Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/Archive 2

message: Should the image that accompanies the featured article on the front page generally link to the article rather than the image page?
*You would expect clicking an image of the subject of the featured article would take you to the article, not a page which most probably just contains copyright info on the imaeg. Where the image page is more complete and informative, then perhaps linking to it from the front page would be ok. Richard Taylor 10:01, 2 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Image Link 

message: There needs to be a little more added to the blurb:
Current text:
The Revised Standard Version (RSV) is an English translation of the Bible that was popular in the mid 20th century and posed the first challenge to the King James Version as the most popular Bible in English. The RSV is a revision of the 1901 American Standard Version. In 1937, it was decided that a revision would be done and a panel of 32 scholars was put together for that task. The decision, however, was delayed by the Great Depression. The translation panel used the 17th edition of the Nestle Greek text. The New Testament was released in 1946, and the Old Testament in 1952.
This is what should be added:
Special editions of the RSV were released for the Catholic Church in 1965 and for Eastern Orthodox churches in 1977. Reader's Digest published an condensed edition of the RSV in 1982. Revisions of the RSV were released by different groups in 1989 and 2001.
The addition covers:
The different editions of the base text (Cath, Orth, RD) and the NRSV and ESV.
I'd do it myself, but i'm not sure I have the power or not.
Comments? 
--iHoshie 09:47, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Revised Standard Version Blurb Addition 

message: I do not think any controversy is qualified for a feature on the main page since controversies are usually only secondary articles. Plus, the particular example of how some software should be labelled is certainly completely irrelevant in the eyes of most people. Get-back-world-respect 13:24, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Featured controversies 

message: So ... is the feature template a part of the Main Page in need of protection? To avoid things like spurious blanking of the picture - David Gerard 14:50, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Or, as I see having caught up with events, to prevent some foolish person thinking an edit war on the Main Page is a good way to make a point. I see the template is now protected, like the Main Page itself. Is there any convincing reason to unprotect it? - David Gerard 14:55, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: IMO, no.  I don't really see a need for non-admins to be editing this template.  If they have a concern, they can address it with an admin, just as they must do with the main page itself.  blankfaze | (беседа!) 14:58, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Less than five per cent of the edits to this page are vandalism. Whatever reason is there to prevent the 95% of good edits being made just because a few idiots choose to vandalise it? Why should non-sysops be made to feel like second-class citizens? They regularly make good edits to this page, and I see no reason to stop them doing that. Try editing on a Wikipedia where you are not an admin, finding wrong information and then realising the page is unnecessarily protected and you can't fix it. Yes, you could bring it up on the talk page, but would you really bother? Or would you think, "well they don't trust me to edit it, so I'll leave it to the admins to fix"? It's important the main page is free from errors, and all users, not just admins, do a good job of editing this template to ensure that is the case. Angela. 18:13, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: You are, of course, completely correct - David Gerard 20:28, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Protection

message: I have often thought that the "recently featured" and "recent days" footnote text on the main page should be italicized.  In Monobook, on
Netscape, those footnotes are right below the paragraph text, and seem 
to be part of the day's entry, rather than footnotes.
I just noticed exigentsky's comments at the top of this page, so I am reposting that suggestion.  Italics ar not only for titles; it is
also a (not the) standard way to set out one block of text from another -- for instance, a quote embedded in a paragraph of prose, or text with some emotional or emphatic highlight, or (as here) a note being set out from the text above it.  
see also articles with "see also" sections at top or bottom
Highlighting the Recently Featured and Recent days footnotes - by italicizing the whole, or by bolding those two-word phrases, or ? - has my vote. +sj+ 21:03, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Highlighting "Recently featured" 

message: With the "Tomorrow's featured article" system in place, I'd like to semi-permanently protect this page. It's increasingly the subject of vandalism, and now that everything that goes onto it is checked for 24 hours, that should alleviate any need for major fixes (typos and whatnot). →Raul654 00:45, Jul 26, 2004 (UTC)
* Makes sense to me.  If somehow any typos slips through, any user can just ask an admin to fix it.  Perhaps this is unwikilike, but I for one am getting tired of silly anon vandalism to this template that is visible to all who visit the site.  blankfaze | (беседа!) 01:13, 26 Jul 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Semi-permanent protection

message: I feel that the article of the week should have a link here. It will give it more exposure (and therefore more contributors), plus it also improves the sense of community on Wikipedia. A line like this, below recently featured articles would be a good idea.
Article of the week: Medieval warfare
What do you think?  10:48, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Let's have a mockup...
----
A copyright provides its holder the right to restrict unauthorized copying and reproduction of an original expression (i.e. literary work, movie, music, painting, software, mask work, etc.)
Copyright stands in contrast to other forms of intellectual property, such as patents, which grant a monopoly right to the use of an invention, because it is not a monopoly right to do something, merely a right to preclude others from doing it. Copyright also does not prohibit all forms of copying.   In the United States, the fair use clause of the Copyright Act allows copying and distribution under certain limited circumstances.
Copyright law is controversial, with some seeing it as essential to prevent abuse; and others, too restrictive.  This has led to the concept of Copyleft and alternative licences.
Recently featured: Siege – Lollapalooza –  Galileo Galilei
Article of the week: Medieval warfare  
 
