Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive88

Canvassing support for Nonmetal

The nominator, User:Sandbh has canvassed for support of this candidate:

Michael_D._Turnbull

Petergans

Utopes

Not only have "supports" been blatantly solicited, the nominator has unilaterally declared my oppose on sources and summary style as "inconsequential". -Graham Beards (talk) 17:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Gah, this isn't helpful Sandbh. If you want more reviews, ask for more reviews, but don't ask for "supports" and don't declare other editors' positions as "inconsequential". I imagine if this kind of behaviour continues, some kind of topic ban will be eventually requested. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 18:04, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Sandbh: - This is not appropriate behavior. You can ask for reviews, but only in a neutral manner. Don't ask previously uninvolved editors to come in and support - this is a violation of WP:CANVASS. Any notifications left for editors to come to an FA should be made in a neutral manner and not made to push them to a specific outcome. Hog Farm _Talk 18:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Definitely a breach of WP:CANVAS, which applies s much at FAC as anywhere else on a project that needs to establish and implement rule by consensus (I don't see the word 'inconsequential', mind you, but maybe I missed something.) ——Serial 18:52, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Unproductive discussion

You did ;-) "It so far has two supports and one (inconsequential) oppose". Graham Beards (talk) 19:07, 20 November 2021 (UTC) Couldn't find it with ctrl+F, and I've had a brief but insubstantial look in the history with no luck. Still, the important claim—canvassing—is beyond doubt. @FAC coordinators: , FYI. ——Serial 19:30, 20 November 2021 (UTC) You must be looking in the wrong place. See [1]. Graham Beards (talk) 19:33, 20 November 2021 (UTC) Ah, that's because you didn't provide a diff. Cheers. ——Serial 19:40, 20 November 2021 (UTC) Other than the THREE diffs he provided in the opening post you mean? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 19:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC) In quotes, rather than in brackets? Nah. ——Serial 19:54, 20 November 2021 (UTC) Futile. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 19:56, 20 November 2021 (UTC) as to whether you are referring to your edits or general presence here. ——Serial 20:00, 20 November 2021 (UTC) (I have warned Serial about making personal attacks. Here's the diff [2]. Graham Beards (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC)) Graham Beards (talk) 20:06, 20 November 2021 (UTC) For the clarification requested Serial Number 54129, the diffs were provided in the original post. Please see WP:CIR before making yet more erroneous posts or personal attacks. Shameful. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 20:24, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Asking people to review your FAC is encouraged. Some people leave notices on every review they do asking for input on an ongoing FAC. However, asking people to support or oppose a FAC is not acceptable for the reasons explained above. The coords decide how to weigh different reviews and so it's both premature and rude to declare them "inconsequential". (t · c) buidhe 19:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The FAC has been irrevocably compromised and should be archived. The article has received lengthy and valuable reviews at this FAC, which should hold it in good stead for any future nomination. We should of course assume good faith, but we cannot let this go unchallenged; it will set a precedent. Graham Beards (talk) 19:57, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Recommend the coords archive it per the violations of CANVASSING. We need to set a precedent that this behavior is not acceptable here at FAC. Noah^Talk 21:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Sandbh comments: I hope I’m allowed to give an account of myself? If so, this will follow shortly. Thank you, Sandbh. Sandbh (talk) 21:45, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I can't speak for the group, but I think you can provide an explanation. I would appreciate it if you could give a list of editors you reached out to for this FAC, in the spirit of full transparency. Z1720 (talk) 22:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you Z1720. Will do. Sandbh (talk) 23:17, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Sandbh account: I’ve been editing for ten years, and have been involved in or attained three FA, and up to now had never heard of WP:CANVAS.

Further, the FAC instructions say nothing about WP:CANVAS.

In reading through the FAC nominations page I'd seen Gog the Mild politely asking reviewers, on the FAC page, if they were in a position to support or oppose nomination, with no obligation to do either.

On that basis, and WP:IGF, I asked some editors if they’d be in a position to support or oppose my nomination, on a no obligation basis. I later dropped the “oppose” part as I didn’t understand why one would ask another editor if they'd be in a position to oppose a nomination, and my question included a no-obligation proviso. Personally, I draw a distinction between blatant canvassing such as, "I'm hoping you will support my nomination" v saying "I was wondering if you'd be in position to support my nomination, no obligation?" Others may treat this as a semantic contrivance.

Elsewhere, User:SandyGeorgia/Achieving_excellence_through_featured_content#Advice_for_FA_aspirants writes here:

"Ask as many topic area experts to review your article as you can find. Most will be happy to have been asked, and a majority of previous FAC nominators will have done similar themselves when starting out."

According to Graham this is excellent advice.

If I were to follow this advice, I'd explain that I was tying to get the article up to FA status, and ask the editor to review the article in that context. I'm not sure what the difference is between this and asking the same author, post FAC nom, if they now felt they'd be in a position to support the FAC nomination, on the basis of it being up to FAC standard.

As far as notifying/asking other editors, this is what I did:

1. I posted notifications at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements [3][4] and [[5]] [6][7]. This prompted comments from three editors, one of whom supported.
2. I pm'd a few other editors whom I'd got to know personally during my six month chemical elements based topic ban, which arose as a result of a disagreement I had with one WP:ELEM member, who has nevertheless commented on the current FAC nomination (he and I have expressed no hard feelings). The pm prompted some comments but no support. One of these other editors had previously opposed.
3. Later, on the basis of their expertise, I pm'd some former members of WP:ELEM whom I'd either not interacted with as they were around before my time, or had only seen one or two talk page edits from in the past 10 years. Nil response.
4. Recently, I asked the three editors that DePiep listed on the FAC project page[8].
5. On my talk page I pinged an editor who had expressed an interest in FAC#2 [9], and who graciously declined my FAC#3 request.
6. And another two editors [10][11] the latter with no expertise in chemistry, and who may have provided the most comments, along with YBG, at FAC#3 (neither supporting). I'm sorry for the FAC coordinators for whom this will be a chore to read through. I asked the latter editor since they had previously expressed support for the way I'd spent so much good effort trying to work stuff out at WP:ANI, including integrity and careful attention paid.[12]
7. And I asked another editor, on the basis of their interest in physical chemistry, chemistry, physics, history of science, if they could chime in [13].

I believe that's all, going from memory; I didn't keep a list.

I didn't know how those editors would respond, if at all, to my request. Petergans and I, for example, have expressed strong disagreement with one another in previous discussions on other talk pages e.g. Talk:List of aqueous ions by element. That said, I respect his expertise in chemistry and different perspective to mine, and I asked him on that basis. I asked Michael Turnbull, whom I’d interacted with, as I recall, once before, on the basis of his expertise in organic chemistry.

Now that I’m aware of WP:CANVASS I intend to observe it. Having said that it’d be good if the FAC instructions could clarify what's acceptable and what isn't acceptable. For example, is it permissible to notify an FAC nomination to an editor and to ask them to participate in it? Judging from other comments this is OK. If so, could this guidance please be included in the FAC instructions so that it does not trip up other less experience FAC nominators?

Re the general comments made in this section it saddens me that fellow editors are quick to respond, judge my actions in some cases, and provide guidance without first giving me an opportunity to give an account of myself.

Re Graham Beards’ comment, he has a conflict of interest given his oppose to the nomination. That said he described the nomination as a commendable effort. I have acknowledged that his comments resulted in improvements to the article. As well, he has mentioned "IGF" in this case and I further thank him for that.

As far as “declaring” Graham’s oppose as inconsequential I made no such declaration on the FAC project page. It is otherwise my personal IGF opinion included in my posts to editor talk pages.

Looking at the FAC so far and more generally, it seems to me that the four supports have been made in recognition of the merits of the article, having regard to the FAC criteria, and that's a good thing. Of the other reviewers I’ve made improvements to the article in response or, if not, carefully explained my position including in light of FAC guidance. From my recollection of past FAC nominations that is how I gather the process works.

If my opinion counts then there are two remaining, separate, issues:

1. The overall calibre of the article and the merits and basis of the four supports and three other positive reviewers; and the one oppose and one other generally negative reviewer; and
2. My IGF, inadvertent breach of WP:CANVAS.

I feel that all #2 warrants is a warning to me, of the kinds already expressed here, which I gladly acknowledge and will observe in future.

I've strived to maintain a courteous and collegiate demeanour throughout FAC#3 and intend to continue to do so.

Thank you, Sandbh (talk) 01:44, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

• The reason WP:CANVASS isn't spelled out in the FAC instructions is that it's a sitewide behavioral guidelines, and it's not necessary/feasible to note that stuff that applies elsewhere applies here, too. The difference between asking those who have already placed comments if they feel like supporting/opposing is that it's essentially saying "you've commented here - is everything addressed to your satisfaction". There's nothing wrong with placing a neutral request for reviews, but keep it neutral and don't specifically ask for a support. As to the bit about a review being inconsequential - I'd recommend you not make such comments in the future. It may be perfectly innocent in your mind, but to the reviewer who posted the review it has the potential to be inflammatory - cost-benefit relation there is negative. This looks like a genuine good-faith mistake here, but I hope Sandbh will keep the feedback here in mind for the future. Hog Farm _Talk 01:53, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Regarding my essay which you quote, asking content experts to review (pre-FAC) is very different from asking them to support while at FAC. I see you made an honest mistake, but in different times, it would have resulted in immediate archival. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:04, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I would find assuming good faith easier if I had received an apology; instead Sandbh writes "(Graham) has a conflict of interest given his oppose to the nomination". I opposed because we could not agree on the use of ancient sources (in a science article) and the inclusion of the quotations. To be blunt, the FAC is a mess and I feel sorry for the coordinator who has to unravel it. Even one of the reviewers complained about this. The FAC is far from over. There are just two unsolicited declarations of support and there has been no source review yet. My recommendation is to archive this FAC − or restart it as Sandy occasionally had to − I think it has been hopelessly compromised by the nominator's naivety. Graham Beards (talk) 08:40, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Dear GrahamGraham Beards---re-ping as the first was to the wrong Graham

I regret the need to prolong this thread. The contributions of Hog Farm and SandyGeorgia were all that I felt needed to be said in the matter.

I apologise for my apparent naivety.

One week ago on the FAC page I gave the reasons for my opinion of the oppose.[14] That edit was a summary of somewhat more detailed explanations I provided.[15][16][17][18][19][20]

I understand that the decision to promote an FAC nomination is based on establishing consensus, and that consensus does not require unanimity.

In that context it did not occur to me that, in concisely expressing my personal opinion of the oppose, I had something to apologise for.

Nevertheless I apologise to you for any slight that may arisen.

In closing, the 3rd and 4th FAC supports were made by one editor who is a former lecturer in inorganic chemistry; and another editor who is an organic chemist. Any inference that their objectivity may have been compromised as a consequence of my nativity is, I feel, disrespectful and unhelpful.

I trust the focus can now return to the overall merits of the article. Personally, I hope to be able to return to addressing the few outstanding items at the nonmetal FAC page.

sincerely, Sandbh (talk) 22:06, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Sandbh, I fear that my message may not have been clear or I was overly brief as I have relatives here for Thanksgiving. You canvassed, and even if you were unaware of the policy, and even if the policy didn’t exist, and even if it is an honest mistake, common sense should inform anyone that you can’t go around asking other people for support, while at the same time denigrating reviews from others. I don’t know how you could have read anything like that into my essay, so I re-checked my wording, and it is clearly about things one is expected to do before approaching FAC. You would have earned an immediate archival for these actions in the past. I cannot guess why that has not been done in this case, but the integrity of the process is (or should be) more important than any individual nomination. Much more significant is that you owe Graham a straight up, straightforward, no weasle apology for labeling his oppose as “inconsequential”. What I see above is a weasly apology, as opposed to a sincere and heartfelt one. I don’t know why your nomination is still open, but I’d feel much better about that if your “apology” to Graham had seemed less weasly. Instead, you are here on this page, still trying to justify your stance wrt someone who kindly reviewed your article, and rearguing on this page a FAC that should be closed. This whole idea that three supports equals promotions needs to end; this is an example of where it has led. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:27, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Dear GrahamGraham Beards---re-ping as the first was to the wrong Graham

I unreservedly apologise to you for referring to your oppose as inconsequential.

sincerely, Sandbh (talk) 05:32, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

@Sandbh, you keep referencing the wrong Graham. Please double-check your mentions. Graham^talk/mail/e 16:38, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, I've updated the pings, to Graham Beards this time. Sandbh (talk) 21:49, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Received and acknowledged. Thank you. Graham Beards (talk) 22:51, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

The role of FAC co-ordinator

Hello all. We've had some lively discussion above about new co-ords, and their roles. We have, I believe, two new candidates getting almost unanimously supported to be added to the co-ord payroll. However, I've also seen a post from SandyGeorgia which indicates that there has perhaps been some perception that co-ords should be experienced in a diverse area of the encyclopedia, and moreover, be capable of "outreach" for FAC. This is literally the first time, in more than a decade, that I've heard this perspective, and given the morass of mixed commentary going on in preceding sections, I'd just like to understand what the community believe our FAC co-ords are here to do. The FAC boilerplate says: The FAC coordinators—Ian Rose, Ealdgyth and Gog the Mild—determine the timing of the process for each nomination. For a nomination to be promoted to FA status, consensus must be reached ... (it's there for all to see). Is there a tacit expectation that our co-ords need to be doing more than this? Also, an assertion has been made that we have "declining reviews". I'm not clear on that but since we have a near-record number of promotions, is there a corollary that there's an issue with the current co-ordinator promotion methodology? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 22:45, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I still think that there is a benefit to having coordinators who are experienced in different subject areas, just for knowing when to promote an article. For example, if an article in a subject area I'm slightly familiar with looks ready to promote I would check it over and might notice that there is something missing, therefore would enter an oppose rather than promoting it. Whereas if it's not an area I know, like pop culture or hard math, I would probably not notice if reviewers missed anything. (t · c) buidhe 22:52, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, and if I could own a BMW and a Lamborghini, I probably would. We deal with what we have. Are we now looking at a situation where we "elect" FA co-ords based on their experience and suggestions for promoting the FAC project? Like RFA/Arbcom? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:04, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

I personally would support electing FAC coords similarly to MILHIST coords (self-nomination and approval voting, terms of 1-2 years). The number of coords could be decided by consensus. Outreach does not need to be a specific responsibility of the coords since anyone can do outreach. (t · c) buidhe 23:10, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

This seems reasonable, I guess the only thing missing right now here is the "term" aspect. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:13, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

TRM, this section does not seem to be a genuine attempt to listen to what the community thinks. It seems more you are angling for people to agree with you that Sandy is wrong. So, when Buidhe explains a good reason for a diversity among the coordinators, you counter with some nonsense about fast cars and a statement that entirely misrepresents the position of anyone here. You are being ridiculously over-defensive of that situation were are in. If you would "like to understand what the community believe", then I suggest listening not arguing further. -- Colin°^Talk 14:17, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

As per another user here, that's spouting rubbish I'm afraid. It wasn't nonsense, it was an analogy, i.e. if I had the luxury of choosing different cars (not "fast cars", weird) then I'd take a diverse arrangement of them, but I don't have the choice. And it was a "counter", it was in agreement. Sorry you completely misunderstood. Anyway, I think Gog has summed it up well, co-ordinators have a well-defined, well-understood role here, as noted in the FAC instructions. Anything else expected of them is clearly an example of requirement creep. Thanks for you input. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 14:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Colin: I have no idea why you've come in with this unnecessary WP:BATTLEGROUND post here. As far as I can tell almost everyone involved in this round of discussion is in agreement that diversity of coordinators would be a great thing in an ideal world, but that we can still go ahead and promote two trusted new coords now even while not attaining the desirable diversity, because we need more coords to handle the workload. And ultimately the role is more about checking everything's in order with the nom rather than needing to be a subject-matter expert. Perhaps yourself, Sandy and one or two others would prefer that we don't appoint new coords at this time, in lieu of waiting for more diverse candidates to come along, but that doesn't seem to be the consensus view in the discussion, and I don't think the community "thinks" anything radically different than what is already proposed. By all means propose a different course of action if you have one, but let's leave the antagonism behind. Cheers  — Amakuru (talk) 15:11, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm aware it was an analogy. It was an analogy with something unobtainable. That's "nonsense" because having diversity isn't unobtainable nor reserved for an imaginary "ideal world". Sandy lists "Laser, Graham, Karanacs, Ealdgyth, Sarastro, Ucucha and me [i.e., Sandy]" as examples of the diversity of those previously involved in closing FACs. It seems we have ended up in this situation out of statistical happenchance rather than that it is somehow inevitable in our imperfect world. It shouldn't be the case that anyone suggesting this is less than ideal gets presented with arguments that they are being unreasonable and living in cloud cuckoo land. It is perfectly possible to take on board and agree with a criticism (lack of diversity) without it ultimately affecting the decision one makes (supporting the candidates proposed, as Sandy has clearly done). I think that's actually the case for most people here, who don't feel the need to get all overly defensive about their vote. -- Colin°^Talk 15:49, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Oh dear Colin. No-one is defensive, other than you it would seem. Anyway, I'm glad you understand now what was meant, and I don't recall anyone suggesting striving for diversity in all aspects of Wikipedia was "cloud cuckoo land", but it is wholly dependent on our demographic. "Outreach" to get new editors to Wikipedia is nothing to do with FAC as far as I can tell. I was just checking that I wasn't alone in that thinking. Thanks, once again, for your input, albeit non-collegiate and bad faith in tone. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 15:58, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Please stop. This helps nobody. Femke (talk) 16:06, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Agreed, battleground behaviour and ABF isn't going to achieve anything. I think the bottom line is that my initial question has been answered, in general, so that's been worthwhile. If WMF could fund a project to bring more diversity (in all senses, but in this case, in knowledge/interest) that would be a good thing too. I'm not holding my breath on that. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 16:15, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Re the "declining reviews" point, see this table -- it looks like we've been slowly increasing review volume for about four years and are on a pace to match or possibly exceed 2017's total. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:58, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Mike, are the 2021 numbers to date or to the end of September? Gog the Mild (talk) 23:47, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

To the end of September. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)|

We're also archiving articles earlier (about 2 or 3 weeks earlier than 2017, per the stats posted in an earlier discussion), so potentially we "waste" fewer reviews on archival and therefore need fewer total reviews per promotion. (t · c) buidhe 23:05, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

That's a good point. The recent co-ord crop have done a great job of closing down dead duck nominations, which we didn't see in the past. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:11, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Partly I would guess it's due to increasing opposes in the last two years which enable coords to archive more quickly. (t · c) buidhe 23:14, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

And I think most of us would agree that's been an improvement to the process. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:15, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Buidhe re Partly I would guess it's due to increasing opposes in the last two years which enable coords to archive more quickly I am not sure the data supports this. (Aside: would be grand if someone would continue to maintain the monthly promote/archive stats at WP:FAS. The monthly data hasn't been kept since 2014, and since 2018, even the aggregated yearly data hasn't been updated, but opposes have gone done considerably as FAC duration has increased.)

