Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article

Enough is enough

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

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

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

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

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

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

An early 2021 RFC resulted in a trial of a bot to PC-protect the featured article. That trial happened in May 2021, but when the follow-up RFC happened in June 2021 a significant fraction of participants that time opposed any use of PC protection on general principle (i.e. not because of anything that happened during the trial) and people wound up deciding they'd rather have a trial for semi-protection instead. That trial eventually happened in September 2022. Following that was supposed to be another Village Pump RFC to analyze the results and determine if it should be continued going forward, but it seems no one ever did that. Anomie⚔ 11:32, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

So it seems that the followup needs to happen and that opining here will do no good. (FWIW, one of the several reasons I gave up on building new medical content was the debacle that TFA was for buruli ulcer along with some other ridiculousness that occurred with others.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:06, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

The results make an extremely strong case -- an additional RfC would likely have quite little opposition on the merits rather than the principles, if we can get a good way to present them. Vaticidalprophet 23:21, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

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

• Noting, porn on the mainpage during lung cancer, [2] and I just took a look at the improvements damage to the article in its mainpage day (today), and someone should protect the article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:20, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  Best part. The editor who put the porn on the mainpage today is still unblocked. Yes, enough is enough. TFA isn't even being watched by enough admins to keep out porn = should be protected for the remainder. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:24, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support semi-protecting TFAs one day before and while they are on the main page. Further protections can be considered if this does not solve the problems. Z1720 (talk) 12:43, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  There have been multiple RFCS already ... supporting on this page isn't useful, as that is a local consensus problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:00, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• I have had 45 FAs I nominated for FAC feature as a TFA over the past four-and-a-half years. Every single one of them has had some level of protection by the end of its 24 hours. I agree that it may be time to recognise reality, decline to dig ourselves further into this particular hole and write in a policy-level easement to preemptive protection. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:37, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• Semi-protecting TFA is fine (usually FAs are so good these days that there is very little to be gained from opening edits to the whole world). I would oppose protection for other content linked from the Main Page, and I definitely oppose Pending Changes or other horrible non-wiki ways of dealing with changes. —Kusma (talk) 15:02, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
• This is embarrassing (the porn image in the infobox of TFA, not this discussion). If I, or another admin, just decided to semi every upcoming TFA around 23:00 each night, would said admin end up before the WP:Slough of Despond? After this, I’m willing to do it, but a bot would be so much better. Courcelles (talk) 17:46, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  We have a local consensus and if we opened another RcC, that would give us justification to proceed with protection without much risk for trouble. Schwede66 18:00, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  Sometimes you ask permission, sometimes you ask forgiveness. I believe there's a saying about their efficiency. Vaticidalprophet 23:18, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  Michael Francis Rizzi, do you renounce Satan? SN54129 11:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  @Vaticidalprophet, I did it for tomorrow’s. I’ll try and remember to keep doing so. Courcelles (talk) 23:31, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

  In practice: I think an RfC about the trial results can be done very soon, and if presented well (i.e. a way that doesn't force VPP's regulars to click too much), will sail through. "Four oversighted edits in four minutes" is emphatically something that makes a case. Vaticidalprophet 23:33, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

• Comment - just playing minor devil's advocate for a second, I assume that historically the reason for being careful about overprotectiion was that the TFA could be the way for potential newbies to learn that Wikipedia really is editable by anyone. I don't know if there's any evidence around whether there really are editors that we wouldn't recruit otherwise. As we mvoe to greater protection, and perhaps even requiring accounts in the future, we just need to think about keeping that "anyone can edit" message prominent, because there really are a lot of people who don't realise its the case. But anyway, given both the risk of articles being grotesquely vandalised and also the effect that has on editors like Sandy, based on the comments above, something definitely needs to be done and probably Semi-protectiom is The answer.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:00, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  While I share the concerns about keeping the promise "anyone can edit", I no longer think TFA is a good place for a newbie (it is rather unlikely a random newbie can help) so I semi is OK in my book (DYK items are a much better target). If we are thinking about alternatives, the only other thing I see that could be done is to get more people to do RC patrol on TFA so we can quickly revert and block the vandals. —Kusma (talk) 12:16, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  Well, it's not so much that we expect the newbies to contribute usefully to the FA, but the point is that you see an article, you hit the "Edit" button, and your change goes live. I think my first ever edit was to insert "cauliflower cheese" into an article as a joke/test, fully expecting it not to work, or be vetted in some way, but was astonished to see that it just saved straight into the page, and then realised I could also contribute.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:04, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

  If there isn't any data or "evidence around whether there really are editors that we wouldn't recruit otherwise", WMF will make some up based on a survey and twist it to suit their narrative. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:31, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

• Counter-example After reading this discussion, I took a look at the current FA. Picking a paragraph at random, I immediately found and corrected a malapropism. I was able to edit through the semi-protection but ordinary readers would not. So, the idea that FAs are so pristine that they don't need correction is mistaken. My impression is that they are usually so long that most of the text is read by few people and so such errors can persist for some time.

