Wikipedia talk:How to review a featured article candidate

message: I've started to expand this a little. Nothing that I'm adding is written in stone. I'm just trying to lay down a structure within which editing can take place, so if people object, please don't panic. :-) SlimVirgin (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Structure

message: Can I ask, please, that people stop discussing particular articles or particular reviewers? All that's happening is that some reviewers are starting to feel alienated; and as a result are wondering whether they should take part in this. If they don't, this page will be meaningless, because they're the ones with the experience; and they're the ones who are actually reviewing articles all the time. This page can't be hijacked in favor of any particular cause. The aim is to develop a set of consistent, explicit, reasonable guidelines (that are consistent with our policies) on how to review an FAC — a reviewers' and nominators' checklist. If it would help, we can switch the focus from reviewers, and write instead about what both sets of parties should be looking out for. But please, let's try to pull together on this. SlimVirgin (talk) 21:20, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Working together

message: From the last point in the "Reviewers" section: "Show that you read the article, and care for its well-being, by adding at least a minor edit before you object."
I don't really think this is really useful as a blanket recommendation.  If a nominated article has no references, for example, I don't see how correcting a comma somewhere will either make the reviewer more capable of noting that the article hasn't got a snowball's chance in hell of passing without them, or make the impact of such a statement less traumatic for the nominator.  Better, perhaps, would be something more like: "When objecting over relatively minor points of style... a minor edit before you object."  Even then, however, I'm not sure that having this point adds anything of value. Kirill Lokshin 22:18, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I agree. SlimVirgin (talk) 22:21, 5 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: After taking a look at the page, I guess this stipulation was removed. Good thing too. Reviewers are certainly under no obligation to make edits, nor should they be. Ryu Kaze 17:31, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reviewers editing the article 

message: V good.  Do you not go out on Saturdays?  Anyway, you solved the 'proportionate' one pretty well.  And vg to have points for nominators too.  I like this.  (dbuckner) 86.132.252.232 07:26, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, DB. It's good to get some positive feedback. SlimVirgin (talk) 07:33, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  looking good 

message: The heading says it all. I don't know all that many people on the Wikipedia, but I know there are some highly-respect editors (professional and/or Wikiepdian admins) who ought to be involved in processes like this. User:Jmabel, User:Cberlet, User:SamSpade, User:Chalst, User:Piotr, User:Banno, (only two of these are philosphy editors,BTW) are all examples of people I have come across in the last six months in one forum or another. I don't know if these partiuclar people have the time or interest, but I think you get my point. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Recruit more people

message: Just letting you know I've merged "be unemotional" and "don't be neurotic" because they seem to be the same point, and more importantly, I was worried that the phrasing would encourage editors to cite this page by saying -- "See REVIEW! Don't be so neurotic!" which could be considered uncivil.  -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 02:15, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Good idea. SlimVirgin (talk) 03:26, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Minor tweak 

