2008/9/24 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com:
Very poor article seems to have surfaced today...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mom_and_Dad
How did that slip through?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Mom_and_D...
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
Bear in mind, the article was made featured in May 2007. So it could have changed significantly. Why did it take so long to be on the front page?
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:20 PM, Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.comwrote:
Bear in mind, the article was made featured in May 2007. So it could have changed significantly. Why did it take so long to be on the front page?
Here's a diff showing the changes made between when it was promoted and today: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mom_and_Dad&diff=240673526&...
On Sep 24, 2008, at 9:20 AM, Al Tally wrote:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
Bear in mind, the article was made featured in May 2007. So it could have changed significantly. Why did it take so long to be on the front page?
Because there were a bunch of other feature articles that people were clamoring to get on the front page, whereas this one was pushed through by Badlydrawnjeff, who soon after wasn't around to ask for it to be frontpaged?
-Phil
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:23 AM, Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.comwrote:
On Sep 24, 2008, at 9:20 AM, Al Tally wrote:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 2:06 PM, Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton@gmail.com
wrote:
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
Bear in mind, the article was made featured in May 2007. So it could have changed significantly. Why did it take so long to be on the front page?
Because there were a bunch of other feature articles that people were clamoring to get on the front page, whereas this one was pushed through by Badlydrawnjeff, who soon after wasn't around to ask for it to be frontpaged?
-Phil
Bear in mind that a lot of articles take a long while to be featured. When I was active in the process two or three years ago, the waiting list was already easily a month long, if not more. I'm not sure how it works now but it can only have gotten lengthier.
Johnleemk
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 11:36 PM, John Lee johnleemk@gmail.com wrote:
Bear in mind that a lot of articles take a long while to be featured. When I was active in the process two or three years ago, the waiting list was already easily a month long, if not more. I'm not sure how it works now but it can only have gotten lengthier.
The more relevant number is the net change in featured articles over time (that's promotions minus delistings). Every month this year it's been quite a bit more than the number of days in that month; indeed it's been that way since at least early 2006.
We're never going to catch up! (A bad thing because not all FAs will be main page featured; a good thing because there are so many more FAs.)
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics
We're never going to catch up! (A bad thing because not all FAs will be main page featured; a good thing because there are so many more FAs.)
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
Maybe with the new main page design, a second FA space could be incorporated.
2008/9/24 Al Tally majorly.wiki@googlemail.com:
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 3:23 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote:
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
Maybe with the new main page design, a second FA space could be incorporated.
[[WT:FAC]] and [[Talk:Main Page]] would be the places to run it past, if Raul654 (the Featured Articles director) thinks we can reliably supply 730 new FAs a year for the foreseeable future. (cc'd to him)
- d.
2008/9/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We're never going to catch up! (A bad thing because not all FAs will be main page featured; a good thing because there are so many more FAs.)
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
That's a false division of content. Wikipedia merely has more space for pop-culture topics than traditional paper encyclopedias. Anyway, pop culture on Wikipedia is one of our greatest assets - it attracts a lot of new users who would not otherwise read encyclopedia articles.
On 9/24/08, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
That's a false division of content. Wikipedia merely has more space for pop-culture topics than traditional paper encyclopedias. Anyway, pop culture on Wikipedia is one of our greatest assets - it attracts a lot of new users who would not otherwise read encyclopedia articles.
It also attracts deletionists who would otherwise have nothing to bitch about, or would they find something else? *shrug*
—C.W.
2008/9/24 Charlotte Webb charlottethewebb@gmail.com:
On 9/24/08, Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com wrote:
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
That's a false division of content. Wikipedia merely has more space for pop-culture topics than traditional paper encyclopedias. Anyway, pop culture on Wikipedia is one of our greatest assets - it attracts a lot of new users who would not otherwise read encyclopedia articles.
It also attracts deletionists who would otherwise have nothing to bitch about, or would they find something else? *shrug*
I don't think deletionists come to Wikipedia to delete. Perhaps they have a strict idea of what should be in an encyclopedia (based on print encyclopedias), and since pop culture does not fit into this model, they wage war against these articles?