FYI, the error was introduced in this good faith edit rather than being the result of vandalism.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:27, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

• Strong Support semi-protecting TFAs one day before and while they are on the main page. Enough is enough. Are we going to let the article that is essentially the face of the encyclopaedia for a day get degraded by vandals? No. JML1148 ^{(talk | contribs)} 08:10, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

• Support Vandals or content creators? I'll go with the content creators. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:26, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Hello,

We are reaching out to escalate feedback we are receiving through the app questioning the integrity of Wikipedia as a result of vandalism of the article of the day.

"I opened up my Home Screen to see my Wikipedia widget showing NSFW content on my home page. No steps to replicate, I’ve opened and refreshed the article multiple times, not sure where it’s pulling the image from."

The approach of proactively protecting articles of the day drastically decreased complaints like the ones above until the recent decision to rescind proactive protections. On our end we are doing what we can to reduce interruptions in user experience by increasing the velocity of clearing cache to ensure our explore feed is updated with the article is updated. We've also created this ticket (T342119) with additional approaches. Ultimately, the biggest intervention we've seen work is to prevent them all together by protecting the page when it is the article of the day. We hope this insight will serve as an additional input as you all decide what makes most sense for your group. We are also open to additional ideas you have that we can implement on our end.

Thank you for your ongoing commitment to the community and movement.

ARamadan-WMF (talk) 08:53, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

• Support automatic semi-protection of TFAs. I can bring this to WP:CENT if it hasn't already been there. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 20:59, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Please do. Remembering to do it manually is something I’m only managing most days. Courcelles (talk) 21:06, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

  Ask and ye shall receive. I've put it at WP:VPP and will bring it to CENT shortly. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:37, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Should TFA rules be written down?

There's a discussion at Errors and that points back to TFA practices that appear to be agreed but are undocumented. I've had a look around but there does not appear to be anything written down about writing TFAs other than what is written on the project page: Each day, a summary (roughly 975 characters long) of one of Wikipedia's featured articles (FAs) appears at the top of the Main Page as Today's Featured Article (TFA). Here's what got discussed at Errors:

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Comment: captions are usually omitted for a TFA image like this. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 16:20, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I’ve had a look through the September set of TFAs and the bios are inconsistently dealt with. Some have captions for a person's photo and some don’t. I could not track down a set of rules. Is anything documented somewhere? Schwede66 18:30, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I know the main page often has its own rules, but MOS:CAPTION seems a sensible guideline to follow. In this particular case, the caption adds useful information (about when in Kaske's life the photo was taken). Bazza (talk) 18:57, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

i believe that, in general, a caption is not used for a biographical blurb if the image is a photo of the featured subject taken during the subject's prime, as seen here and here. exceptions include when other people are in the photo (as in the one previously featured in this blurb) and when the image shows a non-photographic depiction of the subject, such as a painting or sculpture, as seen here and here. i presume the captions in the september blurbs that do not follow this pattern will be removed in time. i think the blurbs from august and july currently adhere to this practice. dying (talk) 19:14, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

With 23 (Shaylee Mansfield) and 24 September (Queen Victoria) being exceptions to that rule for the current month. Hence I was wondering whether the rules are written down somewhere. Schwede66 20:47, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

yeah, i had noticed those two captions as well, so it's completely understandable for one to assume that there is no consistency after only examining the september blurbs. i think this practice (like many other quirks of the main page) is not documented in any formal guidelines, but i do try to mention it in an invisible comment whenever i remove such captions myself, as seen here.

note that i don't have a personal preference regarding whether or not such captions should be used; i only remove them because i think it is the current practice at tfa and wish to make the blurbs consistent. i have no issues with changing this practice if there is consensus for such a change. dying (talk) 21:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

As far as I know, there are no rules for this in the TFA area. We run on the basis of several RfC's, certain practicalities, and a good deal of custom, and, I like to think, common sense. It seemed to me useful to mention a year in both cases, due to the length of Victoria's reign, and Mansfield's youth, and knowing that others who care more about captions than I do would view the blurb and possibly make alterations. Wehwalt (talk) 22:05, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Should we write down any of the those rules and practices as they apply to TFAs. I think it's a good idea as it makes everything a bit more transparent and when something crops up at Errors, there's hopefully something one can refer to rather than having to rely on some of the insiders knowing how it's usually done. Schwede66 22:55, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd be happy to draft a list of prevailing "general conventions" (so to speak) from my experience looking over TFAs and other Main Page sections, which we can of course discuss and amend as we see fit. It isn't an urgent necessity, I don't think, but would certainly be useful in general. — RAVENPVFF · talk · 23:37, 4 September 2023 (UTC)

