Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles/Archive 5

Missing plus-sign

The good article Svalbard appears to be missing the green plus displayed in the upper right. Can someone remedy that? Chris857 (talk) 03:12, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

The {{Good article}} template, which makes the green icon appear, had been placed inside a navboxes template, apparently suppressing it.--BelovedFreak 08:18, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

A-class expansion

B-class, Good, and Featured articles are common on Wikipedia, from what I can tell, and (at least the higher two) have very structured review processes. Here are my comments from the A-class talk page:

"I feel that an A-class review is useful, sorting out articles that (while perhaps not quite good enough, or well known enough, for whatever reason, to make it to FA), in terms of quality, equal those of a professional encyclopedia. I am a little surprised that only a few WikiProjects have very active A-class review sections, and am wondering if it would be possible to make this category as prominent as either FA or GA. Any ideas?"

Thanks for your comments. DCItalk 17:36, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Only GA and FA have formal review processes. Those labels are granted by the whole encyclopedia, whereas C-class, B-class, and A-class are specific to Wikiprojects. Most projects don't do reviews for B-class; the label is just applied by individuals haphazardly (and it's pretty meaningless). In fact, at this point most projects (easily 90%) don't do anything at all. That's why they tend to skip A-class, because it would take months for any article to pass A-class and it wouldn't get the article much closer to FA.

The problem is that there's such a lack of energy on this site (compared to 2007–2009) that adding any more review processes would just be dead weight. And it would make it more difficult to distinguish which label is which. The GA criteria are pretty low, but in practice, many editors treat the GA review as FA-lite (or FA for subjects that are too weak to be FAs). There's not a lot of room for A-class to slip in.

A-class reviews are effective because they're only done by the communities that particularly care about the subject areas. It should be encouraged for projects that can handle it, but it wouldn't work as a sitewide process. —Designate (talk) 19:51, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Dunno about meaningless (B-class) - it generally means pretty well-reffed with inline refs and no major holes. There are many pages which were ranked B-class years ago that no-one has readjusted which do not have much in the way of inline references. Most of these should be C- or even start-class. Casliber (talk · contribs) 15:24, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

It is lamentable that the C-class was introduced so late (2008), thus the habit of defining all substantial articles as B-class (although many were not substantially good).

A-class is de-facto above the Good Article class and I actually think the A-class is now being used as an FA alternative, simply getting a topic expert to look over a top quality article while avoiding the politics which invariably appear at FA nominations. No one ever mentions it, but it is a bit strange that FA reviewers are frequently unfamiliar with the topic matter (how do they establish that an article is not biased towards a certain interpretation? Or isn't missing a key facet of the topic?).

Expanding the A-class across the whole site would likely involve an immense amount of in-depth article review (not going to happen in this anarchic place). Perhaps a better solution would be to maintain the drive-by nature of the article class system from Stub to B and simply downgrade the plethora of poor quality B-class articles to C-class, thus making the B-class a thing of actual value. SFB 15:57, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

Now that's an intriguing proposal. Designate (talk) 20:50, 3 November 2011 (UTC)

A-class is orthogonal to FAC and GAN, not an alternative to either of them. The problem with A-class reviews is the narrow perspective of the reviewer(s). Malleus Fatuorum 01:50, 4 November 2011 (UTC)

Is canvassing for a GA reviewer permitted?

I believe I have taken the article Jud Süß (1940 film) from Start-class to GA. I have nominated the article for GA status and so it is in the queue. The article is about an infamous anti-semitic film made during the Third Reich. I think it possible that some member of Wikiproject Judaism might be interested in reviewing the article for GA status. Would it be acceptable for me to put an NPOV notice of the GA nomination at WT:Judaism to solicit a GA reviewer? The notice would not attempt to influence potential reviewers but simply state that the article has been nominated for GA status and ask if anyone was interested in reviewing it. --Pseudo-Richard (talk) 10:21, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

A neutral notice should be OK. I have tweaked the Article Alerts page to show GA nominations for the project as well. Jezhotwells (talk) 13:46, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd be careful with that one, as it may be an emotive issue, but a neutral notice on the talk page/appointed page of the relevant WikiProject is usually a perfectly valid way to get hold of reviewers. Contacting the reviewer you want on their talk page not so much. J Milburn (talk) 14:32, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

Good articles without images

Just wondering... There can be good articles without images if we can't find suitable images? --My Sistemx (talk) 14:32, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Of course; having images is not in and of itself a requirement for GA status. Any images on a page of course have to follow guidelines though. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 15:59, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Particularly true if there is non-free imagery but that fails NFCC#1 (free replacement) such as s photo of a living person; non-free media should never be shoehorned into an article to meet GA or any other quality metric if it breaks NFCC. --MASEM (t) 16:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Another good example are rare species. There are even plenty of featured articles out there without any images- take one of mine, Gymnopilus maritimus, for instance. J Milburn (talk) 21:13, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Random good article link

The toolserver.org link on the good articles page is broken. I think Wikipedia should program a random good article link. Let me know if I'm missing something.

