I don't like to do so, but obviously I am the first one to interrupt you, lessen your enthusiasm and get kind of realistic.
Yes, of course it's important to improve quality, espacially now when en: has reached an unbelievable high number of articles, but I don't think you'll reach 100k of FAs without easing the requirements for an article to be featured, even if you go for it for three years. Let's explain:
English WP has now exactly 1118 featured articles on 1,395,220 total articles which means that there is 0.0008 FA on one "normal" article (=NA), or, better, 8 FA on 10,000 NA. On de, we have 869 FAs on 469,065 total, what is somerwhere around 0,19% or 1,8 FA on 1,000 NA. If we take an average of these numbers (which is not realistic, I know), we'll have 0,135% of FA compared with total articles on en and de. Taking together the 16 biggest wps (according to [[en:Wikipedia:Multilingual_statistics]]) there would be about 4 million total articles. If you take our FA-average of 0,135% FA on total article number, there are at the moment 5,400 (!!) FA _in total_ on _all_ Wikipedias, including those 1118 already existing on en. This means you would have to write about 96,000 FAs during only 365 days - that's impossible, imagine how long it took you to get just these 1118... [1]
So far on numbers, you see, that's kinda irrealistic to set such a goal, because of the huge amount of articles needed to be created from the beginning. And that's not the only argument: As already said, for non-native speakers, it takes lots of more time to write an really excellent article in a foreign language so they probably would thing "what the hell to to with en.wp, I'll better invest my time on improving articles on my "home"-wp, that'll be more efficient, it's less depressing, it's easier for me" - I think (also because I know what I can do and what I can't) you'll not get real support from other language wps except of people who are used to write on en: only.
Third, I think that - as on de: - probably many of the really active users who write FAs have other jobs like vandalfighting which have do be done also. People who are capable of writing a really good wp article have to be familiar with regulations, with the community, they have to be used to write long articles - especially the first two characteristics qualify an user for adminship (I doubt that this is completely different on de: and en:...). One cannot take the risk of a completely destroyed (yes!) Wikipedia just to have another FA, so admins can't give all their time on the FA project, and the many RC patrollers either.
Well, to get to an end: I think, this big aim number is too big. It's just depressing and nothing else to work on the 5,000th FA in july and there is just another 6 months to complete further 95,000 articles. If a smaller number like, probably, 10,000 or even just 5,000 was set, it would be easier to reach and a better motivation for all writers.
Nevertheless, if [[Wikipedia:Featured Articles]] shows a number higher than 50,000 on this time in 2007, I'd oblige me to write at least 50 FAs for en: until december '08 ;)
rdb
[1] To get some more numbers: To create 96,000 FA in 365 days means 263 FA per day. 50 hours per FA - 13,150 hours of work per day. A day has 24 hours - you'd need about 550 editors per day working on FA. But - don't forget - they'd have to work 24/7 per one year ;)
David Gerard schrieb:
[[:en:WP:100K]] is a page about Danny's wild idea to have 100,000 featured-quality articles on en: in a year or so.
Featured articles from other language Wikipedias may be a marvellous source for quality material.
If you write well in both English and the other language, you may be able to do very well for en: by going through the other language's featured articles and bringing the en: article up to scratch.
(And for the other Wikipedia by doing it the other way.)
How do those of you who write well in two languages feel about this idea?
- d.
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