Wikipedia talk:Good topics/Archive

Questions about the implementation

I expect people will have questions about the good topics implementation - how it works, etc. It's such a large thing that I'd rather not have to explain all of it from start to finish, so I think the best method would be if people ask any questions they have here, and I'll try to answer them.

One thing I will say though is that if a good topic gets enough articles to be featured, then the topic will move automatically to being a featured topic (and vice versa). You may worry that we won't be able to see this happening, but I've set up a dummy WP 1.0 log so any changes to articles can be seen there. In fact, if a topic moves from good to featured or vice versa, then the importance of the articles in the topic changes, too, and this will also show up in the log. The log updates every few days, but you can force an update by running the WP 1.0 bot.

Okay, so, any more questions? rst20xx (talk) 02:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

1. Ok, there have been a lot of changes with FT recently, and I'm not sure I'm caught up on them all. If I read {{Featured topic box}} correctly, a featured topic comprising four featured articles and one B-class article (from a recent FAR, for instance) would have the "fully featured" star incorrectly applied—what used to be handled with the ftstar parameter. Is this correct? Pagrashtak 03:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   This is correct. I thought long and hard about this, and realised that most of the time this happens it'd be because a topic had an article about something that was a tick, and then the tick happened and so it became a minus. (The rest of the time obviously is due to an FAR or GAR) In this case I think the topic should get to keep its fully featured star in the meantime. At any rate, all topics that have minuses are only temporarily there with minuses. And there were big problems with the old system, in that sometimes people won't notice when a topic gains/loses its star. Having it update automatically is just easier - rst20xx (talk) 14:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Yes, but temporarily in FT can mean half a year. I'm all for automation, but it would be nice if there was a more accurate way to do this. Pagrashtak 14:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   It only means half a year when there's been a rule change that results in a topic going under retention, and I don't see anyone making a rule change that would put a topic with such a high number of featured articles into retention. When there hasn't been a rule change, it would mean 3 months instead. Anyway, if you really feel strongly about this, bring it up at featured topic criteria - rst20xx (talk) 16:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   See Wikipedia talk:Featured topics#Display of fully-featured star cluster. Pagrashtak 17:01, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

2. Resolved
   Issue two: the {{TopicTransclude}} method results in blank spaces in the FT listing where the Good Topics are located. Pagrashtak 03:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   This is true, but I didn't see any way round that. The best I could do was remove all the line-breaks between the invisibly transcluding topics, which means there would be no more than one extra break between any two visible topics - not too bad, whilst at the same time maintaining some readability of the page's code. I hope the advantages of TopicTransclude are fairly obvious, but to reiterate: if a topic gets good enough to go from good to featured, or vice versa, then thanks to TopicTransclude it can do automatically. So definitely worth the linebreaks IMO - rst20xx (talk) 14:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   If you have to go in to remove the line breaks, then you've negated the benefit of the automatic updating. If you're going to edit the page to fix a line break, you might as well edit the page to add a topic. Pagrashtak 14:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Never mind, I think I've got this one fixed. Pagrashtak 15:52, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Wrong, as the featured topic box includes a clear all at the bottom, so you wouldn't have to re-add the line breaks by any means. But having said that, your fix is great, an even better solution. I'll apply it to the Good topics page too - rst20xx (talk) 16:05, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

3. My next question: How does the GT/FT process work with {{ArticleHistory}}? Since GT to FT is intended to be seamless, will the move be reflected in ArticleHistory? What about a fall from FT to GT? How will a GT to FT move affect Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured topic nominations and Wikipedia:Featured topics promoted in 2008? Pagrashtak 14:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   ArticleHistory also autoupdates, all these templates use another template called {{FeaturedTopicSum}} that does some sums involving the number of articles in various categories (which are themselves populated by {{ArticleHistory}} ) to work out if a topic has enough featured articles to be a featured topic. As for what would happen to Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured topic nominations and Wikipedia:Featured topics promoted in 2008, I'm not sure if the bot will still update things right. I guess they could be manually updated in the GT to FT case. We know when this happens as it will show up at the log as a change in importance. That's certainly how we know to announce new FTs in various places, such as Template:Announcements/New featured content - rst20xx (talk) 16:14, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   That's not exactly what I'm asking. If a topic goes from GT to FT, what what ArticleHistory look like? Will there be an actionx1 of GT and actionx2 of FT? Pagrashtak 16:31, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Oh, right, sorry, I'm with you. Erm, no, at the moment it'd just have the original nom. So far it hasn't even been implemented so that we can call things "Good topic candidates" when they're first nominated :/ This is the last piece of the puzzle that needs fixing. We discussed updating it every time a topic moved from good to featured but there wasn't any consensus for it - feel free to bring it up again though - rst20xx (talk) 16:45, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

