The Philosopher's Annual has announced its choices for the top ten philosophy articles of 2002: Download file
You can see the articles chosen over the past quarter-century here. As the editors admit, choosing 10 articles is a rather daunting task. But if you look at their choices from 20-25 years ago, it's certainly the case that about 25% of the articles they picked turned out to be genuinely important--either the articles themselves (or the ideas they introduced and then incorporated in to books) are still read and discussed today. That's a pretty good track record, given the difficulty of the task. And perhaps with occasional exceptions, the articles are all ones that any student of philosophy, wanting to stay abreast of developments outside his or her main area, would benefit from reading. (Disclosure: having had an article chosen last year, I'm not a neutral observer!)