Wikipedia talk:Featured topics

If you have any questions about a topic you are working on you can ask them at Featured topic questions. This page is primarily for discussion on featured topics in general and their place within Wikipedia.

50 Topics!!!!!

Sorry that I am late, but we have reached a mile stone in the Featured topics project 50 topics. The 50th was Lost (seasons 4). This topic also put us over 400 articles now that we have 406. The average number of articles in a topic is 8.18. Zginder 2008-08-04T20:43Z (UTC)

discography topics

There are two discography FT's (Powderfinger and Wilco) that do not include EPs and singles. Is that ok? Nergaal (talk) 01:20, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Look at the current nom. I think so

Protecting topic boxes

I think that it might be time to protect the FT boxes for each topic. Whenever the number of articles tagged as being part of a FT doesn't match the total number in boxes, it takes a long time to go through all the boxes to check whether an editor has added an article to a topic without a nomination. Even if people have the boxes on their watchlist, some edits can sneak through, and as we get more FTs, it's only going to get harder to watch them all. The big problem with this proposal is that if an article is promoted from GA to FA or is demoted, only a sysop will be able to update the icons on the topic. I think that this extra hassle will be worth it to keep our FTs in check. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 16:35, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

It might be a good idea, even if we do not, we might want to simi-pro them. Zginder 2008-08-27T21:11Z (UTC)

I thought of that, but any user that would be at the stage where they are trying to update FTs would already have got past the semi-pro barrier. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 21:23, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

After the GT thing goes through, and the cats have been reorganised, I might be able to write a template to do this. It would require an equivalent to PAGESINCATEGORY, except it'll test if a given page is in a given category, instead of counting the size of a given category. Only problem is I don't know if such a function exists :/ An alternative is to set up a bot-managed Daily log of status changes for all articles tagged as being FTC articles, under the theory that if people add an article when they shouldn't, then they'll probably also add the fact it's part of an FTC to the article's talk page, and then it'll show up in the log. This'll probably work about half the time, as obviously not everyone will tag the talk page - rst20xx (talk) 01:54, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I suspect that those who don't know enough to nominate an article also don't know enough to change the talk page. I bot might be able to work with the "what links here" of topic boxes, but I can't think of how that would work. Hopefully we can work something out, but would people mind if I be bold enough to block the boxes until then? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:27, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I wouldn't. Maybe you can set up an easy-to-find talk page so people can notify you of any status changes. And also, maybe you don't need to block the topic boxes of non-sequential topics - rst20xx (talk) 17:02, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposed move of the "discography" topics to "albums"

As far as I can tell, the way the topics came to be under the current "discography" name is that:

1. "Powderfinger albums" was nominated and promoted
2. "Wilco discography" was nominated, but while the page name may be "Wilco discography", the header says "Wilco albums". Hence, most of the voters would have seen "Wilco albums" only, but when it was promoted, it was promoted as "Wilco discography"
3. "Powderfinger albums" was renamed "Powderfinger discography" to bring it in line with "Wilco discography", and citing "Wilco discography" as precedent.

While I think that the ultimate scope of the two "discography" topics is the whole discography of the respective bands - be it albums, EPs, singles or anything else - at the moment they both cover just albums. And time and time again, we see a debate about whether this is cherry picking. I feel that if we rename the topics back to "albums", this would knock out half the argument. And then we can always rename them back to "discography" or something else (e.g. "albums and EPs") if they ever expand beyond just the albums - rst20xx (talk) 17:17, 29 August 2008 (UTC)

I support that. We can probably just call that a caretaking technicality and avoid having to do sup noms for them. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 17:20, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

That's effectively how it was done in the first place, so if anyone kicks up a fuss, we could in fact be cheeky and say that the pre-moves place would be albums... rst20xx (talk) 00:15, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

I support this as a compromise measure, and in light of this, would like to thank the above two individuals for taking everyone's opinions into account. LuciferMorgan (talk) 12:02, 3 September 2008 (UTC)

Good topics implementation plan

Following on from the prior straw poll, I've written a fully detailed, unambiguous plan as to how I would implement good topics, and all that remains is to sort out some of the finer points of it. Please feel free to contribute to the discussion here - rst20xx (talk) 01:16, 30 August 2008 (UTC)

Another name standardisation - "series" to "titles"