4. I am not sure what is the process now, but there should definitely be a nomination procedure for a GT going for a FT (i.e. there should always be a FTC for a FT). Better safe and have at least someone review the entire topic before it is included in the "featured content". Nergaal (talk) 04:38, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   No, because as it stands, the only difference between GTs and FTs is criterion 3. If something passes GT that isn't good enough for FT once it gets the article quality, then that something shouldn't have passed GT. If GT and FT diverge more, then we will need a formal nom, but as it stands, we don't. At the moment the process is all automated. But don't worry, we can see when it happens as it shows up in the log - rst20xx (talk) 16:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   I just think it is better to simply have the comprehensiveness be reviewed again before actually labeling them as featured content. Furthermore, I think this would allow the employment of new criterias (stricter) for FTs. Just an example that comes in my mind: discography topics would be ok as GTs if they include the albums, but to become FTs they would have to include every single that is not covered by albums. Or for example the Slipknot nomination, where some albums seem not to be able to be brought to GA - possibly allow Slipknow as GT, but not as an FT. There is also the issue of contributors: maybe someone makes good GAs, and creates a GT, but somebody else brings the articles to FAs, and he might be wanted to be recognized as an FT contributor. Nergaal (talk) 00:25, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

   We are here to write an encyclopedia not give people credit. Zginder 2008-09-12T04:26Z (UTC)

   We can change the system to require renominations if the two processes diverge, but at the moment they only differ in criteria 3 so it may as well be automatic for now - rst20xx (talk) 14:47, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

5. Since you've recently done some formatting on Wikipedia:Featured topics, do you have any idea why Wikipedia:Featured topics/The Simpsons (season 8) and Wikipedia:Featured topics/The Simpsons (season 9) are not being displayed? The code {{TopicTransclude|FT|The Simpsons (season 9)}} appears to be correct, so I figure it must be some template syntax problem. user:Everyme 06:06, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   This is because they're both good topics now. That code is placed there so that if they do get enough FAs to become FTs, they can move from WP:GT to WP:FT automatically - rst20xx (talk) 14:24, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Ah, didn't realise that those Simpsons seasons are GT, not FT (yet) and that {{FeaturedTopicSum}} checks whether the talk page of the respective Wikipedia:Featured topics subpage is included in Category:Wikipedia featured topics. Quite an elegant solution. Ok, thanks. (Or should that be Ok, thanks?) user:Everyme 15:25, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Actually it doesn't use Category:Wikipedia featured topics. It uses (for example) Category:Wikipedia featured topics The Simpsons (season 8), Category:Wikipedia featured topics The Simpsons (season 8) featured content and Category:Wikipedia featured topics The Simpsons (season 8) good content and does a sum involving the number of articles in each. If there are enough featured articles, it makes it a featured topic, if not it makes it a good topic - rst20xx (talk) 15:28, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

6. Ok, I should probably read more about the featured topic candidate process. I thought the promotion is determined similar to articles, i.e. users decide when a topic goes from good to featured. As I currently understand it, the topic itself is promoted to good/featured and then automatically goes from good to featured when enough articles in the topic are featured. Is that about right? user:Everyme 15:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

   Yes, that's absolutely correct. The only difference between good and featured topics is the number of featured articles/lists, so there's no reason a good topic would need to go through another nomination process if it is ready to become featured - rst20xx (talk) 15:53, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Log

Have we been keeping a good topic log of passed and failed topics.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 23:25, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

No, there's one log for good and featured topics. As promotions/demotions between the two is automatic, we decided that it would be extra work with not enough benefit to create separate logs - rst20xx (talk) 20:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

...see here for continuing the discussion - rst20xx (talk) 20:47, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

My thoughts on GT (and a proposed lowering of the criteria)

A GL process is not feasible because the gap between FLs and GLs would be too narrow. In contrast, GT is viable due to the large potential gap between FTs and GTs, which is currently not realised. With the current criteria, the gap between FTs and GTs is too small. Both demand that all articles to have at least GA status (or FLs, for lists), but FT also need at least 25% of articles to have FA (or FL) status. To be honest, GT currently seems like a tool used by pro-GA, anti-FA Wikipedians.

The GT criteria needs to be lowered. How about requiring that at least 50% of articles should be GAs (or FLs, for lists) and the remainder must pass an audit (and there must be at least three GAs/FLs)? This would significantly increase the gap between FTs and GTs, but GTs would remain fairly prestigious.

I think that the FT process significantly worsens systemic bias by encouraging article writers to focus exclusively on over-represented American (and, to a lesser extent, European) topics such as music, sports and video games. A cursory glance over the current FTs supports this belief. Nobody in his right mind would try to write an FT on a Singapore-related topic. If the GT criteria were lowered per my suggestion above, I can think of at least two Singapore-related topics which are viable GTs (one of which I actively contribute to).

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 16:33, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

Oppose. It is bad enough that low-quality articles make it through WP:GAN on occasion, but B-class just screams lack of quality (usually lack of sourcing and basic copyediting). If a B-class article has enough quality, it should be able to pass WP:GAN and hence contribute to GTs under the current regulations. In the end, wikipedia doesn't need more GTs and FTs, but quality articles. – sgeureka ^t•c 11:40, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Hence my suggestion that non-GAs and non-GLs must have undergone an audit. The audit process is already used and having undergone an audit should indicate that an article is of a reasonable quality. The narrow gap between GTs and FTs needs to be addressed, but the problem of systemic bias is far more important.

