Portal talk:Featured content/Archive 2

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Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Contents

No-longer-featured content?

An issue that doesn't seem to have been discussed: rotating through the daily FA listing (and probably the FP listing?) will bring up a lot of articles that subsequently lost their FA status. While the ease of technical implementation is a good thing, I'm not sure that presenting them this way is genuinely a good idea; in many cases, the articles are nowhere near the current FA level, and thus don't really provide an accurate picture of the quality of our featured content. Thoughts? Kirill Lokshin 02:17, 16 October 2006 (UTC)

Actually, since the inception of the 'past content display' on this page I have 'blocked out' items which have lost their featured status. I don't update it every time something is 'downgraded', so a particular item which has been rolled back might be displayed a few times after losing status but I don't think that's a major problem. It is also possible that I missed some as I worked primarily from those that have been marked as 'downgraded' in the archives, but that could be resolved by checking the archives against the current lists. There is a larger pool of 'old featured' materials and I agree that standards have changed... to the point that there are probably a few hundred featured articles which would never pass if they were going through today. We could try to identify and remove those from the display list, but it would seem to make more sense to handle that through a systematic 'featured articles review' rather than the semi-random downgrading which occurs currently (basically when someone decides to make an issue of a particular article). Though... as I expect standards to continue changing that might be an ongoing thing. On the horizon there is some indication of adopting standards of actually verifying all facts in an article (not just listing sources, but actually looking up the reference and confirming that it supports the article text)... which is a standard none of our featured articles would currently meet. So long as we classify something as 'featured' I think we can display it here, and the quality of the materials displayed will improve as the quality of our listed featured materials does. --CBD 11:54, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
I currently see Breastfeeding in the featured article, which is no longer featured, can that be added to your block list? Jay32183 01:49, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Featured lists and portals on the Main Page

What's the case about FLs and FPORs (at least a link at the top right corner) being excluded on the Main Page? Is there a place to suggest them? Village Pump? --Howard the Duck 03:37, 6 November 2006 (UTC)

They're not promoted fast enough to have one a day. Plus this page is a new invention. The links in the top right of the contents page take you to info about nominations. :) --Quiddity 03:48, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks. Ah, although I'd FLs to appear once a week, and FPortals once a month. About nominations, I was referring on how to suggest the appearance of FLs and FPortals on the Main Page... --Howard the Duck 03:52, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Would have to be suggested at Talk:Main Page and maybe Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals). It's unlikely though, as there's already ongoing arguments about the Main Page being too long (which is partly why the <20k interlanguage links are gone). This page is due to be added to the sidebar (in place of "featured articles" link) soon though :) --Quiddity 04:02, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
But it'll be just once a week... we can use the features that's on this page, we can even remove pics, it's like replacing a pane of the Main Page. About the navbox, it's about time. --Howard the Duck 08:33, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
My own suggestion in this regards is that 'lists' are just a type of 'article'. There seems no reason that the 'article of the day' could not sometimes be a 'featured list' rather than a 'featured article'. That would take up no additional space and side-step any problem of 'not enough lists for one per day'. --CBD 13:35, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I too think it would be a good idea to get a list or a portal on the Main Page once in a while, but I'm sure that there would be some resistence. Perhaps the easiest would be to replace one of the existing panels on the Main Page with a list or a portal once or twice a week. However, I suspect that Raul654 would not be very keen to cede control of the TFA panel. Is anyone "in charge" of the FP slot? Can it be hijacked, perhaps :) -- ALoan (Talk) 14:16, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
I believe user:Solipsist does the featured pictures. Raul654 14:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
It's high time a featured list gets featured. But since FLs are few, once/twice a week will be good. I'm in favor of replacing one of the panes in the Main Page, even half a pane, like the DYK pane. --Howard the Duck 05:15, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

I have raised this on Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. -- ALoan (Talk) 15:12, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Updating/Rotating

Is there a set time table for changing the mentioned "newly featured" content, or maybe an all at once thing? Asking cause portals section is abit old, there are now four newly/newer featured portals. I was gonna change, but didn't want someone planning their day tomorrow around it.  :) Joe I 11:40, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

They're all in there. Click "other featured content examples" at the top or "purge page cache" at the bottom to reload the page and see a random selection from the list: Wikipedia:Featured content/Portals. --Quiddity 19:07, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
This rotational thing I'm getting sick of already. FAs long deteriorated are getting prominence on the page. LuciferMorgan 14:44, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Would that problem be solved by removing the dates from the list of possibilities of SetDate? There are currently 816 dates on there and by my calculation there should be at most 809 if the main page version of articles that have not yet appeared on the main page have been included. Jay32183 21:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
That just highlights that some of them need maintenance or reviewing for FA status. And as the date is mentioned, it gives the clue that some of them are older, and might have different standards or be deteriorating over time. --Quiddity 06:43, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Well some of them have lost their featured status and still appear. I've seen at least three former featured lists this week show up as featured content. Jay32183 09:25, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
There are only 4 Former featured lists, and they're not in the rotation. Do you mean articles? You already suggested a solution to that... (or am i missing something? :) --Quiddity 21:03, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes. There are former featured articles in the rotation. Jay32183 22:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)Why this rotational thingy??--Darrendeng 10:43, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'll try to find some time to remove the FAs downgraded in the past couple of months. As to the 'newly featured' section... that is Template:Announcements/New featured pages. It is usually updated when new items are promoted. --CBD 12:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
This has now been updated. All 'previously featured' articles have been removed from the list. After adding new pages since the last update there are now 840 'articles of the day' in the random queue. --CBD 14:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Nav Bar