Would anyone have a problem with moving the video game topics with "series" in the title to "titles" so that they all match? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 01:35, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

I would have a problem—Organization XIII is a part of the Kingdom Hearts series, but it is not a Kingdom Hearts title. Pagrashtak 02:16, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, looking over them, it's called "titles" where just the video game articles are involved, and "series" where other articles (such as Organization XIII) are involved - makes sense to me. Having said that, I now realise that the Super Smash Bros topic is under "series", when it should be under "titles", so I would support the moving of that - rst20xx (talk) 02:24, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Very good points, I agree with you both. --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 02:59, 4 September 2008 (UTC)

Sooo... can we get the Super Smash Bros topic renamed? rst20xx (talk) 17:13, 8 September 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, rename it. Gary King (talk) 00:42, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Note that I'm currently creating the categories for good topics, and now whoever does the rename will have to rename them, too :/ rst20xx (talk) 01:32, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Article

This weeks Wikipedia Signpost contains an article about Featured Topics written by yours truly- check it out! --PresN (talk) 14:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Nice work! rst20xx (talk) 00:29, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I forgot to compliment you on that one; it's a nicely written article, well done (and thanks for mentioning me)! --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:41, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Questions about the Good Topics Implementation

Please address any questions you have about how exactly good topics are implemented here - rst20xx (talk) 02:32, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

FT star calculations

Ok, there have been a lot of changes with FT recently, and I'm not sure I'm caught up on them all. If I read {{Featured topic box}} correctly, a featured topic comprising four featured articles and one B-class article (from a recent FAR, for instance) would have the "fully featured" star incorrectly applied—what used to be handled with the ftstar parameter. Is this correct?

Issue two: the {{TopicTransclude}} method results in blank spaces in the FT listing where the Good Topics are located. Pagrashtak 03:56, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Gonna answer over at the good topics questions page linked above - rst20xx (talk) 14:41, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Proposed Move: North Carolina hurricanes -> Lists of North Carolina hurricanes

This should probably be moved, per the Florida topic - rst20xx (talk) 14:33, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

As primary contributor, I agree. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 15:08, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh. Odd. Upon closer inspection, it seems OhanaUnited for some reason made the duplicate (North Carolina hurricanes) a while back, and then replaced the original with it in various places. But the original is correct, so I shall bring the topic to requested moves, citing it as an error on the part of one of the editors, and once the move has been made, then we can go about fixing the links - rst20xx (talk) 15:46, 11 September 2008 (UTC) In fact, Hurricanehink, you're an admin, can you do the moves? Would be quicker. So the topic box needs moving on top of the other, and you'd also need to rename:

• Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes
• Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes featured content -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes featured content
• Category:Wikipedia featured topics North Carolina hurricanes good content -> Category:Wikipedia featured topics Lists of North Carolina hurricanes good content

I can do the rest - rst20xx (talk) 15:49, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately, as an admin, I cannot move those categories. That requires a bot, or something. However, I did the right thing and proposed them for moving. ♬♩ Hurricanehink (talk) 02:11, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Oh right, I didn't know that! You learn something new every day! Thanks for proposing! rst20xx (talk) 14:57, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Move completed. --Kbdank71 13:20, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Display of fully-featured star cluster

Alright, so the FT boxes have been retooled to automatically determine whether the fully-featured star cluster should be displayed or not. Previously, this was done manually with the ftstar parameter. The basic way it works is that it checks to see if there are any articles in the "good" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series good content). The "featured" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series featured content) doesn't need to be checked, and the "other" category (Category:Wikipedia featured topics Guitar Hero series) isn't checked, because this is where audited articles show up. The problem with this is that if an article is demoted to B-class, it shows up in the "other" category and is not checked. So, if there were a featured topic with nine FAs and one GA, if a GAR resulted in the demotion of the GA to B-class, the fully-featured star would pop up on the topic box. I feel this is a significant enough problem to warrant a fix. I discussed this a little with rst20xx (talk), who feels the automation is beneficial enough to forgive an overlook like this and suggested I bring it up to the FT community. Any thoughts? Pagrashtak 17:00, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

I suppose what we could do is have a manual override, so that in a case of a topic that is under retention due to a demotion (as opposed to one that is there due to a topic coming out of an audited period, which should get to keep its ft-star IMO) we can say "nope, this one doesn't get the star". And then it's still automated but can be overridden - rst20xx (talk) 17:16, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