message: This looks pretty good (there, I've satisfied the "positive points first" requirement =), although I just removed that part as instruction creep).  A few points:
*On precedent: The problem with this as it is currently stated is that standard reference works are rarely written to deal with an encyclopedia.  An encyclopedia article is not an essay, nor a treatise, nor a novel, nor a journal article, nor a textbook, nor a newspaper article. Rare indeed is the style guide that explains what "encyclopedic prose" and "encyclopedic style" really is.  In fact, if you've ever seen one, let me know. Furthermore, what's an "authoratative source"?  A textbook?  A journal article? I've got textbooks with gaudy colors and flashy diagrams and huge margins and centered bold text and no inline citations.  I've read journal articles where the authors constantly refer to themselves.  In my opinion, our only real standard can be the Encyclopedia Brittanica, because it's professional, generally well written, and, most importantly, it's an encyclopedia with a scope similar to that of Wikipedia.  Even then, however, I feel that we can improve on them, but that's only going to occur by consensus, not by dogmatically throwing style guide references around.  I'll be the first to admit that style guides can be useful, especially when all or most of them agree, but I don't think it wise to include a clause that says to the nominator "find a style guide supporting your position, and suddenly the reviewer's objection is invalid."  Such a statement would have a number of detrimental effects, such as making WP:MoS completely useless and turning WP:FAC into a style guide battleground.
: A v good point.  I had encyclopedias in mind (clearly not textbooks or journals).  For philosophy, I use the SEP and the Oxford Companion.  The former has the benefit of being online.
*The "be proportionate" guideline and the "be sure of your ground" guideline could be combined.  For example, I see no problem with being adamant and blunt about the phrase "its cold outside today" because it's clearly wrong.  Few FA nominators will have any problem with me saying "Its/It's is misused throughout the text".  However, if it's something I'm not sure of, I shouldn't be so adamant.  For example, a month or two ago I commented on a nomination on an Indian subject where the English went back and forth between -ize and -ise.  I thought that India used British spelling, but I wasn't sure. So I said that one system or the other must be selected, and that I thought that British system was more appropriate.  
*I am concerned that this is just instruction creep.  The page is part common sense, part synthesis of other policies and guidelines, and part content from user essays.  The fact that it combines all of these is somewhat valuable in itself, but at the same time, is it really necessary?  I'm especially concerned about requirements like the one I mention above (now deleted) where reviewers are told to mention positive points first.  Obviously, that's a great idea, but if I see an article that has an absolutely 0% shot of passing FAC, I'm not going to preface it with "wow, hard words like 'incidentally' and 'excellent' are spelled correctly" and then get into how the prose is poor, the references are lacking, the images carry non-free licenses, and whole areas of the subject aren't covered.  I feel that if this guide is going to be useful, it should be as sparse as possible.
: The original draft had a bullet point, since removed, about 'being realistic'.  If something clearly doesn't stand a chance, one has to say so (and this doesn't conflict at all with being sensitive).  I once had a letter from a journal which began 'I know there is nothing worse for an author to have their work rejected ...'.  Or something like that.  It worked.  Most journals signal at a very early stage whether it's a case of needing a bit (or a lot) of work, but basically stands a good chance, and 'hopeless case'.  Dbuckner 07:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "I am concerned that this is just instruction creep" - me too, and all of your above points as well. This page is pretty decent, but I'd much prefer a page without any "policy" tags - with an emphasis on explaning things rather then giving guidelines. For example, when people come to FAC they often meet "late-breaking" style guidelines that they have perhaps not read yet. Or, perhaps they are jarred at the relative nitpick-iness that FAC has (and is rifting even more) compared to most peer reviews. RN 05:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "How to..." is an off-putting title. It has a patronizing and elitist feel. Unfortunately I'm not inspired enough to come up with an alternative today that doesn't suffer from the same problems. Yomangani 10:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "Reviewing a featured article candidate" might work. SlimVirgin (talk) 14:13, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That would be fine if that was all it covered, but it has advice for nominators too, so it needs a title that encourages nominators to look at it. Yomangani 14:24, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Comments 

message: I rearranged this section to remove the requirement for reviewers to be familiar with the policies. Hopefully they will know the policies before reviewing, but to make a comment on a POV statement it is not essential the reviewer be familiar with WP:OR, and insisting they know all these policies before reviewing would be discouraging to potential new reviewers. I also moved WP:BLP to the bottom, as it will be applicable only in some cases. Yomangani 10:19, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Reviewers do have to be familiar with the policies, Yomangani, or it'll lead to arguments. You can't have a writer following the policies, and then an objection made based on a misunderstanding of policy. SlimVirgin (talk) 14:15, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think Yomangani's point though is that if I know the style guide like the back of my hand but am clueless with regards to references, I can object over style issues.  Reviewers need understand only those policies which they refer to in their objection. --Spangineeres (háblame) 14:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that's a fair point. My concern is that I've seen reviewers make suggestions that weren't consistent with the policies or guidelines. We could say something like "Before giving advice or posting a criticism, make sure you're familiar with the policies or guidelines that govern that area. For example, reviewers who focus on images should make sure they've understood the image policies." Would that work? SlimVirgin (talk) 14:27, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yep, that's the idea. --Spangineeres (háblame) 14:30, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that works for me. Yomangani 14:31, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Content policies

