Wikipedia talk:Featured article criteria

If an article has a sentence, and there are several sources for that sentence, say three, that are all significant, what is the best practices in FA for listing all sources? Displaying three (or more) separate cite superscripts as [1][2][3] in the body is clearly ugly, so bundling is preferred, correct? Is is acceptable in the FA world to use bullets as shown in the following examples:

This is sentence one.^[1]

or:

This is the sentence two.^[1]

or:

This is the sentence three.^[1]

[ignore the first/last/title formatting here ... question is only about the bullet layout]. Or is some other approach more favored in the FA universe? Noleander (talk) 20:07, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

All forms are acceptable. Bundling is not best practice. I personally prefer separate cite superscripts, as bundling leads to bloat and repetition where the same reference is used multiple times in different bundles. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 21:01, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Agree with Hawkeye that bundling is not necessarily preferred. It's worth considering whether you do in fact need to use three or more consecutive citations often enough that it makes a difference whether or not you bundle – often lots of consecutive citations are either unnecessary (unless it's very contentious, you don't generally need three citations to support the same claim) or could be better placed so as to make it clear which one supports which claim. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:35, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

@Caeciliusinhorto - Great suggestions. Regarding multiple sources for a sentence: the article I'm working on covers a contentious topic, and there are a couple of sections that seem to attract lots of the wrong kind of attention. Providing multiple sources is, it seems to me, a useful way to provide information for editors 5 or 10 or 20 years in the future. If editor(s) in 2025 do research and find 3 different angles on a single sentence, why not capture all 3 angles, so future editors don't need to repeat the research process? Again, this is in the context of contentious sections that have been repeatedly contested over the past 20 years. Noleander (talk) 00:31, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

There certainly are situations where multiple citations are a good idea. Looking at your contributions, I see a lot of recent edits to Margaret Sanger – I can certainly see why you might want to might often want to provide multiple sources there. If you do want to bundle citations in an article like this, I don't think anything in the FA criteria would prohibit you from doing so. Of the three examples you give, I would tend towards the second format Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:53, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 - Thanks for clarifying that bundling is not best practice ... good to know. Noleander (talk) 00:27, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

He's expressed his opinion, which is far from clarifying or confirming anything. I tend to use 2-3 sources together, & will bundle short non-templated refs together, which is absolutely fine for FA. FAC is still resistant to any pushing of a particular ref style, though unfortunately not as much as it used to be. That's as long as the system works. Johnbod (talk) 19:01, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Bundling is allowed. Not bundling is also allowed. FAC does not have a preference between those options. Nikkimaria (talk) 20:37, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

@Hawkeye7 and Nikkimaria: when bundling when different parts of a sentence come from different sources, are explanations required for what comes from where, per WP:CITEBUNDLE? For a single sentence, is it an WP:INTEGRITY issue bundling different things without mentioning? Bogazicili (talk) 21:24, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

It would depend very much on the specifics of the case, IMO. It certainly makes INTEGRITY problems more likely. Nikkimaria (talk) 00:48, 26 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! I'm interpreting this as, unless it is obvious, it should be in WP:CITEBUNDLE Bogazicili (talk) 20:00, 27 June 2025 (UTC)

Consider a biographical article, and the subject wrote book "A Great Book". That book does not have its own article in WP. The book _is_ used as a source for citations, so it has an entry in the Bibliography, and there are citations pointing to it. Query: When the body of article first names "A Great Book" in a sentence, should the text be a blue link down to the entry for "A Great Book" in the Bibliography section? Or should the book's name simply be white text with no link? Or does FA not care either way? [PS: I tried to find recent FA articles that had this situation, but could not find any] Noleander (talk) 04:56, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't do that -- it would be a WP:EASTEREGG. I tend to footnote with something like "the work is Smith 2020", linking "Smith 2020" via a Harvnb template. I'll blow my own trumpet and point you towards note 63 on Alison Frantz. UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 23:03, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Footnote 49 in Coinage Act of 1873. I did not note that it was a source.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:35, 25 June 2025 (UTC)

In 2019, compliance with WP:make technical articles understandable was added to the GA criteria. Surprisingly, the standards at FA seem to be lower in this regard, even though reviewers sometimes argue that overly complicated prose and content is not engaging (1a). The recent disaster around simple AI summaries reminded me of this discrepancy. Would people be open to adding a new criterion (1g) worded as:

1g. Understandable to an appropriately broad audience.

