User talk:Marskell/FA/FAQ

I'll talk to you Marskell if that's what you want :-) Joopercoopers 09:23, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, thank you Jooper. I'll probably buzz a bunch of people on their talk to respond to the following to begin with.

In principle is this a good idea?

• I think so, obviously. Marskell 15:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)
• I have several concerns (Convince me.)

1. WP:WIAFA links to several user pages of suggestions, yet in far too many nominations, it appears that not only is WIAFA not read by a substantial number of nominators, but neither are those pages. This is yet another page that might not get read, meaning that Objects may still have to be lodged on FACs just to get the basics up to snuff.
2. If there is really a problem at FAC, there may be others ways to fix those perceived problems. For example, there was a suggestion that we should have some sort of pre-review to eliminate the structural Objects; well, why do we have WP:PR? Should we insist on peer reviews first, to try to minimize the unprepared FACs, so that structural Objects need not be lodged? I'm not actually advocating for this position. I'm pointing out that as long as FACs show up without the basics of MOS attended to (and then receive numerous Supports from reviewers who don't even seem to check for most of the requirements), someone should be pointing out the deficiencies. FAs supposedly represent our best work (yes, in hindsight I think it was a mistake to have removed that wording), and other editors do use FAs as guides; why should we let them out the door when they haven't even been reviewed for MOS basics? There has been other commentary about an adversarial tone at FAC; if articles are promoted quickly in spite of no review of over half of the criteria (most reviewers tend to focus on prose), an Object must be lodged so the FAC won't be promoted until those issues are addressed. Registering a comment doesn't work, unfortunately. Perhaps that could be dealt with in terms of how the promotion process works. And what about the problem of "fan support", when Project members overwhelmingly support an unprepared FAC? A lot of Objects wouldn't be necessary if that issue could somehow be dealt with. And, I would argue that the process does eventually deal with it. Many months ago, there were problems on the India Project nominations; they were coming through with very bad prose, but getting promoted with support from involved editors. A light was shone on that issue; it's no longer a problem. Hence; Michael Jordan. Let's solve these problems.
3. Instruction creep; it has been argued (correctly) that common sense hasn't been applied. You can't legislate common sense; I don't think an FAQ will fix that. We shouldn't write FAQs in reaction to a few troublesome situations—bad case law. Those situations should be (and have been) dealt with via consensus. Wiki policies cover everything FA writers should be doing (and often aren't)—how are we going to get editors to read yet another page, and why should we repeat information that isn't getting read anyway?
4. Risks: for everything we might put here, there will be an exception. What makes "common sense" for an article in a given topic might not apply at all to a different subject area. This seems to be a reaction to several extreme situations, not at all representative of most FAs, FACs, or FARs. For example, as soon as you start telling editors what to cite, someone will come and along and refuse to cite something just because it's not specifically listed here. Another example; if we're going to say length doesn't matter (only a guideline), let's say that for every guideline. Then where do we end up? Repeating that guidelines are only guidelines.
5. Ain't broke, don't fix it. There are quite a few editors who are FA machines, regularly churning out beautiful articles; it doesn't strike me that the process isn't working for them, or that there is any problem with the citation on their articles. Again, we shouldn't create more instructions to deal with a few problem areas. Adam Gilchrist is not a typical FAC; let's not write instructions around it, lest those instructions come back to kick us in the behind down the road.
6. If the real purpose of this page is to specify exactly what to cite, that will run up against policy and create loopholes we may have to live with down the road. I see more risk than benefit from this proposal. Again, Adam Gilchrist isn't typical, and we shouldn't write instructions around exceptions. Undercited articles are a larger problem throughout Wikipedia than overcited articles. Wikipedia will continue to suffer from credibility issues if our readers can't verify information here; claiming that information is attributable while refusing to say where the information comes from (because if you're not a university professor and don't have acces to those texts, that's your problem, and someone will claim you're not entitled to ask for a cite if you're not an expert in the area) isn't going to convince an independent reader our information is credible. Yes, I believe the subtle difference between claiming our information is attributable while providing no source and allowing our readers to verify our information will eventually undermine articles, and won't address the already significant credibility concersn—let's not do anything that will head us down that road. We shouldn't overreact because someone cited the fact that Adam Gilchrist plays cricket, or someone else refused to cite opinion on a FAR. If a reasonable person reasonably asks for a cite, it should be provided. Consensus works; if the request is unreasonable, in most cases (bullying aside) consensus will deal with it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:58, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't want to start in on a long response to this, or sound like I'm trying to put words in Marskell's mouth, so I'll just ask a question. In the original thread, you said that you didn't think the then-current state of this FAQ weakened citation requirements. But here your comments seem to suggest again that this will 'create loopholes' that soften expectations for referencing. I don't see that, either in this draft or in the general motivation behind it - can you point to what's giving you that impression?

As an aside, IMO most reviewers focus on prose because of the nature of the FAC process (at least, for a well-prepared article). Most reviewers don't know the subject in-depth, and few care about obscure and picayune points of style that are essentially aesthetic and unrelated to the article's quality, but most people can distinguish good and bad writing readily enough. Opabinia regalis 02:06, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I think part of Sandy's concern is that any wording can create difficulty because A invites not-A exceptions. We do need to be sensitive to that. But if extra words are dangerous, so is a vacuum. Has it ever been written down that there is no importance requirement for FAs? Has it been mentioned anywhere that footnotes are not actually required? But that, de facto if not de jure, inline citations are inevitable? I think we should note these things—very very carefully.

Re "obscure and picayune", let's be careful there too: whether I use 2007-03-14 or 14 March 2007 is essentially aesthetic. But whether an article is consistent in usage on such points, employs proper formatting, etc. is related to quality. I empathize with Sandy because she's often the only one who pays attention. Unfortunately, in some of the debates, stridently demanding sources has been conflated with demanding that sources be laid out properly, which are two different issues. Marskell 19:10, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Specific suggestions

• Number the questions; makes the answers easier to refer to.
• This may fall too far over the line of instruction creep, but either the first or the second answer could mention that length should be in some sense proportional to the topic - eg, 40kb of prose on World War II is probably fine, 40kb of prose on Sin Alley (found courtesy of the random article function) is over the line.
• I don't suppose the older footnote methods like {{ref}} are still acceptable? That system did have its advantages. I mention this only because its absence from the referencing question may imply that it's not permitted.
• There might be room for expanding the 'biographical material' thing more. There seems to be another common misconception that BLP somehow means, literally biographies, such that unsourced assertions about living people in articles that are not biographies are less of a transgression somehow.
• 3 C's: I like this.
• The example footnotes ideally would exemplify a complete citation, since they're the examples and all. Or maybe not: we'd get people pointing to whatever you put in them as the minimum requirements for book citations.