TFA scrutiny needs to be done in a timely manner

Today's TFA is my third or fourth one to receive essays of scrutiny from User:Dying a few hours before appearing on the main page. To my utter shock, an admin casually suggested pushing back the TFA appearance because of minor concerns no FAC reviewer shared. There has to be a way to do things while respecting the contributors who have put in years of hard work to get an article on the main page on a specific date. Come on, people! Having an article appear on the main page is an incredible achievement for any editor and it is not fair to have that experience regularly spoiled. I suggest moving the scrutiny sessions to at least a month before main page appearances so that FAC reviewers are able to participate in the discussions. The way it is currently being conducted, the contributors feel extreme pressure to give in to this one user's demands and change the versions of articles that have passed the community FAC process, which does not seem fair.--NØ 10:33, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Off the top of my head:

Given how much in advance TFAs are scheduled (eg, November's draft schedule is already up), if an editor can't flag up extensive and/or existential concerns at least a week before they are due to appear, then as a coordinator I would be inclined to ignore them. Minor points should be flagged up even more in advance.

WP:FAOWN applies. A consensus formed at FAC is one of the stronger ones on Wikipedia. To change it there needs to be either a significant and manifest error or an equally strong consensus to change. (It is up to the person wishing to make such a change to either make the case or gather the consensus, in the absence of agreement from the FAC nominator(s) - which should not be unreasonably withheld.) This is just normal procedure and applies while an article is nominated or scheduled for TFA as much as at any other time.

Withdrawing a TFA once scheduled is down to the scheduling coordinator. They should, obviously, take all available information into account and may consult the other coordinators. Anyone may, casually or otherwise, suggest postponement or withdrawal for any reason, and if discussions are becoming heated I am sympathetic. I think that the coordinators are only likely to go along with this for the most egregious issues (probably for older FACs) with a strong trade off between how egregious and how long before the scheduled main page appearance.

I agree that regular reviewers of blurbs - who provide an extremely important service - should be carrying out such reviews well in advance. The suggestion of a month sounds about right, insofar as I would hope that such reviewers would around now be down to a handful of outstanding issues regarding the October blurbs and have started to look at the early November ones.

Neither TFA nor (especially) Errors are venues for re-lawyering FACs.

I am sure that other opinions are also available. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:42, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

For me, I think the bottom line is that I've been away from the day-to-day business of TFA for two years, and now that I'm looking more closely, it's a bit confusing. Most of the time, people are happy, and most conflicts that do arise are handled productively. But there's still some disagreement about how all the gears fit together, and about when things are supposed to happen. Before I weigh in, I'd like to get the experience of managing October under my belt. Hopefully I'll be able to draw some initial conclusions in early November. - Dank (push to talk) 16:35, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I'd agree with both my colleagues and urge the scrutiny of blurbs, and if necessary the underlying articles, at as early a time as possible. For example, when a nomination is made at TFA/R, it would be useful if those who are helping us by editing blurbs, edit these blurbs while the nominations are being !voted upon. That would help bring out problems at the earliest possible date, and maximize the feedback. WP:ERRORS should be a final backstop, with as much work as possible, ideally everything, done in advance of TFA day. Wehwalt (talk) 16:58, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't know what the basis for this statement is: A consensus formed at FAC is one of the stronger ones on Wikipedia. To change it there needs to be either a significant and manifest error or an equally strong consensus to change. (It is up to the person wishing to make such a change to either make the case or gather the consensus, in the absence of agreement from the FAC nominator(s) - which should not be unreasonably withheld.) This is just normal procedure and applies while an article is nominated or scheduled for TFA as much as at any other time. To my knowledge, this entire premise is simply mistaken; FACs these days get a few more reviews than the one review that GAs get, and not everything is reviewed. I hope we aren't pushing the idea that the version of an FA that got reviewed by a small handful of FAC reviewers is somehow set in stone, forever immutable, particularly when crucial things are being missed that Dying is having to pick up on. The point of TFA was once that article improvements happen during TFA-- not that a handful of editors can stall improvements when a broader audience than FAC sees an FA on the main page. There is nothing about an FA that circumvents levels of consensus policy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:19, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

Hi SandyGeorgia, the policy states:

While Featured articles... are open for editing like any other, they have gone through a community review process as Featured article candidates, where they are checked for high-quality sources, a thorough survey of the relevant literature, and compliance with the Featured article criteria. Editors are asked to take particular care when editing a Featured article; it is considerate to discuss significant changes of text or images on the talk page first. The other policy being cited is WP:ONUS. SN54129 15:02, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Serial Number 54129 I'm curious to know why you think I need to be told this :) :) :). Gog's post above is well off the mark of FAOWN, to the point of concern and alarm. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

