T P wrote:
I despise the current FA practice that "everything needs an inline citation". Basically all you need to pass FA is a lot of citations.
I was a history major, so that requirement doesn't really bother me except when people somehow think a statement isn't sourced even though there's a reference at the end of the topic. Anyhow...
Can we slay this myth once and for all? Sources are a quick and easy way to get junked or lose FA status, but it's not all you need. My first real FA try ended up being twice as long as the article I was nominating because of the "brilliant prose" requirement - talk about subjective. I have no hard numbers, but I bet a lot more struggle due to that then because of inadequate sourcing.
I'm not sure this is the same issue, but I had an argument with someone who wanted to include some loosely related material because it "related [the subject] to people's lives". Frankly I don't think we need to "sell" a topic to the audience. People look up articles in an encyclopedia because they are already interested in the subject, it's not like a magazine where you come across the topic randomly.
Yeah, but I have a feeling we're heading in a direction where we're going to begin failing at this. Part of Wikipedia's awesomeness (and why I started contributing originally) was because...
a) Wikipedia probably has an article on what you're looking for. b) If Wikipedia doesn't have an article on what you're looking for, you can probably make it.
If we lose that, we lose our audience. Long tail, or something.
-Jeff