While there was an uptick in Opposes (leading to faster archives) in 2020, that trend does not seem to have continued. So I looked at the recent high volume months. Even though they were high throughput months, [21] I see only one oppose in the September data [22] and two opposes in the August data.[23] Conversely, a year ago (during the period when I was actively reviewing), I alone lodged six opposes in one month.[24]See correction below from Nikkimaria Opposing quickly and giving the nominator information about needed improvements, so they can resubmit a better prepared FAC for a quicker promotion, has always been an expedient route to promotion for marginally prepared FACs, and if we got back to that model, more resources could be focused on the well prepared FACs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:24, 28 October 2021 (UTC)

Sandy, I think you might be looking at struck opposes, rather than just opposes in those tables; there were 7 non-struck opposes in September and 18 in August. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:25, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

aha, Nikki, you are correct .. Opposes are separated from the struck opposes in the charts, so I missed them entirely. Then that changes the conclusion and Buidhe is likely correct. Ugh, too tired to fix this just now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:15, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Mike Christie's table shows that the proportion of opposes to supports has almost doubled in 2020 and 2021 (10% as many opposes as supports, both years) compared to 2017 (6%). (t · c) buidhe 00:29, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, Buidhe, Nikki was correct and I missed an entire column; too tired. Then, I am happy that the return to the Oppose-- which I advocated for :) -- may have led to something good! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:18, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

PS, sorry to all for having to read through an error; Moderna booster left me foggier and ... ugh ... than did original J&J vaccine. Shouldn't be typing I spose, but wanted to catch up. Mañana. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:26, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I suspect the issue may be in how the "consensus" you mention above is determined. WP:CONSENSUS on Wikipedia has always been a complicated beast, with caveats such as WP:NOTAVOTE pulling one way, and WP:SUPERVOTE pulling the other way. But what's always been fairly clear, at least at venues such as AFD and RM, is that this consensus is based not just on counting heads, but on an intelligent reading of what the contributors to the discussion have said. So if a reviewer says something like Support. This article has lots of lines that aren't referenced, and that's the way I like it, referencing sucks, then our intrepid FAC coordinator is expected to look at that and give it considerably less weight than a support which is based on our policies and guidelines. As such, the coordinator must not only be experienced in general matters, but also to have some idea about norms and practices in particular subject areas. Which is where I'd imagine having a broad spectrum of interests on the coordinator corps comes in. Is it vital? No, because I think we can trust those currently in the job and those proposed this week to do the job properly and perhaps reach out to others if they're unsure of anything. But would it be desirable in a perfect world? Probably.  — Amakuru (talk) 23:16, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

  Indeed, I'm not clear why we're aspiring to a perfect world when reality tells us that the vast majority of contributors are white males between 18 and 40 whose interests most likely don't cover the entire panoply of a conventional encyclopedia. For outreach, see WMF. For best working practice within Wikipedia, see the community we have available at any given moment in time. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:27, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

The number of editors having their first ever FACs promoted over the last seven years was:

• 2015 - 27
• 2016 - 30
• 2017 - 37
• 2018 - 22
• 2019 - 25
• 2020 - 30
• To Sept 2021 - 27

So either this has stayed steady or, arguably, we have turned round a decline which bottomed in 2018. If the trend of the first nine months of this year continues we may just break a seven-year record. We shall see. At any rate, whether one considers these numbers high, low or neither, there is no sign of a long term decline; 198 successful first time FACers over the past seven years. (With many thanks to Hog Farm for generating the numbers.) Gog the Mild (talk) 23:23, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

It's not a decline at all, and very encouraging that we have such a surprising number of new and interested nominators given the bloody-minded attitude of some of the "FAC community". So it's on the up, not the down, despite all the moaning! The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 23:29, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I'm a little sceptical that 40 is the upper age bound below which the "vast majority" of contributors lie! But it's good to know we're still getting new blood coming through the door with fresh FACs anyway...  — Amakuru (talk) 23:31, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Digging into the numbers a little, over the past seven years we have usually had 2 0r 3 first time promotions a month. The numbers for the past July, August, September are 4, 5 and 6. A slim base from which to extrapolate, but - so far as it goes - encouraging. Gog the Mild (talk) 23:42, 26 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes Amakuru, I for one am considerably above the upper age limit... Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 01:01, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I'd be curious to see how many people go on to nominate a second article for FAC after their first nomination is closed as successful. Are these new contributors driven away, just ticking boxes, or is it something they would go through again? Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 01:46, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I thought "18 to 40" odd - pretty much all the FA writers I know are over 40. It used to be the case that c.25 to c.45 was the hole in the middle of our demographic, when people were busiest with careers and families. I suspect this is still an effect. Johnbod (talk) 01:52, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Eddie891: for 2020, for example, there were 85 nominations by users who had never nominated anything before. Of those, 30 were promoted. Another 7 of those 85 nominators subsequently succeeded in getting an article promoted - Heartfox and HAL333 are two examples. A total of 31 of the 85 nominators have nominated again since their first nomination -- examples are Luk3, Aviator423, ArnabSaha, and Wna247. Is this the sort of data you're looking for? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library)

I'm another example of a 2020 first-time FAC nominator. Hog Farm _Talk 03:20, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure when my first nom was but 2020 was the year of my first successful nom as well. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Your first nomination was in 2017 -- you can see your nomination history by putting your username in this page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:14, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@Johnbod: That may be the case for FAC noms; I know just 28% of our editors site-wide are over 40, but this may be otherwise influenced. Perhaps we could run a poll for FAC nominators for their ages. For consideration, I am 20. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:35, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Most FAC nominators I know (and I know a lot) are under 40 years old and most are male. YMMV but that's what I'm aaying, the majority of our contributors match that description so it's little wonder that certain topic areas are "under-represented". In actual fact, the FA numbers almost certainly align with the demographics, and why would anyone expect anything different?? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 07:00, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

When I said "know" I meant I'd met them in person; I wonder if this is what you mean? Without specific evidence, guessing the age, ethnicity or gender of people you "know" on the internet is a mug's game. Johnbod (talk) 17:06, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

What a curious interjection. I am not prepared to doxx anyone of course, so I'll just leave it as I said it and meant it, of course. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 18:12, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

@The Rambling Man: No, I'm inclined to agree with your view of the demographics anecdotally, but it is possible I'm way off the mark, hence the suggestion of the age poll. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 16:14, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's needed. The results speak for themselves. There are lots of younger, whiter, maler contributors than any other demographic. That slice of society is usually more interested in the topics which receive more attention. Neither FAC nor FAC co-ords are designed to change that demographic, or at least if they are, in the 16 years I've been here, I'm completely unaware of it, until now it seems. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 16:17, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

• Some general thoughts: TRM is right about our demographics. These introduce an inevitable push towards certain subject fields, which are likely to continue; As the demographic of our White men get older, we will soon have a crop of Wikipedians who are fathers, and therefore develop an instantaneous and endurant interest in WW2. On a serious note, the nearest fix I can think of with any feasibility, although I don't necessarily support it, are "subject experts" of a type. Like Buidhe says, For example, if an article in a subject area I'm slightly familiar with looks ready to promote I would check it over and might notice that there is something missing, not sure how this would be implemented, but perhaps we could have a subject expert look over the article, somewhat like source and image review. Maybe this position would be self-identified, or else we could even install via approval margin (i.e. 80% support) people who we view as experts in the field. Again, I'm not entirely sold on this idea as it would be an extra step of bureaucracy, but it's the most realistically possible solution which would bring about good results, as far as I can see. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 03:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  Remember that Wikipedia was explicitly built as an alternative to a system where recognised subject matter experts would approve articles (Nupedia), which did not work. Let's continue our successful informal non-expert approach please: while we should welcome reviews by subject matter experts as they will find it easier to assess comprehensiveness and have a different view on neutrality, there is nothing wrong with the nominator being the only subject matter expert in the room. —Kusma (talk) 10:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  Actually, Wikipedia was originally meant to be a sort of feeder site for Nupedia with the masses writing about things which the subject-matter experts would then collate into the reader-facing Nupedia. That Wikipedia eventually became the main game in town was an unintentional development which occurred later.  — Amakuru (talk) 10:47, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  You are right and I stand corrected. There is still a useful point about experts to be made, though. —Kusma (talk) 11:50, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

• Comment A very strange—and very dated—conversation seems to be going on here. I'm glad that it is though because it constitutes the kind of evidence that might be needed for a change. The problems at FAC have nothing to do with the real demographics of the nominators. Rather it is the lack of sociological, geographical, and High- and low-level-diversity in the subject areas. By contrast, the NY Times in the 1960s and 70s had mostly White male reporters, but the topics they covered (and the depth and breadth they covered them in) were diverse in these senses. The discussion here, on the other hand, seems to have the flavor of the early 1950s—they pre-date (if American society is taken as an example) the Stonewall riots, the Equal Rights Amendment, hearkening almost to the pre-Brown vs Board of Education times. (Obviously also as is being pointed in the previous posts, Larry Sanger's various utopias (Nupedia, Citizendium) have fallen flat.)

So what is the problem with the FAs constituting a kind of in-house blog, in which people with similar interests write articles and review each other's submissions? It has everything to do with how FAs are advertised on WP, in particular in the resources of WP devoted to WP:TFA. If there were no TFA on the main page advertising a featured article, or if that space was shared with other kinds of valued articles, no one would care about FAs being diverse. Why? Because the other parts of the main page: DYK, Featured Picture, "On this Day" or "In the News" for the most part don't lack diversity in these senses. Also, as I've already shown in a discussion here of a year or two ago, less than 6% of the people who read WP's main page click on "Today's Featured Article." So, the solution might lie in a wider discussion both on Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation on why FAs are on the main page and why they are advertised as WP's best work (without qualification).

I recall The Atlantic (digital edition) had a report on the discussions about the lead of the Kamala Harris page soon after the buzz around her candidacy for VP began to grow in early 2020. The descriptors we chose for her then on Talk:Kamala Harris, "African American," "Asian American," "South Asian American" came to inform wider usage in America and is now pretty much the norm. Maybe the wider media might be needed to report on the discussions here, its ear bent. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:12, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

That discussion, if you want to start it, would be better held on WT:TFA or WT:MAIN. There are certainly editors here (I'm one) who have no interest in whether FAs they work on are featured on the main page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:24, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

But you do have an interest in FAs being called "Featured Articles," and not say, "Refereed WP Blog." Right? Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

No, I've no strong opinion on what FAs are called, although I think that suggestion isn't a good one since there's no "blog" element to articles. But if the community renames them it would make little difference to me. That discussion wouldn't take place on this page, though. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:56, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

I too have no interest in "my" FA's appearing on the Main Page. When Menstrual cycle was TFA earlier in the year, I played no part in its appearance. This is not the place for this conversation. Graham Beards (talk) 12:31, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Thirded. All that happens through TFA is the addition of vandalism to FAs so it's of little-to-no interest to me other than solving that issue. But in any case, this is an unwelcome digression from the purpose of this section which is to understand the community's expectations as to the role of a FAC co-ordinator (the clue is in the section title). The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 12:40, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Graham Beards, I didn't say that the authors of the FAs have an interest. I said the collection of FAs, increasingly an unrepresentative one, are promoted in a certain manner on WP, given a type of "air time." If they were labeled more accurately and the air time shared with other articles of value, the problems might cease. FAs will become just another WikiProject. You should not object to that. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:42, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

PS Anyway, have to run. Fowler&fowler«Talk» 12:49, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Self quoting from a little further up this page "As both an FAC coordinator and a TFA scheduler, can I point out that FAC does not exist in order to service TFA. Wearing my FAC hat, I don't much care about TFA and don't see why I should." But anyway, if there is a desire to discuss this, could it be done in an appropriate place, which is not on this page and not in a thread discussing the role of FAC co-ordinators. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:38, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

• Comment I see the role of the coordinators as pretty straightforward: determining consensus. I would however be pleasantly surprised if they feel like designing proposals that could strengthen the FAC process (such as having minor prose comments on the talk page of the nomination, maybe encouraging reviewers to make edits directly to that saves time for all involved). Outreach I consider a responsibility of all of us here. It's for instance a shame that the flourishing WP:COVID Wikiproject hasn't found it's way to the GA/FA processes much. Femke (talk) 16:13, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  A problem with making the edits yourself is that they can substantially change the meaning of the words away from the sources; "there are only three synonyms between a dropped glass and an exploding grenade." If there are issues of punctuation, linking, formatting, etc. I simply make those edits myself, but much of the time if it has to do with the sources themselves, I do not. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:27, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  @Femkemilene: messed up the @ previously. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 18:28, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  That's the way I'd like to see it, yes. Only do the uncontroversial/simple edits yourself. Femke (talk) 18:32, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

  An approach I've occasionally taken, particularly with nominators I haven't worked with, is to do that kind of initial copyediting pass prior to making any FAC comments at all, and only after that to decide whether to leave FAC comments. That way if I decide I don't have time to do a substantive review, I've (I hope) improved the article without having left the nominator a laundry list of minor issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:44, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Re: Eddie891's question as to whether successful first time nominators are driven away from nominating second articles. That was my experience. I felt the effort involved in getting my first time FAC, and the grief I rec'd from one of the FAC coordinators back then, was not worth the achievement of the bronze star and TFA. Conversely, the effort involved in getting published in the academic literature is the gift that keeps on giving via citations in the academic literature and recognition from peers. I have however come back and nominated FACs again but it has taken an extraordinary event to motivate myself sufficiently to resubject myself to the FAC process. That is to say I do them now in spite of the FAC process, rather than because of the FAC process.

I concur with Femkemilene's observations re designing proposals to strengthen/improve the FAC process. And I recently saw some commendable outreach by Gog the Mild wrt to a recent first time FAC, which was not well prepared by the nominator.

Fowler&fowler's observation about "A very strange—and very dated—conversation" is right on the mark. Nothing changes so nothing changes so the subjects of dated conversations are periodically recycled. Sandbh (talk) 23:55, 27 October 2021 (UTC)

Adding a time-stamp to avoid archival as I have not yet found the time to respond to this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:36, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Anyone who wanders by and is so inclined may archive this thread now. I have been timestamping it to prevent archival (after I petered out when my COVID booster left me ill for three days) and hoping things on this page would settle so that I could come back to really discuss the Coord role and correct some misrepresentations or misunderstandings about what I said in the previous discussion that led to this thread (where I wasted a lot of bandwidth defending myself as to what I actually said and meant).

A discussion of the Coord role could be/should be had, but might be more productive if not starting from a premise which I don't believe captured my concern (which was endorsement of the current Coords, with nothing more than a reminder, for next time, to consider the need to diversify the exposure to different content areas in the Coord pool). I never got around to actually discussing the Coord role in this thread. Following on this conversation with TRM, I'd prefer we focus on more pressing matters on this page (the FAC instructions), and hold off on a more thorough discussion of the Coord role until the New Year, and hope that everyone participating on the FA pages will enjoy a happy and peaceful holiday season.

So, if anyone is inclined to ignore my timestamps, please feel free to go ahead and manually archive. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Village pump idea lab

Of interest to FA-peeps: Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#URFA addition to article milestones SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:04, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

This proposal has garnered some (meaningful) support; more feedback would be helpful. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Calling all source and image reviewers

We've got quite the backlog of source and image reviewers needed at Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Image and source check requests - many hands make light work. Hog Farm _Talk 21:19, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

Because it uses Spanish-language sources, I can do Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Vuelve (album)/archive1, but probably mañana (and you may need to ping me if I forget, ‘cuz lots goin’ on here). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:43, 28 November 2021 (UTC)

 Done (three hours that perhaps could have been better spent). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm looking for a FAC mentor

Hi, I'm interested in bringing an article to FAC, hopefully in mid to late December or early January. I've been editing for about 4 months now, and have 2 GAs (soon to be 3) under my belt, so I'd like to take a shot at my first featured article. I know that the process is quite daunting, and it is advised that editors seek a mentor, so I'm asking for one here. The two articles I am thinking about taking to FAC are both related to trains (duh). They are Cedar Hill Yard and New Haven and Northampton Railroad, both of which I brought to GA status, and the former of which was also created by me. I haven't decided which to nominate first, and that's one of the areas I'm looking for help from a mentor, along with things such as the details of referencing which I'm not very well versed in yet. Thanks in advance. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

You already put Cedar Hill Yard up for PR which is a great step! The articles appear to be well-prepared so you don't necessarily need a mentor, you can go straight ahead to FAC. (The worst thing that can happen is it isn't promoted.) (t · c) buidhe 02:45, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

I appreciate the vote of confidence! I'm working through the comments made at PR, and after that I will nominate it for FAC. Thanks for the couple of fixes you made to Cedar Hill Yard, by the way. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:49, 2 December 2021 (UTC)

FAC reviewing statistics for November 2021

Here are the FAC reviewing statistics for November 2021. The tables below include all reviews for FACS that were either archived or promoted last month, so the reviews included are spread over the last two or three months. A review posted last month is not included if the FAC was still open at the end of the month. The facstats tool has been updated with this data. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:51, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Reviewers for November 2021

# reviews Type of review Reviewer Content Source Image Accessibility Nikkimaria 8 19 Buidhe 2 1 8 The Rambling Man 8 1 Iazyges 2 7 Aoba47 6 1 Grapple X 3 2 1 Gog the Mild 5 1 Jo-Jo Eumerus 3 2 Graham Beards 4 1 Hog Farm 3 2 HJ Mitchell 5 Pamzeis 4 Tim riley 4 FunkMonk 4 Casliber 4 ChrisTheDude 3 Z1720 3 Zmbro 3 Nick-D 3 Moisejp 1 1 1 Usernameunique 1 2 Lee Vilenski 3 Wehwalt 3 Gerald Waldo Luis 1 1 Amakuru 2 Laser brain 1 1 Eewilson 2 Therapyisgood 2 Kavyansh.Singh 2 Hawkeye7 1 1 Jimfbleak 2 Jens Lallensack 2 David Fuchs 2 Aza24 2 KJP1 1 1 RL0919 1 Mirokado 1 Heartfox 1 CactiStaccingCrane 1 Spicy 1 Mike Christie 1 Dumelow 1 KN2731 1 Johnbod 1 Gerda Arendt 1 Pseud 14 1 GhostRiver 1 Ian Rose 1 Eviolite 1 Jeuno 1 RunningTiger123 1 Girth Summit 1 Dracophyllum 1 Indopug 1 Popcornfud 1 Vami IV 1 Vahurzpu 1 Hike395 1 Peacemaker67 1 Volcanoguy 1 SandyGeorgia 1 TheJoeBro64 1 MSG17 1 Pendright 1 Kusma 1 WA8MTWAYC 1 DMT Biscuit 1 Bilorv 1 GeoWriter 1 Richard Nevell 1 Indy beetle 1 1 3E1I5S8B9RF7 1 Epicgenius 1 Zawed 1 Neopeius 1 Sportsfan77777 1 SatDis 1 IceWelder 1 Dudley Miles 1 ZKang123 1 Pfly 1 JG66 1 Totals 142 32 33 0

