Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team
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NOTICE: Please put all proposals for future missions at Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team/Mission Proposals rather than on this talk page.
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[edit] Proposed mission
Some editors of the Economics Wikiproject are trying our best to bring Adam Smith up to FA status. Any help you could lend would be most appreciated. Remember (talk) 17:30, 23 May 2008 (UTC)
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- I've copied this request to Wikipedia: WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team/Mission Proposals. qp10qp (talk) 12:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Does the FA Team have any way of responding to requests? (Help is best given when main editors are active on an article, which may not be forever, as the case of King Arthur shows.) qp10qp (talk) 22:50, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Mike Christie used to organize things, but he hasn't been doing things of late. Perhaps we should take that duty on ourselves? This is obviously an important article. I can give it a peer review as a start. Awadewit (talk) 23:05, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
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- I think perhaps there's a general issue with lack of direction here. This is not a criticism of Mike or anyone else, as I include myself in this, but more an observation that many of us were busy elsewhere before joining up to form the FA-Team, and taking on such a huge project as the MMM has left backlogs in other areas - many of us seem to have gone back to our day jobs. Perhaps we ought to consider appointing an official FA-Team coordinator (if Geometry guy or Mike want the job, that's fine by me!) who can be a contact point for requests, alert team members to what's in the in-tray and generally keep things moving. EyeSerenetalk 09:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Well, it should be possible for us to help out here and there with FA Team tasks if all are chipping in; but it becomes a burden if only a few hold the fort.
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- Being realistic about such projects (which is why I've never joined it: don't like to make promises I'm not sure I can keep), it is likely to either flag or devolve to an individual or small few who make it a main part of their Wikipdia experience. However, I think there are ways of pepping it up. First, we should perhaps remind people to put this page on their watchlist; secondly, instead of having a co-ordinator, I think we should empower individuals to make a first assessment of any request from outside the group (or a second assessment, if the request itself comes from inside the group). In other words, I think that as soon as a request is made, someone/anyone from the FA team should look the article over and decide if it falls into the FAT remit, which I believe is mainly for formatting/preparation help prior to FAC for editors relatively new to the process. That assessor should then have the authority to place the article on the missions list. At the moment there is no obvious way for an article to get on the missions list. If all members have the page watchlisted, they might then help with an article that fits into their interests.
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- If the project continues to lack group effort, I suggest it simply be turned into a request list. People can list articles that they require FA help with, and hope for the best, as they do at the League of Copyeditors page, though I expect there will be a backlog. Or we can merge with the list of review volunteers, which is likewise moribund.
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- Failing all that, maybe we should give up trying to herd cats and go back to the old system of requesting help from one another with articles that need it, for new editors we have met, or whatever. That's how people like Yomangani and I got involved with MMM anyway—because Mike asked us. qp10qp (talk) 12:08, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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- I have only just noticed the page Wikipedia:WikiProject Featured articles/FA-Team/Mission Proposals, so I have moved the Adam Smith proposal there. So how does a proposal become a mission? Plenty of proposals hung out to dry on that page but still only one active mission listed on our mission page (King Arthur, which is nearing accomplished status). I did unilaterally shove Adam Smith up as a mission, but realised this was unfair on the proposals higher up the proposals page. But it all seems too slow and elaborate to me. The main thing is to help, or to request help, not to discuss whether to help or not. qp10qp (talk) 12:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
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(outdent) ...hence the need for someone/ones who can decide what we work on (or at least, facilitate a discussion), and then poke team members until things happen. I'd offer my services, although I'm not the most active editor on the team and busy elsewhere with my limited wikitime. It would be a shame to let things die away though. EyeSerenetalk 10:10, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
- I agree; as Awadewit says above, I tried to be the person who coordinated decisions such as this. I've been inactive for a couple of reasons (change of job, involving temporarily relocating the family to another state) and that's likely to continue through August, I'm afraid. If someone could take on the coordination role that would be great. I'm willing to do it when I become active again. Mike Christie (talk) 12:47, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Some proposals, then
Looking through the list of proposals, I think some should be promoted to missions. I've just checked the state of the articles, and it seems to me that the articles that have a good level of citations and current active editing are these:
- Problem of Apollonius FAT member Willow is already helping with this and more help would be appreciated.
- Indigenous people of the Everglades region This is on GA hold and could do with helping through that stage right now. It could be argued that main editor Moni3 is not a newby to FA; but she is asking for assistance from the FAT team with copyediting, etc. and clearly feels that the extra help will make a lot of difference. It would be a shame if she was turned down here the way Willow was turned down.
- Adam Smith The Economics Wikiproject have asked for assistance on this one, and they are actively working on the article now.
Would anyone object if I added these to the missions page (and crossed the MMM project off)? Then all, hmmm, that's needed is for members to go out and help. qp10qp (talk) 01:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC) (By the way, I am not co-ordinating, just fusspotting.)