In my experience, articles tend to mimic the tone of academic sources, which for technical FA articles are often preferred. Sometimes appropriately of course, for topics studied at postgraduate level, but there is a tendency to use the same tone for articles likely of interest to a non-academic audience. Given FAs should be the best articles we write, excluding a large share of our readership by making things too complicated isn't ideal. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:37, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

No, 1a should cover it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:25, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't consistently in practice however. Some reviewers interpret 1a to include understandability to a wide audience, while other articles that are unnecessarily complicated (but great in other aspects) pass. Making it explicit will remove this inconsistency. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 13:40, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

Such as? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:55, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

I don't want to single out current nominations, but might be better able to give examples if there is a list of recently passed FAs? It's not too difficult to find overly complicated leads of FAs from the overall list. In medicine, all the articles I looked at are understandable. In other topics, it's more hit-and-miss. For instance, group (mathematics), fails to give a simple example in the first paragraph. Diamond contained a niche application in its first paragraph, DNA contains unnecessary jargon in its first sentence, Actuary has overly complex sentence structures in its second paragraph, Oxidative phosphorilation had inaccessible IPA in its first sentence. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:52, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

This will give you the recently passed FAs. I think one problem with your proposal is there is a spectrum of opinion about how technical or non-technical language should be for any given article. WP:ONEDOWN is one suggestion but I have seen (and engaged in) multiple good faith disagreements about what is appropriate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:28, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

And here is one of the discussions I mentioned -- there are many others. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:37, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

FAs are required to comply with the MoS, which includes MOS:JARGON. This by no means includes all of the areas complained about, but a greater awareness of it at FAC may help. (It is also where one level down features in the MoS.) Gog the Mild (talk) 19:45, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

On the face of it, it does seem odd that GAs are held to higher standards of comprehensibility than FAs. De facto, it is extremely common to bring up comprehensibility in FA reviews, so there might be an advantage in writing that into the criteria explicitly -- though, as Gog and Sandy say, it's certainly possible to justify opposing an incomprehensible article on existing grounds (either that it doesn't meet MOS:JARGON or that a professional writer would do a better job of making it understandable; MOS:NOFORCELINK sometimes comes in as well). I'm not sure I'd want to put WP:MTAU, particularly WP:ONEDOWN, on too high a pedestal -- the "intended audience" part is controversial, possibly not applicable to FAs (which generally end up on the Main Page, so being read by everybody) and often used (at this point the proposer may remember a recent GA nomination...) to justify not making an article comprehensible. I suppose that probably all works out to a tentative support in principle? UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 22:55, 7 June 2025 (UTC)

What about adjusting the text of 1a instead of adding a new criterion? I could support, e.g., a new wording of "Its prose is engaging, of a professional standard, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience." A. Parrot (talk) 02:40, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

I would also support this. Alexeyevitch^(talk) 03:36, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

That would seem like a good move to me: "appropriately broad" theoretically allows a duck-out under ONEDOWN (e.g. "this article is too complicated for absolute beginners, but they're not an appropriate audience for this topic). UndercoverClassicist ^T·C 11:30, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

I like the approach of working any change in to 1a, but can't support it as written ("appropriately broad audience"); the technical density of the article varies as one goes deeper in to the article, or in to sections that would be less read by "broad audiences" (eg, pathophysiology in medical articles). The level of accessibility is not the same for the entire article as it needs to be, for example, for the lead or several other sections (in medical, eg symptoms). Again, I believe the notion is worthy, but the problem is already covered by 1a and 2. If it's not being applied at FAC, that is a separate matter. We really should avoid CREEP in FA criteria. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Supportive of changing 1a instead too.

SG: The suggested text is meant to cover that nuance: the difficulty of a text should depend on the range of expected readers (and that includes within-article differences in audience). WP:MTAU, which I suggest we link to, mentions the differences in difficulty within an article in WP:UPFRONT. We might want to improve the guideline now that most people are reading article non-linearly on mobile. That shortcut further suggest a section such as pathophysiology could have a single paragraph in simpler terms before delving into the technical details. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:29, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

MOS:INTRO also implies the lead should be relatively easy to understand compared to the body (and leads are also prominent for mobile). I've as a vague rule of thumb considered ONEDOWN to be useful for the body, while the lead could perhaps be 'TWODOWN' or similar. CMD (talk) 01:29, 10 June 2025 (UTC)