Supports and opposes for November 2021

# declarations Declaration Editor Support Oppose converted to support Struck oppose Struck support Oppose None Total Nikkimaria 27 27 Buidhe 11 11 The Rambling Man 8 1 9 Iazyges 2 7 9 Aoba47 6 1 7 Gog the Mild 4 2 6 Grapple X 3 3 6 Hog Farm 2 3 5 Graham Beards 2 1 2 5 Jo-Jo Eumerus 1 1 3 5 HJ Mitchell 4 1 5 Pamzeis 4 4 Tim riley 4 4 Casliber 4 4 FunkMonk 3 1 4 ChrisTheDude 3 3 Moisejp 3 3 Wehwalt 3 3 Nick-D 2 1 3 Zmbro 2 1 3 Z1720 2 1 3 Lee Vilenski 3 3 Usernameunique 1 2 3 Gerald Waldo Luis 1 1 2 KJP1 1 1 2 Eewilson 1 1 2 Jimfbleak 2 2 Aza24 2 2 Hawkeye7 1 1 2 Laser brain 1 1 2 Therapyisgood 1 1 2 Kavyansh.Singh 2 2 Amakuru 1 1 2 David Fuchs 2 2 Jens Lallensack 2 2 Dracophyllum 1 1 Girth Summit 1 1 Bilorv 1 1 DMT Biscuit 1 1 RunningTiger123 1 1 RL0919 1 1 Mirokado 1 1 Heartfox 1 1 Kusma 1 1 WA8MTWAYC 1 1 Jeuno 1 1 JG66 1 1 Pfly 1 1 Pendright 1 1 Eviolite 1 1 ZKang123 1 1 Dudley Miles 1 1 MSG17 1 1 TheJoeBro64 1 1 Ian Rose 1 1 GhostRiver 1 1 IceWelder 1 1 SatDis 1 1 Volcanoguy 1 1 SandyGeorgia 1 1 Gerda Arendt 1 1 Pseud 14 1 1 Neopeius 1 1 Sportsfan77777 1 1 Hike395 1 1 Peacemaker67 1 1 Johnbod 1 1 Zawed 1 1 Vahurzpu 1 1 Vami IV 1 1 KN2731 1 1 Dumelow 1 1 Epicgenius 1 1 3E1I5S8B9RF7 1 1 Popcornfud 1 1 Mike Christie 1 1 1 1 Indopug 1 1 Spicy 1 1 GeoWriter 1 1 Richard Nevell 1 1 Indy beetle 1 1 CactiStaccingCrane 1 1 Totals 109 4 0 0 5 89 207

Note that I was unable to include in the database the Persian name of one of nominators of one FAC, for technical reasons. I've instead used an English transliteration of their username: Armin Hoveidaee. Also, the blank line for the reviewer name is a placeholder to indicate that one FAC received no reviews. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:51, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

12 articles promoted in the last week

Keep up the great work everyone!! (t · c) buidhe 04:11, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:FASA

Z1720's Featured Article Save Award has been launched, with nominations for this year's "saves" starting at Wikipedia:Featured article review/FASA. Thanks, Z, and here's to an uptick in saving those rusty bronze stars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:32, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Another reminder to !vote for FA Save Awards at the open discussions; there would typically be two or three per month, but we are playing catch up for the entire year, and hope this activity will encourage more "saves" at FAR of rusty bronze stars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:04, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

FA Contest(s)

As some of you know, for the last decade I have been working as a cartographer. My work has appeared in reports for the Demographic and Health Surveys Program, peer reviewed publications, and other places. I figured we can have some fun. I will make a map (up to 40 hours of work) for the first two people to bring a Core article to FA over the next 6 months. Similarly, I will give the same thing to the top two people who reviews the most articles at WP:URFA/2020 over the next 6 months. The map can be about anything. We can discuss the brief you have in mind. -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 15:44, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I prefer not to discuss my briefs with anyone, let alone put them on the map. ——Serial 15:48, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

AMAZEBALLS! This is the “just do it” kind of effort and attitude that healthy discussion about improving overall FA processes can produce.

Guerillero, although not a core article Great Lakes Storm of 1913 is the deadliest storm to ever hit that area, and is being restored at FAR. There is a tricky copyvio map issue, discussed here on Elcobbola’s talk. Perhaps you could have a discussion with North8000, who is struggling to re-do that map? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:51, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Wow, less than 10 hours, and copyvio issue resolved [25] … thank you so much, User:Guerillero !! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:23, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I happen to have designs for FACs for two Vital articles. Would those count? –♠Vami_IV†♠ 23:23, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

@Vami IV: As long as they aren't at FAC right now, yes! -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 00:24, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

SpaceX, ;) CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 16:01, 17 December 2021 (UTC)

Adding a timestamp to prevent archival and keep this offer on the page longer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:03, 3 December 2021 (UTC)

Changing instructions to remove xt, !xt, and tq from allowed templates

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.

---

I propose we change the instructions from

The only templates that are acceptable are {{xt}}, {{!xt}}, and {{tq}}; templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples; and {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions.

to

The only templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples.

This is because {{tq}}, {{xt}}, and {{!xt}} all cost four bytes per character enclosed, whereas the colour templates only cost two, and achieve almost the same effect. Removing those three templates will provide a reduction in post-include template size, but little loss of functionality, so I hope this is not controversial. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:38, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I proposed some replacement text further up to this effect but which encouraged plain markup and also addresses ping templates—do you know offhand how expensive {{u}} or {{ping}} are? Because they're used a lot. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 12:19, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Just tested them: {{u}} has a base cost of only 10 bytes but costs three bytes per enclosed character, meaning that within a FAC that base cost would be 20 and it would cost six per enclosed character. {{ping}} has a base cost of 96 and costs four bytes per enclosed character, so that’s 192 base and eight bytes per character inside a FAC. I’d say these are annoyingly expensive but since they only ever enclose usernames, which are rarely very long, they probably aren’t that big a problem.

The reason I didn’t mention the alternatives that you proposed, for plain text markup, was that there didn’t seem to be immediate consensus for those changes — I was trying to suggest an incremental change that nobody would disagree with. I haven’t decided myself whether I like the plain-text markup idea, but removing xt/!xt/tq seems like an easy step. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:33, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm happy to settle on low-resource alternatives if things like {{green}} are manageable but a note advising to directly notify a user with a wikilink (User:Grapple X, not Grapple X) would shave this down, especially as FACs tend to have multiple pings per review--reviewer pings the nominator with their comments, nominator pings reviewer to show they've responded, back and forth. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 12:37, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I too am worried that the excessive pinging is part of the problem, and think that Grapple X’s note reminding editors to use a direct wikilink instead could help. It might also help remind editors, at the same time, of how often they are pinging people who should be watchlisting the FAC anyway. I read through the entire October FAC archive last night, and was astounded to see how often the FAC Coords are being pinged (as if they don’t read the FACs anyway?). It seems to have become a trend to say “OK, Coords, I have my three supports, please promote”. Three supports is not a guaranteed promote, and how on earth are the Coords managing with all this pinging from people who can’t wait for the next read-through? Also, we should never have to ping the nominator, who should watchlist— it has become customary to use pings throughout Wikipedia, and it might help to get people to rethink that relative to our template limit problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:09, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I would say that perhaps once or twice per nomination the {{@FAC}} was used to request the opportunity to launch another nomination. In most cases that was all it was, not a request to promote. Perhaps if the {{@FAC}} is a problem, it should be removed. It also transpires that some of the co-ords did not even receive the pings, hence the reason in some cases why the ping was repeated. Co-ords themselves have requested leave via this ping to start a new nomination from other co-ords after three supports, an image review and a source review. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 14:15, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

{{@FAC}} costs 142 bytes, so inside a FAC it costs 284 bytes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Since I became a coordinator I have been surprised at how infrequently the {{@FAC}} template is used. Nominators seem to have an intelligent grasp between necessary queries and notifications and unnecessary pestering. Pending any changes and/or formal decisions can I encourage nominators wishing to communicate with the coordinators to use this function. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

It seems to me that these kinds of queries (pinging the co-ords with {{@FAC}} to discuss a second nomination) are exactly suited to a nomination's talk page, so doing so there should be uncontroversial. Using any template there should have no effect and it's the kind of aside not relevant to promotion/archiving which could be shunted off easily. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 14:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Agree, if the Coords are not being bothered by excessive pinging, at any rate, these could be placed on the individual FAC’s talk page so as not to consume 284, which is a lot. ( I always thought they were more useful here on FAC talk, where everyone could see them and opine, but a) I had empowered other trusted people to act on those requests in my place, and b) we had far more volume in my day, so I needed those helpers.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

There's only been like three since I got added to the ping. It's not bad at all. Hog Farm _Talk 15:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I have pinged at least two since you became Coord, so you may not be getting all? Or are you referring only to those within FACs, not elsewhere? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Only those in FACs. Kinda interesting to check in see "hey, I have 1 new message!". Hog Farm _Talk 15:23, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Ah, OK, that’s better, thanks :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Perhaps we should encourage people to ping in their edit summaries instead of in wikitext. Gives the same notification but doesn't use a template (and saves space). Downside: harder to see for others that you have pinged. Alternative: nowiki / remove ping templates when replying. —Kusma (talk) 14:42, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I think {{green}} may lose some accessibility compared to {{tq}}, but I'm not an expert. —Kusma (talk) 12:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I think you're right -- {{green}} doesn't change the font. I know we have one or two colour-blind regulars at FAC; perhaps one of them could comment? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:31, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Pinging PresN who I've always known to be on-point re: accessibility. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 13:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Mike and PresN, would {{highlight}} (which uses yellow) work better with less cost ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

{{highlight}} is more expensive than {{green}}; it costs 3 bytes outside FAC and 6 in a FAC per character highlit. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

OK, thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I am on board with whatever version of this gets consensus for now, anticipating it will need to be revisited as it is not enough to address the problem. The problem is lengthy FACs, and the templates within those FACs is only a symptom, and by addressing only one of the symptoms, we will still have load time problems, FAC archive problems, and FACs that don’t necessarily cover all bases, and FACs that are increasingly promoted on only three supports. But. It is crucial to move forward with something to address the problem limiting the page now, so I hope we can come to quick agreement, and I won’t oppose anything we/the rest of us come up with.

My read-through of the past discussions in archives last night indicated that part of the problem is also excessive sectioning of FACs with sub-heads, so unless we also (eventually) deal with that, I am concerned we will quickly be right back here; the sectioning of FACs has come about because of the extreme length and because FACs are now peer reviews rather than Suppoprt, Oppose, followed by rationale with links to extended discussions on talk. But not to hold up this proprosal for that issue. We will need to eventually look at the extreme length and sub-sectioning of FAC pages.

Another area of concern is collapsing; I don’t think it helpful, and don’t think it addresses the underlying issues, rather encourages them by encouraging extremely long reviews which are then masked/hidden. Past discussions in archives indicated collapsing made it harder for Coords to read through a FAC, so we should definitely hear from all four Coords as to whether they view collapsed text as an impediment to their read-through.

All that said, my preference for this text would be to allow either green or yellow (via the highlight template, depending on accessibility), to disallow collapsing, and to remind editors to take care with pinging:

The only template that is acceptable is {{green}} to apply colours to text to highlight examples. User notification templates such as {{ping}} or {{U}} should be replaced with a direct wikilink, such as [[User:Example|Example]]. Offtopic discussions should not be collapsed within templates, but may be moved to the nomination's talk page, supplying a link to extended discussions.

If the Coords say that collapsing doesn’t impede their read-throughs, then letting that go is a compromise I am willing to agree on, although my concern remains that it encourages lengthy FACs rather than summation of whether an article meets criteria, which is the purpose of FAC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Apologies for killing the whole page, and thanks for the fix, Hog Farm; that was a weird problem that Nikkimaria described at WP:VPT yesterday— I’ll follow up there, as it continues to happen. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:38, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Since banning the collapse templates and template-based pings seems less likely to have quick consensus, could we limit the wording change discussion in this section to just what I proposed, or tweaks that don't change the intention? I deliberately limited the wording in the hope of getting a quick agreement rather than an extended debate. If you want to propose banning template pings or collapses, I'd suggest a separate section for those discussions. That way, anything that has consensus can be implemented without a long discussion. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:39, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, good approach, but there was already a thread about this very topic higher up; sorry for foiling your plan, but we now have two threads. So, we will now have a third proposal, I guess, on the pingie issue?

OK, so, I defer to the Coords on collapsing, but still believe collapsing will lead us further back into the very problem we are trying to solve, and agree with the limited banning of other templates you have proposed as a very temporary fix that will not solve the whole problem, but will get us moving at least. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll admit to having just fallen into the conventions I see around me after coming back from an extended break so although I recall a time when headings were explicitly not used, I've taken to using them due to their ubiquity (also if I add something new under a header, it falls under that header if I don't make a new one). I'm happy to go back to using semi-colon bolding as was the old convention, which might also remove some of the false positives from the nominations viewer (which seems to count "support" or "oppose" in a heading and in the text below that heading twice). ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 14:35, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Collapsed content

FACs that don’t necessarily cover all bases, and FACs that are increasingly promoted on only three supports so you're implying FACs are being prematurely promoted by co-ords? Could you give some examples of this so the co-ords have a right of reply? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 14:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC) TRM, I am not biting anymore on these repetitive insinuations of territory we have been over a gazillion times in multiple discussions for over a year, and your constant attempts to put words in my mouth that I have asked you three times to stop doing. I am not implying anything about the Coords; stop attempting to create division. When I have something to say about or to the Coords, I do it quite directly. And the next time I go to your talk page to address these behaviors, [26], don’t just remove the post, rather engage to discuss in the appropriate place, which is user talk, thank you. FAC talk is becoming the TRM/SG sideshow, and I don’t appreciate it, nor do I appreciate constantly having to deal with your false summaries of what I have said or what positions I have taken, as you did in this entire section. Stop it. I suggest someone hat TRM’s comment and my response, and remind him to deal with his constant unhelpful insinuations on user talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:50, 12 November 2021 (UTC) Then I have no idea what you mean when you suggest there's an issue with promotions with three supports or what you mean when you say FACs that don't necessarily cover all the bases. I imagine that if I'm struggling to follow your issues with these, I'm not the only one here in that position. And what you do or not appreciate about my interpretation of your posts is entirely up to you, but I was by far from the only person who was surprised at your outreach comments. Indeed I believe even at least one of the co-ords appeared to find it baffling. Can you explain what the issue is with "promoted on only three supports" for example? Can you give these numerous examples of where three supports has prompted a request for promotion? Oh, and as for your talk page "message", the level of passive aggression there was so high it had to be removed for my own mental health. So don't do it again please. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 15:03, 12 November 2021 (UTC) Then raise it elsewhere, without putting words in my mouth. Done. And stop with the “passive-aggressive” personal attacks (now your fourth). Will someone please hat this? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 12 November 2021 (UTC) I've raised it here, the appropriate venue. And you brought up your horrible message which caused me great distress, not me. I just got rid of it. There's only so many times I can take such "post"s, you'll not be surprised to know that no further such examples are allowed hereafter. Now, the three supports "issue", what is the problem with that? P.S. I don't suppose there'll be an answer, so by all means hat this yourself. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 15:32, 12 November 2021 (UTC) I have done that, and no, there will not be an answer at this page about issues that belong on user talk pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:16, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

As an example of how expensive the {{tq}} and {{xt}} can be - this edit and this edit dropped post-include expand size by about 47,000 bytes between the two. Might not seem like that much against 2,000,000, but in comparison I found that Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/I'm Goin' Down/archive1 took up around 32,000 post-include bytes itself. The amount of xt and tq amounted to more than a shortish FAC in just 2 FACs! Those templates are becoming way too expensive for us to continue to use. Hog Farm _Talk 14:39, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

• Some editors will just ignore all these wails against brackets and templates and carry on using them... no matter what the expense. ——Serial 14:53, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  If we can't get people to stick to the rules voluntarily, there's always edit filters or bots I guess. —Kusma (talk) 14:58, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  If we make this a rule, we'll probably have to allow the coordinators to remove the template usage if the editor who added it won't. Hog Farm _Talk 15:14, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Serial, I have found that asking them once, and explaining why, does the trick at FAR; all it takes is for someone to routinely patrol and remind those who are doing this. From my read-through of the October FAC archive last night to see where all the green was coming from, it was pretty clear that a lot of this problem could be addressed via conversations with less than five editors. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Just got a feeling that for only semi-regular contributors to the project (as opposed to those of us, you, know, who fire up back-to-back FACs) it might be off-putting--and perhaps harder to remember to follow on that account. Basically, I'm just a little leery about making things more difficult in a volunteer project. I get where y'll coming from; I just think it should be borne in mind that some people might find the things we're talking about a convenience. I agree that, who these people are and how many of the them there are is somewhat of a variable, not to say an unknown quantity  :) ——Serial 15:43, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Yeah, it's a hard balance. We don't want to make it hard, but the page also has to function. And if two FAC's worth of colored text can result in taking up the space as big as several FACs, well, if something needs chucked overboard so the page will run .... Hog Farm _Talk 15:46, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  This is why I wanted to be sure to list some simple alternatives as opposed to just saying "don't do this". Rather than simply cutting out the section on a few allowable templates, giving a plain markup alternative should make it much easier to steer usage; carrot first, then stick. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 15:52, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

  Keep trying, Grapple; your effort is appreciated! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

There is a very simple plain alternative that drastically alters formatting without using any templates: just start your new line with a space.

The result looks like this. 

Unfortunately it can't be used inline. But maybe worth considering? —Kusma (talk) 16:44, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Wow … that kind of “thinking outside the box” is what we need in this matter! Very hard to write that into instructions, though :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

"and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text" - Should we be more specific not to use tq, xt, etc? Because they also apply colors, and I don't know how intuitive it will be for people not following this that you can use green to colorize text, but not xt or tq. Hog Farm _Talk 16:02, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I initially thought this was a bad idea because we obviously can't list every template that we don't want used, but it's probably worth explicitly naming ones we're finding frequently. I'd suggest if we want to have an exclusion list that the coords just update it without asking for input, based on whatever they are running into and having to remove. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:17, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Revised proposal

Taking into account Hog Farm's suggestion, here's a revised proposed change. I'll make this a formal proposal section with support/oppose below and a discussion section.

The proposal is to make the following change to {{FAC-instructions}}. Change:

The only templates that are acceptable are {{xt}}, {{!xt}}, and {{tq}}; templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples; and {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions.

to

For technical reasons, the only templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples. Other templates, such as {{done}}, {{not done}}, and {{xt}}, may be removed by any editor.

Supports/Opposes

• Support. As proposer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support - seems reasonable as a start, although I'd personally like to hold a conversation about the collapse templates at a future date. Hog Farm _Talk 14:21, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support per above Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 14:31, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. It's a start, at least. I think there's some room for improvement (specifically calling out user link instead of ping templates, for example) but let's see how this affects us going forward and circle back if we need to. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 14:35, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support and per HF I would like to discuss removing the collapse templates in a subsequent proposal. Z1720 (talk) 17:12, 15 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support: I admittedly do not have a strong opinion about this, and I have used these templates in my own reviews, but if this will help the FAC process and those who want to participate in it (as either a nominator, reviewer, or both) even a little, then I will support this. Aoba47 (talk) 22:44, 19 November 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose because the proposed wording is so garbled that it appears to be proposing the opposite of all that was stated in the discussions that led to it, and what seems to be the intent of the proposal. I said I would not Oppose in general, even though I think this is not addressing the core problems, but the wording proposed is so ambiguous that it will be impossible to enforce and hard for new editors to understand. See my request for clarification in the Further discussion section, which yielded no correction or clarity. Regular editors at FAC may understand the intent of this wording, but it is not likely to be clear to new/future editors (actually, it's not even clear to me) because the wording literally ends up with the opposite of the proposed intent (which is to remove tq and tq2). So, when editors do attempt to follow these instructions and remove unnecessary templates, confusion may ensue, particularly with new editors or reviewers.
  Those editors who are supporting this wording are saying that any editor may remove any other kind of template except the two (only) kinds of templates allowed at FAC (emphasis on only as that is used in the proposal):
  1. {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}},

     but ... "used to hide offtopic discussions"; that is, any time collapse is used for ontopic discussions (which is, does this article meet WP:WIAFA?), those can be removed by any editor. Is this the intent?

