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"Behaviors"?

I have noticed an increased use in the text of articles at peer review and FAC of the plural form "behaviors" (I've also seen "literatures"). Perhaps I am being pedantic, but to my rheumy, 1970s-educated eyes these are abominations. "Behavior" and "literature" are examples of abstract mass nouns that do not have a separate plural forms; there are many such cases. Can anybody cite usage of this form (outside Wikipedia) which indicates that it is acceptable in professional-standard prose? Brianboulton (talk) 14:30, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Behaviors" gets 15 million Google books hits, "behaviours" 2,340,000. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:43, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Behaviours" is commonly used in the social sciences, as in Meaden and Hacker's Problematic and Risk Behaviours in Psychosis (2011). I'm no so keen on "literatures" though. Malleus Fatuorum 14:45, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not absolutely convinced that the Social Sciences is the best authority to quote concerning proper English usage, since psychology in particular has rather a history of mangling and jargonising the language. Consider this: If two children have behaved badly, would it be acceptable English to say "Their behaviours were appalling"? or "Due to the behaviours of this pair the games room is closed"? etc etc. Brianboulton (talk) 20:21, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Psychology, sociology, and anthropology discuss ranges of behaviors. If the article is about a range of behaviors, or behaviors that fall under a personality disorder, that would be appropriate. If it addresses two children stealing cookies, that's just naughty behavior. Yet completely justified. --Moni3 (talk) 21:07, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Dictionary.com lists two definitions for behavior that are susceptible to pluralization. 2c is "a stereotyped, species-specific activity, as a courtship dance or startle reflex". 3 is "often, behaviors. a behavior pattern". Looie496 (talk) 21:44, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it is entirely respectable in zoology, as well as the social sciences. I think the fly-swatter should be kept handy for non-technical usage though. Somewhat the same with "literatures": "Both the Franks Casket and the Ruthwell Cross have large literatures" is ok I suppose, but it should be kept for that sort of context. Johnbod (talk) 23:09, 21 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Before this vanishes, I'll just note that OED "Literature" 3b is "The body of books and writing that treat of a particular subject", first cited from 1860, & presumably always capable of taking plural form. Johnbod (talk) 16:14, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Question about repeat links

There is |an RfC regarding best practices for repeat links ... it is asking if LINKS should mention the convention used in many FA articles, where links are repeated when first encountered following the lead. --Noleander (talk) 22:53, 29 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Knowle West

I think all comments on this FAC have been answered, is there anything else that is needed? Jezhotwells (talk) 20:59, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One of the delegates is going through FAC every few days, often Karanacs on Wednesday and me on Friday or Saturday. There isn't much for you to do at this point, I think. Ucucha (talk) 21:24, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

OK, thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 01:28, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not FACs were promoted for the week of 30 October -5 November Hawkeye7 (talk) 22:34, 8 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Verifiability RfC....

Dear all, there has been ongoing armwrestling for years about the wording of the WP:V, which finally might be laid to rest now with over 300 folks commenting and counting. I obviously have an opinion on it, but did wonder about other folks who do alot of content and referencing work (i.e. FA writers), as I didn't see a huge number of our names there...just saying is all....and I won't hold it against anyone who likes the wording as is (chuckle) Casliber (talk · contribs) 23:44, 3 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Cool script available

The featured article SS Edmund Fitzgerald has several errors in the citations that are highlighted in red by the script available at User:Ucucha/HarvErrors. I repaired everything I could, and placed a note on the article talk page. It might be a good idea for people who are reviewing featured articles to install this script, as it points out referencing errors of various kinds if the article is using Harvard templates. It would also be great if the {{sfn}} template was widely used on our featured articles (and all our better articles) as it makes checking the citations easy via script. Regards --Dianna (talk) 00:05, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I doubt that you'll find consensus about using templates in articles at any level. Imzadi 1979 → 00:07, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There were 28 citation errors on this article when it appeared on the main page; they were highlighted in bold red by this script. Tools such as templates and scripts that can help us produce better articles with less effort are a good thing imho. --Dianna (talk) 03:10, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ouch! That's a lot of errors for a TFA. - Dank (push to talk) 14:18, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm dumber than the average bear, but I can't decipher where these 28 errors were (but then I hate Harvard and sfn tempaltes and would never use them)-- the only thing I can figure is that the Wolff-Holden citations were changed to Wolff which is wrong. I guess I'll have to install the script to understand the problem, but I certainly wouldn't want any template imposed on FAs or any other article (and that has been PERENnially defeated). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Many of the errors were {{sfn|Wolff|1990 should have been {{sfn|Wolff|Holden|1990. The author names and the publication years have to match. In some cases there are multiple publication years for works, and information might appear on different pages in those different editions, so it is important that this stuff be right. There was one invalid ISBN caught by a different script. I'm not suggesting everyone start using templates, but they will certainly become more common as time goes on (Amundsen's South Pole expedition uses them, for example), so it might be worthwhile for some of the reviewers to install the script. It's easy to install and easy to use. Regards, --Dianna (talk) 17:35, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Diannaa - I used to use Harvard templates but have stopped because on a very long page it slows load-time. Also, as you've mentioned above, the syntax has to match perfectly otherwise they don't work, and quite frankly it can be a maintenance nightmare. Personally I've found it's much easier to format freehand cites and references; formatting citations is done on a case-by-case, page-by-page basis and it wouldn't be a good idea to impose a specific style. Truthkeeper (talk) 17:53, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No one is proposing the imposition of a specific citation style, but I agree that when you do use Harvard-style citation templates, you really should use this script, because it makes it's very easy to make errors and without the script it is difficult to find those errors. Ucucha (talk) 18:40, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is not so, Ucucha: Dianaa specifically said "It would also be great if the {{sfn}} template was widely used on our featured articles", and now she's trying to impose that citation style at Ernest Hemingway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That is not true. I made some corrections to the Harvard citations on the Hemingway article on Saturday the 19th, and expressed an opinion on the talk page that I thought {{sfn}} templates are better than {{harvnb}} templates. I have not been back to the article or its talk page since that day, and do not even have it watch-listed. --Dianna (talk) 05:50, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bolded supports, etc.

From time to time, delegates haved asked reviewers to bold their support or oppose and put it at the beginning of a line (with or without a bullet in front). I was just tidying up a support here and I realized I didn't quite know what I'm supposed to do. I changed "That's all the comments I can muster, so I'll support now." to: "Support. That's all the comments I can muster, so I'll support now." Also, the reviewer started off with a bolded Comments (which I personally prefer to starting with Oppose or Support) ... I added their name, but I wasn't sure whether to strike the "comments" when I added the "support" below. (I'd prefer not to, if that won't be confusing.) - Dank (push to talk) 02:24, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, Dank ... what you did was fine, except that you split a reviewer commentary in to two lines-- I restored it to one line.[1] Don't worry about comments ... when I read through on my first pass I just don't want to miss a FAC that might be maturing and ready for a solid look because the Support is buried in a mass of text, sometimes with colorful sigs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:50, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry about that. Will try to remember to put the support in front in the future. Giants2008 (27 and counting) 21:43, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

A little time, please

I am currently "at sea" but will return tomorrow to full access to the Internet unmetered and all the joy that brings. I'd appreciate it if Raul and delegates would allow me a little time to drum up reviewers for Indian Head gold pieces. That is, if we do not unexpectedly hit an iceberg off Miami.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:01, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

No problem ... Watch out for the sandbars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are reports coming in of icebergs off Miami. Its probably best to quitely archive Wehwalt's nom. Pity. Ceoil (talk) 18:28, 12 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, well, Cuba showed up off the port bow. The Captain says he was expecting it but I have my suspicions.--Wehwalt (talk) 09:27, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Your captain needs to give me back my 1 million dollars. Ceoil (talk) 18:05, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Getting more reviewers in?

