Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Mark Speight/archive2

Oppose as per 2b

• Does not have "a system of hierarchical headings and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents".
• It does not have "a system of hierarchical headings and a substantial but not overwhelming table of contents" because it has little real content. It has little real content because it is ephemeral and trivial. No real content exists to be added.
• Like a blancmange, this article has coherence, but no content.
• We've got only one top-level heading (biography) .. the first section contains some nondescript childhood bio junk .. the second sections gives a resume' quite characteristic of some second-rate actor-wannabes all over the world, plus some praise from some TV critics (who are paid to do praise) for some shows that will be forgotten in a year or three, and we have an arrest, and we have a tragic death. Five years from now, who cares? How many in-depth analyses of the work of this individual will appear in refereed journals? Even among lighter fare, how many books will do more than mention his name in passing at best—in fact, how many will do even that? We could end up, on the second or third nom, FA'ing an article that no one will read or care about simply because its prose is grammatical and its references are well-formatted. Look again: "simply because its prose is grammatical and its references are well-formatted." The battleground that was Notability has largely (though not entirely) been won by inclusionists (as always and everywhere is the case), because Notability is just so darned hard to pin down to a precise definition. But FA should be different.
• Every single reference is a link to some online article about a then-current event. All online. What does that imply? It implies that event was ephemeral and trivial (not trivial to Speight's family, of course, and all apologies to those... but Wikipedia is not MySpace or FaceBook).
• This is a trivial article written at high-school level (arguably, at "advanced high school level"). It is grammatical and well-formatted. Those are its ONLY virtues. Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 05:24, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Well, you're right, of course. The only purpose that this article would serve as a featured article would be to, potentially, reward the editors for their work. It should not appear on the front page of this or any other encyclopedia. But I know you know there's a more general point at work here. I dare say that close to a majority of FACs accomplish precisely the same result. I'm all for the more reasoned approach to what kind of articles should be featurable, and always have been, but I'm not fighting that fight. Are you? Is your chosen method to pick one FAC and say "here's the problem"? Maybe because discussions that start out considering general principles never get anywhere? I don't know what else you could do. Well....

How about implementing the ability for the Wikipedia community to "top out" an article at Good Article status? If this type of article hits FAC, then a consensus of "reviewers" can say, no doubt in a form shortened down to an acronym, "the choice of subject matter precludes the inherent depth of research and (usually correlatively) broad enough applicability that our best work must contain." Such ideas scares people a priori and so they won't think about them any more. They think these ideas open the door to subjectivity and "censorship" running wild. But I don't believe it for a moment. It's about stepping back and admitting that many wikipedia articles are small and trivial; you may be able to make them larger with web references and such, but they'll still be trivial. And how can we feature the trivial? We're an encyclopedia. Now, the decision to top at GA would be by consensus, and consensus ideally means input from a broad swath of the community. We need to ensure the broad swath. As a reviewer, if I had this keep-at-GA option, I would wield it with the utmost care. No need to worry about advance "formalization" of my idea either; if the option to say "keep at GA" is made valid, the community's consensus response in each case will define the idea for us. Why don't we implement this idea at this FAC, as a test? Rules should not prevent improvement in the workings of the encyclopedia, they say. –Outriggr § 06:15, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Yes, this is a test case. That's why I moved the thread to Talk. As for a solution, many options are available, but have always been shouted down:

1. We could strengthen WP:WIAFA, so that FAC reviews could be given a more tangible reason to fail FACs such as this.
2. We could have two levels of FA.
3. Your idea, which may be the most doable...
4. Other solutions.

Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 06:22, 14 November 2008 (UTC)