Forum:CT:Required FA Seer votes and outstanding FA/GA objections

I’d like to propose two things. One is in regards to featured articles, and the other is in regards to both good articles and featured articles.

First proposal – required number of Seer votes on FANs

The first is that we have a set number of votes from the Council of Seers that are required to pass a featured article, as opposed to what we require now which is a majority of Seers. This is also as opposed to what’s required for good articles, where we require 4 Seer votes regardless of the number of Seers there are. The reason I believe we should do this is because, once again, the number of Seers is growing. We currently have 7 Seers, meaning we need at least 4 Seer votes to pass an FA (4/3). There is currently a request for Seership going on for JediCommando, which, if successful, would bring the number of Seers to 8 and the required number of Seer votes to 5 (5/3). This was always done to prevent a tie.

I hope that we can add more Seers in the near future if we see people we think could do the job. If we suddenly had 10, that’d be 6 Seers who would have to vote. I know this is the epitome of a long shot, but imagine if we had 15 Seers. That would mean we would need at least 8 Seer votes. That starts to get excessive.

Some Seers don’t vote on every nomination, which is fine since they don’t have to, but if those same Seers still didn’t vote on every nomination and the number of Seers we had started to climb then that could hold back the number of votes a nomination would get. That could pose a problem when we already don’t have a queue and pretty much put articles up on the Main Page literally as soon as they’re successful, as was the case last night, or when they’ve only been on the queue for a day or so.

Also, like I said, we’re already doing this with good article nominations, and it’s helped the process even though good articles don’t seem to get much love nowadays anyway. I think doing this for FAs as well will help speed up the process as the number of Seers we have continues to grow. I’ll note that Wookieepedia does this as well and it’s successful. There are currently 17 Inquisitors (the Wook’s FA review board, for those of you who don’t know), but only 5 Inq votes are required to pass an FA nomination.

The vote that will be in the voting section below will have three choices: require 4 votes, require 5 votes, or keep it as it currently is. Anything less than 4 or 5 wouldn’t be enough, IMO, and also IMO anything more than 4 or 5 would be excessive.

Second proposal – passing a nomination with active objections

A few weeks or months ago (can’t remember how long it’s been), there was a nomination for featured article (won’t say which one, just cuz) where there were some legitimate objections still on the article’s CS review page that hadn’t been tended to. Despite this, the required number of votes for the nomination came in (because a lot of people don’t read the CS pages or even the article when it’s nominated) and the article became a featured article, even with these objections still on the CS page.

To me this isn’t right. Not only did it waste the reviewers time (just for the record, it wasn’t me, in case anyone was getting that impression), but it also meant that an article passed through with some legitimate objections on the review page. I think we need to add in a rule that says regardless of the number of votes a nomination has, it cannot become a good or a featured article (yes, this is about both) if there are still active objections from any user, Seer or otherwise. It just isn’t right to pass an article if there are still legitimate objections on the CS page.

That said, you’re probably saying “well what about stupid objections, or ones that come down to personal preference and have no bearing on the actual FA requirements?” That’s a good question. The answer to that is that 4, 5, or the majority of Seers (depending on the outcome of the first proposal in this thread) can strike out the objections of any user, Seer or otherwise, if they’re stupid, are personal preference, etc. AND (not or, “and”) are preventing an article with the required number of votes from becoming a GA or an FA. I think that’s fair. Just a note, that means we will only strike out stupid or personal preference objections if they’re holding up a nomination.

Please note: YES, this means you will have to actually strike out your votes using so people know that they have been corrected, or that you’ve withdrawn said objections. If you don’t do that, you’re risking holding up a nomination or you’re risking having the Seers strike the objections for you. You pretty much have to do this so people know that all of your objections have been met.

Vote
Both of these votes will last until Sunday, October 8, unless more or less time is required for them. All matters of the voting policy apply. Please be civil.

Require 4 Seer votes (1)

 * 1) If we had 10 or more Seers then I would vote for 5, but considering the current number (and the potentially future number given the current RfS) of Seers I think that 4 makes the most sense. I think that going away from the majority vote makes the most sense either no matter what, per what I said above. - Brandon Rhea Alliance Starbird.svg (talk) 05:41, November 2, 2009 (UTC)

Support (+1)

 * 1) As the proposer. This is only fair. - Brandon Rhea Alliance Starbird.svg (talk) 05:41, November 2, 2009 (UTC)

Discussion
I’ve broken down the discussion section into two parts, one for each proposal, in order to keep things more organized. - Brandon Rhea  (talk) 05:41, November 2, 2009 (UTC)