers wielding massive corpora will come after your job here soon. The hemingwayapp analysis is obviously based on a variant of one of the common readability test formulae. Here's a non-commercial website that will perform several of these tests on a submitted text. I think these tests should have a place in WP (though probably not at FA level) because they can indicate when a piece of text is more complex than it could be. For our purposes this could be used – at peer review, for example – to show that an article is less clear than similar articles in the same field. There was a piece in Signpost in 2012 that touched on this; the comments are worth reading, as is this short VPP section from 2008.  —SMALLJIM  13:25, 22 December 2016 (UTC)

WikiCup 2017

Season's greetings! This is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2017 WikiCup will begin on January 1st. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. At the time of writing, more than eighty users have signed up to take part in the competition. Interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 11:46, 31 December 2016 (UTC)

Second opinion needed on article being mentored

Jo-Jo Eumerus asked for a mentor to look at Lake Tauca, which I've done. I would appreciate it if another editor could take a look at Talk:Lake Tauca#Article structure and organization. There are plenty of high-quality sources cited, but I'm concerned that the lack of a secondary source that gives an overview of the state of knowledge, along with the fact that the primary sources vary quite a bit in the conclusions they draw, makes it extremely difficult to put a high-quality article together. The contrary view is that assembling sources into a coherent narrative is exactly what an editor is supposed to do when writing an article. I think more opinions would be helpful, particularly if anyone has experience with scientific articles where there is no clear guiding secondary source. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:21, 31 December 2016 (UTC)