Wikipedia talk:Articles for improvement/Main page proposal
Wikipedia:Today's articles for improvement is a weekly collaboration that identifies and improves articles over a one week period. Approximately 18 months ago it was featured on the Main Page (below DYK, original implementation discussion), in a box that randomly rotated 10 articles each week. At the end of 7 weeks it was removed due to a combination of technical issues, overly ambitious expectations, and low results.
There have been many changes since TAFI was last on the Main Page. The collaboration has moved to a much more successful one article per week format. The weekly articles are determined 4 weeks in advance through a points based voting system, where the articles with the most all around support are selected. Once articles are scheduled, a picture and blurb are setup on cascading pages which can be edit protected in advance. The weekly blurbs are used featured in a variety of templates, one of which is featured at the Community portal, and we send out weekly messages to editors that opt in. We make use of the WP v1.0 assessment standards and perform weekly pre and post collaboration article assessments. We track our progress on our Accomplishments page. In the past we had also made use of some bot automated tasks, but there is currently no active bot maintainer.
In the 52 weeks since the change to the one article per week format, actual results have improve dramatically, with 32 of the 52 articles being reassessed at C class or higher. The project also recently had three articles promoted to GA (International airport, Steak and Java Man). We also make use of the Further collaboration page to keep track of articles that are receiving ongoing development past the original 7 day collaboration.
The proposed return to the Main Page would be a full width banner, in the same space where TFL normally runs on Mondays. Since our collaboration runs on the ISO calendar week (Monday to Sunday), and Monday is already taken by TFL, Tuesday would be ideal. It is still early in the weekly cycle, and it would give regular participants 24 hours to come up with some structure/improvement ideas for the article. Featuring this project on the Main Page would be to present an avenue for new editors to join the community. A weekly collaboration, guided by active and experienced editors, would present an opportunity to both improve articles and encourage community inroads.