Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team/Mission Proposals/Archive 1

• Poor Willow can't do everything by herself to save the article! Team to the rescue! :) Awadewit (talk) 20:01, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  I agree, and would encourage anyone reading this to help out now. What I mean by saying "it doesn't necessarily fit the FA-Team model" is that a large part of the FA-Team motivation is to help inexperienced editors and hence create new featured article builders. Geometry guy 20:16, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  Oh yes, I agree with that part. Unfortunately I am not seeing many proposals that fit that model, so I thought I would mention this. I apologize if it was out of order. Awadewit (talk) 20:18, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

  Absolutely no apologies necessary: I would encourage all FA-Team editors to help this article; it is a win-win situation, even if it not officially FA-Team activity. Geometry guy 20:42, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

• The biggest hurdle here is citations (although there are also article organization issues): I don't see how FA-Team members can help with the research/citations. The Medicine Project seems to have washed its hands and hasn't even tried. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:10, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Willow's doing the research. I was thinking it might be nice if we freed her up to do more of that. Took some of the more mundane tasks off of her hands. She has been a one-woman FA rescue machine on this article. Awadewit (talk) 04:17, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I offered to the MoS cleanup, but I think she went ahead on that on her own (?), and other suggestions (summary style) haven't been used. It's certainly curious that none of the med/bio people will help; I don't have the content knowledge, but that seems to be the main holdup. I did some work in there tonight, was alarmed still at the external links, TOC and lack of citation. Lots of citing to be done still; what it mostly needs now is content experts, although I can continue adding the missing PMIDs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:21, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
      • According to the talk page of the article, 23kb of prose have been cut, leaving the article at 50kb of readable prose. The "Mathematical models" section is now smaller, so I think progress is being made, slowly but surely. Awadewit (talk) 04:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

        When I see "Lots of citing to be done" and "Content expert" in the same sentence about a biological article, the name that immediately springs to mind is Tim Vickers. He has already been providing occasional helpout with the article, but if you two were to turn on the charm on his talk page, I think this article might move very rapidly to where it deserves to be, and with more expertise than the FA-Team can provide. Geometry guy 06:07, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

        • I believe many messages have been left already for Tim. I would also like to add, again, that there is much for non-experts to do. Poor Willow - she helps everyone else out with such good grace and no one will help her out! Really, it's too bad. Awadewit (talk) 06:29, 22 April 2008 (UTC)
          • Yes, I regularly and routinely ping Tim on bio/med FAR/FAC articles (this is but one of many samples of such, action potential is not an unusual bio/med FAR, been working on saving articles at FAR for two years :-). I pinged him on action potential, as I always do.[1] We don't need to turn on the charm; Tim always does everything and anything he can, as soon as he can. The article I pinged him about just before that, he salvaged in a matter of hours and it was a Keep at FAR.[2] He entered a Remove on Action potential because it's uncited and the material can't be verified. Tim rarely enters an Oppose; what else can I say? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:45, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

            Sorry for my naive and unhelpful suggestion, but I don't know what else to suggest. I've helped out a little with the math section already, but I don't know what else to do. Willow has added a huge amount of material to this article, which is now over 100 KB and is a completely different article from the one that was brought to FAR. Of course she is the most deserving, graceful, and generous Wikipedian that all of us have met, but it may be that the best we can do is follow Tim's line and vote remove. The attention of a later FAC may provide the help that the article needs. Geometry guy 07:08, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

            Apparently I am just as unconvincing as Willow in trying to drum up help for this article. Ah well. It is the action potential curse. Awadewit (talk) 07:13, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

(outdent) G guy, I totally don't follow your system of asterisk and colons, so I'm outdenting :-) Ah, what to do; now you see the problem :-) Like I said, I've got hundreds where action potential came from. It beats the heck out of me why the Medicine Project doesn't help on FARs, why there are only six to eight editors we can count on for saves at FAR, and why more reviewers and editors don't help. Dozens of articles a month that are almost there, and just need a little push to save. That is my point about Rudyard Kipling, about the hundred or so I could bring here. Right now, the one that is killing me is Samantha Smith; nice little article, two or three citations away from a Keep, but nobody can or will do it. It's not naive or unhelpful; it's the disappointment that Marskell and I deal with every day. This is why it's important that we recognize Wiki resource limits and use our resources wisely, expending effort in areas that will generate maximum return on editors who will pay back. Teach them to fish rather than giving them the fish. We can't feature them all and we can't save them all; as Tony says, we can leave the largest possible footprint, reach as many editors as we can, and hope it spreads from there. This is the crux of the matter; how can FAT achieve its mission without draining our limited FA writers, FA reviewers, and FA savers. It's a small pool, and there are many editors, articles and Projects who would die for a moment of the attention and talent and knowledge available on this page. Hard to pick; hard to see articles that are almost there and that have received so much work not get their star when the editors have worked so hard. Especially when you look at some of those that are getting their star, while FAC is missing its best reviewers. I guess this sums up everything I would say on the post-mortem: the importance of a footprint to Projects that will yield ever-widening circles of editors and articles, and if no one is over reviewing at FAC and FAR, and article standards slide, for what is the effort, anyway? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:23, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Can I just say that after attempting to source A Tale of a Tub, I would never recommend that anyone participate in trying to save an FAR that is unsourced. And after seeing the problems with Action potential, I am doubly convinced. I consider the work I did a complete waste of time wiki-wise. I spent weeks reading on Tub and even after all of that reading, I could not properly source the article (it would probably take me a year to do the proper amount of reading). If an article is completely unsourced, only someone who wrote the article, who knows the subject from top to bottom, or who is willing to rewrite the article, can fix it. Sorry to be so pessimistic about FAR. Awadewit (talk) 07:33, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