--StringRay (talk) 02:24, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

Reviewer limits

Regarding reviews, is there a way to reverse what I consider a bad review? Brunei was just passed in Talk:Brunei/GA3 by User:Thehistorian10, who has a total of 202 edits scattered over almost 2 years. The article in question is extremely short, and while not a bad article it isn't up to par (large number of shorter paragraphs for example). The nominator has been a bit overenthusiastic too, is there a minimum time between nominations? Thanks, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 18:11, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

As noted at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment, you can do one of two things. (1) Re-assess it back down to B-class (or lower) by yourself (Wikipedia:Good article reassessment#Individual reassessment]] citing specifically which GA-criteria it no longer meets and why (examples). (2) Community reassessment by listing it at WP:GAR. maclean (talk) 20:28, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, reassessment is the way to go if you think it doesn't meet the criteria. Remember that the GA criteria are supposed to be a low threshold, not a thorough peer review. The mere fact that the article is short doesn't disqualify the review: the article merely needs to "address the main aspects of the topic", and give due weight to each section. It doesn't need to be exhaustive. We're better off encouraging people to do reviews, and reassess the problematic ones, then discouraging people from doing them in the first place. Reviews are good, high activity is good, and occasional false positives are much better than massive backlogs. —Designate (talk) 20:38, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the link and advice. Cheers, Chipmunkdavis (talk) 11:30, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried contacting this individual? OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:11, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

I haven't, as I was under the impression that once passed it was passed, with GAN being a very one-to-one system. Can a user simply take back a GA status they awarded? Chipmunkdavis (talk) 16:49, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

No, you have to go through a GAR. Malleus Fatuorum 17:35, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

2012 WikiCup

I'm just dropping a note to let you all know that the 2012 WikiCup will be beginning tomorrow. The WikiCup is a fun competition open to anyone which awards the production of quality audited content on Wikipedia; points are awarded for working on featured content, good articles and topics, did you know and in the news, as well as for performing good article reviews. Signups are still open, and will remain open until February; if you're interested in participating, please sign up. Over 70 Wikipedians have already signed up to participate in 2012's competition, while last year's saw over double that number taking part. If you're interested in following the WikiCup, but not participating, feel free to sign up at Wikipedia:WikiCup/Newsletter/Send to receive our monthly newsletters. If you have any questions, please contact me on my talk page, or ask away at Wikipedia talk:WikiCup, where a judge, competitor or watcher will be able to help you. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 00:41, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

The GA stage

On behalf of WP:FOUR and as an active WP:GAC/WP:GA contributor, I would like to note that GA is the only stage of the WP:FOUR process without a creation summary (see WP:MOSTARTICLES, WP:WBDYK and WP:WBFAN). What is the proper way to rectify this?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 00:15, 1 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree that there should be a listing by GAs. Chris857 (talk) 03:59, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Why does this need to be "rectified"? Who cares how many GAs you, me, or anyone else has written? My own view of GA isn't as some kind of badge, but as the minimum standard to which every article ought to aspire, nothing special really. Malleus Fatuorum 17:31, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

The obvious way to rectify it is to delete the other three. Yomangani^talk 18:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Should we limit the number of nominations per user?

