Wikipedia:Featured articles/Make Featured Article leaders elected (RFC)

This is a proposal to change the Featured Article leadership to be periodically elected rather than historical and appointed.

What is the current leadership setup at Featured articles?

The Featured article program currently has a Director, Raul654, who is the ultimate leader of the project. Raul654 became FA Director in ~2004 by starting to do the job. He was approved in one talk page election shortly after. He has never stood for re-election.

All other leaders (Delegates) in the Featured article project were appointed by Raul654. He can dismiss Delegates and has done so at least once. Currently there are three delegate slots in Featured article candidates, two delegates in Featured article reviews, and one delegate for Today’s featured article.

Why change?

Issues

1. We are making fewer and fewer Featured Articles per year. At a time when the encyclopedia is turning more to quality of articles, FA should be growing. However, the year to year change in FAs (new FAs net of demotions) has dropped to half that of four years ago. In contrast, the Good article program is growing. There, the production rate is triple that of four years ago. GA has accomplished this while improving quality and, at one point, conducting a vast "sweep" (demotion campaign) of the old, lower-quality, GAs.

2. The FA project is anti-democratic. There is no mechanism for fellow volunteers to change the leadership (without huge investment in an RFC such as this one).

3. It gives the wrong message to new FA participants that leadership, based on history, is entrenched. How are we to attract new writers and reviewers when they see positions of leadership for life?

4. Too much power is concentrated with one, unelected, Director.

5. The current Director is effectively absent.

a. Since October, Raul has only made ~250 edits to Wikipedia, most not dealing with TFA or any part of the FA program.

b. Raul654 has not participated visibly in FAC or FAR for over a year.

c. There is a de facto leader at FAC, SandyGeorgia, but she was never elected to be the leader. There is no visible supervision of the acting leader.

d. A new delegate had to be added at TFA to handle that workload. Despite this, we recently missed updating the Main Page TFA once (queue empty).

6. In the last year we have lost two FA delegates. They left without saying goodbye to the program which they were leading. In both cases, there was a long delay before this was brought up by the Director and a successor named. No input was requested from FA participants nor any approval sought for the new delegate added (one vacancy exists now).

Opportunities

1. The discussion during elections will naturally lead to new ideas and changes in Featured Articles. And such discussions will be connected to some process that means something. That connects to action. Not just talk page chat.

2. Program-building aspects of leaders may be considered. Not just the ability to promote or fail submissions (important to be sure), but also the ability to grow the program and bring new participants in.

3. New leaders will contribute new tools or layouts for the project when they assume leadership. Recent new delegate Ucucha has just created a bot that checks for wikilink duplication (a time consuming and mind-numbing aspect of writing an FA).

4. More of a connect between leaders and participants (submitters and reviewers) will emerge. It will become more normal for participants to move between roles.

What would the new setup look like?

Shift to a system of annual elections for all Featured Article leaders. Elections will mimic the highly successful system of elections for Coordinators at the Military History WikiProject and at the Guild of Copywriting Editors. Most recent elections:

• Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Coordinators/2012
• Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Coordinators/September 2011

The shape of the proposal

Structure

• Elections from February 01 through February 14.
• Terms of service from February14 through next year’s elections (~14FEB2013)
• Selection of 4 FAC delegates, 2 FAR delegates and 1 TFA delegate.
• One of the above is also the overall Director for all of Featured Articles.

Process

• Winners of the positions to be selected based on whoever gets the most “supports”.
• Nominees to indicate if they are also willing to serve as Director. Among these, the candidate getting most votes to become Director.
• Self-nomination by any interested member of the Community in good standing (not an IP or new account)
• Voting by any interested member of the Community in good standing

Community vote

Please vote support or oppose. Keep rationales short. All comments on other voters' rationales should be made in the Discussion section (not intermingling). End 2359 15JAN2012.

