Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria

Request for clarification

2.c. consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using either footnotes (<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1.</ref>) or Harvard referencing (Smith 2007, p. 1)—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. The use of citation templates is not required.

Is this requirement for consistent formatting intended to imply that all citations in an article must either display full first names only, or all must display first name initials only, and that a combination of initials where provided by the source, and full first names where provided by the source is not acceptable?

I have just finished reading through the archives of this talk page, and cannot find anything definitive. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 16:05, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

I would think that providing the names as they appear in the source is a consistent system. That isn't about formatting so much as honest representation, in the spirit of WP:SAYWHERE. --RL0919 (talk) 16:52, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

An article looks polished when the citations are consistently formatted using the same scheme. Saying that, if a few sources didn't give full first names, I wouldn't say anything if we had a few initials in a sea of citations with full first name, while the reverse wouldn't be very polished. Imzadi 1979 → 02:56, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

There was a discussion on this very matter a year or two back, I'll try to find it. One person held that if just one source provided only initials, then all of the other sources must be altered to also show only initials.

My own view is that you should give the credit according to what the source actually says, omitting any titles or honorifics. That said, if I have two books which are definitely written by the same person, and one is credited to "J. Smith" and the other to "John Smith", I will use |first=John |last=Smith for both of them. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:11, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

These suggestions appear entirely reasonable to me. The incident for which I am trying to find guidance is exactly as Redrose64 describes, where one reviewer contends that all sources must be either initials only, or full names only, which implies that if only initials are available for a single case, the entire list must be altered to be initials only. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 13:15, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

I concern myself first with the reliablity of sources used. Then with making sure the same information is presented in the references. At some point, however, if we start demanding consistency in this form, we're descending into madness. As long as the references all contain author information and it's all either "first last" or "last first", we should not care if they are all initials or all first names. We should use what the source itself uses - which abides by WP:SAYWHEREYOUGOTIT, which has always struck me as a good general guideline to follow. Do what the sources do as far as providing information. Thus, I don't insist that ISBNs be provided for all references, if some sources predate the ISBN system. Same for how the names are presented for authors - go with what the source uses. Ealdgyth - Talk 13:38, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

As per Ealdgyth and Redrose. Not least, there are US v. UK variations in this (the UK tradition being to use initials, the US to use full first names), which mainstream academia has no problem with (you follow the way it was presented in the original publication). It can be very hard, in fact, to identify the first name associated with some UK published works, particularly if the writer was not well known. Hchc2009 (talk) 14:15, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

This is the kind of decision we ought to leave to the writers. Insisting on consistency would mean that all citations would have to use initials if the full name of just one author was unknown. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:04, 16 December 2017 (UTC)

@Raul654, SandyGeorgia, Ian Rose, and Sarastro1: If any of you who have experience in closing FACs would like to comment, it would be appreciated. · · · Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:56, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

The most important principle here is that inline citations must be unambiguous. If the article cites two books by the same author, then the inline citations must explicitly call out the title of the book being referenced; if there's two authors cited by an article who have the same last name/initials, the article should cite them by their full names.

Beyond that, I'd support either (1) citing authors using whatever names that they publish under, or (2) citing them by their full names, as long as we are consist about it within an article. Raul654 (talk) 18:10, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

No, a title is not necessary in either harvard referencing or shortened footnotes if the author and year taken together are unambiguous. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:17, 23 December 2017 (UTC)

I have a different question about this requirement. Is it a requirement to use Harvard-style or shortened footnotes? I've seen a number of FAs with regular citation templates--is that allowed? Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 19:53, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

No specific system for formatting the references is required. If you want to use Harvard refs, that's fine (I like them myself), but if you prefer full citations, that's fine also. Templates can be used or not, as you prefer. Just be consistent with what you do -- for example, don't use "Cite book" some of the time and "Citation" other times in the same article. --RL0919 (talk) 22:16, 26 March 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. Rachel Helps (BYU) (talk) 15:27, 28 March 2018 (UTC)

Obviously, a featured article that cites A. A. Milne, C. S. Lewis, or J. R. R. Tolkien has to be very short because it can’t cite anyone else. And you’re not allowed to cite Dr. Suess at all.

Kidding. The requirement in WP:FACR is “consistently formatted inline citations” and refers to WP:CITE for suggestions, which spells it out in the section WP:CITESTYLE. That entire long guideline says nothing about full names or initials, and makes it clear that citations’ content is variable, listing what we try to include in a “typical” citation, and details that may be added “as necessary.”

Written content, including references, is distinct from citation format. An author’s name is their own, and we should use it as they did their published works to 1. make them easy for our readers to find and WP:VERIFY, and 2. to respect their self-identification (see also WP:NCBIO and WP:LIVE).