  2. templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples

     so {{highlight}}, {{tq}} and {{tq2}} (all of which apply colour and are used to highlight examples) would be allowed under this second category of only two kinds of templates allowed. Isn't that what we are trying to remove? How will a new editor, not having participated in this discussion, distinguish between {{green}} and {{tq}}, both templates that apply colour to highlight examples?

So, with only two kinds of templates that are allowed, we are left with a long list of templates that can be removed by any editor. This list encompass, basically, the very list this proposal is intended not to disallow, in the Further discussion section-- things like {{U}}, {{endash}}, {{Ping}}, {{Re}}, {{slink}}, {{efn}}, {{cite book}}, {{pb}}, {{Anchor}}, {{reflist-talk}}, "and scores more".

I understand this has happened because Mike has simply used some of the wording that already existed at Template:FAC-instructions, but unless I have entirely missed the point of these lengthy discussions here, the ambiguity and lack of clarity in the proposed wording puts us into a deeper trench of template limits and a deeper well of misunderstanding as new editors attempt to understand how to navigate FAC. I am fairly certain that this proposal does not mean what it says or say what it means, and suggest a reboot to correct the wording to do that. We already have wording in the instructions about not adding subheads to FACs, and that wording was there for very good reasons, but is now completely disregarded. It does us no good to end up with wording no one follows. 'Tis a pity Tony1 is not about to help us fix this, because this wording leaves us tq and tq2 (since they apply colour to highlight examples), and can be interpreted to read that any editor can remove pings and paragraphs breaks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:28, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Resolution of the minor wording quibbles at #Adjusting per request for clarification would allow me to remove my Oppose. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:05, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support in light of making definitive objective improvements in the short term rather than spending months debating the minutiae to gain not much. Feels like we have constant filibustering around these parts. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 22:37, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

  It would be helpful to this page if you worked on not personalizing discussions. (Recognizing this should be placed on your user talk, which you have disallowed.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

• Support. Wording could be improved and the proposal could go further but ffs let's make a decision, any decision. We can refine it once we've agreed a starting point. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 06:19, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
• Oppose. Eh, sorry, but I think that Sandy is right that this rewrite appears to have the opposite effect to that desired. Offtopic discussions don't need to be kept on page and "templates like {{green}}" sounds like it'd be interpreted as allowing things like {{tq}} which are a problem. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:33, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support - we can at least start this off in the right direction. Graham Beards (talk) 11:52, 21 November 2021 (UTC)
• Support. Strictly an improvement; does not in any way impede further steps. Vanamonde (Talk) 03:38, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

Further discussion

Please add any further discussion comments here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:11, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

• Question: Under this proposal, why are off-topic remarks put in a collapsed template instead of moved to the talk page? Wouldn't moving the off-topic comments prevent templates from being used in FACs, and thus save transclusion space? Z1720 (talk) 02:51, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  The only thing I'm trying to accomplish with this wording change is to get rid of xt, !xt, and tq. We've had a lot of discussion (above) about various possible changes, but there seemed to me to be little opposition to removing these three. I don't think that removing collapse templates is quite as broadly supported, so I think it would be better to have a separate section for that. Similarly we may want to get rid of {{green}} as well, but again that might not pass so I think would be better as a separate question. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:24, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Have we got a quantitative assessment of the impact of removing these? Or is it rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic? For example, if nominators sign each response to a comment, wouldn't that vastly overwhelm any benefit gained by removing these templates? I'm not sure I know the answer. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 08:08, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  We do have enough information to indicate that this is a worthwhile change. Search this page for "47,000" and you'll find a post from Hog Farm, who saved that many bytes by removing those templates from just two FACs. If we eventually decide to keep colour templates like {{green}}, and those FACs had used colour templates instead, the savings would have been half that, but that still implies we could save perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 bytes across all FACs. As for signing every response, your signature is 146 bytes and mine is 205, so each instance of a signature would cost that many bytes. (It's not in a template so it doesn't cost double, as tq does.) Yes, that can add up to more than tq/xt/!xt, but I don't think that's a reason not to ban these templates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:06, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Oh no, I'm sure every little helps, but I had no idea that what on the face of it is a reduction of about 143 bytes equates to an actual reduction of 47,000 bytes. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 10:26, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  See also this section above, which gives some more details -- part of the problem is that 100 bytes of text in a {{tq}} template costs 400 bytes in WP:FAC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  And is that like a principle of physics which cannot be addressed because it is what it is, or is it something we could somehow improve? Or create a new template which does the same but without that ridiculous overhead? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 10:43, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  The best that can be done is to reduce the 4x penalty to 2x, which is what the colour templates such as {{green}} do. That's why I didn't include the colour templates in this suggestion. We may eventually decide to eliminate those too, but since they cost only half as much as xt/!xt/tq that's not as obvious a decision. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:47, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  (edit conflict) Any template will have the impact of its size multiplied due to the way FAC pages are transcluded again onto WP:FAC, so even a small template ends up several times the size it began. Text formatting templates can really add up because their size is also impacted by the amount of text they're used to format, X many bytes per character is then multiplied when the nomination is transcluded again so it's also more than just the base template size. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 10:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  If they're not "templated" but just "marked up", would that incur a similar issue, e.g. if I wrote all my quotes out with code would that be equally profligate? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 11:00, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  No that would be better, direct markup doesn't multiply in impact like a template. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 11:02, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Well that should be an easy win then, tell reviewers to use markup, not templates. The text is presented differently and is still accessible (no colour perception issues) and costs almost nothing to facilitate. The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 11:09, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  If you subst {{green|fred}}, you get this: <span style="color:green;">fred</span>. In a FAC that would cost 56 bytes -- 52 for the markup and then 1x [correction: 2x, because of the double transclusion] the number of characters in the span tags. Tq doesn't work that way; it references a css file, so it's a lot messier to achieve with tags. I think some users would find that a bit harder to deal with in the editing window, so again I would say that should be a separate question since not everyone might agree with that -- after all, if we do decide to require markup, not templates, it still means banning tq/xt/!xt. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

• Per WP:SIG: Signing your posts... both for the article and non-article namespaces, is required and facilitates discussion by identifying the author of a particular comment. Other users can then navigate to a talk page and address their comments to the specific, relevant user(s). Discussion is an important part of collaborative editing, because it helps all users to understand the progress and evolution of a work. ——Serial 10:37, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Yes? The Rambling Man (Keep wearing the mask...) 10:39, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Wut. ——Serial 10:50, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

  Do you have a template in your signature? -- Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 12:25, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I substed a copy of every FAC into a sandbox earlier today, and calculated how much each template cost towards the page limit. Here's what I found -- I did an exact count for tq, because it's so large, but just estimated the others. These costs include the doubling/quadrupling effect of the two levels of transclusion. A reminder: the limit for transcluded text is about two million -- 2,097,152, to be exact.

• {{tq}}: 317 transclusions, with a total cost of 156,672 bytes (and this is after Hog Farm took out a 47,000 in cost by getting rid of scores of tq uses)
• {{U}}: 106 instances, cost 5,000
• {{endash}}: 89 instances, cost 300
• {{xt}}: 79 instances, cost 39,000
• {{Ping}}: 75 instances, cost 11,000
• {{Re}}: 39 instances, cost 5,000
• {{slink}}: 25 instances, cost 2,800

Other than an instance of {{efn}} and one of {{cite book}}, nothing else seems likely to cost more than a thousand or so bytes. There was only one collapse pair. There were about fifty other templates beyond those listed here -- {{pb}}, {{Anchor}}, {{reflist-talk}}, and scores more. If someone would like to spotcheck my numbers (probably worth doing) the sandbox is here.

The tq and xt templates together cost about 200,000 bytes. Replacing them all with {{green}} or another colour, would save about half of that, but if we think 100,000 is still too expensive for colour-coding the text, we may consider banning that too. The pings and collapses aren't worth banning just for the sake of their size; I know some people don't like collapsed text (I'm not a fan, myself) so perhaps someone will propose we ban that too, but a ban couldn't be justified just on the basis of the include size problem. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:33, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Wow. Tq seems to be a real problem, there. Kusma's outside-the-box idea of putting a space before text seems more inviting by the minute. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:37, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I may have found a way around the issue, at least for {{green}}, and perhaps for {{tq}} and its cousins too. The collapse templates used to be a huge problem for FAC because they took all the collapsed text inside the template as an argument. That was fixed by creating {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, which simply place the appropriate tags at the ends of the text -- the downside for a user is you have to put two templates in, but it makes the collapse templates very cheap in our terms. I tried doing the same thing for {{green}}: see User:Mike Christie/greent and User:Mike Christie/espan. The first is essentially a "green start" template, and the second is a "green end" template (or end anything that creates but doesn't finish a span tag). If you put text between these two templates like so: {{User:Mike Christie/greent}}This is some text that should be green.{{User:Mike Christie/espan}}, the text will turn green, but the include cost is only the size of the templates themselves. It won't matter how much text you put between them.

We still need to ban xt etc., but this might mean we could bring back an alternative. We might be able to create an {{xtstart}} and {{xtend}} that could be used like xt. I would want to ask about this at WP:VPT first, because I could see some problems that might arise -- for example, it would make it very easy for users to mistakenly turn a whole page green. All they'd need to do is forget to put in the end span tag. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:06, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I mainly use quote marks and/or italics which are very cheap. (t · c) buidhe 12:12, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, this might be too much trouble to go to for something which isn't strictly necessary anyway. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:15, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

• Just wanted to add that templates can be useful where there are a lot of review comments and you need to highlight a few that haven't been addressed. Otherwise I agree that they should be deprecated and editors guided to use "<insert highlighted text here>" or some alternative normal text formatting like italics etc. I used to use templates like xt routinely in my early days, but haven't for years except in exceptional cases for a few I need to highlight. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:14, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Request for clarification

Mike, your proposed text (bold emphasis mine) says:

… the only templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, …

Per the bolded text, I am reading this to mean that collapsing is NOT used for on-topic (relevant to WIAFA and the review) discussions. But some of the Support declarations seem to indicate that other editors may be reading this differently (that is, the collapsing will continue for resolved review discussions, which others want to discuss further–I agree if that is the case). If we are indeed collapsing only off-topic, I have the same concern others have raised (why not just move to talk)? If we are instead allowing collapsing of review content, that is a different discussion. Confused as to intent here, please clarify.

Also, the context of the word only may be clear to us relative to the rest of this discussion, but could confuse future/new participants; you have given above a long list of other templates that are still in use and will likely to continue to be used (endash, ping, etc), so some clarification of the scope of the wording may be in order. All templates other than those listed are not being discouraged, so only could mislead or confuse new participants. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:56, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

The change I'm proposing is made with no prejudice to changing further wording -- it just seems to me that {{tq}} is eating enough space that we need to get rid of it. The "offtopic discussions" wording is only in this proposal because it's in the same sentence with the proposed change. And I agree that we probably need more discussion on the use of other templates. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:19, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

So I think we all may (or may not) know what we mean relative to this discussionn, but I’m not sure the wording says we think it says, so I’m not sure what we’re !voting on (we want to get rid of tq et al, but what are we actually saying about collapse and only, and what will new participants make of it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:27, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

Well, I don't think we'll have enough space in the header to ever discuss the entire nuances of template use. Maybe a brief synopsis there and a link to something like a Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Allowable templates? It feels like we're stuck trying to create rules/instructions for a complex and nuances topic and trying to fit it into the cramped space of the header. If we do end up creating a list of allowable templates, it would be best to handle each of the major classes separately. I've become convinced that this talk page struggles to handle complex discussions for a variety of reasons. Hog Farm _Talk 22:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Not a great wordsmith, but if all we are trying to do is remove tq and tq2, why don't we just say that? (Of course, all of this begs the question of shuffling the chairs on the deck of the Titanic, and would be immensely simpler if we actually addressed the core problems, rather than try to fiddle this template problem.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

At least how I understand this, I'm seeing getting rid of those templates as just a start. I'd still like to see collapse gone, a consensus formed as to what can/should be the on the FAC talk page, and several other changes, but I'm really worried that if any of the long-term fixes are going to be made, it's going to need to be in incremental improvements, as several things need to be done, but it's difficult to keep discussion here focused. Hog Farm _Talk 22:51, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Yes, I think this is just a start and we do need further discussion. (I plan on closing this tomorrow if there are no more substantive comments and no opposes, unless someone else closes it first.). Sandy, re “why don’t we just say that”, that’s what I meant to do — all the wording does is remove those. I quoted more than that in the proposed change to make it clear what the change would be but I can see that might have been taken to mean I supported the rest of the wording. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:56, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I recognize it's not easy, and I recognize the problem is because you kept some of the current wording, but we're not there, and are going to add confusion to new participants with the proposed wording. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:59, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

After giving it another reading, I can see where the confusion Sandy is referring could come from. I don't know how to fix the wording and make it clearer exactly what would and would not be okay. {{Green}} is less expensive than {{xt}}, and the wording is trying to steer users away from the more expensive ones, but it's not clear because in practice tq and green do the same thing. A bit of a puzzle - I think there's case to get rid of the color templates, but not sure that an entire ban on all, including the ones like green, would get consensus. Yet we're too limited on space in the instructions to get into all the details. Hog Farm _Talk 23:05, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

What if we just outright stopped with templates, and left a note in the instruction how to manually the colour span formatting achieved by {{green}}? Specifically calling it out with something like "templates should not be used to format text, but markup like <span style="color: green;">color formatting</span> may be used in their place". ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 23:11, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Substing {{green}} does the same thing and is a bit easier to remember. Tq/xt make a bit of a mess of the edit window when subst'ed. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 23:18, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Then if it's easier to grok we could simply state that only {{green}} is permitted and must be substed, if the net result is the same. ᵹʀᴀᴘᴘʟᴇ ꭗ 23:20, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

re Hog Farm on “incremental improvements”. Yes, and we generally all agree that the immediate incremental movement is to get rid of tq and tq2, right? Yet that is not what the proposal does, wrong? In fact, it does the exact opposite by allowing templates that use colour to highlight examples (which describes tq and tq2). It would be optimal to fix this before it goes live, right? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:58, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

No, tq changes both font and colour (and technically could do more than that since it refers to a style sheet). To me, it’s a problem that right now coords can’t go through and remove, or request the removal of, tq. Changing this wording would allow that. I suppose some editors may not realize that tq does more than change colour but the coords can disabuse them of that. And if they change to using {{green}}, which we may also ban eventually, that’s a huge improvement over tq. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:05, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

But Mike, that is a nuance that is lost on new editors. We need to be more clear. We know what we intend but this wording doesn't get us there and will further confuse the very editors we need to reach. It reads the opposite of what is intended. Let's fix it now. I am heading out for the evening, and having an early Thanksgiving tomorrow. I hope you can find a way to fix this, which means you can ignore my Oppose if that is done ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:26, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

I believe the text is still an improvement since it lets the coords remove tq, but since you’ve opposed I’m not going to close this; I’ll wait for a coord to close it. I feel that if we were to change the wording now it would invalidate the support votes, and it would be better to close this discussion and move on to the next. I do have ideas about what could be done next, but I don’t want to raise those ideas in this discussion — it’s so hard to get change around here that I think we should take what we can get. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The wording does not give the Coords the power to remove tqs. It gives everyone else the power to remove almost everything except tqs. I understand you not wanting to invalidate the Support votes already there, but what on earth is being supported, when the wording is exactly the opposite of the intended effect? There is no urgency; FAC is unlikely to hit template limits in archives again until next October, so why put through something with wording that is obviously not what you intended, hurriedly, yet can confuse new (and even existing) participants? Right now, the wording says that I (as “any editor”) can go through and remove pings. Or that I, as “any editor” can go through and remove anything that starts with double brackets (is a template) except in two limited cases: collapsing off-topic content only, or highlighting text in colour. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:09, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Adjusting per request for clarification

Mike Christie, if I am understanding your proposal correctly, I believe the adjustments below would solve the ambiguities mentioned. And, unless I am misunderstanding your intent, it is likely that pinging those already supporting would allow us to get this done. I hope these few adjustments (below) reflect your intent, while removing the ambiguities. (Strikes to indicate removal, bold to indicate addition.) Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

PS, because this is necessary for technical reasons, yet goes against WP:TALK guidelines (to never alter another editor’s post), it seems we should really work to get it right, and have a broad consensus, rather than a hurried adjustment. We don’t want to end up in dispute resolution over changing another editor’s posts, but the proposed wording could have us removing things like citation templates and paragraph breaks, while leaving ambiguity about the very thing we intend to remove (tq and tq2). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:41, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Current as of Oct 31	Revised proposal	Adjusted per request for clarification
Please do not use graphics or templates on FAC nomination pages. Graphics such as  Done and  Not done slow down the page load time, and complex templates can lead to errors in the FAC archives. The only templates that are acceptable are {{xt}}, {{!xt}}, and {{tq}}; templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples; and {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions.	Please do not use graphics or templates on FAC nomination pages. Graphics such as  Done and  Not done slow down the page load time, and complex templates can lead to errors in the FAC archives. For technical reasons, the only templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples. Other templates, such as {{done}}, {{not done}}, and {{xt}}, may be removed by any editor.	Do not use graphics or complex templates on FAC nomination pages. Graphics such as  Done and  Not done slow down the page load time, and complex templates can lead to errors in the FAC archives. For technical reasons, templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that are used to highlight examples without altering fonts. Other templates, such as {{done}}, {{not done}}, {{tq}}, {{tq2}} and {{xt}}, may be removed by any editor.

Sandy, I think you and I agree on the overall goal here. I also agree with you that giving the coords the ability to remove {{tq}} et al. was one of the goals, and if I were to write the proposed text again I think I'd change the given example from xt to tq. However, I feel that since tq is no longer named as protected, the wording already discussed does enable them to remove it. So I think I would still rather let this go through, as it appears it probably will, and then tweak it. Part of the reason is that I'm not sure I would agree with the other apparently minor changes you've made -- for example, you've added "complex" to "Do not use graphics or complex templates"; I don't think "complex" is well-defined, and in any case it's the PEIS that matters, not the complexity. And altering fonts, per se, is not the issue; there would be no harm in altering fonts if it could be done without the PEIS cost. I can think of other ways to address the underlying issue -- just as we have {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, we could have {{green top}} and {{tq top}} which would cut 90% of the cost of those templates at a stroke. So we might end up re-adding some form of the troublesome templates to the permitted list. Or we might split the page in two -- "Newer FACs" and "Older FACs" separately transcluded, with just a list at the main FAC page. Or we might change the instructions to say that no template that includes quoted text inside the body of the template is permitted, since that's mostly the issue, and would be a form of words that would immediately allow the fifty other templates I found in the test I ran. Or someone might come up with another issue. So I think we should let this pass and then look at next steps. As I said above, we have such a hard time making progress I don't want to derail what seems to me to be an important change. I was even hesitant about posting the list of possibilities in this very paragraph, for fear it would start another conversation about possible changes to the wording and derail the current proposal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:01, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

I added complex as it was a word you used, and in trying to distinguish that when you say only, you don't really mean only (we're not intending to delete paragraph breaks, citation templates, and the like, nor are we intending to remove templates that only add color); there could be a better way to distinguish that. But my bigger concern is that if you really intend to give this ability only to Coords, it should not be saying any editor, as we don't want "any editor" to end up in a messy dispute if they follow these instructions and alter someone else's post. And I really don't think if we just fix these things now, that any of the editors who supported wouldn't immediately support again, along with me removing my oppose (win-win). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:24, 27 November 2021 (UTC)

Close request

@FAC coordinators: : could one of the coordinators close this? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:58, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

@FAC coordinators: : Pinging again. If y'all would prefer I ask for a third-party closer, let me know. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:07, 19 December 2021 (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.