An editor recently nominated about 25 articles in a short time period. This seems a bit excessive, and I worry that the user may not be able to address any issues that come up during a review since it appears that the user has not made any contributions to the articles being nominated. I do not feel that this is ideal for GA nominations, and I think there should be some guidelines written to prevent excessive backlogs like this. I think it would be a good idea to make a suggestion in the "How to nominate an article" section that limits the number of nominations to 10-12 or so. I think it would also be good to inform nominators that it is preferred that they be available and/or prepared to deal with article issues that may arise during the review process. Thoughts? --Tea with toast (話) 03:41, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I think the limit for non-contributors making simultaneous nominations should be one, or maybe zero. I've only rarely seen anything good coming out of such a nomination; they are often straight fails, since the articles in question usually have much wrong with them. As for contributors who know what they are doing making simultaneous nominations, as long as they are doing at least as many reviews as they are doing nominations, the queue won't get any worse. Wasted Time R (talk) 03:48, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree. A very strange case of 20 articles nominated suggests this is just a test edit or even blatant vandalism. Whatever the case, we should see if this is a newbie so we can ensure they know what they're doing. If they're not a newbie, then this is probably an action in bad faith. Lord Roem (talk) 03:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

If the nominator is not the editor, we should check the articles for proximity to WP:WIAGA. If they pass, we should ask if he would consider a limit of about 5 at a time until he has some experience with the process. We should also ask him to do some reviews himself.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 03:59, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

I've left a note at his talk page, suggesting that he remove most of his nominations so he can really focus on his top two or three. Lord Roem (talk) 04:02, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Most or all of these articles seem to come out of a classroom project, described here: Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects#School_of_Law.2C_Singapore_Management_University:_Constitutional_and_Administrative_Law_Wikipedia_Project_.28ongoing.3B_started_January_2010.29. That may be while they are all being nominated at once. Wasted Time R (talk) 04:34, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Lord Roem: "If they're not a newbie, then this is probably an action in bad faith." I really don't think this is fair. It is more likely to be misguided than in bad faith. However, I think Wasted Time R's thoughts are sensible. J Milburn (talk) 12:49, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Didn't see the "not". J Milburn (talk) 12:51, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Note to WikiProject members - I have started a conversation at GAN talk here on a proposal to limit GA nominations to 10 or less. Regards, Lord Roem (talk) 03:18, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion: Creating a GA oversight "committee"

This is based on recent discussion from WT:FAC. To summarize that, my general thought on the purpose of FA was to be a goal attainable by all articles, but more editors share the view that that is an aspect more on the GA side of things with FA to be the best articles possible.

While I agree with that larger picture, my take is that GA can be a trivially easy and possibly gamed aspect to be met. The process is decentralized enough that an editor can submit an article that is far below WIAGA-quality, have either a very disinterested editor or perhaps a very COI-conflicted editor pass it without question, and then it remains a GA until someone notices, which could be years, or until another GA review drive is performed. GAR is meant to catch these, but again, with a decentralized process, this entire thing could be gamed; I doubt it has, but I also am concerned that it doesn't speak much to have a GA process that only has one gate to pass.

My idea is not meant to be disruptive but to add one rather simple gate to assure that a GA assessment has been made properly. This involved the creation of a GA "oversight committee", whether chosen by editors or picked by a trusted editor in the GA process. When any editor finishes a GA assessment with the anticipation to pass an article for GA, it is instead tagged as "Pending oversight" (or similar). An editor from this oversight committee simply needs to verify that the assessment wasn't bogus or bad (eg if they spot immediately glaring probably on the article and its clear the assessment didn't discuss them). It should not be a second deep GA review. If the oversight editor agrees with the assessment, the article goes GA. Otherwise, the oversighter can tell the assessing editor to double check/perform a more thorough review or to get a second opinion. At most, we're talking 2-5 minutes work the oversighter needs to perform to double check a GA assessment. GANs needing such oversight check-offs can be categorized, making it easy to find the backlog and clear it out.