Yeah, we're a bit short of reviewers. Have you considered reviewing more? I noticed you reviewed Tintin, but additional reviews would help cut down on the backlog. Beyond that, I'm not sure what can be done - the reviewer shortage is becoming a perennial problem. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:09, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sceptre, here's why helping out with high quality reviews at FAC will improve your chances of seeing a nomination promoted. Other delegates may approach the task differently, but one of our "jobs" is to manage the size of the FAC page so that worthy articles have a fair shot at being reviewed. As long as the number of nominations is in the 25 to 30 range, I would be uninclined to archive a month-old nomination that has gotten no review-- even less inclined to archive quickly for a third nom. On the other hand, I would still archive noms with Opposes quickly, and when the page size gets up around 40 to 50, I archive more aggressively. Long story short-- the more any nominator can contribute towards high quality reviews that help the delegates close nominations more quickly and hold down the page size, the better the chances your nomination can run longer. Conversely, low-quality reviews (that is, supports where subsequent reviewers identify problems) cause nominations to run longer than necessary and add to the backlog, increasing your chances of seeing a nomination archived sooner. It's quality reviews that help the backlog-- dropping in a Support on nominations where other reviewers subsequently find problems just cause nominations to run longer, sap reviewer time, and mean that delegates may have to archive those nominations that receive no feedback more aggressively as the page size grows. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

What she said, and there are also some easier jobs that really need doing to get some of these FACs moving. Just reading the article and noting where something doesn't sound right to you ... and don't be shy about saying that you're not sure why, it just sounds wrong, or you don't follow what it means ... can be a huge help. Spotchecks are easy more often than they're hard ... just look at the sources that you can find online, and make sure the writers got the page numbers right and didn't misrepresent or closely paraphrase the sources. (Also see WP:Wikipedia Signpost/2009-04-13/Dispatches). - Dank (push to talk) 18:35, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We should probably have a page that tells you how to do a good FAC review. Y E ^Pacific ^Hurricane 18:38, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-04-07/Dispatches. From my seat, a good reviewer is one who either:

a) specializes in one area so I know exactly what the reviewer's expertise is and what they've checked (examples, prose, sources, images, check the lead, etc), or
b) does overall checks of a little bit of everything (reliable sources, accurate representation of sources, no copyvio, comprehensive, prose, MOS, etc) and lets me know what they've checked, or
c) a topic expert who can speak from a base of knowledge of the subject matter, or
d) a non-topic reviewer, who can check for jargon.

So, anyone who doesn't feel qualified to do b) particularly in the absence of someone else doing a) and c) probably shouldn't be adding Support, but could review to oppose on any basis. The single thing that contributes most to the backlog IMNSHO is reviewers who add unworthy supports and then don't keep the nom watchlisted to see if significant issues are later revealed. When a nomination has accumulated enough faulty supports, it has to be carried until serious reviewers dig in and identify the issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:10, 13 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, fuck it, I'm a sucker for a request for help. I suppose I could come back to FAC. Sven Manguard Wha? 08:24, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Fantastic. - Dank (push to talk) 12:41, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

We could still use an essay guide to describe those 4. I believe that is one reason people have issue. That and they think they aren't qualified, so suggesting to cut their teeth at WP:GAN and WP:PR are also good suggestions.∞陣内 Jinnai 21:30, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am very much afraid that we have a reputation as less than welcoming and rather difficult to break into.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:44, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. That doesn't mean we need to promote that stereotype.∞陣内 Jinnai 21:53, 18 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Spotcheck advice required

I've been spotchecking a couple of articles at the bottom of the list to help out. This has involved selective sampling of probable, or available, sources to test whether copyright violation, plagiarism or inaccurate representation of the source has occurred. A couple of times I've come across "minor" issues: typos, true claims that are not cited, but are citable to another source, or close paraphrase (adjustments of nouns only, with the verb phrase and order remaining the same). This isn't a case where I can clearly say, "Well, 3/15 sources checked, and 1 minor issue, that means there are 4 undetected minor issues, better Oppose then." So what do I do? Bold a Hold pending changes and a report from the nom? Confuse the hell out of the delegates? I need advice from colleagues on this. Fifelfoo (talk) 22:34, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The few times I've done spotchecks and found marginal problems I've lifted the text from the source to compare to the text from the article and asked the nominator to fix. Some issues are easily fixed but need to be pointed out. Hope this is helpful. Truthkeeper (talk) 23:02, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

it is helpful, but the issue is the rate of minor errors projected into unspotcheckwd sources, and to what extent such an expected rate should cause opposes? 203.20.35.101 (talk) 23:18, 15 November 2011 (UTC) [forgot to login] Fifelfoo_m (talk) 00:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest, Fifelfoo, not opposing, but asking the delegate to wait to promote until your concerns are addressed (this is, by the way, one reason why I think VanishedUser1123581321's suggestion of having assigned delegates to FAC nominations is at least worth discussing). Forgive me, IP, if you are in fact that editor.--Wehwalt (talk) 23:23, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ah, sorry Fifelfoo, I wasn't sure who had written that and thought it might be TCO back from the Great Turtle in the Sky--Wehwalt (talk) 00:32, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't oppose unless it were a chunk of text obviously plagiarized. I've found problems in only a few reviews and simply point them out as a comment. Usually the problems are fixed. Truthkeeper (talk) 23:28, 15 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm worried about Brain and feel inclined to oppose after checking another tranche. With Boston I'm not fundamentally concerned. Kiapit needs all of it's last available source checked anyway. But what distinguishes my response to Brain from Boston or Exchequer? A119 is a clear oppose, and Nobel Peace 2010 is clearly safe after nominator response. I'm trying to work this out so I'll have a clear view on how to do this regularly; given that it is a spot tater than an exhaustive check. Fifelfoo_m (talk) 00:27, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Do you want another set of eyes? Truthkeeper (talk) 01:17, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I had a look at Brain and I think what you've done there is fundamentally correct. When I run into issues like that, and I understand that it's tedious work, I tend to dig a bit deeper. And then wait for nominator response or leave it to the delegates to decide. Truthkeeper (talk) 01:26, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Conflating several issues here: true claims that are not cited — whatever the practice is at FAC, the official policy (and the practice in proper journals and books) is that you only cite what might be challenged. I'd ignore an uncited obvious fact. I was asked recently if I should cite the lack of a pub in a village, which is, well.... With listy type material, like the Spotted Woozelum eats only apples, bananas and carrots, there is a limit to what can be done in terms of paraphrasing. WP:GF seems to be going out of the window to be replaced by an assumption that everything is either made-up or plagiarised. But then, I'm a irresponsible bully, what do I know about content? Jimfbleak - talk to me? 06:47, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I encourage you to spot check a bunch of articles in a row. The disconnection between sourcing and content is disturbing. See my comments on Brain regarding a primate specific Nature paper being used to describe all mammals; or, a paper on Bats whose abstract directly contradicts the content placed in the article. Fifelfoo (talk) 06:58, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The structure encourages that. There is rarely an actual check of a printed source because a reviewer is unlikely to be in possession to it unless there's a Google books preview. I believe that was also pointed out by TCO before he retreated into his shell, the normal reaction of course, under the circumstances.--Wehwalt (talk) 12:55, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I don't tend to do more than 1 or 2 spotchecks, but if I do find issues, I check a few more. Then, I file nominations into three mental categories of action:

Minor errors and low rate of error. Inform nominator and wait for fixes. Support would be conditional on fixes.
Minor errors and high rate of error. Recommend broader checks by an independent reviewer, and generally oppose.
Major errors or blatant plagiarism. Usually recommend withdrawal of nomination.

