Frankly I agree with you. I've always been annoyed that the current maintenance collaboration is to create articles that have been requested for over a year. Articles are constantly requested, yet there are always requests being filled. So what do we do with the requests we cannot fill? I propose: 1. Article requests be cleaned up very thoroughly, with entries deleted if they can't be filled adequately or should not be on Wikipedia 2. Focus of experienced editor efforts be on clearing out merger backlogs, voting per specific policies in AfDs, clearing out speedy backlogs (sysops, obviously) and the like. 3. Attention be paid to the cleanup taskforce and wikification backlogs. That way we can increase the quality of the encyclopedia. It would be good if unneccessary stub articles (careful attention should be paid to whether or not the article should be deleted, but either way [[Wikipedia:Articles for undeletion]] will pile up with incidents) could be cleared out, and vandal fighting tools spread to the masses (every CVU member should know about Lupin's tool or VP/VP2/VS/MWT, for instance). You mention that we should aim for 100,000 featured articles. I assume [[WP:ARCAID]] (merger of [[WP:COTW]] and [[WP:AID]] for those who weren't informed) will help, however I propose it be expanded so that there is more advertising of the ARCAID around Wikipedia and experienced editors are encouraged to contribute. I'm not aware of other broad attempts to improve the quality of articles (by broad I mean broad, so SCOTW and the like do not count) How about we start a wikiproject for the cleanup taskforce? I've already established one for the wikification taskforce, it has worked very well and the wikification backlog is being cleared out quicker every day. A formalisation of the process in a wikiproject would encourage people to join in, not only to cleanup articles, but to assist in other measures like publicity for the cause which could eventually lead in many more people helping out. And then we could have bureaucrats force 1FA upon RFAs :) As for your competition, I suggest you give the winner the chance to donate $100 to Wikimedia instead, its an option I'd personally prefer. -- Akash/Draicone On 9/12/06, daniwo59(a)aol.com <daniwo59(a)aol.com> wrote: Recent the the articles that 230,000 without articles an does not spurious (who These articles shift "Requested feature the focus that most of judges will historical reasons, this participated _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 12/09/06, Anthony <wikilegal(a)inbox.org> wrote: This is answered in Danny's original message, which I will therefore assume you didn't read before hitting 'reply'.

I think what will happen is that the volunteers will do whatever the heck they feel like.

On Sep 12, 2006, at 10:28 AM, Anthony wrote: Anthony, please stop pontificating to actually look at things occasionally. Danny offered the list at [[Wikipedia:Vital articles]]. Go look at it, and you can see how many are featured, how many are good, and how many require cleanup.

In the meantime, I'm placing you on moderation on this list. Posts that obviously fail to engage what people are saying, or that otherwise fail to engage reality in a sufficiently useful way will be rejected.

On 12/09/06, maru dubshinki <marudubshinki(a)gmail.com> wrote: million articles. Raul as Featured Articles Dictator might apply the cattleprod enema a bit more thoroughly. If FAC has gone off into one of those weird genetic drift zone of ten people agreeing to 'consensus' that drives others out and fails to serve Wikipedia, and if GA has done the same (considering GA was supposed to be the process-light parallel to unclog FAC), then burning it down and building something that actually gets back to the really quite short and reasonable FA criteria might be well in order. - d. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

On 13/09/06, MacGyverMagic/Mgm <macgyvermagic(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> With FA nominations often missing out on basic criteria (at least the last > time I checked in there), rules are apparently needed. It stops additional > work in de-featuring work that should not be featured to begin with if > criteria are too lax.

Yeah. But it's gotta be more of a checklist and a general Request For Shrubbery Demands.

David, what exactly are you referring to here? Most of the minor detail type things that come up in FACs are pretty easy to fix (such as formatting and consistency issues). Other potentially bigger problems that are still somewhat debatable are things like prose quality and reference quality, and these can take more time. But in the end, the resulting work is usually significantly superior to the old version (at least as far as I can tell, being someone who thinks WP:RS and WP:CITE are indispensable). Which of these do you see as shrubberies, or am I missing another option?

Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores: standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied. Good Articles itself has turned into a mockery of FAC. Most Featured Articles are great articles, but most great articles are not FAs.

Put together an implementation in templates? Presumably to be put on the talk page.