Currently, over 70% of FTs are about "popular" topics (I included tropical cyclones in the count), while just under 40% of FAs are about "popular" topics; most of these are American (or European). Is this because it would be nearly impossible to write a Singapore-related FT or GT (or one on an obscure non-popular topic), thus encouraging editors to only work on "popular" American topics? Do we really want to cover only "popular" American topics well?

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 12:17, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think the current distribution of subjects encourages "popular" American topics. I think this more the result of the amount of readily available sources being about popular American topics. Some editors found the proper sources for their topics, and ran with them.

In regard to the audited articles, I believe you'll find most editors oppose the inclusion of B, C, and Start-class articles because the ratings are assigned by WikiProjects rather than through a Wikipedia-wide process. Since every project has different standards, the level of quality is too varied and too hard to regulate.

If you're concerned for the gap between FT and GT, the FT criteria is planned to slowly become more stringent over time. The next increase is planned for the start of 2009 and will increase the Featured count from 25% → 33%. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 13:15, 30 September 2008 (UTC))

Raising the FT criteria would indeed increase the gap between FTs and GTs, but it would worsen the problem of systemic bias. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 06:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• Oppose per the above opposes, and also let me point out that the first GT promotions happened 10 days ago. To claim there's not enough difference between GTs and FTs because there's only 9 GTs, when GTs have existed for 10 days, is ludicrous. Give the current system a chance to find its feet before proposing to change it. Also, let me reiterate that any skew in topic numbers is simply reflective of the fact that there are more American contributors than elsewhere, and as a result they can collaborate better, and GTs/FTs are more about collaboration than GAs/FAs. Also also, audits wouldn't work as if a Start-class article is sent to peer review, it's by no means going to come out B-class even if all concerns are addressed - rst20xx (talk) 13:55, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

  I agree that the GT process is new, but did not use the low number of GTs to argue that the gap between FTs and GTs is too small. If a topic had 20 articles, the gap would be reasonably large, but if a topic had only 4 articles, the gap would be very small; a GT with 4 articles could be promoted to FT when just one of its GAs attains FA status. Regarding your other points, see my rebuttal below. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 06:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• No. Inclusion of B-class into GT? Nope. We can't control the quality of B-class articles, nor control the individuals that slap the label of B onto the article. B-class criteria is a lot more vague than GA's. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 14:38, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Rebuttals and further thoughts

The primarily cause of systemic bias is that most Wikipedians are Americans contributing to articles about "popular" topics. However, the featured content processes indirectly worsen systemic bias.

Writing FAs on (for example) Singaporean historical sites is far harder than writing FAs on American popular topics. Referenced information about Singaporean historical sites is scarce, so comprehensiveness and FA-standard referencing are very difficult to attain. Furthermore, non-native speakers of English would struggle to write prose that is "engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard". As a result, most FAs are about American popular topics. This discourages editors from writing about Singaporean historical sites and encourages them to write only about American popular topics.

FTs are composed of multiple high-quality articles. Thus the gap in difficulty in writing FTs about American popular topics and writing FTs about Singaporean historical sites is many times more than the difficulty gap for FAs. Consequently, the FT process compounds systemic bias many times more than the FA process does.

The GA process was created for excellent short articles that were ineligible for FA. It helps fight the systemic bias of FA by recognising the efforts of editors writing about Singaporean historical sites (such as Aldwinteo) and hence encouraging editors to write about Singaporean historical sites. Similarly, GT should help fight the systemic bias of FT. In its current form, it fails to do so.

Perhaps I should be open about the two "Singapore-related topics [which would be] viable FTs (if the GT criteria is lowered per my suggestion)". They are "Jack Neo movies" and "National symbols of Singapore". Shall I use them as case studies? I have written GAs about two of the better-known Jack Neo movies, and am writing a third, but articles about the lesser-known movies would struggle to attain even GA status. As for "National symbols of Singapore", Majulah Singapura is currently a GA and Flag of Singapore is nearly there. Vanda Miss Joaquim and Merlion could attain GA status with some effort. Unfortunately, Coat of arms of Singapore and Symbol of Singapore are unlikely to attain even GA status.

Of course, I am always open to other ways to make GT a more accessible standard that helps counter the systemic bias of FT. For example:

• We could lower the GA criteria. I have proposed that a small percentage of sources with borderline reliability, used to reference relatively uncontroversial information, could be accepted in GAs.
• With the introduction of C-class, the B-class criteria have become more stringent. Some WikiProjects do not use C-class, but we could require that all non-GAs (which must have undergone an audit) should meet the site-wide B-class criteria. Perhaps the B-class criteria should be raised further (but should not be too close to the GA criteria).
• The auditing process could be reformed to ensure that audited articles are of an acceptable quality.
• Not worrying about the quality of non-GAs in GTs, as long as they are not stubs or missing articles. To be honest, if a Singapore-related topic has ten articles, six of which are GAs, while the remainder are C-class, I think our coverage of the topic is still good.