The endgame is determining based on sample size and rate of error the likelihood of additional errors or deliberate plagiarism. There is no hard answer for whether you oppose over it, but in my opinion, you have a responsibility to oppose a nomination over anything more than a handful of actionable problems. Either way, let the delegates know whether you are satisfied or unsatisfied with the sourcing so they can judge the weight of your comments. --Laser brain (talk) 15:05, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

That can't be Laser brain, I thought he was on the Mars mission. His account must have been hacked. I knew I saw my block button only last month ... let me look ... oh drat.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Per Laser, and either way, if you find and indicate anything of substance, whether or not you oppose, I'm unlikely to promote anyway until another reviewer has had a deeper look. Don't worry, Fifelfoo, the process sorts it out-- say what you found, oppose if you feel you should, but as far as I know, all of the delegates take comments seriously too :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 16 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My response is that articles need to be checked, and errors corrected. It is easy for an article under editing to have the citations start to drift out of alignment with the text. An example came up in my Kaiapit article. The text said something like "taking advantage of an improvement in the weather, 99 sorties were flown". The source said: "we flew 99 sorties". Fifelfoo asked whether the weather improvement was implied. Possibly; but it was just as easy to added another source which commented on the weather. I do not actually rely on the sources for fact checking; wherever possible I verify them against the primary sources. That is to head off citogenesis. Hawkeye7 (talk) 02:01, 17 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

One citing question: source A says A1; source B says B1 and B2. A1 and B1 happened at the same time, so I say that A1 and B1 happened, cite it to A, then later in the same paragraph, I cite B, intending that to cover both B2 and the earlier B1 fact. S'okay? - Dank (push to talk) 12:52, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I would expect anything before the first cite to be found there. I would either cite twice to B or else put both cites (A and B) at the end of the paragraph.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a matter of personal editorial style, and not subject to any policy. I would expect, and have found that, natural editor behaviour for long paragraphs is A1, B1;^[A][B] B2.^[B] On the other hand Wehwalt's alternative is also very popular: A1, B1; B2.^[A][B] When there's a doubt, and there's a mixture of technical points with analytical coverage, I'd encourage explanatory citations that indicate which source supports what, but that would be completely optional. In this short burst of spot-checking, I didn't have any problems identifying which citation supported which content. Fifelfoo (talk) 12:11, 20 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

FAC spends too much time on trivial topics

Have put some issue analysis down here:

PowerPoint: Wikipedia's poor treatment of its most important articles

69.255.27.249 (talk) 14:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC) (TCO, via IP)[reply]

I'm reading it. Very interesting. Once I'm done, I'll make a few comments about it. --Lecen (talk) 14:56, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the broad thrust, & have said many of the same things myself. You will find it hard to get much traction, here or on WP in general. The lists at WP:Vital articles are themselves deeply flawed; for the Humanities at least they consist very largely of biographies, which is frankly babyish, and bypasses our very worst weakness, which is articles on broad abstract topics - in other words what most other encyclopedias concentrate on. Much of the detail in the presentation is rather unclear & subjective-seeming; I'm not sure why you think that The Magdalen Reading received a poor content review when I had edited and discussed it on various talk pages, and checked against the most significant source for the painting, the exhaustive 12 large pages in small type in the Campbell NG catalogue. Not many FAs are compared in that way to the major sources; perhaps my final comments didn't make that clear. The key point is that it is just much harder to write on large topics with huge literatures, whether for FA, GA, or at any level. Who did you say you were, btw? Back to dabbling now, Johnbod (talk) 15:47, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I am "TCO". I have seen your analysis before. Need to reread it. Not meant to slight you. I'm sure there are mistakes in individual ratings (and I put the details on a slide, so people could nitpick). And I did that part a little fast. That said, I sincerly doubt it changes the overall story, given I looked at 30 reviews. There is a pattern of lack of content review at FAC (almost to the extent that people think it is normal/OK/what we do here). It's not awful since the more important topics definitely get looked into. That said, there is something there, I think. 16:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Like you I have a general sympathy for the idea of improving important articles, but deep misgivings about the vital article list. For instance, I consider the world's first stored-program computer to be an important topic, but whoever made up that list doesn't. And I didn't write that just because I wanted to collect a star. Malleus Fatuorum 15:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have a couple comments in the deck about not getting hung up on debating individual examples, when trying to think about the class of items (see VA reccs and then the slide on VAs in background).69.255.27.249 (talk) 16:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But the list is a collection of individual examples. I think it's inevitable that there will be disagreement after the obvious stuff like planets, elements, and so on. To pursue my example, I note for instance that ENIAC is included at level 4, but neither the SSEM or the Ferranti Mark I, both of them also important world firsts, make the list. Malleus Fatuorum 16:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Just one initial point; because an article isn't "vital" doesn't automatically mean that it's trivial. Malleus Fatuorum 15:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point and agree: (1) It's not digital, but analog (the property of triviality or its converse, relavence). (2) Importance by subjective rating and by web views are incredibly highly correlated (definitely pass a t test by a mile). They are not exactly the same thing...but close enough so that VAs do fine even in a system that priorities purely by page views. And the Gorbatai slide (first one in the relevance section) shows that subjective ratings and page views have roughly the same "story" in terms of the basic implications.69.255.27.249 (talk) 16:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Although I do take your general point, we may have to agree to differ on the contents of that vital articles list; I find it very hard to consider an article like house in any way "vital". Malleus Fatuorum 16:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

"Dinner with Jimbo". I admire your notion of reward. Yomangani ^talk 15:52, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

hush you, no humor allowed. zis is serious.69.255.27.249 (talk) 16:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

This is a very interesting presentation, and not at all light reading, so I can't dedicate a lot of time to it while at work. I might have more later, but on the topic of vital articles: When I look at the level 3 list (1000 articles), I count 82 FAs and 70GAs. That means that 1 in every 12 articles on this list is an FA, 1 in 14 is a GA, and 1 in 7 is either. For Wikipedia overall, the figures are 1 FA in 1120, 1 GA in 288, and 1 of either in 228. The quality of Wikipedia's vital articles are well ahead of that of the project as a whole. Add in that 451 articles are ranked as B or A class, and I would argue that we aren't necessarily failing as badly as is suggested.