Wording at Template:FAC-instructions and the collapse templates

I've implemented the change in the Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates#Changing instructions to remove xt, !xt, and tq from allowed templates discussion above, but have a secondary question about the wording. Currently, we have the text templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, in there. If it's truly off-topic, does it really need to be on the FAC page at all and should it be moved to the talk page of the individual FAC? Hog Farm _Talk 00:18, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I think the instructions should change to state that off-topic conversations are moved to the FAC's talk page. I do not see any benefit in keeping conversations in collapse templates, and moving the conversations will help prevent another transclusion problem. Z1720 (talk) 00:27, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree that the instructions should suggest moving off-topic conversations to the talk page. I think it should be worded as a suggestion rather than a requirement to avoid the possibility of arguments over whether something is off-topic. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:13, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

I agree with Mike. (I usually do. :) ) Gog the Mild (talk) 22:44, 20 December 2021 (UTC)

In the analysis I did in the now-closed section about the wording change to the instructions, it became apparent that by far the most expensive thing you can do in terms of eating up the template include allowance is to wrap quoted text inside a template. Years ago the {{collapse}} template was banned for that reason, and replaced with {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, and their abbreviated forms, {{cot}} and {{cob}}. {{tq}} was the most expensive template I found in my analysis, but if every instance of it were to be replaced with {{green}}, that would not be cheap -- about half the cost of tq, as I recall, which could still be hundreds of thousands of bytes. I know some people dislike coloured text in FACs (I stopped using it while Ealdgyth was a coordinator as she's one such) but many people find it a real aid to readability, and unless we ban it on look-and-feel grounds it would be nice to have a way to do it that won't cause us to hit template limits.

There is a technical way around the problem, which is also mentioned in the earlier discussion: we can do for tq, green, and the other templates the same thing that was done for collapse, and create top and bottom templates that can be used inexpensively. Then we could either update the instructions to say something like "extensive quoting of text inside templates is forbidden" or we could perhaps request a bot that converts tq into {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}}, and so on, for any active FAC page. Actually it would be fine if it went back and fixed old FACs too; that might prevent the include limit being hit on a couple of old FAC archives.

One other point on the collapse templates: some nominators like to use them to collapse completed reviews, so, assuming we're not going to ban that practice, any wording change ought not to ban the use of the template -- it should just make the point about off-topic discussions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:04, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

That all makes sense Mike, although I am a trifle less relaxed about collapsing comments that are relevant to a review - if they may be of interest to a closing coordinator, why make them difficult to find? But that is entirely a personal preference. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:11, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

You're not the only coordinator I've heard say that. I've collapsed my own comments sections when I felt they were unwieldily long, and I think generally it's a judgement call; it might be hard to get the instructions to match best practice. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:16, 22 December 2021 (UTC)

Possible wording

Here's the current wording of the instructions:

Do not use graphics or complex templates on FAC nomination pages. Graphics such as  Done and  Not done slow down the page load time, and complex templates can lead to errors in the FAC archives. For technical reasons, templates that are acceptable are {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, used to hide offtopic discussions, and templates such as {{green}} that apply colours to text and are used to highlight examples without altering fonts. Other templates such as {{done}}, {{not done}}, {{tq}}, {{tq2}}, and {{xt}}, may be removed.

Beneficial changes I'd like to suggest, both from above and from Sandy's comments in the earlier discussion:

• Suggest moving offtopic discussions to the talk page
• Eliminate all templates that enclose quoted text
• Make it clearer which templates are OK -- e.g. there's no reason to exclude pings.

Personally I dislike the {{done}} and {{not done}} templates, but that's only for aesthetic reasons. The instructions imply they are banned because of the post-expand include size (PEIS) limit, but that's not a good reason; they contribute very little to to the PEIS, and the other reason given, of slowing down page load time, is also very dubious. Here's a suggested rewording of the paragraph that leaves in the exclusion of those two, and tries to achieve the other three goals:

For technical reasons, "quoting" templates (that is, templates such as {{tq}}, {{green}}, and {{collapse}} that take quoted text as a parameter) are forbidden on FAC nomination pages. The graphics templates  Done and  Not done are also forbidden. Quoting and collapsing can be done using templates such as {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}}, or {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, which do not take text as a parameter, if needed. Collapsing text may be used to hide offtopic conversations, which can also be moved to the talk page if preferred. Templates that do not comply with these restrictions may be removed by any editor.

Currently {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}} are redlinks, but I can create them quickly if we decide to go this route. Any thoughts on whether this is an improvement or not? Should we remove the exclusion of  Done and  Not done? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:30, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

I personally dislike the done and not done templates as well (I think it also can cause some issues with line breaks/threading at times, although I may be wrong). I think the proposed alternative to quoting templates is interesting, and would like to hear others' thoughts on the matter. Hog Farm _Talk 19:44, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Would "Quoting and collapsing can be done using templates such as {{tq top}} and {{tq bottom}}, or {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}, which do not take text as a parameter, and may be used to hide offtopic conversations, which can also be moved to the talk page if preferred." be a little clearer? (Assuming that that is in fact what is meant.) Gog the Mild (talk) 11:50, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I phrased it the way I did because one wouldn't use tq to hide an off-topic discussion. Maybe it would be better to remove the "offtopic" point from this paragraph altogether, and put "Offtopic discussions may be moved to the talk page or collapsed using {{collapse top}} and {{collapse bottom}}" somewhere else in the instructions? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:47, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of the {{done}} and {{not done}} templates either, but wouldn't any potential technical issues disappear if we used versions with ✅ and ❌ glyphs instead of SVG images? —Kusma (talk) 12:41, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

Weather articles at FAC, FAR, and GAN

See WIAFA 1f, WIAGA 2d

See Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/WikiProject Tropical cyclones

See Wikipedia talk:Featured article review/Tornado/archive2#Summary

I have now done in-depth looks at three (or four?) weather-related articles at WP:FAR, following on the Tropical cyclones CCI. Although Tornado technically is not within the scope of the CCI, the issues and concerns are similar. Because it is a highly summarized article (offering sub-article potential for copying within), I undertook an in-depth review, hoping to leave a roadmap for the checks and work that are needed throughout weather articles, and the work that nominators might do before the articles appear in content review processes.

With the amount of unattributed public domain content and unattributed copying within throughout these articles, I hope this roadmap leaves a template for FAC, FAR and GAN reviewers. (That's why I spent the ten hours.) And that nominators will assure that {{Copied}} and {{Pd-notice}} checks and attributions are done before appearing at FAC or GAN. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:53, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

PS, while it is unlikely that our prolific FA writers are serial violators of copyright policy, their articles could nonetheless have issues introduced earlier in the articles' editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 28 December 2021 (UTC)

I will often copy text from articles without attribution, but only when I'm the sole author. I believe this practice is allowed as I have the copyright to my work, but should I be noting it in edit summaries in the future? (t · c) buidhe 02:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

If you're truly the only one with any copyrightable contributions in there, then per WP:NOATT it's not strictly necessary, but I'd recommend leaving an edit summary indicating where stuff came from anyway. Hog Farm _Talk 02:46, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

@Buidhe Per Hog Farm it's not strictly necessary, but sometimes Copypatrol will pick up mirrors when scanning those edits and it can be difficult to figure out who wrote what, so it's unfortunately better to attribute to avoid any mistakes. I and I hope most copy patrollers know wouldn't copy from sources, but it's better to be on the safer side... Moneytrees🎄^{Talk/CCI guide} 05:11, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

Buidhe, having now spent long hours to track WP:CWW and understand the issues affecting the weather articles, I’d say the same, but would take it further. When a duplication is found, it takes as much time to find the correctly attributed CWW as the unattributed, so if we had a convention of using a highly standardized edit summary, it would be much easier to scan the article’s edit history, and faster than using the tools to find the duplicated text. Imagine ten years from now that someone notices similar text in two of your articles, and is trying to track it down. There are times when one copies in something they wrote, and then also adds new text, so digging in to find out what’s what gets very complicated. I have two suggestions for the avoidance of doubt in the future:

1. When copying within (even your own) or adding public domain text, always add only the copied part in one edit, and then make the adjustments in separate edits. Future editors will thank you :). As an example, for this CC by 4 source, I added the source to Works cited with CC by 4 attribution here, and copied text here, here, and here and then adjusted here. That leaves a very clear trail to what I copied, and how I adjusted it.
2. The wording at CWW is: “A statement in the edit summary such as copied content from [[page name]];” I would strengthen that to a strong suggestion that we always use that exact wording, to make it easier to search edit summaries. If you are copying strictly only text that you wrote, you could amend it to: copied content from [[page name]] that was written by me … and the edit summary search would still turn up the copied content part.

Anyway, I hope my lengthy example does not frighten people off of doing these checks in the future, recognizing that Tornado was an extreme example because of the number of sub-articles. The more typical cyclone articles come in a suite of four: the season article that contains hurricane X, hurricane X, Effects of hurricane X, and Meteorological history of hurricane X. Really awful hurricanes may have Effects of in multiple locations. And old versions need to be checked, as copying within is obscured by intense copyediting.

In the near future, I can commit to checking any cyclone articles that appear at FAC or FAR, but I won’t always be able to do this work and hope my example is useful to others; while I can do most of my editing with my typical gazillion typos and additions from my iPad, this kind of work requires a real computer with multiple windows open, which I can’t always do, per the tree. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:51, 31 December 2021 (UTC)

FAC reviewing statistics for December 2021

Here are the FAC reviewing statistics for December 2021. The tables below include all reviews for FACS that were either archived or promoted last month, so the reviews included are spread over the last two or three months. A review posted last month is not included if the FAC was still open at the end of the month. The facstats tool has been updated with this data. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:12, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Reviewers for December 2021

# reviews Type of review Reviewer Content Source Image Accessibility Nikkimaria 2 18 Hog Farm 6 5 1 Buidhe 3 7 Mike Christie 8 Jo-Jo Eumerus 1 5 1 The Rambling Man 6 Iazyges 3 3 FunkMonk 6 Hurricane Noah 4 Wehwalt 4 Hawkeye7 3 1 Usernameunique 3 Kavyansh.Singh 2 1 HJ Mitchell 3 ChrisTheDude 3 Aoba47 3 Steve Smith 1 1 Aza24 1 1 Tim riley 2 SandyGeorgia 1 1 CactiStaccingCrane 2 Gerald Waldo Luis 2 Nick-D 2 Chiswick Chap 2 Pamzeis 2 Johnbod 2 Edwininlondon 2 Guerillero 1 1 Guettarda 1 Dracophyllum 1 Indopug 1 Serial Number 54129 1 Thryduulf 1 The Most Comfortable Chair 1 Amakuru 1 LightandDark2000 1 Balon Greyjoy 1 Dugan Murphy 1 Casliber 1 Peacemaker67 1 AryKun 1 DanCherek 1 Extraordinary Writ 1 Blz 2049 1 Czar 1 FredModulars 1 ClaudineChionh 1 Indy beetle 1 Mirokado 1 Trainsandotherthings 1 Pendright 1 SnowFire 1 Amitchell125 1 Hurricanehink 1 RetiredDuke 1 Aa77zz 1 Urve 1 Gerda Arendt 1 GraemeLeggett 1 Gog the Mild 1 Borsoka 1 Lee Vilenski 1 KJP1 1 Caddyshack01 1 Rhain 1 Stuartyeates 1 Levalyn 1 Grapple X 1 DMT Biscuit 1 Sturmvogel 66 1 Cplakidas 1 TheTechnician27 1 HAL333 1 Totals 117 25 29 0

Supports and opposes for December 2021

# declarations Declaration Editor Support Oppose converted to support Struck oppose Struck support Oppose None Total Nikkimaria 20 20 Hog Farm 4 1 7 12 Buidhe 1 9 10 Mike Christie 8 8 Jo-Jo Eumerus 1 6 7 FunkMonk 4 2 6 Iazyges 3 3 6 The Rambling Man 6 6 Hurricane Noah 4 4 Wehwalt 3 1 4 Hawkeye7 3 1 4 Usernameunique 3 3 ChrisTheDude 2 1 3 Kavyansh.Singh 1 1 1 3 Aoba47 3 3 HJ Mitchell 3 3 Steve Smith 2 2 Tim riley 2 2 Pamzeis 2 2 Guerillero 2 2 Chiswick Chap 2 2 Nick-D 1 1 2 Gerald Waldo Luis 2 2 Aza24 2 2 CactiStaccingCrane 1 1 2 Edwininlondon 2 2 Johnbod 1 1 2 SandyGeorgia 1 1 2 ClaudineChionh 1 1 FredModulars 1 1 Gog the Mild 1 1 Gerda Arendt 1 1 GraemeLeggett 1 1 Czar 1 1 Blz 2049 1 1 Guettarda 1 1 Urve 1 1 Extraordinary Writ 1 1 TheTechnician27 1 1 HAL333 1 1 Aa77zz 1 1 DanCherek 1 1 AryKun 1 1 Cplakidas 1 1 RetiredDuke 1 1 Peacemaker67 1 1 Sturmvogel 66 1 1 DMT Biscuit 1 1 Hurricanehink 1 1 Casliber 1 1 Levalyn 1 1 Grapple X 1 1 Amitchell125 1 1 Dugan Murphy 1 1 Stuartyeates 1 1 SnowFire 1 1 Balon Greyjoy 1 1 LightandDark2000 1 1 Rhain 1 1 Pendright 1 1 Trainsandotherthings 1 1 Amakuru 1 1 The Most Comfortable Chair 1 1 Caddyshack01 1 1 Mirokado 1 1 Serial Number 54129 1 1 Thryduulf 1 1 Lee Vilenski 1 1 KJP1 1 1 Indy beetle 1 1 Indopug 1 1 Dracophyllum 1 1 Borsoka 1 1 Totals 82 1 2 0 4 82 171

Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:12, 1 January 2022 (UTC)

Restoring older Featured articles to standard: 2021 Summary

Introduction

Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles/2020 (WP:URFA/2020) is a systematic approach to reviewing older featured articles (FAs) to ensure they still meet the FA standards. It was launched at the end of November 2020. This is the first annual report for this endeavour.

The goals of URFA/2020 are to:

• Identify deteriorated older FAs to submit to Featured article review (FAR)
• Encourage tune-ups on mostly compliant FAs that don't need a FAR
• List older FAs that are ready to be today's featured article (TFA) and help the TFA Coords check older FAs before running on TFA

The URFA/2020 list is divided into two pages: WP:URFA/2020A for very old (VO) featured articles last reviewed in 2004–2009, and WP:URFA/2020B for old (O) articles last reviewed in 2010–2015.

Progress

Further information: Wikipedia:Unreviewed featured articles/2020/stats

Since URFA/2020's launch, with 4,526 FAs needing a review:

• 195 FAs were Delisted at FAR (179 VO and 16 O)
• 151 FAs were deemed Satisfactory or declared "Kept" at FAR (107 VO and 44 O)
• FAs needing review were reduced from 77% to 69%
• 60 editors made at least one notation in WP:URFA/2020, while others nominated, reviewed, and edited articles at WP:FAR

These numbers do not encompass the full activity of URFA/2020, however; once three experienced FA reviewers have deemed an FA 'Satisfactory' (not needing a FAR), it is moved to 'Kept or FAR not needed'. At year-end, an additional:

• 164 FAs had been given notice of the need for a featured article review
• 206 FAs had received one 'satisfactory' review (53 VO and 153 O)
• 64 FAs had received two 'satisfactory' reviews at URFA/2020 (16 VO and 48 O)
• 36 FAs were at FAR (33 VO and 3 O)

20% of the initial 4,526 older FAs have had ‘satisfactory’ feedback, or been noticed, kept or delisted at FAR. Hundreds more have been noted as having minor issues that should be addressed, work underway, or similar. Some FAs needing review per contributor copyright investigations have been flagged.

In December, URFA/2020 focused on reviewing FAs from 2004–2006. This resulted in many of the oldest articles getting reviews, particularly hurricane and typhoon articles; the number of these very oldest FAs needing review started in November 2020 at 225, and stands at 132 at year-end 2021. Reviewers are still needed for these older articles, especially editors with experience in European history, biographies, and animals. If you have any questions on how to review articles, please see the instructions tab or comment below.

URFA/2020 participants intend to write year-end reports for Wikiprojects, which will highlight articles that members of your Wikiproject might want to review. If your Wikiproject or newsletter is interested, please comment at WT:URFA/2020.

How to help

If we continued this year's trend, it would take more than ten years to review the remaining FAs, which is why we need your help! Here are some ways you can participate:

• Review "your" articles: Did you nominate an article to FAC from 2004–2015? Check these articles, fix them up, and mark them as "Satisfactory" at URFA/2020. If they do not meet the FA standards any more, please begin the FAR process by posting your concerns on the article's talk page.
• Fix an article: Choose an article at URFA/2020 and bring it back to FA standards. Enlist the help of the original nominator, frequent FA reviewers, Wikiprojects listed on the talk page, or editors that have written similar topics. When the article returns to FA standards, please mark it as "Satisfactory" at URFA/2020.
• Nominate an article that has been ‘noticed’ of a FAR needed but issues raised on talk have not been addressed.
• Edit and review articles at FAR: FARC/FAR is a collaborative process. We encourage all editors to WP:BEBOLD and fix the concerns posted at FAR. We also need reviewers to list concerns so editors know what to fix.
• Review articles at URFA/2020: Experienced FA writers and reviewers are encouraged to help by marking articles as "Satisfactory" or posting notices for FAR. Inexperienced reviewers are also needed; articles far from meeting the FA criteria can be noticed and eventually posted at FAR. This allows experienced editors to focus on articles not egregiously failing the FA criteria and allows more articles to be nominated at FAR.
• Organise "review-a-thons" with editors and Wikiprojects: Are there editors in your Wikiproject that can help? Organise a contest with your Wikiproject to review and improve your project's FAs. The contest can even hand out barnstars and awards! Please post at WT:URFA/2020 if interested in hosting an event.

Feedback If you have any questions or feedback, please visit Wikipedia talk:Unreviewed featured articles/2020#Discussion 2021 Summary.

Older reports 2021's quarterly reports are listed below:

• 2021 Q1 report
• 2021 Q2 report
• 2021 Q3 report

Thanks to everyone who helped with this report. Z1720 (talk) 20:22, 6 January 2022 (UTC)

Bot warning

@FAC coordinators: WARNING: Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628/archive2 has NOT been transcluded on the nomination page Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:14, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Out of process so I've requested G6 deletion. (t · c) buidhe 00:39, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Source reviews needed

Currently there are 10 articles listed as needing source reviews in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Image and source check requests. It would be great if any of you could knock a few of these off. (t · c) buidhe 09:54, 10 January 2022 (UTC)

Looks like it's now down to 4, and on 3 I've actioned the requests. That leaves the Frozen II FAC. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 12:04, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks everyone who helped bring this down! (t · c) buidhe 13:12, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

What does FA really mean?

