Talk:Archive:Article of the Week

Temporarily delay Life?

Based on these comments by the editors voting on Life:

Chris Day (talk) 12:43, 8 August 2007 (CDT) (Subject to the article being reapproved. There are quite a few changes since the last approved version. Also we need to complete the external links and bibliography as part of that process); Supten Sarbadhikari --I would like to wait a week or two to follow-up on Chris and Supten's points. --Anthony.Sebastian (Talk) 20:02, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

Do you think we should temporarily disqualify Life from the contest for August 21 because of these comments? Even if none of these editors voted, however, Life would still have 6 votes to Electoral College's (current) 5, and would win anyways, so by that logic Life should still be eligible this week.

We probably also should have an overall policy stating that votes are unconditional so we don't need to sort out whether or not to count them in situations like this. What do you guys think, both on what to do about Life this week and about this as a general policy?

Although I have voted for Life, I have also put a comment on the Draft/Talk page that the English is a hodge-podge of varieties and should be standardized into US English before being made Article of the Week. Can someone do that? --Martin Baldwin-Edwards 22:01, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

I just noticed this. I just thought that so many changes have been made since the last appproval that it needs to be critically proofed. I have not had time to read the changes yet. No one else has responded yet either. Since we had biology so recently I see no harm in holding off if we have other good candiidates. Chris Day (talk) 22:05, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

Sounds good. I'll change the page to reflect this. -- Carl Jantzen 23:17, 19 August 2007 (CDT)

Procedure for a tie

One thing I've noticed is that there is no clear procedure for what to do in case there are multiple articles with the same number of votes at the designated time. As written it seems that the first article in alphabetical order would be chosen, but that seems a little unfair. My suggestion is that whoever is moving the article to the front page should be allowed to choose among all the articles with the same number of votes. This would get rid of an alphabetical bias, and give the program administrators something more to do. On the other hand would this be giving the administrator too much power? This situation isn't likely to happen too often, but it is worth thinking about. --Carl Jantzen 09:53, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

I think to begin with it would be determined by number of specialist supporters. If this fails to break the deadlock, then I suggest number of supporters generally. If all else fails, I recommend picking one - say by alphabetical order - then guaranteeing that the other is Article of the Week next. So no further voting takes place on that article, and people nominate and support for two weeks later. I don't think deciding by which one was nominated first is a good idea because this says nothing about quality. John Stephenson 02:49, 10 August 2007 (CDT)

John, I think this is all sensible--please feel free to write it on the main pages. Unless anyone objects! Well, we just need a clear decision procedure. --Larry Sanger 02:53, 10 August 2007 (CDT)

Article of the Week Administrators

I noticed the little section at the bottom of the page calling for Administrators for the AotW. Since no one else had signed up and I've been looking for a little way to contribute to CZ in adition to authoring I figured I'd jot my name down.

It's still quite unclear what, exactly, an AotW administrator's duties are, except for posting the weekly selection on the front page. Maybe I'll be able to play a role in shaping the program, although it looks like the existing guidelines should work fine for now. -- Carl Jantzen 09:21, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

--

I'm going to apply to join up for the time being to help it get started - I'll probably hand over the reins come October when College starts and my access to a computer at a certain time cannot be guaranteed :( Only heed my volunteering if it is a more than one man job - I am in a very roundabout way saying 'If no-one else volunteers, pick me!' PS- Carl, sign your posts at the end for clarity purposes :) Denis Cavanagh 09:25, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Whoops! Fixed. -- Carl Jantzen 09:48, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Article of the Week

Larry, Citizendium, etc al,

In addition to "holding up an article to the limelight" to show how good it is, can we have basically the opposite? Should we have a "focus article" of the week that we can collaborate on? Eric M Gearhart 12:09, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Why not have both? Wikipedia has a Collaboration of the Week for certain WikiProjects; we could have wiki-wide improvement drives. Sean Allen 12:48, 25 July 2007 (CDT) Whoops, I mis-read your post. I think it'd be a great idea to have a focus article. (: Sean Allen 12:50, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Well, that's solving a different problem and therefore there might be a better solution. The problem the Article of the Week solves is putting something attractive on the front page and rewarding people for producing our best work. A "Collaboration of the Week" would evidently be aimed at getting people to, well, work on articles. I agree that encouraging, in various creative ways, people to work on articles is the best way to motivate them, but I don't immediately see why choosing just one article for people to work on will actually do much more than get some of them working on that article. So...? --Larry Sanger 13:00, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Red links in the front page looks rather odd. Can we ensure that at least the portion of the article of the week that is showcased in the Mainpage does not contain those? Supten 23:06, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

They don't bother me so much, because they encourage people to write articles on those subjects. But if you want to remove those links, or if you feel strongly about them, let's remove them. --Larry Sanger 23:29, 25 July 2007 (CDT)

Vote

Notice, dear Citizens, the Biology article featured on the Main Page. This illustrates the concept of the Article of the Week. We'd like to find out if there's enough interest in this and also in a Contributors of the Week thingie. Alternatively, consider the Creation of the Week New Article of the Week. Sign with three tildes (~~~) and let us know!

Interested in Article of the Week?

Please sign below if you are interested in, at the very least, voting on articles of the week.

