UESPWiki talk:Featured Articles

Welcome to UESPtalk:Featured Articles

Comments and suggestions about the featured article process can go here. --Aristeo 14:49, 1 November 2006 (EST)

Hmmm... I dunno about every month. Is there any way it can be weekly? Verin Sedai 19:04, 13 November 2006 (EST)

Featured...Collaborations?

I'm not sure that I like the featured article system, and I don't think anyone else does either. Instead of focusing on the quality of our site, lets focus on the quality of our community. What I'm proposing is that we highlight a project going on here that deserves special attention, and then we post it up on the Main Page as the "Featured Collaboration". Does this sound like a good idea? --Aristeo | Talk 11:38, 14 November 2006 (EST)

I like the idea, but I think we would run out of projects pretty quickly. I think a good idea (I have NO clue if wikis can do this) would be to display three random pages that "need cleanup" every time someone visits the main page. Will this be possible at all?

Verin Sedai 17:11, 15 November 2006 (EST)

I like both of your ideas, but I like Aristeo's. Morrowind is still very bare, and a small amount has been done about it. While, I would do this at school, it is blocked, which causes problems, and getting around them has already gotten me suspended for a day. Featuring these projects might help the people who want to help but don't know when to start. --Timmeh 20:13, 18 April 2007 (EDT)

Turkish hackers

• I moved this comment from the main page after reverting the spam --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 14:22, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

This page should be restored by a member of the community, someone had placed numerous spam ads for "Middle Eastern Turkish Technology", sorry if the info isn't in the discussion page, I don't have time to register.It would be better if this page were to be locked and un-editable by non-members or newbies. - Anonymous --— Unsigned comment by 24.137.86.26 (talk)

And FYI, the page UESPWiki:Featured Articles is fully editable by any contributor, as proven by the fact that the vandals were able to modify the page, and then you were able to add your comment to the page. The only protection on the Featured Articles page is move protection (i.e., regular editors are not able to rename the entire page). --Nephele^Talk 15:31, 22 April 2007 (EDT)

Question

I think I know how to nominate an article. I just edited the nominations/votes part on the project page and placed my vote there. Did I do something wrong? Can anybody please tell me?!!? --Matthewest ^Talk 12:48, 21 January 2008 (EDT)

You did it right. Not sure about the choice of article though... –Rpeh^{•T•C•E•} 02:50, 21 January 2008 (EST)

Is it possible for me to reverse my vote because I just ran through all the text again realised what you guys mean. Matthewest--Oblivion and Morrowind player. Xbox user only. 21:26, 21 January 2008 (EST)

If you want to withdraw the nomination, you could add a statement to the article stating that you have withdrawn it and why. However, the nomination should probably not be deleted immediately. We prefer to have discussions be open and to make it possible for all members of the community to easily see what was said. Therefore, it's best to leave the discussion in place at least until enough time has passed for it to no longer be an active discussion. --Nephele^Talk 01:01, 22 January 2008 (EST)

Voting System

The rules for voting are rather vague on this page. It states that each member has a full and valid vote, but also states that this vote may be "split" into two halves. How does this work? I have recently placed two votes for two seperate nominated articles and was about to place a third when I noticed this. In my situation, am I allowed to vote for or against the third article curently in the nominations list? Or have I used my "two halves?" I think that rule needs to be clarified. --HMSVictory 12:19, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I think our system has kind of gotten a little less organized. The idea here is that it wouldn't make sense to be able to vote for all three articles. (Originally there wasn't supposed to be a possibility to vote against something, I think. The way you'd vote against one article would be to cast a half-vote for the other two.) Since this particular aspect of the site does not get visited much, the rules aren't exactly formally set. I guess we could officially declare that any "nay" vote on one article is equivalent to a half-"yea" on the other two or something. Not sure how much thought we really need to put into this whole thing though. Personally, I'd rather spend time actually adding to and improving the content on the site, rather than trying to decide which existing articles deserve a round of applause for being good already. --TheRealLurlock ^Talk 13:04, 25 January 2008 (EST)

Good point, HMSVictory. I think the rules probably should be revamped to just simply allow any editors to vote "support" or "oppose" for any articles that are added to the page. I think the rules were put in place anticipating that periodically a large slate of articles would be posted, but that's not what's been happening. I think simplifying the voting rules would make it easier for everyone to know what to do, easier to accommodate a system where articles get nominated randomly rather than once-per-month, and it would also make the rules more consistent with voting as done elsewhere on the site.

