Casliber's words take root
- This week the Signpost interviews Casliber, an editor who has written or contributed significantly to a startling 69 featured articles. We learn what makes him tick, why he edits, and why he can write on everything from vampires to dinosaurs, birds to plants. He also gives some advice to budding featured article writers.
On editing and featured content
I've been on a few game shows over the years, and had read bits and pieces of Wikipedia to remember trivia. Then I figured that editing and improving or correcting things would help me retain facts better, however I gravitated straightaway to editing banksias and dinosaurs, which I was interested in at the time; My first DYK came as a bit of a (welcome) surprise (I was busy making new articles)... and off I went. Hesperian and I discussed making Banksia a Featured Article very soon after I got here.
What initially attracted me to featured content was that it gives one's edits/improvements some permanence or stability, as I was dismayed with the idea that what I wrote would be subsequently erased. Featured content is the best thing we have short of Stable Versions. It marks a point where consensus has been reached on quality, and can be referred easily to later by anyone if or when the article degrades. This still remains my biggest motivator for pushing articles to FA status. I also think it helps us all be better writers; by promoting collaboration and review we can find out about our own weaknesses in writing. For instance, I can be a slob so it helps me actually finish things in less of a slap-dash way 
For the reader, I see the role of Featured Articles as twofold – laypeople can soak up information, and experts can scan the references for the sources to hunt up on if they've missed them elsewhere.
I have soft spots for almost all of the articles I've written, but some of the biggies were epic and a real pleasure afterwards to look back and go, "wow!". Vampire, Sirius, [and] Lion are some which come to mind which I look back on and feel most impressed by. Some are definitely easier than others – it is funny how sometimes they come together almost naturally and other times they just....don't. My most difficult featured article candidacy was major depressive disorder, which was finally promoted after something like six weeks, including a lengthy first page and restart. This was a group collaboration and to be fair I wasn't as thorough in checking sources as I am now. Medical articles have stricter sourcing guidelines, but relations deteriorated badly with one reviewer which sidelined the FAC somewhat.
Collaborations are an integral part of editing and most have been very enjoyable – many of the Bird WikiProject editors have joined in on various bird articles I've worked on. Helpful in a different way are the reviewers. Sasata, Ucucha and J Milburn are three who come to mind who are incredibly thorough and clinical in their dissection of stuff I put forward. Guettarda and Hesperian with writing plant articles, Circeus loves taxonomic conundrums and, of course, Sasata with fungi. The Dinosaur Wikiproject was quite active when I began so we had collaborations happening which were a lot of fun. I miss some of the dino editors, who are not now editing, as we buffed a fair few articles. Writing medical articles – part of my real-life work – is too much like... ummm... work. But seriously, I have been meaning to. One has to reach a certain level of enthusiasm and sustain it to the end to carry it through the process. Best I can say is, "watch this space".
On participating at FAC
New participants should keep upbeat, try to do everything possible to improve the article beforehand, and always respond to reviewers' concerns promptly – if you can't find sources say so, if you don't feel the point made is warranted, explain calmly why not. As a reviewer, I place a lower priority on reviewing articles where I see concerns unanswered or dismissed out of hand. The added rigour of the FA process combined with the lack of Peer Reviewing has meant that the GA reviewing process is a good thorough review-point and can act as a way-station on the way to FAC. It helps articles be better prepared for FAC. When reviewing GAs, I try to give nominees a big a shove as possible toward FAC.
For narrow or esoteric articles it is a reasonably straightforward matter of harvesting all available material and reviewing it. Broader articles become trickier as one needs to become more discerning about what to include, how much to weight it, and what to (possibly) leave out... and then on really big articles the subject of maximum prose size invariably comes up. Long articles are always tricky at FAC as a lot can go wrong and be very time-consuming to correct. It is true that (well, for me anyway) there needs to be a significant amount of enthusiasm to really carry a subject/article all the way to FA status, and mine has waxed, waned and shifted over time.
Generally the work required goes up dramatically with the size and breadth of an article. As well, some articles seem to "come together" a lot more easily than others and it can be hard to pinpoint why. Often when I've tried to improve some large existing chunk of content, I've found it a more laborious process than if I'd started from scratch. Oftentimes one has no choice if one decides to hoe into an established article to buff it for GA/FA, but is worth being aware of. The good thing is that one can always walk away for a while and come back later, which often brings new insights and a fresh look. This then is an interesting learning process at how to work through writing blocks as well, which inspires me to finish the job. The level of enthusiasm required to carry an article "all the way" makes forcing people to work on core content difficult, if not impossible. To this end, I much prefer the idea of carrots rather than sticks, which is why I've always tried to promote WikiProject collaborations (though this has met with very limited success in recent years) and the Core Contest.
For a first up, pick a reasonably narrow well-circumscribed topic you know well, and hopefully for which there is a template or format, then read the recipe below:
FA RECIPE
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It's a great way to improve writing and making sure some of your work "sticks".