Battlestar Wiki talk:Quality Articles

Woah woah woah. Locking an article down from edits totally defeats the wiki spirit. I don't object to having specific revisions marked as "1.0", "1.1", "2.0", etc. which we can link to with oldid links, but blocking edits entirely is a very poor idea. --April Arcus 00:01, 13 October 2005 (EDT)

I concur with April here. This is a slippery slope that defeats the collective purpose of the Wiki. I like the idea of tagging popular or quality pages, but the idea of numbering versions will be a nightmare of micromanagement. I didn't get how we define what is quality, but I will read it again. I would think such a thing would be by things like (1) hits on the article, (2) number of edits, and (3) number of hard sources. If that is the case, then, many current articles fit this, defeating the reason for the tag. I'll have to think a bit more on how this could work. Spencerian 12:49, 13 October 2005 (EDT)

I agree. To clarify my idea on numbered versions, although it could be useful to know what the most recent version is which has passed a certain battery of quality tests, the fact is that newer material will almost invariably be better than older as long as projects such as the Citation Jihad et al. maintain their vigilance; and that vandalism will be reverted practically instantly. Anything beyond a wikipedia-style Featured Articles process strikes me as obtuse and impractical. --April Arcus 17:06, 13 October 2005 (EDT)

I like what Memory Alpha does for Star Trek: there is a list of "features articles" but you're allowed to edit them. All it is is a "showcase" list of the best articles that new readers might want to look at; they are also more heavily moderated, but editing is not locked. Further, character biography pages are mostly being added chronologically now, and the Cylon page is notoriously in need of devlopment; of course, that's because we the audience are in the same situation as the Colonials, who know little of the Cylons as well. --Ricimer, October 14, 2005

Very cool. Glad that everyone agrees that protecting articles is a bad idea. :-) (That portion was BS anyway, though oddly enough inspired by this news article regarding Jimbo's locking down of articles whose quality was "undisputed".) -- Joe Beaudoin 09:59, 14 October 2005 (EDT)

Comment: I think "Featured Articles" has a better ring to it than "Quality Articles" - noun-noun compounds always strike me as ugly. And exactly what "quality" is it, exactly? Good or bad? --April Arcus 19:03, 17 March 2006 (CST)

Maybe. But even if there is a difference, if you had 5 Quality articles, you can't show five of them on the front page at once. --Shane 19:16, 17 March 2006 (CST)

I'm not sure you've replied to my actual comment. All I'm saying is that "Quality article" is a worse name for this sort of thing than "Featured article". --April Arcus 19:21, 17 March 2006 (CST)

I concur, April. Though, because of common usage, I'd not be so hasty to say that "quality" cannot be an adjective. In any case, I like the fact that "Featured Articles" is more exact and equally concise. It also does not, really, imply any level of high quality. If a Quality Article is vandalized it will not be of high quality (for all of, maybe, five seconds), thus ruining the name. If a Featured Article is vandalized, it will still be featured (and fixed quickly as well, I hope). --Day 21:37, 18 March 2006 (CST)

I concur, April. If we could change it before it appears too many more places, that'd be great. --CalculatinAvatar 22:09, 25 April 2006 (CDT)

Quality vs. Featured

Are we still using this? What is meant to be the difference between a Quality article and a Featured article? --April Arcus 18:55, 12 June 2006 (CDT)

QA's could being used as what Wikipedia:Peer Review does before most articles are even considered to be FA. This could end the "debate" on most FA's and have people nominate pages to QA status first before the short FA period beings. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 20:16, 12 June 2006 (CDT)

Not a bad idea. I think wikipedia calls them "Good articles". --April Arcus 22:05, 12 June 2006 (CDT)

Link was bad. --Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 23:21, 12 June 2006 (CDT)

I created the current site notice to try to draw some attention to this process, as I find it a worthy one. In a perfect world, featured articles would go through the quality article process first (not that it is truly necessary). I do think, however, we should be identifying quality articles any which way. I've added a few potentials but have yet to see much commentary on them. JubalHarshaw 11:49, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

Yeah, this sounds like something we should do. I tried thinking about some articles, but nothing comes immediately to mind. Maybe we could start by finding the best (or just really good) main character article, episode guide page, technical article, etc... --Serenity 11:55, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

There are a handful of articles in Category:Quality article candidate that could probably use some review. JubalHarshaw 14:40, 18 May 2007 (CDT)

Quality Episode Guide

The episode guide pages are a big part of what drew me to the battlestar wiki, and we have a lot of good content, analysis, quotes on those pages. Maybe somebody could search through the RDM episodes and find an episode guide page that could be cleaned up to QA standards for potential use as an FA? --Steelviper 10:40, 15 June 2006 (CDT)

Rapture guide is pretty good. If it was fixed up a little bit more... i think we be golden for an FA status. Shane ^{(T - C - E)} 12:38, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

Mhh, yes. That one looks good. Maybe if we find some official statements and a bit more noteworthy dialogue (just a few items. Some pages tend to go overboard with it). --Serenity 12:41, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

I'll try to pull something appropriate out of the podcast for an official statement or two. --Steelviper 13:27, 17 May 2007 (CDT)

Question on qa diff template use

Ok, Cylons (RDM) is now a quality article. According to the QA page, Battlestar Wiki:Quality Articles/Cylons (RDM) needs to be archived, and the {{qa diff}} template used. How would one go about doing this? Thanks. JubalHarshaw 00:47, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

• Also need to do it for The Colonial Gang.

Basically, all you have to do is remove the {{qa talk}} tag, and replace it by {{qa diff|pagename|oldid}}, where pagename is the name of the article in question (e.g. Cylons (RDM)), and oldid the revision ID of the article's current revision. You can get this ID by visiting the page and clicking "Permanent link" in the left sidebar. Your browser's address bar now reads http://en.battlestarwiki.org/w/index.php?title=Cylons_%28RDM%29&oldid=122402 which means you need to fill in 122402 as the second parameter. I have done this for Battlestar Wiki:Quality Articles/Cylons (RDM). --Catrope^{(Talk to me or e-mail me)} 03:18, 20 May 2007 (CDT)

Thanks much, Catrope, this is exactly what I needed. Will do for The Colonial Gang right now. JubalHarshaw 13:24, 20 May 2007 (CDT)