Tightening Featured Articles guidelines

[Ray Trace]

So recently, I nominated Culex to be unfeatured because I think that its length is too short for it to remain in its featured stats. I had a disagreement with Tucayo regarding what constitutes as a reasonable length, and he suggested me to rewrite some of the guidelines of the Featured Articles so it better defines and accommodates what exactly that we are looking in Featured Articles. I have some difficulty coming up with ways to improve the system, however, especially in terms of how large articles should be or what the cut-off point is; it's difficult coming up with a guideline that is not too stringent, but isn't too overly vague as well, as the current definition attempts to add a broad sense of article length rather than strictly, and so we end up with debateable articles such as Culex.

I think I have an idea of how to rewrite guidelines outlined in MarioWiki: Featured Articles. I've been wanting to take inspiration from MarioWiki:Good Writing on how to elaborate what our rules exactly mean, with more detailed explanations on what is suitable as a featured article and not.

This is my WIP progress page

User:Baby Luigi/Featured Articles guidelines

I would like feedback or maybe someone who has better writing skills than me to draft out what I want.

 

[Roserade]

Ironically, it felt like your phrasing of the desired length section had some padding. :P Here's how I would rephrase your desired length section:

Due to the limited appearances of the subject of the article, an article may not have the capability of being expanded any further than what is addressed in the Good Writing page; attempting to do so may result in unnecessary padding. Because of these limitations, these articles will not have the detail of larger articles, and therefore may not be considered nominees for the best articles of MarioWiki. Though there is no explicit cut-off length for how long an article must be to qualify, if you find yourself asking, "Is this article long enough to be considered," the article likely does not comfortably pass the grade.

That's just an idea, of course. But I'd recommend condensing it.

 

[Time Turner]

Silly question: why do we have a cut-off point for the length of an article? Instead of imposing a strict limit based on characters or vaguely tiptoeing around what is considered a desired length without actually saying anything concrete, why not just set that aside and focus on the actual content of the article?

 

[Ray Trace]

Keep in mind that this is being discussed on our discord channel as we speak, so yeah, I can't keep updated until what's been decided in there.

Silly question: why do we have a cut-off point for the length of an article? Instead of imposing a strict limit based on characters or vaguely tiptoeing around what is considered a desired length without actually saying anything concrete, why not just set that aside and focus on the actual content of the article?

That's the exact problem I have in this. I know that there is some limit somewhere, but the feeling I have is so vague that I can't describe it adequately and I want to tighten things up around here so we don't get conflicts on article size.

 

[Lord Bowser]

we are currently considering proposing good articles (yet again) while at the same time tightening featured article standards. it would be best for us to debate these tightened fa standards, and then decide good article standards based on those. ideally, articles like Culex would be unfeatured, but would be given good article status instead.

we would also need people to comb through the currently featured articles and list those that wouldn't meet the increased criteria, and then either revise them to meet said criteria or unfeature them to become good articles.

once all of this is set and done, we will create a proposal with all the changes.

 

[Kerrigan]

I'm currently drafting a proposal to implement the system of Good Articles, which I hope to post here by tonight or tomorrow. Obviously it's not going to be complete on the first draft, which is why I'm posting a draft before the final proposal goes up.

 

[Time Turner]

Good Articles sounds like we're just giving a "you tried" medal to pages that are okay, but not stellar. I don't think I'm particularly fond of that.

 

[Kerrigan]

Good Articles sounds like we're just giving a "you tried" medal to pages that are okay, but not stellar. I don't think I'm particularly fond of that.

Basically what we agreed on is that Good Articles would be articles that aren't long enough to be featured. I don't really know how to expand on that, so if someone else wants to do that that would be really helpful.

 

[Time Turner]

Good Articles sounds like we're just giving a "you tried" medal to pages that are okay, but not stellar. I don't think I'm particularly fond of that.

Basically what we agreed on is that Good Articles would be articles that aren't long enough to be featured. I don't really know how to expand on that, so if someone else wants to do that that would be really helpful.

If they're good enough to be Featured Articles, why not make them Featured Articles?