As part of changing the rules, it would also be good to add in some information about how a new featured article is selected. For example, state that nominations must last for at least one week before a decision is made, and that the article must get at least 5(?) votes before there's a decision. A new featured article should only be created if the existing one has been in place for more than a month.

That would mean that after a week nominations like Oblivion:Roleplaying could just be deleted. If more than one article qualifies to be made into a featured article at the same time, it's up the admin's discretion to decide which one gets added to the main page; the other one can be left in place on the nomination page until the following month. If this process ever becomes popular enough that this doesn't work any more, then we can revamp the rules again. But for now I think this would be a better approach. --Nephele^Talk 13:41, 25 January 2008 (EST)

I see what both of you are trying to convey. My main concern is that new users will see featured articles and decide they want to have a say. The fact that a negative vote is of a different value than a supportive one makes little sense. And I believe that each article's nomination should be treated individually, so voting for the other two does not equal voting against the third. A clearer proposal would just be to state that "Every user has one valid positive, negative or neutral vote concerning each individual article. No user may vote twice for one article, but may vote for every article shown." I really can't see a problem with that approach. Lurlock, I understaned what you mean about concentrating on improving, but featured articles surely set an example, showing to users what we believe is an article of quality. From that demonstartion, it could become clearer as to what goals a user's edits should be aiming for. --HMSVictory 08:56, 26 January 2008 (EST)

In the absence of any dissent or counterproposals, I've gone ahead and revamped the page to match my earlier proposal. As far as I can tell, this is consistent with what HMSVictory was suggesting. To me, it also seems less potentially confusing than Lurlock's suggestion. If anyone has any comments, this discussion can be continued, and the guidelines then revised again accordingly. --Nephele^Talk 23:23, 27 March 2008 (EDT)

A Cleaner Page

In order to have a more organized page, I propose the following system:

Candidate

Support

1. Supporter 1
2. Supporter 2
3. Supporter 3

Oppose

1. Opposer 1
2. Opposer 2
3. Opposer 3

Comments

• Comment 1
• Comment 2

This will make it easier to count votes, and the supporting and opposing vote won't be mix up all together.

For a good example of this, please see this. Michaeldsuarez (talk· contribs· email) 21:50, 15 March 2008 (EDT)

Except we don't have a problem right now with figuring out the votes or keeping track of them. The problem has more to do with an apparent lack of interest in the system, either in nominating articles or in voting for them. Changes are needed (for example, followup on some of the ideas above) to make it easier for people to figure out what they're supposed to do; right now the voting rules have almost no relationship to what actually happens on the page. But I don't think adding a new set of subheaders will do too much to address those issues.

For example, even though Oblivion:Artifacts has been massively altered since this nomination started, nobody has provided any feedback on whether the article still has support to be a featured article. Probably at some point soon (after a final issue with color-coding has been resolved) I'll just assume that a lack of input means that it does still have support. Counting the two votes isn't a problem. But the fact that there have only been two votes in eight months isn't really indicative of overwhelming support. --Nephele^Talk 22:14, 15 March 2008 (EDT)

Yes, I understand. You're right. Michaeldsuarez (talk· contribs· email) 22:22, 15 March 2008 (EDT)

New Voting System

I propose the following:

Possible votes are:

Support = 2

Slight Support = 1

Slight Oppose = -1

Oppose = -2

In order to qualify for featured, an article must have at least 5 votes and 2 score.

Who agrees? --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 20:26, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Can I just say for now that I really disagree with this. Too busy elsewhere to say more, but I've learned that ignoring a vote is counted as a vote for, so I need to state a position now. This shouldn't be here anyway - it should be on CP. rpeh •T•C•E• 00:55, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

What CP is? --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 06:36, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Search for "cp" - or click "Community Portal" in the sidebar. --Krusty 06:46, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Community Portal? Okay, I'll move it. --Rigas Papadopoulos • Talk • Deeds • 06:49, 3 November 2010 (UTC)

Revocations

Sorry, I'm a little late to bring this up, but I don't like it. The idea that featured status can be revoked, I mean. It adds a whole new layer of ongoing critiques to our judgments on articles. The premise, which is that any article which has ever been granted featured status must be constantly up to the burden of deserving featured status, is flawed. All the former featured articles are time-stamped on the page; it doesn't make sense to "revoke" the featured article of August and November of 2006 because that article doesn't meet the standards of August 2011. It is implicitly acknowledged that an article granted featured status several years ago may not have been maintained up to our evolved expectations. Babe Ruth or Ty Cobb most likely couldn't be dominant players in the modern MLB, but it doesn't mean we should kick them out of the Hall of Fame. In their time, they were outstanding, and that's enough. For you Europeans, that was a baseball reference.