And the earlier history than that is at Wikipedia talk:Ownership of content/Archive 1#Featured articles and Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive47#WP:OWN, calling out: I merely want WP:OWN to be redrafted so that the positive efforts of primary editors to maintain the standards of their work aren't classified as "ownnership" in the derogatory sense ... Brianboulton (talk) 00:03, 25 September 2010 (UTC) (that's where it started, and that's the intent, which is well off the prima donna tone this entire thread conveys, when issues are found in an article that passed FAC). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:22, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

• Speaking as someone who works quite a bit with issues raised at WP:ERRORS, but also with a few FAs under my belt, I have to say I disagree with the sentiments expressed above. Editors have every right to flag issues with FACs prior to go-live, just as they would with any other area of the main page. My priority, and I hope others' too, is to ensure that what we show to our readers on one of the web's most visited pages is fully accurate, reflective of the literature, and also representative of our best work. Of course, in an ideal would everyone would be scrutinising TFAs months in advance and flagging issues then, but it's not an ideal world. In reality, the majority of checks on TFA, DYK, OTD and POTD happen in the day or two leading up to a particular run. And I have to say, hanging Dying out to dry like this is very unfair, when they're doing a fantastic and useful job in keeping an eye on TFA. It doesn't happen nearly as often here as in DYK, but every nominator should still be prepared for the fact that sometimes there will be issues. In this case, it seemed like the issue of whether Deja Vu is the second or third single is clear enough given the Billboard definition, but it's ambiguous enough that it was worth asking the question. Of course, FAC is a fairly rigorous process and one would expect that the resulting article is excellent in quality, but that doesn't mean it's immune from scrutiny or guaranteed 100% perfect, as implied above. There might be an issue that no reviewer managed to pick up, or perhaps there's clear sourced evidence that something is amiss.  — Amakuru (talk) 17:08, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  No one's throwing anyone under the bus, and dying's work is greatly valued. They were, after all, one of the editors we were considering to fill the vacancy among the coordinators until Dank, a former coordinator, offered their services. That esteem has only risen since then. We know that there are always going to be TFA-day reports at WP:ERRORS. We're simply trying to brainstorm ways to move the process earlier wherever we can. The more time, the better decisions, this seems obvious. Last night we were faced with suggestions that a TFA be pulled or postponed with only a couple of hours to go. That doesn't leave a lot of time for community discussion before something has to be done one way or another. Wehwalt (talk) 18:00, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  I don't disagree with any of this, Wehwalt, and certainly earlier scrutiny is preferable to later - if we can get to that point through discussion then great. But the OP statement at the top of this section says "The way it is currently being conducted, the contributors feel extreme pressure to give in to this one user's demands", as if Dying is being unreasonable in reviewing TFA articles. And then there's a suggestion from Gog that we should ignore "extensive and/or existential concerns" if they are raised less than a week before the TFA, implying that we'd let serious issues go uncorrected, simply to protect the sanctity of the "locked-in" version of the TFA and to spare the FA nominator's feelings... Anyway, that aside, let's have at it and work together to come up with a good long-term way forward! Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 18:19, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Hi Amakuru, you seem to have misunderstood what I was saying. No one is arguing that Dying should not be allowed to scrutinize TFA blurbs to "spare the FA nominator's feelings". They should just do it at a time which allows a time window for the points of scrutiny to be discussed by several editors to obtain a consensus. TFAs are generally scheduled months in advance so there is ample time. Doing it at the last moment which jeopardizes the TFA appearance itself is not the more good faith option. It is not about protecting the "locked-in" version of a TFA but rather about protecting the consensus-drivenness of the process.--NØ 20:35, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  You should instead be grateful that Dying has time to identify issues to be resolved, regardless of when Dying is able to get to them. If errors are identified the day an FA runs, or one or two days before, fixing them (rather than complaining about someone who bothered) should be the main priority and concern. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:21, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  I fail to see how these conditions are mutually exclusive. I am grateful Dying has the time to identify the issues to be resolved and, simultaneously, said identifications should be done for TFAs scheduled a month or at least a week away so the points raised can be deliberated upon for consensus. Identifying issues in TFAs scheduled a month away does not take any extra time compared to identifying them in TFAs scheduled two hours later. Not sure why a very simple point is not getting through.--NØ 21:27, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Because volunteers have time ... when they have time ... and we can't demand someone review something on a time schedule convenient to us. But more ... the entire tone of this section is problematic. Let's not have FAC become about being prima donnas rather than gratitude for any review we can get, whenever that happens. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:40, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Identifying issues in TFAs scheduled a month away does not take any extra time compared to identifying them in TFAs scheduled two hours later. Dying would not be spending extra time reviewing articles scheduled a month away...--NØ 21:44, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  I'm curious how you know Dying's schedule or time constraints? Why not focus on the real issue; why are deficient leads passing FAC at all. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:47, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Reviewing an article scheduled for October 10 does not take any more time than reviewing an article scheduled for the date September 10. Blurbs have more or less the same amount of characters. No one's schedule needs to be looked at to know this...--NØ 21:50, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Respectfully, I think that's an unrealistic demand. Aside from anything else, to get from where we are now to the October 10 point, dying would have to somehow work through 2+ noms a day for the next month, and then also not have any breaks thereafter in order to keep that up. You can flag that up as a "Big Hairy Audacious Goal" for dying if you like, but you certainly can't demand that they do this. Dying is doing you and the rest of the project a favour by reviewing the TFA, not the other way around. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 22:05, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  I too think that would be an unrealistic demand so they could probably decide to skip some. But I hope I have been able to demonstrate that my point is about the time window and not about the scrutiny itself. Cheers.--NØ 22:11, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