 

[Lord Bowser]

Good Articles sounds like we're just giving a "you tried" medal to pages that are okay, but not stellar. I don't think I'm particularly fond of that.

that's not exactly what we had in mind, though
the good articles category would ideally be for articles that would've met fa standards, but are held back by unworkable criteria (i.e. length). they're still very good quality articles, but just fall short of fa standards due to issues that cannot be easily fixed.

 

[Kerrigan]

I wrote the first draft of the proposal. I left out coding for now, that can all be added in later.

Spoiler

Implement a "Good Articles" system and tighten the requirements for FA's

On May 22, 2017, a discussion was held in the Mario Wiki Discord chatroom between a group of users (see the list of proposers), which discussed the possibility of implementing a system of "Good Articles" which, basically, would be Featured Articles but with the exception of ignoring length requirements. The requirements would be as follows:

*The article must be in concordance with MarioWiki:Good Writing. This includes such guidelines as not having any grammar or spelling errors, only having a reasonable, if any amount of fluff, and other guidelines outlined there.
*The article must provide all the information necessary for the reader. If there are any tags such as Rewrite Needed or Stub, the article cannot qualify to become a Good Article. This is mostly encompassed by the above qualifier, but there are some qualifications not found on MW:Good Writing that are included by this rule.
*Although it was mentioned previously that length would be irrelevant, there would be a slight length limit in place (so that an article of 150 words could not become "good").

Good Articles would not be featured on the Main Page similar to Featured Articles; rather, this system serves as more of a way to show what articles are most high-quality and are good examples of what the wiki expects, but will be given to articles that have problems that are beyond the point of being fixed (for example, a short article that cannot be expanded without adding filler).

The second point mentioned, which was brought up by Baby Luigi in this thread, is tightening requirements for Featured Articles. According to her, some articles such as Culex are well-written and fall under the guidelines for Featured Articles except for being of questionable length to be featured. If this proposal passes, a requirement of one thousand (1,000) words of original text (ruling out coding, quotes, official bios, etc.) will be put into place and any article that is currently not at the limit will be reduced to a Good Article (or unfeatured, if it is decided that the Good Articles system not be implemented).

We think that it is generally unfair, if I can use that term, for articles to be unable to be featured because of problems that cannot be fixed without adding too much, and therefore we have brought to you this idea of Good Articles.

Proposers: Baby Luigi, GSYoshi, Lord Bowser, and Tucayo
Deadline: [deadline here]

The four of us agreed to all be the proposers in the Discord room.

 

[Daniel Dyce]

So you aren't ignoring length requirements but rather creating new arbitrary ones
are you going to create a system called fair articles so that you can include even smaller ones because ever page needs a medal

 

[Kerrigan]

So you aren't ignoring length requirements but rather creating new arbitrary ones
are you going to create a system called fair articles so that you can include even smaller ones because ever page needs a medal

The reason I have a requirement to have a decent amount of words is so that there aren't articles of superficial length being called "Good." Obviously there's going to be other criteria, but for now, that's all I'm able to come up with.

 

[Daniel Dyce]

So you aren't ignoring length requirements but rather creating new arbitrary ones
are you going to create a system called fair articles so that you can include even smaller ones because ever page needs a medal

The reason I have a requirement to have a decent amount of words is so that there aren't articles of superficial length being called "Good." Obviously there's going to be other criteria, but for now, that's all I'm able to come up with.

What are these other requirements going to be
is this going to be a stricter system then the FA's
is it going to be looser?
cause if it's looser requirements then TT is right this is just a you tried medal to give out to ok articles so they we can stroke our dicks about how good are pages are.
Like what does the wiki gain from this

 

[Glowsquid]

The main page doesn't need more bloat.

 

[Hobbes]

It's not looser requirements, Good Articles will have to fully meet criteria 1 to 10 as established in MarioWiki:Featured articles, the only difference is that they can be shorter articles (like Culex and others).

The main page doesn't need more bloat.

GA's won't go in the Main Page.

 

[Daniel Dyce]

It's not looser requirements, Good Articles will have to fully meet criteria 1 to 10 as established in MarioWiki:Featured articles, the only difference is that they can be shorter articles (like Culex and others).