Right now, the only article to get its featured status revoked has been the Khajiit page. I made some changes some time ago that I think significantly addressed the concerns of substance mentioned on the talk page in connection with its revocation. Which begs some questions: can a revocation be vacated, how, by whom, and using what criteria? See, this is why I don't like it, all this procedure and assessment is too anal-retentive for my taste and, in the long term, it's not feasible to ask editors to police the list of former featured articles to ensure each one complies with every new or revised site policy. Minor Edits 04:07, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Lore:Khajiit had it's status revoked as no one voted on it. It truly never earned it's featured status, and it wasn't the only one to have it's status removed due to this (as I pointed out in the linked talk page). Nominate it for featured status if you think it deserves it. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 04:15, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Oh, okay, I thought it was a quality control issue, and the lack of voting was a supplemental concern. Nevermind, then. I agree that a lack of voting is a good reason to revoke featured status, though it is also the only reason I can think of where it is appropriate. Anyways, I try to avoid nominating things to which I've made some substantial contribution, or even voting on them. I'm worried that can be perceived as pompous or conceited. No offense to those that choose to do so, of course. Minor Edits 04:47, 10 November 2011 (UTC)

Can We Skip Lore:Khajiit?

Like a previous discussion on featured images, can we please skip the lore article and feature the Skyrim article instead? I'd really like our next featured article to be a Skyrim article, not a Lore article. As we currently have both waiting to go up (and it's overdue to be changed), I say we skip Lore:Khajiit this month. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 21:21, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see a problem with that. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 21:24, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Totally agreed. The Khajiit page will see the main page in due time, but it is better to feature SR-related stuff at the moment. --Krusty 21:28, 20 February 2012 (UTC)

Do we want to feature the article on the main page at all? I agree with restoring its FA status (even though I abstained from the actual vote), but I don't see why it needs to actually be featured again. And – like has been said above – it's better to feature Skyrim content currently. --Legoless 12:36, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

There's no reason to not feature it. We are still an Elder Scrolls wiki. elliot (talk) 16:37, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to skipping the Lore article for now, but I don't see any reason not to feature it again later. ABCface^◥ 16:52, 31 March 2012 (UTC)

Glitch?

For the last month, I've seen Skyrim:Thalmor on the front page. Now, I see Skyrim:Delphine. The record on this page indicates that it should be vice versa... Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 15:38, 29 October 2012 (GMT)

Not a glitch, I just screwed up :). That's what I get for editing before caffeine, I guess. Thanks for pointing it out! ⇠eshe^talk 15:43, 29 October 2012 (GMT)

Lore:Scourge

Is it really on the queue to be a featured article? I can't find any voting history in the archive, and the article is much shorter than any other FA I have seen. This is a mistake, right? Kozol (talk) 22:28, 14 October 2013 (GMT)

Yes, it's there, and has been for over two weeks. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 22:34, 14 October 2013 (GMT)

It says the page should be changed on 20th dec?--89.241.167.38 09:05, 22 December 2013 (GMT)

They are changed when the administration finds the time to. That date is the earliest date that it can be replaced, not necessarily THE date. -damon  ^xoxo 09:38, 22 December 2013 (GMT)

Suggestion - Biweekly Featured Articles

The simple fact is, as we have well over 20k articles now, only featuring twelve a year seems to be too few when you take into consideration the ever-growing size of the site. Even counting the vast majority that we would not consider worthy of a star, like books or highly technical articles that no common reader would want to see, we still produce much more feature-worthy content than the system allows us to display on the main page. As such, I wish to change our current monthly schedule to a biweekly one (one every two weeks, like we do for FI).

Now I know many of you will take fault with this suggestion for the simple fact that we get much fewer nominations for Featured Articles, but I believe that the simple constraints put on by the currently implemented featured article update schedule is a big part of the reason we see so few. Why bother nominating something that won't be featured for months, after all? On a personal level, needing to feature an article every two weeks would encourage me to participate in more votes and to even nominate more articles, while this current system discourages all but the most basic levels of interest. Right now, we don't need another featured article until April 22nd, with only one article queued up for feature status at the moment. It is rather off putting that we're not going to have any current FA nomination displayed until after ESO is out.