message: I'd like to see some discussion of how an FA is supposed to be different from a GA.  It is my experience that writing a featured article has two components, 1) getting really good content and organization, which carefully balances the many deeply competing goals of WP (comprehensive, and global in scope, yet short, easy, jargon-free and unpaid, NPOV and yet no OR, lots of citations yet No OR or POV, etc.) 2) getting the content to a high degree of polish, by conforming with lots of style manuals and guidelines, salting the citations in-line, etc.
The Wikipedia: What_is_a_good_article page says "However, they are written, and the good article review process is designed, primarily with short articles (15kb or less) in mind, for which prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and in which inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria."  Is it really still the case that we intend the main difference between good articles and FAs to be LENGTH?  Should a failed FAC, cut itself down to 15K to try to gain GA status?  Surely that's not our goal.  If not then we need to think about what exactly 'brillant' prose is supposed to mean.  I assumed when I first read this, that it meant "inspired and moving prose," but from watching the process, I now think it means "polished to a bright sheen."  If so, then maybe we intend all of the really good content issues to be part of becoming a good article, and the in-line-referencing, and highly-polished prose to be the FA stage.  Or maybe part of the mis-communication between nominators and reviewers is between these two different notions of what could count as "brilliant" prose, and if so we should clarify as much as we can, because I frankly misunderstood this when I first read it.
The Wikipedia: What_is_a_feature_article official FA guideline is that an article should be "well written in the sense that it "the prose is compelling, even brilliant" (which sounds like brilliant isn't required, and that compellingness is more important than polish).  There is no requirement about how polished it is except "it exemplifies our very best work" and "it complies with the standards set in out in the style manual and relevant wikiprojects."  But both of these could easily be fulfilled by an article which was "best work" in terms of content, but was adequate rather than exceptional in terms of polishing.  If we really mean "highly polished" to be part of the requirement for FA, then we need to clarify.  Writing a "well-written" article, and editing an article to being a "exquisitely well-edited" article seem like totally different things to me, but Tony1 seems to think in Wikipedia: How_to_satisfy_Criterion_2a that being well written requires being "exquisitely well edited."  I cannot agree.  But maybe being exquisitely well edited, or "edited to a brilliant sheen of polish" or something is an appropriate goal for FAs.  If so, then we need to add it to the list of requirements for FA (and it is a great way to distinguish FA from GAs.) Bmorton3 15:50, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That FA and GA are hard to distinguish is a problem with GA. GA is misconceived (or at least has been misused). Scrap it or radically re-work it is my opinion. The length bit is there because WorldTraveller initially conceived of it working it that way. Marskell 19:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed but doing so might help us get clearer on what FA is supposed to be. Bmorton3 20:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: While I agree that it is worthwhile to periodically revisit the question of what FA is supposed to be, and how well we're conforming to that, FA isn't defined by its relationship with GA, nor should it be. Regardless of whatever flaws it may have, FA came first, and it's a more widely accepted process with a better definition of its role. GA was modelled on FA, not the other way around, and I think the length issue you bring up demonstrates how that process is still finding its role in Wikipedia.  -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 22:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: What is an FA?

message: The FAC process needs to incorporate "expertise" (sorry, folks, I had to use the evil word) in the specific areas of knowledge that each article deals with. Then, this FAC process, enhanced with substantive evalutions from experts,  should be applied to the WHOLE of Wikipedia. The result would be an extroadiny improvement in quality. That's all I have to say at this point. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 18:59, 7 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You're right.  Unfortunately, there aren't that many expert Wikipedians.  One project that attempted to provide expert peer review was Wikipedia:Scientific peer review, but it didn't last long.  For many subjects, the most one can hope for is someone with an extensive undergraduate education in the subject or a closely-related subject. A number of ideas have been floated for generating interest among experts, but it's slow going. --Spangineeres (háblame) 19:49, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Not true.  In philosophy there are a number of well-qualified people working in Wikipedia.  There is Prof. Irving Anellis, a noted historian of logic, who has done excellent work on the Bertrand Russell article.  There is Prof. Sarah Uckelmann, medieval scholar.  I worked with her on William of Sherwood.  Prof. Randall Holmes is a well-known logician who has contributed .  Here on this page we have Prof. Brian Morton, also Prof. Sam Clark has contributed to the debate.  Franco himself, while currently working outside academia, has contributed outstanding high profile articles on philosophy.  Not to forget Mel Ititis, who is anonymous, but is a lecturer at Oxford.  Dbuckner 07:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

