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Once an FA, always an FA (Featured article review is moribund)

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See Featured article statistics, Unreviewed featured articles and the FAR archives.
See related discussion at FAR

Between 2006 and 2010, a concerted effort was made to review featured articles via an organized list and systematic approach (see WP:URFA as an example of how 50% of the FAs on the books when standards changed in 2005 were systematically reviewed and either upgraded to meet current standards or were removed as FAs).

The Featured article review process has essentially died. As the number of FAs has grown, the percentage of FAs demoted has dramatically declined. This is not because more FAs are being kept after review: since 2010, the number of FAs reviewed at all has also been declining. With declining editorship, it is unlikely that this effect is due to increased surveillance of existing FAs. Who is watching them?

The value of the bronze star is deteriorated when those articles that achieved FA status with stringent review stand alongside others that have not been reviewed for years. With less than 1% of FAs now being demoted, we have essentially a situation of "once an FA, always an FA"; FAs that have deteriorated over time but remain listed at WP:FA devaule the star on every FA.

Is there some way to get FAR kickstarted again? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Year FAs at
start of year 		Demoted
during year 		% Demoted
2008 1862 143 7.7%
2009 2365 156 6.6%
2010 2769 115 4.2%
2011 3166 47 1.5%
2012 3460 39 1.1%
2013 3794 29 .8%

Discussion of FAR stats

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I don't mean to contradict your strongly held conviction, but I wonder if this is necessarily a problem. I sense that the standards for featured articles, while still increasing, are doing so much more slowly than they used to. Looking back at my own FAs promoted in 2009, the criteria then were much, much closer to the current ones than to those of 2004. This is to be expected, of course, as the encyclopedia stabilizes. Could it be that most of the FAs that don't fit the criteria have already been demoted? Tezero (talk) 02:26, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that in recent years the standards for featured articles have stabilised but the FAR process also has to deal with articles that were of high quality when promoted but have subsequently deteriorated. This can easily occur when the main editors of an article retire from Wikipedia. One of the most difficult areas to police is the accretion of extra material into top level summary articles. Aa77zz (talk) 08:58, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
FAR is a three-step process. Should the two later stages (review and removal candidate) be merged into a single step (reassessment)? DrKiernan (talk) 09:09, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - I always thought the two-step process was unnecessarily complex and pointless. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 09:10, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My sentiments are generally the same as those of Tezero; perhaps the reason why so few FAs are demoted nowadays is because we've already caught most of the bad apples. But seeing as we don't have enough editors willing and/or to undertake such a systematic review of all older FAs (those promoted before, say, 2010), how about focusing on the most popular/most important old FAs? I don't think our readers pay too much attention to the GA icon or FA star at the top of the article, but demoting one highly visible article not worthy of FA status is likely to be a better use of our scare volunteer pool than demoting 10 very obscure FAs not up to par that no one looks at.
You could also argue that our time might be better spent trying to improve our most popular and most important (WP:VITAL) articles to FA status rather than scouring every old FA to see if it still meets the criteria. At any rate, if you're still are interested in a systematic review of older FAs, perhaps you could market it as a competition along the lines of the Wikipedia:WikiCup or the more recent Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GA Cup. Admittedly, these contests likely draw from the same pool of editors, meaning that yet another competition could result in editor dilution, but it still might be worth a shot. AmericanLemming (talk) 09:18, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with AmericanLemming, we could start out by reviewing the most popular older articles to get an overview of how bad/good the situation is, and get a tangible improvement for the readers at the same time. FunkMonk (talk) 09:21, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
FACs now take about three months to complete, FARs about six. We could simply run FARs against the articles that have been the longest since their FAC or last FAR. But I fear that the availability of reviewers will be the critical factor. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:52, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are certainly bad apples out there - see User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page, which is a useful resource / starting point. I'd disagree with the sentiment that reviewing old FAs isn't the best use of time - if something is of FA status but isn't fit for the main page, it gives a false impression of what our standards are and complicates selection of TFAs. BencherliteTalk 11:30, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree - it'd be good to prioritise working through User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page, which (a) gives more options for TFA coordinator and (b) will give more of an idea about FAs that need FAR out there. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:07, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NB: How about everyone reading takes a bit of time today to look at one article on User:Dweller/Featured Articles that haven't been on Main Page and give it a tick or otherwise notice on its talk page about what needs fixing and then FAR in six weeks if no action? Just so we can get a bit of a clearer picture. Also maybe comment on articles areadly at FARC and we can close them? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:30, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@ Tezero, I am not sure what you are referencing with "increasing standards since 2009". You can find the benchmark dates in the FA process among the footnotes at this chart (which by the way hasn't been updated since 2011, hint, hint) UPDATED. The last time there was a change in the criteria was March 2009: we've had only minor wording changes for clarity or linking since then. The last benchmark change in FAC reviewing processes occurred in November 2010 (copyvio checking was tightened). Reviewing standards have become more lax: we no longer have, as examples only, the highly detailed sourcing checks which were done by Ealdgyth, prose checks on the level of writer Tony1, and copyvio checking also seems to have declined. I could name scores of FAs still on the books that are not up to snuff, but don't do so as not to single out any particular group or editor. I don't doubt that at least a quarter of our FAs are out of compliance. More importantly, because no one has been systematically checking, how do we know if it's not worse?

@ DrKiernan, I agree it's time to revamp the FAR process, because it has gone moribund. The two-step process worked quite well, and was necessary when we had to process 50% of the FAs on the books at the time for citation reviewing. It's no longer working. We are going to need to do something to get the process reinvigorated and to encourage at minimum a list of all old articles that have not been reviewed -- not one generated by hand, but one generated systematically by bot as was done in the past (see WP:URFA). And we may need to at least talk about putting in some time limits at FAR, and even consider some sort of "sweep" as was done in the "Refreshing Brilliant Prose" phase (see Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-07-21/Dispatches for a history of the FA process). Putting through FAs at one pace, while disregarding the maintenance end of reviewing the older ones, devalues every star on the books.

@ Cas, while I agree reviewing Dweller's list is helpful in the TFA selection process, I disagree that it is helpful overall. Reviewing only articles that haven't run on the main page, so that the main page can reflect better quality, goes the wrong direction in terms of leaving the impression that other FAs are at that standard. TFAR is one process: FAR is another. FAR's mandate is to review all FAs; TFAR should have its own processes, and Dweller's list may accomplish that, but FAR needs a list of unreviewed articles including those that have run mainpage already.

As one example, User:YellowMonkey was for years, the top FA producer (and a FAR delegate) before his departure in 2010. Who is following his 60+ FAs? I didn't want to single out one editor, but there's an example. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm aware that the official criteria haven't really changed, but I get the feeling, as someone who's gotten FAs promoted in both 2009 and 2014, that FAC wasn't quite as strict in the areas of comprehensiveness, aesthetics/layout, and source reliability as it is now. At the very least, three supports from well-established editors (including one from someone unaffiliated with the subject matter) is an official requirement now, while then it was more of just a recommendation. Even if the FA criteria had loosened, though, that wouldn't invalidate my point, which is that the 2009 criteria are closer to 2014's than to 2004's. Tezero (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
While I, on the other hand, disagree particularly in the comprehensiveness and sourcing realms. No reviewer has approximated Ealdgyth's sourcing reviews, or Awadawit's comprehensiveness reviews. And, if three supports is really "an official requirement now", then we have a(nother) serious problem! And saying three supports was "just a recommendation" in the past is not correct. Passing FACs on three supports would be a departure from history: FAC is not a vote. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:47, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Tezero and Sandy, My guess what the three supports is is that three supports indicating the reviewer has taken a good look at the article, plus an image review plus a source review is the absolute minimum level of input an article needs to pass FAC, but that any suggestion of issues means an article will be left open longer for more in-depth analysis and work. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Better :) Except you left off a copyvio/close paraphrasing check, or at least a spotcheck, although this is often passed over for repeat nominators if they have been checked in the past. The big if is three reviewers that have "taken a good look at the article", because that doesn't always happen. Unfortunately, the notion that three supports = passing FAC seems to be taking hold. Three supports can mean, well, nothing if they aren't good reviews. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:53, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, forgot that - I am not sure about it taking hold. I've seen delegates wait until consensus is more solid or ask for checks quite regularly, even on regular nominators, like me, which is fine. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 00:28, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Sandy I've gotten into the habit of clicking through TFAs to their FAC pages, but I haven't come across any of these source reviews of Ealdgyth or comprehensive reviews of Awadawit yet. Could you link us to a couple examples so we could have a model to refer to? What I've experienced as a reviewer is that you're pretty much on your own figuring out how to carry out a review, which kept me from reviewing at all for a long time. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 21:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, dear, that is a challenge to my memory. While I go off and dig back four years into archives to find an example of the comprehensive issues Awadewit used to raise, I want to provide at least something to encourage reviewers. Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-26/Dispatches and Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches provide bits to chew on; perhaps Ealdgyth will link us to a representative sample of her older, thorough sourcing reviews, and I will be back once I can locate an Awadewit comprehensive review in archives. But basically, it involves a search of the relevant literature to make sure nothing significant has been left out (which depending on the topic area may require university access). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:53, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm back; searching archives by name stinks, but one of the reasons you may not have come across what we are discussing is that your search on TFAs would reveal only FACs that passed-- searching on those that were archived may be more productive in the "how to review" department, because the Oppose button can be a fast route to article improvement, and that is where you will find the sample deficiencies. While reviewing archives, I remembered that Karanacs was also good on evaluating comprehensiveness by, basically, going out and making sure no important sources were left out. Some samples:
I'm afraid none of those represent the best samples of Karanacs or Awadewit's work, but finding things I might remember after reading four or five thousand FACs is about impossible ... I hope that gives you the idea, though, which is that to evaluate comprehensiveness, you may need access to real books and a real library, or to search a library database to make sure the most relevant sources have been covered, per criterion 1c. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:29, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Well, if you can find exemplary examples it would be nice to put them somewhere where new reviewers can find them. I've found reviewing difficult because I've had to figure things out on my own—we aren't really given any guidance on how to carry out a review. And if you have trouble digging out examples that you've seen with your own eyes, where does it leave those of us who haven't seen such examples? Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 02:14, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Nikkimaria is one of our experienced source (and image) reviewers -- her guide to source reviewing (part of a larger guide to FAC reviewing) is here. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:27, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, first I've seen that. Clicking through to Special:WhatLinksHere/User:Nikkimaria/Reviewing_featured_article_candidates shows it's not linked from anywhere many are likely to find it, though. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 03:33, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The following from that guide seems bit odd to me: "If you find yourself leaving a huge "wall of text" on a review page, consider whether your comments are best placed elsewhere (article talk, review talk, etc), or whether the volume of concerns merits an oppose !vote and a suggestion of peer review" In my experience, most thorough reviews are pretty much walls of text. FunkMonk (talk) 12:08, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes; this is a change from years ago, when reviews were often quite short. I had reason to look at one of my earliest FACs the other day and was startled to discover that it would fit on a page. There's been intermittent debate over the years about whether this is a good thing. On the one hand the argument is that FAC should not be peer review: articles with problems should be removed from the queue quickly. On the other hand I personally find it hard to oppose when I think all the issues are easily fixable, and I think there are some articles that would never be promoted without help of this kind. Of course this does mean that FAC slows down and becomes more labour-intensive, which is undesirable. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:25, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, personally I don't find long reviews problematical, it is rather the wait between reviews that drags out. In fact, long reviews gives the nominator something to do in the meantime, instead of just waiting... FunkMonk (talk) 12:06, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As Mike Christie says, when Asser was promoted in 2007, reviews were often very short. But during 2008 and 2010, review length grew (significantly) as sources and images were checked on every FAC, and with the addition of copyvio checks in 2010. FAC was processing monthly double the amount of nominations it sees today, (FAC stats by month), and most were processed within two weeks, but even with FACs being processed fairly quickly, the drain on reviewer time, and the page length, were issues. The provision to be able to remove an ill-prepared nom upon suggestion of a reviewer was added, so that those articles could be better served at peer review.