The main page doesn't need more bloat.

GA's won't go in the Main Page.

Why not just lower the FA standards then
how are you going to determine the limit
if it's 1000 words then why?

 

[Hobbes]

Because creating a lower tier does not diminish the distinction of being a Featured Article, that's why.

Because 1,000 is a round number.

 

[Time Turner]

If they're good enough to be Featured Articles, why not make them Featured Articles?

 

[Daniel Dyce]

Because creating a lower tier does not diminish the distinction of being a Featured Article, that's why.

Because 1,000 is a round number.

What makes a 999 page article worse then a 1000 page article?

If they're good enough to be Featured Articles, why not make them Featured Articles?

This

 

[Glowsquid]

I mean, if the "Good Articles" are not going to be spotlighted anywhere visible, then I do not see the point into creating yet more gaudy shit to shove at the top of pages or the purpose of (ineffectively) highlighting articles that are "pretty good but too short I guess". I guess. It's like, if you think there's a minimum length needed for front page exposure, that's fine, and it's a principle nearly every print media operates on, but "featuring" content will always be exclusionary in nature. There's no value in making a consolation prize.

Not every product is going to be put in the store's front window. Not every show is going to get primetime adverts. Not every commercial is going to air during the Superbowl. If some articles can't hack it, that's Too Bad.

 

[Magikrazy]

I've managed to compile a list of featured articles under 1000 characters in the case we do manage to go through with this:

I only counted original writing that wasn't a quote or a caption or within a template.

List of Collectibles from Mario Party DS - under 200
Badge - just under 960
Sticker (Super Smash Bros. Brawl) - under 250
Assist Trophy - under 200
List of bonuses in Super Smash Bros. Melee - under 200
List of Tayce T. recipes - under 200
Culex - under 600
Miracle Book - just over 100
Super Duel Mode - under 600
Rosalina’s Storybook - under 300
Vivian - just under 960
List of Zess T. recipes - just over 200

 

[Ray Trace]

I think the listicles should be excluded, so Assist Trophy, Miracle Book, and anything that begins with "List" should be excluded.

Anyway, I wish for more thoughts and opinions on my draft of tightening guidelines. The Good Article thing is just one way of attempting to address the shorter Featured Articles.

I'm still thinking on what should be the lower length limit in order for the article to be content rich enough to be featured in the main article. It's not just words alone, either, there's more factors to that than word count, as Magikrazy as posted some examples that I think wouldn't really work under the limit. I really think articles that teeter on the length requirement are simply not good enough to be featured, just end of story. If we need to debate its length, it's not good enough to be featured. This doesn't apply to any other reason listed. If the writing was just, passable, the article's formatting not very great, or the image quality very eh, we don't feature it otherwise.

Articles like King Boo, Mario Kart, Donkey Kong 64, Nintendo DS, Super Mario Bros. 2, etc., there's no question about their length that they can be featured. Articles like Vivian, Badge, Culex, etc, though, they barely pass the line. I consider these articles in "purgatory" or "limbo", and I don't think this personal opinion I have should be Featured worthy.

 

[porplemontage]

An article is feature-worthy when it is reasonably "complete" and follows all the wiki guidelines. For some topics that will result in a long article, but for others it will be quite short. Nothing wrong with that.

 

[Ray Trace]

The problem I have with this guideline is that "reasonably complete" is very loosely defined, and it's often up to the editors to discuss what exactly constitutes as "reasonably complete". For example, I consider most vehicles in Mario Kart to be reasonably complete, as they technically follow all guidelines, talk about all of their stats, talk about their appearances, and even list color variations of the characters. Yet I don't think anyone would be particularly eager to feature B Dasher any time soon, and it's mostly because of length reasons.

How we defined it is that length definitely plays a role in most of these nominations. I'd argue overall length of the article is part of the article's quality, of course assuming the article is not padded out. If one-note characters cannot make it in because they have only one appearance in one game of the series despite playing a somewhat big role into it, then their articles just bite the dust. Simple as that.