User:Pmanderson/FA

This essay is intended to evalute Wikipedia:Featured Articles. Is it an asset to the encyclopedia?

Evaluation standards

FA is usually justified by two arguments: it evaluates articles, supposedly picking out our very best, and it improves articles so that they may pass the evaluation. It does neither of these jobs very well, and they interfere with each other.

There are three all-too-common responses:

1. Support Yeah, fine, looks good to me.
2. Comment I don't actually know anything about this subject, but here are a couple of superficial things you can polish.
3. Oppose You've hit one of my pet peeves. Fix it or be refused promotion.

None of these judges the accuracy, verifiability, or neutrality of the article; there will often be

4. A few comments on the clarity of the article.

The Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Battle_of_Red_Cliffs for Battle of Red Cliffs comes close to exhibiting all of these. The issue for the oppose appears to be the use of Harvard referencing, which is supported by policy, and which certainly does not affect accuracy, verifiability, neutrality, or clarity.

The fundamental problem is that any article will get very few reviewers; and few of those are likely to know anything about most of our subjects.

Even when type 3 responses actually respond to something that would affect the merit of the article, they produce a further complication. For example, the first FAC for William Claiborne failed largely because the author liked linking years. At this point, the objectives for FA diverge: fixing this would slightly improve the article, but it is not the difference between a very good and a great article. Therefore, to compel improvement, we reject; but this is not a reasonable evalutation of the article; if we feature only articles beyond the reach of improvement, we will feature none.