With this in mind, I believe we need biweekly featured articles, and I'd love to hear what you all think about this as well. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 22:25, 9 March 2014 (GMT)

I think this will pose a challenge, one which will require a lot more time and effort from multiple contributors in order to ensure that we can vet articles properly, vote on them, and have one ready every two weeks without compromising our standards. I'm not opposing it, but I think people should fully understand what this would entail. Increases in arguments, tensions, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, etc. Okay, well, increases in arguments and tensions, at the very least. We'd also have to accept that, cumulatively, we would be spending God-knows-how-many hours making, assessing, voting on, or arguing about nominations instead of putting time in elsewhere on the wiki. It may encourage some activity in the wiki, but I don't think opportunity cost plays in its favor overall in terms of productivity.

All that being said, bring it on. Minor Edits^{Threats•Evidence} 22:38, 9 March 2014 (GMT)

I think it's a really good idea and I wholly support it. Despite any extra conflict that would pop up, per ME's thoughts, when FAs are nominated/supported it makes it easy to focus on one article and fix it up if it's not great yet, so standards wouldn't really need to be compromised. It makes the front page more interesting, and FAs are nicer that just searching for a random article while still being somewhat random. Of course, I rarely, if ever, vote on them. But yes, more frequent featured articles would make the site seem more lively and less boring. Considering the vast amount of quests and NPCs that we haven't featured on the wiki, and the huge amount added by ESO, there's absolutely no way we only have 12 good articles a year. One of the appealing aspects of Wikipedia is the dynamic front page, personally, and a more dynamic front page here would be awesome too. It's doable and I think would be a positive thing. Vely^►t►e 02:15, 16 March 2014 (GMT)

I think that having yet to prove capable of agreeing on 12 articles that are feature worthy in one year we shouldn't try to up that to 24. I agree that the percentage of pages that are featured is somewhat 'woeful', but with all respect that's down the the incompleteness of so many of our pages, not a lack of nominating or consensus of voting. There are a handful of people currently writing full articles compared to adding bits and pieces, which means that a vast majority of our articles that are not small pages (e.g. items, NPCs that comprise more than three paragraphs) or list pages, have project tags, stub tags and/or verification needed tags. In my opinion the percentage of pages featured compared to what many would call a complete page is actually quite decent. I won't vote against the rules, but its up to those that want to change it to find and nominate more pages that they consider feature worthy to keep up with demand. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 16:05, 16 March 2014 (GMT)

I agree with what Silencer says about having to force 24 FAs into existence per year, and I want to add in my own little thought: What if by making them biweekly, we unconsciously start voting on less-interesting articles or less-complete articles simply to keep up with the quota, which I could argue has happened before (though I won't derail the topic with that discussion).

Derailing the topic on something related, based on thoughts I have after reading everyone else's comments: What if we did something like WP? FA and Good Articles? The Featured Articles are the best of the best, and good articles, we vote and put them in their own section and we essentially say "Hey, here are some articles that are admirable as what we like, but they could be better", perhaps as an encouragement to get the adequate articles into the spotlight and get touched up in some way? As we all know, there are plenty of articles that could be considered "good", just running through FA archives alone. It would be a good way, IMO, to get articles touched up, a good way to encourage community involvement in these processes and editing in general, etc? -damon  ^{talk ♥ contribs} 20:45, 16 March 2014 (GMT)

(←) One thing is the question of pace of changing itself and why. There is not exactly a long backlog of articles just waiting to be published, so it seems the frequency of change is for the time being already on par with what we can offer.

Another thing is the fact that in only a few weeks time there will quite probably be a rush of new and inexperienced contributors to the UESP Wiki. The more experienced contributors will then probably have more than enough to be at pace with an eager surge of well meant but frequently somewhat clumsily written contributions that needs to be tweaked and polished. There will in all likelihood be hordes of enthusiastic new contributors needing guidance and advice. I just do not think there will be more time to find good candidates to nominate for FA for some time.

