Wikipedia talk:Four Award
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Frequently asked questions
Q1: What does WP:FOUR recognize and why?
A1: FOUR recognizes the development of an article through four major editorial stages: 1.) A new creation, 2.) a developing article with at least one interesting encyclopedic fact (WP:DYK), 3.) a fairly thorough and high quality article (WP:WIAGA), 4.) complete article passing all quality standards (WP:WIAFA). Taking one brand-new article through all three of Wikipedia's major content milestones is a major achievement, and this award exists to recognize that effort and encourage others to do the same. Q2: What counts as a new article for the purpose of WP:FOUR?
A2: Any article that would have been a redlink before you created it, or any article that was a redirect with no content history before you wrote it. Articles that are redlinks because they were deleted count so long as you created your version from scratch. If a redirect has content history that you did not create, it does not count. Q3: Are articles split from other articles eligible?
A3: Generally yes, as long as you made significant editorial contributions in the process of shepherding it through the relevant DYK/GA/FA nominations. Q4: What about expansions from existing stubs?
A4: Regardless of the quality of the stub, expanding an article does not count as creating a new article. You are improving an article that already exists – an achievement not to be downplayed, but not the purpose of the Four Award. Q5: If an article was featured as a bold link on WP:ITN or WP:OTD, rendering it ineligible for WP:DYK, can it still qualify for WP:FOUR?
A5: No. ITN and OTD have different criteria and quality standards for their selections than DYK, so those processes are not considered substitutes for DYK the purpose of the Four Award. Q6: Are articles nominated for DYK after becoming GAs eligible?
A6: Yes. The timing of the DYK does not matter. Q7: Why doesn't this award include articles that went through three of the four stages?
A7: Because it's the Four Award. Its purpose is to recognize the effort involved for one person to bring one article from brand-new through all three of Wikipedia's major content milestones. Allowing only three stages to be recognized would be counter to the point. The WP:TRIPLECROWN recognizes when an editor has achieved several milestones on different articles, and may be of interest to users whose articles do not meet the FOUR criteria. Q8: Why don't we have a five award for WP:FAs that make the main page through WP:TFA, or become part of a WP:FT?
A8: The Four Award recognizes advances in editorial quality. Being selected for TFA is one way an article is recognized for achieving FA status. Being included in a WP:FT is another. Neither TFA nor FT represents an advance in editorial quality past FA, so they are not considered as part of the Four Award process. Q9: Is it possible for collaborators to all receive WP:FOUR recognition?
A9: Yes. In order for multiple editors to be awarded WP:FOUR recognition, there needs to evidence of collaboration throughout all of the processes. As WP:DYK, WP:GAN, and WP:FAC all allow co-nominations, the most challenging aspect is during the article creation stage. Evidence of collaboration can be provided for the creation stage in a number of ways. A common way would be multiple editors providing substantial content to a draft, which would then be moved into the article mainspace. The responsibility is on the nominators to provide the reviewer evidence of the collaboration throughout the entire article development process (evidence above and beyond just being a co-nominator would need to be provided). Q10: Are articles nominated for featured lists status eligible?
A10: No. The featured list editorial process is different from the featured article process. FOUR is meant to recognize the article-development process, not the list-development process. |
 | This page was nominated for deletion on 15 August 2013. The result of the discussion was keep. |
"Former" awards
I noticed that 4A is the only user award where you can lose your award because your article got delisted. Honestly I think that sucks. You don't lose your Wikipedia:Triple Crown if your article gets deleted or whatever. Why should your 4A be relegated to former in the same instance? You still did the work to get the award, even if it later got delisted or deleted. Does anyone have any objections if I declare a general amnesty and restore the ones that have been cast down into sadness? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:23, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- I don't think "former awards" makes sense (we should not take away people's awards unless we can prove they cheated and never deserved them), but it is fine to note articles that are no longer FA. —Kusma (talk) 07:20, 11 December 2024 (UTC)
- Excellent. Love it. Starting to reintroduce them now. How do we feel about marking delisted FAs with a † symbol? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:55, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- In a perfect world, I'd like to see a symbol like that plus a footnote explaining that and when the article was delisted/merged/whatever. —Kusma (talk) 12:27, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- I made the dagger hoverable, with a little tooltip that says the article was delisted deleted or merged. I could go back and add delist dates, if you feel it's helpful. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:00, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- In a perfect world, I'd like to see a symbol like that plus a footnote explaining that and when the article was delisted/merged/whatever. —Kusma (talk) 12:27, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
- Excellent. Love it. Starting to reintroduce them now. How do we feel about marking delisted FAs with a † symbol? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:55, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
My nominations
I wanted to ask if anyone is processing my nominations at the page? I can create and share the syntax for updating the Records table if no one has gotten started on that.--NØ 16:49, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
- FOUR awards often take a couple of weeks to get processed. Somebody'll get to yours eventually. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:33, 22 March 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for the heads up. I find it unfair for someone else to have to do this much work for me to be awarded, so I am sharing the syntax below:
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- Pinging TechnoSquirrel69, who is the most recently active awarder.--NØ 04:40, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
- Thanks for doing that, MaranoFan, I've gone ahead and handed those diamonds out to you. This actually reminds me of some changes I was thinking of for the {{Four Award Nomination}} template that would make things easier for reviewers. I'll probably sandbox that and propose it when I have a little more time on my hands. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 21:34, 24 March 2025 (UTC)
- Pinging TechnoSquirrel69, who is the most recently active awarder.--NØ 04:40, 23 March 2025 (UTC)
Why not use the draft symbol instead?