I think that however you phrase it, since FAs tend to be on non-basic or specialized subjects, there is always going to be discussions about whether or the basic concepts that underlie the article should be explained for the benefit of the newbie, whether an article about a baseball game should assume the reader knows the rules of baseball.--Wehwalt (talk) 14:01, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

I am not sure I could support the word "appropriately". What does it mean? In what way does it improve, or even change, "understandable to a broad audience"? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:20, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Other wording might be "understandable to its expected audiences". I've pluralised here in lieu of 'broad'. "Understandable to a broad audience" might imply that highly specialised articles need to be understandable to people unfamiliar with the topic area. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:32, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Er, if an article is only understandable to people already familiar with the topic area, why is it in a general encyclopedia? Gog the Mild (talk) 20:38, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

With topic area I mean the broader topic. As in, I expect only people with a decent grounding in mathematics or physics to read Ginzburg–Landau equation. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:45, 9 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for all the thoughts here. Opening an RfC, as there seems appetite for possibly adding this, but there's no clear consensus for the wording. Hope that the proposals below address concerns expressed above. That is, putting the audience of an article (section) explicitly in there. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:45, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

Should understandability be added to the featured article criteria? And if so, which wording should be used?

1. It should be added to the well-written criterion as
   1. well-written: its prose is engaging, understandable to a broad audience, and of a professional standard;
   2. well-written: its prose is engaging, understandable to its audience, and of a professional standard;
2. It should be a separate criterion: 1g. Understandable to its audience.
3. Status quo: no explicit mention

—Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:45, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

• Option 2 > 1.2 > 1.1: If I had to choose 3 criteria for a featured article, it would be that the article is well-researched, neutral and understandable. In the GA criteria, we explicitly mention understandability, but we omit this in the featured article criteria. Adding understandability has two advantages: it puts it more front-of-mind for those preparing an article, and makes it more likely reviewers explicitly review on it. In my experience of reviewing at FACs, article writers often have to make fairly significant changes, in particular the lead, to make the article more understandable. It would be good to make expectations more explicit. On occasion, tough-to-read articles slip through.
  Now, there's two options to include this. The first is to adjust the 'well-written' criterion, the second is to include it as a separate criterion. As understandability refers not only to prose, but also to images and tables, my preference is to mention it as a separate criterion. For example, at Talk:Grid energy storage/GA1, I was rightly requested to remove a complicated figure and replace it with a simpler table. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 11:45, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1.1 good to explicitly mention WP:MTAU in the criteria, but it's a subset of prose and there's no need to include a link to an essay too. Thus, 1.1 works best. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:15, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• 3, then 1.2 Frankly, I don't see the need for a change, it is going to come down to reviewer and coordinator judgment in any case. If we do, it is senseless to make an article understandable to those who will never read it. I read 1.2 to say that an article should be understandable to those who would be expected to read it. Thus, an article on the finer points of baseball should be understandable to those who at least have a nodding acquaintance with baseball. If it is to be read to say that you have to dumb down prose to explain there are 9 players on the field in a baseball game etc then I certainly favor 3. In neither case should this be used to bludgeon nominators over the head who care to write specialized articles.--Wehwalt (talk) 13:03, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3, no change, not necessary: well-written prose should already be enforcing understability via WP:WIAFA crit. 1, MOS:JARGON is already part of WP:WIAFA via crit. 2, and expanding the FA definition of a professional level of writing is instruction creep that opens the possibility for problems such as the claim that anything not explicitly mentioned isn't included (keep it simple applies). Different parts of the article have to be accessible at different levels; this addition creates the possibility of making it harder to write the specialist parts of FAs. The LEAD should be understandable to very broad audiences (MOS:INTRO is already covered by crit. 2), whereas more technical sections (eg pathophysiology in medical content) can be written at a higher level; adding this broadly without such nuance could be problematic. There are quite a few subject areas whose articles get through FAC with dense prose that is hard to understand even at the intro levels, but if WP:MTAU is not being reviewed for and enforced at FAC now, that is a FAC/Coord problem that hamstringing writers by CREEPing the criteria won't solve; it's perfectly fine for the Coords to point out when dense prose is present that reviewers haven't addressed, and delay promotion until that review has occurred and items have been addressed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:23, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 per scope creep. Strongly opposed to option 1.1, which dumbs wikipedia down. I don't expect to understand an article on quantum physics or partial differential equations, but I do expect physicists and mathematicians to find those subjects in an encyclopedia. Option 1.2 would be acceptable to me as long as it is clearly understood that the audiences for physics and mathematics articles are physicists and mathematicians, and similarly the audience for other in-depth articles is the profession interested in that article's topic. DrKay (talk) 13:37, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3. I don't have any objections in principle to the requirement for understandability, but it's not well-enough defined for the other options to be helpful. I agree with DrKay that 1.1 is a particularly bad choice -- there is no way that sheaf (mathematics) can be made to comply with it, for example. 1.2 and 2 don't say who the audience is: if it's professional mathematicians, then the article on mathematical sheaves is fine as is. If it's undergraduate mathematics students then it's not. That question is exactly what derails many of these discussions. I agree that WP:JARGON does already cover this as much as can be done and so this is scope creep to some extent as others have said. That doesn't bother me too much, though; the real issue is that this would add nothing useful to the discussions that already take place at FACs on this question, and 1.1 would be actively harmful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 1.1, then 3. Option 1.2 might cause editors to state that their intended audience is people with specialised knowledge, which is not English Wikipedia's stated audience. I read DrKay and Mike's comments above and do not agree, but would not be bothered if Option 3 was used over option 1.1. I like 1.1 because it makes the formatting of the criteria more succinct. Z1720 (talk) 14:11, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Option 3 I think "audience" and "broad audience" need to be clearly defined before any FA criteria can be based on these terms. There's a shortage of science FACs and I think adding another hurdle will deter nominations. We have Criterion 1a, which should be enough if fully enforced. There are many subjects that I would have to work at understanding, but at the same time, I expect to see them in an encyclopaedia. This is not the Simple Wikipedia.Graham Beards (talk) 16:35, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