To compare a professional style guide’s advice, the CMoS says “Authors’ names are normally given as they appear with the source itself,” but “certain adjustments, however, may be made to assist correct identification” (14.73), and “For authors who always use initials, full names should not be supplied” (14.74).

If article and reference content starts being modified or removed to serve format, then we are failing the encyclopedia’s readers. —Michael Z. 20:34, 26 November 2020 (UTC)

Question about high quality reliable sources

There have been repeated discussions on the climate change article about what constitutes a high quality reliable source. The issue resolves around the public websites of organisations like NASA and WHO, which are not dated and don't have an author. To me it seems that not knowing how recent information is, when scientific thinking is still developing, is a strong mark against using these reliable sources, and that peer-reviewed secondary sources would be better. On the other hand, NASA and WHO are the ultimate authorities on their respective topics. Would you guys consider those sources high quality? Femke Nijsse (talk) 07:52, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Femke Nijsse, sourcing quality is highly context-specific, so it would depend on what was being used to source what. For example, WHO would certainly be the ultimate authority on their own policies, but other sources may offer critiques of those policies. Nikkimaria (talk) 12:53, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I understand it's very context specific. The contact seems to be re-occurring: using the public website (so not their scientific reports) of these organisations for scientific findings. For instance, the estimation of the amount of people dying from air pollution. As these estimates vary over time and it's unclear how often the website is updated, my instinct would be that these websites are not the best source we can find. Femke Nijsse (talk) 13:01, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Categorization

I find it a little odd that the FA criteria doesn't mention anything about categorization. At a number of GA reviews I've done, I've noted where categorization was incorrect, lacking, or failed WP:CATV. I was surprised when one of the nominators remarked that they hadn't really looked at the categories, as they weren't part of the FA or GA criteria. In fact, neither WP:FACR nor WP:GACR mentions anything about categories. And frankly, as much as everything associated with FAC is nitpicky in some ways, it seems weird not to explicitly mention quality of categorization in the criteria. It's obviously WP:Instruction creep to include a new letter-level statement for categories, but maybe add in some wording somewhere in one of the other line-items that categorization should be of high-quality, too? Hog Farm _Bacon 16:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

• Yes, this is a weakness, & the cats are not infrequently poorly done. Johnbod (talk) 01:30, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

RFC: Does following style guidelines on consistent citations mean consistent inclusion of “place of publication”?

I hope to resolve an editing disagreement. It’s about FA criterion 2.c., which says that a featured article:

follows the style guidelines, including . . . consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes (<ref>Smith 2007, p. 1</ref>)—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.

Does this mean that every citation in an FA must either include the place of publication, or else every one must omit it? —Michael Z. 21:03, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• The requirement is consistency, but at a slightly more granular level than suggested by the question asked. An author could choose to include publication location for magazines but not for books, or for newspapers only when the location is not in the title, for example. There should be a clearly identifiable "rule" of when to include or not, but that "rule" can be more nuanced than "every single citation in this article must include a publication location". Nikkimaria (talk) 22:22, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

  An WP:RFC is a neutral dispute-resolution mechanism. You’re not supposed to swoop in and set the tone with a proposal favouring your view and ignoring all my concerns. Furthermore, the position you’re advocating is nothing like your arguments at User talk:Nikkimaria#Place of publication to disallow adding any publications locations in the article Winnipeg at all. I call bad faith. —Michael Z. 03:34, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  I disagree, on all points. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:41, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  Where is the “clearly identifiable ‘rule’” for the article Winnipeg? Who made you the appointed “author” that decides no place of publication shall appear there? Which guidelines or consensus are the source of this idea that is not mentioned anywhere? —Michael Z. 14:39, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

  As you note, that article does not include place of publication at all; that has been the established style for years. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:24, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

• What Nikkimaria just said. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:43, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• I agree with Nikkimaria's interpretation. — Wug·a·po·des​ 22:48, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• I agree but would add that in those rare cases where a location is simply unavailable, that should not force the removal of all locations on citations of that type. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:52, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

• The MOS provides a rationale for locations for books in WP:BIBLIOGRAPHY: When you provide an ISBN for an edition, complement this with the precise publication details: this will help point out exactly what the ISBN denotes, and so for example a reader in the US will not waste time searching for an edition restricted to the British market. It used to be that foreign editions were unavailable in the US due to copyright restrictions, but these were struck down by a court decision, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., in 2013. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:01, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
• Agree with Nikkimaria - nowadays many books are published simultaeneously in eg London and New York anyway, & the ISBN makes books much easier to find. Johnbod (talk) 01:28, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
• The relevant part of the CITE guideline is WP:CITEHOW. It suggests when to include location. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:32, 4 December 2020 (UTC)
• I also agree with Nikkimaria's position and it's my impression that most FA source reviews are conducted this way already. (t · c) buidhe 10:37, 4 December 2020 (UTC)

What is the recommended article length?