Ironically, the argument that "anyone can slap a B-class label on an article" is similar to the arguments used by the FA community to discredit GA. The FA community are proposing a FSA process to recognise excellent short articles, which would render GA redundant; this suggests that GA is failing in its mission. After eleven years in the Singaporean education system, I know that meritocracy can breed elitism, and I believe this is what is happening here. Please do not let FTs (and Wikipedia) be dominated by elitism and American popular topics.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 06:57, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

• We're not going to allow topics to include B-class articles for the sake of countering your perceived notions of systemic bias. WikiProject ratings are so variable between projects (many projects don't even have a set of criteria for B-class articles under their scope, let alone any type of assessment department to handle such a task) that attempting to set B-class as a quality level for topics is meaningless. You suggested that the article could be peer reviewed, but at the end of that peer review, that article should be able to pass WP:GAN, no matter how limited its subject material is. We have GAs as short as Chase Promenade, AT&T Plaza, and New York State Route 164. One of the reasons GA exists is to recognize articles of limited subject matter such as these. Yes, it's not perfect, but it's a community venue of assessing articles rather than the lack of consistency between the ratings of different WikiProjects. Good topics are already a compromise that recognizes the difficulty of producing a featured topic and provides a minimum bar that is not going to move to address systemic bias on Wikipedia. Topics are supposed to be collections of Wikipedia's best articles, and I don't see how allowing articles that simply are not our best to be included is in line with this. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 07:48, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Addressing each of your points separately:

"WikiProject ratings are so variable between projects...that attempting to set B-class as a quality level for topics is meaningless." - Instead of using WikiProject ratings, we could check all non-GAs against the site-wide B-class criteria during the review.

"You suggested that the article could be peer reviewed" - You mean an audit is merely a peer review? I thought there was an established audit process for non-GAs in FTs and GTs. Shows how little I know. Perhaps the audit process could be modified?

"One of the reasons GA exists is to recognize articles of limited subject matter such as these." - I agree, but I am also concerned that GA may be losing sight of its goal, a reason why FA regulars are proposing a FSA process to recognise excellent short articles. In a recent discussion, several GA reviewers suggested that articles about sportspeople need "Personal life" sections to attain GA status. This would prevent me (and other SGpedians) from writing GAs about several Singaporean Paralympic medal-winners, as there is very little information available about their personal lives. Unless you regularly contribute to such articles, you are unlikely to understand how difficult they are to write (especially when FA/FL/GA status is the goal).

"Good topics are already a compromise that recognizes the difficulty of producing a featured topic and provides a minimum bar that is not going to move to address systemic bias on Wikipedia. Topics are supposed to be collections of Wikipedia's best articles, and I don't see how allowing articles that simply are not our best to be included is in line with this." - To be honest, I do not really understand why GT exists. The gap between FTs and GTs is too narrow. Processes must exist for a purpose, such as to fill a void. For example, I created RFF because PR did not cater to new articles written by newbies. Likewise, GA was originally created to cater to excellent short articles. What is the purpose of GT? Not simplicity and lack of bureaucracy, since the nomination process is unlike that of GA. Providing an accessible standard, especially for topics which cannot achieve FT status? Evidently I am the only one who thinks of that. FT already recognises the best topics, so GT needs to recognise topics that are not the best.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

That there is a site-wide B-class review is still meaningless unless there is a community venue to ensure that the criteria is met. It should not be the job of FTC to determine this, especially when B-class is intended to be a WikiProject rating given by WikiProjects to articles on a quality scale that they have already determined. The jump from C-class to B-class is intended to encapsulate project-specific criteria (namely in content) that varies from project to project, and it should not be the role of a community venue to assess that these articles are B-class (as GA and FA assume WikiProject-specific requirements have been met per the requirement for comphrensiveness). The fact that many WikiProjects don't have assessment departments (or even criteria for that matter) to assess articles means that any random bloke can change an article to B-class. As for the audit, it is a peer review. That you don't know this is troubling considering you want to fundamentally change the process. In terms of the audit, the only thing FTC should check is that the peer review was adequately thorough and nothing more. This audit is only intended for a tiny part of the topic that cannot become a GA or FL because it simply is impossible - a television series that has not finished airing, a video game that has not been released, a film still in production, and so on and such forth. These are generally short and concise articles that don't require an extended peer review to fully evaluate the article. A B-class article (especially on the topics you're bringing up) would require an extensive peer review with a lot of input, and that's not the job of FTC to judge whether that review is thorough enough (hence the minimum bar for a GA, which is a very lenient bar).