• Dying does a good job, and the TFA schedulers are working well enough in advance, so I don't agree with criticism there, and don't see any need for change. I'm mostly in line with Amakuru here, with one big difference.
  The underlying problem here resides at FAC; Dying should not be needing to do what Dying does so well. Leads are used to generate TFA blurbs, and leads are not being well enough scrutinized at FAC. The blurbs should more easily write themselves if FAC is doing its job at reviewing the lead. That is the reason that 2a has a separate callout in the criteria, and that Dying is doing so much work on blurbs indicates FAC isn't doing the job there. This problem should be raised at FAC-- not aimed at Dying or the TFA schedulers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:41, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  Deficient leads getting through FAC are by no means rare. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:46, 8 September 2023 (UTC)

  The blurbs don't write themselves because the character limit on blurbs is so much smaller than that of the average Good Article. Even a short article like The Forum, Norwich (picked at random from the GA queue) with a one paragraph lead still has a lead longer than the blurb limit. Most FAs have 3 or 4 paragraphs. So the blurbs have to be custom-written, and this is usually done by the TFA coordinator and FAC nominator in partnership. Nowadays we do it shortly after the article is promoted, but some still have to be written at the time it is nominated for TFA. Errors can occur in the condensation process. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:56, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

  I acknowledge and understand that, but then I've seen many times (as in the two examples I gave above), where the deficiencies were not in the condensation to a blurb, but in the actual lead content. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:44, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm late to this discussion – been off WP for a day and a bit. I'm the admin who "casually suggested" that pushing back the TFA appearance was an option for dealing with unresolved issues. I'm not sure why that suggestion caused "utter shock" to MaranoFan. I could understand that concern if the scheduled date was of relevance to a particular TFA, but this wasn't the case. In general terms and for future reference, I'd like to learn why swapping TFAs if one that's about to run has unresolved issues is apparently not an option that's available to us. The reason why I'm asking is because I think that's an elegant way of dealing with time pressure; such a swap would generate as much time as needed to get to the bottom of any potential issues. Schwede66 19:25, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

There is a date relevance for the FA in question but that is not the point. "Unresolved issues" is subjective, and Dying in particular finds "unresolved issues" extremely often a mere few hours before TFA appearances. This does not leave the time window for subject matter experts and the FAC's reviewers to weigh in on why they did not perceive the same "unresolved issues". Given how often this happens, starting to willy-nilly delay TFA appearances is dangerous territory and we might as well close down the TFAR page as it is absolutely meaningless.--NØ 19:56, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Sometimes such a swap would be fairly feasible, but sometimes that would mean that an article is being put up where the FAC nominator is not expecting it so soon and the blurb may not be as vetted as we usually have it. Wehwalt (talk) 19:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Completely agreed with Wehwalt, and I'll fill in some details on what "feasible" looks like to me: if there's a well-supported argument going on the day before a blurb's Main Page appearance, and it's about something substantive and significant, and there isn't a quick rewording or workaround available that would keep us out of trouble, and it looks like we won't figure out an answer before the Main Page appearance, and if there's another risk-free blurb available that could be swapped in, and if it's one of my months to handle these things ... yes, I'd be open to pulling it. Otherwise, I think, no, because pulling articles at the last minute has sometimes caused people to lose faith in the process. (I can give examples but I'd rather not.) - Dank (push to talk) 20:01, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Do TFA coordinators all have Errors on their watchlist? Or what's the best way to get input? Or is it really up to that month's coordinator to make a call (and I assume I can figure out who the coordinator is simply by looking at an item's history)? Schwede66 20:10, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

{{@TFA}} always works, but if you'd rather ping us individually: I've got the first month of each quarter, Gog has the 2nd, and Wehwalt has the 3rd. I don't have the page watchlisted, but I'm subscribed to the section (i.e. WP:Main_Page/Errors#Errors in the summary of the featured article). - Dank (push to talk) 20:32, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

I do keep WP:ERRORS on my watchlist. Often, I've seen action taken on issues before I notice, or I may feel that I don't care to weigh in on, for one reason or another.

