Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/requests/Archive 1

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Old FAs

Hey Raul, I have taken the liberty of making a list of the FAs that were not on the Main Page as of August 18, 2004 and have still not been there, and are still listed. I sincerely hope you are giving priority to these.

• Quatermass and the Pit
• Louis Armstrong
• Roy Orbison Featured on 6 December 2005
• Igor Stravinsky
• Charles Graner No longer an FA
• Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. No longer an FA
• Privy Council of the United Kingdom (page was moved, this is the new title, still an FA)
• Tynwald Day
• Ralph Yarborough No longer an FA
• Hereditary peer
• Order of the Thistle
• Olympic Games
• ASCII
• C programming language
• Java programming language Featured on 17 December 2005
• Markup language
• Phonograph cylinder
• Quantum computer
• Telephone exchange This was an FA under the old name, but has been moved to Central office, does that mean it should go back through the FA process? --JohnDBuell 04:07, 3 January 2006 (UTC)

-- Earl Andrew - talk 05:00, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I know people like to have recent FAs on the front page, but can we recognise some more of these old ones too, please? -- ALoan (Talk) 18:44, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Banging my drum again, but there are now lists of the featured articles by date promoted, also listing if (and when) they were on the front page: see, for example, Wikipedia:Featured_articles_nominated_in_2003. The older ones surely deserve their day in the sun. -- ALoan (Talk) 11:16, 9 September 2005 (UTC)

And again - go on, some of these deserve it. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:23, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

Comment: If Roy Orbison is any indication of quality, I think this proposed approach to "dealing with the old" is problematic, as FA quality and standards have apparently improved significantly in a short time (even, in certain subject areas, over the last few weeks). That's certainly been the case from my personal observation of specific articles, and the comments of others from here and there (e.g. WP:FAC, WP:FARC) would seem to support this view. I'll try to take a look at other articles in this list, but for me, at present quite active in FAC, the practical requirements of FAC seem to be multiplying. Almost identical work is required not only in FAC, but TFA, FARC/reviewing current FAs, and Peer Review. This kind of undercuts the perceived value of working on FAC, when substandard FAs are simultaneously appearing on the Main Page, and there are likely dozens, maybe hundreds more waiting in the FA collection... ("Comprehensiveness", as interpreted a reasonably acute and/or knowledgeable-on-the-topic reader/FAC reviewer, seems to be the main issue with old FAs, with writing quality coming in second...)

Also, a bad Main Page article can put more stress on the FAC system, by creating precedent that encourages lower quality nominations. This is particularly...bad with pop culture stuff, like recent songs and artists, because writing "encyclopedia articles" for many of these simply hasn't been done before, so FAs are often the only examples to go by...).

Another way to put this, if I want to work on improving FAs, should I focus my efforts on FARC before FAC? --Tsavage 16:09, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Given the number of people who read and contribute to WP:FAC, your individual contribution would probably have more effect if you concentrated on reviewing old FAs and nominated the poor ones on WP:FARC or WP:FAR. It has to be said that some of these old FAs still compare well - for example, I think Order of the Thistle would pass FAC today, which shows how valuable Emsworth's contribution has been.

Good places to start would be the older entries in the Featured log, and Taxman's list of featured articles with possible references problems. -- ALoan (Talk) 16:35, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Sorry, my last was a mainly rhetorical question. Put another way, is it more useful to bail water (remove existing bad FAs), or to plug the leaks (FAC process ensuring more bad FAs don't get through)? I'd rather plug leaks, and that also seems to be most useful, as the "bad FAs" will remain more or less static (subject, of course, to ever-improving standards), and the ship doesn't seem to be sinking. ;) From my recent experience, I don't think "given the number of people who read and contribute to WP:FAC" means another pair of eyeballs is not needed. In fact, I haven't nearly found myself simply going with the majority on each of the FAC I've commented on, therefore, perhaps my input is not redundant. I believe the Main Page FA is really the thing we are discussing here. As for that, ensuring that only currently valid FAs make it to Main Page sounds like a reasonable goal... Thanks for the feedback! --Tsavage 18:57, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

What is meant by placing requests at the top of the page, in other words, how do I nominate an article?AndonicO 16:56, 21 August 2006 (UTC)AndonicO