Historically, a bit more than 50% of FACs were promoted; now we are running at about 2/3 (an all-time and increasing high). Summary: I still agree with what Nikki stated in her guide: "If you find yourself leaving a huge "wall of text" on a review page, consider whether your comments are best placed elsewhere (article talk, review talk, etc), or whether the volume of concerns merits an oppose !vote and a suggestion of peer review". That might be one of many steps that might help get this page reinvigorated relative to historical numbers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:46, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, but only if it's an accepted standard: on at least two occasions recently I've opposed with examples of issues, and have been asked for a much more comprehensive account of problems and/or asked to fix the problems myself. To my mind, while both have been done at FAC, neither mesh well with the purpose of the page. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:47, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Curly Turkey, it seems I've not come up with a satisfactory answer for you :) So, until/unless I can comb through more than 4,000 FACs and FARs I've read to provide you with better examples, two suggestions:

  1. Pick an area where you excel and feel confident, and review in that area alone for a while. Whatever you do, be the best at it. (As Ealdgyth did with source reviews, Nikki with images and copyvio, Elcobbola and Jappalang with images, Tony with prose, Epbr123 with MOS, etc). Then the person passing the FAC can develop an assurance that, at least, your area has been well reviewed. Do not, though, Support an article on a partial review. FACS should not be passing with supports based on partial reviews by reviewers who have not engaged all of the criteria.
  2. A comprehensive sample which I hope you will find instructive is at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/School for Creative and Performing Arts/archive1. I found that FAC with support to promote, but several deficiencies (it was almost a promotional puff-piece), so I recused and did the review myself. (I also made sure Elcobbola and Jappalang had cleared images before supporting, since I am not an image reviewer. Raul654, FA director, promoted five days after I supported.) I hope you find that FAC to be instructive of the kinds of issues that may be missed in FAC review. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for another example, but what I've been trying to get across in my roundabout way is that for any prospective new reviewer, the process can seem opaque—much more so than nominating. I'm using myself as an example of someone late to the FAC party—I submitted my first FAC in 2012, and probably had a dozen or so FAs to my name before I really began reviewing others' FACs, which I did basically by mimicking the kinds of reviews I'd received. I've done quite a few reviews now, yet I still feel like I'm groping around—thus I usually feel like I have to guilt myself into doing them—I have to convinve myself to give up time for content-creation, an area where I feel much more confident and enjoy a heck of a lot more. I imagine many (most?) others just don't bother at all. The links you've given here will help me, and perhaps a few others who happen to be following this discussion, but soon this'll all be archived and hidden away from the next poultroon pondering whether to bother reviewing. If someone had the skill, time, and knowledge to do a "How to perform an FAC review" tutorial (with links to helpful real examples) and put it somewhere where newbies were likely to find it, perhaps we'd get more and higher-quality reviews. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 05:18, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FA processes

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I am moving my post down from above, as no one answered. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And another example:

ColonelHenry (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · page moves · block user · block log) was active at FAC and TFAR, and was not blocked until April 2014. S/he created hoax articles, and had seven FAs. The notice that review of all of his/her work was needed was posted at ANI. And yet, I am unable to find in archives (my apology if I have missed it) any mention at either FAC or FAR of anyone initiating a review of the Colonel's a) FAs, or b) reviews.

Has there been a review of Colonel's FAs, initiated at either FAC or FAR? Who is taking the leadership role in issues such as this one? This is not just a FAR issue: it is an issue within the whole process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Those are listed at User:ColonelHenry/Cleanup (for fact-checking). DrKiernan (talk) 15:52, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, Dr (as usual, you're on it!) But that is a CCI, initiated by MRG for copyvio checks. My question is related to FAs. Who is reviewing the FA candidates supported by ColonelHenry, and who is reviewing the FAs authored by him/her vis-a-vis all of WP:FACR, not just copyvio? Were deficient FAs passed on ColonelHenry review, and do his/her seven FAs meet standards in addition to copyright policy? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thoughts: Sandy, I don't know to what degree your questions are meant to be rhetorical ("Who is following his 60+ FAs?" and "Who is reviewing the FA candidates supported by ColonelHenry [and] authored by him/her") because I think you know the answers. I bet people have them watchlisted—I have every FA I've ever seen promoted watchlisted—but watching them is a different task entirely from keeping them on par. We've fostered a system, either by choice or by nature, that encourages solo specialist work. Most FAs were researched and written primarily by one person, and the topics specialized enough to where that one person is probably the only one around who knows anything about it or has the sources. The only significant exceptions are those WikiProjects that have successfully groomed teams of like-minded editors who have similar expertise and interests (like MilHist).
Clearly problems emerge when that solo specialist loses interest in the article or just disappears. This has happened on legions of FAs. Who keeps them up, unless they are so obscure as to not attract any edits anyway? Maybe someone, maybe no one. Even the FAs I've managed to stay on top of get exhausting. Anyone remember the Red Hot Chili Peppers guys? They came through here and got almost every notable RHCP member, album and song promoted to FA. Then they took off. And those articles are the daily target of every know-it-all RHCP fan from LA to Moscow. It's tempting to get irate at the absentee authors, but this is a community project. Why can't we or shouldn't we be able to maintain something once someone gets it up to snuff? Back to my original point. No one knows or cares about most of these topics other than the primary author. If they do, they lack the energy and enthusiasm that motivated the authors to begin with. FAR isn't effective, why? The article is there because the author didn't keep it up. Why would they show up at FAR if they haven't been showing up until then? The two-step process is of course ridiculous now, although it works when there is actually an effort to save the article.
To propose reforms or a new process, we have to face the reality of what our resources can support. We need a minimalist, streamlined, process that consumes few resources unless a person is willing to get engaged. Something like what Cas proposed, except expanded to include all FAs past a certain age or anything likely to be high-risk. Perhaps an well-written RFC could propose a process, something like sweeps, where deficient FAs can be easily demoted if the author is gone and no one steps up with any interest in adopting it. It should take 2 minutes to tick off a few boxes:
  • Are the original authors/nominators around?
  • If yes, are they keeping it up?
  • If no, is anyone else keeping it up?
If the answers are no, flag it and see if anyone comes riding in. If not, auto-demote. If yes, carry on smartly. The only durable process is one that flexes with community resources any given time. We are a community of volunteers and to expect anything more would be unrealistic, I think. --Laser brain (talk) 16:04, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for all of that, Laser! While I've been trying to nail down numbers, figure out the scope of the problem, and generate lists to help us see how many FAs might need review (thanks, Hawkeye7), I fear the notion that what we need is a tally and then a proposed methodology to deal with increasing FAC promotion in an environment of decreasing editorship and decreasing FAR review, is being lost. We need to know how many articles potentially need review before we can design a process.

So, for example, Hawkeye put up several lists of FAs, which prompted Ealdgyth and Wehwalt to remind us their "long" FAs were reviewed for length at FAC. Folks, no need to worry! We can't figure out which FAs have grown considerably in length since their FAC, and might be out of compliance, unless we have a list of long ones to begin with. That is not meant to imply that every long FA needs review, but we need to determine a basis for a list.

Example, Society of the Song Dynasty passed FAC seven years ago, with 10,000 words of readable prose; it is now at 13,500 words of readable prose. So, that FA has a third of its text unvetted by FAC or FAR. That's the kind of info we're after.