I have read tons of essays about the featured article status, but I don't know what's the bar of a featured article. I have also looked at other articles as well that is related to SpaceX Starship: Space Shuttle, Hubble Space Telescope, Boeing 777, etc. Is the Starship article "good" enough? CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 08:54, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

The criteria are here Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and these are what the article will be assessed against. I advise you go for a Wikipedia:Peer review beforehand. Graham Beards (talk) 09:18, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

I have read the criteria and peer reviewing the article, but they are pretty vague to based on. When I looked at FAC, I don't really see a common theme (especially at technology related articles). CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 09:20, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

Stability is always going to be a concern with a quickly changing subject. I notice at the peer review that Atrecht believes that the article does not distinguish sufficiently between Musk's claims and what the rocket can actually do, that would be a POV issue. It's much easier to write a FA on a topic that's "past" or doesn't change a great deal on a week-to-week basis. (t · c) buidhe 09:30, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

SpaceX is also very broad a topic when you think about it in relation to Dracophyllum fiordense... Dracophyllum 18:05, 12 January 2022 (UTC)

That's true, especially about its "potential" side of thing as well. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:16, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

As I've noted elsewhere, the lack of coverage of any criticism of the concept, design etc is a major flaw in the article and I would oppose at FAC just on that basis. Also agree with Buidhe's observations, and note that is seems pretty "promotional" on a quick skimming, partly due to the lack of criticism. Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 00:24, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I added enough at Starbase... Thanks for the suggestion, I will for sure look for more. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:26, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Guess you are right! I will focus on environmental impact when you yeet a thousand rocket per day, then I am going to focus at design complexity when there is reliable source on the topic. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:47, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Texas A&M University

Playing leap frog all over the place here. No one in 6 months will explain what "high quality reliable sources" are defined as. I've offered to replace any/all sources and/or remove sections all to no avail. After being drug through FARC for months with unanimous support + some people stating some criticism that was still being discussed (plus "don't worry, we aren't going to remove it from FA as long as changes are being actively made" and waiting for WEEKS for a reply), over Christmas, 4 people voiced their opinions and the article was demoted without a chance for a reply. When asked why the sudden change, the admin involved refused an explanation and refused to discuss. Those who demoted it suggested bringing it to WP:FA. I did. After one review and every concern being addressed within 12 hours, it was removed because "it is clear that this article is not yet ready for FAC, so I am going to archive it." This doesn't help matters in the slightest. I've again asked for clarification for weeks to no avail.

This feels very much like an exercise in jumping through unnecessary hoops to prove fealty to the FA gatekeepers. I have no idea what's wrong now because no one will respond. Saying "it is clear that this article is not yet ready for FAC" is absurd when it was an FA just 2 weeks ago. If there's something wrong, please let me know. I can/will address it, but I ask that you answer my questions as well so I know what to address. Buffs (talk) 00:40, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I continue to recommend, as I did here, that you seek a collaborator who is well versed in FA standards (akin to what former FAC delegate User:Karanacs was in originally bringing the Aggie articles to FA standard). Also, one should never bring an article to FAC without having first addresssed prior concerns, and I see largest.org is still in the article. Two weeks, two months or two years, the article should not come back to FAC until the lengthy list of issues in the FAR is resolved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:46, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

The "lengthy list" appears to be 5 sources. I've repeatedly asked for clarification and, IMHO, you/others refuse to discuss. Buffs (talk) 16:13, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Don't see what "clarification" you are expecting. Either the sources are reliable or they aren't; the forum for disagreement is WP:RSN. You won't be successful at FAC if you don't resolve comments from earlier review processes. (t · c) buidhe 16:16, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Buidhe: I agree 100% either the sources are reliable or they are not. The issue I take is that there is an accusation of it being an unreliable source and that is all that is needed to shoot down a source, just an accusation. Justification should certainly be needed if you're alleging a source isn't appropriate so that such a shortfall can be addressed. Additionally, I'm happy to make changes, but given the dispute, I don't want to expend effort just guessing what the reviewer objects to and have asked for clarification in every venue. There appear to be 5 sources of contention, based on the FAC: GenomeWeb, biography.com, Tomahawk Nation, mcubed.net, Largest.org:

• GenomeWeb I stated why I felt it was a reliable source with no response. As a sign of good faith, I just removed the whole section
• Biography.com There is no consensus Biography.com is unreliable, though some allege it isn't. The mere fact that Wen Ho Lee went to Texas A&M is not contentious in the slightest (if anything, it's a minor negative stain on the school). If you want the sources replaced [27] [28] Given this information, biography.com seems to be clearly reliable for what is being sourced, but, as stated previously, I'll be happy to replace them.
• Tomahawk Nation I've stated that this particular source is appropriate and why. I also offered to replace the source with another source, and asked multiple reviewers to select from an extensive list (dealer's choice) and I'd be happy to do so. To date, no one has responded.
• mcubed.net I offered a solution in both the FAC and the FAR (the NCAA). To date, no one has responded.
• Largest.org I offered a solution in both the FAC and the FAR (remove the section). To date, no one has responded.

I'm ready, willing, and able to make such corrections, but would like clarification before I jump through potentially unnecessary or pointless hoops. Buffs (talk) 18:17, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Per WP:RS, a source is only reliable if it has a reputation for fact checking and accuracy. If you think the source is reliable, you should be able to show that it has such a reputation rather than expect the reviewer to justify why it does not have such a reputation, which can be hard to prove.

An even bigger issue with the Tomahawk source is that it does not support the content. The entire article should have been checked for verification before submitting to GAN or FAC.

If there is no reliable source for a certain assertion, the only solution is to remove it. (t · c) buidhe 18:30, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

(EC)@Buidhe:

How would it be best to demonstrate that a source has such a reputation for accuracy? It's way easier to point out where a source is inaccurate/pushing a political goal over facts. Proving it is a reliable source is far more difficult than proving it is not. If I showed that all of mcubed's figures lined up exactly with NCAA stats, would that be sufficient? I'm not against putting all season records of A&M on there to justify it, but 40+ sources for their bowl record seems unnecessarily pedantic. I'll do it if it's necessary, but it seems pointless to do 40+ references.

Re: Tomahawk, how does it not support the content. It talks about how Fischer left FSU for A&M. That's literally all it is there to support. The ONLY reason I'm keeping it in at this point is for clarification as to what is wrong. I will be happy to replace it with whatever source you want.

I'm at a loss as to what to do with "largest.com". How can I possibly prove it's an accurate and a reliable source. Every figure they cite aligns with every figure here on Wikipedia (and yes, they are backed up with sources). They align with every other article I can find on the subject too.

"If there is no reliable source for a certain assertion, the only solution is to remove it." I couldn't agree more Buffs (talk) 20:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

How would it be best to demonstrate that a source has such a reputation for accuracy? Often this is shown by 1) being cited by unquestionably reliable sources, 2) being created or published by people who have a high reputation for credibility or are recognized experts.

The source was published in 2017, so it does not support the claim that the coach was at the university for five seasons. If you can't see why that is a failed verification issue, I'm not sure you have the necessary editing precision that is expected at FAC. (t · c) buidhe 20:43, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

So a reliable source is a reliable source because a reliable source uses it as a source. Surely there's a better definition for a "highly reliable source".

The end of the 2021 season just ended. We are in the 2022 season...he is IN his 5th season (2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022). Buffs (talk) 23:11, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I will update all sources or delete statements as outlined above. I want to be very clear on this, I am only citing all the bowl games because there isn't another source that some people find reliable that combines all the data into a single source; this is NOT my preferred method and not what I desire. I am not doing so to be WP:POINTY, but to provide the requested information. If someone has another method of consolidation or a "better" source, I am open to alternatives. Buffs (talk) 23:22, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

• GenomeWeb removed section
• Biography.com section removed by @Buidhe:
• Tomahawk Nation Replaced by Sports Illustrated
• mcubed.net replaced by DMN & NCAA
• Largest.org removed section

All points addressed Buffs (talk) 17:37, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

This is going to be my last response on this (now at least) sixth page where the TAMU matter has been raised (FAR, WT:FAR, FAC, WT:FAC, DrKay’s talk and Gog’s talk).

Buffs, stop misrepresenting— people, statements, intentions, everything. No one has “refused to discuss”; quite the opposite, as reviewer after reviewer spent huge amounts of time explaining to you the issues that need to be addressed. There simply comes a time when reviews need to be closed.

First, you breached every FAC norm by bringing the article to FAC so soon after the FAR close, without having worked on the issues raised. You seem to literally blame that on HF and Buidhe, who suggested you bring the article to FAC; I can’t imagine anyone would guess that you would do that in only two days, without having addressed any of the issues. Second, Gog left the FAC open longer than necessary, because based on my first point, it could have been closed instantly. Third, I have now seen you pester both a FAC Coord and a FAR Coord, although I indicated to you concerns are raised at WT:FAR or WT:FAC per instructions in both processes. The issues are apparent to everyone viewing the FAC and the FAR; please stop pestering the Coords. Although at this point, I recommend you not be allowed to re-nom this article without a) permission from Gog or Ian, and b) an FA-knowledgeable mentor on board, whether that is at two weeks, two months, or two years. Reviewer time and effort should be respected.

I again conclude that unless you find a collaborator who is familiar with FA standards, as Aggie Karanacs was at the time these FAs were promoted, success at FAC is unlikely, and becomes even more unlikely as you do not digest the comments given on the review pages. You have three other FAs that have the same problems as this one, and also need FAR, so your time may be better spent on addressing those. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:56, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Sandy, that last comment is a little unbecoming, and might even, in a febrile atmosphere, be seen as WP:HOUNDING. Could we dial it down a little. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

"A little unbecoming" might be an understatement.

• First, you breached every FAC norm by bringing the article to FAC so soon after the FAR close, without having worked on the issues raised.

Bringing it to FAC was Hog Farm's idea, not mine, and was seconded by another editor as a good suggestion. You offered no objection to this path and, in fact, said you'd recuse yourself from this process. So let's not pretend that I "breached every FAC norm" when I did exactly what was advised.

• Second, Gog left the FAC open longer than necessary, because based on my first point, it could have been closed instantly

See previous. If you meant something else, you should have said so.

• Third, I have now seen you pester both a FAC Coord and a FAR Coord, although I indicated to you concerns are raised at WT:FAR or WT:FAC per instructions in both processes.

Where are these instructions? Asking them for clarification why something was closed is hardly "pestering"

• You seem to literally blame that on HF and Buidhe, who suggested you bring the article to FAC

I'm not blaming anyone. I'm stating why I nominated it. If you three meant something else, you should have stated so. Insinuating some stubborn, nefarious motive behind this nomination is absurd in the extreme.

• I can’t imagine anyone would guess that you would do that without having addressed any of the issues.

Let's not pretend I nominated it "without having addressed any of the issues" (currently at 100+ manual edits to ~40 points brought up in discussion; no points outstanding):

• [29]
• [30]
• Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Texas_A&M_University/archive1

Regarding sourcing, I've repeatedly asked questions in good faith in multiple fora to include offering to remove phrases/sentences or alter sourcing without a clear response (the FAC being the most recent). Buffs (talk) 17:19, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Gog, "Hounding" after having spent more than a year reviewing older FAs at WP:URFA/2020? Quite the opposite, I have avoided noticing those three articles precisely to avoid same. But I said that would be my last response, so ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:48, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Buffs: I reviewed this article while it was at FAR and pulled back when others were reviewing. However, I kept following the FAR, then this FAC with interest. I write this in an edit conflict with Sandy above, so sorry if some of this overlaps. I hope what I say below is read with the best of intentions because I don't mean any ill-will towards this article or any editors. However, I am going to give some blunt opinions.

This article is not FA quality right now. Multiple editors have questioned the sources in this article: In the FAR, HAL333 mentioned it in their initial nomination in July, then a few days later listed some sources that might not be high quality, I questioned primary sources in August (in the History section) and September (the Campus section), Sandy questioned in November, Hog Farm expressed concerns about the sources in December, then had verification problems in January. In the FAC, Nikki had verification problems and questions about the quality of the sources, and Guerillero also had concerns about an overreliance of primary sources. I would be concerned if editors were continuously bringing the same concerns to an article: even if the specific concerns were fixed, the expectation is that the rest of the article is checked for that concern, too. When an article is nominated at FAC, it is expected that only small, nitpicking edits will need to be made to garner support. This article has large sourcing concerns, which remain and persist.

Before nominating again, I suggest reading User:Ealdgyth/FAC, Sources, and You, which prepared me for the "Why is this source reliable" question when I brought articles to FAC. WP:FARS is also fantastic; although written for reviewers, it helps nominators understand what reviewers will look for in a source review. After reading those, check every source and determine what your response will be if challenged with "Why is this a reliable source?" If you cannot answer this question, replace the source. Yes, some information will have to be cited to Texas A&M, but sometimes there are better sources that can be used. If you find a high-quality, reliable secondary source that can replace a Texas A&M source, then you probably want to use the secondary source instead. Lastly, check every citation to ensure that it verifies the information that is citing it.

Reviewers hope that articles will be perfect when brought to FAC, because reviewing an almost-perfect article takes much less time than an article with lots of problems. They will probably pay special attention to sources the next time this is nominated. It might not be fair, but it is the truth; make reviewers happy by having as few concerns as possible. I'm not the best person to ask for advice on bringing this particular article to FA status (I have two FAs, and both are in 19th century Upper Canada history) so I'm probably not going to respond to questions that arise after this. However, I hope my advice will be taken so that this article can be closer to FA status, and I hope you seek a mentor who can help bring this article back to FA status. Z1720 (talk) 02:07, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Second this. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 02:20, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I've asked at least 5 people...no takers. Everyone is willing to tear down. No one is willing to build up. Buffs (talk) 20:34, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

Reviewers are not going to fix the article; they have their own projects and interests to work on. If you want this article to be featured status, you will have to do the checks, fixes, and legwork. Reviewers are there to confirm that the work has been completed. If reviewers find too many problems, especially ones that were pointed out in previous reviews, they will become frustrated, not continue their reviews, and oppose. Z1720 (talk) 22:08, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I have only asked people to make changes (fix it) if they were extremely minor, such as saying the article is "missing commas everywhere in numbers like 1,000" (paraphrased) when, in fact, there was ONE single instance. Making someone scour an entire article looking for a single-character error when you know exactly where it is and are unwilling to tell them is cruel/unnecessary, literally taking something that you could easily fix yourself with fewer characters than typing out a criticism and wasting someone else's time and effort a hundred fold more than you did. Aside from that, I've been willing to make every single change myself by hand. I'm clearly willing to do the fixes/legwork: I've personally added over 100,000 characters to this article alone (according to the stats). I'm quite certain I could take any/all featured articles and be pedantic/find things that are wrong with them. Buffs (talk) 23:53, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

@Buffs, don't worry if you don't get FA this time. It takes me 2 failed trial already at SpaceX Starship. The most important thing is to keep revise, revise, revise (thousands of times even?) and get it perfect. The article is not perfect right now, it is only somewhat good only. We need perfection, not good enough. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:11, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

If you did like, here are the attempts:

• First version + FAC
• Second version + FAC
• Third and current version

-- CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 00:24, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Just for the head up, this editor has declared that they will leave Wikipedia. I hope this wraps thing up. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 03:39, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Semi-retired. I think I'll finish this up before I leave. "don't worry if you don't get FA this time." There is no "this time" currently. It was shut down. Buffs (talk) 04:29, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Well, good luck at your other ventures. I hope you will be successful there. CactiStaccingCrane (talk) 04:30, 14 January 2022 (UTC)

Funny...I don't see "perfection" as a criteria for FA. I must have missed it... Buffs (talk) 20:01, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

I read through the FARC, the FA, and this thread and formed some impressions, and have some recommendations based on my experience of the FAC process as a nominator. You may know or observe some of these.

Recommendations

1. As nominator, always go out of your way to respond politely. Never say things like, "Well this is a bit of joke."
2. Never expect a reviewer to fix something they raised because they could've fixed it in a few minutes.
3. If you disagree with a nominator's comments give your reasons and move on.
4. When reviewers criticise something on the basis for style, have your style guide ready. The reviewer may still disagree but following a style guide trumps a reviewer's personal preference.
5. If a reviewer says e.g. "too many commas missing", you're welcome to ask them for some examples. Otherwise do your best to see if there's an issue, and set out what you found and what you did in response. Never criticise a reviewer for a lack of specificity.

I may not live up to all of these but I try.

Observations

1. It's disconcerting to have a Coord close a nomination at short notice without giving the nominator notification of the Coord's intent to do so, and to the provide the nominator an opportunity to respond. If the Coord, having regard to the nominator's response, then decides to close, then that's all well and good.
2. It's disconcerting to receive comments from reviewers that contradict one another e.g. "more citations required" v "too many citations." My general approach here to is to say to whoever was second that I already acted in response to the first reviewer's comments, and that I don't intend to revisit old ground.
3. I always view any .com source as being potentially unreliable and biased. That said, I've used them in limited circumstances, and explained my basis for doing so if challenged.
4. It's disconcerting when: (a) a reviewer posts an oppose; (b) the nominator responds by adjusting the article on the basis for the oppose and/or explains their reasoning for not so doing; (c) the reviewer lets their oppose remain anyway; (d) the coordinator appears to decide that consensus does not exist in any event, on the basis of this oppose, never mind the considered response of the nominator. See also #5.
5. As a nominator it's disconcerting to be advised that, "unless you find a collaborator who is familiar with FA standards… success at FAC is unlikely." The FA standards should be sufficiently well articulated, up front, that it should not be necessary to find a collaborator who is familiar with FA standards.
6. It's disconcerting that, while there are FAC standards, there are no Reviewer standards setting out expectations of reviewers. OK, if we don't want to scare away the reviewers than lets's not have reviewer standards. At the same time, the general expectation for reviewers should be, "Don't bite the nominators", noting this goes both ways.
7. It's disconcerting that there are no Coordinator standards setting out how they determine if consensus is established; what notice they will give to nominators of impending closures; and what the "appeal" rights or venues are for aggrieved nominators. OK, if there are none of these, and that's not going to change, then please say so up front.

COI declaration: Buffs responded to my comments about remaining dissatisfied with the way Nonmetal FAC#3 was closed.

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 05:58, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. In general, I agree with your assessment with a few caveats.

As nominator, always go out of your way to respond politely. Never say things like, "Well this is a bit of joke."

First of all, that wasn't the nominator that made that remark. The logic for bringing the whole article up for review in the first place was based entirely on a single vague query (i.e. "Can we do better on some of these sources?" [paraphrased] isn't an actionable critique) that wasn't addressed. No attempt was made to ask any specific editor or address it more than once. If the assertion "please address this or we will be moving it to WP:FAR" had been made, perhaps it would have been addressed to the person's satisfaction. Otherwise, such a process can be quickly/easily abused resulting in unnecessary time spent in FAC defending something that didn't need a defense. Buffs (talk) 03:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC) (sig added for clarity; comments broken via interjecting comment)

Hey, you're welcome! It was good to hear from someone else in the trenches. That makes at least four of us.

You said, "Well this is a bit of joke." right here: [31]. To the edit summary, you added: "this is a joke, right?".