As for GA, it does recognize short articles. That's one of its key purposes, which I've already pointed out with a bunch of short articles. The only reason the FAC regulars are suggesting FSAs are due to a potential flood of short road and hurricane articles that are comprehensive but aren't very long. There's practically no other type of article in that discussion besides these. As for your specific set of Singaporean articles, if you don't have the sources to write such a section, then you don't have the sources. If consensus at GAN is demanding a "Personal life" section then I don't know why you're trying to sidestep them and head to GT with the notion that you can get those articles recognized here, especially since GT have just been established (and if we took a straw poll on this, I would be willing to bet that your proposal would be rejected by a pretty wide margin). As for why GT exists, it's because trying to get a FT is hard. As a person who has made three FTs on his own and with hardly any help (as in I was a primary contributor, if not the contributor to practically all the articles in these topics), I know fully well how damn hard it is. With the requirement moving up to 33% in 2009, FTs will only become harder to acquire. GT is a recognition of that difficulty and sets the bar low enough to allow topics that normally would be very difficult (say Key visual novels or Millennium Park) to be recognized. One of the topics I am making would be near-impossible to acquire as a FT, but now is available to me as a GT. Are GTs our "best" articles? No, that's FT. However, GTs are many of our "good" articles that have been evaluated by a community standard, not B-class articles evaluated by a nebulous standard. If you have problems with your articles passing GA, then take up your problems at GAN, not here. — sephiroth bcr ^(converse) 19:35, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• I admit that I don't know how country-related articles are structured on wikipedia, but have you thought about merging articles that cannot (easily) attain GA status? Screw GTs when you can get an FA-worthy article that way (which should appear on the main page pretty quickly because it is not pop-culture cruft for once). – sgeureka ^t•c 09:00, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

  Maybe you misunderstood what I meant by "Singapore-related article". An article about a Singaporean politician is a Singapore-related article, but would have a structure similar to an article about an American politician, taking into consideration the limited information available on Singaporean politicians. The same goes for Singaporean movies or Singaporean companies. --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• I think your whole premise is wrong, J.L.W.S. The Special One. Yes, I agree it's harder for "non-American" articles to get to FA than "American" ones, and yes, this is due to the sourcing disbalance. But FA rates the quality of articles, not the amount of work that's gone into them, and hence yes, some articles are absolutely harder to get to FA than others. It's worth pointing out that not all "American" articles are of equal difficulty to get to FA - an article on a road is easier to get to FA than one on DNA, but there you go, everyone knows that to be able to say "I got DNA to FA" is worth more than to be able to say "I got New York State Route 175 to FA" (no offense, Mitchazenia), and equally, to be able to say "I got this Singapore article to FA" is worth more than to be able to say "I got this US article to FA" - rst20xx (talk) 16:46, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

By the way, I have thought of a third reason to lower the GT criteria to allow some B-class articles. When an FA or GA in an FT loses its status, or an audited article which was accepted due to instability is no longer instable, the FT could be demoted to a GT instead of losing its status altogether. Should this happen to an article in a GT, the topic will remain a GT unless the percentage of non-GAs (which excludes FAs and FLs, of course) falls below the accepted minimum (50%, according to my proposal). --J.L.W.S. The Special One (talk) 14:13, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Hildan- Will I can see some merit to your argument, can you honestly say that a process (split FT and GT) only a couple months old needs such a drastic change? The gap between the two will widen over time, but such drastic changes in rapid succession will only make it difficult for the community to maintain pace.

In regard to your concerns about systemic bias, I agree that more than half of the topics fall into a "popular" category, but only a third of all topics are related to the USA region. Not perfect but hardly overly bias in my opinion. And to reiterate, I don't think the current distribution of subjects encourages "popular" American topics. I think this is more the result of the amount of readily available sources about popular American topics. Some editors found the proper sources for their topics, and ran with them. (Guyinblack25 ^talk 15:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC))

J.L.W.S. The Special One, in reply to your latest comment, there is already a 3-month "retention time" placed on topics when an article gets demoted/comes out of inherent instability. In other words, the topic keeps its status for 3 months before being demoted, so the editor has plenty of time to get it back up to code - rst20xx (talk) 18:25, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

• I still don't see the point of FT or GT. Neither of them assist readers at all. Recognition of you work is great, but we already have FA and GA if you want that (and at least FA does something for readers too). I just don't see what good GT does other than giving editors badges, and if you edit only for badges, we have a bigger problem. Giggy (talk) 13:33, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

A lot of people edit wikipedia for stupid reasons, e.g. boredom, fear of deletionism or altruism (edit: okay, altruism is that stupid). If these edits significantly improve wikipedia (which GTs and FTs certainly do on a meta level), I am all for it. – sgeureka ^t•c 14:48, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Giggy, initially I very much felt the same way. Outside readers won't know about these topics and won't care at all; ultimately, however, it lets editors work on a group of articles and get recognition for them. For instance, DYK gives out credits for every DYK, and this helps spur people into creating new articles. Gary King (talk) 15:22, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Question

Why aren't the categories here mimicking those at FT? Nergaal (talk) 05:09, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

I believe it's because FT is using the same categories as FA and GT is using the same categories as GA. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:06, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. Is this a setup you're happy with, or do you want to propose we change it? rst20xx (talk) 23:40, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