Getting back to swaps, if one had been necessary, I could have done it for the 13th, since I was the FAC nominator there. It's usually my practice to have an article late in the month where the nominator is either myself or someone no longer active, that can be sacrificed or swapped. But I already used up that flexibility when late scheduling requests came in. So after the 13th, a swap would be problematical. Wehwalt (talk) 20:43, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

An awful lot of work goes into getting an article to TFA. Editors can devote years of their Wikipedian efforts to getting an article onto the front page and can see this as the pinnacle of their work on the site. I have heard of relatives being emailed or fan sites alerted. The blurb may have been on TFAR for several weeks and garnered nothing but supports. Four or five weeks in advance the nominating editor will have been formally told that it will be running as a TFA and when. When it is subsequently suggested at a few hours notice that it be pulled I suspect that for some nominators "utter shock" is only mildly hyperbolic.

No one argues that blurbs don't need reviewing or are not the better for this. This is one reason why there is a formal process for reviewing and approving - or not - requested TFAs. And why coordinators try really hard to have draft blurbs up six weeks in advance and to get finalised blurbs posted at least a month in advance. Which may well leave people scratching their heads as to why Errors is being used for something for which there is already a well established system.

But I am starting to repeat what I said above in "Off the top of my head". Re-reading it that seems on the money and I don't see anything in my colleagues subsequent comments which contradicts anything there. Gog the Mild (talk) 20:52, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for all your replies! Schwede66 20:57, 9 September 2023 (UTC)

everyone, it is admittedly a bit weird for me to see what i do described as a tfa scrutiny session, as i had generally thought of what i did as an informal process rather than anything officially part of tfa. however, if other editors are beginning to see it as part of tfa, i feel like i should be subject to a tfa scrutiny session myself, so that we can formalize anything that seems to call for formalization. to facilitate this, i had started writing out a description of what i have been doing, but eventually realized that such a description would be very long, even if i focused only on the parts most pertinent to this discussion, so i have opted to give only a very brief overview of the most relevant parts instead. i hope you all will forgive me for this wall of text, as well as the delayed response, as a new blurb copyedit comes due every day no matter what. there are many other points that i'd like to address, but this comment is getting so long, i thought i should mention only what i think is most important.

• my current understanding is that the only thing that is really formalized about my process is that if i make any unilateral copyedits to the blurb, i generally should make them at least a week in advance. technically, i have no responsibilities at tfa and can just stop doing what i do whenever i want without even resigning anything. however, i wouldn't dream of that because i really enjoy the process and working with the editors here at tfa. over time, i think i have ended up with some implicit responsibilities. for example, i think i have enough experience reviewing featured articles and tfa blurbs at this point that i would be expected to speak up if i think a blurb may need to be rewritten or possibly pulled, which thankfully has been extremely rare.
• i believe the unilateral copyedit i make to the blurb consists only of uncontroversial changes. i make no future edits to the blurb without forming some kind of consensus with at least one other editor, often the fac nominator. i believe i have adhered to this self-imposed standard for roughly two years now, and follow it strictly enough that if i later discover an error on my part that hasn't been corrected by subsequent copyeditors, i will report myself to wp:errors rather than make another unilateral edit. interestingly, i also tend to avoid making any unilateral edits to the featured article itself at any time, even to correct obvious errors, so i believe wp:faown is pretty much respected by default.
• the time i spend on any one blurb is often spread out over weeks, but the bulk of it is generally spent on the day i make the unilateral copyedit to the blurb. during the process of preparing for this copyedit, i may have noted some issues that i think deserve further consideration. i am usually burnt out on the subject matter immediately after the copyedit, so will generally let at least a day or two pass before i look at my notes again to see if what i had a concern about at the time remains something that i think should be addressed. the points can be quite varied, so there is really no way for me to predict how much time i need in order to do my own research before i raise a query with an fac nominator. notably, my research often also includes reviewing the fac discussion, as i do not wish to relitigate any issues that were already covered at fac.
• i have admittedly never considered my queries to fall under any time restriction, since i believe any editor is open to scrutiny at any time, and in fact, may get a good deal of it on the day their work is featured on the main page. however, as a courtesy, i try to raise any points at least two or three days before the main page appearance date, so that an fac nominator has about a day to change the blurb before it falls under cascading protection. i don't consider this a strict deadline; if i don't get much time that day to work on tfa matters, the copyedit always takes priority.
• unfortunately, this process is rather time-consuming and not easily compressible. i think my limit is roughly one blurb a day at the level of quality i have been aiming for, not only due to temporal considerations, but also due to psychological ones. i'm actually rather surprised that i have been able to do this for two years without a break so far, and am not sure if i need one anytime soon.

