Team Fortress Wiki talk:Featured articles

Possible overhaul

As recently highlighted on the discussion page, the featured article project needs help. Currently anyone who feels a page is eligible can simply make a tiny submission under 'it's awesome' or to that extent, without placing the required template on the article's talk page. Additionally, voting on these candidates is sparse and no general discussion is made. In fact the discussion appears to stray from the required 'is it in good form/layout' to 'do we really want people to see this on the front page?', a form of policy which is not even considered in the guidelines.

I therefore propose an overhaul of the current system with the possible implementation of the following:

• Only open up featured article candidacy at the end of a month, with a possible grace period, where people may make submissions and vote on the page candidates. Less pages will appear in limbo waiting for a vote, and it sets a regime for when the featured article will change.
• The winning page with the most votes should be featured for a month only, until the next voting period begins.
• Put all previous candidate discussions in an archive, so as not to clutter up the page or imply the discussion is still ongoing.
• Have the featured article template on the main page of the candidates. This is a more observable space and will encourage editors to vote.
• Rework the entry requirements. If policy decisions are a key requirement, it should be listed as such. If all pages have an equal chance of being featured, then it should be specified as such. Currently the requirements are vague on this point.

I feel these are all simple suggestions that require little expenditure from moderators or administrators to upkeep, whilst bringing quality and organisation to the project. --Focusknock 10:33, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Me likey. Shock394 22:54, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support Makes sense to me. I do not know if it is currently the case (it may be), but it might be a good idea if one of the bots added the feature article to the Main page automatically, rather than requiring a staff member to "promote" it manually. The bot would simply select the article with the most votes, which would help to automate the system and ensure that, even if only six people out of the entire Wiki voted within the nominated period, the candidate with the most support would be automatically selected. I do not know how feasible this is, but I thought that I would submit it for consideration. Esquilax 23:44, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support Not a bad idea at all. Pierow 07:24, 9 March 2011 (UTC)

I believe the following things need further clarification:

• The 'grace period', in which editors are able to vote on candidates. Essentially this needs to open up before a featured article is made, and should be sufficiently long enough so that enough votes are collected. At the minute, I'm considering a week to be ample enough time.
• The backlog of featured articles from the unofficial TF Wiki needs cleaning. I'm sorry, but the current pages differ greatly from what they once were, and do not help in showing viewers that this wiki is completely segregated from the unofficial one.
• Expanding on Esquilax's point, an automated featuring process would be beneficial. However, there may be certain issues regarding whether the bot can actually tell the difference between votes for and against, and whether general comments would be taken into account. There's also the issue of whether the staff are willing to update the featured article on their own.

Please bear in mind these are only suggestions of my own. If you feel you have a better idea or believe something I have stated is in question, put forward your opinion.--Focusknock 10:41, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

 Support That's a great idea, because I think that everyone is bored to see the old "backstab" page featured in the main page. And then, after what the people before me said, there's only a problem to care about: What if no page is elected or the votes aren't enough? --Pratolli 20:27, 25 April 2011 (UTC)

 Support But we'll want to establish protocol for how many votes a majority needs, what to do if not enough, etc.   Hooper   talk    contribs    email   17:45, 27 June 2011 (PDT)

Featured article: current update?

I Believe that the featured article should be about the current update, And when there hasn't been any updates for a while, It can then be a completely different article. I'm sure this has been brought up before but I'm just putting it out there. Ihasnotomato

 Oppose No, we have the Latest updates tab and the Patches page for that. -- Denmax (talk|contributions|sandbox) 17:53, 25 July 2011 (PDT)

Project?

Is this a project á la 3D Models and Weapon Demonstration? Rolandius 05:36, 6 October 2011 (PDT)

Don't think so. 3D model project is recent, and I do believe Featured Articles existed before the Weapon Demos as well. SS2R 05:37, 6 October 2011 (PDT)

About the move...  Disagree It's part of all Wikis and it's named as "Featured articles" on all of them.  –  Epic Eric (T | C) 13:45, 6 October 2011 (PDT)

Reinvigoration?

Is there some time limit on how often this changes? Because to have the featured article update what would be at this point once a year (last was 4 months ago, and before that was almost 12) seems odd at best. I'd like to look into reinvigorating this, and perhaps work on a new system for making sure there's the best content showcased on the front page. Surely between July and now there've been some great articles that could be featured on our revered front page.

If there's been some back end staff decision about the featured article, just let me know, but otherwise, I might try and reinvigorate it.