I would like to proposed changing "Featured Articles" in the navigation box to this page... I hadn't even noticed this page before today but I think it is great and considering there is now all sorts of work featured on Wikipedia linking to "Featured articles" in the first instance isn't that great. -- PageantUpdater • talk | contribs | esperanza 23:07, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

That'll be happening any week now, as part of the sidebar redesign. :) --Quiddity 23:19, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
1. Voting isn't over yet
2. People who lost will no doubt make a fight and filibuster the results as long as they possibly can
3. Developers will say they can only do X and Y right now, and Z will require more work
4. Some people will favor immediate implementation of X and Y, and others want to wait until everything is done
5. The whole thing is pushed into another consensus gathering
6. Another vote is held
7. See #2
8. Z is still taking time to implement
9. By the time Z is ready, people already want other changes
10. See #5
11. See #6
10. See #7
11. People using other skins start whining why they don't have new features
12. Others immediately start opposing the changes to their skin and ask to leave it as is
13. See #10, #11, and #12
...
So, ahem, any week of which year do you have in mind? :) Elvarg 07:37, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
To date, I don't think anyone (including the person who originally set it up the way it is now) has objected to switching 'Featured articles' to 'Featured content'. So even if the sidebar redesign were to go down in flames (which I don't think it will) I think we could go ahead and make that change independantly without controversy. Though I would like to hold off for a bit longer to increase the number of featured lists in the random queue, maybe fill out the remaining featured portals, and fix the alignment issue on the article/portal row. --CBD 10:38, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
You refused to vote Elvarg! As much as I enjoy pessimistic cynicism, you can't complain if you don't even try :P --Quiddity 18:27, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Refusal to vote IS a vote. As much as I like the new sidebar, I think the process could have been better, and I don't want to add another gear to this ridiculous machine the sole purpose of which is to make simple matters as complex as possible.
I have actively participated in the discussion, and helped make the candidates we now have. I just don't vote.
And I'm not complaning, I'm just stating the facts :) 142.33.66.37 (Elvarg) 20:03, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record, this change to show 'featured content' on the sidebar was finally made on November 24th, 2006. As expected, this led to an immediate increase in traffic, including vandalism, and semi-protection of the featured content page. --CBD 10:54, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Status

Just some info on the content which is currently included in the random display for this page:

  1. All 840 'articles of the day' which have not subsequently been demoted are included. There are currently a total of 1,194 featured articles, but 354 of them have never appeared on the Main page.
  2. All 306 'pictures of the day' since March 1, 2006 are included. There are currently 653 featured pictures, but most of them which have been 'picture of the day' were so before the 'POTD row' format we use was developed. We could expand the featured pictures selection by building back 'POTD row' entries for these older images.
  3. Only 42 of the current 172 featured lists are included. Adding new lists requires putting inclusion tags around sections of text to be displayed and then updating Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists. I will continue to add more entries to this as time allows.
  4. All 39 currently featured portals are included. Rfrisbie has been adding new ones to the list as they are promoted.
  5. None of the five Wikipedia:Featured topics are currently displayed. This is a relatively recent and not fully active type of featured content. If the list continues to grow we should consider ways of displaying these here.

The only other 'non static' section of the page is the 'new featured content' section. This comes from Template:Announcements/New featured pages, which is generally updated by various users as different types of items are featured. This used to be included on the community portal, but now appears only here and on a few pages in user space. --CBD 11:18, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

registered member content

would there be more perks to registering? could this page have some of them? i just joined so i don't know what there really is as registeration perks, i may have even joined just to run my mouth. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Dieselweasel (talk • contribs) 18:58, 15 December 2006 (UTC).

i must be missing how noob was fit in there without me noticing. i didn't know it was html and not some crazy thing made up by the webdesginer to be more 'user friendly' , HagermanBot.Dieselweasel (talk • contribs) 13:11, 15 December 2006 (CDT).

TfD nomination of Template:Featured topic

Template:Featured topic has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. -- this newly created project is adding a big "constellation of stars" graphic on the main article space page of many FAs in contravention of the "no metadata on main article space" rule. please comment at the TFD discussion. 195.114.94.194 18:41, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

MfD nomination of entire project Wikipedia:Featured topics

The topics project is up for deletion at WP:MfD, in case someone here wants to weigh in on the issue. --Arctic Gnome 07:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

jeez. Just H 02:30, 28 December 2006 (UTC)
ok. It's closed now. Man, Wikipedia wouldn't be the same without a featured article on the front page. Just H 02:32, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Featured Templates? Galleries?

