Fanlore:Featured Articles

Fanlore Featured Articles are articles spotlighted weekly on Fanlore's main page.

Featured Article Nomination Requirements

For an article to be considered a good Featured Article nomination, it should fit the following criteria:

The article should follow Fanlore policies.
The article should have a good lead section (usually the first or first section), introducing and summarizing the article clearly and concisely. (An excerpt from the lead section is used to spotlight the article on the main page.) If possible, there should not be any red links in the first paragraph of the lead section.
The article should not be flagged with {{Stub}}, {{ExpandArticle}}, or equivalent notices, or have sections with no content in them.
The article should be thorough and have a solid amount of information. The page should be up-to-date, or as up-to-date as possible. There should not be any glaring holes in the discussion of the article's subject, but the page does not need to be perfect or have every example/event associated with the topic, nor does it have to be a very long page.
The article should provide enough background information or context for a newcomer to understand the topic and its significance in fandom. For examples of articles that provide enough context for a general reader, check out past Featured Articles.
The article should not have been previously approved as a Featured Article and displayed on Fanlore's main page. Previously rejected articles are eligible to be re-nominated if improvements have been made. See Re-nomination.

Nomination Process

The nomination process is a voting period where editors evaluate articles nominated by other users, raise or address any outstanding concerns and either approve or reject nominees. Nominations can be voted on for three months, but this may conclude faster depending on the voting outcome.

Initial Nomination and Commenting Structure

Editors who identify a page that follows the criteria above may add it as a new section in Fanlore:Featured Article Nominations using the following format:

=== [[Page title]] ===

Nominated by ~~~ on ~~~~~. As of this writing, the page has a good intro and no content flags. 

(Add other comments here)

All editors are welcome to fix issues identified in nomination comments and report back. An editor does not need to vote or be the original nominator to add comments addressing an issue or concern. Editors are also encouraged to address their own suggestions, if possible.

Voting System

To be featured, a nominated article needs four affirmative votes and no outstanding issues within three months after the initial nomination. Every voter should bold the main word(s) in their vote—'yes,' 'no,' 'hesitant yes,' and so on—for easier tallying.

Affirmative votes are all variations on 'yes', with no caveat.
A 'hesitant yes' (also 'conditional yes' and 'yes, but') is considered a yes only once the voter's concerns have been addressed. 'Hesitant yes' should only be used if the voter clearly outlines actionable goals that can be addressed within the voting time period, with the knowledge that as long as their suggested edits are made, their vote counts in the affirmative.
'Maybe' votes are neither contextually affirmative or negative, depending on added comment and Staff discretion. (Please try to refrain from 'maybe' votes for clarity purposes.)
'No', 'not yet' and 'maybe not' all count as negative votes. An article will bypass the three month voting period and be disqualified from the nomination process if it accumulates three negative votes. (This is solely to keep the nomination page from getting cluttered with articles that are clearly not ready to be featured, and not to be used as a non-negotiable rule.)

Some example votes with comments:

* '''Yes.''' That looks great! --~~~~
* '''Yes.''' Good one! --~~~~
* '''Hesitant yes.''' Maybe that intro could be fleshed out a bit more? It doesn't really explain much. --~~~~
* '''Not Yet.''' This is a good page, and with some hard work it could be featured, but right now it has some definite gaps, such as [examples]. -~~~~
* '''No.''' This needs more [[PPOV]]. --~~~~

Request for improvement

If you have reservations about the quality of a nominated article, explain your concerns as specifically as possible, with tangible suggestions, so others will be able to address your points. We encourage editors to follow up on their own suggestions, but improving a nominated article is not the sole responsibility of the original nominator or commenter. All editors are welcome to fix problems that have been flagged up and say the issue has been resolved.

Please try to raise issues in a helpful way about what needs to be improved to change your negative vote. For example:

“vote was No because of several issues regarding [x]; details moved to talk page [link]." to be encouraging, with longer lists of suggested changes going to that article's talk page.

“Not Yet: I would like to see some more fan art added to the fan art selection”.

“Maybe: I feel like the intro is overly long/could be split into two paragraphs.”

Please keep in mind that improvements requiring lore or fandom related content may only see contributions by editors knowledgeable in the fandom – where structural or formatting related issues may be addressed by editors not or not as familiar with the content of the article itself.

Approval and Rejection

When the nomination reaches four affirmative votes with no serious objections, Fanlore Policy & Admin will move the nominated article and subsequent discussion from the Featured Article nominations page to the relevant archive page, along with a notice of the outcome:

::'''Nomination approved.'''

Fanlore Policy & Admin and gardeners, who regularly monitor both lists to make sure approved nominations are added to the list, will schedule featured articles (the next section has more information about this).

If within three months of the nomination date a nomination doesn't reach four votes or has serious objections that are not addressed, Fanlore Policy & Admin and gardeners should archive the nomination with a notice:

::'''Nomination failed due to lack of votes.'''

In some cases (mostly too many negative votes, though occasionally if an article was already featured) a page can be removed from the nomination process before the three-month period is up. Staff will archive these nominations with the notice:

::'''Nomination failed due to objections.'''

In cases where there is a policy issue or other concern with an article, Staff may place the nomination process on hold.

Re-nomination

Articles that have been previously nominated and rejected may be re-nominated if the page has been substantially improved and if the issues raised during the previous nomination have been addressed, but not before a three-month waiting period has passed, so that any raised issues can be addressed accordingly.

Articles that were previously approved (and thus already featured) are currently ineligible for renomination. Please remember to check the Fanlore Featured Articles category for the pages that were featured in each year before nominating a page.

Featured Article scheduling

Fanlore Policy & Admin and gardeners should edit the Featured Article template for the upcoming month at least once a month, listing the pages to be featured in the following four weeks. For more information on how to edit the Featured Article template, consult Template:Featured Article.

✪ This article is part of Fanlore Featured Articles. You can find out more about these below.
How To & About	About Featured Articles • How to Nominate
Past Featured Articles	2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017
Featured Article Nominations	2024 • 2023 • 2022 • 2021 • 2020 • 2019 • 2018 • 2017