[WikiEN-l] Re: FA removal

[Dan Drake]

On Thu, 19 Feb 2004 07:20:27 -0800 (PST), wikien-l-request at Wikipedia.org wrote:

>Dan Drake wrote
>
>> <snip> I wonder if a consensus might be possible on this: Any article
>> that's showing a dispute-header is presumed to be a poor advertisement for
>> the high quality of Wikipedia and must not be Featured until the problem
>> is solved.
>
>That means anyone can effectively 'censor' articles by disputing their
>neutrality, for whatever reason.

The article is still there, you know. We're just not calling everyone's attention to this splendid example of a disputed article. It's true that just one person hating the article, not enough to get it pulled by means of the list, could get it taken off _temporarily_; but this is not an automatic mechanism, much less irreversible.

>
>> Would it be too dangerous if some level-headed people were authorized to
>> remove such an article immediately from the list without waiting for the
>> complete process at
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates
>> ?
>
>Who decides who is level-headed, here?  Yes, too 'dangerous'.

That's why I tentatively suggested who might be accepted as level-headed, in a piece of text that unfortunately didn't make it into your posting.  The bureaucrat is, of course, not required to take any action at all. It seems that a malicious editor could waste some of the bureaucrats' time in checking whether there really is an NPOV dispute before said editor gets banned; but then, nobody would be obliged to spend that time, but just empowered to. 

If no one (barring Jimbo Wales) can be trusted to anything without a leisurely formal procedure, so be it. Unfortunate, but true. Still, balance the possible action (of taking it off FA by marking it as having a POV dispute) against another: messing up a Featured Article so that it's a disgrace to Wikipedia, which is still presenting it to the world as a proud and exemplary achievement that will attract new people to the project. This is the case right now; the other is hypothetical.