User:Penstubal/Purpose of "Featured Articles"

The purpose of the "Featured Article" is to show gratitude for the great work so many people have devoted towards making this wiki a better place and brightening the day of others. Featured articles were conceived as a token of appreciation and a reward to the artists on this wiki for the great contributions they have made. Featuring their articles send a clear message to them that their work is greatly appreciated here and that they have done a great job - that they truly deserve to be applauded for their efforts, and that their art is indeed cherished by this community.

Featuring articles has, however, gradually lost its meaning and has devolved to nothing more than a selfish prize users have given THEMSELVES in order to feel confirmed on the Club Penguin Fanon Wiki. Featuring articles has seemingly lost its true meaning, its true intent of congratulating and thanking great people for their great works. No, the system has been hijacked by users either to award works of their own or to award friends (effectively a form of nepotism). As long as such actions occur in which people reward others simply because they are friends or award themselves in order to make themselves feel validated and secure, the featured article award has no meaning.

The featured article votes have become more inactive than ever and there are barely any people left who will truly consider reading great works written on this wiki and nominating them and rewarding their authors for what they have gifted this wiki. Inactivity has become effectively the killer of the Featured Article award - for example, on Shops it has devolved as far as to the same mall winning Featured Mall of the Month several times and only thanks to its owner being the only voter. We haven't fallen that far yet, and there are still people genuinely interested in the Featured Article vote, but for example, in September only two people participated and Doctor John Barrbuh won.

This brings us to the second problem - how legitimate is a Featured Article award if only so few people dared to participate in awarding it? Did Doctor John Barrbuh deserve the Featured Article award considering only 2 people participated in that month's award, both of whom voted for Doctor John Barrbuh? It does not seem to be a show of gratitude and appreciation for the person who wrote the article. Only two people participated in the vote, and that article became the Featured Article /of the whole wiki/. Rarely, if ever, does it occur that everybody agrees on a featured article, but two people participating is a pathetically and inexcusably low number.

Naturally, this inactivity in the Featured Article votes could be and already has been exploited by users in order to award themselves. The ones who wish to award themselves and don't care about other people's works are the ones who always care about the Featured Article vote, and as soon as they see that nobody is participating, they will jump right in to participate in the Featured Article reward in an effort to award themselves. That way, they get to validate themselves by saying that the wiki loves their article, when in reality only they voted for it and forced it to become the Featured Article of the entire wiki. Such actions are absolutely not acceptable if we are to consider that the Featured Article award has any real meaning.

The Featured Article award has more than a material meaning. It is not just a template. It is a commendation of a user's efforts to make you happy. They have written what they have written in order to enjoy themselves, but it would make them feel proud and loved to see other people expressing admiration towards their article. As such, it is absolutely unacceptable and morally reprehensible that the system has come to be abused for the personal gain of individuals. What is the real problem, however, is not that they abused the system. That is, in my view, natural to expect when we're in such a situation as this one. The real problem is the apathy towards the Featured Article vote, ergo the apathy towards other people's creations and other people's talents, and that is the real cause of that problem of system abuse. -- Penstubal (Talk) (Edits) 15:34, 21 October 2018 (UTC)