text: However, while I continue to try to persuade these experts to make a wider contribution to WP, most prefer to stick (probably wisely) to their own specific subject area.  The result is that we have many articles on detailed and specific subjects, for example Brian's excellent page on the somewhat obscure Supposition theory but nothing of any quality on any of the 'big subjects' like Philosophy, Metaphysics, Truth and so on.  There is also a very serious problem, as Franco has noted time and time again.  If you work on a specific subject, it is highly unlikely it will be attacked by trolls and vandals.  I have articles written years ago for which I am still 'top' on the article history page.  But try that on the big subject areas, like Truth, and you are the victim of constant vandalism.  Of two types. One the ordinary kind of graffiti artist.  Second, far worse, the kind of person who imagines they are an expert on philosophy (after all, philosophy is just your opinions ain't it), whose arrogance and egotism is in inverse proportion to their knowledge of the subject.  If there were some recognition of experts in WP - even just the tiniest 'edge', this might change rapidly.  But it won't.  Dbuckner 07:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Supposition Theory isn't my area, it was just a place I saw a hole when I was new enough to Wikipedia philosophy that I didn't understand how many holes there are here.  I have tried to help art and aesthetics neither of which are my area either, but are front-page style big topics.  I actually used WP Truth in my intro to philosophy class last semester, and it turned out to be pretty good when I wrote my syllabus, but too unstable to be appropriate by later in that semester.  Additionally, it is challenging to write a front-page big topic in a way that is NPOV and encyclopedic, and global in scope, no OR, etc.  A detail topic can be a quick summary of the literature, and still somewhat short, without getting into those topics.  But it would take a large professional book to be genuinely NPOV about truth, trying to distill that to a short article for non-specialists while still juggling the many, many competing goals of WP is much harder.  And if one were to do a brilliant job of all that, there would still be a host of writing vs editing issues, and that is before then trying to defend the stability later.  I'm a pro-am advocate and I like that credentialed and non-credentialed folks are on a level field here, but as many realize, stability is a real problem, and there is very little reward system for contributing material.  There is a reward system for polished final product articles, but little (that I've found yet) for defending stability, working on front pages, or writing first pass copy.  What does this mean for reviewing FACs?  Once again let me plug distinguishing the contributions of writing and editing, both are important, but do not criticize a well written article as being poorly written because it is insufficiently edited. Bmorton3 13:58, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Franco has also expressed this view (on his talk page, I think).Dbuckner 07:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: See here. Didn't turn out so well as far as I understand. Marskell 08:21, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Agreed.  Clearly the bar was in the wrong place.  But in what sense has Wikipedia worked out 'well' for subjects like Philosophy? Dbuckner 08:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dbuckner and Bmorton are exactly right.  I've written 5 FAs, all on rather obscure subjects (Welding is the broadest I've attempted so far), and they're easy to maintain, most of the time.  Unfortunately, while a wiki is a fantastic way to generate content, it's not so good at maintaining the quality of existing content.  There has been discussion about stable versions in the past, which may, when implemented, partially address this problem.  With stable versions, changes won't happen to articles immediately, but will instead be periodically integrated into the article that everyone sees.  That way, edits can be reviewed and rejected in groups, and maintaining articles like truth would be significantly easier.  Question: is there a Philosohpy Wikiproject?  I'd strongly recommend that you start one, so that all you philosophy experts have a place to go where you can identify articles that are being assaulted by bad information and POV content.  I'm surprised that there are this many of you around, but this isn't the first time I've ever been wrong about something :).  Don't waste the opportunity though—work together, and I bet you can both maintain and improve the philosophy articles on Wikipedia. --Spangineeres (háblame) 12:10, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: The real problem is the rest of Wikipedia

