On 7 August 2010 01:25, stevertigo <stvrtg(a)gmail.com> wrote: You have an erroneous assumption: that there is perfection or that even a high quality article says all that anyone would ever want to know on the topic. It tends to proceed in a cycle. Well-written, someone adds more stuff they think is missing, someone polishes the writing once more, someone adds more stuff. Those who did the polishing get *really annoyed* at the people adding more *stuff*, but it probably benefits the reader. People come to Wikipedia for its breadth of coverage, not its polished writing. Indeed, some articles decay into mush. I didn't say polishing was easy - it isn't, which is why the people who do it get so resentful. - d.

Certainly, it still describes a real phenomenon: articles that attain Featured or Good status, and then have those statuses (statii?) revoked as they degrade. It happens, all right. As a concept, it bears thinking about. I'm not necessarily saying there should be a hold placed on articles that have attained those statuses... OK, maybe I am. Limit editing to autoconfirmed editors? Obviously when FAs reach the front page, unhelpful editing pretty much always follows. I don't see it as a terrible thing that editing be slowed down on those articles, for instance. It took a lot of considered work to get there. Maybe it should take some consideration to change them. On Fri, Aug 6, 2010 at 8:40 PM, stevertigo <stvrtg(a)gmail.com> wrote:

On 7 August 2010 01:45, William Beutler <williambeutler(a)gmail.com> wrote: Does it happen very often? Most revocations are due to us raising the standards we require rather than due to articles deteriorating. If an article has deteriorated to the point where it isn't worthy of FA any more then wouldn't it be better just revert to the last FA worthy version? If the FA criteria are such that there are edits that we don't want to revert but that make an article no longer worthy of FA, then we need to change the FA criteria (since they don't fit with our actual views on what makes an article better or worse).

You would need some examples to credibly demonstrate this. Fred

On 7 Aug 2010, at 03:13, William Beutler wrote: For and against arguments for this can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:For_and_Against_TFA_protection (To save anyone repeating ones that have already been written down. ;-) ) On 7 Aug 2010, at 01:25, stevertigo wrote: [[citation needed]] please. ;-) Or rather, a solid example (or statistical trend) that actually shows this. If true, then I would have thought it easy to demonstrate - lots of examples would appear at Featured Article Review... Thanks, Mike

But Eventualism implies that articles will get better over time, that the article's value over the long term matters more than its value in the short term. I think Destructionism raises the point that article quality goes in both directions, which is a point worth making whatever it's called. And to those asking for an example, not to be glib, but here's a place to start: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Delisted_good_articles On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Carcharoth <carcharothwp(a)googlemail.com>wrote;wrote:

On 7 August 2010 01:45, William Beutler <williambeutler(a)gmail.com> wrote: I strongly disagree. Exposing them to the sort of casual editing they get being on the front page is the final stage of content review. These are not precious, polished jewels. They are working pieces of informational text. They need regular shaking up. Content is more important than polish. Moves to preserve polish over content are fundamentally wrong. - d.

On 7 August 2010 17:06, MuZemike <muzemike(a)gmail.com> wrote: I think such a principle misses the point that there's no such thing as a finished article. Rather, those who think an article can ever be finished are wrong. I would change it to the statement "There is always something that hasn't been done." Hence the difference between a featured article and "the perfect article." There is always something to be done. Stopping people (including IPs) from even trying to do it, for any reason other than the editorial conflict reasons that articles are protected or semiprotected, is in denial of this. - d.

On 7 August 2010 18:04, William Beutler <williambeutler(a)gmail.com> wrote: Personally I wouldn't objecting to putting FAs into flagged revs for the day they're on the front page. This would present the pretty face and still allow the IPs in. But I don't feel strongly enough to particularly press the point. - d.