I think it makes sense the way it is now. Rreagan007 (talk) 21:18, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

South Park Featured topic drive

WikiProject South Park participants have started a page at WP:SOUTHPARK/TOPIC to organize featured topic drive collaborations. The primary goal is to improve the quality of articles about South Park episodes, with the ultimate end goal of getting sets of episodes by season to Good Topic or even Featured Topic status. We are starting off by focusing on Season 1, to get it to Good Topic status, see Wikipedia:WikiProject South Park/Featured topic Drive/season 1. Any help is appreciated, and feel free to comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject South Park/Featured topic Drive. Cirt (talk) 23:09, 4 April 2009 (UTC)

The Legend of Zelda titles

The Legend of Zelda (series) has been removed from the GA list as the result of a community reassessment. Since I am unfamiliar with the good topics process, I have not updated the good topic status. Geometry guy 14:03, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

OK I'll do it - rst20xx (talk) 20:19, 31 May 2009 (UTC)

Problem on this page

Not sure if it's just me, but in the last section, "Physics and astronomy", the space FTs are showing up (Jupiter, main Asteroid belt, solar system)and they and the two topics after them (Supernovae, Classes of, Upsilon Andromedae) only have the "book" link, not the full "edit/discussion/book" header. Maybe there's too many templates again? --PresN 18:46, 13 December 2009 (UTC)

(Link to previous discussion) Argh... that is the case. There are 515 expensive parser calls, when there needs to be below 500. Bizarrely, WP:FT has not hit the limit yet, although I remember being confused about the two pages having different numbers last time. Let me have a think about what I can do about this - rst20xx (talk) 02:50, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, turns out #ifexist is not the only expensive parser call, there are two - PAGESINCATEGORY is the other one. {{Featured topic box}} uses PAGESINCATEGORY three times, whereas {{FeaturedTopicSum}} uses it 5 times, so this will account for a fair number of the calls. Additionally, templates used by {{Featured topic box}} may use #ifexist or PAGESINCATEGORY. And I can see it's possible that WP:GT and WP:FT may use these a different number of times. After last time this problem occurred though, I went through both pages and checked they both had all topics listed, so I'm reasonably sure they're the same in that sense. I will try and recode the templates to use less expensive parser calls - both have some redundancy, and I haven't done any template coding in a while but I should be able to work out how to get round it. But not today because it is 3 am :) rst20xx (talk) 02:59, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

Wait, I'm now slightly confused again, as to how I fixed this problem last time it came up with this change, i.e. by replacing two expensive parser calls by what I thought were two cheap calls, but now appear to also be two expensive calls...! Well whatever, I'll try and fix it soon - rst20xx (talk) 03:05, 14 December 2009 (UTC)

OK, I went through all the templates, and as far as I can tell, the only expensive parser functions involved are the PAGESINCATEGORY calls in {{FeaturedTopicSum}} and {{Featured topic box}}. Apparently you can't assign the result of such a call to a variable, and just reference this variable when a call is made multiple times. So the only option is to remove the repeated calls, even if it means more redundant code elsewhere - removing the repeated calls isn't always possible but sometimes is. In fact it's possible twice here, once in each of the two templates we are dealing with (there are three redundancies and I don't think it's possible for the third).

Well, I removed the redundancy in {{Featured topic box}} here, and did it change the number of parser calls in WP:GT? Well, there are now 510 calls, so apparently it removed a grand total of 5 :S I think removing the extra call in {{FeaturedTopicSum}} is the next step (very easy to do too), only I can't do that cos I'm an admin. I'll ask someone to do it - rst20xx (talk) 03:28, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

...And obviously these are all stop-gap solutions as there is no way to remove the PAGESINCATEGORY calls beyond the efforts I am making here. So even if this works, as I hope it will, it will only work for a bit longer, and then alas I think the only option will be to break the pages in two. Hopefully they'll have gotten quite long by then anyway so this might not be a bad move anyway - rst20xx (talk) 03:34, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

Argh! The change to {{FeaturedTopicSum}} was made and that didn't fix it! :( rst20xx (talk) 16:36, 16 December 2009 (UTC)

...And the explanation as to why can be found here. Given this, we have reached the point where we need a radical rethink - either the page needs to be split, or we need to remove some of the automation that the use of categories provides, in favour of increasing the amount of manual work required to maintain the WP:FT and WP:GT pages - rst20xx (talk) 02:42, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

I have taken out {{TopicTransclude}}, thus removing (I think) 3 parser calls per topic. This should make the system work for a few more years. However unfortunately it also removes the automation of which page a topic appears on (WP:GT or WP:FT) - this now needs to be maintained manually. I have split the topics up as they currently stand (if you can see any mistakes, ie topics appearing on the wrong page, please fix them). Sorry this took me so long to do something about - rst20xx (talk) 17:58, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Short list question