message: At present, this page states that one of its aims is "to help nominators prepare their articles for the nomination process". I see there's a section at top called "The FA Process". Would it be acceptable to add a little bit of extra explanation -- maybe a paragraph -- of how the process works here? One of the things I've been concerned about in the FA process is the fact that the details of how things work -- how long discussions last, how consensus is determined, who actually promotes the article -- are not presented immediately on the FA or FAC page, where those who are new to process might learn about them. This is something I've brought up before in previous discussions, and there's been some aversion on the grounds of wanting to keep explanation concise, but it seems as long as we're drafting this guideline, such information would fit with the mission of preparing editors for the process.  -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 00:47, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think that is a good idea (I proposed something similar on the FAC talk page yesterday (or the day before depending where you are)). It's fine to keep a concise explanation on the page, but nominators should be able to find out details of the process without having to dig for them. Yomangani 01:24, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

text: Alright, I gave this a go. I had text that was about a paragraph, but wound up expanding it to two. See what you think. Helpful, or no?  -- (Lee)Bailey(talk) 16:12, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I found that helpful Bmorton3 16:19, 8 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  adding (slightly) to this document's scope 

message: Any ideas to avoid redundancy with Wikipedia:Featured article advice? I obviously wasn't aware of this page when I started what became that one. Maybe refocus this one on being advice for reviewers? Having too many repetetive guides isn't good, and I'm concerned that these two are redundant with other style guidelines. Just some thoughts. - Taxman Talk 23:10, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This article is redundant, and instruction creep.  Sandy 23:14, 10 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I have to agree with Sandy. Ryu Kaze 23:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

text: If you can locate anything in this article that isn't instruction creep or already included in WIAFA and other Wiki policies, I'd agree with merging it to Featured article advice.  Sandy 12:36, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Can I clarify which article you mean by this article? This one, Taxman's, both or another one I don't know about? How many proposed version of variations on this advice are there now? I've lost count. Anyway, the info the FAC process should definitely be saved, as it isn't available anywhere else (apart from Ryu Kaze's rewrite of the FAC page). Yomanganitalk 12:58, 11 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Avoiding redundancy 

message: Well, I can't prove any of that scientifically. But you've certainly scared off one old-comer (me). I'm not going through it again. It's not worth it. Where's my paycheck?? name-recognition?? All extremely hard work and no reward, except ferocious syntantic criticism, alphabetizing of interwiki links, peronsdata, blah, blah, blah, blah. Nonsense!!
The FAC system is ridiculous. Period. Good day. umm....once more, please remember,1) IT's ALL VOLUNTARY!!! 2) it is far easier to sit back in judgement than it is to do the actual work. Good day. --Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 09:09, 12 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The FA process is about making the articles the best they can possibly be. It is not a place where everybody just can collect a reward no matter what condition the article is in, because we are afraid to hurt the nominators feelings. It has to be strictly business and if you know you can't take it, then you might consider to just write the articles without nominating them. For me the reward is that somebody else might enjoy the article. If you are looking for money or glory then you are the wrong place. --Maitch 09:48, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's fair enough. I was still a bit on edge even when I write the above. I might nominate something or not. It's a free choice, of course. I've come down (or rather up) from the hyper-depressive state I was in a little bit, though. My real problem, Maitch, is, in part, that I cannout find the right place which you are referring to. But this is not the fault of anyone on Wikipedia. As an aside, I was wondering what this page is still doing here. Has it been merges with other text or shoud it be deleted or what? Not much is going on.--Francesco Franco aka Lacatosias 10:00, 14 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this proposal is dead. The text doesn't match the title. --Maitch 16:35, 15 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The majority of discussion has gone here based on the proposals made above under WP talk:REVIEW#Working toward a resolution. If what's been proposed there is agreed upon, I think that this page should be turned into a redirect to Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Ryu Kaze 15:08, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Scaring off the newcomers from FAC??

message: As mentioned right above, since this discussion made its way back over to the FA criteria talk page a while ago, and since the proposals discussed have now been approved, this page's purpose is pretty much done and it should probably be just turned into a redirect to Wikipedia:What is a featured article?. If no one objects in the next few days, I'm going to go ahead and do that. Ryu Kaze 23:35, 22 August 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Alright, I'm going to assume everyone's okay with this and go ahead with it. Ryu Kaze 03:48, 25 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Redirecting