But we've restored 119 articles 122 articles since the citation requirements were strengthened and the new FAR was put in place in June 2006 to process them. Action potential started a month late, and no other content experts could help. Tub was a different story; many are doable if editors are available. But you're right; in two-thirds of the cases, euthanasia is the best option. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 07:50, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Show me some good examples. Being a lit person, I am less impressed with stats than I am with representative examples. :) I want to see a "before and after" example of an article that had few to no sources and ended up with excellent sources. I remain skeptical. :) Awadewit (talk) 07:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

The list of all saves is in the link above, and the before and after are in articlehistory; pick one from the list that interests you, articlehistory will show you the original featured version as well as the version that passed FAR<link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=User:Lupin/navpop.css&action=raw&ctype=text/css&dontcountme=s"> (FAR is sometimes harder to pass than FAC, by the way). If you want to see one of our oldest restored featured articles you could look at either punk rock or Byzantine Empire. (I imagine you'd rather find something literature related; since I don't work on them, I can't name one off the top of my head.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Maybe James Joyce? Original featured version and version that passed FAR (but in Dec 2006, standards have significantly improved since then). Or George Moore (novelist), Original featured version and version that passed FAR. The improvements in the medical articles I've worked on are more easily notable to my eye: TimV and I worked on Tuberculosis, original version and version that passed FAR. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:39, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

This might be a moment for us to remind each other that our primary goal at Wikipedia is improving the encyclopedia, not creating more featured articles. The latter is simply a mechanism for achieving the former. The improvement in the quality of Action potential in the last month, largely thanks to Willow, has been absolutely incredible. I do not see any of our efforts to help her as wasted: they have converted a fading FA of years ago into an article burning with life and information. Whether it has a bronze star in the top right corner is secondary to whether it provides readers with top quality information and insight.

Not wasted; if no one can cite it, resignation that it may need to come back to FAC after it's cited if it wants a star, but it's still a hugely improved article. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Sandy (post multiple ecs :), I find your outdented post very insightful and it should probably be copied/paraphrased over at the /Analysis page. Unfortunately this rather sad and reflective morning (to me) also starts my busiest day of the week, so I won't be able to reply any further until this evening UTC. All I can do for now is explain the bullets (asterisks) and colons (indents). In a nested discussion it is best to copy exactly the sequence of asterisks and colons of the previous commentator, and then decide if you want to precede your comment by a bullet or not: if you do, add an asterisk, otherwise add a colon. In this discussion I did not want to precede my comments by a bullet, because I was not voting or making a point, but simply exchanging thoughts with two of the Wikipedians I most admire and treasure. That's why I interspersed the asterisks with colons, and I tried to do it without changing anyone else's choice about whether to precede their comment with a bullet point. I wish I could talk here longer, but I have to go... Geometry guy 08:02, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've never before encountered that mixture of colons and asterisks on Wiki ... I don't know what it means, actually, or what to do with it (in other words, I don't know what to put before or after it). It's not sad ! We can spread a large footprint and teach a lot of editors how to write the best possible articles, as long as we are realistic about Wiki's limits and think about where to reach the most editors who are hotly seeking help. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 08:15, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

We're in complete agreement about the maximizing the footprint. Concerning colons and asterisks, the short answer is that it means absolutely nothing. It is just a bizarre feature of the Wikimedia software: if you want to add an indent or a bullet to a discussion, then you have to copy the previous editor's markup exactly, then add a colon or bullet. If you don't do this, the Wikimedia software attempts to provide a whole string of bullets and indents according to your request, and the result is not often pretty. So, just copy the string of the previous editor, put nothing before it, and put whatever you want after it. This may often lead to odd code (as it did here), but the result will be formatted as Wiki intended, bless it. Geometry guy 21:46, 22 April 2008 (UTC)