Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/May 2026
Only TFA schedulers should make changes to the table immediately below. But please feel free to note any concerns, queries or thoughts below it. Thanks.
Possible tweak to blurb for Shipping ethics controversy in fanfiction
editThis upcoming TFA blurb here begins:
- Beginning in the mid 2010s, discourse emerged in online fandom spaces over the ethical implications of taboo and abusive content in shipping fanfiction—romantic and sexual pairings of characters in fan works. ...
That first sentence may be tough to parse for some readers, and has some unusual words. And the final parenthetical definition "romantic and sexual pairings of characters in fan works" can be applied to any of five preceding noun phrases:
- "discourse"
- "fandom spaces"
- "taboo and abusive content"
- "taboo and abusive content in shipping fanfiction"
- "shipping fanfiction"
I did an FA review on the article, so I know it defines (5), but casual readers may get confused. Suggest breaking into smaller, more digestible sentences. Maybe something like:
- The shipping fanfiction community – which discusses fan-created relationships ("shippings") between fictional characters – was the center of a controversial discourse that emerged in the mid 2010s. The debate centered on the ethical implications of taboo and abusive content in romantic and sexual pairings between characters. ...
I'm not saying the proposed wording is perfect (I have not read the sources) but it does suggest how to make that first sentence more inviting. Noleander (talk) 01:20, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- Pinging @Generalissima:. Noleander (talk) 01:28, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- I agree that it might be difficult to parse, but we have to keep things under the 1025 character limit, which is extremely restrictive. IIRC, the current blurb is exactly at the mark. We have to find a way to reword it so it has the same or fewer total characters. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 01:53, 5 April 2026 (UTC)
- And the first Wikilink of a blurb has to be to the TFA article. Nevertheless Noleander is quite right. I have had a go at revising the blurb along the lines they have suggested - obviously at the expense of reducing the blurb's content elsewhere. Please feel free to make further suggestions here, or to suggest entire new drafts on my In Progress page - User:Gog the Mild/Blurbs#In progress. Thanks. Gog the Mild (talk) 22:01, 7 April 2026 (UTC)
@Generalissima and Gog the Mild: I don't know if it matters at this point with the blurb being on the front page now, but relationships between fictional characters are just called ships, not shippings. Here's the Fanlore page on ships and shipping, which has a section on etymology and another on word usage. --ReneeWrites (talk) 18:34, 3 May 2026 (UTC)
Just as a headsup to all involved with the process in case I've missed anything, Gog kindly let me know the Japan Cup was added to the front page queue and asked me to check the draft. I've made some minor alterations to it here, mostly to the image caption, but it should still sit within 1025 characters, and the page has been purged. I'd have liked to add a bit about why the race was setup but there's just no way to fit that into the blurb.
As one thought if it's not too late, this article could arguably be a better fit to be run in November? There's no special anniversary for the race this year, but that's the month it's always been held so it'd be thematically appropriate. Appreciate that might not be the strongest of reasons; either way, I'm happy to see this make the front page :) RandomEditsForWhenIRemember (talk) 12:34, 26 April 2026 (UTC)
- Apologies, one more update I just noticed - the old wording said "The race is ranked highly in the IFHA due to..." which was incorrect, it's the Top 100 G1 report itself the IFHA produces that ranks the race highly, so the old wording didn't make sense. I've had to jiggle some of the wording around (the joys of every association in horseracing being about 30-50 characters long in a 1,025 limit!), but it should be fixed now and still under 1,025 characters, ready for Monday. RandomEditsForWhenIRemember (talk) 11:28, 9 May 2026 (UTC)