Wikipedia talk:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Mike Christie (talk | contribs) at 15:48, 17 January 2008 (→‎The Stars not displaying: The help page). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

The list content is currently maintained by Rick Bot, automatically, roughly daily. -- Rick Block (talk) 21:54, 16 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Include former featured articles?

Is this list meant to include former featured articles?--Pharos 19:21, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

  • I am not quite sure, but I do not think they are included. The original list was gathered by a script. Zscout370 (Sound Off) 19:25, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • Well, I noticed at least one, Belgium, on this page. It was actually listed under the username of the person who unsuccessfully renominated it after it had been removed, rather than the original successful nominator, which I've corrected. I don't know if it's such a bad thing to recognize the efforts of those who helped Wikipedia along in the early days, even if their nominations msy have been outstripped by the evolving standards of FAs.--Pharos 19:42, 4 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]
  • This list includes all the data I have been able to find (and is generated automatically from a separate source list I will post soon). There are 100 or so articles that are from "brilliant prose" days, and don't have nomination history. The former featured articles I've been able to find don't have original nomination logs. I wouldn't mind if "former featureds" were included, but it seems they should probably be noted somehow (perhaps with a different character than ★, anyone have any suggestions ?) -- Rick Block (talk) 00:16, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

source lists posted

I've now posted the source lists from which this list was generated. They are at Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2003, Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2004, and Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2005. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:23, September 5, 2005 (UTC)

Clarification

User:Bmills and I are one and the same. Filiocht | Talk 10:09, 19 September 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Nominator used as a proxy for author?

A ranking by author is probably of more interest than by nominator (although they do coincide to a degree, and more so than they used to). Obviously it is nigh on impossible for this to be generated automatically. Would it be inappropriate for me to change my entry to "my" featured articles as opposed to the ones I have nominated? Pcb21| Pete 14:29, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]

There are three reasons I respond "yes" (would be inappropriate).
  1. By the time an article achieves featured status it's typically been through peer review and has certainly been through WP:FAC. I think it would be at least rare for any featured article to be considered to have a single author.
  2. Even in cases where an article is nearly exclusively the result of the efforts of a single editor, claiming "authorship" for a wikipedia article strikes me as very unwikilike. Wikipedia is inherently a collaboration.
  3. The reason I created this list was to try to increase the percentage of Wikipedia's articles of featured status. To this end, the act of writing the article (although critically important) is not, by itself, sufficient. Featured is more about taking an article through the WP:FAC community comment process. This list is an attempt encourage editors to do this, regardless of whether they wrote the article themselves.
If you or anyone else would like to put together a list of featured articles by primary (or exclusive) author, you're certainly welcome to do so. However, I ask you to please do this with a separate list. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:07, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I heartily agree that it is a good idea to increase the number of FAs (FAC currently requires a pretty thick skin). Pcb21| Pete 19:33, 8 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
I don't disagree with your reasons; they are good ones. I'll just say that in my case it was somewhat disappointing not to find my name here. Looking a little deeper, I see it was because the very kind User:Johnleemk nominated Duran Duran, saying, "I just stumbled on this — it seemed so good (and surprisingly chockful of references) that I was surprised it's not a featured article yet." I was in the process of editing that article to meet the FA criteria when he found it, and I responded to all the objections in a couple dozen in-depth edits; as near as I can tell, the single edit John has made to the article was a vandalism reversion. I have nothing but respect for him, and he certainly deserves his many FA stars, but I'd sure have enjoyed receiving a smidgen of this intangible reward myself...  :) — Catherine\talk 00:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Hi Catherine - There are a number of articles with co-nominators listed (e.g. Paragraph 175, also from 2004). I certainly don't want this list to be taken as a snub by anyone. Since you not only primarily wrote the article, but responded to the FAC comments, I don't think any reasonable person would deny you this "honor". I'll edit Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2004 and add you as a co-nominator (and you'll show up here the next time I regenerate this page). I'm glad you brought it up! -- Rick Block (talk) 01:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much, Rick! I know it's a tiny little thing, but since the rewards Wikipedians receive for in-depth edits are all small and intangible, I really appreciate being included on this list. (Now to start working on star number two....) Thanks! — Catherine\talk 18:17, 18 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Stars

"each star corresponds to..." - dunno, they all look like "?" to me. Perhaps more ASCII-fic symbol, like * could be used?  Grue  08:46, 26 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'd like to keep it as a star. Since wikipedia is utf-8 now, I suspect for "full enjoyment reading" it will become increasingly important to have a full unicode character set installed. I saw some instructions for how to do this fairly recently (which I haven't been able to find yet). Would it suffice to add a pointer to these instructions (if/when I find them)? -- Rick Block (talk) 01:40, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How did you get the data?

