[WikiEN-l] Taking your eyes off the ball

[Tony Sidaway]

On 10/1/05, Mark Pellegrini <mapellegrini at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> the percentage of featured articles (number of featured articles / total
> number of articles) has been rapidly declining since March.
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_statistics).
> And yet no one seems care. Sometime this month, percentage of featured
> articles will drop below 0.1% -- less than 1 article in 1000 being a
> featured article.
>
>
This is inevitable. There is nothing we can do about it and I'd argue that
there is nothing that we *should* do about it.

Even if we accept without question the argument that the "best" articles on
Wikipedia are those that have been voted on, edited, voted on again, and
granted Featured Article status, it's simply impossible for the Featured
Article process to keep up with the current pace of addition of new
articles.

Does this mean that featured articles are doomed? Of course not. There is no
shortage of featured articles, it's just that there is a growing number of
articles that aren't.