Is there any thoughts of having featured templates or featured galleries? Please reply at my talk page. TonyTheTiger 22:41, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll put a link/notice on your talk page, but I'm going to reply here so that others can see the answer. The idea of 'featured templates' has been suggested before, but seems to me unlikely to happen because 'featured' status is meant to indicate that the material is something which shows people the benefits and strengths of Wikipedia. A well written and sourced article makes the case that Wikipedia is a good encyclopedia. A creative or effective template can be very important in helping to format or support that work, but isn't in and of itself something you could show to an 'outsider' to demonstrate the value of Wikipedia. There have been discussions of some sort of alternate program for 'recognition' of particularly valuable templates, but nothing which has gotten off the ground that I have seen. As to 'featured galleries'... I'm not sure what that would entail. We have featured pictures, but would the intent here to be showcasing collections of images which are particularly well selected / organized? Theoretically, I could see something like that if there were a group of pictures on an important theme... i.e. an individual photo of 9-11 might not qualify as a 'featured picture', but a well designed gallery of such which captured the event might be valuable. However, I haven't seen any previous discussion or efforts along those lines. --CBD 13:03, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
It should be noted that featured content serve as an additional motivation to improve our resources. Although featured templates might not be an important advertising component for outsiders it could serve as a motivational tool for editors. Many editors would increase their efforts at creating usful and creative templates that improve the efficiency of wikipedia as a resource if there were a featured template. We know that editors pursue WP:FA and WP:FP in a way that improves the quality of the encyclopedia. Better templates could better integrate the research.
Featured galleries would be the picture analogue to featured topics. TonyTheTiger 21:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured Portal

With this page linked to from the main nav bar, I think featuring the "War" portal is a bit much. How about a "Peace" portal? -- Macduff 15:05, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

They're randomly selected (on each page refresh) from the list of 44 Featured portals. If you create Portal:Peace and develop it to featured status it can be included :) —Quiddity 19:42, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
And from the realm of the weird... a good source for links and info on 'Peace' is... Portal:War. They've got a whole sub-category on it. :] --CBD 21:16, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Somebody complained that it was biased. ;-) Kirill Lokshin 21:43, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
I tried to resist the urge to just reply here with Ministry of Peace ;) —Quiddity 21:53, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured topics and FCpages

Someone has taken Featured Topics out of the {{FCpages}} template. I understand why people wouldn't want a new project grouped with the other ones, but I now have to wonder: how FT can let people know of its existence if there is not link to it on FA, FL, FP, and FPort? If no one has a way to find it, it will never grow. --Arctic Gnome 17:32, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

The 'topics' links were also removed from Template:Announcements/New featured pages and Wikipedia:Featured content/Info, all by the same user. I restored them on the /Info sub-page here because 'featured topics' (along with 'featured sounds') have always been included there... even when both of them were completely unused. The reason for that being pretty much what you refer to... advertising that these projects for other types of featured content exist. I can see keeping 'FCpages' limited to active projects, but since FT has been picking up lately I think it makes sense to include there as well. --CBD 18:00, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I've added the rest of the references to FT back. Calabrese went around deleting all references after his additions were reverted. —Quiddity 19:31, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

Color

I changed the featured topics color to {{{2}}} (hue 90) to match the color scheme used in the rest of the top level pages, as summarized in the table at the top of Wikipedia talk:Colours. Hope that works for everyone.

It might be a good idea to change the "featured" header box standard color to something else that matches, instead of {{{2}}}. Possibly the blue (hue 210) as used in "Featured content procedures", and all the help pages? eg this diff. —Quiddity 19:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree that we should have different color schemes for each of the content types and then one overall which is used for {{FCpages}}, the top header on each 'featured' type page, Wikipedia:Featured content/Info, et cetera. I like the blue, but dunno if everyone on the sub-projects would want to switch over to that (from the current tan) for the headers of each page. --CBD 01:54, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I've made the proposal at each of the subpages, and asked them to reply here. —Quiddity 21:42, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I like it :) If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 21:52, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Support hue 210 - I agree that we should use hue 210. All of the projects use colours in 60 degree shifts on the table at the top of Wikipedia_talk:Colours. Using the last of those as the main FC colour just makes since, all five projects would match it. --Arctic Gnome 22:10, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Go Colts! Blue! ;-) Rfrisbietalk 00:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. If I missed or messed anything, let me know or fix it :) —Quiddity 21:04, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Should the tags on talk pages also be blue? I tried making {{featured}} blue in the sandbox and it looks okay. --Arctic Gnome 21:45, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
I think their talkpage location trumps their featured-content-relatedness. Otherwise long lists like at Talk:TGV would become distractingly colorful (because every subproject would want to color their box individually). It'd need to be proposed as part of a color-palette overhaul of everything at Wikipedia:Talk page templates at the least. Maybe in 2008 ;) —Quiddity 23:41, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Any way to know dates ahead of time?

