Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Fuck (film)

Firstly, thank you to all who commented on the nomination, particularly those for whom it was your first time at the TFA requests page. A lot of good points were made – a few unhelpful ones – and I think that the nomination has now been open sufficiently long for a decision to be made. For the record, I left notice of this nomination at Talk:Main Page, Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates, Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous) and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard. There was also a discussion at User talk:Jimbo Wales that I started after his name was mentioned here, and the nomination was added to {{Centralized discussion}}. I am satisfied that the discussion was well-advertised in neutral locations designed to bring in as many people as possible to the discussion and attempting to minimise any accusation that the decision had been taken by an unrepresentative clique. In fact, with 80 editors or so participating in the discussion, this sets a new record for a TFA request (and I will add it to Wikipedia:Today's featured article oddities in due course).

Discounting those !votes that were conditional on appearance for a specific day rather than a non-specific day, I make the final tally of comments 52–25. In other words, more than twice the number of people expressing an opinion were in favour of the article running.

Looking at the arguments raised, several common themes emerge.

• Some comments questioned the motivation of the nominator, but as so many respected editors endorsed the nomination it would be impossible to conclude that this was a bad-faith request.
• Wikimedia:Resolution:Controversial content was expressly or implicitly referred to by some of the opposers; this says that "We support the principle of least astonishment: content of Wikimedia projects should be presented to readers in such a way as to respect their expectations of what any page or feature might contain." However the first principle in that resolution is also worth stating (and was itself expressly or implicitly (e.g. WP:NOTCENSORED) referred to in the discussion): "Wikimedia projects are not censored. Some kinds of content, particularly that of a sexual, violent or religious nature, may be offensive to some viewers; and some viewers may feel such content is disrespectful or inappropriate for themselves, their families or their students, while others may find it acceptable. 'Controversial content' includes all of these categories. We recognize that we serve a global and diverse (in age, background and values) audience, and we support access to information for all." A clear majority of editors commenting here have reached the conclusion that this content is acceptable for the main page of Wikipedia. Insofar as the resolution helps the Wikipedia community find a line between acceptable and unacceptable content on the main page, the community clearly considers that this article is acceptable.
• Various concerns were raised about the effect that this article would have on Wikipedia's reputation. Comments in reply were along the following lines: that this was a high-quality article treating its subject in a serious way and using the term appropriately rather than gratuitously; and that Wikipedia has run articles on the main page before (whether in the TFA slot or elsewhere) that might have been found to be offensive by some with no evidence of long-term effects (and in some cases no real complaints at the time).
• Various concerns were raised about the effect that running this will have on content filters and the like. Responses were along these lines: filters are unpredictable at the best of times (see Scunthorpe problem); it would be inappropriate self-censorship to refuse to run an article on the mainpage for fear of filter problems; some networks will block Wikipedia in any event; and not everyone visits Wikipedia through the main page anyway.

On balance then, I take the view that the supporters have the stronger arguments as well as the numerical superiority and I will schedule the article as TFA. Having said that, I take the point that there are various ways of presenting articles, some more offensive than others. One of the comments that I most appreciated in the discussion after the appearance of "Mr. Hankey, the Christmas Poo" was from someone saying that although they wished that the article had not been the TFA, they were happy with the way that the blurb (which I redrafted) had been presented. So, the decision I reach is that I will run the article, with a blurb that says "fuck" as few times as necessary, and the "recent articles" links for the following three days will use "F★CK" (one of the title under which the film was promoted) in the hope that this will help avoid unnecessarily tripping filters on the main page. Bencherlite^Talk 22:52, 10 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]