There is also the issue, brought up above, in the definition of what makes a "vital article". A lot of the entries are no-brainers, but regional differences matter. For instance, I would say Terry Fox (FA) is a vital article to Canadians, as is ice hockey (B). Bing Crosby (B) and Association Football (FA) would not be so, in my view. That all being said, there is little doubt that encouraging ways to improve our basic articles is a good thing. Reso lute 17:01, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There absolutely is a positive correlation of quality and importance. The question is, is it enough? I warrant if we paid for articles to be written, there would be a substantially different patter (less hurricanes) and that this is a substantial market failure when you look at the outcome. 85% of VAs are sub-GA. Or the Gorbatai academic paper on project ratings or web traffic.69.255.27.249 (talk) 17:23, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think one of the most important retorts to this is that people already know about most vital topics. I know what history is. There's no real meat and blood behind history. It gets written, apparently, by winners. The article describes generalities. That's not as interesting as what how the Donner Party or Birmingham campaign happened. I already know what art is. How was Walt Disney influenced by it though--and how did he in turn influence it? And how is Walt Disney not on any vital list? I already know the general meaning of what technology is. How did a typewriter turn into a keyboard? That's more interesting. --Moni3 (talk) 20:12, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just checked the stats for the Donner Party a few minutes ago: 84,188 views in October,[2] but not considered an important article. Malleus Fatuorum 20:23, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As you know, even the sources writing about the incident don't consider it all that important to the overall migration westward in North America. That's included in the article. But regardless, the elements at play in the story of 90 people are riveting and horrific. And fascinating. --Moni3 (talk) 20:49, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Page views don't tell you that much, though. Look at Hubert Walter - this is a man who served two of the more important kings of England ... and served as Archbishop of Canterbury as well. He went on Crusade, hobnobbed with Saladin, reformed the English administration, set up the coroner system, along with a number of other reforms, but his page views would tell you that he's utterly unimportant in history or worth knowing anything about. I should stop writing on these types of articles and write on "house" instead, when really ... anyone can find out easily what a house is? Or maybe I should concentrate on something pop culturish instead? Yes, work should go on with the more general articles, but really, labeling other editors isn't going to help your case. All I can tell you is that I was quite offended to have my efforts labeled, and especially by someone who keeps dodging whatever it was that got you to leave your account, TCO. If you're going to continue contributing and stuff, can you please stop editing as an IP and return to your account? All the rest of us are accountable - you certainly feel obligated to call all FA participants on the carpet - but yet you don't feel the need to allow us to hold YOU to account. Yes, I'm feeling a bit cranky ... but I'm tired of being denegrated. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I think we all get tired of being denigrated. However it happens; whichever direction it comes from. Truthkeeper (talk) 21:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I was no more sanguine about being labelled a star chaser than you were Ealdgyth, and like you I found it mildly insulting. The house example is interesting though in a sense, as it's clearly not in any rational sense a vital article, and the high page view count is no doubt because readers are looking for this. Malleus Fatuorum 00:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

On page views as a determining factor of importance, I would submit Wikipedia:WikiProject Canada/Popular pages into evidence. Bluntly, Leduc No. 1, with 50 views a day, is a more important article to Canadian history than Justin Bieber is with 30,000. While it is obvious that broader topics generally have more page views, this is a distressingly bad metric from which to judge importance/value. Reso lute 21:14, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There is a tendency among commentators on Wikipedia (at least, among those who have never edited it) to make general statements such as "Wikipedia ought to improve coverage of X", as if there were some entity, Wikipedia, capable of exerting some kind of control over what content is contributed. Other commenters above have pointed out that FA writers work on topics they're knowledgeable about and have the sources for and which are doable without hundreds or thousands of hours of research. All true, but beyond that, the idea that there is any entity that can be "blamed" for Wikipedia's lack of coverage in an area seems silly to me. Those of us who care about the encyclopedia would of course like to see better articles in more areas, but analyzing existing coverage doesn't move us towards that goal. There have been multiple attempts to organize drives to do more collaboration with subject matter experts; there have even been some minor successes. The presentation spent much of its time making a point that almost nobody would dispute -- that FAs are frequently quite specialized; it spent less time on the harder problem of what to do about it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well establishing a basis of facts to work from is always useful. However you've missed that the evidence strongly suggests that FA is becoming dissociated from the wider wikipedia. With a focus on articles on the fringes of the project and standards set and enforced by people who are to a large extent interested in getting articles of their own through FA rather than more general subject area experts. The result is a considerable risk of what Chip Morningstar called genetic drift "resulting in the intellectual equivalent of peacock feathers".^[1] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Geni (talk • contribs)

Well establishing a basis of facts to work from is always useful. Yes, but this particular body of "facts" has so many methodological errors that it hasn't done that-- in fact, quite the opposite, it contains pages of a good deal of misinformation (and enough good information to make it appear plausible and reasonable, ala "a little information can be a dangerous thing" or "anyone can write anything on the internet") stemming from faulty assumptions. However you've missed that the evidence strongly suggests that FA is becoming dissociated from the wider wikipedia. The "evidence" show no such thing, since there are significant methodological problems, but even if it did ... You say that like it's a bad thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:45, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

It is also putting the blame on the process rather than the editors. Nine of my eleven FAs aren't hockey-related because of how FAC is run. It is that way because of what I like to edit. FAC can't begin rejecting submissions on the basis of "importance", so if one desires better general topics, they need to focus on finding interested editors rather than complaining about the process. Reso lute 00:53, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure what the real point is here. This approach seems backwards to me. Every editor coming to Wikipedia should be prepared to use sources to add content. It seems the editors who add the most content--FA writers--are being chastised or maligned for not covering different topics. A fundamental shift needs to occur all over this site. We've grown into more than 3.5 million articles and instead of everyone doing tiny tweaks and copy edits here and there and leaving the content to some expert somewhere, all editors should bring sources and start writing. It should be expected of everyone. No more pissing around here. It's not that there's FA writers and everyone else and a growing divide between the two camps, but Wikipedia needs to become that place where you understand that you're going to have to work to participate. So TCO, your campaign to get more vital topics to FA is just highlighting a symptom of an overall problem. You need to address the attitude that has allowed these articles to stand as they are for so long. You need to bring this to the entire community and ask them these questions. If you can start a shift in attitudes that promotes more work on a deeper content level, I will jump on your bus. --Moni3 (talk) 01:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually for shear volume of content added you would probably be looking at the mass stub creators and some of out sports and pop culture obsessives. FA writers would be a fair way down the scale. You are also missing that the report makes it fairly clear that FA and its standards are not very relevant to the wider project and to readers. Now it could be that we say fine, wall off FA and get on with the rest of wikipedia without it (you know make it the radio 3 of wikipedia). Alternatively we could try and work out why the current FA process isn't producing featured articles in areas that have either long been identified as important or are actually widely read.©Geni 01:20, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Long been identified as important by whom? And on what basis? Malleus Fatuorum 01:23, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Again, I don't understand this approach. Why would you not take these problems to the stub creators and ask them why they're not expanding articles? Why not ask entire WikiProjects why they are actively arguing about articles but not producing any content? And I disagree with the sheer volume of content claim but that you compare stubs to FA writing makes me think we're not addressing the same issue here. And my exact point is that FA standards should be relevant to every editor. If it were, vital topics might be better quality articles. The culture on Wikipedia is to accept whoever stumbles in the door whether they want to crack open a book or not. It's time for that to end. --Moni3 (talk) 01:32, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Will come back in a day to make replies

Going to resist the urge to respond to each comment. I had the opening shot. Will engage in toto, later.69.255.27.249 (talk) 17:20, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure why I'm supposed to be faulting a writer who restricts themselves to a topic they can actually research and master. And small topics that attract few readers aren't necessarily unimportant; sometimes the best way to get past people's preconceptions is to talk about what happened in specific cases, rather than trying to say something grand about a general subject. Having said that, if we survey people who write high-quality articles on narrow subjects and find that specific things go wrong when they try to tackle "vital" articles, then maybe we will learn something that winds up giving us higher-quality vital articles. - Dank (push to talk) 18:36, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