On Sep 12, 2006, at 9:44 AM, maru dubshinki wrote: The usual solution in these cases would be to create a lightweight, no bureaucracy version, akin to PROD. Article rating was a nice technical solution that had a few major bugs like not actually working, but what if we strayed away from version rating and had general ratings on articles? i.e. instead of the database nightmare just let articles all have 1-5 ratings, with some option like "if ten people vote to clear ratings, the ratings are reset" so as to not have articles sandbagged with ratings of ancient versions? -Phil _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores: standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied.

So when a writer's done their best to meet the criteria on the FAC checklist (except maybe the vague and subjective 'exceptional' one), is there a mechanism that will not feel like too much bloody work for little gain?

To reach 100,000 FAs or GAs - at which point we could in fact look Britannica in the eye on quality - will take a parallel process that isn't turned into stupid amounts of effort for little or no reward. - d.

Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase of it's good enough articles.

On 12/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion. - d.

That goal (and the goal of even 100,000 FAs) may mean that articles which could not be brought to FA level on their own need to be merged (e.g., a single, comprehensive article on multiple schools instead of a stub for each individual article)

To be a featured article an article should be reasonably complete for the level of coverage we provide... but that doesn't require it to be long. I've heard that there is a trend on FAC is to encourage the creation of very long articles... even, perhaps, where really long is inappropriate. If this is the case then it's a cause to improve the FA process, not a cause to back away from making more articles featurable.

On 9/13/06, Matt Brown <morven(a)gmail.com> wrote: own schools To be a featured article an article should be reasonably complete for the level of coverage we provide... but that doesn't require it to be long. I've heard that there is a trend on FAC is to encourage the creation of very long articles... even, perhaps, where really long is inappropriate. If this is the case then it's a cause to improve the FA process, not a cause to back away from making more articles featurable. _______________________________________________ WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l(a)Wikipedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l

They do however illustrate the conflict between providing what people want (more articles on sex and pro wrestling apparently) and creating what we believe should exist.

I'm going to take down the wikicharts tool if I continue to see it used incorrectly to argument stupid arguments.

Secondly, we are not provided with any of another important metrics. For example, if a person googles for "penis anal fisting rectum succubus" they'll get [[Anal Sex]] and be counted as any other reader, but I'd be willing to bet good money that 9 out of 10 look at the page for all of 5 seconds before realizing that this is not the hardcore porno they were looking for and they hit the back button.

The fact of the matter is quite simply that we don't know much, and we certainly can't say from the data we have that we have any clue about what people want.

... and I don't think thats a big deal. Nothing about creating a free content encyclopedia or freeing the knowledge of the world requires that we be the number one destination for the news of the day.

On 12/09/06, Sam Korn <smoddy(a)gmail.com> wrote: Indeed. They're not even the topic of this discussion.

On 9/12/06, geni <geniice(a)gmail.com> wrote:

> Wikipedia is not popual due to it's FAs and GAs. It's popular becuase > of it's good enough articles.

True. But being respectable is not really the same thing as being popular; and I was under the impression that the former was a more practical concern for us than the latter.

David Gerard wrote:

> Oh sorry, they were last year's thing. What's this year's? I forget.

Worshipping process.

I'd personally be more interested in being *useful*, which is an eminently practical concern. From that perspective, a lot of different things are important. Having "good enough" articles on as wide a range of subjects as possible is definitely high up on the list---we provide information that is difficult to come by otherwise. Having very good articles, especially on frequently-consulted topics or topics where errors would be more problematic (biographies; national/ethnic disputes; technical subjects) is another important consideration. More to the point, it's quite helpful to allow a reader to quickly identify how good we think an article is. It's not clear to me what role, if any, the GA/FA process plays in any of these concerns. It doesn't tell a reader which articles are good, because it rates articles as a whole rather than revisions---FA status provides no guarantee that the current article is any better than a similar-looking non-FA article. It appears to provide only a moderate and highly beaurocratic method of encouraging article improvement in the first place. On the whole I'd say I personally never pay attention to whether an article is "featured", and I don't know anyone else who does either. It simply doesn't solve any of the practical problems that come up when reading Wikipedia.

Oh, definitely. But basically, if I'm going to put in a FAC's worth of work, I want to know what's in it for the article, or for me bothering.

One of the things that I've noticed is that articles (esp. in technical subjects) are occasionally listed as unsourced when the sources are textbooks (listed at the end of the article) that spend one or more chapters on the subject, the information from which is distributed throughout the article. Is there a policy somewhere that addresses this situation?