Project:Featured Articles

Part of the proposed new front page will be a link and brief summary of a "featured encyclopedia article": an article we consider to be comprehensive, factually accurate and representative of what we'd like all our encyclopedia articles to be.

"Featured article" is a working title that I have borrowed from wikipedia, who have a similar system, but this is open to suggestions.

Here is how I (JD) propose this page works: we have two lists, one for proposals and "nearly good enough" articles that we should focus our efforts on and decide what needs to be done to make the article better, and, when an article has passed this stage, one for voting on whether it should make it to the front page.

I propose, at least for the time being, we change the front page article once a week. Perhaps when we've built up a bank of good articles we can recycle old ones and change them every day or two.

These are the proposals we should work with for now, but suggestions can be made on the talk page and we can decide on any changes.

Article guidelines

Here are a few ideas for what would a good featured article might include:

• Concise introduction: not too long or technical, but containing the important facts.
• Quantity isn't the most important thing, but articles under 1,500 words probably aren't comprehensive, or are on a too specified or obscure topic. Also, if the article is over 30kb any specified sections should, if possible, be moved onto sub-pages and the main article can be a summary.
• References, preferably including primary literature.
• Further reading, including pop-sci suggestions for the non-technical.
• An image would look good on the front page with the article. I (JD) know the image uploader is broken, and will try and fix it when I've finished all my work! Images should either be public domain, released under a copyleft license such as the GNU Free Documentation License, Creative Commons etc, or belong to the person who contributes them (state on the image pages which it is).

Stage 1: Suggestions

This section is for proposing articles and discussing how good they are and any changes that need doing. After a couple of weeks, if all suggestions have been acted on, proposals can move to the voting section.

Transposition

Nominated by Joe D (t) 22:33, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I know this isn't up the standards I set above, but I think it's a good framework that could be bought up to standard. There's a lot more I could add to this, and I think an article which has a few sub-sections (for the different kinds of transposition) would look good on the front page. There must be plenty of references that can be added, and every single section has the potential for major expansion. An explanatory diagram would also be easy (and I have a couple to base it on). Any comments? Joe D (t) 22:33, 24 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Stage 2: Votes

No articles are currently being voted on.