While I agree with the general thrust that we don't incentivize working on the most "vital" articles, I take issue with you pulling out a case study on a specific editor (Uchuha) where you spend the whole time explaining how their FAs aren't good enough to be FAs. I also don't understand how explaining how you don't feel that obscure species have enough details known to be worthy of FA, even though they got the star, supports your main point. --Pres N 19:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm also not sure that dismissing everyone who predominately writes FAs and the people who run the FA program as being unfixable is really going to help have a useful result from this conversation. --Pres N 19:50, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed. In addition, dubbing specific authors catchy monikers like "star collectors", "champions" and "battleships" -- based solely on the articles' page views -- seems incredibly counterproductive. I suppose I'm a "champion" because The Red Badge of Courage (promoted in April 2011) receives almost 600 page views a day from disgruntled Am. Lit. students? Go me? On the other hand, several other articles I've written are lucky to receive 50 page views a day. Does this make me a champion star collector? Point being: branding content writers by way of traffic is silly talk. María (yllo submarine) 20:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm with Maria on this. I was a little taken back to myself dubbed a "battleship" & thought, "huh, I don't write about battleships". Two things you missed: one is burn out. A year and a half after promotion I'm still fighting on the Ernest Hemingway talkpage - take a look at it, and the talk page for the Ernest Hemingway template (I'm purposely not linking). I brought Ezra Pound to FAC and it didn't go well, big page, hard to balance, but the biggest problem was that I had to bail because of an unexpected side-effect after routine eye-surgery (a four month migraine!) This brings me to the second point: Olivia Shakespear was an off-shoot of Ezra and I really never expected to bring it to FAC. Not important enough I thought. But here's the thing, aside from sleeping with Yeats as your summary says, she supported (financially) many modernist writers and artists - single handedly. So she's much more important in that respect as far as I'm concerned, but more important is that page is probably the best on the internet about her. The same with Edmund Evans an obscure Victorian printer who changed how children's books are made. Almost all the source material about him lives behind a pay-wall, but we have a nice page here, open to the public. Bottom line: how many people get burned out after working on Big Pages, and how many people are writing pages that are free, not behind paywalls, available on the internet. Even if on relatively obscure topics. Consider adding to you analysis. Truthkeeper (talk) 20:41, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I must admit I could never comprehend the idea of coming to WP and looking up "history" or "geography"...or "science" for that matter. Are we sure these are people looking at them? The benefit of hte esoteric is that there is often nowhere where the material has been made so organised and accessible to lay readers . Casliber (talk · contribs) 20:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Quite. And I could add house and many others to your list of ridiculous "vital" articles. I mean really, who's going to come to Wikipedia to learn about houses? Malleus Fatuorum 20:20, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Well over 100,000 per month apparently, probably mostly with homework, as for many of these articles; but they still deserve a better article than they currently get. Or maybe they want to know why the plumbing is bust, in which case, tough. What really pisses me off is truly dire stubs like English Renaissance, where (until today) some 17,000 readers a month were told that "William Shakespeare, composed theatrical representations of the English take on life, death, and history", which had of course remained unchanged since 2005 (when the article overall was far better than this morning, I now see). That's over a million views. I do think that editors who are able to improve the worst of these without much effort have a responsibility to the project to spend some of their time doing so. At all levels we put far too much effort into new articles, as opposed to the long-untouched rubbish on significant topics we already have. Johnbod (talk) 21:30, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've got Thomas Becket cleaned up of the worst cruft, and have been slowly working on Norman Conquest of England - I've also got some of the Crusade articles on my watchlist and have worked on them also. I also try hard to keep at least the worst junk out of the various English monarch articles I've got watchlisted. There is only so much time, honestly. Eventually, I'll get the whole complex of articles around the Norman Conquest up to snuff - but really, on a high traffic article, it's discouraging enough to deal with the usual vandalism. Check out horse, where the other day we had a well meaning but obviously unknowledgable editor who felt that a self-published website that didn't mention its sources was equal to a college text book. Because the web site disagreed with the information in the article that was cited to the text book - the information needed a "dubious" tag. And you want us to work to bring horse up to FA standards? Why? It's hard enough to keep it at GA. And gods - Thoroughbred and Appaloosa are not much fun to deal with either. I try. I really do try. But it's very very hard to keep trying when my efforts get me a denigration as a "star collector" from someone who can't even bother to return to his abandoned account. Ealdgyth - Talk 21:54, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TCO may do, but I regard improving from embarrassingly awful and wrong to merely inadequate as job done for many articles. Johnbod (talk) 22:01, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Keeping Abraham Lincoln at GA is a full-time job that takes up several editors' time as it is. FA is the goal, but I doubt we'll get there. Didn't we have this discussion about a month ago? --Coemgenus (talk) 22:08, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Don't feel bad Ealdgyth, I'm a star collector as well. Malleus Fatuorum 22:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Any thoughts on how to get more participation from GLAM employees, history grad students and professors? They might be interested in tackling some of the higher-profile articles. (I've been talking with some of them lately, and I could use some fresh material.) - Dank (push to talk) 22:51, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Only one. That Wikipedia ought to consider cherishing its contributors instead of pissing them off at every turn. To pick up on your GLAM example, star chaser Ealdgyth worked this museum exhibit up to FA. And I've got no idea how many page views that gets each day, and couldn't care less. Malleus Fatuorum 23:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

well since wikipedia doesn't piss off its contributors at every turn (unless you mean the markup which is being worked on) I'm not sure what we can do about your suggestion. Broad Ripple Park Carousel gets about 3% of the page views Carousel although the involvement of the The Children's Museum of Indianapolis means that that is probably irrelevant in this case. Incidentally the article at no point mentions what the motive power source actually is. Given it's age I'd guess electric but I don't know offhand when they stopped making steam carousels.©Geni 23:39, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Are you for real? Malleus Fatuorum 01:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Before you all go and spend your month bringing house to FA, I believe it's 125k hits per month are a search/disambiguation failure since House_(TV_series) receives 800k. That one's already FA, so you can kick back and have the month off :). --99of9 (talk) 01:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I believe I've said the same thing at least three times here and elsewhere, but nobody seems to be listening. Malleus Fatuorum

One forgets - you should add a reminder next time you bring it up as an example, or switch to cooking, also a Vital (and poor) article, with 46+K views a month. Johnbod (talk) 02:29, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, wait. I scrolled through the entire PowerPoint. You, like...put a list of FA writers and assigned them categories and identities. Then you came here to show everyone what you did. That's pretty impressive. Your testicles must scrape the ground--an unfortunate social faux pas, no? No, really. You really did that. You pigeonholed a group of editors with your chosen set of standards then came here with a flip chart to illustrate your many points. It blows my mind. And shame on me for treating your arguments with respect. I'll not do that again. --Moni3 (talk) 01:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