I'm just curious- how did you get all the data? Surely you didn't send some poor sod to troll through the FA archives. Borisblue 05:53, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I wrote some code to analyze the monthly FA nomination archives (for example, Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Featured log/October 2005), which resulted in the the FAs by year articles (like Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2003). I've wrtten some more code that takes these articles and creates the table with the stars. It doesn't work fully automatically yet, so I haven't posted the code but I will at some point. The current version is written in Unix shell and awk. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:48, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Other featured content

While FA's take more work than other featured content, I was wondering if there might be interest in producing lists of other featured content nominators. Guettarda 07:16, 27 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Hey!

Hey, somebody needs to give me an extra star for Thomas Pynchon!

(sticks hands in pockets and walks away, whistling with utmost modesty)

Anville 18:15, 7 March 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Articles from March 2006 are not included yet. I've been trying to update this about once a month. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:11, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow

Pretty neat page... I had completely forgotten that I nominated Dred Scott v. Sandford, Smile (album) and The Temptations. I barely even worked on those, though. And salsa music is missing - is that just from lack of updating? Tuf-Kat 23:15, 6 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes - articles nominated in March 2006 are not included yet (see Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006). -- Rick Block (talk) 03:12, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that most of December or January articles are included nither, this had a backlog for a few months. Thanks --Jaranda wat's sup 03:30, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Last week I updated it including articles nominated through February 2006. If there's anything missing please let me know. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:16, 7 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Total count

This is a indeed neat page—never hurts to encourage making FAs. I'm wondering if we're missing anything though. Excel tells me there are 968 stars. We have 998 FAs plus 100+ I'd guess that have been removed. Assuming people don't lose stars for former features, shouldn't this page have more than 1100+ listed? Marskell 17:44, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

It's out of date in a way, also several users also removed their FAs when it was delisted in FARC. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 18:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

There are missing entries due to FAs that predate the current FAC mechanism as well. The page is generated (automatically) from a script I run that parses the Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2003 through Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006 articles. The records from 2003 are kind of sketchy. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Agree this is a really nice page. It shows the Pareto distribution, or the 80-20 rule. Not quite that extreme, though. Almost 70% of all FA's come from the 30% of editors who have nominated more than one article. Maybe I'll get out of the one-page-only category one of these days (wink). Casey Abell 04:17, 7 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

next update?

the list still shows me at 4 FAs but i now have 5.... when is it scheduled to be auto-updated? Zzzzz 17:31, 11 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't been doing the updates on a strict schedule, but generally try to wait until the FACs for a given month are pretty firmly settled (like middle of the next month). Then I update Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006 based on the monthly log, then regenerate this list. The process is not fully automatic (the log files are not quite regular enough to automatically parse), so although it's mostly automated there is some manual effort involved. The next update will likely be this weekend (through June). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:52, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Doesn't work

I've been listed in the file for Jan 2006 for some time, but I'm not showing up here. What's wrong? Rlevse 14:59, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Must be some problem with the scripts I'm using (maybe that line says "if user == Rlevse, then ignore this entry" :) ). I'll look into it. -- Rick Block (talk) 17:55, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Entries in the "by year" lists that don't have whitespace around the "||" table entry separators aren't currently parsed correctly. I'm working on a fix. Thanks very much for noticing this. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:51, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I've fixed the script, and updated the list, and you are indeed there now. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:42, 14 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Many thanks!! Rlevse 21:50, 15 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Double counts?

Rick, am I correct in assuming that when people manually add themselves to this list after a successful nom they aren't counted again when you run your script? Marskell 21:57, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, the script regenerates the entire table from scratch (from the "FA by year" lists). -- Rick Block (talk) 23:00, 10 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]
What is the etiquette on adding manual entries? Is it alright to do as a temporary measure, until the next script update? Or is it better to hold off? --Elonka 15:06, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure; last time I did that, it removed them altogether. — Deckiller 15:18, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