As an example, see WP:URFA. At the time citation requirements changed, there were about 1000 FAs on the books. A bot had to be told to pick a number (if I recall correctly, 10 was picked), and to determine which FAs had less than 10 citations. That was the list-- just a proxy for FAs that might need review. During the two years it took to process all of those FAs (saving a third), if two or three reviewers looked at any FA on the list and saw that it was cited, the FA was moved off of the "needing review" list. So, that an FA is long does not mean it will end up on any list, once we have a mehtodology, or that everything on the list will need a FAR. The idea at this stage is to get a list to see how many unreviewed FAs are on the books, so we can put forward a proposal for how to deal with them. That could be something similar to the Refreshing Brillaint Prose phase (straight up or down vote), it could mean scrapping the two-step FAR, it could mean a whole nother process. But we need to find the scope of the problem to talk about process. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:28, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Fully agree that defining the scope of an issue is a prerequisite to proposing a methodology and solution. The scope should start with calculations but not end there—clearly article size today relative to time-of-promotion is one calculation that should help us build a tally of what needs to be looked at. Anyone's article ending up on a review list due to a calculation should not be cause for concern. --Laser brain (talk) 16:39, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, so we have multiple issues that might be added to a potential review list. One is the length we're talking about. Next is ColonelHenry. Next is prolific missing FA writers like YellowMonkey. And last but not least, the thousands of FAs that haven't been reviewed for years. What we need is a cutoff date. But no one is opining on that matter :) Hawkeye seems willing and ready to do the work, but we need to define the scope. I've asked him if we can combine these sections into one, since I fear we're missing the forest for the trees. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Given that chart, it strikes me that a good thing to do would be to use the 2004–2005 articles as a small scale test of whatever, if anything, we decide. Then decide what to do next. I tend to agree with Laser Brain, auto-demote after a period of time unless someone speaks up for it is sensible given our very limited resources. If it is spoken up for, review it in some way after a period of time (six months?) and act accordingly.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:17, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What does the FACs by length list measure?

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I was just looking at Wikipedia:Featured articles/By length because I was concerned about the length of AI Mk. IV radar, which is currently at FAC and which I suspect would be the longest FA by readable prose. However, I can't match up the numbers in that table with the numbers coming out of the page size script. Does it measure raw bytes? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:58, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think User:Bencherlite and/or User:The ed17 have made lists that compare FAs by readable prose, but the two longest I found were Middle Ages at 14,441 words of readable prose and Manhatten Project at 16,750 words. Also, Douglas MacArthur clocks in at 12,757 words. Of course, the FAC in question probably doesn't cover a topic broad enough to justify its current length, but there are precedents for extremely long FAs. AmericanLemming (talk) 17:59, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Not me, guv. BencherliteTalk 18:11, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Mike, try searching the archives here for posts by Dr pda, as he once explained it ... or maybe it was Gimmetrow. It is somewhere in archives, but have fun with that :) Or alternately, scan the talk page at WP:FAS, where we used to organize stuff like that in one place .. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Douglas MacArthur contains 78,994 characters (12,757 words) of "readable prose". That means excluding HTML markup. "Characters" is not the same as bytes. This is because were are using a character encoding called UTF-8. An octet byte has only eight bits, and therefore can hold up to 2^8 = 256 values. Fine for holding our Latin characters, but we need more if we want to hold other character sets as well. In fact some, like Chinese, have more than 256 characters to start with. So we encode in such a way that Latin characters fit into one octet, but Greek, Cyrillic, Coptic, Armenian, Hebrew and Arabic require two, and others will need up to six. So in an article containing a lot of Chinese, the character count will be quite different from the byte count. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:49, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Is FAC moribund also?

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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Hillary Rodham Clinton/archive3

While FAC is passing record-high numbers of candidates (see Wikipedia talk:Featured article statistics#Promoted and archived FACs by month), the FAC nomination of a stellar FA writer (User:Wasted Time R) has been sitting, for 11 days, unaddressed except for the image review by Nikkimaria (thanks, Nikki!).

As far as I know, Wasted Time R achieves neutrality in his political BLPs, earlier nominations of that article failed on reviewer misinterpretation of the 1e stability criterion, and it is so not right for WTR to be ignored at FAC that I am tempted to review the nomination myself, but I do not trust my own neutrality wrt HRC.

So, what gives and what steps might we take to ensure that *worthy* nominations get prompt review? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:15, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I tend to review in waves. start at teh bottom every so often and read what interests me (mentally I try to review three articles for every (sole or joint) nomination I have . Haven't done it for a bit due to quite a bit of other stuff going on but will definitely take a look soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:31, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ditto to all of that; I just started another pass and should get two or three reviewed in the next week. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:32, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have to say, I take offense at the idea that some FACs are more "worthy" than others, barring obviously doomed ones that wouldn't even come close to passing GA. I have seven FAs (and over 20 GAs), and I'm not complaining about Freedom Planet, my current FAC, not being reviewed, although I did request source and image reviews above since the surrounding ones had them before being corrected about how that works. Editors are welcome to request feedback from anyone else they please, as long as they're not too badgering about it, but no one should be obligated to review anything, especially not for a trivial reason like who nominated it. Tezero (talk) 23:57, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Tezero, you may be reading "worthy" much differently than I wrote it. There are ill-prepared nominations (as described in the FAC instructions, those can be removed if a reviewer suggests withdrawal); this nomination -- as I wrote -- failed previously on reviewer misinterpretation of criterion 1e. (There were several similar, and perhaps Wasted Time R remembers on which of those I wrote up a summary of why I discounted the 1e opposes ... too many FACs to remember where to find that, but WTR may remember.) We do not have to wait for someone to be dead and the history books written for an article to be stable; we have to have no ongoing edit wars and no rapidly changing text. "Worthy" in my vocabulary relates only to whether the nomination is ill-prepared. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see what you're saying, SandyGeorgia: we shouldn't give him preference because he's an accomplished writer (which would actually work against the idea of privileging first FACs by users, as is used in WT:TFAR), but because his article has failed FAC multiple times on misinterpretation of one criterion. That I can accept, so if it hadn't already gotten a number of comments, I'd review it. Tezero (talk) 18:17, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We seem to be in complete agreement (because I am also concerned about repeat nominators whose FACs are getting increasingly light review by an increasingly limited pool of qualified reviewers ... it is my opinion that many repeat nominators are not getting rigorous review). I was by no means advocating "privileging ... FACs by users", although I did want to mention that I hadn't detected blatant POV in WTR's political bios. But then, I've got my own POV, so ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:25, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the kind words Sandy. But I'm a patient guy, I know reviewing is hard and reviewers are at a premium. And yes you are right about the stability criterion interpretation changing – in two others I was involved with, the John McCain article made FA less than three months before the general election, and in the next election cycle the Mitt Romney article got promoted four days before his general election! It was considered a positive sign of WP's ability to achieve high quality at any time. Wasted Time R (talk) 01:26, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Tks all. I was surprised by the lack of reviews myself. Tezero, I understand your concern with the idea that some articles might be considered more 'worthy' than others, but this is after all about a major political figure, an article that has been mentioned several times in the media, etc. Sometimes I think that the 'bigger' the article, the longer it takes for one reviewer to make the first move... Anyway, Sandy's post seems to have raised awareness of this article at least. In terms of attracting attention to nominations in general, I never discourage people from posting neutrally worded notes around the place, like project talk pages (occasionally when I think an article with good project-related support needs an 'outside' opinion I'll specifically ask an experienced reviewer if they could take a look, but that doesn't apply until several reviews have taken place). For languishing noms, I also try to re-populate the 'FAC urgents' list at the top of this page every week or so (I've probably missed this past week I admit). I welcome other suggestions. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 02:35, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough. I will admit that I considered reviewing it upon first seeing it, but was intimidated by the size. In the meantime, I can try my teeth at another FAC or GAN, but I'll take a look at this a little later on if no one else does. Tezero (talk) 02:47, 27 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FA length

[edit]
While much has changed, one thing that has been stable for as many years as I have been reviewing is the recommendation of a 10,000 word limit at WP:SIZE, because of reader attention. WTR is a good writer, but I still oppose any article that exceeds recommended size. There are numerous FAs still on the books that have grown substantially since passing FAC. That means they have considerable text that has not been vetted in an FA review process.

Has anyone started a list of the ultra-long FAs, specifically those that have significant unvetted text, with the aim of reviewing them at FAR? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You could probably start with all FA that are also BLP because there will inevitably be life developments. Logical to start from the one promoted the longest ago.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:50, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that too, but way back when this list was generated, it was the Dynasty articles that had grown by as much as 30% post-FAC. It would be so good if we had a comprehensive list of all articles needing review (whether for ColonelHenry hoax/socking, significant growth since promotion, or length of time from review), similar to what was once done at WP:URFA (which the good Dr is keeping track of, but that list is years old). Then, it would be grand if we had some list-making, record-keeping types involved at FAR to help process through these systematically. I realize that Dweller's list looks at those that haven't been TFA, but that is just a subset of the problems. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:23, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and Ketuanan Melayu. HUGE article (15,000 words of prose, 50% more than recommendation at WP:SIZE). Promoted in 2006. Never reviewed. Principal editor long, long gone. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:35, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
How about setting up a process (perhaps bot mediated) to remove all FAs from the list after an agreed term. Then ending FAR and replacing it with Former Featured Article Review, where active editors can nominate former FAs for reinstatement in a process similar to FAC? Graham Beards (talk) 16:41, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My suggestion would be that, before we even begin to discuss solutions, we get an idea of the magnitude of the issue. How bad, or not, the problem is will inform best solutions. In "older" days, Gimme or Dr pda would have bot-generated the lists for us. Who can generate a list of a) all FAs exceeding 10,000 words prose, and b) all FAs passed before <we need to pick a date> and unreviewed since <we need to pick a date>, c) all FAs written by or supported by ColonelHenry, and from there, we can add any BLPs of concern as mentioned by Wehwalt. My concern is that we will find that we have thousands of FAs needing review. If that is the case, it's not possible for current FAR processes to work. So, we need to know the scope of the problem.