What ever it is, they do great damage to Wikipedia and make the project look very hostile - particularly to non-Wikipedians and new users. Where we could allow these articles in the knowledge that they bring people to the project who would otherwise not be here, at the minimal cost of disc space. Instead we scare these users away. This particularly affects young users, who might go onto edit other parts of the project and become respected Wikipedians.
On Sep 24, 2008, at 1:55 PM, Oldak Quill wrote:
I don't think deletionists come to Wikipedia to delete. Perhaps they have a strict idea of what should be in an encyclopedia (based on print encyclopedias), and since pop culture does not fit into this model, they wage war against these articles?
I think deletionists don't come to Wikipedia at all - I've never encountered a non-editor who is bothered by the strange stuff on Wikipedia. To most people outside the bubble, it seems to be one of our most beloved features.
Deletionism seems to be an internal phenomenon - a switch that gets thrown in some editors where they come to the conclusion that deletion is necessary to improve the project. But it's an internal phenomenon - something Wikipedia seems to provoke in editors who have been here after a while.
-Phil
2008/9/24 Oldak Quill oldakquill@gmail.com:
2008/9/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
We're never going to catch up! (A bad thing because not all FAs will be main page featured; a good thing because there are so many more FAs.)
We could start featuring two articles a day. One from a traditional encyclopaedic topic and one from a pop-culture topic, perhaps.
That's a false division of content. Wikipedia merely has more space for pop-culture topics than traditional paper encyclopedias. Anyway, pop culture on Wikipedia is one of our greatest assets - it attracts a lot of new users who would not otherwise read encyclopedia articles.
I never said there was anything wrong with pop-culture articles, but there is a clear distinction between an article on Titanium and an article on Pikachu (sp?). Having one featured article from each category allows people interested in each to find an article they'll be interested in. There are plenty of other ways to split the site in two, but I think this is the best.
On Sep 24, 2008, at 1:38 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
There are plenty of other ways to split the site in two, but I think this is the best.
Surely the best is "don't split the site in two."
Unless we're seriously considering an internal fork between popular culture and academia. Which, as a popular culture academic, I would find horribly dismaying.
-Phil
2008/9/24 Philip Sandifer snowspinner@gmail.com:
On Sep 24, 2008, at 1:38 PM, Thomas Dalton wrote:
There are plenty of other ways to split the site in two, but I think this is the best.
Surely the best is "don't split the site in two."
Unless we're seriously considering an internal fork between popular culture and academia. Which, as a popular culture academic, I would find horribly dismaying.
Come on, am I really that difficult to understand? I thought it was pretty obvious what I meant...
If we're going to have two featured articles a day (which is the only way to catch up - other than promoting fewer articles, which I doubt anyone would support) it makes sense to have two very different articles. An easy way to do that is to separate all the articles into two categories (just in an abstract sense, I'm not talking about any kind of fork, just listing some articles in one column in Raul's notebook and some articles in the other) and pick one from each category each day. There are various pairs of categories that would work, I think "traditional" and "pop-culture" (fairly loosely defined to make sure every article fits into at least one of them, if it fits into both, no harm done) would be best.
2008/9/24 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
An easy way to do that is to separate all the articles into two categories (just in an abstract sense, I'm not talking about any kind of fork, just listing some articles in one column in Raul's notebook and some articles in the other) and pick one from each category each day. There are various pairs of categories that would work, I think "traditional" and "pop-culture" (fairly loosely defined to make sure every article fits into at least one of them, if it fits into both, no harm done) would be best.
I suspect a neater split might be "biographical" and "non-biographical" - we have 2350 FAs, of which 550 are biographical; the number of biographical FAs seems to be growing at 15-30 a month, and they're generally speaking a topic that lends itself well to a one-person drive to get to FA status.
On the other hand, I don't think we need such a split :-) We're not under any obligation to show every FA on the front page - indeed, even if we do ramp up the number featured at any one time, we'd likely get ahead of ourselves again in a year or two.
Perhaps rather than having any formal two-stream system, we should just do what DYK does and increase the frequency of updates? Running two FAs a day might be simpler if we just changed over at 00.00 UTC and then again at 12.00 UTC... but then we'd have to stop calling it "today's featured article". Hmm.
I suspect a neater split might be "biographical" and "non-biographical" - we have 2350 FAs, of which 550 are biographical; the number of biographical FAs seems to be growing at 15-30 a month, and they're generally speaking a topic that lends itself well to a one-person drive to get to FA status.
