[WikiEN-l] 100, 000 FAs as an achievable goal with a plan (was Contest and quality)

Wed Sep 13 01:38:26 UTC 2006

On 9/12/06, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
> Oh - and when I speak of 100,000 Featured Articles, I quite definitely
> don't mean articles that run the gauntlet of FAC as it presently
> stands. I just read all of this page:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates
>
> That's just from the last month. Note the excellent start, where
> someone complaining about the idiocy of the process is told to go away
> and learn to write ... and has to point out to the objectors that he'd
> just scored a couple of FAs.
>
> Any process that promotes this much bile and vitriol is fundamentally
> damaging to Wikipedia's community operation and in need of severe
> process-culling for sheer poisonousness.

The problem is hardly one of excessive process, though.  The purpose
of FAC, fundamentally, is to find problems in articles -- the idea
being that we're looking for articles that none of the reviewers can
find fault with -- and this naturally doesn't sit too well with people
who don't like having flaws in their writing pointed out to them.
Occasionally (as in the example you cite), one of said people will
become extremely agitated and start running around shouting about the
evil FAC process; but, for the most part, article writers take their
lumps somewhat more stoically.

The underlying issue is that the FA process is wearing two different
hats.  It's based on criteria that people want to use as a checklist
for *all* articles -- hence the idea of having 100,000 FAs -- but at
the same time fills the role of selecting our "very best work" (with
all the prestige implicit is that) and serving as pretty much the only
formal recognition for articles available in Wikipedia.

-- 
Kirill Lokshin