After a few months, maybe some time after this summer (northern hemisphere, that is), there will be, I hope, a lot of new, good and stable contributors with the experience needed to probably find more articles to be nominated as FA. I think that will be the time to give the suggestion of biweekly FAs a fair consideration. —MortenOSlash (talk) 21:11, 17 March 2014 (GMT)

I do not believe that this policy, from all the way back in 2006, holds up under modern standards. The UESP needs more flash up front, and FA can desperately help with that. Creating a back log is no problem, I am willing to spam nominations until people vote for enough that we can keep this afloat easily.

Considering the date, I'm shelving this plan until the site's new content is more stable, but once ESO is more incorporated I have every intention of seeing this policy change through. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 01:20, 22 March 2014 (GMT)

This suggestion appears to have been pushed through with the current batch of FAs. I know we have a backlog of two (formerly three) articles at present, but the trend in recent years points to this drying up rather rapidly. 2017 had a total of four FAs, 2018 had five, and prior to the current surge 2019 only had three. I don't see a good reason to use up our current backlog so quickly, and in particular I haven't seen any on-site discussion agreeing to rush through FAs in such rapid succession when the usual period for FA is one month minimum. I propose putting a pause on this biweekly schedule until the backlog actually starts to fill up, because at present we have the opposite problem. —Legoless (talk) 19:55, 11 October 2019 (GMT)

Fully agree with Legoless on all points. I do also feel the Featured Images might not be on long enough, I now we currently have a lot but they too should be extended. And to avoid future droughts, UESP should really consider implementing a Good Article system that Wikipedia has, so quality articles can be potential candidates down the road. Maybe even Comprehensive articles like Wookiepedia has; just a thought. The Rim of the Sky (talk) 20:20, 11 October 2019 (GMT)

Show/Hide Table?

Since our list of FAs is getting pretty long, I think it would be a good idea to make the table into a show/hide table. I wanted to bring it here first in case of any adamant objections (which unless there's a particular reason there isn't a show/hide that I'm not aware of, I don't see any issues), otherwise I would've done it myself. •WoahBro^►talk 04:59, 7 August 2014 (GMT)

This sounds like a good idea to me. The list is only going to get longer, so something like this will need to be done sooner or later. Using a show/hide table seems like a simple solution. Forfeit (talk) 03:12, 8 August 2014 (GMT)

I talked to AKB and Dwarfmp on the IRC earlier, and both didn't have an issue with it. Dwarf even said something about making another column, but after playing around in my sandbox with that, I think it'll just be to much work to create and update with new FAs. I'm going to go ahead and add the show/hide and if someone actually does object, they can bring it up here. •WoahBro^►talk 03:29, 8 August 2014 (GMT)

Artwork

A proposal to change the wording to clarify that artwork and prerelease screenshots are not able to be nominated for Featured status. Agree, disagree, long-winded opinions, all welcome. Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 18:53, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Agree on artwork—I believe it's in bad faith to simply take an in-game asset wholesale and feature it as a showcase of our community's talent, as that's lazy and could be construated and morally reprehensible. However, I see no issue with pre-release screenshots that are in violation of no non-disclosation agreement. Fullerton ﴾_talk﴿ 21:12, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Prerelease screenshots are the screenshots released by the game makers, not screenshots taken during beta tests by users (i.e. the images on any of our Screenshots pages). Silence is Golden^{Break the Silence} 21:46, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Yes, I agree that screenshots released by developers should not be used, with the same argument as was used for artwork. It would probably be in UESP's best interest to also mention loading screens, to eliminate ambiguity. Fullerton ﴾_talk﴿ 21:56, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Or maybe use wording to the effect of images must be unique shots taken by users, so it's clear what the focus is? I'm not too worried about the exact wording, but I definitely agree on the intent. – Robin Hood  ^(talk) 23:04, 23 March 2018 (UTC)

Consensus

Currently, the rules state that a nomination should be left open until a clear consensus is reached. Obviously, sometimes, that doesn't happen, so I'd like to change the wording to include the possibility of "no consensus" after a certain period, either for cases where there's a split decision or where sufficient votes are never achieved. In practice, that's been done several times before, but it should be made formal to avoid any ambiguity. Does anyone see any issues with this? What would be a sufficient time before something's archived as "no consensus"? And should that be measured from the initial nomination or the last vote? Any other thoughts? – Robin Hood ^(talk) 00:09, 24 December 2023 (UTC)

I support it being formally amended due to the practicality of it and past instances of it. I think no additional standards should be added, beyond no consensus being added as an allowed outcome. --AKB ^{Talk Cont Mail} 03:36, 24 December 2023 (UTC)