None of your defensive explanation counts for anything and will not earn you any FAC friends. Yes, the FAC process is easily abused, which sucks, so you need to be prepared to suck up the time obligations.

Recall that nothing is necessarily fair about WP. Your WP life is in the hands of how other editors judge your actions, even if they do so unfairly. That is why it's so important to seek to act with the utmost courtesy and civility. Sandbh (talk) 01:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I think you misunderstand. I'm not saying I didn't say that. I'm saying I wasn't the nominator of the FAR. Likewise, the person who made the nomination and to whom I made that assertion ultimately supported the article for FA. Buffs (talk) 16:37, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

(Comments broken/continued from above) Never expect a reviewer to fix something they raised because they could've fixed it in a few minutes.

I don't expect them to fix it just because they could've fixed it in a few minutes. But if there is a single error in 140,000+ characters, don't vaguely assert. "I see a problem with numbers and commas" just to make someone jump through hoops and find the one instance you're talking about. There's no need to be so opaque. If it's so simple that it would take less effort to fix than report, then yes, you should fix it yourself. If you aren't going to do that, just specify "I think you missed a comma in '2400'". There's no need to force someone to pore over the article manually searching every single number just to find something that could have been fixed in 5-10 seconds. If you do so, I think your motivation is clearly not to improve the encyclopedia, but to force people to jump through your self-appointed obstacle course for approval to the point that you are intentionally wasting the time of our editors.

The idea that a FA needs to achieve "perfection" is an idea that needs to die a quick and notable death. I can pick any article, even an FA, and find something to improve.

YMMV. Thanks for the feedback! Buffs (talk) 03:32, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Effectively, nobody cares what your expectations are. You can only seek to act with the utmost courtesy and civility, and hope to get the same in return. There is nothing you can do about the vague assertions. One can only deal with them as they come, in the best way possible. This includes the time wasters. It sucks, but there it is.

I edit WP because the benefits I get from "improving" some miswritten articles in my areas of interest outweighs e.g. the FAC effort factor. Having said that it took me five years to muster enough gumption to attempt to climb Mt FAC again. The FAC expectations have gotten only higher, and the hidden rules more labyrinthine. I have some articles in the literature and they did not take as long as it has currently taken me, and continues to take, to get nonmetal to FAC. Sandbh (talk) 01:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

I agree, and it won't die by responses like this, in my experience. YMMV, as you say. Sandbh (talk) 01:41, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

One thing to consider is that sometimes two people just aren't going to agree on a given issue. When that happens on a number of points the nomination is likely to fail/get delisted - by definition there isn't a consensus if people don't agree on a topic, and letting the discussion continue [which is what "chance to reply" implies] isn't going to change that. This seems to have occurred at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Texas A&M University/archive1 with respect to the sourcing, and at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Texas A&M University/archive1 albeit over wider problems. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:57, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

@Jo-Jo Eumerus: As clearly demonstrated above, sourcing was not the issue. Clarity was. Buffs (talk) 14:48, 24 January 2022 (UTC)

Consensus does not require unanimity, does it? While two people may disagree on a number of points, the relevant questions are, it seem to me: "On what basis have the disagreements arisen?" and "Has the nominator provided a considered bases for maintaining their position?" If the answer to the latter question is yes, then there is, or should be, no basis to fail/delist the nomination on the basis of that disagreement. Sandbh (talk) 01:28, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Closure of nonmetal FAC archive 3

I write to politely outline some concerns I have about this closure, and to request a civil consideration of these concerns. A sequence of events follows:

1. This article had received six supports and two opposes.

2. @Gog the Mild: then pinged the two opposers to see if they had any outstanding concerns.[32][33]

3. One of these two opposers, without technical expertise in the topic, recycled some technical-based concerns[34][35] that I'd addressed previously on the nomination page.

4. Some other comments were then posted by two editors new to the nomination, to do with:[36]

• canvassing—a concern that had been previously raised, dealt with, and closed on this talk page
• multiple unaddressed opposes–no, their were two opposes and the bases for these opposes had been addressed at length by me at the nomination page
• increasingly acerbic atmosphere–no, the atmosphere had remained civil thanks to encouragement from Gog the Mild, with one exception[37]
• there's a fair amount of work still to be done–no, there isn't
• there are unretracted opposes with actionable concerns (e.g Doncram's) and people are getting tetchy–no, I'd previously addressed these concerns on the nomination talk page.

5. Subsequently an editor who had previously opposed, and who had withdrawn their oppose saying "I'm happy to go with the consensus", [thank you] commented that "For what it is worth, I don't think it is ready to be promoted."[38]

6. @Gog the Mild: then closes the FAC, saying, "It is clear that there is substantial opinion against promotion".[39]

7. The other opposer (Doncram) then acknowledges that a lot of progress had been made and struck out their oppose [thank you], leaving six supports and one oppose.[40]

My concerns

I was not given the opportunity to address items 3 to 5 before Gog the Mild closed the nomination.

I understand that establishing consensus for FAC promotion is not a case of tallying supports and opposes. Indeed, I had posted to the nomination page, "I presumed that keeping track of supports and opposes is one way of informing the consensus climate."[41]

Neither does consensus require unanimity.

Why is it then that…

• the recycled views of one opposer whose comments I've addressed at some length; and
• the views of another opposer (Doncram) whose comments I'd addressed at some length, evidently to their satisfaction; and
• the well-intended but misguided views of three other editors, two of whom were new to the nomination,

…are deemed to frustrate consensus, which does not require unanimity in the first place?

Thank you, Sandbh (talk) 00:32, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

You are not going to like this response, but a very quick look at that FAC provides the ultimate answer. No FAC should be anything resembling that size, as that level of discussion indicates that the article was under-prepared. If there were still outstanding opposes after all that, the coordinators made the right call. Attempting to dismiss reviewers on the grounds that they supposedly lack technical expertise is - to be very blunt - disrespectful and not on. To continue being blunt, the extent of antagonistic discussion in that FAC is simply awful. Nick-D (talk) 09:47, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Aye, this article was underprepared if it required so much commentary, and thus not ready for FAC. And I don't think that all of the issues raised were addressed and yes I did read the talk page. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 11:00, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

Stuff like this is why I think we need to get back to the old system I've heard about (predates my time, not sure when stopped) of restarting FACs that got derailed. Sandbh, this probably should've been procedurally closed and restarted after you canvassed several of those supports in. "The more the words, the less the meaning" - if it requires 40,000 words, then it is very hard to get consensus. One place to start will be not belittling reviewers because they don't have the technical knowledge of you - FACs are suppose to be comprehensible to wide readership. And as to "two of whom were new to the nomination" - isn't the point of review to get uninvolved editors to look at your work? As a FAC coord, I support Gog's decision to archive this nomination. Hog Farm _Talk 14:16, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

For all the reasons mentioned (Nick-D, Jo-Jo, HF), it was a good close. All I can add is that the third nom appeared too soon after the second nom. The two-week wait period is a minimum, but was insufficient to address the concerns raised in the second nom for such a broad article. On that basis alone, it could have been closed sooner. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 19 January 2022 (UTC)

NONMETAL FAC 3

Editor	Position	Word count	%
Double sharp	Support	384	1.1%
YBG	—	9,200	25.8%
DePiep	Oppose	6,428	18.0%
Dirac66	Support	995	2.8%
Graham Beards	Oppose	2,050	5.7%
Doncram	Oppose	7,601	21.3%
Mike Turnbull	Support	1,145	3.2%
Peter Gans	Support	134	0.4%
Mirokado	Support	1,276	3.6%
ComplexRational (source review)	Support	6,509	18.2%
		35,5722

Thanks for the frank responses, patience and civility.

Re concerns about size; level of discussion; [too] much commentary; and the article being unprepared, the NONMETAL FAC 3 table shows what happened:

• For the first five supports there was hardly any commentary.
• While the sixth support by ComplexRational ran to 6,500 words, this was associated with his line-by-line source review of some 280 citations.
• YBG had concerns that he raised over 7 rounds and some 9,000 words; in the event all were addressed or resolved by agreement. For the sole oppose by DePiep I address this in the next paragraph.

On "attempting to dismiss reviewers on the grounds that they supposedly lack technical expertise" or "belittling" reviewers for the same reason, both reviewers concerned have acknowledged that they lack the technical background yet they either raised comments on this basis (which I addressed) or recycled comments on this basis after I'd addressed their concerns. Doncram specifically acknowledged his lack of background in the subject area;[42] DePiep has elsewhere acknowledged his lack of subject expertise re the chemical elements.

Technical issues to do with the article were largely addressed during a one month 35,000 word peer review that ran from August 2nd to October 5th, 2021. Doncram was not involved in the PR. DePiep posted a 357-word complaint about an IP editor who was participating in the PR;[43] and a 93-word contribution, the gist of which I could not understand, on October 4th.[44]

In contrast, Double sharp, Dirac 66, Mike Turbnull, and Peter Gans all have expertise in this area.

The FAC process is not well served when consensus among reviewers with subject matter expertise seemingly does not carry any weight compared to the views, on technical grounds, of two editors without any technical expertise, one of which (Doncram) withdrew their concerns.

In the relatively few cases where I didn't action a concern, I explained my position on the basis of WP policy or FAC criteria, including having regard to the complex nature of the subject matter.

Speaking frankly, with no offence intended to anyone, I don't understand why the canvassing issue is repeatedly raised given it was discussed here, addressed, and closed two months ago.

As far as nomination 3 appearing too soon after nomination 2, I edited the article a further 103 times in the intervening period.

Viewed in light of the above, I remain dissatisfied with the way the close was handled. I've attempted to remain civil in my attempt to work out what happened, and get some answers. That said, I'm beginning to feel like [a polite version of] Sisyphus. Thank you, Sandbh (talk) 03:51, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

@Sandbh: After reading the entire discussion, I empathize with your position and agree there isn't enough transparency here. I also see very few legitimate explanations above; people appear to be adding their own criteria to the FA process

• "No FAC should be anything resembling that size, as that level of discussion indicates that the article was under-prepared."

Or it could simply be a very complex topic requiring some discussion. I have an engineering degree and I found the topic to be highly technical, but I can see how WP:SUMMARY-style in this case can lead to needing additional clarification.

• "Attempting to dismiss reviewers on the grounds that they supposedly lack technical expertise is - to be very blunt - disrespectful and not on...simply awful."

That's on the nominator, not the article itself, which is what is being evaluated. If there is a problem with an editor's behavior, it needs to be addressed elsewhere, not here.

• "the third nom appeared too soon after the second nom. The two-week wait period is a minimum...On that basis alone, it could have been closed sooner."

Time should not be a factor. Either it is ready or it isn't. Waiting extra time just to show fealty to the process is a quasi-religious viewpoint.

These (and others) are terrible and unaddressable criteria/criticism and do not explain why it was shut down when consensus appears to be in the affirmative. Buffs (talk) 17:57, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

While I chose not to participate in the FAC which is being discussed, I provided a review of sufficient length during the last PR, and I watched this FAC from the sidelines. I do agree that Sandbh, one editor among many, can be generally worried and can be right to be worried that his nomination was not evaluated fairly and, by the measure of past results, is not going to be. I agree with the analysis Buffs has provided and I'm afraid that experiences similar to Sandbh's might turn editors away from even trying to get their article promoted. Back when I was an editor, I was struggling with this a lot, and I even got my first bronze star not with the article I first submitted to FAC, because I suspected I was going to be judged more harshly for the article I once failed to promote---I'm going to assume that there are other editors who feel the same.

Over my long experience as an editor, through trial and error, I was able to figure out how to write featured articles, and I was rather good at it at some point. Does everybody have to though? Wouldn't FAC coordinators be interested in more transparency, especially for newcomer editors, in order to not turn editors away from the FAC process?--217.107.127.194 (talk) 21:35, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

• @DePiep: -DePiep (talk) 12:55, 10 February 2022 (UTC)

Proposal to adjust the TFA re-running period

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article § Adjusting the TFA re-running period. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 17:32, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

FASA: get your !votes in

As the end of January approaches, a monthly reminder to !vote for Featured Article Save Awards at the open discussions. Besides recognizing FAR “saves”, hopefully this activity will encourage more rescues of rusty bronze stars. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:41, 20 January 2022 (UTC)

FAC reviewing statistics for January 2022

Here are the FAC reviewing statistics for January 2022. The tables below include all reviews for FACS that were either archived or promoted last month, so the reviews included are spread over the last two or three months. A review posted last month is not included if the FAC was still open at the end of the month. The facstats tool has been updated with this data. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:04, 5 February 2022 (UTC)

Reviewers for January 2022

# reviews Type of review Reviewer Content Source Image Accessibility Buidhe 1 1 11 Nikkimaria 1 2 9 Kavyansh.Singh 9 1 1 FunkMonk 9 Jo-Jo Eumerus 7 2 Gog the Mild 7 1 Hog Farm 4 2 Ealdgyth 5 AryKun 4 Aoba47 1 1 2 Wehwalt 4 Serial Number 54129 2 2 Guerillero 2 2 ChrisTheDude 3 Amakuru 2 1 Tim riley 3 The Rambling Man 3 CactiStaccingCrane 3 Aza24 2 1 Mike Christie 3 Czar 1 1 Mirokado 2 Nick-D 2 Gerald Waldo Luis 2 TheSandDoctor 1 1 Pamzeis 2 Ceoil 2 Jens Lallensack 1 1 JBchrch 2 SatDis 2 GeneralPoxter 2 Gerda Arendt 2 Moisejp 2 Sennecaster 2 Theleekycauldron 1 1 Edwininlondon 1 1 Graham Beards 2 SNUGGUMS 2 Hawkeye7 2 ComplexRational 1 1 Jarodalien 1 ExcellentWheatFarmer 1 Szmenderowiecki 1 HumanxAnthro 1 Opabinia regalis 1 Michael D. Turnbull 1 Trainsandotherthings 1 WereSpielChequers 1 Laser brain 1 TheDoctorWho 1 Pink Saffron 1 Dugan Murphy 1 DePiep 1 Peacemaker67 1 CPA-5 1 TheTechnician27 1 Therapyisgood 1 Blz 2049 1 ZKang123 1 Maxim 1 Petergans 1 Dudley Miles 1 Brigade Piron 1 Chompy Ace 1 Pendright 1 DanCherek 1 SandyGeorgia 1 Wretchskull 1 Dirac66 1 Ham II 1 ErnestKrause 1 Chidgk1 1 SchreiberBike 1 YBG 1 Ojorojo 1 Casliber 1 Sdkb 1 Doncram 1 PeeJay 1 Zmbro 1 Hurricanehink 1 GhostRiver 1 Heartfox 1 217.107.124.254 1 Kaiser matias 1 Usernameunique 1 Amitchell125 1 RunningTiger123 1 A. C. Santacruz 1 Double sharp 1 Smerus 1 Jts1882 1 Gruban 1 Lee Vilenski 1 Pseud 14 1 Totals 145 31 33 0

Supports and opposes for January 2022

# declarations Declaration Editor Support Oppose converted to support Struck oppose Struck support Oppose None Total Buidhe 13 13 Nikkimaria 1 11 12 Kavyansh.Singh 9 2 11 FunkMonk 9 9 Jo-Jo Eumerus 9 9 Gog the Mild 6 2 8 Hog Farm 2 4 6 Ealdgyth 5 5 Guerillero 1 3 4 Aoba47 4 4 Serial Number 54129 4 4 Wehwalt 4 4 AryKun 3 1 4 Aza24 2 1 3 CactiStaccingCrane 1 1 1 3 The Rambling Man 1 2 3 Mike Christie 2 1 3 Tim riley 3 3 Amakuru 1 2 3 ChrisTheDude 2 1 3 Pamzeis 2 2 Mirokado 2 2 Czar 2 2 TheSandDoctor 1 1 2 ComplexRational 1 1 2 GeneralPoxter 2 2 Gerda Arendt 2 2 Hawkeye7 2 2 SNUGGUMS 2 2 SatDis 2 2 JBchrch 1 1 2 Graham Beards 1 1 2 Jens Lallensack 2 2 Edwininlondon 1 1 2 Ceoil 1 1 2 Gerald Waldo Luis 2 2 Theleekycauldron 1 1 2 Nick-D 2 2 Sennecaster 2 2 Moisejp 2 2 DanCherek 1 1 SandyGeorgia 1 1 Szmenderowiecki 1 1 HumanxAnthro 1 1 Hurricanehink 1 1 Zmbro 1 1 Chompy Ace 1 1 Pendright 1 1 Brigade Piron 1 1 ExcellentWheatFarmer 1 1 Jarodalien 1 1 PeeJay 1 1 Dudley Miles 1 1 Pseud 14 1 1 Doncram 1 1 Petergans 1 1 Maxim 1 1 Gruban 1 1 Lee Vilenski 1 1 Sdkb 1 1 Therapyisgood 1 1 Blz 2049 1 1 ZKang123 1 1 Casliber 1 1 CPA-5 1 1 TheTechnician27 1 1 Peacemaker67 1 1 Jts1882 1 1 Smerus 1 1 Ojorojo 1 1 DePiep 1 1 Dugan Murphy 1 1 A. C. Santacruz 1 1 Double sharp 1 1 SchreiberBike 1 1 YBG 1 1 Chidgk1 1 1 Laser brain 1 1 TheDoctorWho 1 1 Pink Saffron 1 1 Amitchell125 1 1 RunningTiger123 1 1 WereSpielChequers 1 1 Usernameunique 1 1 Kaiser matias 1 1 ErnestKrause 1 1 Ham II 1 1 Trainsandotherthings 1 1 217.107.124.254 1 1 Heartfox 1 1 Dirac66 1 1 Wretchskull 1 1 Michael D. Turnbull 1 1 Opabinia regalis 1 1 GhostRiver 1 1 Totals 104 0 2 1 5 97 209

• Thank you for consistently posting this information. Aoba47 (talk) 22:11, 5 February 2022 (UTC)
• Yeah, +1! – Kavyansh.Singh (talk) 04:40, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

• The infamous disappearing oppose (negligible for November, December and January, after a brief and limited reappearance in October) might offer a partial explanation for the upset seen recently when FACs are archived. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:47, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

  Personally, I've opposed more FACs than I've supported :) It's true that most archivals in the past few months have been based on insufficient participation rather than opposes. However, it's not the case that all of these articles were unprepared to begin with; in fact, some could have been promoted if we had more reviewers. Recent examples such as the Soviet economic blocade of Lithuania and Nonmetal FACs have been quickly archived after multiple opposes—the community can deal with insufficiently prepared nominations, at least sometimes. (t · c) buidhe 11:08, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Source reviews needed

We're back again with ten source reviews needed. They're listed in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/Image and source check requests. If you can knock some of these off, please do! (t · c) buidhe 22:30, 6 February 2022 (UTC)

Reviewing by experienced nominators

FAC regulars with a long queue of FAC-ready articles would like nominations to get promoted faster -- well, every nominator would probably like things to move faster, but the regulars have the most motivation. If everyone with more than a handful of bronze stars were to make sure they provided at least as many reviews as they received, I believe the average time taken to promote or archive a FAC would drop significantly. If you have an active FAC and don't know whether you're a net contributor or a net consumer of reviews, you can find out by looking here (it may take a few seconds to load). There are honorable exceptions, of course; some nominators are FAC coordinators, or TFA coordinators, etc., so they contribute to the process in other ways; we can't just go by the raw numbers. But I would urge everyone who has a few bronze stars to take a look at the numbers on that page and see if they can nudge their review ratio upwards a little bit.