Thanks --Sleetwolf^{Talk-Contribs} 03:12, 27 November 2015 (PST)

The staff decide when they want to change the article. Last time I had to go to them and ask. If you want, you can go to the staff IRC channel and talk to them about it as well. -- Dr. Scaphandre 07:38, 27 November 2015 (PST)

In response to that, I'd like to hear a staff members comment, because it really doesn't seem like they're changing it regularly enough, so I think there needs to either be renewed effort on the part of the staff, or we need to have a serious conversation about the processes by which front page content is updated, because the current article is still the Duck Journal! That's End of The Line, how many updates have we had between then and now! I'd love to hear a staff member's thoughts on this, because @Dr, while yes, the staff do decide when that article changes, I think if that system isn't working (a fact which I'd love to be corrected on if I'm wrong), then it needs to be discussed, with whatever conclusion that discussion results in being enacted. --Sleetwolf^{Talk-Contribs} 19:56, 27 November 2015 (PST)

Good luck with that. While you're at it, could you tell them to get back to Wiki Cap voting? Tark is going to die if he doesn't get his cap, and Obelisk is only one vote away from getting his. -- Dr. Scaphandre 20:17, 27 November 2015 (PST)

I agree, change the feature article is a good idea. Also Doc, I already said my thoughts about the cap, stop it. — The preceding assigned comment was added by Tark {Finish Him! ▪ Contribs} 05:47, 28 November 2015 (PST)

I have a theory that one should not expect Mod activity in changing the Featured Article, if there is is no real editor activity on commenting on the nominees. If editors are not paying attention, why should they expect Mods to? M I K A D O 282 oOOOOo oo oo (talk) (To Do) 18:34, 8 July 2018 (UTC)

Featured articles should rotate automatically

Notability is forever. Once an article is deemed notable, it should be featured more than once.

I assume that most would be okay with such a change, but please leave your feedback bwlo (including for how long each article should be re:featured). — Tark lm(pt-br) 03:03, 4 October 2021 (UTC)

 Support I agree with User:Tark, there should be a rotation of articles within the pool of the ones that were featured already, personally I believe that having a 3 month rotation is optimal due to the fact that the pool is big enough that covering all the featured articles will take years. I also suggest to feature an article that is related to the current seasonal event (eg. to feature an article related to Scream Fortress or Smissmass when either events are live). Not sure how much my opinion will matter, but those are my thoughts and suggestions. xoxo Yossef | Talk | Contributions 18:14, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

 Support Yes, but I suggest having each article featured for 1 month. Make the template unable to repeat articles until all of them have been featured, then, start-over with a new shuffled list of featured articles, all done randomly by itself. I don't think that having a featured article related to events are needed, they are always put on the Trending Topics, and recently, with banners on the top of the main page. Featured articles are usually for interesting and well-written articles, and most events/updates simply just add a couple of items, not really worthy to be in the featured article section. - ▪ - 17:49, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

 Support Kind of surprised this wasn't here to begin with. It beats having the same article be featured for months or even years. Increases exposure on good articles which helps new editors know how to what to base their edits on. Good stuff. ~ Boba 20:59, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

 Doing. As you guys can see here (see page code), we can safely feature different articles until December 2024.

I don't think that using a bot for this particular feature is a good idea, so I have decided to make a semiautomatic solution: any user can update {{FeaturedArticle/list}} with new articles, or change the month a particular article should be featured (Soldier in May, MvM in August, etc). This particular implementation will deprecate {{FeaturedArticle/[lang]}} and each blurb will receive its own subpage ({{FeaturedArticle/article/[article]}}).

Please let me know if this solution works for you guys. If it doesn't, we can think of something simpler or more complex.

That said, if we want to feature old articles, we also need to update their blurbs. Please go to {{FeaturedArticle}} and update any outdated blurbs. — Tark 02:34, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

While the curated list is a neat idea (articles showing up at certain times), I think it's a very bad idea to have the whole list of months and years in that template. I think it should grab from a list that rotates throughout the year similar to TCRF's random featured article template. You could probably even still hardcode some articles to show up at certain points of time. ~ Boba 21:47, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Could you elaborate on why you think it's a "very bad idea"? It requires very low maintenance and can be easily modified.

I'm aware of TCRF's system, that's how we handle different class portraits, but it is unpredictable and articles change way too often. — Tark 22:22, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I think having to define individual months makes it more trouble than it's worth when we could have it being done automatically. I worry that something like this is gonna get forgotten in 3 years and eventually we'll reach a dead end on it. I think having it automatic would make it much less of a hassle to maintain while showing off more articles than just per month. ~ Boba 23:35, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘  Done. Article rotation is available here: Template:FeaturedArticle/list. — Tark 13:59, 15 February 2022 (UTC)