That's not a bad idea - "Today's featured biography" and "Today's featured article".
On the other hand, I don't think we need such a split :-) We're not under any obligation to show every FA on the front page - indeed, even if we do ramp up the number featured at any one time, we'd likely get ahead of ourselves again in a year or two.
True, but I think it would be nice for those people writing FAs (I'm not one myself) if they got them on the front page, and got them there sooner.
Perhaps rather than having any formal two-stream system, we should just do what DYK does and increase the frequency of updates? Running two FAs a day might be simpler if we just changed over at 00.00 UTC and then again at 12.00 UTC... but then we'd have to stop calling it "today's featured article". Hmm.
That could work, but the problem is that people who only check the front page once a day (which is probably a significant group) would miss half the featured articles. I think if we were going to do that we would still need to have two articles showing on the front page at a time. "Current featured article" and "Last featured article". If we're doing that, though, we might as well alternate between two categories of article as well. Having the article from each section update at a different time would be good, though.
2008/9/24 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On the other hand, I don't think we need such a split :-) We're not under any obligation to show every FA on the front page - indeed, even if we do ramp up the number featured at any one time, we'd likely get ahead of ourselves again in a year or two.
Nope - Raul654 emailed me back and pointed out we've been running over 60 new FAs a month for a while now. Two a day isn't a problem.
- d.
Nope - Raul654 emailed me back and pointed out we've been running over 60 new FAs a month for a while now. Two a day isn't a problem.
That means it won't even help us catch up... I think 3 a day would be pushing it, though... There is the possibility of sharing one spot between two related articles, but I'm not sure how that would work.
2008/9/25 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/9/24 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On the other hand, I don't think we need such a split :-) We're not under any obligation to show every FA on the front page - indeed, even if we do ramp up the number featured at any one time, we'd likely get ahead of ourselves again in a year or two.
Nope - Raul654 emailed me back and pointed out we've been running over 60 new FAs a month for a while now. Two a day isn't a problem.
My point exactly (albeit I expressed it a bit oddly) :-)
This number's steadily increasing, so even if we do go over to two-a-day, we'll still be sitting here in 2010 going "wow, we're producing way more FAs than we feature", and wondering what to do - because we'll be making a hundred a month by then. Maybe - we can but hope - even more!
The same issue will keep cropping up with time, even if we keep expanding the front-page FA space...
Well, precisely why was the article chosen for that day's FA?
On Thu, Sep 25, 2008 at 4:52 AM, Andrew Gray andrew.gray@dunelm.org.ukwrote:
2008/9/25 David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com:
2008/9/24 Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com:
On the other hand, I don't think we need such a split :-) We're not under any obligation to show every FA on the front page - indeed, even if we do ramp up the number featured at any one time, we'd likely get ahead of ourselves again in a year or two.
Nope - Raul654 emailed me back and pointed out we've been running over 60 new FAs a month for a while now. Two a day isn't a problem.
My point exactly (albeit I expressed it a bit oddly) :-)
This number's steadily increasing, so even if we do go over to two-a-day, we'll still be sitting here in 2010 going "wow, we're producing way more FAs than we feature", and wondering what to do - because we'll be making a hundred a month by then. Maybe - we can but hope - even more!
The same issue will keep cropping up with time, even if we keep expanding the front-page FA space...
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray@dunelm.org.uk
WikiEN-l mailing list WikiEN-l@lists.wikimedia.org To unsubscribe from this mailing list, visit: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l
On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 9:06 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
Very poor article seems to have surfaced today...
How did that slip through?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Mom_and_D...
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
Here's the version that was promoted...
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Mom_and_Dad&oldid=128415356
At 14:06 +0100 24/9/08, Thomas Dalton wrote:
2008/9/24 Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com:
Very poor article seems to have surfaced today...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mom_and_Dad
How did that slip through?
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Mom_and_D...
Are there any valid concerns raised there that weren't corrected?
IMHO, the article is too short, derivative both of the book Eric Schaefer, Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!: A History of Exploitation Films, 1919-1959, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1999; ISBN 0-8223-2374-5 and the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kroger_Babb
And it reads badly.
Gordo