Is there an easy way to find out when a particular article is going to appear here? It'd be nice to know when more traffic (and thus vandalism, etc.) can be expected so that FA authors/maintainers are prepared. --Spangineerws (háblame) 01:37, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

See this month's archive (which is linked from the main page) or the main page overview: Today's featured article. If you have any questions, please contact me at my talk page. Ian Manka 02:01, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
I meant on this page—for example, how could I have known ahead of time that the FA from August 14, 2006 was going to appear on Wikipedia:Featured content today? --Spangineerws (háblame) 02:27, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Er, a new one is shown at random every time the page is purged, so there's nothing to know here. You can make new items appear continuously just by clicking the link. (Maybe it should be placed more prominently, incidentally? People might miss it in the intro.) Kirill Lokshin 03:09, 13 January 2007 (UTC)
Heh.... well, sorry about that. I edited the intro slightly to make it more clear for people with short attention spans, but it was probably ok before too. --Spangineerws (háblame) 04:49, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured list criteria - proposed amendment

There is a proposal to amend the Featured list criteria at Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria#Proposal. The propsal is primarily intended to clarify certain matters. Comments would be apreciated. Tompw (talk) 14:34, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

TOCs transclusion

At Wikipedia: featured content/Lists, I encountered a list that had three sections within the <onlyinclude>, transcluding them and thus a TOC onto the page. I tried to insert __NOTOC__ but it seemed to mess up the transclusion. Somebody want to try and fix this? Thanks. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 19:54, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Do you remember which list it was? They shouldn't have that many sections and I haven't been able to find one which does. Also, the FC page itself has a 'NOTOC' setting and thus would take care of this issue when the list is transcluded here. --CBD 01:14, 21 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I'm afraid it was lost once I edited it, but as I recall it had something to do with ducks, or some type of bird? --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 16:32, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Featured sounds

The featured sound project is trying to get off the ground with a nomination. Which, if they do remain active, will eventually mean we need a color scheme and eventually randomized sample type. Still a long way to go for that, but people might want to take a look over there. --CBD 21:57, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Commons Picture of the Year 2006 Competition

 Interested in honouring the best of the best? Vote now in the
Commons Picture of the Year competition 2006
Voting to select the finalists is open until 14th February.

The arrangements for the Commons Commons:Picture of the Year 2006 competition are now complete, and voting has opened today, Feb 1st. All Commons Commons:Featured Pictures promoted last year are automatically nominated. --MichaelMaggs 12:22, 1 February 2007 (UTC)

Featured topics

Is the featured topics page dead? Only I just nominated Arctic Monkeys, but noticed no activity on the page since April. smurrayinchester(User), (Talk) 21:02, 26 August 2006 (UTC)

The 'featured topics' page is indeed largely dormant, but not officially 'dead' in any sense. You could try contacting the prior participants and/or trying to revive it or just let people comment as they happen to wander by. --CBD 13:05, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm wondering if Wikipedia:Featured topics should be merged into Wikipedia:Featured portals. They serve largely the same purpose; the main difference being that featured topics extend a semi-featured status down to their member articles. --Arctic Gnome 19:08, 15 December 2006 (UTC)

The mainspace template is gone, so there is no longer any real semi-featured status. Since I wrote that last post I've clarified the purpose of FT on its page. --Arctic Gnome 19:51, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
I've now cleaned up the featured topic project a bit and differentiated it from featured portals; but topics could still use quite a bit of work. --Arctic Gnome 17:49, 16 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, this page doesn't display much about featured topics yet. If the list of topics continues to grow we will probably add something like an icon and link for these... similar to how the random featured portal is displayed currently. --CBD 20:46, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
Once there are at least 20 or so featured topics we'll look into changing the look of the page. I don't expect that will take too long; the FT page has gotten quite a bit more activity since I added a link to it on {{FCpages}}. --Arctic Gnome 21:03, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm looking into some boxes that we might use one day down the line here or in portals: Wikipedia:Featured topics/boxes. --Arctic Gnome 23:42, 8 January 2007 (UTC)
I like these, but we'll need to do something about the 'included pages' lists. Right now they can trail down a considerable distance, and as the topics get bigger that'll become even more of a problem. I'm thinking we might use wider boxes for the topics and a small font for the individual page links. However, it will depend alot on where the featured topics display ends up on the page. It would be nice if there were a page which defined the 'scope' of each featured topic and we could just link to that for these and the 'new featured content' list. Maybe set up Wikipedia:Featured content/Solar System and the like and in there list all pages which are included in the topic, pages which are related but not yet considered ready for inclusion, et cetera? Then it could be just one link to get to that and we could probably put the topics in as another box right next to portals... still leaving the articles box a little more width than it has on the Main page. --CBD 09:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd like to have the list of included articles if possible. The wider versions of the boxes on User:Tompw/templates can all be a standard size, even for really long lists if they used a smaller font. We could also keep the tall ones as an option for portals to use if it fits better with their page. --Arctic Gnome 15:30, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Random topic generator

I've made a random topic generator at Wikipedia:Featured content/Topics for whenever you folks think that the topics project is ready to be added to this page. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 19:15, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing many lists in random rotation

Unless I'm reading the code wrong on Wikipedia:Featured content/Lists, there seem to be only 110 lists in the random rotation out of 216 total featured lists. Why is this? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 18:29, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Because the inclusion tags on each have to be set up by hand and I've only completed about half of them so far. See here for info. --CBD 17:21, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Topics and Sounds

I added random display for featured topics (8 currently) and sounds (2 currently) to the page. I put sounds at the top between articles and portals because it is a small section - and still leaves the featured articles with more space than they get when they are on the main page. The 'topics' section takes the full page width and thus went below the lists. There is no 'official' color for featured sounds yet so I used a grey scale to differentiate them from the others on this page. Feel free to suggest formatting / style changes. --CBD 00:55, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Sound location

