Wikipedia talk:Featured short articles

See also the discussion in several sections at WT:FAC.

Name

Any preference one way or the other on "Short featured articles" vs. "Featured short articles"? I don't have a preference. Both shortcuts are available (WP:FSA and WP:SFA), I'll take them now. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 18:50, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

I like it as it is now. -- how do you turn this on 22:42, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

Waiting

Okay, we're waiting for statistics from User:Dr pda, and more discussion at WT:FAC as to whether we're going to continue with this. If we do continue, I'll be happy to do a lot of reviewing and try to recruit some journalism students to come help out with language reviewing. Anything to discuss while we wait? - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 22:41, 30 September 2008 (UTC)

just catching up, but I like this idea. I'm much more likely to participate here than at fac, generally. I'm a bit to flighty for the heavy articles that are fac's. --Rocksanddirt (talk) 00:17, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

So far, discussion at WT:FAC and WT:FACR seems to be mostly negative, which is a shame. I think this would be a great opportunity to get a lot of people's feet wet with FAC, since the criteria would be the same, except for length. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 02:10, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Actually, as far as I can tell, people are generally not opposed to the idea. The thing is, many wish to focus on the minor details, and thus, a clear consensus of support has not been gained. I presume a straw poll will eventually commence. –Juliancolton ^{Tropical Cyclone} 02:13, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I detest straw polls (fyi). --Rocksanddirt (talk) 05:09, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

Ya, obviously some more talking is going to need to happen on the other FA pages before we can actually start this. What would be good is if people could ask for people for expressions of interest, as Dan has suggested. Tomorrow I'm going to type a rationale that summarizes the logic developed in the WT:FAC thread.

Re name: Short featured articles is more colloquial but Featured short articles is in keeping with other pages, so I prefer the latter. Marskell (talk) 15:51, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I got interested when we were talking about "Featured short articles"; I thought the point was to find ways to get more people interested in writing and reviewing Featured Articles. Now some people are saying that's not on the table, that we're talking about something called Excellent articles, which I don't think there's going to be any demand for. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:04, 1 October 2008 (UTC)

I prefer "Featured" over "Excellent" as well. Marskell (talk) 13:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

Now that I've heard G-Guy's suggestion and thought about it, I think it would accomplish the same things I hoped for here, but better. Please, please give your thoughts at WT:WikiProject Good articles#DYK. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 17:10, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

←Current proposal at Wikipedia_talk:FAC#Even more arbitrary section break. - Dan Dank55 (send/receive) 20:52, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Solving how? (not what)

So...having failed to elicit an answer as to why "short" in and of itself is a problem, the next question is: what benefit does this process confer?

• Splitting off short FA candidates will prevent the "main" FAC list getting swamped with short articles? Well, not really. Firstly, the problem of swamping seems to be largely hypothetical and secondly, we aren't suddenly going to get a whole host of new reviewers which means the existing reviewers are either a)going to be swamped anyway, or b)ignore one of the streams in favour of the other. If they are splitting their time between SFAC and FAC it is of no advantage, and if they concentrate on one or the other we run the risk of one of the streams stagnating or two separate standards developing. I can envisage that short articles will get an easier run here, which would encourage more short article submissions and actually increase the workload for the reviewers.
• It gives the FA director a quick way of seeing what articles are not suitable for TFA? No, because this is a subset of those articles.
• Easier for the readers? True, once they know about the two streams they can pop over here to pick out a short article when they have five minutes, but there are simpler solutions to marking the length of the articles.
• Easier to maintain? Certainly not. Aside from the duplication of work, we have to deal with addition or subtraction of content pushing the articles between FA and SFA and vice versa: does tipping over the bar of word count automatically move a short FA to FA "proper"?
• Dumping ground for the "problem"? Sure, as a sop to those working on shorter articles that don't want them excluded from the FA process altogether, that might convince.
• Downgrades the efforts of those working on shorter articles so they don't challenge those ranked high on WBFAN? Not meaning to be cynical about my favourite list of all time, but with a little change to the bot that just might work. (not serious, but I can't let an opportunity to laugh at the WBFAN list pass)

If anybody can tell me a concrete advantage for this as a solution to the problem (should it exist) I'm all ears. I really fail to see any at all, but I've missed the obvious before and am quite willing to admit that I may have done it again. Yomangani^talk 12:31, 9 October 2008 (UTC)

Proposal tag

I was very confused when I came across this, today. I've therefore added a "proposal" tag, to be removed if it gains consensus, or it's archived as a failed proposal. --Dweller (talk) 20:31, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

See Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive31#Wikipedia:Excellent short articles. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:49, 25 November 2008 (UTC)