Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article

Unreviewed Featured articles: year-end summary

Restoring older Featured articles to standard:

year-end 2022 summary

Unreviewed featured articles/2020 (URFA/2020) is a systematic approach to reviewing older Featured articles (FAs) to ensure they still meet the FA standards. A January 2022 Signpost article called "Forgotten Featured" explored the effort.

Progress is recorded at the monthly stats page. Through 2022, with 4,526 very old (from the 2004–2009 period) and old (2010–2015) FAs initially needing review:

• 357 FAs were delisted at Featured article review (FAR).
• 222 FAs were kept at FAR or deemed "satisfactory" by three URFA reviewers, with hundreds more being marked as "satisfactory", but awaiting three reviews.
• FAs needing review were reduced from 77% of total FAs at the end of 2020 to 64% at the end of 2022.

Of the FAs kept, deemed satisfactory by three reviewers, or delisted, about 60% had prior review between 2004 and 2007; another 20% dated to the period from 2008–2009; and another 20% to 2010–2015. Roughly two-thirds of the old FAs reviewed have retained FA status or been marked "satisfactory", while two-thirds of the very old FAs have been defeatured.

Entering its third year, URFA is working to help maintain FA standards; FAs are being restored not only via FAR, but also via improvements initiated after articles are reviewed and talk pages are noticed. Since the Featured Article Save Award (FASA) was added to the FAR process a year ago, 38 FAs were restored to FA status by editors other than the original FAC nominator. Ten FAs restored to status have been listed at WP:MILLION, recognizing articles with annual readership over a million pageviews, and many have been rerun as Today's featured article, helping increase mainpage diversity.

Examples of 2022 "FAR saves" of very old featured articles

Solar System 2007 FA J. K. Rowling 2007 FA June 26, 2022 TFA Antarctica 2006 FA Joan of Arc 2006 FA Speed of light 2010 FA

All received a Million Award

But there remain almost 4,000 old and very old FAs to be reviewed. Some topic areas and WikiProjects have been more proactive than others in restoring or maintaining their old FAs. As seen in the chart below, the following have very high ratios of FAs kept to those delisted (ordered from highest ratio):

• Biology
• Physics and astronomy
• Warfare
• Video gaming

and others have a good ratio of kept to delisted FAs:

• Literature and theatre
• Engineering and technology
• Religion, mysticism and mythology
• Media
• Geology and geophysics

... so kudos to those editors who pitched in to help maintain older FAs !

FAs reviewed at URFA/2020 through 2022 by content area

FAs reviewed at URFA/2020 from November 21, 2020 to December 31, 2022 (VO, O) Topic area Delisted Kept Total Reviewed Ratio Kept to Delisted (overall 0.62) Remaining to review for 2004–7 promotions Art, architecture and archaeology 10 6 16 0.60 19 Biology 13 41 54 3.15 67 Business, economics and finance 6 1 7 0.17 2 Chemistry and mineralogy 2 1 3 0.50 7 Computing 4 1 5 0.25 0 Culture and society 9 1 10 0.11 8 Education 22 1 23 0.05 3 Engineering and technology 3 3 6 1.00 5 Food and drink 2 0 2 0.00 3 Geography and places 40 6 46 0.15 22 Geology and geophysics 3 2 5 0.67 1 Health and medicine 8 3 11 0.38 5 Heraldry, honors, and vexillology 11 1 12 0.09 6 History 27 14 41 0.52 38 Language and linguistics 3 0 3 0.00 3 Law 11 1 12 0.09 3 Literature and theatre 13 14 27 1.08 24 Mathematics 1 2 3 2.00 3 Media 14 10 24 0.71 40 Meteorology 15 6 21 0.40 31 Music 27 8 35 0.30 55 Philosophy and psychology 0 1 1 – 2 Physics and astronomy 3 7 10 2.33 24 Politics and government 19 4 23 0.21 9 Religion, mysticism and mythology 14 14 28 1.00 8 Royalty and nobility 10 6 16 0.60 44 Sport and recreation 32 12 44 0.38 39 Transport 8 2 10 0.25 11 Video gaming 3 5 8 1.67 23 Warfare 26 49 75 1.88 31 Total 359 Note A 222 Note B 581 0.62 536 Noting some minor differences in tallies: A URFA/2020 archives show 357, which does not include those delisted which were featured after 2015; FAR archives show 358, so tally is off by at least one, not worth looking for. B FAR archives show 63 kept at FAR since URFA started at end of Nov 2020. URFA/2020 shows 61 Kept at FAR, meaning two kept were outside of scope of URFA/2020. Total URFA/2020 Keeps (Kept at FAR plus those with three Satisfactory marks) is 150 + 72 = 222.

