[WikiEN-l] Wikipedia:Excellent short articles

[Stephanie M. Clarkson]

Phoenix wiki wrote:
> On 10/20/07, Majorly <axel9891 at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On 20/10/2007, Phoenix wiki <phoenix.wiki at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Surely an excellent article can't be
>>> short?
>>>
>> Oh yes it can.
> 
> 
> Oh no it can't. It can be very good but if it's under 50-60 lines long then
> it can't be excellent
>

Untrue. I write on several articles that do, in fact, cover everything that you might need to know about a subject (indeed, I'm *often* taking lines out of [[Hidden tracks]] because everyone any their brother wants to add their favourite bands track to the article, even if there's already a documented example of the method they used to 'hide' the track). But the articles will never be 'featured'; they often just aren't an expansive enough subject, even when they're definitely something someone might well look up. 

(in the case of the Hidden tracks, it will also never be labelled a GA, because there's a checklist that people use, such as 'should include a picture', and the vague idea that the article should be more prose, less list. Yet in the case of the subject in question, it makes much more sense to say, 'Here's a method, here's some technical info about how it's implemented. a) example, b) variant, c) variant.' Also a picture on the page would be superfluous; illustrating 'Hidden tracks' is impossible. It's a short article, to the point, and not ever going to be more than a B-class because people have a list of things that they check it against, instead of allowing that not all subjects need to be 20 pages, 300 footnotes, and copiously illustrated, and that the subject does in fact cover the subject completely, regardless of the checklist)

Thes.