Wikipedia:Featured articles/Proposal

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Problems with WP:FAC
For an essay version of these criticisms, see User:Physchim62/Situation Normal: All FACked up FAC doesn't guarantee that Featured Articles are "good" by any normal definition of the term. FAC doesn't, for example, guarantee that Featured Articles are pertinent, useful, complete, factually accurate, well written or even grammatically correct. The only thing that FAC guarantees is that Featured Articles have passed FAC. Featured Articles do not and cannot represent "the very best work on Wikipedia", as Featured Articles are only selected from among the tiny subset of articles which are nominated at FAC. Featured Articles, therefore, represent the very best work which has been nominated at FAC, and some would argue even with that. FAC placed a great burden – some would say an unreasonable burden – on the article nominator: for this reason, it is unusual to have articles nominated by editors who haven't already been highly involved with writing the article. FAC is bureaucratic, tying up the full-time equivalent of 30–50 volunteers at any one time. FAC encourages the idea that editors own the articles they write. So FAC ties up substantial volunteer resources to produce a product whose only guarantee is that it has passed the process. This product has a monopoly of representing Wikipedia on the Main Page.

This page is a draft proposal to replace the current system of selecting featured articles (basically, the system at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates, better known as WP:FAC) with a new system based around the assessment work already done by the WikiProjects. The current system is not perfect, and examples of its alleged imperfections can be found in the box to the right. However, it has the great virtue of existing already, and so any proposed replacement must be positive, seeking to improve the current situation. No editing or assessment process can offer an absolute guarantee over the result. The question asked by this proposal is "can we do better than the current system at WP:FAC?" Or, at least, "can we do just as well, but using fewer resources?"

Fewer resources is the key point here. Adding another layer of checks and safeguards onto the current process will just mean that fewer people get involved, which is the exact opposite of what we are trying to achieve. We need more people involved, more eyes reading the articles before we say that they figure among our very best work, and that can only be done with a simpler system.

Any new system

should offer a reasonable guarantee that the article representing Wikipedia on the main page would be described by most editors as good;
should have wide participation, including, where possible, editors with specialist knowledge in the subject area of the article in question;
should ensure that all the subject areas covered by Wikipedia are reasonably represented among the articles which are featured on the main page;
should promote discussion and collaboration between editors and the general improvement of Wikipedia content.

WP:FAC only addresses the first of these points: it is neutral on the other three, neither for or against. We can do better than that (I hope!).

Proposal for the replacement of WP:FAC

Every three months, the WikiProjects should be invited to submit proposals for articles to be featured on the Main Page.
The proposals should be made publicly, and at least one month before any of the proposed articles actually appears. To give an example, proposals for articles to appear on the Main Page between 1 July and 30 September should be made by 23:59 UTC 31 May at the latest.
An article which has already appeared on the Main Page may not be proposed. However, WikiProjects may keep the same Proposed Article through several quarters, if they so wish and if it has not yet appeared on the Main Page.
WikiProjects are invited to bear in mind the existing featured article criteria when proposing articles. However, the overriding criterion in their choice should be that the article represents the best work in their field.
The proposals should be made on a dedicated page, for example Wikipedia:Proposed featured articles/2009, 3rd quarter. WikiProjects could include a brief gloss with the article name, to indicate (for example) that a given article is particularly appropriate for a given day.
The system should aim to have 150–200 Proposed Articles per quarter, from fields which reflect the general distribution of articles on English Wikipedia. In the case of the smaller WikiProjects, who may not have an article they feel is good enough to represent their subject area on the Main Page, they are still invited to have a "Best Article" system with which they can advertise the article(s) which they think are their best, and so not leave any decision or improvement until the last minute.
Editors who feel that an article is not good enough to appear on the Main Page are strongly invited to improve it, while respecting the work and opinions of other editors.
The article which appears on the Main Page on any given day will be chosen by WP:TFA, as occurs at present.

How would it work? Q&A

Surely there's no guarantee of quality?
No Process can provide a 100% guarantee of quality, but this system provides stronger guarantees than WP:FAC.
- The articles are selected by the WikiProjects, that is, by editors who are experienced in their respective subject areas.
- The selections are made public at least a month before the article appears on the Main Page, to allow any editor to read and, if necessary, improve them.
With WP:FAC, there's no guarantee that anyone apart from the author-nominator and the reviewers has read the article before it appears on the Main Page, nor that the reviewers know anything about the subject area of the article. More eyes reading the article means more of a chance that problems will be spotted before the article hits the Main Page.
So what do I do if I find a problem with an article selected by a WikiProject?
The same as with any other article on Wikipedia, if you think there's a problem, you should try to improve the article by editing it or by discussing the matter on the article talk page.
What if the problem isn't fixed?
The article goes on the Main Page anyway (assuming the problem isn't in a "hard-policy" area such as copyright or BLP).
But surely that won't represent Wikipedia's very best work?
The articles will be the best in each of the subject areas covered by Wikipedia, which is a fair definition of "representing the very best work".

