Wikipedia:BrilliantProse
 | This page is currently inactive and is retained for historical reference. Either the page is no longer relevant or consensus on its purpose has become unclear. To revive discussion, seek broader input via a forum such as the village pump. Replaced with the featured articles process. |
- drawing on John M Wolfson's page "Pre-June 2003 Brilliant Prose"
| “ | Wikipedia does rock. By the count on the "brilliant prose" page, there are 14 not-bad articles so far [out of an estimated 184 total], and that's great. | ” |
| — Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger announcing the BrilliantProse page introduction in inaugurating the Wikipedia-l mailing list, 22 January 2001[1] | ||
The "modern" (so to speak) process of Featured Article candidacy was created on 24 June 2003 by User:Eloquence. Prior to that time Wikipedia had a system known as Brilliant Prose to recognize its best content, which was an ad hoc collection of articles added to the Brilliant prose page by various editors.
Starting in November 2001 these additions are readily available in the [merged] page history of Wikipedia:Featured articles. This page commemorates the earlier process and contains history up to 17 August 2001. There are some missing edits from August to November 2001 which have as yet not been found.[2]
First light[edit]
This was the initial revision of BrilliantProse from 23:53, 21 January 2001:[3]
Somebody thinks the following WikiPedia pages are "brilliant prose" or at least pretty damn good:
TheCanonofScripture -- MathematicalGrouP -- NewZealand --
And the following are looking very promising:
BallroomDance -- ChristianIty -- DirectRealism -- EuroCurrency -- OpenContent --
and this is the revision from 00:02, 22 January 2001, which was current when the first Wikipedia-l email referencing "14 not-bad articles so far" was sent:[4]
Somebody thinks the following WikiPedia pages are "brilliant prose" or at least pretty damn good:
TheCanonofScripture -- MathematicalGrouP -- NewZealand -- PythagoreanTheorem -- SabBath -- TaoTehChing -- TheMostRemarkableFormulaInTheWorld -- TheRecorder
And the following are looking very promising:
BallroomDance -- ChristianIty -- DirectRealism -- EuroCurrency -- OpenContent -- PrettyGoodPrivacy
Well, whatever these articles are, they sure aren't PatentNonsense!
First criteria for inclusion (May 2001)[edit]
(1) copious original content;
(2) good writing;
(3) clarity for the person who doesn't know what the topic is about
(after all, this is an encyclopedia!);
(4) whimsy. --Larry Sanger[5]
Articles listed as Brilliant Prose before June 2001[edit]
- music
- disco
- Freestyle music
- Hammond organ
- hip hop
- jazz
- Mozart
- musical instrument
- punk rock
- The Recorder
- saxophone
- religion
- The Book of Mormon
- The Canon of Scripture
- Catholicism
- Christianity
- Protestantism
- Sabbath
- Scientology
- Tao Teh Ching
- literature
- science fiction
- Ernest Hemingway
- H. G. Wells
- Stephen King
- film and television
- film theory "some good articles in this area"
- Paramount
- Star Trek
- Walt Disney
- animals
- bulldogging
- horse-breaking
- horseshoe
- computing and technology
- ASCII
- code
- Computer Security
- computer system
- Echelon
- information theory "probably others about Computing"
- Linux
- markup language
- Search Engine
- The Singularity
- World Wide Web
- law and copyright
- copyright "and related pages"
- intellectual property
- Law "bunches of good brief articles"
- trade secret
- language
- Japanese Language
- Language "some of the individual language pages are excellent"
- politics and economics
- Anarchism
- Capitalism
- Economics
- market forms "and related pages"
- sociology + society
- Disabilities/Disability Etiquette
- Hate Crime
- Milgram experiment
- negligence
- political correctness
- geography
- City "a few of the city articles are good"
- countries of the world "the CIA pages, anyway; hey, the CIA did a great job!"
- Earth
- Gladstone Oregon
- New Zealand
- history
- Alexander the Great
- Byzantine Empire
- East Germany
- History of Germany
- History of England
- History of Levant
- Netherlands/History
- History of Science and Technology
- United States/History
- World War I
- mathematics
- Mathematical Group
- The Most Remarkable Formula In The World[note 1]
- Pythagorean Theorem
- statistics "the whole area"
- science & engineering
- Alchemy
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Biology "many excellent pages here, and a good start generally"
- carbon
- cladistics
- Classical Mechanics
- DNA
- geologic ages "and related pages"
- Paleontology
- periodic table
- protista
- Quantum Mechanics
- Road Transport
- Spacecraft Propulsion
- games
- Bridge
- Game (this whole area is excellent)
- game theory
- Go
- Poker (amazing!)
- Sheepshead
- Stone, Paper, Scissors
- video game (a great start)
- Wikipedia
- Wikipedia FAQ
See also[edit]
Notes[edit]
- ^ now Euler's identity, see the Nostalgia Wikipedia