Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria

This page appears to be the only existing policy on featured articles, other than what little is written at the top of the featured article candidates page. Raul654 has cited it a couple times recently to dismiss objection that aren't based on the standards written here. Now that I've taken a good look at it, it seems he's merely citing standards he wrote himself.

I think we could use some actual community discussion of what should constitute a featured article. I personally use some criteria that are not currently represented here, and I don't want them dismissed as illegitimate just because they aren't written here.

I'll start the discussion with the suggestion that we need to separate the questions of "is this an excellent article?" and "should we put this article on the main page?" Various occasions have come up recently where the first answer might be yes while the other is no. Wiki and Wikipedia might be good articles, but we don't need to look like we spend all our time gazing in a mirror. George W. Bush may be good right now, but putting it on the main page during a political campaign would be asking for edit wars. It would be nice to have a way of recognizing such articles.

I also think that some topics simply don't work well on the main page. Articles featured on the main page should have some general-interest appeal, because that's what we're presenting to the general public. We want people to read those articles, say "Wow, that was impressive" and start to look for more. Some articles, by the very nature of their topic, won't do that for most people. An article like Gröbner basis, even if it were a brilliant article on the topic, is too technical for a general reader. It would need to wander far off topic in order to provide enough context. I think that that should be a rough guideline - if most readers will need more context than can fit in the article, we probably should reconsider featuring it.

Comments? Isomorphic 04:19, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)