  I believe it has been defined clearly as WP:ONEDOWN. This ensures that maybe 95% of likely readers will understand a given article.

  I would not see this as a hurdle, in the sense that some editors believe they need to cover highly technical issues only of interest to a very small subset of expected readers. By making clear prose needs to be understandable to its audience, you lower the hurdle to write about these technical topics. I usually find reviewers helping me write more understandable the most pleasurable part of nominating articles. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:39, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

  Hi Femke, from my experience (nearly 20 years) of our FA system, this comes naturally to our nominators of technical articles and is further refined by our reviewers. In my view, they write lower than one down. The most recent FAC that comes to mind is Virgo interferometer. This was not one of my nominations, but one I fully supported. When we worked together on Menstrual cycle, you noticed that I did not dwell on the chemical structure or the precise mechanism of the hormones actions. I don't believe we need to add another criterion: we should enforce the ones that have served us well for so many years. Graham Beards (talk) 19:46, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3. I found myself nodding to every rationale for preferring option 3 above, but have been holding off a decision. Mention of ONEDOWN has crystalised my decision, as I have only previously seen it cited as a reason for not making articles more understandable. Gog the Mild (talk) 17:54, 15 June 2025 (UTC)
• Strong support for Option 3 I've seen problematic changes when editors try to change the text to simplify it. I think this might also lead to WP:OR, WP:DUE, and WP:PROPORTION issues. In general, I find editorial decisions in Wikipedia such as this as very problematic. Paraphrasing what the sources say in simpler terms should be ok, but we should stick to what the sources say in general. If the article is too complicated, find another source which explains the issue in more simple terms. These discussions should be done on the talk page of the article, and depends on the availability of the sources. Given availability of the sources is an issue, I'd only support a recommendation for "understandable to its audience" Bogazicili (talk) 17:55, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

  Support Option 3 for the same reason. Gommeh 🎮 20:53, 1 July 2025 (UTC)

• Option 3. I don't see how an article would even get through FA if it weren't understandable to an audience. MTAU reads more like advice and I'm not sure how we can really evaluate compliance with ONEDOWN. voorts (talk/contributions) 20:45, 20 June 2025 (UTC)

Could someone clarify please why there is a difference with regards to accessibility between WP:FLCR and WP:FACR? I particular, why is §5(c) of the featured list criteria not present in the featured article criteria? Renerpho (talk) 12:26, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Renerpho, see e.g. Wikipedia_talk:Featured_article_candidates/archive93#Alt text for discussion on the issue, and the previous RfC (linked therein). There may have been subsequent discussions since. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:54, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Thanks! Renerpho (talk) 13:20, 24 June 2025 (UTC)