More featured articles ...
----
Mmm...I think it'd look better if we didn't wikilink "Article of the week". Right now I'm neutral. Johnleemk | Talk 12:23, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: It's a bad idea. It would imply that "Article of the week" means "feature of the week", when it really means "Charity case of the week" - read Wikipedia:Article of the week - David Gerard 18:49, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)

text: It should probably be on Wikipedia:Main Page (i.e. the editors' portal page), but not on the public face to the world - David Gerard 17:49, 31 Jul 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Does anyone actually use the editors' portal page? anthony (see warning) 13:51, 1 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Linking to article of the week 

message: This has never been voted on. So let's see what consensus says.
Update: Closing 1 week from today, i.e. 2400 UTC 12 Aug 2004 - David Gerard 23:28, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Ratification of [[User:Raul654]] as Featured Articles Director

message: Someone changed this poll and removed my vote.  What's going on? anthony (see warning) 01:19, 6 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Who moved my vote 

message: If such a position is created, which continues to seem like a poor idea to me, 
 a) it should not be limited to one person, and 
 b) its primary goal should be recruiting and training others to share the work.
It is one thing to have unintended SPF weaknesses in an organization; quite another to atively create them.  Wiki is very robust in the former sense; it starts out with very few SPF weaknesses, since everyone and her mother is encouraged to fix anything that is broken.  
Actively creating bureaucratic structure with such weaknesses runs against the grain of wiki, and contrary to my intuition.  
Everyone can agree that Raul is a greatly positive and energetic contributor, who among
other things takes excellent care of our featured articles.  The above FADdish vote is, however, more than a vote in favor of Raul, or even in recognition of his work.  It is a vote to set in place a system with inherent weaknesses, with no clear compensating advantage.  
Weakness 1: Single Point of Failure - Rather than developing a community of well-intentioned people, who have all learned how to effectively and peacefully maintain the main page, this suggests a system where a small group of people maintain the main page, with input from (and occasional rebuffs to) others.  Writing a good main-page blurb takes practice, just as writing a good ITN one-liner does; there should be many active contributors at any given time who have done this and received feedback from the community about it.
Weakness 2: Inefficiency - The standard inefficiencies that arise naturally from consolidation of power can all come into play.  In well-designed bureaucracies, this weakness is offset by the advantages of faster unilateral action and personal accountability to agreements and compromises; in this case, there are few such advantages.  The inefficiencies include: 
* limited availability of people allowed to work on the main page ("That's a nice idea, but it would be too much work"), 
* limiting the actions of others to 'make life easier' for the group of privileged editors (cf. suggestions to protect this project page, above), 
* confusion in circumstances of absence (who will do the updates, when?  what if there is a dispute?  an edit conflict?)
* jockeying to be "next in line" (since only one person at a time can be in control), 
* vertical consolidation of power across similar systems (Marking an article as "Featured" is quite different from choosing what goes on the Main Page, crafting a blurb about it, and updating the TFA template... but both would implicitly be handled by the FAD because the inaugural candidate is very active in both areas.  More robust and more efficient would be a system in which different groups of people with different, complementary criteria handled these two tasks.)
* &c. (openness of process, openness to change, the friendship of open ownership, the freshness of changing tasks...)  The strengths of wiki are many and invisible, until one discards them.
+sj+, who thinks 654 is swell.
:To have everyone merely vote on the featured article for the next day would encourage chaos. "Mob rule" would in some cases lead, for example, to a week of consecutive United States-related articles. Thus, I am absolutely opposed to have people vote daily on which article should be displayed. Rather, I would prefer having a single individual or a group of individuals randomly choose articles for the main page, so as to ensure a distribution over all categories.
:I do not mean that a single individual must be responsible for the entire matter. Mr Raul could, of course, share his workload with others. These others would not have to be elected; rather, they would participate with the agreement of the users who participate in the FA nomination process. Of course, disputes would arise from time to time. They would have to be resolved by consensus. But whilst something appears on the main page, a provisional solution would have to be enacted quickly, perhaps by the directoral authority (whether that authority be a single person or a group of persons). 
:-- Emsworth 20:51, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a strawman.  No one said anything about voting.  Surely it is easy to find a single article each day that everyone can agree upon. Alternatively, if we want the article chosen randomly, as you suggest, then having a featured article director is actually counter to that goal. anthony (see warning) 01:44, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: The point is that the coordinator is the individual who is trusted to make a random choice (the requirement being varied from time to time to take into account considerations such as requests made by users). If, however, you can suggest another system whereby articles will be randomly selected, I would be most eager to consider it. -- Emsworth 01:53, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)

text: Well, the choice isn't currently being made randomly anyway.  If you want to select articles randomly, you put the articles in a pool, pick a seed and a random number generator, and then pick them randomly.  There's no need for a featured article director to do that, unless you'd like Raul to pick a RNG and seed. anthony (see warning) 02:45, 8 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  On actively choosing single points of failure 

message: I've reverted the addition of date variables to the template because as Tim Starling said at template talk:stub, "You can't make links like Category:Stub , there's a bug in MediaWiki which will cause link table corruption if you do." This makes "what links here" etc completely useless for any articles ever linked to from template:feature. The date needs to be changed manually each day, the same as for  the Picture of the day. Angela. 01:39, Aug 9, 2004 (UTC)
:Two questions: Are we sure this is not only related to Categories? The current system seems to have worked fine. If this is a problem, will it be fixed? Thanks. ❝Sverdrup❞ 01:28, 17 Aug 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Link table corruption