FARC

Can you add to your script so that it removes articles that appear at former featured articles? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 22:12, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I'd be willing to list former FAs in a different font color (or something), but I think removing them completely seems a little harsh. Successfully carrying an article through the FA process is an accomplishment, even if that article later degrades to the point (or standards change so) that it becomes a former featured. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:09, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe create a second list at the bottom of the page? It's just it skews the stats, even with separate colours, because people see "Oh, that guy's got 50 articles!" when actually, half have been defeatured. I think for the sake of statistics, a seperate list would be a good idea. But definitely on the same page. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 18:39, 19 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. If someone has gone to the trouble of nominating 50 articles, I don't much care what happens to them later. Are you worried about someone habitually nominating "unworthy" articles that become featured and are then defeatured? I'm always willing to listen, but I don't think this is a problem worth worrying about. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:40, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - because effectively they haven't written an FA anymore. They've put a phenomenal amount of work into an article, true, but its not FA standard anymore. I think its obvious I'm using Lord Emsworth as my example here: the man has nominated over 50 FAs, which is an amazing achievement - but by the time whoever is nominating all his articles at FARC is done, he'll only have about twenty. So, if Lord Emsworth had nominated all his articles now, they would have failed. Yet he is still at the top of the list, which I feel is unfair to the people below who WOULD have passed their FAs if they were to nominate them now. However, the work he put in at the time was FA standard and so I think while this shouldn't be in the main list, it should recognised in a separate table. Different colours wouldn't work because I can't see the Featured stars anyway, just question marks. Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 05:18, 20 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If an article got to FA, he still wrote an FA. Maybe he died and can't maintain it anymore. I support making them a different color.Rlevse 12:50, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The not so subtle point of this page is to help increase the number of featured articles by recognizing those users who take articles through the FA process. Lord Emsworth did not "game" the system or do anything remotely indicating he is undeserving of his exalted status on this page. I agree standards have changed, so some of the articles that became featured in the past would not pass now and have been nominated for review. I think it is appropriate to somehow indicate in this list articles that are no longer featured, but changing rankings seems much more unfair to me than continuing to count articles that are defeatured. Unless there is a community consensus that the list should be sorted by count of "currently featured" rather than successfully nominated, I think we should leave it the way it is.
The stars are the Unicode "black star" character, number 9733 (x2605). The help at Help:Multilingual support may be useful. A list of fonts including this character is at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u2600. -- Rick Block (talk) 19:28, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with Rlevse and Rick Block. There is no need to "erase history" by removing articles that aren't FAs any more. Doing so would fail to record interesting information like what users participated in the process, when they partcipated in the process, and how the nature of Featured Article subjects change as standards change. (For example, I'd still choose the FAs of the fellow who isn't here any more over much of what is now generated in FAC.) This page is helpful in showing how times change. –Outriggr § 03:10, 2 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nov 2006

The Nov 2006 articles aren't being credited yet. For example, Wimvandorst shows 2, but has 3 with Lead(II) nitrate. Rlevse 18:10, 31 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Also, under editor Piotrus, why is History of Solidarity a question mark?Rlevse 12:52, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I just updated it. The History of Solidarity issue was because is was manually added that way, with this edit. -- Rick Block (talk) 18:41, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great. Thanks. I know it takes several days for the previous month, so I asked but Nov, but know Dec 2006 will need a little more time to show up.Rlevse 20:22, 1 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Return to the STARS

Please! These box outlines are hare to see because they're so thin and they hurt my eyes! Aargh! Rlevse 10:58, 8 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Which versions are you talking about? Please post specific links. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 01:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Something just occurred to me. This changing the colours of the stars won't work because I can't even see the stars, just a whole bunch of question marks. Is it possible to chnage the script so it doesn't use something lots of people have trouble seeing? Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 08:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible that your system cannot render these stars properly due to lack of a proper font. It would be useful if you gave me the breakdown on what OS and browser you're using, so that I could expand my answer. Until then, that's about the best I can offer you. --Slgrandson (page - messages - contribs) 19:54, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I have Mozilla firefox on Xp, but it doesn't matter, the question marks have turned rust coloured. :) Dev920 (Have a nice day!) 23:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Noting removals...

I know the idea of noting delisted articles has been mentioned previously, and I emphatically agree that this page should not post-hoc judge articles/nominators by removing stars, but in terms of usefulness might it be time for a different colour with delisted articles? I say this having worked a great deal at WP:FAR, where FAs are subject to review and removal. A few editors have informal lists of old FAs they're planning to send to FAR (Emsworth's are the obvious example); if delisted FAs are in red rather than blue, people could better browse those that are still FAs to see if they do in fact meet the criteria.

