Wikipedia talk:Featured topic criteria

If you have any questions about a topic you are working on or about the criteria in general you can ask them at Featured topic questions. This page is primarily for discussion on changes to the criteria or their implimentation.

"Each article or list is of high quality, including the referencing."

I see this currently listed as one of the criteria for items contained within a good or featured topic. However, I see little or no evidence that those voting on whether a collection of articles/lists etc have ever checked that the "referencing" is of a high quality. In fact, I've been shot down for noting that many links in many articles within a proposed good/featured topic are actually _not_ of high quality, or they are dead, or similar. Perhaps the people that administer this section of Wikipedia need to consider if this section (i.e. including the referencing ) is really part of the criteria for a good/featured topic, because right now, most contributors to the voting page don't even give it a passing glance. Right now I would suggest this clause is removed since people who vote for featured topics pay no attention to the quality of the constituent elements other than to check they are either GA, FA or FL, nothing more. There is no more quality control than that. The abject lack of quality control should be reflected in the criteria. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:18, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

I disagree removing it. I would rather rephrase so it is clearer; then you could say oppose based on criteria x. How about saying that the topic entries "are still passing the FX/GA criteria at the time of the nomination." Nergaal (talk) 00:05, 12 January 2013 (UTC)

Retention period

Not sure who is following this, but would anybody be opposed to increase the grace period to 6 months? Nergaal (talk) 01:11, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

I wouldn't be. In the case of musical albums for example, I feel the grace period should be even longer. Whereas a film undergoes cinematic and DVD release and then mostly that's it, an album has touring behind it, and in the case of popular artists could spawn a string of singles. That's at least a year to two years of new information having to be added if singles are included. LuciferMorgan (talk) 15:33, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Question of Topics

Is it possible for a topic's lead article to be broader in scope than the topic itself? For example, I've been eyeing topics such as the Endemic Birds of the Sulu Archipelago and Extinct Birds of the United States, which would include 4 and 4-9 articles respectively. However, it would be a bit ridiculous to have a List of Endemic Birds of the Sulu Archipelago as it would be so small. Possible, but sort of pointless. Would I be able to count a List of Birds of the Sulu Archipelago with a section detailing the endemics and count that as the lead article for my hypothetical Endemic Birds of the Sulu Archipelago topic? Thanks. Rufous-crowned Sparrow (talk) 02:11, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Not sure why nobody has answered this, but I believe you could. There are FTs / GTs where this has happened. LuciferMorgan (talk) 22:27, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

'Cause it got answered over at Wikipedia talk:Featured topic questions, FYI. --PresN 23:10, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Loosening standards for big topics?

Just throwing it out there, but the 50% rule is pretty hefty once you get to a decent size, and I worry that could dissuade people from attempting big topics. What if, for big topics, there was a gradual reduction to the 50% rule? Hypothetically, a 100 article topic would be near impossible to get 50 articles to FA, and yet I believe that having 30 articles featured, for example, would be quite an accomplishment and worthy of featured topic status, IMO. Just throwing it out there. Not sure what the gradation would be though. --♫ Hurricanehink (talk) 03:12, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Intro para as requirement for FT

I think having a requirement for FUTURE FTs to have a decent short paragraph would be adequate. I've tried to push nominators to create one anyways, but I think since FTs CAN actually appear on the mainpage this would be an appropriate, easy requirement. Also, for the sake of logistics, previous FTs would not be required to have such an intro (yet) since I am assuming those can be slowly filled up in time once this new criteria becomes standard. Nergaal (talk) 16:44, 30 April 2015 (UTC)

The nomination template that gets autocreated when you make a new nomination asks for an intro paragraph; it noincludes it so as not to clutter up the main FLC page but it's there. I'd be fine with requiring FTs/GTs going forward to fill one out, especially as it's basically a modified version of the lead article's lead. --PresN 17:00, 30 April 2015 (UTC)