Tightening Featured Articles guidelines

[Time Turner]

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.

I was tempted to nominate B Dasher, but I don't even think it's all that well-written.

 

[October Yoshi the SSM]

Good articles sound like a good idea. But, I have an idea. What about articles that are exceptionally good, but are short (can't think of any). Would you call that good? And if it is just a few words like a one-time power-up. Should it be at least good? One-liners are discouraged from the wiki anyway, so they would never be good at all.

And if you didn't like that idea. I am thinking that the symbol for good articles would be a silver star, but if that is too good, a bronze star.

 

[Alex95]

This is my WIP progress page

"Work in progress" progress?

I don't think this has been brought up yet, but MarioWiki:Article size might be worth taking into consideration when thinking about this. While it mainly talks about whether pages of certain sizes should be split (btw, something might need to be done here about Mario...), the sizes it talks about might be useful here. Pages less than 40kb don't need to be divided, so by going off of that, should pages less than 40kb also not be featured?

 

[Ray Trace]

Good articles sound like a good idea. But, I have an idea. What about articles that are exceptionally good, but are short (can't think of any). Would you call that good? And if it is just a few words like a one-time power-up. Should it be at least good? One-liners are discouraged from the wiki anyway, so they would never be good at all.

And if you didn't like that idea. I am thinking that the symbol for good articles would be a silver star, but if that is too good, a bronze star.

It's good, but that's probably it. It won't be featured on the main page, but it's nice and complete. That's the best we can say about it. If the subject gets lucky and featured in more future games, then MAYBE it has a shot? What the consensus says right now is that good articles aren't a great idea and they do have a point.

"Work in progress" progress?

I don't think this has been brought up yet, but MarioWiki:Article size might be worth taking into consideration when thinking about this. While it mainly talks about whether pages of certain sizes should be split (btw, something might need to be done here about Mario...), the sizes it talks about might be useful here. Pages less than 40kb don't need to be divided, so by going off of that, should pages less than 40kb also not be featured?

Yeah my wording tends to crap up once in a while. It happens.

Article size is something worth taking into consideration but keep in mind that article size includes formatting of tables and templates and that can take up a huge amount of space. We settled on word count for that reason. Then again, word count isn't completely perfect either.

 

[Czario]

So, I can understand why article length could be a factor in featuring articles, but how are we supposed to decide an exact length limit? Do we just assign a minimum character limit? It seems that the definition of how long an article should be to qualify would be too vague. Furthermore, if we try to determine the proper length, there's gonna be disagreement about where to draw the line. How do we determine this without choosing an arbitrary minimum?

 

[Ray Trace]

This is where we need to come up with an agreement with and that's the part that I have the most trouble with. I think ~1000-2000 (1000 is less strict while 2000 is far more strict. Personally, either limit and between doesn't matter to me but this depends on what the community thinks is a worthy length) words (give or take 50-100 around the border) is a good limit and of course this excludes Featured Lists or if other articles have other means of organizing features aside from prose (like Super Duel Mode's article, but I think it could benefit from a general gameplay section regardless).

Magikrazy has compiled a list of smaller, less wordy articles in his list. One of them would be a good lower limit example, such as Vivian. You can look at other shorter ones like Koopa Bros. or even Dr. Mario, find your limit. My lower limit is probably going to be like Koopa Bros. or Smithy (though Smithy's writing isn't....the best really).

 

[Alex95]

I don't think there's a good guideline we can follow here, to be honest. Every article on the wiki is different, therefore, each one has its own "needs". Sure, there's a standard layout we follow (introduction, infobox, headers, etc.), but the amount of information on a page is determined by the amount of information that is available. For example, 10-Point Star is well written, but incredibly short, as that's all the information available. Special 8-4 has well written information, section headers, and an infobox that gives out the necessary information at a glance, but will never be a featured article because it is "too short".

My point is, length should only really be taken into account if the article has too much filler and unnecessary information. In which case, it should be common sense just to fix it. If the article is well written, information in the infobox describes valid information at a glance, pictures are clear, and there are no maintenance templates like stub or rewrite, then article length shouldn't matter. If there are any problems with the quality of the article, then it should be brought up on the talk page (like with Culex, whose information has expanded since its denomination) or just outright fixed.

 

[Ray Trace]

That's why I find it extremely difficult to find out a size that is "just right" for it to be considered on the Main Page. An article can be good and complete, typically, with no tags (that's how we want ALL articles on MarioWiki to be like, really, that's why we even put tags and stuff up there in the first place, so we can draw editors to make articles as perfect as it can get), but there's a sort of different, higher standard when it comes to outright featuring them on the main page and giving them the designation of "Featured Article", where I think quantity is more important in that regard. I mean, we can toil around writing articles like Spirit Ball and make them as perfect as we can, and while the article would be considered perfect as it is, I feel like it's completely out of league to be a Featured Article.