Note this isn't a "blow the star off" idea; some old ones get saved, some removed. It would just be nice to browse them more easily. Marskell 22:21, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I intend to come up with a way to indicate former FAs here (probably color), but haven't gotten around to it yet. This list is automatically generated from the by-year nomination lists, like Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006, so step one is to indicate former FAs in these lists. Assuming somebody wants to do this, then step two (fairly simple) is to change the script that generates this page to recognize former FAs and change the star. It would also be possible to change the script that generates this page so that it automatically determines which articles are former FAs by looking at Wikipedia:Former featured articles (and Wikipedia:Featured articles), but that would be considerably harder than relying on an indication in the by-year lists. There does seem to be interest in this, so I'll think about the auto-detect sort of approach. -- Rick Block (talk) 23:24, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Articles listed in Wikipedia:former featured articles are now rust colored stars. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:21, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Detecting former FAs relies on the article name (before any "|" character) exactly matching between the by-year nomination lists (like Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2006) and Wikipedia:Former featured articles. I've spent some time fixing some, there may be more. If anyone notices any more, please either just fix it (probably edit the by-year list) or let me know. Thanks. -- Rick Block (talk) 03:15, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Good work, Rick. I don't want to give you extra work if it's not something people will act on, but one other thing to think about is a way to flag those that have passed FAR since the new process was instituted there. It would allow people to see which old ones could use a review now and which have already been done. Marskell 16:00, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

order by current # of FAs excluding former FAs

would it be possible to order the list dufferently? ie instead of just doing "total number of FAs ever submitted", do "total number of FAs submitted that are currently FAs and have not been demoted from FA status". ie dont change anything, except the ordering. this would mean the total number of FAs would still be recognized and shown in the list, and the demoted FA info would still be there, but would also give an incentive to people to ensure their FAs keep FA status. (e.g. worldtraveller would go above raul654). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 82.27.251.102 (talk) 16:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I'd prefer not. Realistically, this list doesn't mean anything anyway and I don't think anyone should be using their "position" in this list for any purpose whatsoever (if anyone is, please let me know who and for what). If someone feels tremendously competitive about it my advice is to nominate more FAs (or relax). -- Rick Block (talk) 19:54, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. The change to the rust colour answers the broad concern of differentiating removed from current FAs. It's not a contest—if it should be anything, it should be a tool which aids people browsing the FAs and tracking who can help with what. Marskell 21:30, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Copied from user talk:Rick Block

Hi, I've got a wierd case for you about the Wikipedians by FA page - User:Cuivienen has 4 FAs, however 2 other stars link to the same article - The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask. This is because the article was promoted, then demoted & then promoted again. My question is - is this allowed, fair etc? If not, can you remove it, as it seems a bit unfair that one person gets to be higher on the table due to a technicality like that... And yes, I'm that petty... ;) Thanks, Spawn Man 10:38, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This is how it currently works, and IMO it's fair enough. Here' my thinking:
  1. You get a star for successfully nominating (or co-nominating) an article that becomes a FA. No one can or should ever take the star away from you, regardless of whether standards change in the future or the article degrades enough that it gets nominated at WP:FAR and demoted.
  2. The star becomes rust colored if the article is currently WP:FFA. Note that you may or may not still be an active contributor, so whatever happened to cause the article to be demoted may be completely beyond your control.
  3. If you or anyone else successfully renominates the article for FA, another star is awarded. Not to do this seems plainly unfair to the renominator, unless you think it's much easier to get a FFA to FA than any other article (if you think this, please try it).
Now, what should happen to the original star after a successful renom? Go away? I don't think so (per #1). Remain rusty? It isn't an FFA anymore, so I think it'd be pretty confusing to leave it rusty. If it simply looks like all the other FAs, a regular star means you successfully nominated this article and it's (currently) FA while a rusty star means it's currently FFA.
Can this be gamed? Sure, but I frankly don't care. You shouldn't either. If you think it's easier to get stars by getting FFA's repromoted, please do it. If you maliciously degrade current FAs so you can nominate them for WP:FAR and later fix them up so you can renominate them for FA to get a star, I urge you to seek professional psychiatric help. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:04, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • For example, Emsworth's articles were top grade back in 2004; taking away his stars because they don't meet modern standards would be an insult. — Deckiller 17:59, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
No I didn't mean that at all - I meant if the same person renomed an article he had already gotten to FA. I never intended to sound as if I wanted the rusted stars to be taken away either lol. Anyway, get your point now, but stil a bit iffy for me... Thanks, Spawn Man 00:11, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
If anyone gets a star for a renom, why shouldn't an original nominator get one, too? I know it looks a little odd for one person to have two stars for the same article. My view is the star is not for the article but rather for the work involved in taking that article through FAC. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:29, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Nominations by the FA Director