Thank you for speaking up, Graham :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cool beans, Hawkeye7 indicates (below) that he can write these scripts. So we need to pick screening dates. And a new/separate discussion thread for discussing this separate from the tallying issues (Dr Kiernan, once those errors are all sorted, WP:FAS may need to be footnoted, since the diff links to the FA page are now no longer in sync with the chart [1]). Hawkeye, do you want to start a new thread to let us know what info you need for scriptwriting, or should I? And a ping to Nikkimaria, since this involves WP:FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:01, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Interesting idea, Graham, but I don't think it would be workable - some FAs are maintained quite well in the long term, while others need review shortly after promotion (for example, after the discovery of hoaxing or copyvio issues). I'm leery of adding an additional process when we're already short of reviewers. Automatic flagging for human review after a set period might be workable, although that too would rely on having people to review. Nikkimaria (talk) 14:48, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of bots

[edit]

Speaking of bots (above at 16:49) reminded me of another concern. Gimmetrow's bots used to do all of the housekeeping of making sure the definitive list of WP:FA was accurate. Category:Featured articles shows 4,391 FAs, but WP:FA shows 4,424. Gimmebot also kept up with name changes in FAs, updating re-named FAs wherever they occurred, and he made sure the WP:FFA page was kept in sync. Is all of that being done? It doesn't appear so, since the FA category and tally are now well out of sync. Which Coordinator is watching issues like this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The category count is wrong: it is an artifact created by the way the wiki software works (it also gives an incorrect transclusion count of 4626 for Template:Featured article). Using AWB, there are 4424 pages transluding the template and 4424 pages in the category. DrKiernan (talk) 17:32, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I am aware of that (it has always been true), but there were times when Gimme was able to bring them in to sync, and the bigger question is, has anyone checked the tally lately? I checked it monthly, by hand, to make sure no errors had crept in, until Gimme took over somehow (beyond my ken) doing it by bot. Dr, so nice to have you back in here again, with your institutional memory! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:35, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
PS, I know WP:FFA was accurate as of November 2012. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have been regularly manually checking the FA count from the time we had that error caused by a redirect. Graham Beards (talk) 18:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Graham :) Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:01, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hmmn. That's interesting. I get 4422 articles on the FA page. DrKiernan (talk) 18:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Goopy Gyne Bagha Byne and Joker venom are masquerading as FAs. DrKiernan (talk) 18:16, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
And Rana Muhammad Akram Khan. And why is 2nd Canadian Division linked on WP:FA without a FAC? DrKiernan (talk) 18:23, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I see: that's the redirected one? So, is that now an FA or not? DrKiernan (talk) 18:27, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Should be removed from the old talkpage (can be converted in a non-cat text comment) in my opinion. Anyway, I made a list of some remaining differences in the listings - see previous section. GermanJoe (talk) 19:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ack. No answers here, but these are the kinds of issues that can happen. DrKiernan, can you move all of these posts (from 18:07) into the section above (speaking of FA-lists)? They seem to have ended up in the wrong discussion. (DONE) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:07, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have pasted a numbered list list here. I get a total of 4423. If someone can spot where my checking is going wrong, I would be grateful. Graham Beards (talk) 21:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
You have the 2nd Canadian division in your list (which should be former FA, see end of next section). But there must be a second troublemaker - I'll crosscheck your list with mine. GermanJoe (talk) 22:40, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Line 200 is empty in your list (and FA-page has no entry there) - so 4,421 should be OK. GermanJoe (talk) 22:49, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks GJ. I have corrected the spreadsheet on my PC. I am glad there weren't too may errors. I'll update my sandbox in case others want to cross-check it. Graham. Graham Beards (talk) 22:57, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ruhrfisch and I have taken the responsibility for updating the FA stats page over the last few years. DrKiernan, I've seen your changes to the figures, can I assume they're as a result of these false FAs you mentioned above? If so, did you work out how and when these began masquerading as FAs so we can monitor this more closely in future? Tks/cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:39, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, the false numbers were due to arithmetical errors: [2][3]. The false FAs were just a confounding factor easily dismissed. DrKiernan (talk) 23:43, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ian, Joker venom looks innocent (as if a user was copying over templates from another article and did not realize the featured article template had been grabbed)[4] And, good news, it was recent. It was the confounding arithmetic errors that perhaps disguised things for a while. I think we're all set now at WP:FAS (please check the footnote I added there), but still need to sort and archive a dummy FAR on the Canadian article. IF that is done before tomorrow, then month-end tallies for November should sync. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:22, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Tks Sandy. I'll check over FAS some time today and obviously will be updating tomorrow. At the moment I have to go rescue a hard drive that's making suspicious noises... :-P Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:36, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Found another article masquerading as FAC (and GA at the same time) here. So much easier to find these with catscan these days. BTW Sandy, I have been auditing the numbers periodically over the years, and keeping a history on a subpage. Maralia (talk) 06:38, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks again, Maralia. Maybe my old User:SandyGeorgia/FA work can be massaged and updated into something useful to help more editors help the Coords with the routine stuff? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See User talk:DrKiernan, for specific errors identified. Once everything is settled, I will footnote the chart at WP:FAS to explain why tallies no longer match the FA month-end diffs. You all rock! Problem raised, problem solved, prontissimo. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching these errors - I usually do the Peer Review maintenance tasks on the first of each month, and check if FAS has been updated them (lately it already has been, so I've not done much with it recently). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 20:08, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Speaking of FA-lists

[edit]

Is anyone still using Category:Wikipedia featured articles (filled by the talkpage category as opposed to the article star) for statistics or anything else? Category:Wikipedia featured articles and Category:Featured articles are definitely out of sync.
Articles marked as "FA" without matching talkpage category (looks like some of the newer promotions didn't get the category on their talkpage):

non-FA redirect categorized as "FA" in the talkpage (due to an old move/merger):

If the "Wikipedia ..." category is no longer in use, feel free to ignore that listing. GermanJoe (talk) 19:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

After allowing for Tony Hawk's Underground and 2nd Canadian Division, I now get the same 4420 articles in both categories, transcluding the template and linked from WP:FA. That still leaves 2 out of 4424 articles unaccounted for. DrKiernan (talk) 19:25, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Struck out articles have been fixed manually by DrKiernan (thanks) and me. GermanJoe (talk) 19:27, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like the counter is wrong, an Excel import only lists 4,422 records. However Excel CSV import is notoriously unreliable, so I would have to write a script to double-check this. GermanJoe (talk) 20:15, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So, the problem that raises is that when the error is found, WP:FAS (and perhaps some archives) will have to be fixed. I can't write scripts for double-checking, but if I can help fix FAS, please ping me. Would it be related to this from a year ago? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:19, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The FACBot was having trouble with Tony Hawk's Underground due to hanky panky with the apostrophe. It should be okay now. Hawkeye7 (talk) 20:50, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Seems like the great new toolserver (yeah, that was sarcasm) is down again. I'll check the lists again, when it comes back up. Regarding SandyGeorgia's question: comparing the actual lists will only show actual differences; without a deeper analysis of the log histories (probably beyond my coding skills) I can't tell you exactly, when the error sneaked in. GermanJoe (talk) 21:00, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
1 more entry found: 2nd Canadian Division is listed as FA (it got "demoted" during a merger from 2nd Canadian Infantry Division). The old article name "2nd Canadian Infantry Division" should probably be listed as former featured article (?), although it does no longer exist in this form. Please double-check and fix (not sure, I know all statistic pages to fix this). GermanJoe (talk) 21:59, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The current total number is 4,421 featured articles, based on FA-page and both FA categories. GermanJoe (talk) 22:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Did you see my comment above? Graham Beards (talk) 22:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Could you all please point me to this FA demotion of the Canadian via merger? What can/might/should/? be done in a case like that is to create and archive a dummy FAR page, so records are accurate. What was done? Is it listed at FFA? Where do I look for the record-keeping? The merge discussion can be listed in a dummy FAR that goes in ArticleHistory, goes in FAR archives, and goes for the removal at FA and addition to FFA. Then our numbers would account for the merger, and there would be a record of what happened. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:05, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have removed it from WP:FA but I haven't added to WP:FFA because I am confused wrt the article history. Graham Beards (talk) 23:22, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I manually removed "currentstatus=FA" from the redirect's talkpage Talk:2nd Canadian Infantry Division to get the redirect out of the FA-category. The complete old talkpage is still at the former article's location (now redirect). GermanJoe (talk) 23:24, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) Hi all, just arisen on this Sydney Sunday morning. I'll start here. Yes, I did notice something odd about this a while ago and raised queries on the article talk page about the validity of the merge and sought opinions about undoing it or leaving it and therefore having to demote it or put it through FAR. Unfortunately it seemed the main editor and even FAC reviewers weren't active any more and we didn't reach a conclusion. I hadn't come across this situation before but my bad for not just calling it one way or the other and either undoing the merge or demoting it -- I see Graham's done the latter now but I'd assume we should have a dummy FAR for record-keeping. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:26, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
(after six edit conflicts) OK, I've momentarily lost the plot, but will catch up :) If we need a dummy FAR for archives, I will create that and run it by Nikkimaria, but what I don't understand is that, since DrKiernan made the numbers sync, but this was removed without adjusting the tally,[5] how is the tally still correct? I still need to footnote WP:FAS to reflect this and the two other errors DrK found. Also, once I sort out whether we need a dummy FAR, what about listing at FFA? @Nikkimaria: again. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:28, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, and if we get this all sorted and in FAR archives before tomorrow (month-end), we'll be month-end accurate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:30, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Graham corrected the tally immediately before removal[6]. DrKiernan (talk) 23:40, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much, Dr. I think I'm back on plot now. I believe that as long as a dummy FAR is archived before tomorrow, and the Canadian article is recorded as a demotion, then month-end November stats at WP:FAS should sync with the FA page. Would someone else (Ian?) who better understands the Canadian demotion like to settle that up with Nikkimaria? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:25, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I can make the nom soon enough with some reasoning/history if Nikki can then push through the archiving. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:41, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's fine with me, just let me know when it's ready Ian. I think this is a good solution wrt record-keeping. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
@Nikkimaria: Okay, I think that's done now, let me know if you need any more from me. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:33, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
OK, Ian got Wikipedia:Featured article review/2nd Canadian Infantry Division/archive1 going, and I finally got the plot and got maybe caught up ... could folks have a look at this? It's a dandy! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:20, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FA scripts

[edit]

We are looking at three scripts for analyzing FAs:

  1. all FAs exceeding 10,000 words prose
    The trick here is figuring out how to count the words of prose.
  2. all FAs passed before <we need to pick a date> and unreviewed since <we need to pick a date>
    The ArticleHistory should contain this information, but from memory the early FAs have poor article histories
  3. all FAs written by or supported by ColonelHenry, and from there, we can add any BLPs of concern as mentioned by Wehwalt
    If we can find the nomination page, this is actually the easiest of the three to do.

Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:12, 29 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Top ten FAs by readable prose size (December 2014)

[edit]

Figures are in kilobytes

  1. Manhattan Project (103)
  2. Pope Pius XII (99)
  3. Elvis Presley (97)
  4. Ketuanan Melayu (93)
  5. Byzantine navy (93)
  6. Michael Jackson (92)
  7. Byzantine Empire (87)
  8. Nikita Khrushchev (87)
  9. Sea (86)
  10. Society of the Song dynasty (85)
Well, as to Khrushchev, it's more or less how it passed FAC and I and others maintain it. There was a discussion as to length as part of the FAC, it was debated on that very point and passed, and I don't believe there's been significant expansion since the FAC. I'd submit that it's kosher.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:26, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Top twenty FAs by readable prose size (December 2014)

[edit]
  1. Manhattan Project (103)
  2. Pope Pius XII (99)
  3. Military history of Puerto Rico (98)
  4. Elvis Presley (97)
  5. Ketuanan Melayu (93)
  6. Byzantine navy (93)
  7. Michael Jackson (92)
  8. Air raids on Japan (91)
  9. Middle Ages (88)
  10. Spanish conquest of Petén (88)
  11. Ian Smith (88)
  12. Nikita Khrushchev (87)
  13. Byzantine Empire (87)
  14. Sea (86)
  15. Benjamin Disraeli (86)
  16. Finnish Civil War (86)
  17. Society of the Song dynasty (85)
  18. Lemur (85)
  19. L. Ron Hubbard (84)
  20. Tang dynasty (84)
  21. Star Trek: The Motion Picture (83)
  22. Military history of Australia during World War II (82)
  23. Bob Dylan (82)
  24. Punk rock (81)
  25. Ronald Reagan (81)

These are all the articles above 80K of prose according to DrPDA. Discrepancies between this list and the last are due to corrections to the counting algorithm. This one is more accurate, but the script still needs work before I could reliably tell you what the average is. Note that prose size is pretty unimportant compared to the size of the images. Barak Obama weighs in at over 1 MB raw, but has only 58K of readable prose; Manhattan Project is only half its size. Hawkeye7 (talk) 18:00, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Well, speaking to Disraeli, the article hasn't changed since the FAC, which was in 2013. It is long because the man had a political career of just under a half century, two terms as prime minister where policies and events had to be covered, and a literary career as well. At the FAC, three supporters said in one form or another that the length was justified. No one expressed concern that it might be too long. As the guidelines say, sometimes articles are long because the subject matter demands it.--Wehwalt (talk) 20:24, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I make no apologies about Middle Ages' length. It's a rather large topic... I'm impressed we managed to keep it under 15,000 words or so. Only covers about 1200 years and an entire continent. Ealdgyth - Talk 20:36, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise, I am not apologising for the Manhattan Project. It too has grown over the past years since its FAC, as editors have added more material. I have kept a close eye on the additions. Over the next year though, I will be creating a series of sub articles, and will then be in a position to reduce the main article. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:14, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hawkeye7 See also User:The ed17/Featured articles by prose size etc., etc. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 23:22, 6 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
From The ed17's longer list, the kinds of articles we are discussing that might need review can be found. Moving all the way down around the 50th longest FAs are samples such as:
  • Germany currently 12,300 words readable prose, passed FAR June 2011 with 7,800 words of readable prose. More than three years since it has been reviewed, and has almost doubled in size, meaning most of the text in the article is unvetted in a review process.
  • Paul McCartney, BLP, currently 12,000 words of readable prose, passed FAC in July 2012 with 10,700 words of readable prose, FAC nominator no longer active.
So, the idea of looking at very long FAs is only to identify those that a) might have grown significantly since last review, or with b) several years lapsed since review, or with c) FAC nominator no longer active. If we can get a list of all FAs that have been x years unreviewed, we might then be able to focus on those that have a lot of unvetted text by way of having grown post-FAC or those whose nominators are gone. That is the subset that might need to go to FAR, but we need a starting list so we can begin eliminating the ones that still look to be well maintained.

Hawkeye7 would you mind if I merge all of this info to one thread, retaining sub-headings, so we have it all in one place in archives? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: I've come to the realization that overwriting this data for each update may have been a bad idea. That said, for article comparison purposes, my page goes back to 2013, and Dr pda's page goes back to 2007. Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 01:25, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, The ed17; I'm getting the idea, though, that there are only about four editors who care about the declining value of that bronze star, and perhaps initiating an up-or-down vote (as in the Refreshing Brilliant Prose phase of FA history) may be the only way to deal with the thousands of unreviewed FAs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:39, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
We no longer have the manpower to review hundreds of articles. What we could use is a way of selecting articles. Many have changed little since their FAC; other (like Batman) have been completely rewritten. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:42, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FAs by date since last FAC or FAR (December 2014)

[edit]
  1. Quatermass and the Pit (August 2004) Filiocht (talk · contribs) *
  2. John Millington Synge (October 2004) Angmering (talk · contribs)
  3. Geology of the Death Valley area (May 2005) Mav (talk · contribs)*
  4. History of the Grand Canyon area (May 2005) Mav (talk · contribs) *
  5. Myxobolus cerebralis (May 2005) Harry491 (talk · contribs) *
  6. Chagas disease (July 2005) Redux (talk · contribs) *
  7. USS Missouri (BB-63) (July 2005) Bschorr (talk · contribs) *
  8. Gas metal arc welding (July 2005) Spangineer (talk · contribs) *
  9. Restoration spectacular (August 2005) Bishonen (talk · contribs)
  10. Astrophysics Data System (August 2005) Worldtraveller (talk · contribs) *
  11. Marine shrimp farming (August 2005) Lupo (talk · contribs)
  12. Cerebellum (August 2005) A314268 (talk · contribs) *
  13. Flag of Belarus (September 2005) Zscout370 (talk · contribs)
  14. Multiple sclerosis (October 2005) Wouterstomp (talk · contribs)
  15. Sicilian Baroque (October 2005) Bishonen (talk · contribs)
  16. War of the League of Cambrai (November 2005) Kirill Lokshin (talk · contribs)
  17. Yarralumla, Australian Capital Territory (November 2005) Martyman (talk · contribs) *
  18. Planetary habitability (November 2005) Marskell (talk · contribs) *
  19. Early life of Joseph Smith (December 2005) COGDEN (talk · contribs)
  20. Australian green tree frog (December 2005) LiquidGhoul (talk · contribs) *
  21. Dinosaur (December 2005) Spawn Man (talk · contribs) *
  22. Short-beaked echidna (December 2005) PDH (talk · contribs) *
  23. Economy of the Iroquois (December 2005) Bkwillwm (talk · contribs)
  24. Gas tungsten arc welding (December 2005) Spangineer (talk · contribs) *
  25. Saffron (December 2005) Saravask (talk · contribs)
  26. KaDee Strickland (December 2005) Extraordinary Machine (talk · contribs)

* Inactive users

The last is the only BLP, and the only one where the date is of its FAR (its FAC was in September 2005). The others never had FARs. Only two are more than 10 years old. Over 2,000 FACs are over five years old. Some FACs are older than these but are not listed because they have more recent FARs. For example, Batman was promoted in December 2003, but had a FAR in June 2006. Hawkeye7 (talk) 09:13, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Short-beaked echidna got an overhaul and much-improved referencing in early 2010 by YellowMonkey who had suggested it may need to go to FAR in 2009. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 12:23, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
So, we should agree on a list methodology and add them to a sub-page before we start listing good or bad of each :) Multiple sclerosis is not up to snuff ... based on ancient sources. But no need to comment on each of them here, since we need to decide how deep to go into "old". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hawkeye7, when you say over 2,000 FAs are over five years old, does that mean without a FAR? Are you able to generate a list of every FA whose most recent entry in ArticleHistory is, for example, 2009 or older? That is, if there has been a FAR since 2010, they would not show up. Are you able to calculate how many articles that would be ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 30 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • 2,373 to be exact. The most recent of these is Flag of Singapore (December 2009). This is based on the date of the most recent FAC or FAR. Some articles have had many FACs and FARs. I have a full list. If we review one per diem, we can knock the whole list off in just 6½ years. Hawkeye7 (talk) 18:27, 2 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Featured articles by date of last FAC or FAR
Year Articles
2004 2
2005 24
2006 291
2007 713
2008 773
2009 570
Total 2,373

More discussion

[edit]

Hawkeye7, I suspect that what we're trying to accomplish is getting lost in the woodwork (no need for editors to defend their "long" FAs that were discussed at FAC). Would you mind if I combined these lists into the topics above that generated them, so all would archive together? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:30, 3 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Of course not. Go right ahead. Hawkeye7 (talk) 07:32, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Done! [7] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 7 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hawkeye7, me again :) OK, I want to start a process for discussing pruning down the several thousand FAs potentially needing review. One aspect of that (there are several) would be identifying FAs whose nominator is still active and maintaining "their" articles. Based on a process with some sort of spotcheck, we could potentially strike groups of FAs whose main editors are actively maintaining them to standard. So, another question I have is, are you able to identify the FAC nominator via script and add it to a list of old FAs without review? RickBot has script that does that when it produces, for example, Wikipedia:Featured articles promoted in 2014, which feeds WP:WBFAN. If we're able to do that, then we might be able to up the cutoff date (to 2010-- still old), with the idea that then we can separately delete groups of FAs from nominators who are still active. Before we can determine a process for reviewing these old FAs, we still need to know how many may need review, so I'd like to come up with a list of older unreviewed FAs (and add in the ColonelHenry, and any from the list of very long that have grown substantially since FAC), and then start looking at what we can remove from the list. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:44, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Okay. I have updated the list above. Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:32, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Dude, awesome! But Hawkeye7, something is amiss in the "inactive users" footnoted; just on a quick glance, I know that Saravask and Bishonen are active. Is your script picking up that they are inactive on the article? If so, maybe amend the footnote? Totally cool that you can produce that ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:07, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
No, I marked the inactive editors with an asterisk. I am still running off the full list. I'll use a separate pass to get the activity, as it is a bit tricky. LiquidGhoul has made one edit since 2012; Redux had been inactive since 2009 but suddenly reappeared in 2013 to find that he'd lost his admin status. I listed Saravask as being still active, as the last edit was on 22 November; but Saravask has made on six edits in the past year. For size difference, I decided to use raw byes rather than text, as activity is more than just changing the text, and we are concerned with references and images as well. On this basis, some have greatly increased in size, but others, such as Mistle thrush, have actually shrunk slightly, die to changes in the templates used. Hawkeye7 (talk) 21:52, 13 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, thanks! So, the idea that we could flag inactive users by script or bot is off? Bummer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:52, 14 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
[edit]
This discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.