But wait, there's more. Someone is already using this .pdf (and the ridiculous "star collector" label) to dismiss the "debacle" that is FA, as well as those who defend the quality of articles promoted to the highest standard. Joy. María (yllo submarine) 04:03, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here's background. WT:USEP is a WMF-inspired program to recruit student editors that has resulted in widespread copyvio and other problems because it wasn't well conceived or launched, the community wasn't consulted, and there weren't adequate ambassadors to oversee the program. That involves JimmyButler and Piotr-- which is the nexis with TCO's FACs. Legit criticism of FAs would be one thing, but acknowledging "good timing" of lobbing this grenade and retaliatory criticism because of a WMF program that has resulted in widespread copyvio ... oh, my. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:51, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I just read the talk page of Ernest Hemingway again. It appears the cranky comments here at WT:FAC may be the least of TCO's concerns when editors with some kind of grudge or motive wield this ~~study~~ commentary with the same lack of knowledge it took to construct it. I'm hard pressed to rationalize the most offensive part of this ~~study~~ commentary. You know: the part where TCO lists all the FA editors then puts them into categories, then comes here to show us all what he did. This is actually a pretty good example of trolling. Wikipedia Review kind of "these are the incompetent people and their cliques" kind of commentary. Instead of the low power of one or two cranks addressing one or two editors on a site few read or know about, it has the bonus of being posted at the place where most of the people you targeted frequent to get their attention and under the guise of academia. Then, it's used as an argument against FA writers on the pages they constructed! Flawless victory eh, TCO? --Moni3 (talk) 12:50, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I'm characterized as a battleship, but I'd actually call myself a star collector, sort of. I take things to FAC because the process generally improves the article in ways that I don't think of, and, at least lately, it's been pretty painless. I write about stuff that I like, that I know, that I have the sources for, and what I want to learn about. I really don't give a damn about page views, but I do care that the quality of some of the core articles on the topics that interest me aren't very good. I have yet to do anything about that because the task of mastering and synthesizing the state of the (often contradictory) research is quite daunting. Compounded with the task of defending the article from every moron who's just finished a popular history or a program on the Military Channel. I think the best thing I got out of the report was the idea to semi-protect articles GA and better. That would save some effort in reverting the near-vandalism perpetrated by a lot of IP editors.--Sturmvogel 66 (talk) 05:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Feedback from one "champion"

Tourette syndrome gets 3,000 to 6,000 hits per day, consistently-- 130,000 hits this month. According to both Looie496 and TCO, that makes it an important topic and me a "champion"; they're both wrong for different reasons.

Problems with both analyses:

"Reader interest" is correlated with page views. Wrong. First, do these guys understand how Google's algorithm works, and the ways the templates added to medical articles increase their google rank? Or factor that hits are driven to an article like TS by advocacy and support group hits, which wouldn't be the case for other types of articles? Or factor that, unlike TS (where our article is the single most comprehensive thing available freely and easily on the internet), many other topics have scores of other internet sources available, so that readers may hit them first and never come to Wikipedia? The whole idea that page views correlate with reader interest is faulty.
"Vital topics" equates to "important topics". Others have already outlined the number of ways this reasoning is wrong, so I'll just add that Looie496 thought TS to be an important topic-- it's not. It's an obscure medical topic that most physicians will never encounter. How about heart attack, breast cancer, stroke, diabetes for important topics? There is quite a bit wrong with any rubric one can come up with to determine "importance", already explained on this page. Anyone's personal opinion of "importance" is subjective, but TS is not "important" by just about any rubric, yet it gets the page views.
There is some "entity" on Wikipedia that can drive certain types of articles to FAC or encourage editors to work on certain topics. Good luck with that. I collaborated to some extent on Samuel Johnson, who is surely more "important" in many ways than TS, but gets far fewer page views, and the FAC was a nightmare because certain editors who had no clue about the sources, the research, the topic, showed up with cockamaney input that had to be dealt with. That's part of why bringing "big" topics to FAC is difficult-- it's the "encyclopedia anyone can edit". And that's without getting in to what it takes to defend those articles once they pass FAC. The idea that Wikipedia can ever work like a journal is just wrong; we can't keep out the kooks, the POV pushers, the clueless, the vandals, etc.
Oh, the idea that we can make Wikipedia work like a journal peer review is just wrong-- it's a Wiki-- oh, did I already say that?
The idea that FAC delegates can somehow encourage groups of editors to bring certain topics to FA is equally interesting. With the way TCO chose to shoot down the work of some stellar editors, I'd not be surprised that more would stay away in droves.
FAC delegates should make sure content is reviewed, similar to images-- (faulty) assumption that they don't.
WMF has a goal for article "quality"-- that's not what Sue Gardner said the other day-- quite the opposite, she (pretty much) said (while ignoring the significant copyvio issue at DYK) that the drive for quality was fallout from an overreaction to the Essjay controversy and the Siegenthaler incident. Again, like that's a bad thing?
Wikipedia as a whole is failing, why pick on FA or GA? Like Ealdgyth, I find it very strange to observe the way TCO alternates between IP, Vanished and signed in editing to lob these misguided assumptions, rather than focusing on the much bigger problems that predominate across the Wikipedia, and WMF's failure to address them while putting forward program after program only designed to get more editors and more articles, not better editors and better articles. I'd say put your resources into FAC bashing once we've dealt with the non-neutral, non-reliably sourced, undue, original research, poorly sourced articles written by POV pushers and advocates in an environment where behavioral norms are absent and dispute resolution is decidedly broken. FAC can't work like a journal peer review because it's part of a dysfunctional process-- deal with the bigger issues, the rest may follow (not holding my breath, though).
One FAC delegate should oversee each nomination-- there is so much wrong with this idea, but why should I engage in discussion of this with a sometimes IP, sometimes vanished user, sometimes signed in user who further has the discourtesy to quote people without diffs, out of context?
One more: reconcile please your objections to "obscure" topics that make FA with the WMF push to recruit student editors, who know nothing of Wikipedia policies, to stub up obscure topics like klazomania? Why is it that WMF can push for more inferior articles that NO ONE will ever read, but hurricane FAs are a problem? Inconsistent. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

So, TCO, your analysis doesn't impress, nor do your posts from various accounts. The one worthy take home message is to try more outreach to engage more editors to write more articles at a higher level. Good luck with that; you don't need to trash the work of some good Wikipedia FA writers to put that message out. I'm a "champion" by your rubric, but I've not delivered more "value"-- it's just the nature of the topic I wrote about. But since this is the internet, where anyone can write anything, I fully expect that the WMF employees-- who have never engaged content and don't endorse "quality"-- will jump on your bandwagon and quote your "report" "data". SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:48, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TS gets some of the page views, but less than half of Diabetes mellitus - not sure what your point is here. Sue Gardner said pretty clearly that her priority was not to "get" more editors but to keep more of the ones we have, both new & old. In fact in the discussion section she said explicitly there was little point in drives for new editors while we remain so good at rapidly driving them away - the Indian fiasco was planned a long time ago, and maybe the global south remains an exception. "more articles" remains an aim on the WMF plan (set by the board, not management, btw) but the main thrust there seems to be non-English wikis, rightly. Quality also remains an aim in the plan, and (as Jimmy Wales has also said often enough) became one after Siegenthaler in particular. Again, not sure what your point is. Johnbod (talk) 02:58, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