One caveat: I recall when I started at FAC I didn't review much till I had fifteen or twenty promoted articles; it just didn't occur to me that I could or should help out in the process. Nominators who are not active reviewers shouldn't be penalized for not reviewing. But I would like to encourage them to start reviewing more; if all the regulars upped their game at the same time, we could get back to the days of regular two-week durations at FAC, and start clearing our backlogs of FAC-ready articles. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:27, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I must second this excellent suggestion. As an additional measure to help motivate excellence in reviewing at FAC, I've been monitoring the recent changes feed and trying to identify and give barnstars for above-average contributions to reviewing. (t · c) buidhe 04:01, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

A fine concept, I would commend it to all nominators. I have always tried to keep track of my assessments so I can tell if I am reaching my target of carrying out six reviews for each FAC promoted. Mike's handy app is a much easier way of telling just where you are in this respect. (Clearly I need to do a bit more reviewing!) Gog the Mild (talk) 22:40, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

Closure of nonmetal FAC archive 4

Former close

I'm closing this now. Sandbh knows where to go with this, and others' time is not to be wasted. We are currently being rather merciful, but if Sandbh dares to put yet another complaint on this general talk page in response to a failed FAC I will have no choice but to initiate a topic ban proposal. Even in the best of cases, this isn't the page to discuss specific FACs. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 15:17, 14 February 2022 (UTC) And I unclosed it, for the faulty reasoning in the close statement; resumed below. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

I write to politely outline some concerns I have about this closure, and the FAC process, and to request a civil consideration of same. Thank you to those editors who posted comments during the nomination's short lifetime. Thank you User:Double sharp and User: Petergans for your supports. Thank you @SandyGeorgia: for additional comments at the FAC archive 4 talk page.

General concerns

• I posted the nomination on 4 Feb and it was closed one day later on 5 Feb.
• Pre-closure I was not afforded an opportunity to respond to any of the comments, a substantial number of which were unfounded.
• I regard such closure as representing less than civil behaviour, and a deficiency in the FAC process.
• Yes, the nomination may have been closed anyway, and at least give me an opportunity to record my say pre-closure.
• @FAC coordinators: Is this too much to ask?
  

Specific concerns
There are too many of these to list so I've limited myself to a selection of what I politely regard as some of the more egregious of them.

• ​​Citations in the lede section. These were added in response to concerns raised during previous FAC nominations and the peer review process. While Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Lead section#Citations discourages adding references to lead sections when they aren't needed, it also says, "There is not, however, an exception to citation requirements specific to leads."

• ​Sourcing. Yes, some sources have page numbers given and others don't - instead only featuring a "passim" even if the source is a long book. A case in point is Emsley's 700 pp book Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Elements. I do not always provide page numbers for this book since one simply needs to look up the appropriate alphabetic entry.

• ​Rushed. "Also, in my opinion, this has been rushed into FAC4". Comment: I politely (strongly) object to this comment. As noted in the nomination, all outstanding issues raised at FAC #3 were addressed before FAC #4 was posted. All further comments rec'd from other editors between FAC #3 and FAC #4 were addressed.

• ​Canvassing. Since this was not done by me, I dispute that it represents grounds to oppose the nomination.

• ​Drive-by or fan support. "Previous supports might be disregarded as drive-by or fan support." Comment: I politely (strongly) object to this insinuation as to the calibre of previous supports. Of the supporters, User:Double sharp is an expert in elements matters and he and I have had strong disagreements; Dirac 66 has interests in physical chemistry; chemistry, physics and the history of science and has provided valuable, balanced and measured, input into those topics; User:Michael D. Turnbull is a chemist not known to me; User:Petergans (a chemist) and I have clashed in the past; User:Mirokado, whom I do not know, provided several comments at FAC 3, which I acted on; and User:ComplexRational undertook a comprehensive review of the sources in the article. There are no drive-by or fan supporters here.

• Unprepared. "Based on what I found, I suggest the article has not been prepared for FAC". Comment: I politely object to this suggestion, implying as it does that I did not prepare the article for FAC.

• Need for Peer review. "I suggest the article…could benefit from a long and strenuous WP:peer review, involving topic experts, non-topic experts (laypersons, for a jargon check), and MOS/FA-criteria-knowledgeable editors." Comment: This has already occurred. The article was subjected to a 3-month, 35,000 word peer review over the period August 2nd 2021 to October 5th.

• Pricing. I included the price of black phosphorus since, while black P is the most stable form of P and is scientifically important for that reason, it has so far only been available in minute quantities owing to how hard it is to prepare. The fact that is is now easier to prepare is a big deal given its novel electronic properties. Clearly, in the previous context, this was not a breach of the spirit of WP:NOPRICE, which provides that, "Wikipedia is not a price comparison service to compare prices and availability of competing products or a single product from different vendors."
• COPYVIO. That was my paraphrasing bad for which I apologise. I politely object to the bad faith insinuation that it "suggests that all hard-print sources should be checked as well."
• OR. "This looks like original research: 'Since there are 118 known elements,[17] as of February 2022, the 23 nonmetals within the scope of this article are outnumbered by the metals several times.' While it may be an obvious calculation of simple math, why is it in the article if not citeable to a high quality source?" Comment: Simple math such as 118/23 = 5 does not need to be citeable to a high quality source.
• Writing standard: "The article's sourcing, writing, organization and presentation seem more akin to a sophomore-year high school term paper than what we would expect from a Featured article." Comment: I politely (strongly) object to this unwarranted comparison. I have successfully completed post-graduate studies; marked undergrad and post-grad assignments; am published in the scientific literature; and continue to write to this end. The approach I took to the article was no different.

And the list goes on…

Conclusion

• Some of the reviewer suggestions had merit and I could've actioned these in a timely manner, within the bounds of the FAC process, had I been provided with that opportunity.
• I am disappointed that the FAC Coordinators appear to place more importance in the superficiality of some comments from reviewers than in the substance of the nomination.
• A fair number of comments have to do with irrelevant stylistic differences including on the question of prose that is engaging and of a professional standard.
• I'll follow up with reviewers in due course.
• Thank you for the opportunity to have my say. Sandbh (talk) 01:20, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

You are starting to come across as entitled to the bronze star and there is a perception that you are perusing a strategy of ramming this article through the process. Further, the point by point dispute threads each time this nom gets closed are starting to verge on being disruptive. You are wearing the patients of the community thin and we are starting to get close to needing to go to a noticeboard to discuss this issue. --Guerillero ^{Parlez Moi} 09:54, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

• Very tempted to Support topic-ban, broadly construed, from WP:FAC for User:Sandbh. Yes, I know it would need to go to the noticeboard, but seriously, this <nominate-archive-lodge massive complaint at WT:FAC-rinse and repeat> is getting extremely tiresome. The last failed nom (#3)—the aftermath of which is still^^^ on this page!—thousands of words—and not even considering hours of volunteer editors' time—was taken up, with it and the subsequent dissection of that nom. And we're expected to go through all that again in the name of good faith? No thanks. Close this now. Sandbh has been given a bucketful of advice; they know precisely what they need to do to get nonmetal up to scratch, but they are starting to appear to think it's more useful to take up everyone else's time and energy here. See: WP:PACT. SN54129 10:26, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I suggest that the FAC community prevent non-metal from being nominated at FAC until 1) it goes through a PR and 2) an experienced FAC reviewer who has opposed a previous nom or been uninvolved gives extensive comments in the PR and states that they think the article is ready for FAC. This would give me the confidence that the article is ready for FAC. Z1720 (talk) 15:09, 7 February 2022 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of topic bans at FAC, and the times I am aware of that it has been done were big mistakes, which have affected the overall FA pool, and not in a good way. We have other ways of dealing with the kinds of issues occurring with this article. If a FAC is disrupted, the disruptive editor can be blocked from that FAC (yay, not an option when I was FAC delegate). Restarts can be an option for cases like this. If an editor repeatedly puts up an ill-prepared nomination, we can ask that permission from a Coord be required before a subsequent nomination. But more importantly, in this case, I hope we can convince Sandbh to take up the cluestick. A cut-and-paste copyvio is not a "paraphrasing bad", and that it was the first thing my eyes fell on over breakfast in a restaurant on an iPhone gives rise to serious concern about previous supports. A series of undefined redlinks in the basic definition of the concept is something that makes me scratch my eyeballs as to how we got to FAC number four with that on board. Sandbh, an experienced FAC mentor may help; do you really want to keep making posts here that may serve only to alienate the very editors who might be positioned to help you and the article? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:04, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

I think one of the issues is highlighted in Sandbh's statement here that he is "published in the scientific literature; and continue to write to this end. The approach I took to the article was no different." What applies to scientific writing and publishing is not what is necessarily going to be a good fit for encyclopedic writing. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this is getting through to Sandbh - I wish it would, as I hate seeing someone keep beating their head against a brick wall, and it's frustrating to watch. Please, understand that no one is doing this as a battle ... folks aren't "against" the article - they just want it to conform to high standards for an encyclopedia article. Work with the experienced folks to get a good outcome. Ealdgyth (talk) 00:13, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

As someone completely uninvolved in this case (but has seen the subject come up over and over), I also think a topic-ban is too harsh, but I agree that the nominator should comply with a thorough peer review before taking the article to FAC again. FunkMonk (talk) 00:23, 8 February 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. I intend to edit the article in light of the feedback received at FAC 4. Once that is done I’ll list it for a second PR. Sandbh (talk) 22:58, 9 February 2022 (UTC)

As a polite suggestion, it would probably be a good idea to take a break from editing this article for a few months, as when/if you return to it it is likely that you will have an improved perspective on it. Nick-D (talk) 06:05, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

For the record: in thisFAC3-evaluation Sandbh started (now in Archive88), I was personally honored with the #three out of four evaluation judgements without being pinged at all. -DePiep (talk) 08:02, 11 February 2022 (UTC)

For the record, I note that no other editor was pinged in that now dated thread aside from the relevant FAC coordinator. Sandbh (talk) 04:28, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

Please help me out: did you attack more editors in there, unpingerd? -DePiep (talk) 07:10, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

• I would also support a topic ban for Sandbh from FAC unless they take a months-long break from it and the article before returning to the process. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 21:41, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

  I have not read through any of the FACs, nor done more than glance at the previous discussions on this page, but on general principles I think a topic ban should be the last resort here. If Sandbh would voluntarily commit to finding an experienced FAC nominator who says it's ready to renominate, before coming back to this page, that would assuage many concerns, and would make the next nomination much more likely to be promoted -- which is the outcome we all want. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:51, 13 February 2022 (UTC)

As flagged, I intend to (1) edit the article in light of the feedback received at FAC 4, and then (2) list it for a second PR. I expect it'll take me a while to work through the FAC 4 feedback and make associated adjustments to the article. I expect PR 2 will take a while, too, given PR 1 ran for two months. Mike, that is a good idea of yours and I'll seek to do so. Sandbh (talk) 04:12, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

I am very disappointed by Sandbhs behaviour in this. [45] [46] (here). -DePiep (talk) 06:29, 14 February 2022 (UTC)

The page to discuss specific FACs

I have reopened after the unnecessary close of this thread. Firstly, because of the incorrect statement that "this isn't the page to discuss specific FACs" (it most certainly is). Second, because there is no consensus for the conclusions in the closing statement; of the ten editors who weighed in here, only two supported a topic ban, while quite a few spoke against a topic ban and expressed the numerous other ways FAC has of dealing with the issues, to which Sandbh appears amenable. Next, because the close was made by one of the (only) two editors who supported that conclusion. And finally, FAC has no need of drama-board-style intervention; there is nothing in this thread or this issue that wasn't handled and can't be handled by FAC participants and Coords. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:50, 15 February 2022 (UTC)

• While the topic ban talk in the original close probably came across as overly aggressive, I take issue with the assertion that this is a page to discuss specific FACs, much less "most certainly"; specific FACs should be discussed, if at all, on their respective talkpages and with the coordinators/participants on an individual basis. This is the talkpage for FAC concerns as a whole, and specific cases should generally only be discussed here in a March 2020-style crisis situation. Sure, Sandbh's original post on the topic many moons ago was nominally a proposal for an overhaul of the FAC system, but this specific post appears to be a laundry list of complaints regarding the FAC process as it applies to the specific failure of yet another nonmetal FAC. That only two persons outright supported a topic ban at the time of the initial close is true, but somewhat misleading as others have also criticized Sandbh's behavior on here, and the rationale for the original close was to prevent this discussion from becoming yet another timesink for the project as the previous discussions had been. I do note that Sandbh has been genuinely published and is an accomplished researcher in the field, which might quite explain their frustration at this field, and I appreciate those trying to provide them due assistance. I think there might be rough consensus for Sandbh to take a months-long sabbatical and work on this article and associated peer reviews without touching the FAC process prior to coordinator input, and it's probably best for further discussion to center on that specific proposal. In any event, I leave if and when to reclose this discussion to someone less involved in it. – John M Wolfson (talk • contribs) 04:31, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  ... specific FACs should be discussed, if at all, on their respective talkpages and with the coordinators/participants on an individual basis. This is the talkpage for FAC concerns as a whole, and specific cases should generally only be discussed here in a March 2020-style crisis situation. This is just not the case. Discussing individual FACs with Coords is certainly one option, but this talk page is another, and we need not leave the Coords to defend every action they take alone. If we always did that, it would be a miserable position to leave them in. They judge consensus, and the entire community is involved, so community discussion is often appropriate and helpful. This talk page is for anything related to FAC, and that covers a lot of territory. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  John M Wolfson, it's worth remembering this page has no standing to place a topic-ban, or any non-voluntary editing restriction; as indeed Serial number notes above, in the only other comment supporting a topic ban. As such there could never be consensus for such a proposal here. Otherwise, I agree with Sandy; discussions here can be quite valuable in bringing matters to the attention of people besides the coordinators. Vanamonde (Talk) 05:17, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  I think if there were clear consensus for a topic ban on this page, it could be implemented. Not with admin action but simply the FAC coords removing their nominations immediately according to the established consensus. However, I don't see such a consensus in this discussion. (t · c) buidhe 10:22, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  No. Per WP:BANAUTH, topic bans (or any other) may only be imposed in certain, limited, scenarios, and individual projects do not constitute sufficient consensus. But any coord removing editors' comments at FAC would likely find themselves at ANI for breaching WP:TPO. As I said, for our purposes, they would be imposed at AN/I where any editor is able to file; whether FAC regulars, or coords, deem it necessary is irrelevant. Disruptive editing is disruptive editing, wherever it takes place; it may not, yet, have arisen in this particular case, but if/when it does, it will not be resolved here. SN54129 10:48, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  SN54129 I do not mean removing an editor's comments, but the FAC nomination itself. There is no entitlement for an article to be considered at FAC and I have sometimes removed nominations that were out of process, for example Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628/archive2 and Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Iron/archive1. This would also be used for example if someone renominated a failed FAC before the two week period. If the community decided that they wanted to ban an editor from FAC nominations for a set period I would enforce it in the same way. (t · c) buidhe 11:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

  Of course FAC can install "topic bans" on individuals: they just aren't called that, but the effect would be the same (minimizing disruption by restricting certain nominations). I am not saying that is the case here, or suggesting we do same here ... just clarifying the principle.

  Historical sample. Last decade, there was a period of considerable disruption at FAC due to WikiCup, whereby a handful of nominators abused of the FAC process in a quest to do anything possible to gain WikiCup points. To curb that disruption, the FAC rules were changed to allow only one nomination at a time, with a two-week wait period after any failed nomination. But since the rule was intended to curb disruption, the FAC delegates (now Coords) were empowered to grant exceptions (because the rule was not intended to stop nominations of well-prepared non-WikiCup FACs). Effectively, abusive nominators had their nominations curtailed, and the WikiCup problem was contained for a decade.

  If the community had similar concerns about the current situation, a similar solution would be easy to devise. A rule such as "After X nominations during Y time frame are archived, the article may not be renominated for Z time period". Or "the nominator may not nominate another article for Z time period." Effectively, banning that article from being nominated again for a specific time frame. That's not a "topic ban" per se, but it accomplishes the goal--stopping disruption or abuse at FAC.

  FAC has many ways of solving disruptive situations; resorting to threats and drama boards need not be among them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:53, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

Changes to FAC rules that affect everybody are one thing; rules targeted at a single editor, without their consent, are in effect a TBAN, and have no basis in policy. This isn't about fine points of policy, it's about fundamental fairness; only community-wide discussions may impose bans. If FAC has implemented rules targeted at a single editor before, I'm not aware of it, but those rules were likely out of order, and only stood because the affected individual did not make a stink about it. Vanamonde (Talk) 16:20, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

As I said, if; I don't believe we have a similar situation here, nor do I believe we have a widespread problem that can't be resolved by means already available to FAC. If we did, I presented a hypothetical for how it could be solved. (The WikiCup situation was not one editor; it was widespread disruption involving several WikiCup participants.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:07, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly with coords closing nominations that are disruptive, but that's a different kettle of fish to banning people from the talk page, which would necessitate a community imposed t-ban, as Vanamond93 notes above. What led to my original remark was the fact that it wasn't just the rinse-and-repeat failed nominations that were disruptive, but the subsequent mandatory thousands of words of postmortem on this page each time, indicating an IDHT approach and a further waste of editors' time and resources. Anyway  :) SN54129 17:42, 16 February 2022 (UTC)

"Rinse & repeat", and fairness

As flagged I've been working on the nonmetal article in light of feedback rec'd at FAC 4.

I saw the references above to "rinse and repeat", and fundamental fairness.

Rather than rinse and repeat I acted on all outstanding feedback at the end of each FAC nomination before resubmitting. This included an extensive PR between PR1 and PR2, as suggested by the FAC Coord.

On fairness, no such thing necessarily exists as I (now) understand it, at WP. That is to say, the overall well-being of WP will override fairness every time, if push comes to shove.

For clarification, here's table showing the sequence of events. The comments in the last column are my personal views.

Nonmetal at FAC and FAC talk: Sequence of events

Event	Open	Close	Days	ca. Words	Editors	Oppose	Support	Main concern
FAC1	Jul 20	Jul 26	6	4,310	6	4	0
Request to undo close of Nonmetal	Jul 27	Aug 1	5	1,517				Unstated FAC expectations
PR1	Aug 2	Oct 5	64	35,360	16
FAC2	Oct 5	Oct 18	13	3,440	6	1	0
Closure of Nonmetal	Oct 19	Oct 24	5	6,295				Closure before OP's responded
FAC3	Oct 31	Jan 18	79	39,450	21	1	6
Closure of nonmetal FAC archive 3	Jan 19	Jan 20	1	1,752				Closure pre-opportunity to address o/s concerns
FAC4	Feb 4	Feb 5	1	3,043	15	1	2
FAC4 talk	Feb 4	Feb 5	1	730
Closure of nonmetal FAC archive 4	Feb 7							Closure pre-opportunity to address o/s unfounded concerns

Days in FAC: 99
FAC editors: 64 (not counting me and the FAC Coord)
Approx. net FAC word count: 86,470
Days between FAC 1 and 2: 71
Days between FAC 2 and 3: 13
Days between FAC 3 and 4: 17
Word count here at FAC: 9,564
Article word count: 6,800

Sandbh (talk) 01:57, 17 February 2022 (UTC)