Slowly moving towards a good topic for National Treasures of Japan (National Treasures of Japan and lists in Category:Lists of National Treasures of Japan) and wondering how to deal with very short lists such as: List of National Treasures of Japan (miscellaneous structures) or List of National Treasures of Japan (historical materials). They are likely never going to become featured lists because of length (or rather absence of it). Should they be eventually nominated separately or merged with some other article (with which?)? bamse (talk) 20:17, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

Merging is definitely the way to go, the question is one of working out which articles should be merged with which. Well, the two you mention above are actually the only two lists that are two short, so my inclination would be to merge them back into the National Treasures of Japan article. Which would look a tiny bit odd but wouldn't grow that article's size too much - rst20xx (talk) 18:01, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. If merging is the only option, I'll do that even though I'd prefer to have lists and overview articles clearly separated. Maybe I should send a petition to the nominating agency asking form more designations in these two categories :-) bamse (talk) 09:03, 25 January 2010 (UTC)

Topic moves between FT and GT in AHs

Please see the discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Featured_topics#Topic_moves_between_FT_and_GT_in_AHs.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 01:11, 28 January 2010 (UTC)

Total count

Is it me or there are 135 GTs but only 134 are counted? Nergaal (talk) 00:02, 15 October 2010 (UTC)

Game of Thrones, Season 1

I'm working on getting the first season of Game of Thrones (TV series) to GT. Right now, however, there is no "Season" episode, as there is only one season. This will change in the near future, as a second season will be airing beginning in March 2012. Should I...

• 1) nominate it for GT without a list article, but then work the season 1 article up to FL once it's created, or
• 2) nominate it for GT with List of Game of Thrones episodes as an FL, and then subsequently replace that with a season 1 FL article once that's been established and worked up to the proper criteria? Jclemens (talk) 19:34, 17 December 2011 (UTC)

Annotated images

I have noticed that some of the images used for the good-topic boxes have annotations (here, here and here, and less intrusively here). Not only is the feature useless when the images are so small, but the note that appears beneath them (drawing attention to the said annotations) disrupts the formatting of the boxes in question. Is there a way to de-activate annotations for the images used in these templates? Waltham, The Duke of 18:09, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Can you provide a screenshot of what you see? I don't see any annotations (checked on two browsers) and there's nothing to indicate that in the page's template code. --PresN 19:13, 29 January 2013 (UTC)

Apologies for the delay. The annotations are in the Commons files, and I understand they appear in Wikipedia because I have them activated through my preferences; I don't recall whether they are opt-in or opt-out, but it would seem that the former is the case and that not enough people have activated annotations for there to be a noticeable problem. Anyway, this is what I see. The first example shows a good topic where the annotations' boxes in the image are considered large enough to appear (and they do once I hover over the image, though it is not visible in the screenshot). In the second they are too small to be discernible at this resolution, and a less intrusive "i" icon appears with a tooltip of "This file has annotations". The template does not seem to concern itself with annotations, but I think it ought to suppress them or default to the relatively unintrusive icon, if possible. Waltham, The Duke of 16:42, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

It's been two years, and this is still an issue... Waltham, The Duke of 11:35, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

This is the first time I've seen this thread. I'll look more into it soon. Sorry that it took so long. GamerPro64 15:08, 30 January 2015 (UTC)

The problem remains, and may be spreading (because of the increasing use of annotations)—it now affects topics such as Parachutes and Boston campaign Saratoga campaign (I'd already mentioned Boston in my original post). Perhaps I ought to take this to the Village Pump... It's not just these templates, after all, but all images displayed in a small size. Below a certain threshold, annotations are likely to be useless and would be best suppressed all over Wikipedia, possibly with the option of an override for images that happen to have large, clearly defined designs. Waltham, The Duke of 20:33, 30 July 2015 (UTC)

God I forgot all about this. I feel like I had an answer but forgot what it was. Probably for the best to take this to somewhere else like the Village Pump. They might be more reliable than I. GamerPro64 00:24, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

So had I; I was just looking at pages on my watchlist and happened to find this exactly six months after my previous message. Anyway, thank you. I'll air my concern on a more public venue. Waltham, The Duke of 04:43, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

And done: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 138#Annotations in small images. Waltham, The Duke of 14:35, 31 July 2015 (UTC)

Proposal that may promote more GA campaignes

I proposed a new class for topics that could help promote more GA topics. I made the proposal Here . It would be great to have some feedback on it. Thank you.Lucia Black (talk) 22:48, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

Reducing page size

By 27 December 2013, the wp:Good_topics page had grown to exceed the wp:post-expand include size limit (of 2,000 KB), and the use of function {{PAGESINCATEGORY:}} had reached 487 of 500 maximum expensive parser functions. There are several tactics to reduce size:

• Split large wp:Good_topics page into multiple pages, as the easiest quick reduction.
• To show icons, use a smaller template, such as {{icon}} not {{classicon}}.
• Reduce size of {{Featured topic box}} by simpler/shorter markup.
• Split columns of page titles into 2nd wikitable with bgcolor=#F2FFE6 and same width/margins (width=95% style="margin:0 auto"), but setting each "column1=" through "column3=" to null and "br=" also to null.