Sounds could fit underneath Portals? I tried to make it so, but my wikitable skills are inadequate... --Quiddity 02:27, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree, I think sounds would fit nicely beside pictures and below portals, but I also don't know how to do it. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The problem with putting sounds next to pictures is that the 'picture of the day' on the main page always covers the full screen width and is formatted with that in mind... some of the pictures (panoramas) actually won't fit if there is another section on the same row. Lists have the same problem... some of them have tables which cover the full width of the screen. Some of the featured topic boxes might be 'compressible', but I don't think that would work for the bigger topics. Ergo, the featured articles are really the only ones with 'spare room'... which is why portals went up there in the first place. Even with both portals and sounds the articles still get more space on this page than they do on the main page - so there aren't any formatting problems with them. --CBD 11:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
See Wikipedia_talk:Featured_content/Archive_1#Featured_picture_options for a previous discussion on the problems with trying to put featured portals (same width as sounds) next to the pictures and different options. Having sounds next to the pictures would be fine for screen resolutions higher than 800x600, and even for that on most images... but the wider images would have problems with the descriptive text being confined to a long column the width of the longest word in the description. --CBD 11:25, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
We mean, we want to put sounds below portals, but still next to articles. i.e. Using the whitepinkspace under portals. (there's a lot at 1024, less at larger) --Quiddity 11:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh. Hrrrm... maybe. I think it may result in big gaps beneath the article sometimes, but we can give it a shot. --CBD 13:11, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I put in the 'sounds below portals on same row as articles' change. As currently configured it sometimes causes a large blank space at the bottom of the featured article at high resolution. At low resolution the Portal + Sound sometimes aren't tall enough to match the size of the featured article and the bottom of the sound box doesn't line up with the bottom of the article box. There's probably a way of solving that, but I want to see what people think of the general layout. --CBD 00:49, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Sound color

As for a colour for sounds, the other five topics have colours from the chart on Wikipedia_talk:Colours, which are all 60 degrees from each other. The only remaining colour is the shade of blue used at the top of each FC page. I don't know if sounds can share that colour or not. If it can't, then I guess a grey shade is our next best bet. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:56, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Having both FC and FS in blue would be problematic on things like this page and the 'new featured content' section... where we show each featured type in its colors, but all on the FC blue background. --CBD 11:12, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I quite like the grey, personally :) --Quiddity 11:42, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Sound box

I think it's a little overly mysterious without the content of the recording or what article it's used in. Featured sounds aren't chosen just because they're nice to listen to, but, similarly to pictures, because of their encyclopedic value. It would be great if we could just fit in a one-line description (I'm not asking for anything big like the FP box).--Pharos 17:57, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I added a description option in place of the 'download file' text. Makes the box a little taller, but not much so long as the description is short. --CBD 00:46, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

New additions

I added two new links to the 'procedures' section of the page to aid in tracking things;

  1. Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Featured content/Pages - Shows all recent changes to templates which impact the display of Wikipedia:Featured content.
  2. Special:Recentchangeslinked/Wikipedia:Featured content/Updates - Shows all changes to the various 'featured' status pages and talk pages. Thus a good way to keep track of nominations, changes to criteria, general discussion, et cetera across all 'types' of featured content.

Essentially these are 'specific topic watchlists' which can be accessed from this page or linked elsewhere for easy access. --CBD 16:46, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Current Featured List

There should be a specific list designated as the current featured list. This current list should be given at least a line on the main page. Since currently only about a dozen lists are promoted per month a current list should have a reign of 3 days. Eventually the reigns should fall to 2 days and then a single day. The FL page should be restructured to reflect specific date assignments for FL status. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:13, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

There have been many efforts to get lists on the Main Page with no success. However, I do hope somebody will finally listen. They would get much more notice if placed on the main page; perhaps more people would strive to feature lists. In the past, though, the proposal has been to place two FLs a week -- one on Saturday, and one on Sunday, so as not to give them more "show time." There would be nothing wrong with adding in a section beneath "featured picture" on the weekends to showcase FLs and Featured Portals. (We'll have to wait a while until we get enough Topics and Sounds though.) --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 00:53, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
The FLs defiantly need more attention. Wikipedia is an amazing source for quick lists of historical items, like past heads of state, and also for sorted and ranked lists to show the best of any set. Of the top 100 most viewed pages on Wikipedia, ten of them are lists. Many lists, like my own pet article List of Canadian Parliaments is much more comprehensive than anything else I've seen online or in print. I understand why you wouldn't want to add a big extra FC box to the main page, but as Tony said, even one line would be nice. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:43, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
There actually is one featured list which has appeared on the Main page. Provinces of Thailand was the article of the day on May 8th, 2004. It was subsequently demoted from 'featured article' status and then eventually promoted to 'featured list'. Which shows how arbitrary the difference between 'article' and 'list' can be. --CBD 19:04, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Fbv65edel said: "There have been many efforts to get lists on the Main Page with no success"
Were those attempts to get a whole seperate entry for FLs? or rather to use a FL as the featured-article-of-the-day? As CBD implies, FLs and FAs amount to the same thing, and should be treated equivalently. I'd be all for having a List as the featured article on any given day; but I'd be opposed to a whole new Mainpage section for FLs. --Quiddity 21:23, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe the closest attempts have been to alternate with one of the currently existing boxes, such as featured picture, or DYK, or possibly adding in a separate box for the weekend only, below FP. However, alternating with the FA would work too, I suppose. I agree both are more or less the same. --Fbv65edel / ☑t / ☛c || 01:49, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Featured Picture March 21, 2007

