Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Peter Wall/archive1

I wanted to comment a little further on my own "comment" on the FAC page. This was a unique FAC, one in which a number of issues might be apparent.

First, I'd like remove myself from the list of those who might have seemed to be objecting (and then cloaking their objection in some other form) because the article is about a businessperson. In my case, this couldn't be further from the truth. I'm well aware of the state of business, finance, and economics articles on wikipedia—it is a topical area given so little thought that the topic generally isn't even included when people list areas in which wikipedia is weak!
My comment referred to my belief that this article is not among "wikipedia's best work", the philosophical backbone of the Featured Article idea (in practice, the idea is much diluted). I could have left my comment on any of dozens of historical featured article candidacies. I chose to do so here because I sensed that there might be a less literal-minded audience here, one which will at least understand my point of view if not agree with it. I have occasionally done this before in a FAC, but it's been a long time.
This leads to my next point, about "validity of FAC objections". I do not believe that any wikipedia editor in good standing is obliged to keep their mouth shut unless their participation in a forum takes place entirely within some rigidly defined rules of discourse: Convention A, Checklist Item B, and Guideline C. Nothing is set in stone on wikipedia, and ideally, that's the beauty of it. FAC objections that aren't "valid" because they aren't "actionable" are nevertheless a communication from an editor, one which becomes part of the fabric of the discussion, and if deemed significant by other editors, organically and over time, the idea carries into the fabric of future discussions, and can lead to change.
It is true that my desired "change" would require Featured Articles to meet a higher threshold of accomplishment; while collecting newspaper clippings (or their web equivalent) to form an article that arguably becomes "the world's most comprehensive" profile of a subject is undoubtedly a unique value of Wikipedia, these topics offer up so little that to call the resulting sentence–fact pastiche "Wikipedia's best work" seems, to me, oddly inward-looking and not reader-oriented. One might also ask, in this case, if it we aren't playing in dangerous territory being "original, synthetic biographers" of living subjects where the bio didn't exist before. (If I am exaggerating the degree of "collecting newspaper clippings (or their web equivalent)" that went into this, I apologize.)
Now then, the above, combined with this editor's belief that there is no merit in ever having "P. Wall" on the main page, is something I feel strongly enough about to chirp up again. Why not the main page? Well, it's an exceedingly narrow subject, with little "connection" into a broader framework of knowledge which other narrow articles do a lot better by innately having ("Historical Novel X" is a good example). jbmurray has admirably tried to make up for this by explaining the subject's environmental context, saying "shorter articles could be much improved if they had sections providing some kind of context" (though the lawyers would call this "original synthesis", wouldn't they?). Second, on the main page, it looks like promotionalism—the average reader who doesn't understand wikipedia's topic-agnostic approach to picking main-page material simply has no way to construe this as an encyclopedia article, so specific is the subject, so they search for other conclusions. It has nothing to do with the person, the editors, or god forbid somebody mention "censorship"—it has do with keeping the set of featured articles, which we advertise on the main page, to more obviously encyclopedic entries; they can be diverse, they can be quirky, but hint, if we're having to synthesize newspaper clippings to write it, and it's a biography, that article probably isn't main-page material.
The original notion of "Good Articles", I believe, was to cover material like this.
I am glad jbmurray has withdrawn. While the number of high-calibre editors supporting this article makes me look twice at my approach, I also find it a little unexplainable that so much energy has gone into this article, given the profound work they've done in other areas.

Hell, even reviewing the article now, I wonder why I'm writing this. It's very good, of course, but the above points still stand. So much of this for me comes down to the bond between FA and main-page-dom: "if it's an FA, it will be put on the main page". Yes, that's my problem. That's why I opposed. Can that be fixed? Yes: turn main-page selection into a consensus process.

In closing, I hope I've clarified why I "inactionably commented" on this particular FAC. (And it's probably obvious why I rarely comment on any FAC, not often enough being able to take the foundational aspect for granted.) Regards, –Outriggr § 07:26, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In response to a couple of your points: the reason so many editors have put time into this debate is that, for all the reasons you outline above, this is a crucial debate. This is about the very nature of a wikipedia article and about the assessment of quality on wikipedia. It is the latest of many apparently sustained debates about a subject that didn't seem worthy: Daniel Brandt and Jogaila spring to mind. As a community, we need to thrash these things out exhaustively, because FA criteria, notability criteria, BLP, nationalism, naming criteria, etc. need constant scrutiny if we are to move forward. This soul-searching is essential in the knowledge and information business.

I disagree that a synthesis of newspaper information is a problem, where that is the only information available. As someone who has edited in the field of early English history, I can tell you that the synthesis of information there is based on even flimsier evidence—often written with powerful bias or opaque intent hundreds of years later than the events it concerns. But for me this is normal: a subject is the sum of the information available to us, including where that information is problematic. The only difference here is that synthesizing commentators have not yet got their teeth into Wall, and so we are the first (I strongly disagree with you that we should avoid making articles that have not been done before: original thought restrictions apply to information not structure); but the article respects policy by drawing no conclusion of its own.

The problem with perceptions on Wall, I think, is that because he does buildings, it might seem almost as if he should have an academic article. In practice, his presence is in popular media, as represented by press reports and stray cultural criticism. But the articles on people like Joey Santiago or various TV episodes do not raise the same opposition (the same disdain, perhaps) because it is accepted that for popular culture the sources will be journalistic, with the occasional spot of cultural criticism thrown in if we are lucky. qp10qp (talk) 13:10, 1 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Outriggr, I can understand the main page reasoning; although on final analysis I think it's misplaced. Anyway, there is now a significant disconnect between main page and FA status. Ceoil (talk) 17:06, 2 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]