Wikipedia has a complex relationship to the encyclopaedic genre and the knowledge it represents. Texts are expected to advance from an initial rudimentary stage to being high-quality articles. The very best texts become Featured Articles (FA) provided with a star.

Research usually focuses on promotion processes, while aspects of demotion—that articles no longer considered to be among the best can lose their featured status and star—receive almost no attention. Therefore, this study aims to examine why FAs lose their status. Based on arguments and rhetoric on downgraded articles’ talk pages, the results suggest that the main reason for demotion is lack of references and verifiability. Despite being explicitly explained, Wikipedia’s quality criteria seem difficult to apply in practice. Since inadequate FAs may have been overlooked for years, the star is a deceptive quality indicator.