Featured Articles that have changed most since last FAC or FAR
Title Last FAR or FAC FAC FAR Nominator Size then Size now % increase
Mauna Loa 11 July 2006 11 July 2006 none Worldtraveller 19,209 77,609 304.02
CM Punk 31 July 2007 31 July 2007 none D.M.N. 53,022 189,790 257.95
Celine Dion 18 January 2006 18 January 2006 none Journalist 41,581 146,151 251.49
Dinosaur 17 December 2005 17 December 2005 none Spawn Man 51,108 166,610 226.00
Exoplanet 13 September 2006 13 September 2006 none Kevin Nelson 56,947 169,009 196.78
State of Vietnam referendum, 1955 17 April 2008 17 April 2008 none YellowMonkey 13,761 40,705 195.80
DNA repair 6 June 2006 28 August 2004 6 June 2006 Mav 25,542 74,498 191.67
University of Michigan 20 January 2006 18 November 2005 20 January 2006 Pentawing 39,537 114,567 189.77
Cerebellum 31 August 2005 31 August 2005 none A314268 29,246 84,213 187.95
Holden Commodore (VE) 21 April 2007 21 April 2007 none SandyGeorgia 39,369 113,221 187.59
Tyrannosaurus 24 July 2006 24 July 2006 none CALR 51,272 147,019 186.74
Doctor Who missing episodes 2 May 2007 4 November 2005 2 May 2007 Khaosworks 41,282 116,782 182.89
1960 South Vietnamese coup attempt 28 April 2008 28 April 2008 none YellowMonkey 16,739 47,243 182.23
Mariah Carey 1 December 2007 14 April 2006 1 December 2007 Extraordinary Machine 64,143 178,799 178.75
Short-beaked echidna 20 December 2005 20 December 2005 none PDH 20,987 57,241 172.75
Pope Pius XII 2 November 2006 28 June 2006 2 November 2006 Savidan 65,892 177,507 169.39
City of Manchester Stadium 15 September 2009 28 September 2006 15 September 2009 Oldelpaso 28,118 75,532 168.63
Bald eagle 3 September 2007 3 September 2007 none Hey jude, don't let me down 37,241 99,656 167.60
LSWR N15 class 19 June 2008 19 June 2008 none Bulleid Pacific 19,483 51,783 165.79
Finnish Civil War 24 November 2006 24 November 2006 none Pudeo 57,911 151,425 161.48
4chan 23 September 2008 23 September 2008 none Giggy 35,117 90,673 158.20
Albertosaurus 22 June 2006 22 June 2006 none Sheep81 21,575 54,598 153.06
Marine shrimp farming 15 August 2005 15 August 2005 none Lupo 36,107 90,669 151.11
William Tecumseh Sherman 27 March 2006 27 March 2006 none Eb.hoop 42,964 107,879 151.09
Global warming 4 May 2007 17 May 2006 4 May 2007 La goutte de pluie 68,462 170,477 149.01
Space Invaders 29 September 2008 29 September 2008 none Guyinblack25 27,142 67,240 147.73
3rd Battalion 3rd Marines 22 May 2007 22 May 2007 none Palm dogg 45,829 113,117 146.82
Military of the Democratic Republic of the Congo 9 September 2007 9 September 2007 none Buckshot06 45,540 112,337 146.68
Bodyline 4 December 2006 10 December 2006 4 December 2006 Mav 20,462 50,144 145.06
Silverchair 28 March 2008 28 March 2008 none Giggy 34,160 83,657 144.90
Planetary habitability 19 November 2005 19 November 2005 none Marskell 38,180 91,402 139.40
D. B. Cooper 24 March 2008 24 March 2008 none Nishkid64 42,130 99,896 137.11
1928 Okeechobee hurricane 24 February 2006 24 February 2006 none Jdorje 15,248 35,979 135.96
Quatermass and the Pit 2 August 2004 2 August 2004 none Mav 17,055 40,197 135.69
Janet Jackson 16 April 2008 16 April 2008 none Bookkeeperoftheoccult 69,918 161,021 130.30
Ph?m Ng?c Th?o 25 August 2007 25 August 2007 none YellowMonkey 22,320 51,346 130.04
Chagas disease 8 July 2005 8 July 2005 none Redux 24,660 55,937 126.83
Powderfinger 28 November 2007 28 November 2007 none Seb26 46,684 104,514 123.88
Mars 15 March 2007 15 March 2007 none GimmeBot 69,538 155,572 123.72
The Simpsons 13 May 2007 14 August 2007 13 May 2007 Green Owl 60,883 135,824 123.09
Antarctica 4 July 2006 26 February 2006 4 July 2006 Mahanga 45,937 102,138 122.34
Weymouth, Dorset 27 November 2006 27 November 2006 none Rossenglish 32,162 71,147 121.21
Bradley Joseph 1 June 2007 1 June 2007 none Cricket02 29,058 64,221 121.01
Battle of Midway 6 June 2006 6 June 2006 none TomStar81 43,979 97,145 120.89
Frank Macfarlane Burnet 9 October 2006 9 October 2006 none PDH 34,633 76,488 120.85
Military history of Puerto Rico 25 October 2006 23 May 2005 25 October 2006 Raul654 72,351 159,482 120.43
The Stolen Earth 16 August 2008 16 August 2008 none GimmeBot 48,890 107,555 119.99
Green and golden bell frog 12 August 2006 12 August 2006 none Froggydarb 21,369 46,734 118.70
Joel Selwood 9 August 2009 9 August 2009 none Aaroncrick 41,968 91,316 117.58
Michael Jackson 28 July 2008 28 July 2008 none SandyGeorgia 111,388 241,817 117.09
Western Front (World War I) 24 February 2006 24 February 2006 none RJHall 34,764 75,396 116.88
Alpha Phi Alpha 11 May 2006 11 May 2006 none Ccson 46,962 101,323 115.76
Fin whale 8 November 2006 8 November 2006 none Neil916 39,014 84,122 115.62
Khan Noonien Singh 11 October 2008 11 October 2008 none David Fuchs 19,424 41,732 114.85
Aaliyah 20 December 2001 20 December 2001 none Explicit 53,492 114,845 114.70
Grim Fandango 26 March 2008 26 March 2008 none Masem 40,755 87,450 114.57
Atheism 28 April 2007 28 April 2007 none Brian0918 69,552 149,204 114.52
Don Dunstan 21 August 2006 21 August 2006 none Beneaththelandslide 42,879 91,587 113.59
Prairie Avenue 27 January 2008 27 January 2008 none GimmeBot 16,683 35,321 111.72
Bill O'Reilly (cricketer) 22 May 2007 22 May 2007 none The Rambling Man 35,764 75,654 111.54
California State Route 78 11 April 2009 11 April 2009 none Rschen7754 31,211 65,952 111.31
Shelton Benjamin 5 November 2007 5 November 2007 none Feedback 32,806 68,888 109.99
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series) 16 August 2006 16 August 2006 none JohnDBuell 26,199 54,595 108.39
Rush (band) 9 April 2006 9 April 2006 none BorgHunter 42,681 88,642 107.68
Emma Watson 26 January 2008 26 January 2008 none GimmeBot 32,133 66,696 107.56
Thomas Playford IV 17 February 2007 17 February 2007 none Beneaththelandslide 45,573 94,232 106.77
Perfect Dark 13 April 2006 13 April 2006 none CALR 43,416 89,579 106.33
Flag of Australia 26 January 2006 26 January 2006 none PDH 26,843 55,311 106.05
Influenza 2 November 2006 2 November 2006 none TimVickers 68,048 140,195 106.02
Mass Rapid Transit (Singapore) 6 January 2006 6 January 2006 none Mailer diablo 37,586 77,262 105.56
Magic Johnson 18 April 2009 18 April 2009 none Noble Story 56,042 115,138 105.45
European Commission 9 September 2007 9 September 2007 none JLogan 29,574 60,672 105.15
George V 21 April 2007 21 April 2007 none DrKiernan 39,223 80,225 104.54
Multiple sclerosis 15 October 2005 15 October 2005 none Wouterstomp 42,327 86,568 104.52
Connie Talbot 15 November 2008 15 November 2008 none GimmeBot 26,813 54,598 103.63
Déjà Vu (Beyoncé song) 2 September 2008 2 September 2008 none GimmeBot 28,067 57,137 103.57
Alice in Chains 11 February 2008 11 February 2008 none GimmeBot 42,031 85,107 102.49
Crab Nebula 21 May 2006 21 May 2006 none Worldtraveller 18,975 38,296 101.82
Irreplaceable 31 March 2008 31 March 2008 none Efe 43,822 88,390 101.70
Song dynasty 25 August 2007 25 August 2007 none GimmeBot 55,878 112,145 100.70
Batman 10 June 2006 15 December 2003 10 June 2006 Mav 58,660 117,594 100.47

Hawkeye7 (talk) 19:06, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of most changed
[edit]
Wow. Just wow. Awesome work, Hawkeye7 ... but the size of the problem is more than I counted on :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:11, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Oh dear, Hawkeye7 ... how did I end up being listed as the nominator of Michael Jackson? Ack !!!! I see some misplaced Raul and Gimmebot as nominators, also. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:19, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I did rewrite California State Route 78 last year (and I was the nominator), since I didn't feel that it was up to standard... I didn't have it re-reviewed at either the roads A-Class review or FAR at the time, but if people feel it's necessary I can send it to either. --Rschen7754 14:32, 16 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Two proposals

[edit]

On the FAR page (please keep discussion over there):

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 15 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

FAC and FAR Coordinator proposal

[edit]
The proposals and comments have been reviewed, and the results are as follows:
  • Recognized as additional FAC Coordinator:
  • Removed as FAC Coordinator, with thanks from the community, and without prejudice to reinstatement should he resume active editing:
  • Recognized as additional FAR Coordinators:
  • Removed as FAR Coordinator, with thanks from the community, and without prejudice to reinstatement should she resume active editing:
Risker (talk) 04:42, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion 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.