Support proposed change

1. Support per nom TCO (talk) 03:04, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Oppose proposed change

1. While in other respects I oppose "appointments" on a wiki, the plain fact is that it has worked very well at FAC. The forum is prone to stacking if we're not careful—something Sandy has worked hard to minimise. I don't want to see a popularity contest, because job is not about popularity. WRT some of the material above, I don't go along with the assumption that declining FAC numbers is contrary to the goals of increasing quality. Tony (talk) 05:18, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
2. First of all, most RFCs last for 30 days. This one is only lasting 7. Secondly, I agree with Tony - FAC is not a popularity contest. There is a certain level of "skill" and competence necessary for any leadership position in the FAC program. You need to know how to evaluate prose; how to determine if criticisms are ax-grinding, misinterpreting the FAC criteria, or are valid; how to prod discussions to keep them going, or when to archive them away; etc. --Rschen7754 05:22, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
3. Honestly, this has a bad taste now that Sandy has resigned, but I have to continue showing my opposition in this. As someone who has opposed RFAs for lack of writing credentials, not everyone can write them. (Hell I'm trying for my 13th, but that's why I'm around these parts.) Not every has that ability. If FAs are going down to those who are dedicated, then we have to work with the stuff we have. Performing a mutiny on the leadership brings down the ship, doesn't solve the ship's problems. Mitch32^{(Never support those who think in the box)} 05:24, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
4. Tony's got it right. Additionally, WP:Wikipedia is not a democracy. Many of TCO's "opportunities" can be accomplished without elections. The best analogy for leadership selection isn't MILHIST or GOCE, but the other featured content processes that also use appointed leadership. In all cases, the leadership needs to be insulated from politics because they need the flexibility to archive nominations that don't meet the standards expected of the bronze star; the leadership shouldn't be worried that editors upset over archivals will vote them out of "office" at the end of the year. Imzadi 1979 → 05:29, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
5. I agree with moving to an elected system for FAC delegates, but the timeframe here is much too hasty. I think that the benefits of electing editors into these positions above are also over-stated. As a I see it, the main benefit would be to encourage a (probably slow) turnover of personnel, which would contribute to making things run even more smoothly over the long term. I don't see how it would lead to a noticeable increase in the number of FAs. Nick-D (talk) 05:53, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
6. While I appreciate the sentiment that leadership in any process should not be entrenched, I don't see how this proposal directly relates to the problem that featured article promotions are declining. One of the biggest problems with Wikipedia in my mind is that there is a lack of systematic rigor used to develop process improvements. The RfC process encourages editors to state their opinions, but all too often degenerates into a factionalized mess as participants focus too hard on "winning", versus determining what solutions address the true root causes of the process problems. I strongly suggest that, before proceeding with radical changes to FAC such as this, we first reach consensus on what the process problems are, determine the root causes of those problems, and only then propose solutions that address those root causes. In my real-life job I spend significant time working continuous process improvement using tools such as Lean manufacturing and Six sigma; I think there might be ways to use these tools to find the right solution to fix FAC's problems. –Grondemar 05:55, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
7. No, per missing the point as I've said elsewhere. Many risks from this approach for negligible gain. Casliber (talk · contribs) 06:06, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
8. Would certainly be the wrong timing given Sandy's resignation. So the Good Articles owe their success to an elected Director, am I getting that right? Johnbod (talk) 06:17, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
9. Oppose I don't believe that elected delgates or directors is the best way for the FA process to go.--MONGO 06:21, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
10. The people currently doing the job are doing an job one. FAs are about quality and the bar has been raised over the proceeding 4 years, thus the numbers have dropped. I write GAs primarily due to my grammar not being sufficiently good to write FAs. I have the insight to realize this. The quality standards for GAs have also increased and for this we where rewarded by the community with a little green plus on all the articles no to long ago to go with the gold star. Wikipedia is becoming academic and the wording is beginning to recognize this. This has been a good direction to go and my support to all those who pushed us in this direction. Keep up the good work.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:40, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
11. There is no point in having this RFC if a much more extensive, much more detailed (and much better drafted) RFC is in the works. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:01, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

1. You lost me at one - Featured articles are about quality, not quantity. So too should FAC delegates be. - ʄɭoʏɗiaɲ ^τ _¢ 05:20, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comment - I am concerned that this will snowball into the other Featured content. And this is coming from a Featured Topic delegate. GamerPro64 05:28, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
• FA/FAC needs management, not governance. There is room for improvement but the rationale for using routine elections as the way forward is not convincing enough. maclean (talk) 06:48, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Notifications

(in progress)

• Central notifications
• Village Pump
• Featured Articles
  • FAC
  • TFA
  • FAR
• Good Article Nominations
• DYK
• MilHist
• GOCE
• WPBFAN members