On Sat, Aug 7, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ian Woollard &lt;ian.woollard(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: <snip> This is not true for articles where the "story" has not yet finished and updates are needed. I often use Hurricane Katrina as an example. This hurricane took place in August 2005. It was promoted to FA-level in June 2006 (over four years ago), but as time went by it was noticeable that no-one was really updating the article to include the ongoing legacy of this natural disaster. I would sometimes comment on this, but nothing much got done. It was defeatured in March 2010, with the discussion seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_review/Hurricane_Ka… The concerns expressed there didn't include "is the article up-to-date", but look at the article and ask yourself if it really covers in the detail you would expect, what the continuing impact on the area is? Maybe the information is in other articles? We have articles like these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_of_New_Orleans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_engineering_and_infrastructure_repair_in… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bring_New_Orleans_Back_Commission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans_Architecture_and_the_rebuilding_pr… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Make_It_Right_Foundation_New_Orleans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Army_Corps_of_Engineers_civil_works_contr… Some of those articles are in a very poor state. My conclusion is that if I want information on how New Orleans and the surrounding area recovered and is recovering (or not) after Hurricane Katrina, and what the long-term effects are, I have to look elsewhere (i.e. not on Wikipedia), though there is some bits of it in these places: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Orleans#Post-disaster_recovery "The Census Bureau in July 2006 estimated the population of New Orleans to be 223,000; a subsequent study estimated that 32,000 additional residents had moved to the city as of March 2007, bringing the estimated population to 255,000, approximately 56% of the pre-Katrina population level. Another estimate, based on data on utility usage from July 2007, estimated the population to be approximately 274,000 or 60% of the pre-Katrina population. These estimates are somewhat smaller than a third estimate, based on mail delivery records, from the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center in June 2007, which indicated that the city had regained approximately two-thirds of its pre-Katrina population.[30] In 2008, the Census Bureau revised upward its population estimate for the city, to 336,644.[31] Most recently, 2010 estimates show that neighborhoods that did not flood are near 100% of their pre-Katrina populations, and in some cases, exceed 100% of their pre-Katrina populations.[32]" There are some hints of the population figures in the Hurricane Katrina article, but not much, mainly this bit in the economic effects section and this bit in the lead section: "Nearly five years later, thousands of displaced residents in Mississippi and Louisiana are still living in trailers. Reconstruction of each section of the southern portion of Louisiana has been addressed in the Army Corps LACPR Final Technical Report which identifies areas not to be rebuilt and areas and buildings that need to be elevated." Though to be fair, it is not actually that normal for natural disaster articles to go into the level of detail about the aftermath and long-term reconstruction as would be possible here. But it should be clear that articles about contemporary events need constant updating as the histories get written. Articles about the past, for which the major histories have already been written, only tend to need updating when new scholarship and histories are written, and that, I agree, does need careful integration with the existing articles. I sometimes think getting an article to FA-status too soon can impede its future development. There is a right moment to push for an article to get to FA level, and there is a wrong moment as well. Carcharoth

On 9 August 2010 21:29, Ryan Delaney &lt;ryan.delaney(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Not at all. The leap from "is" to "ought", however, is fallacious and an important and damaging error. [1] It's the "something must be done, this is something, therefore this is a good idea" fallacy. - d. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

Imperfection is, in fact, an art, an art we need to master, see: http://thesatisfiedlifenetwork.com/templates/System/details.asp?id=31327&am… Fred

Tony Sidaway &lt;tonysidaway(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: It is. I had thought destruction was the salient concept here, in keeping with our old tradition of creating "-isms" (deletionism, (did I coin that?) inclusionism, etc.) I just did this at [[matter]], but the issue though is that there's no way to really see what gold exists in previous versions, unless you know what already exists there and understand what erosion has taken place. Matter is an example of a case where 1) everyone knows the common definition and 2) the technical definitions can sometimes contradict, hence 3) rewrites to include these advanced caveats turn the article into WP:NONCE. + -SC

On 14 August 2010 05:37, stevertigo &lt;stvrtg(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: I've had to investigate articles in the past and there are some effective time-saving methods such as: looking at the editing as composed of different waves, characterized by the identity of the major editors; performing diffs at timely intervals (three or six months, say) to identify large scale changes. You might miss a shortlived improvement of course, but you still pick up on any significant trends in degradation.

Fred Bauder &lt;fredbaud(a)fairpoint.net&gt; wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Good_and_evil&diff=379134639&… An example of a restore, from 2008. 'Perfection by reduction' experts trimmed it down to virtually nothing. Note that that second paragraph could use some trimming, but the essence of its definition was removed entirely. -SC