Wikipedia:Article size mentions 10,000 words, but I looked at Barack Obama (via [1]) and it's more than 15,000 words. I am asking, since we are discussing article length on Climate Change. I think for a big issue such as climate change, 15k should still be acceptable for FA status, similar to Obama's article? Bogazicili (talk) 14:43, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I don't think either of them should pass 8,500 words. I explain why at User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving excellence through featured content. (You're just buying yourself an interminable unmanageable headache, while giving our readers something so long they will never read it.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:48, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I think most people would just read the lead and few specific sections anyway, even at 8500 words. I guess the word count is a suggestion and not an absolute limit for FA articles? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogazicili (talk • contribs) 14:52, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Right; you'll find plenty of reviewers willing to pass WP:SIZE, and plenty who disagree with me. You'll find few that have been around for 15 years to see what eventually becomes of articles that size :) I will never support an article that size. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:55, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Lol, but Climate Change is not Brie_Larson, so it should depend on the topic too I think.Bogazicili (talk) 14:57, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

The size limit is more important for our core articles.

• For the reader, who will not spend more time reading an article just because it's longer, and will miss important information if there is too much cruft.
• For the updater-type editor, who will have to maintain a lot of information on the top and all the sub-articles
• and for the review-type editor, who needs to verify more information than they can cope with. Half of our article on climate change needs updating around every 5 years, and with the current length + my massive time investment that's barely doable.

I think the Barack Obama article has moved quite far from FA standards, with issues like length and WP:PROSELINE. Femke Nijsse (talk) 16:49, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Onama has probably never been at standard, but taking it to FAR doesn’t work ... the example of success on size I give in my essay is Islam ... it did fine when trim, but went all to heck when allowed to grow beyond very strict summary style. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Summary style isn't always appropriate for every topic. For some topics, particularly visual arts articles, it's more of a service to the reader to have everything in one place so they can compare-and-contrast at a glance rather than skipping between articles, even if it breaks every part of the MOS. One also needs to consider that we're writing for the benefit of readers, not for the benefit of the MOS; not all readers are going to be reading online, and "for more information see [[Subarticle]] is no use if one's reading a printout or a mirror page, or if the subarticle isn't included on the limited-article-set WP:IIAB installaton that reader happens to be using. (I won't repeat the whole thing here, but do a ctrl-f on my talk page for "We're not print" to see more of my thinking on this issue. The TL;DR summary is that I'd rather write a useful article that doesn't meet WIAFA than one that passes FAC but is less of a service to readers.) ‑ Iridescent 18:44, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I have been editing Climate Change article for a few months now, and I have concentrated on certain sections. I still haven't read the entire article! Even at less than 10k words, I really doubt readers read the entire article (I wish if we could poll readers on Wikipedia). So I'd place more emphasis on lead and completeness, within certain limits. So 10k limit is a suggestion. Can we also add a flexibility range on that, depending on the topic? Like 20% for example (8k-12k word count range)? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bogazicili (talk • contribs) 21:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Unless you're proposing a special wordcount just for FAs, I'd suggest making your case over at Wikipedia talk:Article size. Nikkimaria (talk) 21:28, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Lol, thanks, so many talk pages...I wanted to get the opinions of editors who edit quality articles first. And also because Climate Change is going through FA review. What do you think of the suggestion? I might bring it to Wikipedia talk:Article size as well. Also what is a centralized page for discussions such as these, if there are any? Bogazicili (talk) 21:33, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Bogazicili, you have a manageable and professional article now at Climate change. If you expand beyond a readable summary style you will not only get an article that is unlikely to be maintained at FA standard over the long haul; you will also earn at least one Oppose (mine). And you will chase off a number of reviewers who recognize that readers aren't going to want to trudge through an article that size. Regardless if the Coords ignore Opposes on crit. 4 (It stays focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail and uses summary style), or if consensus on this article overrules that, you will have lost the chance to engage an informed reviewer, along with readers who are put off by a book-sized article. There are good reasons that WIAFA reflects consensus at WP:SIZE.

As to "polling readers", WMF already has data indicating that few readers read beyond the lead; why should we give them more reason to not read beyond the lead by trying to turn articles into text books? One of the elements of good writing is knowing what to leave out as much as what to put in. The proof that Climate change doesn't need to be a sprawling mess is apparent in the version already written.