What's the point of using the "neutral vote" image for "new article"? There's already a dedicated symbol for that. Is it possible to make a second version? I feel like it'd look better too. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 02:49, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- The reason the Draft symbol wasn't used is because the Four Award predates the creation of draft space
(not by much, if I remember correctly, but by about a year or so).That being said, I agree that this is a better symbol for "create an article" and would support its usage. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 03:27, 28 May 2025 (UTC)- Struck the "not by much" comment; apparently Cas got an award in 2009 — Chris Woodrich (talk) 03:28, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- @Chris Woodrich,
I'd be willing to make this. I'll make a version and put it up for vote in a new post.– Farkle Griffen (talk) 16:31, 28 May 2025 (UTC) - Turns out everything is an SVG, and I don't know how to properly edit those. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 17:43, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Neither do I. But before being WP:BOLD, I'd say it's definitely worth letting others provide feedback, given that the award design has stayed the same for sixteen years. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 18:50, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- What Hawkeye said. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:51, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Wikimedia's SVG rendering and Adobe Illustrator seem not to get along well, but I made File:Four Award with draft icon.svg Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Whoop! Gog the Mild (talk) 20:16, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Nice! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:38, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- Responding to idea lab post: Seems a positive change, as the neutral symbol doesn't make any intuitive sense. I personally have used the
stub symbol for new articles (seems more applicable to that then it does for stubs really), but the draft symbol carries a similar message. CMD (talk) 09:32, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
- Responding to idea lab post: Seems a positive change, as the neutral symbol doesn't make any intuitive sense. I personally have used the
- Nice! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:38, 29 May 2025 (UTC)
- Whoop! Gog the Mild (talk) 20:16, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Wikimedia's SVG rendering and Adobe Illustrator seem not to get along well, but I made File:Four Award with draft icon.svg Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 20:14, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- What Hawkeye said. Gog the Mild (talk) 19:51, 28 May 2025 (UTC)
- Responding from the idea lab post too, really agree with the change! Even if new articles don't necessarily go through draft space, it is still more representative of article creation than a "neutral vote" image. Chaotic Enby (talk · contribs) 15:50, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
- I like the draft symbol much more than the equals sign. Let's do this. Binksternet (talk) 16:15, 14 June 2025 (UTC)
- 2nd with enby here. A positive improvement to the look. JackFromWisconsin (talk | contribs) 19:49, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
- I'm also here from the idea lab, this is a solid improvement. That gray icon always bugged me a little. Toadspike [Talk] 13:48, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
- I very boldly made the change to the main page, the template and it's doc page and the wikipedia awards template which shows a very small icon of the four award. I still might've missed some, namely those ribbon templates Yelps ᘛ⁐̤ᕐᐷ critique me 11:00, 21 June 2025 (UTC)
- Just looked at the main page and was confused as to why people thought the symbol was out of place, being a pen and all. Looking back at the old version it's much worse. Fully endorse this. Mrfoogles (talk) 22:39, 21 June 2025 (UTC)
- It's been well over a week since your change and it still seems to be unanimously approved. I updated the userboxes, nomination template, and put in an edit request at Template talk:Icon to update
. I think that covers just about everything. – Farkle Griffen (talk) 17:43, 30 June 2025 (UTC)
- Excellent suggestion, and the new image is fantastic. Progress like this counterbalances the creeping cynicism I get from observing .... so ... many ... bad decisions in WP. Good work! Noleander (talk) 00:23, 9 September 2025 (UTC)
Implicit GA in FA?
Howdy, recently I brought an article from creation to DYK to Featured List: List of Chaplain Corps Medal of Honor recipients. I skipped the GA process as it is so horridly backlogged, Featured List was the goal anyways, and the FL review process was very quick. There was a discussion a decade ago here about whether receiving an article becoming Featured receives Good Article en passant, or whether not literally receiving all four awards literally is disqualifying; the discussion didn't seem to reach consesnsus. I don't have a strong preference, but I wanted to bring it up again for discussion. ~Darth StabroTalk • Contribs 14:49, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
- Featured Lists don't qualify for FOUR anyway as lists can't be GAs, so in your case it's a moot point. In general, I would argue that skipping GA is not in the spirit of the FOUR award - all three "overview" processes have different criteria and check different aspects of the article. GA these days mandates a spot check, for example, where FAC does not except for first-time noms. It's fine to skip GA given the backlog, but if you skipped it, you skipped that phase and don't qualify for FOUR. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:01, 11 March 2026 (UTC)
Question
An article was created and promoted to GA 10+ years ago, but without the DYK nomination. Now the article is improved toward FA. The promotion to FA status (as far as I understand) does not satisfy the newness criterion for DYK. Is there another way to get the DYK or something equivalent to satisfy the Four award or the particular article is doomed not to qualify for the award? Thank you in advance. A.Cython(talk) 00:55, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- Only if the article can somehow be expanded 5 times (or I guess if it got demoted and then re-promoted at GAN). Otherwise, It can't get another DYK. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:19, 12 March 2026 (UTC)
- That's what I thought when I looked at the rules. It is strange when the rules point to unintended conclusions it got demoted and then re-promoted at GAN. Oh well... thank you for your reply. I will be happy once (and if) I manage to get it to FA, that's enough of a reward. A.Cython(talk) 02:08, 12 March 2026 (UTC)