It's not showing up on my browser, but the actual picture works (Image:Tetrahedral_group_2.svg), and I have no idea to see if it's a problem on the page - thought I should point it out. If that image is broken, how would I go about fixing it. Ta ...adam... 18:30, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

The most likely cause would be some kind of ad-blocker. Wikipedia assigns independent names to the resized images cached on each page. The precise name varies by the size and positioning of the image and every so often those names actually include the string 'ad'... which alot of ad-blockers assume to be an advertisement and suppress. Sometimes changing the size of the image by just a couple of pixels corrects the problem, but the best bet is to shut down your ad-blocker or get it to ignore content on Wikipedia pages. --CBD 23:27, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Featued Article selection

Given the 114 article backlogue at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests a procedure should be instituted to choose the WP:FA. By the way Wikipedia:Featured article statistics should include statistics about the number of non-FA FA-class status articles. I don't know what the current proportion of articles are. It is possible that going forward there could be multiple articles of the day (Bio/non-Bio) or (person/place/thing). Of course, this would require shorter main page text leads. However, that issue aside given a single article policy and the huge request pool a procedure needs to be instituted. I suggest that each article be nominated for 1 specific date each week or month. An article that does not win an election within 1 year should be given some sort of designation to signify that it was not chosen to be a main page article, but had FA-class status. Wikipedians could then popularly elect FAs. The voting policy could clearly be refined through experience, buth this would be a start. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

P.S. I would propose an extremely short date justification like 25 or 30 words per nominee to explain why it should be elected for a specific date. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 22:54, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

After further thought, the above process would be too administratively involved. A better procedure would be to have 3 FA statuses. The current FAC status would be a status where articles are evaluated based on general policy guidelines for worthiness just as it is now. From there candidates either become FFACs or FANs. All FANs are eligible to be nominated for election to FA each month. Every wikipedian gets a vote (or possibly 2 or 3). From the first day of the month through the twentieth day of the month all FANs are voted upon. At the end of the month the top 30 or 31 candidates advance to FA status. For the next ten days in groups of 6 starting with the top six the first two days and the second six the next two days, etc. FAs choose their dates in the following months queue. The next 30 top finishers plus all those tied for thirtieth runner up retain their FAN for another month. All mid-month FANs retain their FAN status as well. The remaining nominees become FFANs. All FFANs are eligible to renominate themselves as FANs after one year, if they have retained FA class status and can get renomination support from the majority of those who supported their advancement from FAC to FAN.