All this does is simply add a bit of quality control on the assessment of GAs, helping to promote them as an acceptable, final state that you want your articles in; if you can advance them to FA further, great, but having a GA should be a sign of the quality we expect on WP. And like how FA director and his/her delegates help to drive what FAs should be, this committee should also help to direct the quality of GA even if hundreds of editors are involved in the assessment process. --MASEM (t) 16:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I think that would be an excellent idea- a core of a few experienced reviewers/writers just "keeping an eye on things", as it were. I'm sure we're all aware of cases when something like this would have been highly beneficial. J Milburn (talk) 16:50, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm not, and I think it would be a terrible idea. WP:GAR works perfectly well. Malleus Fatuorum 16:52, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Sort of review the reviewer - no thanks, if its not broken so don't fix it - look at what happened at DYK. Jim Sweeney (talk) 17:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not a review of the reviewer. It is a review of the assessment. I can understand that over time there may be assessors (the ones presently passing/failing GAs) that are known to be consistently good, and ones that may be consistently bad, and it can be difficult to review an assessment without that influence coming up. But beyond communicating concerns to the specific assessor, there's no need to consider who actually did that assessment, only to make sure the assessment isn't missing anything glaring. If it is, push it back out there for re-assessment. If there is an assessor that consistently passes articles that fail GA easily, that's a RFC/U or other user-based action, but not something short of GAR that this process can deal with. --MASEM (t) 17:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I also have concerns about this. Considering that it already takes 2-3 months (in my experience) to get a GA review now, why pull away some of our best GA-involved editors into another layer of bureaucracy, most likely increasing this delay even further? Even if the "oversight" review only takes 2-5 minutes, how many GAs pass in a day, week, or month? I suspect that becomes a signficant time commitment. Believe me, I see the flaws inherent in the "one gate" system, but I'm not sure this is the way to fix it. It adds more red tape and another level of perceived status for certain editors, which reinforces the notion that some people already have about some editors' opinions carrying more weight than others. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 17:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Without having some second level of perceived status as oversighters, GA will never be taken as seriously as FA; a group of editors needs to be tagged as understanding what GA is as to make GA more than a flag you can wave around. But this is why I think a committee and not the director/delegate model as used at FA is better here; no one person holds the process to a specific whim.

As for the time aspect, there is the problem that we have many noms and too few reviews (I'm lax here too). But taking the attitude that "oh, it's taking too long for my GAN nomination to go through" is not the right attitude; it shouldn't be how fast we can process nominations to make the nominators happy, its about passing articles at a pace that simply avoids a backlog. The additional time to have an oversight check is minimal, as long as we create a committee of the right size. So, say we are passing 30 GAs a day, for example, I would expect a committee size of about 12, so that that's twice the number needed for each editor to review 5 assessments, a half-hour bit of work at most. --MASEM (t) 17:47, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Why should we be striving to have GA "taken as seriously" as FA? The two processes are entirely different and have different aims. GA is deliberately designed to be scalable, whereas FA is inherently not. Throttling the process with some kind of oversight committee is not a step in the right direction. Malleus Fatuorum 18:02, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not meant as a throttle - the check is not rigorous and can be cleared with one review of a page within a few minutes. Have enough people on this oversight job, and there's a one or two day delay at most - nothing that is critically going to harm the GA process.

As for taking GAs as seriously as FA, given the impression I get at FA and elsewhere, every article should be able to merit a GA eventually. Our policies and guidelines are geared towards driving articles to meet that quality standard in terms of sourcing, content, images, referencing, style, and the like. To that extent, GA should have more rigor than having a checkbox form that one editor checks out. Yes, there is GAR, but that requires an article to have been noticed receiving a GA when it obviously should have failed. GA is scalable: GAR is not. Adding this type of oversight does not diminish the scalability of GAs, since we can add and remove oversighters at will to match the workflow. --MASEM (t) 20:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I intend to comment further below, but I broadly agree with MF: GA is primarily about improving the encyclopedia as a whole; the reliability of GA status, and the reputation of GA are means to an end, not an end in themselves. The scalability works for two reasons: first nominators and reviewers are interchangeable because only one reviewer is necessary for each review (more are permitted); secondly, the GA product is only checked for problems when someone complains. This avoids wasting effort checking a product which is good 98% of the time (say). Your suggestion to me is not a matter of principle, but a cost-benefit analysis: you are, in effect, arguing that the cost of your proposal would be relatively small, and would be outweighed by the benefits. Geometry guy 21:16, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

PS. Of course GA does have much more rigor than a checkbox: see WP:RGA. What it "should" have depends upon what you expect of it with regard to an article, how, and by when. Geometry guy 21:24, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I disagree that it isn't about keeping the nominators happy. That isn't the only concern, but it should be a concern. I have been the primary contributor on 69 good articles, but I rarely even target articles for GA anymore because the reviews take way too long. By the time I get a review, I'm on to another subject, sources have been returned to libraries, etc. At least at FA, I get an up-or-down decision within a month or so. The only reason I nominated the two GACs I did recently is because I noticed the backlog elimination drive and thought I might get a review in a decent amount of time. (I did, btw.) If you make the process more credible, but nobody uses it because it takes too long, what have you gained? As for the comment that "its about passing articles at a pace that simply avoids a backlog", I agree, but we haven't found a way to do that yet without this added gate. If we could, I'd probably be more inclined to support this proposal. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 18:11, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

