Tightening Featured Articles guidelines

Xiahou Ba

Xiahou Ba

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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.
 
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.
 
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?
 
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.

Time Turner said:
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?
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
Time Turner said:
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.
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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.
 
J-Fred said:
Time Turner said:
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.
Click to expand...

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.
Click to expand...
If they're good enough to be Featured Articles, why not make them Featured Articles?
 
Time Turner said:
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.
Click to expand...
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.