At present, Main Page articles are only selected from among those articles nominated at WP:FAC, there's no guarantee at all that they represent our "very best work". Nor is there any guarantee that the objections raised during FAC reviews actually improve the article, let alone the rest of the content on Wikipedia.
What about the Manual of Style?
If you want to check the Proposed Articles for compliance with the Manual of Style, go ahead! Just don't forget that it is not the only valid definition of quality, and that the Manual of Style is a set of guidelines to which there can be occasional exceptions.
Surely the choice of articles for the Main Page is a matter for the Community, not the WikiProjects?
Far more editors will be involved in choosing the articles for the Main Page than under the present system. The new system also guarantees a fair representation for each of the subject areas.
How will the WikiProjects choose the articles they propose?
That's up to them in the end. I would suggest that they start by looking at their list of A-class articles, which in most cases is not too long, then try to get a consensus on the project talk page of which one(s) to put forward. But each project has its own peculiarities, it wouldn't make sense to impose a system.
What about WikiProjects which don't have any A-class or Good Articles?
No project should be forced to propose articles if it doesn't feel it has any which it is willing to see represent its project on the Main Page. They should still have the chance (if they wish) to pick and publicize their best article without actually proposing it for the Main Page – some current B-class articles don't need very much work at all to bring them up to A-class standard, and a little publicity might bring in a friendly volunteer to help them out.
Doesn't this make lots of extra work for the WikiProjects?
The choice of which articles to put forward for the Main Page should be a natural extension of the assessment work the projects are already doing for Wikipedia 1.0, so no, it shouldn't be a great deal of extra work. However, projects without a stock of high-quality articles will find themselves having to think about which articles they can improve (and how they can improve them) to make them suitable for proposal. That is surely a Good Thing: the incentive (and responsibility) of Main Page exposure is spread more evenly across the encyclopedia.
What about editors who don't work within a WikiProject? How will they get their articles on the Main Page?
By collaborating with a WikiProject is the short answer to that one. If there's really no active WikiProject in your area, try asking at WT:COUNCIL about starting a new project or merging into an existing one.

There's nothing wrong with encouraging collaborative editing, it is our first and last line of effective guarantee of the quality of our encyclopedic content. The Community trusts certain editors more than others because they've seen their previous edits, and that goes in subject areas as well.

The input of the WikiProjects is also important in persuading people to tackle difficult but important subjects: if the subject is important, other editors will surely help. At present, one-third of all Featured Articles are rated Importance=None at WP 1.0. Encouraging our good writers to work in collaboration is also encouraging the development of the more important areas of the project, the articles that users read even when they're not on the Main Page.
How often would each WikiProject get its articles on the Main Page?
The figure would be based roughly on how many articles the project had assessed for WP 1.0, as a measure of its size. No doubt any repartition would need fine-tuning once the system was under way but, as a rough estimate, the largest "assessment categories" for WP 1.0 (projects, taskforces, workgroups, etc.) would have about one slot every three months, while the smallest projects may well have to group together, or go in with a parent project, to share out one slot per year.

However, the larger projects would be encouraged to put two candidates forward for each slot, and the smaller projects either two per group slot or one per project. The idea would be to have roughly twice as many Proposed Articles as needed for the next three months, so as to give some flexibility to WP:TFA (see below).

WP:COUNCIL would seem like an ideal forum to coordinate the assessment statistics with the desires of individual projects.
What would be the role of Wikipedia:Today's featured article (WP:TFA) under the proposed system?
WP:TFA should be doing the same job under the new system as it does now: putting "featured" articles on the Main Page with respect for the balance between various subject areas of Wikipedia and for various special dates (if there's a particularly appropriate article available). The only difference is that it would be working from a different set of articles. At present, WP:FAC approves about twice as many Featured Articles as are needed for the Main Page, and the aim of the new system is to keep the ratio about the same: twice as many Proposed Articles as we actually have space for. One advantage of the new system would be that the set of articles would already be fairly balanced by subject areas, so the job of picking an article for a given day should be slightly easier.

At present, a very small number of featured articles are deemed inappropriate for the Main Page. The same might happen with a very small number of articles selected by the WikiProjects as the best in their field: again, the system proposed here changes nothing in that respect.
What would happen to Proposed Articles if they're not picked for the Main Page? And what about current Featured Articles?
WikiProjects would be free to keep the same Proposed Article(s) for as long as they haven't appeared on the Main Page. They could also change their proposals each quarter, if they wished, assuming they have sufficient high quality articles. That choice would be for the WikiProject, and would certainly depend on its particular circumstances.

Projects could propose articles which have passed WP:FAC, so long as they haven't yet appeared on the Main Page. Again, there is no obligation either way, that would depend on the circumstances and decision of the project.

The existing pool of Featured Articles which haven't yet appeared on the Main Page would also provide a safety net to WP:TFA in case of any teething troubles with the new system.

Comments

Feel free to add comments on the talkpage for the time being: we can refactor them into a comments section if desired when the proposal is finished.