anyway, i hope this gives a very rough idea of what i do. any of it is open to change, and i will be happy to try to conform to any consensus established here. also, please let me know if you want any details or clarification regarding anything i glossed over or simply didn't mention.

as an aside, to those who don't know this, i have previously tried to make it clear to the tfa coordinators that i welcome criticism, so although it may seem to some that they are being overly harsh, i have been seeing their comments as good feedback rather than taking any of it personally. that being said, i am unbelievably grateful for those who have come to my defense. all these words of praise from editors i greatly respect has brought much water to my eyes.

last but not least, i wanted to mention something in defense of Schwede66, who raised the possibility of the blurb being rescheduled. i think raising the question was entirely reasonable, as tfa appearance dates have been pushed back before, or simply pulled, and how that is decided is not necessarily entirely clear to everyone at wp:errors. in this case, i thought what happened was proper: the tfa scheduler for the month was alerted, and made a decision, which stood. the process worked, and no one did anything wrong. dying (talk) 04:44, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the amazing summary of your dedication, which is most appreciated. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 05:59, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Wow. That’s way more involved than what I had imagined. Thanks for your good work. Schwede66 09:02, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

Yes, OMG, thanks for your work. I mean that sincerely. Believe me, my intention is not to bring "water to [your] eyes" but to avoid last minute tensions for the TFA nominators. Highlighting issues a few weeks in advance seems to be something you are open to doing, if I understand correctly?--NØ 09:24, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

MaranoFan, sure, if there's a consensus for it. how should it be implemented? obviously, i am simply incapable of completing the big hairy audacious goal. should i just jump ahead and ignore a month's worth of blurbs? admittedly, the next few copyedits might be a bit rough then, as i don't think i've begun reviewing any of the blurbs at that point yet. i am also not sure if this change would put undue pressure on the tfa coordinators. based on the schedule you are proposing, i should have made my unilateral copyedit of the first october blurb about three weeks ago, even though that blurb was only posted one week ago. i don't know if it would be fair to ask the coordinators to change their schedule just so that i can post my unilateral copyedits according to the schedule you are requesting.

also, would this mean that i simply shouldn't mention anything about a blurb during the month before it appears on the main page? i assume this would necessarily mean that i should also ignore all blurbs that are swapped in less than a month before their appearance. in addition, would this restriction apply only to myself, to a certain subset of editors, or to everyone? note that i actually don't mind if there is consensus for a restriction that applies only to me. after all, the request for me to make unilateral edits at least a week before a blurb's run date is a similar restriction, and i have no issues with it.

i feel like i should also note that, with such a change, my ability to help out at wp:errors will probably be much weaker, since i generally stop thinking about a blurb after the unilateral copyedit unless there are remaining issues to consider, in order to prevent burnout. for example, i remember being able to explain that an unusual image choice was due to a date request that was not obvious in this error report, but i just looked through the july blurbs and realized that, aside from the obvious ones, i can no longer remember offhand if any of them had a specific date request.

by the way, is the timing of my queries a concern for the other fac nominators? i think this is the first time it has been raised before, so was rather surprised at the suggestion of the big hairy audacious goal. i can understand being troubled by someone unilaterally changing a blurb not long before it falls under cascading protection, but as i welcome people critiquing my work, i admittedly had never considered the possibility that one of my queries would spoil someone's tfa appearance experience before. (i was actually the idiot responsible for the quirky image hook at dyk this past april fools' day, and greatly enjoyed all the error reports.)

if it is just you, i think it should be easy enough to accommodate one person's wishes. there is one obvious solution: i could simply skip over your blurbs. the process is a labor of love, and there is no need for me to put myself through the process if you prefer to avoid scrutiny. tfa doesn't require it, and the project ran fine for years without me. i can also think of another solution offhand. when Dank was helping me develop my process, i would raise my concerns regarding the blurbs directly with him, and he would decide whether something should be done about them. following that practice, in the future, i could raise any concerns i have regarding your blurbs directly with the tfa scheduler for the month instead, who could handle them if desired, to avoid spoiling your experience. would either of these options be agreeable to you? dying (talk) 21:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

It would be great if Dying could bring that level of scrutiny to articles at FAC, although per VOL etc some prefer to play a lone game. SN54129 13:28, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129: we can always hope, yet be thankful for his copyedits to our blurbs. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 18:44, 11 September 2023 (UTC)