In fact I can also make it that the manual override stops overriding if it becomes the case that there are no audited articles either... rst20xx (talk) 14:50, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I think the manual override should always override. It would be useful for work pages, where the categories don't even exist. Actually, I'd rather see this work in reverse—add a parameter autoftstar=yes to all the topics listed at FT and GT that tells the template to enable the automatic ftstar. That way work pages, etc. wouldn't trigger that part of the code and wouldn't have the star cluster. Then add a manual override in addition to take care of the B-class problem. Pagrashtak 20:09, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't think I agree, I feel it doesn't really matter whether mockup topics have the ftstar or not. Anyone else have an opinion on this? rst20xx (talk) 20:55, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

I don't care about mockup topics, but I don't feel like fully featured topics should keep the star after one of the articles gets FARC'd or FLR'd down to B-class. Maybe we should just make it so you don't get the star if you have "checkmark" articles? --PresN (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

I'd support that. Pagrashtak 20:03, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

No, that's not fair, because the whole point of the checkmark is that it's an article that can't get to GA/FL, so is the best it can be - rst20xx (talk) 08:21, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

I could argue that if we aren't going to call the article our best work (not FA), then it would be logical for the topic to not be our best topic by extension. But taking a step back, is there really that much use to having that cluster in the first place? I mean, it's painfully obvious how many FAs and FLs the topics have with or without that cluster there. Pagrashtak 01:12, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

It's shiny. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs ^(talk) 01:39, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

(reset) (Response to Pagrashtak) Firstly, I could argue that a checkmarked article is the best that Wikipedia could possibly offer on the subject of that article, hence the checkmark. And secondly, in response to whether we need the checkmark at all, well that's true that it's somewhat obvious how many FAs/FLs there are anyway, but then equally one could argue that therefore, maybe, whether it appears or not shouldn't be taken so seriously?...

It seems to me that the only point of it is to act as a (very small) added incentive for editors to get their topics fully featured. If we say that some topics can't get it at all (by saying that those with audited articles can't have it) then the incentive is gone - rst20xx (talk) 20:45, 15 September 2008 (UTC)

We need a list of things to do

When a topic goes from GA to FA and from FA to GA; e.g., do this. Zginder 2008-09-12T04:17Z (UTC)

Yeah, that's true. Going from GT to FT is basically the 3 steps in the promotion procedure that are just for FTs, i.e.

1. Add a notice to Template:Announcements/New featured content using [[Wikipedia:Featured topics/ExampleTopicName|ExampleTopicName]]
2. Add a notice to Wikipedia:Goings-on using [[Wikipedia:Featured topics/ExampleTopicName|ExampleTopicName]]
3. Add the topic to the random topic generator at Wikipedia:Featured content/Topics and update the count.
4. (Added by me just now) Update Wikipedia:Featured topics/count and Wikipedia:Good topics/count

and then the other direction has the step you just carried out, plus step 4 above, plus the GA guys might want to name a few places they want notification as well (both for new and demoted topics).

Thanks for updating that by the way, I completely forgot about that! rst20xx (talk) 14:54, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

How will we keep on top of this when we have a hundred topics with thousands of articles that each have the potential to be automatically moved any day? --Arctic Gnome (talk • contribs) 03:43, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Not sure, I guess we'll just have to see how it goes. We can see when topics move quite easily though: run the 1.0 bot on "Featured topics", then check if any articles have changed importance in the quality log. Top = FT main article. High = FT other. Mid = GT main article. Low = GT other - rst20xx (talk) 13:49, 17 September 2008 (UTC)

Fix a topic

Hi. Recently, 2008 ACC Championship Game underwent a peer review to satisfy criterion 3.c. It was reviewed and now the topic needs to be updated. Does someone mind updating the FT template? Also, the retention period in the criterion page needs to be removed. Thanks! Pie is good ^{(Apple is the best)} 20:59, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

Just noticed that it never closed yet, sorry. Pie is good ^{(Apple is the best)} 21:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)

You need to renominate the topic, as a "supplementary nomination". See the nomination procedure page for how to do this - rst20xx (talk) 23:44, 14 September 2008 (UTC)