Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-07-21/Dispatches
Dispatches: History of the featured article process
The first process of recognizing quality articles on the English Wikipedia was spearheaded by now-retired editor
- Aztalan State Park, a self-nomination by JohnOwens
- Same-sex marriage, nominated by Eloquence; the primary contributor at the time was Montrealais
- MKULTRA, nominated by Eloquence; the primary contributors were The Anome, Kwertii, and Maury Markowitz.
In November 2003,
In December 2003,
Originally, nominations were expected to be by uninvolved editors who often had no investment in the nomination. In some cases, reviewers would fix issues that they or other editors had noticed in the articles; in others, the issues were never fixed and the nomination would eventually fail. This led to a gradual shift in nomination practices, and by the end of 2004 almost all nominations were by significant contributors to the article, who would then be more likely to respond to objections and comments.
Around June 2004, partly in response to the FAC nomination of
As the number of nominations increased, the FAC process adapted to keep up. The original process had kept all nominations and their discussion on one page, at times divided into "Opposed" and "Unopposed" sections. By December 2004, the page was groaning under the weight of nominations and reviews, and nominations were instead placed on their own individual pages (for example, {{Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/name of nominated article}}) and transcluded onto the main
The
At the suggestion of
By June 2006, the standard had again increased, and featured articles were expected to have some form of inline citations, either footnotes or Harvard style. This was partially due to the December 2005 introduction of cite.php, which allowed the method of referencing that is most widely used on WP today. At the time, there was much disagreement about whether this requirement should be applied retroactively. Very few articles at the time (even featured articles), had inline citations. Ultimately, it was decided that all featured articles should be held to the new standard requiring inline citations, regardless of when they were promoted. In mid-2006, Marskell proposed that the old Featured article removal candidates (FARC) be merged with the Featured article review. It was revamped to allow at least a month in review and more time for older articles to meet current standards, including the addition of citations; the modern FAR process was implemented in June 2006 and tweaked to its current form a month later.
In June 2006, the English Wikipedia noted the promotion of its net
For just over a year, spanning 2004–05, Featured articles represented just over 0.1000% (one in a thousand) of all articles on Wikipedia. As the total number of articles on Wikipedia has increased, this percentage dropped to a low of 0.0762% (fewer than one in 1300) in February 2007; since then, it has slowly yet steadily increased to 0.087% (one in 1140), the current proportion. An examination of the promoted and archived FA nominations showed that in February–July 2006, roughly 35% of all articles nominated for FA were promoted—an average of 44 articles were promoted to FA each month. In the same period in 2007, 56 articles were promoted monthly, some 53% of nominations. While that pass-rate that has remained steady into 2008, the higher nomination rate we now see has boosted the number of monthly promotions to an average of 72 a month in the first third of 2008.
See also
Notes
- ^ All have since been delisted.
- ^ Iranian peoples was reviewed in June 2006 and remains featured.
Discuss this story
The Main Page didn't have its current look in 2004; it was redesigned since then, although the 2004 version was similar.--ragesoss (talk) 18:15, 21 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Cool
Thanks for this, a great and interesting read. :-) —Giggy 06:38, 27 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]