Wikipedia has a plethora of good topics. The criteria used remains that expressed by Larry: (1) copious original content; (2) good writing; (3) clarity for the person who doesn't know what the topic is about (after all, this is an encyclopedia!); (4) whimsy (i.e., don't expect to see perfect consistency and fairness). 5) Refrain from listing many of the articles that consist of links to other articles, except where most of the linked articles were good (this is noted by "and related pages").
- the CIA pages, anyway; hey, the CIA did a great job!
CIA pages are very buggy. I live in Poland and I had to fix a few serious bugs about Poland, I've also found serious bug in article about Isreal.I'm sure that people living in other countries probably could also find some bugs. So don't praise CIA World Factbook too much. --Taw
The author of the Eugene Wigner page placed his own page here, which I think we should agree
is not appropriate (I happen to think some of my pages that aren't here deserve to be, but I'm
not going to nominate myself like that). Also, it was in the wrong place, put here before the article was even written, and the article needs work. --
LDC
Oh, I see. I'd agree with that. --
LMS
Seeing that the same thing has happened again, I've added a sentence to the main page suggesting that you shouldn't nominate a page you've written most of. If that's not the consensus view, please remove it --Robert Merkel
I agree that the article is pretty good, though, and may well end up there soon. --LDC
I fully concur with the "don't nominate yourself" principle that LDC outlined. (OK - no page "belongs" to anyone, but obviously if you've made 23 out of 24 edits, there is a sense in which it is "your article" for this particular discussion.) Like LDC, I've written a few articles that I thought were damn good, but sadly no-one else feels they qualifyfor BP. However, that aspect is a good exercise in humility, and make's me want to try and write better articles. - MMGB
I admire your humility. But are you sure that the people who know about the brilliant prose page and who are knowledgeable enough in your subject area to recognize brilliant discussion of it are the same people who have read your article? ... Looking forward to having an active "watchlist," --
Koyaanis Qatsi.
Even if I don't think you should add your own page, I don't think there's anything wrong with bringing attention to your work: Manning, I added your Paul Erdos page. --LDC
Removed Charles Evers because the article is clearly not yet up to scratch. To the person(s) working on the Evers page, I'd just like to make clear that this is a page for recognising the best writing on Wikipedia, not the articles on people who we think are particularly notable. If the article becomes brilliant, me or somebody else might well add it here. --Robert Merkel
- Robert - I've also removed the Charles Evers article (on another occasion) for the same reasons of inadequate quality - better watch out for this link in future. - MMGB
Shouldn't Brilliant prose be named wikipedia:Brilliant prose? This article is really wikipedia-centric and has no place in the article namespace - me thinks. --maveric149, Thursday, April 4, 2002
Yes, I suppose it should now that we have namespaces. I'll try to hunt down all the links. --LDC
I removed a bunch of things:
anarchism,
capitalism,
democracy,
city,
countries of the world because, well, because these pages are just not brilliant. I believe that when this page got started a lot of stuff got put here because they were some of our first long articles that actually resembled enclopaedia articles. But now we have a lot of truly brilliant articles, so I think we shouldn't be afraid to add those here and subtract the ones that really need work.
djk 14:21 Jul 26, 2002 (PDT)
- I'd suggest anarchism might now qualify: I'd like people to take a look and see what they think. Also, libertarian socialism might be good enough. I'll let others judge, since I did a lot of work on those pages. Sam 20:51 Jan 12, 2003 (UTC)
- Well? Look at them now, dammit! ;) -- Sam 12:49 Jan 30, 2003 (UTC)
I tend to flip in and out of here a lot, so I'm not sure where to ask this, but is it possible to but a button or link on the pages that we'd like to nominate for inclusion on the 'brilliant prose' page? I'm sure somebody's had this discussion somewhere, just not sure where ... Certainly it would be an easier way to add pages and encourage adding to this list - it seems a bit clumsy at the moment. As long as its not abused, of course ;)
Atorpen 00:37 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)
- I'm sure it'd be possible to add such a feature. It would probably be nice, but IMHO there are more important features required. --Robert Merkel 01:02 Jan 23, 2003 (UTC)
- Certainly understandable. Atorpen
Does
Freestyle music really belong here? This article didn't strike me as being particularly well written, and isn't even laid out in the agreed wikipedia style (ie, no definition at the start, title isn't bolded (doesn't even appear!) in the first sentence...
quercus robur 09:33 Mar 10, 2003 (UTC)
You can't call prose "brilliant" when it only avoids sexism by means of clumsy usages. Since in this case it was historically inaccurate (no female PMs yet), and the "they" form was not only clumsy but obscured the essential aspect of individual connection and responsibility, I changed it. I earnestly hope that someone can find a form of words that avoids both treading on toes and inacccuracy, but meanwhile - here's the former. PML.
Tannin, my face is getting red ;)
Ericd 11:21 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)
- I have to sit down and read it through carefully, Eric, but the work that went into that layout and, in particular the table, is fantastic. Who says open source can't get professional results? Tannin
- Don't emphasize too much on the table I didn' collect the datas myself and my HTML editor did good job.
- Ericd 11:33 Apr 18, 2003 (UTC)
I just added Prisoner's dilemma, which seems well-written. What's wrong with it? --
Taku 17:51 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
- It is a great article. I misinterpreted "-- Prisoner's dilemma" as meaning you removed it. Kingturtle 17:53 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
- LOL, I was thinking the same thing, but I checked the diff and saw what he really meant, but then I really got perplexed when I saw Taku asking what was wrong with it. -- John Owens 17:55 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Oh, I gotcha. Sure, -- can be seen as "remove". I didn't think of that at all. I would be more carefully next time then. -- Taku 17:59 May 13, 2003 (UTC)
Moved talk about new candidates section to Wikipedia talk:Brilliant prose candidates.