Reading the list, I was thinking that some of Raul's nominations are actually re-listings of nominations he executed exercizing his role as FA Director (such as Hippocrates, Salvador Dali and others). I think that it is fair to mention that (maybe as a footnote, saying that this, this, and this nominations were re-listings by Raul of the initial nominations of this, this, and this user), and also to mention the names of the users who made the initial nominations. Because it is not exactly that these nominations were rejected. Raul himself, when relisting a FA nomination as FA director, says that he does that, because it was tough for him to determine consensus. And, after all, these are not "normal" nominations. They are nominations executed by Raul as a special status he has (FA Director), and not because of his special affiliation with these articles.--Yannismarou 10:11, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In cases where they've obviously been just relistings I've been attempting to list the original nominator(s) in the by-year lists. If there are other instances I haven't caught, please either let me know or just fix the appropriate by-year list. I'll ask Raul if he can spend some to review these as well. -- Rick Block (talk) 13:23, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mine: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Not mine: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Hope that helps. Raul654 01:27, 20 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Raul, that was very helpful indeed. Let me just add that these re-listings, are actually not typical "re-nominations", since in normal second nominations there exists also an archive of the previous nomination. For example, check:

vs

  • original nomination for Salvador Dali which was not archived anywhere, apart from Raul's first comment when he archived it by simply deleting the text (first here), with the note "Restarting old nomination - many objections, most of which were addressed.".

Maybe the bot should search in the history of the page for the first edit, rather than finding the first user linked in the text after the deletion/archive by Raul? Thanks!Yannismarou 08:21, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The initial entries in the by-year lists are "bot assisted" (not done by a bot since the nominations aren't quite regular enough to reliably parse). A heuristic suggests likely nominators, but is only about 80% accurate. Looking in the history is possible, but most of these cases predate the current transclusion setup. I've manually fixed these. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:23, 22 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This exists b/c...?

What is the point of listing Wikipedians by featured article nominations? « FMF » 18:44, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I created it as an alternative arena, somewhat less useless than Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, for highly competitive types to compete in. The percentage of articles that are featured has been declining (see Wikipedia:Featured article statistics). Articles don't get featured by themselves - nominating an article and responding to comments at WP:FAC can be somewhat of an ordeal. This list is meant to provide some encouragement to take articles through this process.
Why do you ask? -- Rick Block (talk) 21:48, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
So this is for "encouragement"? I'm kind of discouraged because, despite a GAC, I wasn't ready yet (for a certain nomination), but still went along with it! I asked just out of curiosity really, since I got here by checking what linked to F-Zero GX.« FMF » 23:29, 6 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Confusion

I just notice that my (user:M.K) nomination (House_of_Gediminas) is attached to other name user:M.K., please somebody fix this (I would do it manually by myself, but instruction says not). Thanks, M.K. 12:28, 29 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The instruction is meant to say "edit the source, not this list". The source in this case is Wikipedia:Featured articles nominated in 2007 (and it's been fixed). -- Rick Block (talk) 14:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Old name/new name

My one solitary little star is even lonelier than it should be, as it's my second FA - the first was under my old username, User:Proto. Can this be resolved? Neil ☎ 14:21, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yup. Like this. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:44, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Aha, I knew there would have been some cunning way to do it. Thanks Rick! Neil ☎ 14:48, 7 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Elements FYI

Just an FYI. WikiProject Elements appears at the bottom of the list twice. Once with a period following the name and once without. KnightLago (talk) 15:49, 18 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Number the entries?

Would it be possible to add # or something like that, to number all of the entries? Cirt (talk) 16:17, 29 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Sure it's possible (although not with #, since it's a table), but why? Do you want to know your ordinal position in this list? At 10 or less FAs there are so many ties, I'm not sure a 1-N ordinal number makes sense. I guess we could say Emsworth is 1, Hurricanehink, Piotrus, and Worldtraveller are all 2, Johnleemk is 5, etc. (sort of like a pro golf tournament). If you're looking for a "score" I think the number of FAs is as good as anything. I'm personally not very inclined to add a number, but if there's some sort of consensus that it would be worthwhile (or some really good reason I'm not seeing) it wouldn't be very hard to implement. -- Rick Block (talk) 02:27, 30 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Your words, from above:
I created it as an alternative arena, somewhat less useless than Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, for highly competitive types to compete in. The percentage of articles that are featured has been declining (see Wikipedia:Featured article statistics). Articles don't get featured by themselves - nominating an article and responding to comments at WP:FAC can be somewhat of an ordeal. This list is meant to provide some encouragement to take articles through this process.