But looking only at the oldest FAs (from the 2004–2007 period), there are 12 content areas with more than 20 FAs still needing review: Biology, Music, Royalty and nobility, Media, Sport and recreation, History, Warfare, Meteorology, Physics and astronomy, Literature and theatre, Video gaming, and Geography and places. In the coming weeks, URFA/2020 editors will be posting lists to individual WikiProjects with the goal of getting these oldest-of-the-old FAs reviewed during 2023.

Ideas for how you can help are listed below and at the Signpost article.

• Review a 2004 to 2007 FA. With three "Satisfactory" marks, article can be moved to the FAR not needed section.
• Review "your" articles: Did you nominate a featured article between 2004 and 2015 that you have continuously maintained? Check these articles, update as needed, and mark them as 'Satisfactory' at URFA/2020. A continuously maintained FA is a good predictor that standards are still met, and with two more "Satisfactory" marks, "your" articles can be listed as "FAR not needed". If they no longer meet the FA standards, please begin the FAR process by posting your concerns on the article's talk page.
• Review articles that already have one "Satisfactory" mark: more FAs can be indicated as "FAR not needed" if other reviewers will have a look at those already indicated as maintained by the original nominator. If you find issues, you can enter them at the talk page.
• Fix an existing featured article: Choose an article at URFA/2020 or FAR and bring it back to FA standards. Enlist the help of the original nominator, frequent FA reviewers, WikiProjects listed on the talk page, or editors that have written similar topics. When the article returns to FA standards, please mark it as 'Satisfactory' at URFA/2020 or note your progress in the article's FAR.
• Review and nominate an article to FAR that has been 'noticed' of a FAR needed but issues raised on talk have not been addressed. Sometimes nominating at FAR draws additional editors to help improve the article that would otherwise not look at it.

More regular URFA and FAR reviewers will help assure that FAs continue to represent examples of Wikipedia's best work. If you have any questions or feedback, please visit Wikipedia talk:Unreviewed featured articles/2020/4Q2022.

Douglas Albert Munro

I don't know anything about how to get an FA on the main page, so I would appreciate it if someone could nominate this unique article for the main page: Douglas Albert Munro. 70.161.8.90 (talk) 22:35, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

I see that it ran as the TFA for October 11, 2019. Articles may run twice, but they must be at least five years apart. Accordingly, it can't run on the page again until October 11, 2024. If you come here again then, and remind us of your interest, it is likely that we'd be willing to accommodate you. Wehwalt (talk) 22:40, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Me again

Hi all. I became mostly inactive at TFA 20 months ago, but I'm feeling better now, and looking to get more active. Feedback is always welcome. Good to be back. - Dank (push to talk) 12:55, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I’m sorry to hear you were unwell, Dank. Good to hear that things are going well again. Welcome back! Schwede66 15:37, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Enough is enough

So Battle of Helena is finishing up today's run for TFA. I was away from my computer and unable to monitor the page, and while there's some standard post-TFA cleanup like where non-consensus numbers were added with an obsolete source, but that's expected and normal. But I'm also having to re-protect the page because the 6-hour protection didn't stick, and having to answer this because some pervert put pornographic imagery into the article earlier today. And that's besides all of the standard formatting messing up and date vandalism that I'm going to have to correct in related articles like Little Rock campaign and Marmaduke-Walker duel.

Once upon a time, we were semi-protecting FACs before they went on because this happens almost every damn time. And that stopped, for reasons that have never been clear to me. So now we're showing porn when someone previews the TFA today. Between articles I've worked on or have helped with or have agreed to monitor for others, I'm probably maintaining about 150-175 articles. And that's a lot of vandalism and sneaky incorrect information and similar to clean up on an almost daily basis. And then you throw in the free-for-all that TFA has become.

Vandals or content creators? Who should get precedence? Frankly, the answer should be the latter but our TFA policies are heavily skewed to the former. I'm not a top-flight content creator, but I've been involved with the FA process for almost three years now in various ways. Real life has thrown some stuff at me in the last several months to the extent that I've been too burnt out to write content lately. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel in real life, but I'm having strong second thoughts about writing content again. The garden variety stuff I can deal with; that's just part of the process. But the community willfully placing vandals, trolls, and troublemongers ahead of those who actually bust our asses to produce encyclopedic content is another thing. Hog Farm _Talk 23:07, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I can see the argument that we shouldn't be making TFAs impossible to edit, but I'd support automatic application of pending changes protection to all articles linked from the main page that aren't otherwise protected. The vandalism is real on TFAs and unfortunately it doesn't always get reverted right away. (t · c) buidhe 23:27, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

I vaguely recall a protection trial getting consensus and then never happening. Vaticidalprophet 23:48, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

The trial happened but for some reason it wasn't continued. (t · c) buidhe 01:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support some form of protection, even if it means creating an easement within the current policy (which IIRC forbids preemptive protection). SN54129 09:51, 5 July 2023 (UTC)