Forum:The Future of Featured Articles on Halopedia

"You want a new Featured Article? Then I suggest you go through all of our articles and work on one."

- CommanderTony, 2 December 2009.

It's no secret that our Featured Article program is lacking extremely well in the activity quota, with the disbandment of the inactive Monitors of Halopedia not really helping the situation at all.

To be honest, not only do I blame myself this unfortunate sight on Halopedia, but I also blame everyone who has made even a single worthy contribution on this website. We are all to blame for lagging behind our fellow wikis on the subject of Featured Article creation, submission, voting, and honoring. In November 2007, the Monitors turned out and acknowledged four great articles, such as the article on The Flood, and awarded the high status of "Featured Article"; including another nine articles also awarded that year. Since December 2008...the few thousand Halopedians who frequent this wiki have only managed to turn out two....two articles that represent the best that Halopedia and the community can offer. Quite frankly...this is an absolutely appalling thing to see.

Though, I guess there is somewhat good news in all of this. Without the aid of any usergroup, or oversight, a few users banded together and helped make the article for Admiral Preston Cole into one of Halopedia's best. I, CommanderTony, gave this article it's FA status without any warning to former Monitors or any other veteran users on the IRC channel. While most would frown upon this as careless acceptance for a page with little prior review...I see this as the initiative Halopedia needs to make our articles have outstanding quality. I'll admit, this has never been discussed in an official capacity by the Administration, but I can see that people crave action...so here it is:

Starting on Saturday, March 13th, 2010, I will start accepting a few nominations for Featured Articles on this page HERE with strict guidelines set forth by reasonable standards possibly including minimum of 15,000 bytes in length, following the Manual of Style to the word, and a minimum of 15 sources. Despite this, I will consult my colleagues and other experienced users on what they think should be including in this standards.

Until an official group can be established, such as a revived Monitors of Halopedia, the mainspace edit count to be able to vote should be set at a minimum of a few hundred to eliminate baseless votes by inexperienced users. If you haven't already read my previous proposal, then i'll sum it up for you in a few words. Mainly, it would consist of an elected body of a few well experienced and active members, instead of the all "lifetime" group of the original Monitors; though two active Administrators with extensive knowledge and experience with Featured Articles would assist as oversight for as long as they can maintain a regular appearance in votes. Personally, i'd like to see something such as this be established just prior to Summer beginning to maintain a good balance of activity throughout the rest of the year.

Well, that's the end. I insist you give your opinions in the comment field below! Thank you, and have a great day!

Rawr,

Comments
''' Please keep your comments civil, short (five-word minimum), to the point, and good. Thank you! '''

A suggestion: follow HF's FOTM nomination and voting format and avoid having the talk page cluttered with multiple nominations.外国 人 (7alk ) 05:03, March 3, 2010 (UTC)
 * A good idea, but i'm sure i'm not the only one not fond of a "competition" between articles for Featured Article status.
 * It all depends; competition between nominated articles could promote quality (and quantity) but it could also lead to edit-war.-  5 əb'7 aŋk (7alk ) 13:24, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I was shocked the other day when it was changed, simply because it hasn't been changed in a very long time (not since I've been here) and this proposal of yours seems to have everything required to make the feature work. By all means, continue the excellent work, CT. - DinoBenn says "Fight to the End,  Never Give In"   05:09, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Looks good. It's nice to see a practice like this revived, I hope it'll inspire people to improve the quality of the articles here. --Jugus (Talk  | Contribs ) 07:18, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Sounds Good. Sith-venator Wavingstrider  ( Commlink ) 12:54, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I think this could help, so yeah, I'll agree. Field  Master   Spartansniper  4  50  15:07, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

This sounds like a good idea. Finally, something to inspire me to edit again! Kougermasters  ( Talk )   ( Contribs )   ( Edits )  15:41, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

This should improve things, good suggestion. Our featured articles have been dormant for too long. -  Halo-343   ( Talk )   ( Contribs )   ( Edits )  20:40, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

I like it, seems like a worthy revival for a worthy program. -  S.B.44    [Talk] |undefined 21:05, March 3, 2010 (UTC)

Nice idea. There are quite a few articles that could reach the status of FA, provided we work harder on it. But what happens to the pages that don't meet the requirements that are already FAs?  General5 7    talk    contribs    email

Obviously this is a fundamentally sound idea, but requirements such as on a minimum number of sources would put certain articles at a disadvantage, for example one-time appearance characters. Since these articles are by their nature limited in the number of citations, digital size, etc. I suggest either making these regulations strong suggestions or fluid in nature to keep the field of potential FA's far and broad. -- Lord Hyren 03:16, March 4, 2010 (UTC)
 * 15 may seem like a large number, but considering all of our previous Featured Articles (such as ODST, Admiral Cole, etc.) have been prevalent elements in the Halo franchise, I think that's a small number to make a minimum reference count. ;)
 * Upon further "research," I tend to agree with the 15 reference minimum. I just dislike seeing set-in-stone criteria for things as subjective as featured articles. -- Lord Hyren 04:01, March 17, 2010 (UTC)

This is an utterly wonderful idea Tony, your best in a while. ;) MidnightRambler Talk to the Rambler!  Ramble on! 16:43, March 4, 2010 (UTC)

Sounds good, lets give it a go. We're with you 100% all the way. Grunt minion22 6:20am (Midwest) March 13, 2010

I like that we're bringing back a group, but why did we disband ALL groups? The Monitors and the Standards Council are still needed! - Scot 113 15:35, April 2, 2010 (UTC)

I'm not too active on here, but I think they were disbanded because their activity levels were too low. --<font color="2.5"><font color="#dddddd">SPARTAN  <font color="#dddddd">Talk  13:52, April 6, 2010 (UTC)

That is a great idea, but relating to scot 113 what do you have planned for the standards council and maybe the Ancients? You have my full support. 13:43, April 9, 2010 (UTC)