This is not a MOS-driven argument as Iri implies; it is about reader attention span and good writing. If our goal is to impress readers with every bit of data that interests professionals and researchers (and that they already know as they've read the texbooks), at the expense of an encyclopedic summary that engages all readers, doubling the size of the article would be a good way to achieve that goal. My interest remains engaging readers by respecting WIAFA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:41, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

SandyGeorgia, I'm not suggesting adding too much detail. What I'm against is leaving out entire topics. Economic benefits of mitigation is an entire topic for Climate Change, for example, yet it was completely left out. Even with Summary Style, and even when you leave out too much detail, it might not be possible to stay within 10k limit for certain topics. That's my whole argument. As I said, Climate Change is not Brie Larson. Massively different types of articles should not have the same limit. That doesn't sound reasonable to me. Bogazicili (talk) 22:53, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Then you need to more tightly summarize everywhere. And the argument that Climate change is not Brie Larson is a straw man. Brie Larson is not Bob Dylan or The Beatles or Babe Ruth or Baseball, either; the notion that Climate change (or any particular content areas) is somehow harder to summarize than any topic about which much is written is fallacious. It's about good writing, that engages the reader. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:00, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

And your suggestion to "tightly summarize everywhere" is extremely theoretical. You don't know the specific issues and what's missing in the article. You seem to be favouring shorter length over comprehensiveness. Is that really your preference? Bogazicili (talk) 23:02, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

Comprehensiveness without verbosity is what I'm after (and also hoping you will dispossess yourself of the idea that Brie Larson is a valid comparison :) I write in an area where, as someone once stated, malaria is not Louisa May Alcott. There is always more that could be added to a medical article, since there are so many quality sources and deep detail that could be explored, but we won't engage or impress our readers by writing a Lancet medical journal article they don't want to read. If you go that route, you'll end up with an eventually de-featured poetry or Islam. (Yes, I understand that Obama has escaped, but that is for different reasons ... right now, there is a RECENTISM, NOTNEWS, UNDUE statement from The Washington Post in the lead, but no one is likely to complain on Wikipedia.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:07, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I do agree with "comprehensiveness without verbosity". We are still going through editing process, we'll see what happens. The minute we have to leave out an important topic because of some length limit is when I'll come back to these length forums with that specific example how hard length limits is hampering comprehensiveness. I'm using Brie Larson as an example because it was in top hits list lol. Bogazicili (talk) 23:12, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

OK, good luck over there ... it is an impressive work ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:22, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Sandy. Mostly. An article should be as long as it needs to be to give the reader an introduction to a topic, without getting so long that it's overwhelming for readers and unmanageable for editors. The classic example to me is World War I; a top-level article like that needs to summarise the events, explain the importance of the subject, and summarise scholarly works on the topic. It can't possibly cover every skirmish, participant, opinion, or effect, so it provides an overview and directs the reader to sub-articles for more specifics (eg Causes of World War I). There will be the odd exception. Iri is not wrong in saying that it's not the way to go for every article (some subjects are more self-contained than others; some need more explanation than others; and nobody will ever agree on what should be omitted from a contemporary politician's biography). But 10k words is not a bad rule of thumb. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:38, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree that 10k words isn't a bad rule of thumb, but more for load times and browser issues than for readability reasons. As per one of my regular hobby-horses, as editors we sometimes lose sight of the fact that more than half of Wikipedia pageviews (and steadily rising) are in Minerva (the format non-logged-in readers see when reading Wikipedia on Android or iOS), which is totally different in both appearance and usage patterns than the Vector or Monobook displays we see as logged-in editors. (Follow the instructions here, if you want to see what a given article will look like to the majority of readers.) In Minerva, all the sections other than the lead are collapsed by default and there's no table of contents, meaning that the internal headers themselves serve as de facto links to show any given section.

World War I as it appears to the majority of readers

To stick with HJ Mitchell's example of World War I, a reader using Minerva—which to labor the point again is already the majority of readers and the proportion is rising steadily—is very unlikely to read the whole thing top-to-bottom whether the article is 1000 words, 10,000 words, or 100,000 words. Instead, they'll read the lead section, and following that will see a list of links (see right) which correspond to the sections of the article in desktop view. As such, the majority of readers will only even see, let alone read, the lead section and those sections of the body text which either look like they contain the specific information that they're looking for, or which have interesting-looking titles that encourage readers to click on them, and this is the case whatever the length of the article—to most readers it quite literally doesn't matter what the length is as they're still only going to read a few sections of the article.

I make no secret of the fact that I hate Minerva and think it's one of the WMF's most costly errors in terms of driving readers away, but it's what we have and they show no signs of changing it. In the Minerva context, the traditional arguments about summary style and article length go out the window—the most important thing is to have sufficient information within the parent article (since the links to subpages are themselves buried within already-collapsed sections so readers are unlikely even to know that they exist), and to ensure that every section header is an accurately descriptive summary of the information it contains so readers know what to click. In this new world we should probably really have "is comprehensible and correctly-formatted to a reader using a mobile device" as a specific FA criterion—there's no point something being brilliantly informative and beautifully formatted on desktop view if it looks like a garbled incoherent mess to the majority of readers—but I suspect that would cut as big a swathe through the FA list as did the mass delisting when we abandoned "brilliant prose". ‑ Iridescent 08:09, 25 December 2020 (UTC)