The Signpost

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Paul M. Barrett1, Kimberley E.J. Chapelle, Casey K. Staunton, Jennifer Botha & Jonah N. Choiniere
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Serendipity

Maintenance crews continue to slog through Wikipedia's oldest Featured Articles

Unreviewed featured articles/2020 (URFA/2020) is a systematic approach to reviewing older Featured articles (FAs) to ensure they still meet the FA standards. Through 2025, with 4,526 "very old" (from the 2004–2009 period) and "old" (2010–2015) FAs initially needing review:

  • 556 FAs were delisted at Featured article review (FAR).
  • 322 FAs were kept at FAR or deemed "satisfactory" by three URFA reviewers. Hundreds more are marked as "satisfactory", but are awaiting three reviews.
  • FAs needing review dropped from 77% of total FAs at the end of 2020 to 53% at the end of 2022.
  • 19% of articles originally listed at URFA/2020 have been reviewed.

URFA is working to help maintain FA standards; for some, FAs are restored via FAR. For others, improvements are initiated when talk pages are noticed.

Examples of 2025 FAs that kept their status at FAR or were deemed "Satisfactory" at URFA/2020

There remain almost 4,000 old and very old FAs to be reviewed, and any little bit helps to improve our oldest FAs.

Ideas for how you can help are listed below and at the 2022 Signpost article:

  • Review a 2004 to 2007 FA. With three "Satisfactory" marks, an article can be moved to the FAR not needed section.
  • Review "your" articles: Did you nominate a featured article between 2004 and 2015 that you have continuously maintained? Check these articles, update as needed, and mark them as "Satisfactory" at URFA/2020. A continuously maintained FA is a good predictor that standards are still met, and indicates to reviewers that it is ready to be checked by a neutral editor. If they no longer meet the FA standards, please begin the FAR process by posting your concerns on the article's talk page.
  • Review articles that already have one "Satisfactory" mark: more FAs can be indicated as "FAR not needed" if other reviewers take a look at those already indicated as maintained. If you find issues, you can enter them at the talk page.
  • Fix an existing featured article: Choose an article at URFA/2020 or FAR and bring it back to FA standards. Enlist the help of the original nominator, frequent FA reviewers, WikiProjects listed on the talk page, or editors who have written similar topics. When the article returns to FA standards, please mark it as "Satisfactory" at URFA/2020 or note your progress in the article's FAR.
  • Review and nominate an article to FAR that has been "noticed" of a FAR needed but issues raised on talk have not been addressed. Sometimes nominating at FAR draws additional editors to help improve the article that would otherwise not look at it. You can also look at the unreferenced sub-project, which lists articles that a script has indicated might have several unreferenced paragraphs: the script is not perfect, which is why human editors are needed to verify that the article truly does have uncited statements.

More regular URFA and FAR reviewers will help assure that FAs continue to represent examples of Wikipedia's best work. If you have any questions or feedback, please visit Wikipedia talk:Unreviewed featured articles/2020/2025 report.

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Thanks to the URFA people and everyone who maintains FAs. Maintenance is just as important as content creation/expansion! Icepinner (Come to Hakurei Shrine!) 08:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

There are 137 Featured articles with statements tagged as unsourced. DuncanHill (talk) 09:14, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

We can't even find people who are willing to review current Featured Article candidates. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 15:04, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

  • @Thebiguglyalien: and any other interested editors: I like setting a goal of reviewing one URFA/2020 FA a week, as FAR allows editors to post an article once a week (if that is necessary). Any help is appreciated. For FAC, I encourage editors who nominate articles to review: it takes at least 5 reviews at FAC to promote, so I try to maintain a 5-to-1 review to nomination ratio. Z1720 (talk) 16:48, 17 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • This is a fantastic project - I've seen notifications of FARs at some WikiProject talk pages I watch, but didn't realise it was a coordinated effort until now. It might not be as glamorous as creating new FAs, but it's just as (if not more) important. Thanks for all your hard work! Ethmostigmus 🌿 (talk | contribs) 01:56, 18 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]
  • I wonder whether checking with AI tools for inaccuracies or maybe other issues (like dead refs) is part of the review routine(s) – see the AI finds errors in 90% of Wikipedia's best articles Signpost piece. Thanks to all the hard work people of this backlog drive are doing! I think statistical charts of the progress would be nice to have in such articles. What's described here is a specific contribution type (reviewing [old] FAs) and I think it would be motivating if there were user stats for task types like that (see also c:Category:Wikimedia contributions for more + ideas) and associated badges as well as a way to find items of that task type one is interested in (basically FAs in need of review finding people who are knowledgeable in the subject to do so, not only the other way around). --Prototyperspective (talk) 00:53, 19 February 2026 (UTC)[reply]

















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