The need to appoint additional Coordinators at Featured Article Candidates (FAC) and Featured Article Review (FAR) arose in this preliminary discussion, following on posts to the FAC talk page and the FAR talk page.

As discussed at both pages, there is considerable work to be done to review older FAs, and several new FAR Coordinators are proposed to take on the backlog and generate an updated list of Unreviewed Featured Articles. FAR Coordinator Dana boomer has been inactive,[8] and FAC Coordinator Ucucha hasn't promoted a Featured article recently.[9]

The following FAC and FAR changes are proposed: FAC Coordinators Ian Rose and Graham Beards, and FAR Coordinator Nikkimaria would continue in their roles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed: FAC Coordinator Ucucha

[edit]

Thank Ucucha for his valued service at Featured Article Candidates, and remove him as Coordinator (without prejudice to his future reinstatement should he resume active editing).

Proposed: New FAC Coordinator Laser brain

[edit]

Laser brain served as FAC Delegate/Coordinator between November 2010–August 2011.[10] He has returned to active editing.

Proposed: FAR Coordinator Dana boomer

[edit]

Thank Dana for her valued service at Featured Article Reviews, and remove her as Coordinator (without prejudice to her future reinstatement should she resume active editing).

Proposed: New FAR Coordinator Casliber

[edit]

Proposed: New FAR Coordinator DrKiernan

[edit]

Proposed: New FAR Coordinator Maralia

[edit]
Hi Ed—Previously I, too, tried to argue that my low edit count this year could be perceived as a problem, but nobody would buy what I was selling, and here we are. I'll just offer that I have been around and responsive this year despite my low edit count; that after 7 years I'm not going anywhere anytime soon; and that I've followed happenings at WT:FAC and WT:FAR throughout the year, so I'm as informed as I ever was. Maralia (talk) 20:53, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, let me reverse myself and support. If you're going to be around, this will be an excellent move. :-) Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 00:46, 22 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Other discussion

[edit]
  • This might be the time and place to reconfirm the good work done by current Coordinators Ian Rose, Graham Beards and Nikkimaria! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:47, 19 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
    • Indeed. All three work hard and achieve the highest standards in their work at FAC/FAR. Courteous and professional, they are over-worked and under-thanked. Hopefully having new colleagues will reinvigorate not only them but the FA processes. Thanks as well to Sandy for taking the lead on this issue. She is second to none in her desire to ensure that having the bronze star is no empty symbol, and hopefully the plan to review older FAs will be well supported. BencherliteTalk 07:56, 20 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Probably also a good time to remember, that everyone can help to relieve some stress from the coordinators: point out premature or flawed nominations (as politely as possible), help new nominators with tips and guidance, fix minor formatting bugs, check the list of requested reviews, ... - the list goes on. And of course do those pesky review thingy. Thanks for the current coordinators' efforts and to the candidates willing to step up. GermanJoe (talk) 11:26, 21 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Because of another hat I sometimes wear (RfC closer), I can't participate here ... I just want to say that so people won't read anything into my non-participation. Best of luck to all involved, and thanks for offering your services. (The reason I can't vote isn't related to anything at FAC or FAR, nor will I be closing any RfCs on FAC or FAR. I'm just abiding by the most stringent expectations on closers ... I always have, and so far, that's been a good idea.) - Dank (push to talk) 12:57, 28 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment/Question - I'm still having some trouble working my way through all of this to find out how it initiated, which is probably okay, but wondering why we're adding three coords to FAR? Looks like there were some ongoing discussions in various places and then it all landed here. One question though - has anyone been in contact with Ucucha and Dana Boomer? I've looked at their talk pages and don't see messages left there but perhaps email has been sent. Just wondering. Victoria (tk) 15:27, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Victoria, re. the first point, to allow for spreading workload, breaks, recusals, etc, there should always be two-three people for any FA-related coord job, and given the hoped-for focus on FAR/FARC, four FAR coords seems reasonable. Re. last point, as a fellow FAC coord, I've emailed Ucucha on several occasions lately to keep him up to date with what's going on and had a response, so I believe he's aware of it. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment, it would be nice seeing the FAC reviewer positions put up for a vote, with term, as other committees are done.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:11, 10 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • You are referring to the reviewers who support, oppose, or comment on nominations, as opposed to the coordinators who close them? If so, then no. These aren't committees, they are individual reviewers, independent of each other. As far as I know no process requires that reviewers be elected or part of a committee - DYK, FLC, etc all have the same system as here in that regard. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:08, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I was under the impression that not just anyone an review for FAC/FAR.--RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 22:25, 11 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Nope, anyone can review - I invite you to join in. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:51, 12 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Timing

[edit]

I notice now that we didn't suggest an end date for this proposal/discussion. Now it's 2015, and no-one yet has opposed anything, I'd be happy to see it closed and put into effect at any time. Of course I'm biased, having effectively supported every part of it... ;-) Anyway, thoughts? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 01:40, 1 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Not exactly uninvolved myself, but maybe keep it open until 19 January? 4 weeks should be enough time to give everyone interested a chance to speak up. I am sure, all candidates will do a great job, so this should just be a formality anyway. GermanJoe (talk) 11:11, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm unconvinced that we need four weeks for a close on this. Perhaps Risker, Moonriddengirl or Bishonen, who have been involved in FA pages and RFCs in the past, but haven't weighed in here, would close the discussion? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I should be available next weekend to close, if that is helpful. Risker (talk) 04:18, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Risker, that would be most kind of you, and allows the extra time mentioned below. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:02, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would be more comfortable if this was left open for another week or so, since so many people travel or are otherwise occupied at the holidays. Maralia (talk) 22:39, 2 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with GermanJoe and Maralia because others, like myself, might not FAR on watch (where the discussions originated?), have been busy since the beginning of Dec., and haven't had time to review the discussions. Victoria (tk) 15:48, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I think too much has been done over the holidays when people are inattentive. I also would suggest, lest anyone think it improper for the proponent to suggest what admin should do the closing, that the discussion be listed for closing instead. I don't think whatever admin does it will have a hard job, considering no one has chosen to express opposition.--Wehwalt (talk) 11:56, 9 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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.


One-month trial transclusion of FAR to FAC

[edit]

Following on discussions of the backlog of Unreviewed Featured Articles,[11][12] a one-month trial to bring more attention to Featured article review pages by transcluding them to FAC was considered at the FAR talk page, and proposed at FAC.[13] FAC and FAR would still be two separate processes, with separate Coordinators closing nominations, but the pages would share the skills of reviewers, since both processes evaluate articles against the FA criteria.

There are some differences in how the pages operate: the FAR page is set up to make sure involved participants are notified, and to allow time for improvements before an article is delisted.

  • Notifications must be made on article talk before a FAR nomination (the idea is to allow time for improvements).
  • Notifications of significant contributors and WikiProjects must be made when a FAR is initiated.
  • An editor may only nominate one FAR at a time, with the exception that three FARs from the Unreviewed Featured Article list may be listed per week.
  • FAR is divided into two phases, providing time for problems to be identified and addressed in a deliberative fashion. During the FAReview phase, issues that need attention are raised. At the end of that phase (about two weeks), the FAR moves to the FARC (Featured Article Removal Candidate) phase if there is not consensus that all issues have been addressed. During the FARC phase, another few weeks are allowed for improvements. Towards the end of the overall month of review, Keep or Delist are declared.

It would be helpful if FAC regular reviewers would also browse to the bottom of the page to review FAR nominations, as processing of older FAs or FAs that no longer meet standards has slowed down because of a lack of participation at FAR. If experienced FA reviewers can list issues seen during the FAR phase, and declare Keep or Delist towards the end of the FARC phase, this will help assure the integrity of the bronze star.

Hopefully, this transclusion will bring more eyes to FAR; re-evaluation at the end of a month. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:18, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is a major change. May I enquire as to where the decision was made to do this, either by consensus or otherwise?--Wehwalt (talk) 14:40, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
The links to the discussion (including the notification on this page) are all listed in my post above, but I'll put it here again for the third time.[14] As an example of how this might work, see the same thing on board at Featured List Candidates. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:51, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I would hesitate to call the level of support I see over there consensus. There's almost nothing from the rank and file; all supporters are current or nominated coordinators other than yourself of course Sandy. Two coordinators have expressed significant reservations. I would hesitate to close the discussion as consensus achieved at least not at this stage. Not that I would of course. Imagine it's the season running all these proposals and nominations at the holiday season when so many people are away doesn't strike me as best calculated to get a broad level of participation in the discussion.--Wehwalt (talk) 17:49, 29 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
People are free to comment; it's been two weeks, and you can lead a horse to water and all that. And the reservations expressed were all addressed according the qualifiers expressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:57, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I think the present setup is OK now, but what will happen when FAR activity ramps up to the level that is desired for knocking down the number of deficient FAs? If FAR gets much above 15 noms (a distinct possibility now), that's a significant expansion of the FAC page at a time when the reviewer base is far too stretched. To be fair, this isn't the biggest problem I have with what is happening; I'm much more concerned by the lack of an obvious place that lists which articles are being reviewed "sweeps" style at a given time. Not sure why that hasn't been addressed (that I've seen), but I fear that the lack of people involved in the process will become more obvious now in various ways. Of course, that is a structural problem which isn't easy to fix, but we don't have the "processing power" that we did when I was starting out 6+ years ago and that needs to be reflected in some way. Giants2008 (Talk) 02:36, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
My line of thinking was that some could be archived/demoted relatively quickly if they were clearly below standard and several people pointed out as such and no-one was interested on working on same, so that hopefully we would not have FARs open for protracted periods. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 04:02, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, Giants2008; I'm not sure what you're referring to, since there is nothing like a "sweeps style" review in place. We've talked about how far behind FAR is, but nothing came of any "sweeps" idea. There has been so far no agreement that FAR needs to do some sort of sweeps-style, or up-or-down vote, and if it does come to that (once a list of Unreviewed Featured Articles is generated), then that would require some whole new way of processing and a whole new notification and consensus discussion about how to proceed. I would not think that would be part of the regular FAR page, hence would not be transcluded to FAC ... if it comes to that, it would need a Whole New Thing.