TS gets the same range of page views as those highlighted at the top of the TCO list as "valuable", and he references Looie's analysis which also considered TS "important". TS is not an important medical topic by any measure: it gets high page views because of its google rank, which is partially related to how often it most likely is referenced by support groups which may also be related to issues like the NIH information is incorrect and incomplete, and the Tourette Syndrome Association website is a navigational nightmare, so our article is first on Google. Contrast that with truly "important" and "vital" medical topics like the Common cold, which gets the same range of page views as the TS article. Ditto for influenza. One likely reason the common cold doesn't get more page views-- although it's "important"-- is because unlike TS, other websites come up first on google (NIH and CDC). My point, rather plainly, is that page views has nothing to do with reader interest, and more to do with any number of other factors. Whatever "plan" the WMF board has allegedly set to paper is irrelevant when they're not singing that tune in talks they deliver, and they are putting programs in place that are demonstrably affecting article quality (negatively), and they are overlooking copyvio issues at DYK in favor of vaguely useless statements about FAs, and how the "quality" problem is a result of an overreaction to Siegenthaler and Essjay. I don't know how to make that more clear, but for that, we have Moni3 aptly pinning the tail on the donkey. The measures TCO looked at have little to do with anything; faulty assumptions--> faulty recommendations, but nice intent except for singling out of specific editors from behind his constantly changing posting status. It reads like a Manic Manifesto to me-- shoot a bunch of points out there and hope something sticks (which always works on the internet, where anyone can say anything). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sour grapes are so unbecoming, tsk. Fallout from WT:USEP-- if this is how you all conduct yourselves in public, I fret to think of what you're like in private. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:36, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yet another extended response

Trivium derives from the three basic elements of a medieval university education, and was considered trite due to its foundational status. I am not going to claim that FAs based on the social impact of swearing in southern England is trivial—it isn't foundational. Thus I'm going to talk about "foundational" and "non-foundational" topics and articles.
Work expended on non-foundational articles comes from resources (writers) that are non-transferrable to foundational articles. This is due to: concentration of expertise; incommensurability of expertise in foundational versus expertise in non-foundational topics; an unwillingness from expert non-foundational writers to put up with the shit you have to put up with to write articles that come under systemic public attack.
Work by FA reviewers on non-foundational articles is not a significant impact on the capacity of FA reviewers to review foundational articles. Most writers of non-foundational articles are either inexperienced and require significant coaching by the FA community, or they are highly experienced and their FA candidates are low impact in terms of economic cost. Training writers to be the best kind of editor is part of our responsibility here. Moreover, foundational articles will be written by both kinds of writer.
From page 4: 55% of "vital" articles (B, A, GA) are in the area where immediate work to promote to FA could be considered. In contrast, 85% of "vital" articles are in a position to be moved to A or GA class. The bulk of the work lies further down the chain from FA.
Your proposal on a writing vital articles project leading vital article writing is good. I strongly suspect that writing vital articles requires a different kind of expert editor, willing to put up with different kinds of shit, and willing to write as if they were gnoming.
Your metaphors are deeply insulting to volunteers: "Wikipedia should be assessed versus what its customers want, not just what it happens to produce." "Dropping quality (like a marketer dropping price) is NOT the ONLY way to increase volume. Think about more factors that affect production." "(core business versus growth business)" Go bite your head. I'm not here for this; I get labour discipline at work, and I don't expect to get KPO'd here. Go away and rephrase that as an encyclopaedic statement. Actually, I'll go further, the day I think that Value is being extracted from my work here, that my work is being turned into labour power, I'm gone. I'm not here to reproduce Value in an expanded form, I do that in order to subsist. Wikipedia is a break from the experience of reproducing value in an expanded form for recooperation by the market for me. Pedagogy, free learning for others, is a motivator. Liberation, freedom in collaborative work, is a motivator. Enhanced performance outputs over the five year plan is not a motivator.
"Many Featured Article Candidates (OCT 2011) are on unpopular topics." showing Brain leading with 100K+ views. Brain is currently opposeable because its citations do not substantiate its claims.
"The more Featured Articles a user writes, the lower the average relevancy of his articles" This indicates that vital articles are gut-busters to me
I enjoyed the detailed analysis of one project, and one author. They made me reflect on my behaviour as a reviewer deeply (and were tastefully done to my mind, and don't read as criticisms of the project or author). In particular it made me rethink my behaviour as a sourcing/spot-check reviewer; and, that I don't spend any time grappling with "content" (even though my content speciality rarely appears).
ALoan's 2006 suggestion on turning series of articles into high quality articles makes me very very suspicious of Wikipedia's false taxonomies of importance in social science, and history.
I am impressed with your finding in relation to the US National Archives challenge, particularly its conclusion that respondents need to be drawn from outside the existing FA community.
FA community pedagogy needs to improve, particularly with authors we can "observe" have an ongoing interest. I try to write my reviews so that they're comprehensible, but this isn't always easy.
I am amusingly reminded of the quantity into quality problem for the Soviet economy. Interestingly Nikita Khrushchev is a FA.
Thank you for putting the effort into this analysis. It is interesting. It has immediately modified some of my opinions about appropriate source, citation and spot checking. Fifelfoo (talk) 01:52, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts from Sp33dyphil

I have no problems with trivial articles being nominated for GA/FA. However, this generally comes at the expense of vital articles not receiving enough attention and are being left to be derelict. I think it'd be good if the same number of VAs are being nominated as the number of trivial articles, but I think that's asking a bit too much. I believe an ideal situation would be to have experienced editors who are extremely successful at FAs to cut back on creating articles to teach a younger generation how to write and give guidance on everything Wikipedia, while writing more VAs. This would result in many more trivial articles, but at the same time VAs are being produced. Any comments? --Sp33dyphil © • © 10:04, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

PS. It was a pleasant surprise to have my Aviation Master Plan included in the presentation.

False dichotomy. That many editors choose to focus on so-called "trivial" articles has no bearing on whether or not an editor focuses on a so-called "vital" article. If I wasn't writing about hockey or Canadiana, I wouldn't be writing about philosophy or 19th century composers instead. So no, one does not come at the expense of the other. Reso lute 15:15, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Not entirely. Most of us have a choice allocating our time between improving larger numbers of very poor articles in our area of interest or concentrating on a few, probably relatively obscure ones, and bringing them to the high state of polish needed for FA. That may not work so well in a narrower field like ice hockey, but is certainly the case in most areas, and perhaps especially so in my area of the visual arts, where the sort of analysis TCO quotes is amply justified and most articles on major topics are crap (Indian art, Italian Renaissance sculpture, in fact anything to do with sculpture, Baroque, Rococo, Romantic art etc etc). All of these are exactly the sort of thing people are likely to look in an encyclopedia for, and do, & they are being badly let down. I've increasingly chosen to spend more time on the former, mainly in the belief that this is best for the project. So I don't get stars, but can comfort myself with the much higher page-views my work is getting. Johnbod (talk) 15:30, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, but that only further invalidates TCO's arguments. According to him, your work is not good enough because you aren't trying for a

or

. And yet, by improving these articles, you are furthering the project's goals. As I said somewhere else in one of these dozen discussions TCO started, he's blaming the FA process when it has nothing to do with why people aren't editing these topics. Reso lute 15:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I have no problems with trivial articles being nominated for GA/FA. However, this generally comes at the expense of vital articles not receiving enough attention.^{[citation needed]} I can bring TS to FA standards-- I can't bring heart attack or diabetes or cancer to FA standards, and bringing TS to standard didn't stop me from working on core or important topics; we all do what we're able to and enjoy. PS. It was a pleasant surprise to have my Aviation Master Plan included in the presentation. Were you also pleasantly surprised to see your FA work described as it was (I'm not going to troll through the faulty analysis again, but I believe the word used to describe your FA work was "rough", feel free to provide the exact wording), after I've had to engage on several of your FACs because content and prose were endorsed by involved reviewers. Curiously, the author of that same opinion piece claimed that FAC delegates needed to make sure content was reviewed-- notice any contradiction? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:39, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thoughts from Pesky

My views and responses on the subject are here. Much easier for me to make this a link than to cross-post same text to multiple areas! Pesky (talk …stalk!) 10:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Vital is as vital does