This step would make this list more in-line with Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by number of edits, and it would also make it easier to see how many people are on the list with a quick glance. Perhaps there is a way to number all people with the same amount of FAs the same number, like a tie, and then start a new number for the next lowest amount of FAs down the list, and so on? Cirt (talk) 05:30, 30 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

  • I know you said you couldn't use # because it's a table, but the idea I mentioned might look like:
  1. Fifteen articles
    Joe Schmo
    Jane Doe
  2. Fourteen articles
    Sara Schmo
    John Doe, etc.

Just a thought, if people shoot it down, that's alright too. Cirt (talk) 05:51, 30 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

  • Eh, just an idea. Nevermind, I like the page the way it is. Great work you do here. Cirt 19:29, 30 November 2007 (UTC).[reply]

Probably an odd request

I noticed that I was co-credited for Acrocanthosaurus with Sheep81. In all fairness, I didn't do much on this article, and it wasn't a co-nomination, so it should go to Sheep exclusively. J. Spencer 23:35, 1 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, OK. This edit will take care of it. -- Rick Block (talk) 04:39, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
It was that easy? Thank you! J. Spencer 05:14, 2 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Shared star?

Eardwulf of Northumbria just got promoted to FA. I nominated it, but most of the work on the article itself was done by User:Angusmclellan. Angus also did a lot of the work on responding to the FAC issues. Can stars be shared? If not, I think this star ought to be listed under Angus's name. Mike Christie (talk) 11:20, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it's possible. It's done like this. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:25, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Great; thanks! Mike Christie (talk) 16:30, 4 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Displaying the stars

The stars display as stars on one computer I use, and as question marks on another. I assume I need to install some character set in some way. Does anyone know just what needs to be installed? I use Firefox, in case that makes a difference. Mike Christie (talk) 13:39, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(repeat from above) The stars are the Unicode "black star" character, number 9733 (x2605). The help at Help:Multilingual support may be useful. A list of fonts including this character is at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u2600. -- Rick Block (talk) 14:50, 5 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

2007

Rick, is it possible for the bot to generate a list of 2007 totals? We might hand out cookies to the top editors or something. Marskell (talk) 09:39, 10 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

This is basically trivial, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. I'll let you know when it's done. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:47, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Stars not displaying

There seems to be a lot of editors who have difficulty seeing the UTF star symbol, myself among them. Would it not make more sense to replace the text stars with the FA star image we already have? It would require only changing two lines in Wikipedia:List of Wikipedians by featured article nominations/script (I think it's lines 85 and 90). If the ImageMap syntax is used, the links to the articles themselves can be preserved. I am not familiar with the language used in the script, but this is the syntax required: 

<imagemap>
Image:Featured article star.svg|15px
default [[Articlename]]
desc none
</imagemap>

The newlines are required, and produces

For former featured articles, Image:Cscr-featured-strike.png could be used. Does this sound like a good idea? Happy‑melon 10:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Wouldn't displaying almost two thousand images make the page display much more slowly, and make the load on the servers much greater? Or would the image be cached once for each display and then re-rendered each time? Mike Christie (talk) 12:49, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The image would be loaded once by a browser and I suspect the server load difference would not be noticeable (very slightly more since the whole page can currently be cached in the squid front ends - adding an image makes the browser fetch the page content from the squids plus fetch the image once), but the source text reference to the image is 60 bytes or so compared with the single utf-8 character (which is actually 3 bytes), so doing this would essentially double the source page text size from its current (not very small to start with) 122K. I don't know the HTML size of the page (also not small), but doing this would increase the HTML size as well (I think by at least 100K). I'd prefer not to do this.
Is the help at Help:Multilingual support not useful? A list of fonts including the star character is at http://www.alanwood.net/unicode/fontsbyrange.html#u2600. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:42, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't say it's not useful, but it didn't solve the problem for me. I'm an IT professional but I started to glaze over as I tried to figure out how to use that list of fonts to solve my problem. I know I didn't have to buy a font to make it work on my home machine, but my work machine doesn't display the star and I can't figure out what to do about it. What would be great would be a step-by-step guide to "how to install font X"; however, I haven't asked because it's really not a Wikipedia problem, it's a tech support problem. Still, if you know where such a guide lives that would be great. Mike Christie (talk) 15:48, 17 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]
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