Suppose we have 115 FANs nominated for FA. The top 30 votegetters would advance for April’s FA queue. Ties for thirtieth place would be broken based on support percentages in the FAC nomination procedure. Those articles finishing between 31 and 60 plus all those tied for 60th would carryover to the next month. All articles advancing to FAN status during the middle of the month would carryover as well. Right now this would clean up our queue. In the future when Wikipedia is much larger than it is now and more than 30 FACs achieve FA status per month, this will help us keep the number of articles being evaluated for daily FA to a reasonable level. In the future when 100 or more articles are achieving FA status per month, this will keep the process manageable. Furthermore, this will eliminate articles advanced in part due to sympathy for hard work and procedural persistence. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 07:55, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestion. It's been discussed before and rejected. We won't be voting on the main page FAs. We won't be featuring multiple ones in the same day. The system works pretty well as is, and we don't be changing it. Raul654 20:00, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Can you point me to some discussion on voting on the main page. When you say it works pretty well are you aware that things that have worked in the past may not continue to work as wikipedia grows? Do you mean the system works the way you want it to work or the way the majority of wikipedians want it to work? Are you oppossed to a democratic consideration of the procedures? TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 20:37, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Isn't broken; don't fix it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:04, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Look at the chart at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/amendment proposal and see if you understand the problem I am attempting to institute a policy to fix. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, Tony, but your proposal has got to be one of the most confusing things I've ever read. I'm not convinced that the current procedure is broken, but any proposals to change it need to be a lot simpler if they are to have any hope of gaining support. — Brian (talk) 00:35, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Reread my revised proposal at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/amendment proposal and see if you understand it. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 17:28, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi Tony. I did some research after looking over this page. In the 108 days December 1, 2006 there have been around 200 articles promoted. As such, the non TFA pool is growing about 0.85 net per day. This essentially maps into what you are saying about the wait times for articles to appear on the Main page increasing. As a result, you are suggesting that it would be fairer to let the community decide which pages appear on the Main page and have some, fairly involved, procedures for making that work. I think this has two significant problems - first, any community based procedure is going to require alot more complexity and bureaucracy than we have for this now and result in alot more disputes. Second, people are generally happy with the job Raul does and thus unlikely to be receptive to change.
The root problem seems to be that articles are promoted at a rate (1.85 per day) greater than they are displayed (1 per day). This also ties in to the issue discussed above about featured lists not being on the Main page... adding them into the mix would delay articles even more. As featured sounds, portals, and topics become more established I'd expect to see them vying for Main page space too... all of which runs counter to the fact that people want to keep the Main page constrained in size. To deal with this I'd suggest something like a smaller scale version of what we do on the Featured content page. In the same 108 days only 83 pictures have been promoted... growth of less than one per day. Which is why many pictures have appeared on the Main page two or even three times. It might make sense to instead occasionally (maybe on weekends) switch the 'featured picture' section with a 'rotating featured content' area that would show one of a small group of; one featured article from the backlog, one featured list, one featured sound, et cetera. Links across the bottom could go to each of these specific types of featured content or the user could reload the page to display a different one (rotating every ten seconds or so). This would help to clear out the backlog of non-Main page featured articles and thus decrease the wait time. Having content for this rotating section chosen based on strict seniority could guarantee that the content which has been waiting longest finally gets displayed. If the people who maintain an article wanted to hold out for it to be TFA rather than in the rotating section they could do that, but I suspect alot of people would be happy having it on the Main page 'part time'. Could even stack three or four articles in there on a given day.
Whatever procedures for choosing content are used the underlying problem of featured content growing faster than it can be displayed remains. The only solutions would be to slow down our promotion of featured content (which is counter to the goal of building a quality encyclopedia) or speed up the rate at which we prominently display that content. --CBD 00:22, 19 March 2007 (UTC)
The fact that TFA pool is growing at about .85 articles/day understates my concern. I am concerned that the rate of .85/day is growing. The 1st 2 months of last year saw 75 new FAs, two years ago 61 new FAs, this year 101. .85/day is not as much a problem as the acceleration of the growth is. In two years we have gone from 1 new FA/ day to almost 2. In two more years we will probably be producing 3.5-4 new FAs a day.
There are 2 solutions to getting FLs on the main page. 1.) Putting them on the main page allowing for repeats. 2.) Work them in with other featured content on a rotating basis (4 days of FP, 2 days of FL, 1 day of other FC per week). Eventually, each type of FC could move to a no repeats policy once its promotion pace is sufficient.
Your 2 solutions of slowing down FA promotion or speeding up rate at which content is displayed (possibly 3 or 4 a day like DYK) ignores the possibility I pose of selectively choosing from FX for FXOTD. That is my proposal. Note that each of the other solutions really just delays things to a later point in time. I believe my system will handle promotion rates at 10 times the current rates. Yes even 18.5 FAs per day (500+/month) could be handled by my solution. I don't think changing to bihourly TFAs would be a solution and I don't think being 10 times as strict with FA promotion would be a solution. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 19:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I must not be understanding your proposal then. How would it allow ten times as much content to be displayed on the Main page? What do you mean by "selectively choosing from FX for FXOTD"? My best guess is that you are saying we'd put a bunch of links to different content featured for the day... which is essentially what I was saying except that I suggested that in addition to the links the results of one section be displayed on every page view, but rotating every few seconds so someone could refresh to cycle through all the featured sections for the day, --CBD 23:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
I am not saying that my proposal would allow 10x as much content on the front page. It would allow for just and equitable treatment of 10x the current volume of FA promotions. If we sped up including them on the main page we would have to rotate every 2 or 3 hours to accomodate 10x current volume of FA promotions. If we slowed promotions we would have to make FAC procedure 10x as strict so that only 1/10 as many succeed. However, voting in the top 30 works whether there are 100 or 1000 candidates. I did not understand your suggestion to mean rotating page views. That is interesting. I think one feature of my suggestion is getting people use to skimming 50 words instead of 200-250. It may eventually allow for two 100 word main page sections (FA and FL, for example). I am not sure about a rotating view because it would only work for the images. Rotating the text could be bothersome. TonyTheTiger (talk/cont/bio) 21:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Aside: CBD, I'm traveling and on a slow dialup, so I can't recheck your numbers, but I suspect a flaw in your analysis. Not all articles that are promoted request to be on the mainpage. You would need to look at promotion rate vs. request for mainpage rate. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:10, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

This may seem like a ridiculous concept, but...

Featured disambiguation pages? It was my assumption that the ultimate, final and unreachable ideal goal of Wikipedia is to improve all content to good/featured status?--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 21:08, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Featured redirects? Featured shortcuts? There are some things which inherently don't have enough 'substance' to them to 'feature'. Yes, we eventually want all our disambiguation pages to conform to certain style guidelines... but when they do does that mean we should tell visitors, 'Hey, look at this! It has links in a bulleted list and everything!'. By their very nature disambiguation pages are meant to be minimalistic... navigation aids with no more info than is needed to differentiate between different uses of the term. Making good disambiguation pages is a great help to the project, but if it is done right the finished product is not 'featureable'. Only a bad disambiguation page would have enough 'bells and whistles' to impress visitors. --CBD 10:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Fair use images in Featured Lists

There is a discussion taking place at Wikipedia talk:Featured list criteria#Fair Use images about the permitted level of usage of Fair Use images in Featured Lists. Your input would be welcomed. Tompw (talk) 23:00, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia's triple crown

Commerce Tigers

The Commerce Tigers is a baseball team with all kids on it their names and their positions will be told. Zachary Stulberg catcher & firstbase Alex Stulberg secondbase & picher Aakif Lodhi firstbase & catcher Umair Lodhi thirdbase & outflid Nate Shallal picher & —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 71.227.12.144 (talk) 21:18, 14 May 2007 (UTC).