Serial Number 54129, i am admittedly unsure of what you mean by "play a lone game", but i have actually been meaning to join you all at fac for some time. unfortunately, i have been hitting a psychological barrier: i don't want to technically have the power to fail someone's article without having gone through the process myself. ironically, my work at tfa is currently what is preventing me from finding the time to write anything worthy of the fac process. hopefully someday. dying (talk) 21:05, 12 September 2023 (UTC)

@Dying: Let me express myself through the medium of poetry. Yes, I am that kind of sensitive guy :D ^{(It's )} SN54129 20:16, 16 September 2023 (UTC)

The Main Page Haven

And User:Dying, always scrying, FAC unsubmitting, still is sitting,

On ERRORS' empty eyrie just above the Main Page door;

And his Process and its private passion appears ashen to those daydreaming of astronautic FACs scheming, preferring pepper to an abettor Swift'en,

And the Main Page admins o’er him fully praising throw out all that FAC forgot, failed or did fully ignore all errors for;

And my FAC from that Process purposefully snipped that which FAC ne'er failed, until Dying's deftly dulling nail, in spite a crying wail "But whatever for?"

Shall be TFA—nevermore!

(W/a EAP)

Nicely done, and thanks for your work. - Dank (push to talk) 13:30, 10 September 2023 (UTC)

• Different editors have different habits and workflows and, per our policy WP:CHOICE, they are free to work in their own way. In my case, I usually browse the main page every morning, looking at all the sections such as TFA, DYK, ITN and so on. If I especially like an entry then I might thank the principal author, who oftens turns out to be Dumelow. If I spot some other issue then I may drill down and check it out. If it seems erroneous, then I report it at WP:ERRORS because that's the proper process.

It is then sometimes suggested that I should have spotted and reported the error sooner. This is absurd because this is usually the first time I've encountered the article in question and I look at many such articles every day. The point of putting articles on the main page is to give them a much wider exposure than they would otherwise get and so I'm just one of thousands of editors reading the new day's entries. These many eyes will naturally bring lots of fresh perspectives and so a spike in feedback should be expected.

I've sometimes wondered whether I should try inspecting such articles at the outset. The trouble is that, when I look at WP:FAC, I find that it's full of articles like 1912–13 Gillingham F.C. season which are far from vital and so only of interest to fans. So, that's another factor – such niche topics are not going to get much attention until they reach the main page. At the recent London Wikimeet, the work of Phlsph7 was commended. They have been bringing broad topics like Education and Logic to GA level and this is so unusual that it's remarkable.

Andrew🐉(talk) 08:39, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Thanks Andrew. This is in reply, but also in reply to the current complaint at WP:ERRORS about today's TFA ... which is (quote) "Seems largely promotional." I've been wondering for a while what my philosophy is going to be regarding complaints at ERRORS during October, and the answer just popped into my head (finally). I think the key is to respond in two different ways at the same time. As an editor and a member of the Wikipedia community, I'm interested in what everyone has to say, including on the day an article is on the Main Page. Sometimes I'm personally skeptical, but I at least try to push aside my skepticism and think about whether there are edits I can make that address the criticisms. For instance, in response to one discussion about BLP issues, even though I was thinking "I've heard this before", I reviewed blurbs I've written to see if I was being careful enough ... turns out I wasn't, and I made some edits accordingly. But at the same time, people will be expecting me to act like a scheduling coord in October, and we'll have to figure out together what that means. If someone makes a comment like "Seems largely promotional" and there doesn't seem to be support for that in the discussion, then people might expect me to blank the discussion at the point where it appears that nothing's going to happen. The blanking part is routine, and also an important part of supporting the informal discussion rules at ERRORS. I'm open to discussing the pros and cons of blanking any time; in the meantime, I'll just try to copy what's been done before. - Dank (push to talk) 16:46, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

If an article is claimed to be "largely promotional" it should be easy for the complainant to point out where it fails NPOV. If no such failures can be found, the complaint should be ignored. —Kusma (talk) 17:45, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

December schedule

A tentative schedule for December 2023 may be found here. This is not intended to foreclose further TFA/Rs, nor to stop !voting in the various TFA/Rs that have already been submitted. Scheduling will start in a few days. Wehwalt (talk) 19:49, 24 October 2023 (UTC)

Possible non-mainspace TFA

Would it be possible to include a piece of Wikipedia history, in this case WP:UuU, on the Main Page, either on January 15th (Wikipedia's anniversary) or January 16th (the UuU edit's anniversary)? Although this is more niche due to the fact that it's no longer Wikipedia's oldest edit, it is still an interesting piece of Wikipedian history. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:35, 28 October 2023 (UTC)