Forgotten Realms Wiki talk:Good articles

Totally behind this
This sounds like a good idea to me. I'm totally behind this, but admins may be inundated with new requests at frist :P -Thomas Love http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/jackass/images/5/5f/Star_tiny.png [ talk ] 21:32, October 2, 2015 (UTC)


 * True, there could be a lot of requests, but there's also no rush to do it.
 * ~ Lhynard (talk) 21:43, October 2, 2015 (UTC)

TBH, I'm a bit ambivalent as it currently stands. Ideally, all articles should meet these criteria. If fully implemented, everything else, the stubs and unsourced and rambling articles, will become the ordinary articles, which feels uncomfortably like lowering our standards. On the other hand, every article I've written should be counted as Good, so that's nice. :) Ordinary articles could also be updated regularly, so they'll require constant re-evaluation.

I see the benefit of something less than the epic-sized Featured Articles for regular editors to aim for, but they should still be a cut above the rest, so they're not so easy to achieve, nor are we likely to be overwhelmed with possibilities. Wookieepedia has a Good article system that is more discerning: exactly the same as a featured article, but not meeting the length requirement (1000 words). Of course, their feature articles also have more discerning requirements than ours. I listed my proposed requirements for feature articles at Forum:Featured articles!. On that basis, I feel a Good article would cover this limited set of requirements: Complete, Correct, Referenced, Formatted, and Demonstrative (so not including Important, Big, and Illustrated). — BadCatMan (talk) 12:01, October 3, 2015 (UTC)

PS: Also, articles that for whatever reason can't be accepted as Features would make find Good articles. For example, Tome of Torment is pretty good, but we already have Church of Ilmater and it's single-source, so Good is a fine a second place for it. — BadCatMan (talk) 12:19, October 3, 2015 (UTC)

Qualifications
I feel having an image shouldn't be a requirement. Being largely novel- and sourcebook-based, the Realms are primarily a written setting. There are some great articles for which there are no relevant images. There are also major novel characters who will have no artwork.

I prefer an article be fully complete, because that is most useful and clear to a reader. Of course, completeness might not cover every edition, but an article should at least be complete from the source(s) used/known, and be able to stand alone (i.e, there's no mysteries to the content). — BadCatMan (talk) 12:01, October 3, 2015 (UTC)

Possible GA Template
I was thinking of something like this to go on a page that is a Good Article. I wanted it to be unobtrusive, so it's only the width of an infobox and floats to the right.

I went with a gold coin, thinking that we might eventually change a lot of our tag boxes around, as we've been discussing. If and when we do, perhaps we could make stubs have a copper coin image, good articles a gold, and FAs a platinum, with the idea that all other articles are silver? ~ Lhynard (talk) 21:42, October 2, 2015 (UTC)


 * Template looks great! Maybe make the coin a little bigger (30 px perhaps)? And a very washed out gold backgorund colour might be nice.
 * I really love the idea for different coins for different qualities of articles! Stroke of genius!
 * -Thomas Love http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/jackass/images/5/5f/Star_tiny.png [ talk ] 22:08, October 2, 2015 (UTC)


 * I don't really see a need for multiple grades. The Unreferenced, Nofootnotes, Stub and other such templates pretty much speak for themselves and Featured Articles are already covered by FA. Also, grading is subjective and the more grades you have the harder it is to find consensus. Even the word "good" is subjective&mdash;I suggest changing it to "gold". I suppose it would be okay to give out gold coin badges to "complete" articles, but I am not in favor of attempting to grade 16,000+ articles when they are already tagged with those templates I just listed: it's just busy work. And how about this scenario: An article is given a gold coin because it meets the criteria, then someone comes along and adds some 5th edition lore but doesn't have a reference, then someone else adds Fact. Does the article lose its gold status? It no longer meets the criteria, but was a perfectly good article until someone tried to improve it! This gets absurd rather quickly and I feel we do not need yet another bit of administrivia that distracts the admins from actually adding content along with all the other things we have to do. &mdash;Moviesign (talk) 03:02, October 3, 2015 (UTC)


 * I like the idea of using images to accompany our tags. Wookiepedia has pertinent images and quotes that really personalise their wiki, though we don't have to go that far (nor is the Realms all that quotable). But coins are nice. It reminds me of a Volo's Guide. :D Actually, why not a golden scroll? Platinum scrolls for Featured Articles, gold scrolls for Good articles. But I wouldn't give them to other articles, especially problematic ones, as per my lowered standards argument above. Regular decent articles shouldn't get special treatment.


 * I agree that bringing articles to "good" status should be a priority before shepherding articles that have Good status. Then again, there is that old rule I just made up: you propose it, you work it. Good luck, Lhynard. :p — BadCatMan (talk) 12:01, October 3, 2015 (UTC)