On 9/12/06, maru dubshinki marudubshinki@gmail.com wrote:
Impossible. Featured articles are determined by FAC, which is as ridden or more so with politics as AFD, DRV, and other such eyesores: standards are constantly shifting and unevenly applied.
I have to say, though I've heard comments like this before, I'm not sure I agree. Standards do change on FAC, but that change has come in the form of a slow improvement in standards; the last truly major shift was the requirement for inline citations, which came into place around the start of this year. I have never seen a well written, well cited, comprehensive article fail FAC. This isn't to say that people don't raise frivolous objections--they most certainly do--but those objections are generally easily addressed or ignored, and you'll sometimes see FAC regulars pointing out to objecters that, for instance, FAs are not required to have see also sections (or whatever). Likewise, it isn't to say that people don't complain that objections raised against their article are frivolous, but as someone who believes that "this is enirely sourced to poorly written websites", "the prose in the article is subpar", and other ire-drawing types of objections are quite valid, I don't see this as a sign that FAC isn't working. I haven't agreed with the result of every single FAC I've watched or participated in, but the ones I've disagreed with have generally been borderline cases. If someone can bring forward evidence of clearly worthy articles failing (or conversely, of seriously troubled articles passing), please do so, but until such evidence is presented I don't find broad assertions like this particularly convincing.
--Robth (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Robth)