G'day John,
On 5/10/07, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
Perhaps, but FAC quite deliberately and with forethought crank
up the
requirements so that FAs stay "best of the best".
And there's nothing wrong with that. The problem is that GA lost sight of its original purpose very early on, and became a mini-FA. I've had decentarticles on subjects where not much can be written because of lacking sources rejected from GA - even in its first few months - and so I've given up completely on getting such articles recognised as being "good quality,but can't really go anywhere because they don't have sources or for some other reason can't make FA". In the end, these articles cannot be distinguished from the rest of the tripe that is normally on Wikipedia, and as such complicates things when, say, we want to compile articles illustrating the breadth of our coverage, since this practice effectivelyaccentuates systemic bias.
I've actually got an article on a West Australian iron ore magnate which is (in my own estimation, and that of a couple of people I've spoken to familiar with the FAC process) a gnat's wing away from being an FA. I just need to get around to visiting the National Library again and doing a couple hours' more research, and I reckon it'll be ready for FAC.
It's five zillion pages long, has fifteen sources for every fact, is brilliant prose (in my own modest estimation), and covers the chap's life in detail --- more detail, in fact, than is available anywhere in the world outside of an actual, book-length biography. It was recently tagged by one of these new article-evaluating chappies, who said, "With a bit of effort, this might one day achieve GA status".
Unless my dreams of FA are a long way further off than I thought, one might suspect GA of creeping ever-closer to FA requirements ... and, therefore, being worthless.
Cheers,