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.
For what it's worth, I've asked Novem Linguae (courtesy ping) to take a look at making an 4A promotion script, which should hopefully take a lot of the annoyance out of doing these. They told me they're busy at the moment but will try to look at it later in the fall. ♠PMC♠ (talk)19:28, 12 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I've done the majority of promotions for the last couple of years, and it's all I can really do to watchlist the page and not let it fall off the bottom. That means that when nominations are made within 7 days of each other it doesn't hit my radar. I've appealed for help a couple of times but few others are promoting. I don't enjoy the task but I believe it's important for editor retention. The same is true of Triple Crown. I think there'd be more time invested making a script than saved from following the well-detailed instructions (although I'd use the script if someone made it). We just need more people watchlisting the page and lending a helping hand. — Bilorv (talk) 19:05, 14 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
The reason we can never get any traction with doing these is that the process is unbelievably tedious, so no one wants to do any. It takes like five solid minutes to do a single one, and that's if you don't make any mistakes. You have to do a bunch of fiddly templates in a fiddly table (and no cheating by forcing VE, because the templates aren't friendly to VE) and then edit like three other pages to increment numbers or set flags. A script will make that so much easier - enter the dates in the prompt box, hit enter, and it does all the other work for you. Boom. A tedious bore becomes a 30-second data entry adventure. There's no reason not to encourage a willing editor to bash up a tool for it. ♠PMC♠ (talk)19:26, 14 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Though checking the nomination can be trivial when you see 99% of the edits to the article were made by the creator, reviewing each criterion fully is a significant proportion of the time taken. I think it takes me 10 minutes or so to process a nomination. — Bilorv (talk) 19:38, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
The fact that it takes you, the most active and therefore the most experienced promoter, at least ten minutes to do just one of these, is a strong argument for building a script. Any time saved on that will be valuable, both for you and for encouraging other people to step in. Although to be honest it feels like you may be overscrutinizing. People tend to self-select for this one pretty fairly; I don't think I've seen ever seen anyone make an invalid 4A nomination. I just went back and looked at the last ~150 or so edits to the nomination page and I don't see a single one where the edit summary indicates a decline. It's all "awarded", "processed", "done", etc, so it's not as though there's a rash of bad-faith or even mistaken nominations. Spending 10+ minutes to confirm each one feels like going past the point of useful returns. ♠PMC♠ (talk)21:54, 15 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
I'm not launching a campaign against a script that I said I'd use. I just offered my thoughts. I think there are other factors to the backlogs, like the fact that you never get positive feedback on Wikipedia for helping out, just criticism that you're doing the job wrong (e.g. "overscrutinizing"). — Bilorv (talk) 20:34, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Bilorv, I apologize. I didn't mean that as a criticism of you or the hard work you do. I meant it in the sense that I think you're making it harder for yourself than is necessary to get the job done. Our time as editors is valuable, it's the only currency we have here. The time you spend dealing with 4A nominations is valuable time. You could be doing anything at all on-wiki or off, and you are choosing to take on tedious work so that people can get their awards, which I think is a great kindness on your part. I want to be clear as a 4A recipient that I appreciate you and any other editors who take time to do these things. It's because I value your time and effort that I don't think you should have to spend it triple-checking things that don't seem to need to be triple-checked. That's all I meant. ♠PMC♠ (talk)21:19, 17 October 2023 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 10 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello friends, it's occurred to me that we should update the instructions page to be more clear about our current practices here, which lean a little more charitably and less strictly than in the past. Specifically, I think we should be explicit that articles which were converted from redirects, split from other articles, or recreated after deletion, are all acceptable. We've had discussions on this page agreeing to this and I updated the FAQ in line with these ideas in 2022, so I don't anticipate any objections, but discretion + valor etc.
I'm also going to remove the note about the Morotai Mutiny because TonyTheTiger apparently gave Ian the 4A for that one in 2011, so it's stupid to have a note saying it's disqualified. ♠PMC♠ (talk)05:12, 1 February 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 25 days ago1 comment1 person in discussion
If I solicit the Guild of Copy Editors for an article I'm pursuing a 4A for, does that significantly affect eligibility? I wondered if there would be an argument that "someone else wrote this" if I did. I currently have Eternal Blue (album) listed there, and PMC personally knows I've been working on this one for a while. My plan was to get this copyedited, attempt FA again, and if successful nominate it here. If that's a problem, I'll withdraw it and fix complaints at FAC myself. mftp danoops15:47, 13 November 2024 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 1 day ago3 comments2 people in discussion
I realize I swamped the page, so I'm just going to note that ten of the items had received FOURs in the past. I believe the issues that resulted in me avoiding this page after 2013 have been resolved, so those ten should be easy enough to reintroduce. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 17:13, 5 December 2024 (UTC)Reply