1. Larry Sanger
2. Matthew Cornell Woods, Jr.
3. Eric M Gearhart
4. Greg Woodhouse
5. Michael Underwood
6. Sean Allen
7. Chris Day (talk)
8. David E. Volk
9. Jochen Wendebaum
10. Anthony.Sebastian
11. Aleksander Stos
12. Andrew Fleisher
13. Ruth Ifcher
14. Stephen Ewen
15. Thomas Mandel
16. Todd Coles
17. James F. Perry
18. Supten
19. John Stephenson
20. Nereo Preto
21. Gareth Leng
22. Stephen Tapril
23. Greg Heuer
24. Andrew Staroscik
25. JeromeDelacroix
26. Ian Johnson
27. Steve Mount
28. Denis Cavanagh
29. Robert King

Interested in Contributors of the Week?

Please sign below if you are interested in, at the very least, nominating a Contributor of the Week or a New Contributor of the Week.

1. Larry Sanger
2. Eric M Gearhart
3. Matthew Cornell Woods, Jr.
4. Jochen Wendebaum
5. Stephen Ewen
6. Todd Coles
7. Supten
8. John Stephenson
9. JeromeDelacroix
10. Greg Woodhouse
11. Robert King

New Article of the Week?

I moved this discussion to CZ Talk:New Article of the Week. Carl Jantzen 09:34, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Further comment

Feedback?

Well, what do you think of the rules here? --Larry Sanger 07:13, 30 July 2007 (CDT)

Everything appears to have worked well to me. --Todd Coles 14:27, 31 July 2007 (CDT)

Its working well - I think this is a good idea, its good to have something like this clearly expressed on the front page. Denis Cavanagh 09:10, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Clearing the votes

I agree with leaving the previous week's nominated, but unselected, articles on the voting template, but perhaps we should remove the votes from them to give people the opportunity to vote for a different article if they choose. I'd do it but don't want to overstep my bounds here. --Todd Coles 14:26, 31 July 2007 (CDT)

Well, until there's more interest in the Article of the Week concept, we should probably leave the votes there. Otherwise we might find that there are no votes for any nominees! --Larry Sanger 06:49, 2 August 2007 (CDT)

Perhaps we should place a link to the voting page near the current Article of the Week on the mainpage? It could be that a lot of people don't realize this is going on. --Todd Coles 08:06, 2 August 2007 (CDT)

Actually, the link is there :-) just click [ "about" ]. Aleksander Stos 11:32, 2 August 2007 (CDT)

I was thinking of something more prominent. I think part of the reason the Write-a-thon was so popular was because there was a big template plastered on the front page. Not that we need something that big, but perhaps a note saying "Vote here by Tuesday for the Article of the Week!" or something similar that will draw attention. --Todd Coles 14:56, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

Clarify:

Can one vote for more than one article of the week?  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 14:53, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

Isn't it clear enough from the "voting" section? Aleksander Stos 15:53, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

I thought so.  —Stephen Ewen (Talk) 19:43, 7 August 2007 (CDT)

I see. Interestingly, my double vote has been spoted as "illegal" too (by another Citizendian). So let us make it more explicit. I added a little something but feel free to reword it as you like. Aleksander Stos 02:30, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Specialist supporters

I'm not sure its fair that an expert gets three votes, mainly because Its unfair to say, have a history expert vote for say, 'The Roman Empire' and get three votes but someone writes an article about 'Gordon Brown' but actually has a better article and loses because no politics expert is there to vote for it. What do you think? Denis Cavanagh 11:38, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Well, I fail to see how fairness comes into it, for the simple reason that there is no way to guarantee the slightest bit of fairness here in the first place. A much bigger problem, fairness-wise, than the one you cite is the problem that we do not exhaustively explore all possible candidates. What if someone happens not to notice a better article? That's "unfair," too, and more likely to happen than the situation you describe. But we do know that we want to encourage editors to give us their opinion, and their opinion should be worth more because they know more about their areas of expertise. --Larry Sanger 12:06, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Maybe one way we can ensure that one topic doesn't dominate the Article of the Week is through some kind of rule ensuring rotating subject matter. For example we could require that the article of the week must not belong to any of the same Workgroups as the previous week's article. This would take care of Denis's example above by ensuring that even if the History article wins one week another history article won't be eligible the next, so the Politics article stands a better chance. It would also ensure that Biology articles will make up no more than half of the articles of the week. -- Carl Jantzen 12:26, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

I don't really think we need to worry about which articles are "better" here. They are all good articles, hence their approved/near approved status. The way I view it, atleast, is that this is more of a showcase of what we've produced, and the voting process is just a friendly way of deciding which one gets put up each week. --Todd Coles 12:50, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

I agree there, Todd. --Larry Sanger 13:00, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Not that I have anything against Biology articles, but they seem to have the most active workgroup and I want to make sure articles from all topics gain this exposure. --Carl Jantzen 14:06, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Thats a good point there Todd, I suppose I was kinda looking from the angle that the 'best' article should go up, but its not really that relevant since all the articles here meet a high standard. Denis Cavanagh 14:56, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Empty template

Okay, I went ahead and commented it out. Sorry, but that extra row with the [[]] just bugs me. Anyone editing the file will still be able to see the empty template. Greg Woodhouse 18:25, 8 August 2007 (CDT)

Admin(ship)

Just letting you know that now I'm going back to College I won't be able to commit myself to the job. Todd and Carl will do a great job though :) Denis Cavanagh 11:27, 9 September 2007 (CDT)