The quickest fix would be to split the large page into multiple pages, and start splitting columns of page titles into a 2nd wikitable (in each of the dozens of subpages WP:Featured_topics/...), but also the Template:Icon could be optimized someday to reduce its use of post-expand bytes for the "GA" or "FA" icon symbols. -Wikid77 (talk) 15:12, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

• Can someone run a bot for the classicon thing? I have no idea how to do the last two. Nergaal (talk) 11:25, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

• It's now over the maximum expensive parser functions. In Show preview: Warning: This page contains too many expensive parser function calls. It should have less than 500 calls, there are now 516 calls. – Wbm1058 (talk) 17:57, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
  • Just noticed this conversation. Maybe splitting the topics page into multiple pages would be the best idea here. GamerPro64 18:01, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
    • I agree with GamerPro, and a bot for the classicons could also be implimented if we could get someone to write it.--十八 21:50, 12 November 2014 (UTC)
      • I took care of the classicon thing a while ago. Nergaal (talk) 22:09, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I suggest splitting only the Arts category into a subpage, but keep a mini-summary for that here. Arts takes roughly 1/2 of the page size. Nergaal (talk) 22:14, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Actually I noticed that GAs have been reorganized. Before any split maybe have a reorganization for the whole GTs to have the same structure as GAs. Nergaal (talk) 22:21, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Danish cities

Hi, I was wondering if anybody knew how many cities we'd need to get up to GA for it to become a good article topic. It's just @Ipigott:, @Rosiestep: and myself already have 4 of the top city articles up to GA. Would something like the 10 most populated cities be acceptable for a good article topic? As far as I know no country on wikipedia is yet to achieve this with cities.♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:31, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

What lead would you use? If List of urban areas in Denmark by population then at least top 4, if List of cities in Denmark by population then at least top 5. Nergaal (talk) 10:25, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Yes, something like that. I was thinking top 5 minimum and top 10 really to be "complete".♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:29, 23 July 2014 (UTC)

Actually, I disagree. If List of urban areas in Denmark by population is the lead article, all 33 listed cities would need to be GAs and the list itself would need to be a FL. If List of cities in Denmark by population is the lead, then all 45 listed cities would need to be GAs and that list would have to be a FL. I'd have to oppose a topic that cherry-picked only the top 10 when the lists have longer scopes. Imzadi 1979 → 02:08, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Danish cities require rather a lot more work than US farm tracks for GA though Imzadi..♦ Dr. Blofeld 09:22, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

The criteria are very clear to me though. If you're using a 33-item or a 45-item list as your lead, then the topic needs to encompass all 33 or 45 items. All articles need to to be GAs or FAs and all lists need to be FLs. Yes, I understand that means a lot more work. Imzadi 1979 → 09:37, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

Not necessarily. Does Denmark have only 33 or 45 cities? If only the major cities would be included in an initial phase then that would be acceptable. See Wikipedia:Featured topic candidates/Main asteroid belt for a similar example. Nergaal (talk) 13:36, 24 July 2014 (UTC)

New categories

At GA the current categories are:

List of good articles, arranged by topic

Agriculture, food and drink
Agriculture, food and drink

Art and architecture
Art and architecture

Engineering and technology
Computing and engineering · Transport

Geography and places
Geography · Places

History
World history · Royalty, nobility and heraldry

Language and literature
Language and literature

Mathematics
Mathematics and mathematicians

Media and drama
Television · Films · Media and drama

Music
Albums · Classical compositions · Songs · Other music articles

Natural sciences
Biology and medicine · Chemistry and materials science · Earth sciences · Physics and astronomy

Philosophy and religion
Philosophy and religion

Social sciences and society
Culture, society and psychology · Education · Economics and business · Law · Magazines and print journalism · Politics and government

Sports and recreation
Sports and recreation

Video games
Video games

Warfare
Units · Battles and exercises · Aircraft · Decorations and memorials · Military people · Warships · Weapons and buildings

while the current categories for GTs are:

1. Arts (music, theatre film and drama) - split in 2
2. Language and literature (only lit) - same
3. Everyday life (sports, video games) - split in 2
4. Social sciences and society (3) - same
5. Geography and places (places) - same
6. History (world history, war) - split in 2
7. Engineering and technology (computing, transport) - same
8. Natural sciences (bio, chem, meteo, phys) - same

Of all these new categories, only the 2 arts, warfare and meteo are indeed large.

The only missing categories after the split would be:

1. Agriculture, food and drink
2. Art and architecture
3. Mathematics
4. Philosophy and religion

Nergaal (talk) 22:39, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Proposal

Split Arts, Everyday life, and History, and move the new Music, Media and drama, and Warfare to their own subpages. The remaining content should be only around 1/3 of the current size, or less than the current size of the FT page. Nergaal (talk) 22:44, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

Meteo category has 42 entries. Nergaal (talk) 23:31, 12 November 2014 (UTC)

I moved the 3. If someone has some time, they could try to make sure I did not add any errors. Nergaal (talk) 01:09, 13 November 2014 (UTC)