Forum:Fixing Featured Articles

Persons who frequent the wiki's discussions will remember that I've brought up the issue of declining involvement in Featured Articles several times before. Each time, either there was no conclusive decision reached or it was decided simply to promote the feature some more, as well as promoting our other features. However, these choices have not resolved the underlying fundamental problem in Featured Articles - no one is voting.

I would like, simply put, for this to be fixed. Before it can be fixed I feel we need to endeavor to understand why there is a lack of participation. I think we can link it to three main points. They are, in no particular order:

1 - Decline in involvement in community features on the wiki. This is a problem that affects just about everything on-wiki, and not a problem that I propose we attempt to solve in this particular instance. A solution to this problem should be made wiki-wide and not focused on Featured Articles in particular. 2 - Lack of promotion of Featured Articles. While I have seen community blog posts reference Featured Articles, and while they do appear on the main page, there is no other place where we really try to draw attention to Featured Articles, or the fact that we need nominations and votes for them. 3 - Over-complicated rules.

Issue three is, in my opinion, the easiest issue to solve, as it simply involves re-writing the nomination and voting procedures for Featured Articles. I want to stress that Featured Articles must still be about selecting well-written articles. I don't want to return to a system wherein any article can be featured simply by getting the most votes (see Sarah Crittur et al), but I do think the process in place where an administrator reviews each nomination before voting is simply too burdensome. A much simpler solution to this would be to review articles for quality after they've been nominated and have received a vote or two. That way, we know of the relative quality of an article before it is ultimately featured, but we aren't left waiting for an administrator to clear the article for voting.

The argument has been made in the past that it would not be good to create a situation wherein an administrator would have to defy the votes for a winning nomination, if the nominated article was not Featured Article caliber. While I admit this situation should be avoided, there is in my mind no acceptable means to do this. The means we currently employ does this by allowing or blocking voting on an article, meaning that presently nominations can't even be voted on until an administrator says that the article is worthy of FA. However, one administrator looking at an article might not be totally objective, no matter whether it happens before or after a vote has taken place. Accepting that some administrator(s) should review an article at some point prior to Feature, having it done prior to voting is still worse than having it take place later. So this is ultimately what I am suggesting as a preliminary measure:

1 - We eliminate the requirement for administrators to review nominated articles before opening them to a vote.

2 - We require that two administrators independently determine that a nominated article is of poor quality before that nomination is challenged.

3 - In the event of a challenged nomination, the nominated article (if possessing enough votes to become featured) remains un-featured for one cycle (i.e. if we feature a new article every two weeks, it remains un-featured for that length of time). During that time, the article is opened to editing in order to bring it up to FA standards.

4 - If at the end of the period, an administrator feels the issues with the article are addressed, the article is featured. If not, the article nomination is dismissed. The article may be renominated at any time but must start from scratch and go through the same process.


 * I want to make a quick aside: I realize we have issues with all our Featured Content. However I'm trying to address specific problems with Featured Articles that don't necessarily affect other Features. Therefore I'd appreciate it if discussion in this thread remained on-topic with Featured Articles.

So, I'm open to any advice, suggestions, criticisms, etc. But I'm really hoping for some real solutions this time around. --  LiR speak ~ read 07:17, November 21, 2012 (UTC)

Discussion
Now that you mention it, I find administrator review is making all process complicated. In any ways, reviewing does contradict whether or not we review it, because admins are the ones who eventually summarize the Featured Article, unless I mistook your point. The way I see it, I suppose a review is not to unlock the voting system, but rather to see if the article is worth being featured.  Nikel  Talk  –  Vote!  10:08, November 21, 2012 (UTC)

Finding a definite solution is probably easier said than done based on the fact that participation (and activity) on the wiki is technically at an all time low (taking several factors into consideration). Onto the matter at hand, I think relaxing the FA process may be a step forward to encouraging participation and removing the requirement for admins to approve the article pre-voting may help. Seeing as we try to do this for almost everything, I say we assume good faith that a user would nominate a decent article and just let the votes go from there and the two admins pre-challenge would also prevent any possible conflict of interest issues. Overall this proposal does seem promising and I would like to give it a go. 19:29, November 21, 2012 (UTC)