[edit] More general proposal
But here's a thought... Perhaps we should have a page such as the MMM one for all the articles on which the FA-Team is working. Essentially, after all, the MMM "mission" was a series of mini-missions; not every member of the FA-Team was equally involved with each article. So people could sign up for individual articles, and some kind of coordinator role would be to ensure that each article was covered in some way. Then there could be discussion as at WT:Mission1, when particular articles needed help or a fresh set of eyes.
- In other words, rather than seeing MMM as a model for future missions, why not see MMM as a model for how the FA-Team works as a whole? We'd then only directly replicate the MMM model if a series of linked articles (the Everglades one would perhaps be a good example) came up. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:09, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- So for instance, right now I feel my FA-Team contribution centers around King Arthur (though I have been distracted by Peter Wall recently. I'd sign up for King Arthur. But I'd also watch a central talk page in case anyone says "look, X page is about to go for FA now; can we have another copy-edit from someone." Or whatever. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:13, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
(outdent:) Another thing that we could take from the MMM model, and I think it might be handy, would be to set deadlines. After all, MMM took quite a long time to get up and running; then it became quite frantic (in good and productive ways) towards the end. However artificial it is, one condition of accepting a mission could be that the proposer set a deadline: FA by such-and-such a date. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 01:11, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
So, thinking about it more, here's a proposal...
- We establish a "missions" page, along the lines of the MMM mission page
- People are invited to add suggestions to the FA-Team's proposal page, but they have to propose a goal and a deadline. Presumably the goal will normally be an FA nomination, but they may include other stages en route (as in practice was the case with MMM): so a goal could be GAN by such-and-such a date; FAC by such-and-such
- If two (three? but two seems enough) FA-Team editors are willing to commit, then the mission gets added to the mission page. There, other FA-Team editors can add themselves later, should they so wish.
- Discussion of active missions takes place on the missions talk page; requests for fresh eyes, copy edits, and so on can be taken there; periodic updates are also encouraged.
- When the deadline's up, and if it's not extended, the mission is taken off the missions page.
This is fairly simple and unbureaucratic, requires a minimum of coordination, though perhaps each mission could be assigned a coordinator, and a couple of us could take on the role of informal general coordination. It prevents dispersion and encourages cross-fertilization, without meaning that each FA-Team member feels he or she needs to be involved with each mission.
Waddaya think? --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 02:01, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- I think that makes sense, at least as a working model that we can refine as needed. It would be especially helpful to have a general signup page rather than (or in addition to) individual mission pages, where we can see who has signed up for what per the MMM model and apply ourselves accordingly. The major drawback I found with our MMM efforts was the sudden descent of half a dozen editors on a single article - it got a little crowded at times ;) I think deadlines are a good idea too, even if they are fairly elastic. We can't achieve much without the commitment of an article's regular content editors (and shouldn't be taking on such articles anyway) so it would be a good way of indicating to them as well as us what's required. We'd also need a mechanism for removing missions as well as adding them; I've done a few copyedits that have been abandoned as editors have lost interest for whatever reason. Maybe that could fall to the coordinator, or perhaps better, the FATs that have been on that mission. EyeSerenetalk 07:47, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Suitably encouraged, I've started to draw up the machinery. Others should of course feel free to edit vigorously. One thing we do need to do (as Qp suggests) is figure out what's happening with current proposals. --jbmurray (talk • contribs) 08:15, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- I think this is an excellent idea and would be a step towards evenly reviewing FA proposals. Nice idea ♦Blofeld of SPECTRE♦ $1,000,000? 20:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
- Looks good. dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) 23:38, 30 May 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Outreach to academicians
It's my understanding that a major goal here is to spawn new Wikipedians who are already content experts. It's my belief that some of the changes I see at Wikipedia...including the existence of the FA-Team...are going to be very attractive to academicians. I just got a pleasant reply from someone at Rice University, who expressed interest but asked me what a "Wikipedian" was and how I could verify that I was one, and I sent this back, I'd appreciate feedback of all kinds:
[begin] I'm not offended at all, in fact I'm glad you asked. Wikipedia is a lot like France right after the French Revolution...everyone takes great pride in not taking any pride and just calling themselves a citizen :) My username is Dank55, and if you click on the "history" and "discussion" tabs at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot, you'll see I have a long history of commenting on and changing the article. You're welcome to visit my userpage at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dank55. If you are looking for any particular type of confirmation, I'll be happy to oblige.
Btw, big things are happening at Wikipedia. We've known for years that there are several things that academicians really want that they haven't gotten from Wikipedia...and that has been partly intentional, I think we were afraid of being pushed around by people smarter than us :)...but many things are changing this year: 1. There seems to be strong support now for a feature that's currently on the German Wikipedia, where all non-logged-in users and some logged-in users won't see vandalized pages in general, they will only see pages that have been "checked", and this may overcome the objection we have sometimes heard from academicians that Wikipedia requires them to "babysit" their contributions. 2. We are working very hard to increase the quality on enough articles so that we can start distributing a printed version of "the best of Wikipedia", probably next year. 3. We have a lot of volunteers now working with academicians to get them up to speed on all aspects of Wikipedia.
