On 9/13/06, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
I'd personally be more interested in being *useful*, which is an eminently practical concern. From that perspective, a lot of different things are important. Having "good enough" articles on as wide a range of subjects as possible is definitely high up on the list---we provide information that is difficult to come by otherwise. Having very good articles, especially on frequently-consulted topics or topics where errors would be more problematic (biographies; national/ethnic disputes; technical subjects) is another important consideration. More to the point, it's quite helpful to allow a reader to quickly identify how good we think an article is.
It's not clear to me what role, if any, the GA/FA process plays in any of these concerns. It doesn't tell a reader which articles are good, because it rates articles as a whole rather than revisions---FA status provides no guarantee that the current article is any better than a similar-looking non-FA article. It appears to provide only a moderate and highly beaurocratic method of encouraging article improvement in the first place. On the whole I'd say I personally never pay attention to whether an article is "featured", and I don't know anyone else who does either. It simply doesn't solve any of the practical problems that come up when reading Wikipedia.
I suggested the concept of "good articles" long before it happened, but I envisioned something somewhat different. Overall I think it is fairly well implemented, though. The criteria are fairly objective and the process is fairly simple. I don't really like the fact that there's a central page, as it unnecessarily increases the process, but it's not too bad as the instructions are still fairly easy to follow. One big difference is that I had suggested nominating a particular revision as a good article.
The only real problem I see with "good articles", in practice, is that the process doesn't seem to have been adopted. I guess this is in part because it's not as fun of a game as the "featured articles" process.
For whatever reason though, you're right. Good articles doesn't seem to be very useful at the moment.