The only change that has been made so far is that the one-nom-at-a-time rule has been relaxed to allow a max of 12 noms per month from the Unreviewed featured articles list, and with some more Coords on board, FARs shouldn't sit there for four months waiting for something to happen. So, with the 12 noms per month from URFA, and increased Coord-power, it's entirely possible that FAR will stay at about 15 a month. If FAR gets huge, we could/should discuss untranscluding!

Also, in terms of the reviewer base, the work needed at FAR is pretty simple. Most often, when an article needs review, it's because the original nominator is gone, and no one works on retaining status. All that is needed in that case is for people to look at the page, look at the FA, and enter a declaration (typically Delist in that case). In the cases when someone is working on the FAR, if folks could peek in to see if they agree it's a keeper would help-- and if the page moves faster, it shouldn't be backlogged. As an example right now, at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Jack Sparrow/archive1, Curly Turkey did a significant edit of Jack Sparrow, and we just need a few reviewers to say yea or nay ... good enough to not lose its star, or there are still problems. But most of what is on the page sits there with no action, since the nominators or anyone interested in keeping it at status are gone, and if just a few people could help the Coords by entering a declaration, things should move along. A sample of that kind of review is at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Military career of Hugo Chávez/archive1. Hope this helps! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:04, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought that had already been put into motion. My mistake. That's what happens when you get a serious job and barely have time to read discussions here anymore. Your points make sense, but do keep in mind that the WP:FLRC process barely sees much reviewing activity even with transclusion at FLC. Maybe FAR will have better luck with the push that has started. Or maybe our site-wide lack of reviewers will be exposed. I'll be interested to see what happens. Giants2008 (Talk) 16:24, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the site-wide lack of review is a problem, but I hope that editors who are proud of their recently earned or well-maintained articles with bronze stars can take just a few moments a week to go over to FAR and make sure that standards are being held up on both ends! It takes very little time to review a FAR! Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:46, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm uncertain what's being proposed wrt sweeps and FAR. Is it that all old FAs pre some cut-off date are submitted for review at FAR if their nominator has become inactive? I have an interest in this because Bencherlite recently drew Quatermass and the Pit to my attention, as the oldest FA yet to appear on the main page. I've done a lot of work on that since, and to be honest it needed it. But should I be standing by for an imminent FAR? Eric Corbett 18:18, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Scroll to the top of this section and take a look at the discussions - I think if articles are spruced up along the way then it gets noted on the talk page and on one of the other list-pages. e.g. on WP:URFA Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:47, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Ack Eric Corbett, there seems to be so much confusion about what is and isn't happening at FAR, that I will attempt another explanation :)

The only current change in FAR procedures is that the one-nom-at-a-time rule has been relaxed to allow 12 per month from the list of FAs that have not been reviewed since 2006. Not all of those will need a FAR; if you have brushed an article up to snuff, there is no reason to think it will come up for a FAR-- there has to be a deficiency identified to bring a FAR.

The only other current change at FAR is the proposal of three new coordinators to a) get the page moving again (FARs are sitting there for up to four months, when one month is the historical norm), and b) so they can begin to look at how to process the backlog of unreviewed articles. There seems to be an idea that such changes have already happened. No, here is the idea ...

The new Coords will need to look at the lists from The ed17 and Hawkeye7 of older FAs that haven't been reviewed, or FAs that have grown considerably since passing FAC, generate a comprehensive list of older FAs that need to be looked at (I didn't say need a FAR !!!), remove from that list the considerable number that are still maintained by still-active nominators, remove from that list anything already reviewed as up to snuff on Dweller's list, and then even remove those they can see are absent deficiencies (based on consensus of at least three experienced reviewers). When something like all of that is done, then we see how many older FAs *may* need a FAR. If that is something like 500, the current FAR process can handle it, as it did when it processed 500 FAs when citation style changed. But if there are considerably more than 500 FAs that might be out of compliance, then the new Coords might need to propose a new, or one-time process-- somethin akin to a sweep-- where talk pages would first be noticed, some sort of "vote" would proceed, and only those with clear keep or delist consensus would stay or go. The rest (those unclear) would stay on the list as needing to be processed through FAR. But all of this is dependent on the new Coords putting together the new list of older FAs that haven't been reviewed, pruning it down to those that really need a closer look, and only then proposing how to handle them. As of yet, nothing has changed except the 12 noms per month. Bst, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:42, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]

  • Suggestion Maybe I'm way off-base with this, but if the concern here is that articles that were properly vetted at FAC have since fallen into disrepair, why not return them to the version that passed FAC? You could also compare the differences between the version that passed FAC and the article today, and include any improvements while discarding the fluff. Rationalobserver (talk) 19:53, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately it is not so straightforward. FA standards have risen and some articles that were promoted a few years no longer meet the current criteria. Falling into disrepair (nicely put by the way) is not the central issue. For example, we are now more strict about citations than we once were. Some older FAs have whole paragraphs that lack inline citations or use sources that we would no longer accept as reliable, or are now dead links. Graham Beards (talk) 21:00, 30 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
That rarely works, Rationalobservor, although it is always considered as an option. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:42, 31 December 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  • Two questions/comments - 1.), Would it be worthwhile to go through the analysis phase before choosing new coordinators? I'm thinking in terms of leveraging the rapidly dwindling numbers of people on the ground who write/review, etc, and I'm concerned that three prolific writer/reviewers have only recently been siphoned off for TFA (which, in my view, is paramount), and that more will be siphoned away from FAC. Or will the function of the new coords be to help with the analysis? Sorry if this has been explained - I've honestly not had time to read all the relevant links.

    Similar to above, is it worthwhile to wait for the analysis before moving FAR transclusion over here? That's a change I'm not entirely convinced we need given, again, the paucity of reviewers. But I can be swayed by the argument of putting in front of the few reviewers we have left. Still, it's a big change imo. Victoria (tk) 15:16, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Hey, TK. Most of the preliminary analysis is already done, in the sense of knowing there are many FAs to get through (see lists above). I don't share your concern that we've siphoned off three reviewers for the new TFA coords; that there are three of them allows them to share the workload in ways that won't preclude them from continuing to write and review (that job has historically been done by one person-- I recognize they have opted to do all kinds of notifications and things that take more time, but that's a choice). As to siphoning off for FAR, the FAR page moves *very* slowly, so neither should we lose any input at FAC by having those folks work at FAR. Having four Coords at FAR simply allows for more recusals to keep the page moving. Having worked through adding articlehistory to thousands of pages over several months years ago with Maralia, I know she can systematically get through things, and she's not a prolific FAC reviewer. On the actual analysis to be done, it's more like that it's up to the Coords to put the process in place so that everyone can put eyes on the FAs. On the transclusion over here, if another process is needed (sweeps-style), that would not be on this page, so hopefully this page should not have more than about 15 FARs at most per month. I'm not sure I hit all your queries ... please let me know! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:09, 3 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • As I mentioned above, a little out-of-the loop here! I've only just now noticed that FARs are already transcluded here, so that pretty much makes my earlier posts moot. Thanks for responding anyway! Victoria (tk) 01:21, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I guess there's a lot to read :) ON your earlier concern about siphoning off people from FAC, please contemplate the alternative-- that is, if we push FAs up the line but don't review them down the line, the value of the bronze star is deteriorated, and if as I suspect, a quarter of our FAs are not, then comparisons of FA to GA become valid, and why we should even allocate mainpage space for a process that doesn't keep current becomes a valid question. We have to allocate resources to keeping the value of the bronze star across the board, not just when promoted. I believe that Cas, DrK and Maralia can help do that without a loss to FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:01, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've been crazy busy and sort of slide in to do the work that needs to be done and then slide back out again, and I failed to follow the discussions as they unfolded (not having FAR on watch hasn't helped). A couple of thoughts though, and not presented in a very organized fashion. I did think I should probably strike the neutral I posted for Cas but it's not meant as a "I don't support Cas" but rather that I do support the other work Cas does and worry, perhaps needlessly, that we're all stretched a little thin. On a sidenote: I haven't supported DrK or Laserbrain b/c oddly have never interacted with them (I feel strangely like a neophyte here)!

    In terms of preserving the state of a FAC, given the paucity of editors and the inevitable slowdown in processes, should we be contemplating some sort of protection for FACs? In other words, this is a stable version, it's protected, please discuss changes on talk first, type of thing? I find myself working on increasingly obscure topics because they're easier to maintain: the hardest and most time consuming page I maintain is Hemingway - and that is protected. If we have thousands of FACs that are not FAC-worthy, then we need to be creative in leveraging the diminishing base of editors. Anyway, just throwing that out as a future idea.

    The thought of reviewing thousands of FACs makes me gulp. Personally I barely have time to review the new FACs in the queue, but you all have tons of energy and I have faith in you. I'm just not sure how viable that model is for the long term. If any of this makes sense? Victoria (tk) 16:51, 4 January 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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