If you know content experts (of any kind) who are interested in writing articles but have found Wikipedia a "turn-off", please send them my way, and I'll be happy to answer questions and point them to likely colleagues on Wikipedia.
Dan - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 03:50, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
- I think it's great that you're trying to do this...Speaking as someone who loves to joke, the "smarter than us" joke was a bit off-key. First, it references an us-them mentality; second, its self-deprecation kinda bleeds over a bit into poor-mouthing one's self... I woulda said several things differently... mentioning that anonymity is an option; mentioning that Wikipedia is the resource of first recourse for many (incl. esp. the younger generation) so that helping it upgrade its quality is a public service... many published PhDs already are Wikpedians, albeit some do so anonymously.. my jaw hit the floor when I found out that a wiki-friend of mine is someone whose publications I had read for class ;-) ... yadda yadda yadda... Ling.Nut (talk) 07:55, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
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- I'm sorry, my fingers are faster than my brain...the self-deprecating comment was the main thing I wanted feedback on, because this strikes me as a really difficult call. (You're right, I did it wrong.) If we include all the things we want to include (which might include anonymity, as you suggest), then it starts to sound more like an essay or a form letter than a personal note, and people read personal notes, they don't read form letters, unless they were already interested. If I'm writing a personal note, what I want to do in just a few words is convey that a lot of academicians had perfectly good reasons not to participate on Wikipedia before, and we had some role in that, but things are changing. Not to get too Machiavellian, but the closer it comes to sounding like something that just occurred to me, the more engaging it's going to be. At the same time, I'd also like to have a longer, more formal reply available, and that should easily mention all the things you say, and more, if I detect interest. Suggestions? - Dan Dank55 (talk)(mistakes) 14:29, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Then babysit they must: that is what a watchlist is for. I'd hope for an auto-email facility tied to an article for those who don't log in regularly. That should be easy to set up. As for the "big thing" of the "checking" system used on the German W, it's an appalling idea. Absolutely appalling. For a number of reasons that I'm sure you can think of. TONY (talk) 02:44, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
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- No one has ever been able to tell me why it's not a dumb idea to hard-copy publish what is quintessential a fluid online structure. Who wants a snapshot? This 1.0 has shown how low its standards of writing and verification are. It will be a total embarrassment, and will gain very bad reviews in the press. It's online for a reason. TONY (talk) 10:57, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] thoughts
I'm dark on the idea of offering some kind of service to intending nominators: they will come to rely on it. The whole point of the FA process is to encourage the kind of collaborations that will produce FA standards, and a drive-by wash-as-you-watch car-cleaning service will discourage collaborations.
What would be useful is a register of copy-editors along the lines of LOCE. I don't think a list needs to be content-related, since the nominators are presumably the content experts. When they get to the FAC room, their problems are typically process-related, and don't rely on knowledge of a particular area.
It might be good to have a list of reviewers; unsure. Reviewers need to be rewarded for their efforts somehow.
Aside from that, I can only say that the process will just bumble through as it has done for years, but that we should feel pleased that significantly higher standards are (mostly) enforced compared with even a year or two ago. TONY (talk) 11:03, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
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- The idea is to teach people how FAC works and what the FAC expectations are so that they can do it on their own. So many people have bad FAC experiences. We want to avoid that. None of the projects we have worked on so far have been a "watching process". We have worked very well with the article editors. Awadewit (talk) 16:51, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
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- It's true that this may be, like the PR volunteers list, just another herding of the helping-out process. But King Arthur is a good example of why extra help is often needed. This article is largely written by a published academic expert in the field, but a great deal of work needed to be done by those who knew how to get it in shape for FAC. The consequences of a nomination without that prior work might one fears have been a putting off of the main editor from the FAC process or even from Wikipedia. qp10qp (talk) 18:25, 31 May 2008 (UTC)
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- Per Tony's concerns, I agree we have to be careful what articles we help and why. However, if we do this right, we are essentially training editors in what it takes to produce a Featured article - sourcing, MoS, and all the rest (even dashes). Ideally editors won't need to use us more than once. This is not intended to be a wax and polish service ;) EyeSerenetalk 09:27, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
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[edit] Eating my words
I must say I used to proclaim loudly that editing a pile of text was better than starting from scratch, however I may have to eat my words with White-winged Fairy-wren..in any case loads of people have been helpful and I think it is more polished now. I promise I will do more serious articles after this...well maybe not straightaway but I'll get Bipolar disorder and major depressive disorder to FAC sometime this year. Cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 10:47, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Need some help
See Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Textual criticism.
The help of good copy-editors is much needed. This is a complex subject that needs the caring hand of editors that can make a complex subject to be readable as per the comments made in the bottom of that FA review. Thank you in advance for your consideration. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 19:44, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Indigenous people of the Everglades region...
...is now at FAC. BuddingJournalist 15:47, 11 June 2008 (UTC)