House? Cooking? Do people need actually to go to Wikipedia to find out what "house" means? Or cooking? Someone's idea of "vital" is not very well thought out. I should think we need to push articles about people and ideas that are a bit less painfully obvious, but still influential in human life. Moreover, why bust FAC reviewers for what is or isn't nommed? NotSixBodies (talk) 14:04, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Or to put it another way, let's not give ourselves airs by pushing the idea that such-and-such is a vital article when what we really mean is a vital subject. No matter how good our article on brain or sex or John F. Kennedy, it will have plenty of competition out there in the world. Yet our FAs on more obscure subjects may be the most comprehensive around. This is a volunteer project and unless someone wants to make top writers an offer they can't refuse, they'll write not simply on what interests them but where they see a gap, and so they should as long as it meets notability criteria. Cheers from your friendly Star Collector of the Galaxy Rangers, Ian Rose (talk) 15:17, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Signpost

According to Skomorokh, the Signpost will be addressing the study. Skomorokh doesn't make very clear in what way it will be addressed. TCO himself suggested it be covered, natch, whereupon in apoplectic frustration I offered to write a rebuttal. Skomorokh says "Tell your friends" and I always follow the advice of people on the Internet. Tomorrow I have to meet someone I met in a chatroom--he's going to pick me up in a rusted cargo van with "Free Candy" painted on the side. --Moni3 (talk) 16:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Anything that manages to piss off our high-end article writers to this extent is worthy of news yes, and the Signpost would like to extend an invitation to the author to defend their work, and to the rest of you to critique it. Parameters to be worked out, suggestions welcome. "Free Candy" displayed for aesthetic purposes, should not be taken as in inducement of journalistic bribery. Skomorokh 16:14, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

My view

Since I have talked about this general issue before, and TCO has cited me, I would like to weigh in here. In my view the fundamental problem with FAC is the same as the fundamental problem of Wikipedia as a whole: the low number of editors with subject matter expertise. At FAC this manifests itself as a demand for unreasonable levels of referencing, in an effort to make articles verifiable by people who have limited knowledge of the topic. For topics with a small literature the consequences are usually not too harmful, but for topics with a large literature, where most of the statements synthesize dozens if not hundreds of sources, the result is to prevent articles from ever becoming FAs. It is simply futile to demand that readers with no subject matter knowledge be able to verify articles on large topics -- only an expert reviewer can properly do it. I don't think there is any perfect solution other than to bring in more editors with expertise, but maybe there are ways to minimize the difficulty. What I seek is an acknowledgement that referencing requirements should be tuned to the breadth of a topic -- the larger a topic, the lesser the need for detailed page-referencing of every line, and the greater the need for reviewers with enough expertise to have a good sense of whether an article is accurate and comprehensive without having to consult sources regarding every line. If there is no such adjustment of reviewing methods to article breadth, I fear there will never be a substantial number of FAs on broad topics. I don't believe that the changes TCO is proposing will make much of a difference. Looie496 (talk) 16:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Getting reviews

Speaking of unimportant subjects, is it unseemly to solicit reviews on my latest FAC? I was going to leave a note at a couple of Wikiproject talk pages, but I don't want it to look collusive. What's the etiquette here? --Coemgenus (talk) 15:21, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Bring new people into the process. Posting here is treating the whole thing too much like a zero sum game. Circulate in article space (not just projects) and use personal requests. You can find people who know the topic who can do content reviews at least. The orange bar is much more powerful at motivating help (and feels more personal, more of a connect as we do our work) than the talk page plea. I would not worry about "appearances". You know if you are being honorable or if you are trying to pack the court. Go get the best damned reviewers and bring them back here. Heck, maybe they help someone else out as well. Grow the pie!TCO (talk) 15:25, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Good point. I'm informally helping out one of the classes, perhaps I will ask the prof (maybe during finals, when he has nothing better to do) to join my current PR, Mark Hanna (advertising, anything wrong with that?) As he is a history prof, should be right down his alley. And I'm sure he has access to JSTOR, which I don't (big hint here about one of my grievances towards WMF).--Wehwalt (talk) 15:32, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Ask the librarains and archivasts and such as well. I assume you get their business cards, right? It's just a quick email. I bet less than 50% will play, but it's just a couple sentence email with a link. Bread in the water. I had a couple of top reptile professors in the field who were going to write reviews (but picta and state reptile passed too fast).69.255.27.249 (talk) 15:40, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I find a lot of them are too busy even to read my article, but I'll take that on board as a good suggestion.--Wehwalt (talk) 15:53, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Act like you are a player and (some) people will buy it.69.255.27.249 (talk) 16:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I did mention that your article is on the "urgents" list over at WT:MHC#FAC update, Nov 20. - Dank (push to talk) 18:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. that was the first wikiproject I'd planned to pester. --Coemgenus (talk) 21:00, 23 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

^ http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

[1] ttp://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html

[1]

@@ Line 304: / Line 304: @@
 According to [http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/Newsroom/Suggestions&curid=17285802&diff=462273603&oldid=462272667 Skomorokh], the Signpost will be addressing the study. Skomorokh doesn't make very clear in what way it will be addressed. TCO himself suggested it be covered, natch, whereupon in apoplectic frustration I offered to write a rebuttal. Skomorokh says "Tell your friends" and I always follow the advice of people on the Internet. Tomorrow I have to meet someone I met in a chatroom--he's going to pick me up in a rusted cargo van with "Free Candy" painted on the side. --[[User:Moni3|Moni3]] ([[User talk:Moni3|talk]]) 16:05, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
 :Anything that manages to piss off our high-end article writers to this extent is worthy of news yes, and the ''Signpost'' would like to extend an invitation to the author to defend their work, and to the rest of you to critique it. Parameters to be worked out, suggestions welcome. <small>"Free Candy" displayed for aesthetic purposes, should not be taken as in inducement of journalistic bribery.</small> [[user talk:Skomorokh|<span style="color: black;"><font face="New York">Skomorokh</font></span>]] 16:14, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
+===My view===
+Since I have talked about this general issue before, and TCO has cited me, I would like to weigh in here.  In my view the fundamental problem with FAC is the same as the fundamental problem of Wikipedia as a whole:  the low number of editors with subject matter expertise.  At FAC this manifests itself as a demand for unreasonable levels of referencing, in an effort to make articles verifiable by people who have limited knowledge of the topic.  For topics with a small literature the consequences are usually not too harmful, but for topics with a large literature, where most of the statements synthesize dozens if not hundreds of sources, the result is to prevent articles from ever becoming FAs.  It is simply futile to demand that readers with no subject matter knowledge be able to verify articles on large topics -- only an expert reviewer can properly do it.  I don't think there is any perfect solution other than to bring in more editors with expertise, but maybe there are ways to minimize the difficulty.  What I seek is an acknowledgement that referencing requirements should be tuned to the breadth of a topic -- the larger a topic, the lesser the need for detailed page-referencing of every line, and the greater the need for reviewers with enough expertise to have a good sense of whether an article is accurate and comprehensive without having to consult sources regarding every line.  If there is no such adjustment of reviewing methods to article breadth, I fear there will never be a substantial number of FAs on broad topics.  I don't believe that the changes TCO is proposing will make much of a difference. [[User:Looie496|Looie496]] ([[User talk:Looie496|talk]]) 16:47, 24 November 2011 (UTC)
 == Getting reviews ==