Hi, this page is for discussion of the Wikipedia:Featured content page. Your comment does not appear to be related to this page; you are more likely to get a response if you ask at a more appropriate place. If you are looking for help with using Wikipedia, see the help desk; if you need an answer to a factual question, try the reference desk. Thanks – Gurch 06:50, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

Broken or out-dated links

The anchored and piped link to Wikipedia:Wikipedia maintenance#Featured articles no longer works. Ditto for the link to Wikipedia:Featured Article Help Desk, which is now a historical (inactive) page. Carcharoth 02:43, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

I updated the info links section to remove these. --CBD 11:48, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Yoyohippo 06:04, 29 May 2007 (UTC)Suppose we have Featured List of the day? C'mon, weve already got picture and article of the day, why not list. After all, it has the third highest of the content.

Proposal: Featured Template

There are now six types of Featured Content in Wikipedia: articles, pictures, lists, portals, topics and sounds. I want to use this thread to assess how other editors feel about creating a new type of featured content: the Featured Template. The exact criteria would obviously have to be established by discussion, but it should imo be for templates that are comprehensive, that provide context, that are easy to navigate and that add to the article. Examples of good templates that might be Featurable are {{Cold War}} and {{War on Terrorism}}. Any thoughts/suggestions? Cows fly kites (Aecis) Rule/Contributions 14:37, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

'Fraid not, suggested before, see Wikipedia talk:Featured content/Archive 2#Featured Templates? Galleries? and Wikipedia talk:Featured content/Archive 1#Featured project. --Quiddity 17:28, 11 June 2007 (UTC)
As someone who has done alot of work on major templates I'd enjoy the recognition... but that's not the (primary) goal of 'featured' status. The idea is that the featured content should be something we can show to visitors to demonstrate the quality and professionalism of Wikipedia. If we show someone the featured content page they may be impressed. If we show them one of the templates which makes it possible they likely wouldn't be. The 'best' templates might be something which we would want to recognize and learn from internally, but it isn't something that we would be showing to visitors from 'outside'... and 'featured' status is intended for the latter. So, if you want to pursue some sort of recognition system for templates I'd suggest calling it something other than 'featured' - I don't think we'll ever have a list of templates that we push visitors towards perusing, but we could have one for editors to look at. --CBD 12:09, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
There is probably a template barnstar somewhere. Have a look on CBD's page! :-) Carcharoth 14:27, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
I was right. He already has two. See Image:Blueprint Barnstar 2.PNG. Carcharoth 14:29, 12 June 2007 (UTC)
The problem is that the template barnstar awards editors who have created good templates, not the templates themselves. The Featured/Good/Valuable Template (whatever the name may be) assessment would showcase the templates, as an example to readers and editors. If the only problem is that the content assessment classification (FA, A, GA, B, Start, Stub, Unassessed) wouldn't apply to templates, then I would suggest something to the extent of Valuable Template. Cows fly kites (Aecis) Rule/Contributions 12:15, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
I think the best way to highlight our best templates is to use them as examples in help/guideline pages. --Quiddity 18:03, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Accessed articles

Where does one go to see the most accessed articles each day on wikpedia?--LtWinters 23:09, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

WikiCharts. --Quiddity 23:35, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

How can I Propose a featured article

Frida Kahlo's 100 birthday on July 6th. I tried to find a contact address to place the suggestion, and despite I read the whole contact information, I couldn't find it. I wanted to propose Frida Kahlo's 100 year birthday for the July 6th edition. Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience.

First you need to improve the article so that is good enough to be a featured article. Then request this at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates – Gurch 14:41, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

wtf?

Don't make the freakin WonderBra a featured article. For crying out loud, some of us are at work here. . . —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 138.163.0.44 (talk)

Featured articles are chosen for their quality, not their subject. The day's featured article is selected from those which are featured. – Gurch 14:39, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Personal rant

(may NOT qualify for speedy deletion) I am not sure if I should put my personal difficulties in this page but Firefox 2/0/0/6 on Mac OS X Tiger is not displaying this picture http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Tetrahedral_group_2.svg in the main page. I mean not even the PNG version! Am I missing something? --Click me! 10:16, 15 August 2007 (UTC) (All calls may be recorded for quality.) Have A Goood day love mrs zi

Formatting snafu

Why is the featured list (islands in Scotland) copied four times on the page? I couldn't find it in the wikicode so that's why I haven't fixed it myself. Cynical 10:35, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like there were extensive updates to the featured list sub-page the past few days which caused a few hickups. Everything should be sorted out now... and there are a whole bunch of new lists in the rotation thanks to Circeus. --CBD 12:09, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Ap European Mr. Madieras' calss can talk here@@!!! John Duong

YOOOO. Happy Valentines day everyone!