To some extent, if timing is really a concern, this "gate" could be placed on the other side of the process - after an article has received its GA, to have a review of that GA process, and if there's a problem, GAR it. However, if this idea has some merit, this is a more damaging point to have that since it would be like "Here's your GA--- and now we're taking it away due to no fault of your own!" But the other concern is that GA is a process that needs input to keep the backlog down, and to have that input, it needs to be a process that is appreciated by the community at large. It is not that GA is suffering from a tarnished image, but I do see that GA is often seen as a overly simple gate. Add some oversight and you will make GA a more respectful process, and then subsequently will make it a process more people want to get involved in. This isn't the only way to prevent backlogging, but it is one part of the larger issue. --MASEM (t) 20:10, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I'm all for GA getting a better reputation, as I don't think FA is a realistic goal for many articles. However, I'm not sold on your premise that raising the perception of GA will attract a sufficient number of reviewers to eliminate the backlog. I think your proposal is well-intentioned, but without some kind of fairly solid indication that it will bring about the ultimate result of helping eliminate the perpetual backlog at GA, I don't think I can support it. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 20:55, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• The idea has merit. However, starting right out of the gate with something formal and examining every review is not realistic. An informal group of interested editors looking at a samples could produce some observations or recommendations for consideration. But I think the focus should probably be more on articles, rather than reviews (but could lead to recommendations for reviews). maclean (talk) 17:56, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Good thoughts behind it but a IMHO a bad idea. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I would imagine reviewing roughly follows the 80/20 rule and that the reviews that need checking the most come from the newer or less experienced reviewers. Some editors seem to informally check new reviewers, but having a more formal process or making it easier to do so might be beneficial. The 80 percent or so who review regularly don't need to go through an oversight committee. AIRcorn (talk) 22:40, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that this is necessary, and I don't think it would actually work the way Masem thinks it would.

Leaving aside the obvious problems (which seem to get caught pretty quickly), most of the serious problems with reviews can't be spotted within a couple of minutes. Just reading a 5,000-word article can take more than ten minutes. That doesn't include time to look at even a single source, check for copyright violations, or do anything else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:17, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

• Comments. The WT:FAC discussion on which Masem based the idea is the one I started here. Masem was responding in particular to point 4 ("good content") of my initial comment and a first exchange of views. Whether this proposal is a good idea or not depends upon several things: first some matters of principle as to what GA is for, what GA status means and so on, then a more pragmatic cost-benefit analysis as to whether this proposal would help achieve those goals.

My view on the principles is that GA is first and foremost about improving the encyclopedia, article by article, on as wide a scale as possible. It does this through a scalable strategy in which a request for GA status by one editor is granted (or not) by another. There is no 100% guarantee that the result is an article that meets the GA criteria, and GA further saves on effort by only checking for problems when editors raise them. Hence GA status does not mean "This article meets the GA criteria", but rather "To the best of our knowledge, this article meets the GA criteria; if you think it might not, please let us know". Since articles can degrade with time anyway, this is a more pragmatic interpretation as to what any article status means. From this point of view, the reliability of GA, and its credibility in the community, are means to an end, secondary to the goal of improving Wikipedia. If a proposal to improve credibility diminishes the ability of GA to improve articles then it is a net loss.

There are many possible responses to Masem's proposal, some of which have been made above. Here are a two more.

1. GA already has a committee to deal with poor quality reviews: it is called WT:GAN and is very actively frequented by GAs most experienced reviewers. All editors are encouraged to check GA reviews for problems and raise them at WT:GAN for advice. Where problems are found, WP:GAR provides reassessment processes, both by individuals and the community.
2. The output of the GA process (as with all of Wikipedia) is freely licensed. Hence editors who so wish are entirely free to set up a "GA++" project which only lists GAs that have been checked by a panel of respected editors. No input from or change to GA is required to do that, and if the cost is low, why not do it? An accompanying program to check the c. 14k current GAs may be a little bit time consuming, but only a temporary inconvenience (as some GA editors know from the "only temporary" pain of GA Sweeps).

That said, I'm not set against the idea, but I see three tests it needs to meet: compatibility with the principles of GA; a net positive cost-benefit analysis; agreement from the community of GA reviewers. Geometry guy 00:20, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I do agree that any modification of the process must be light-weight; if it requires extensive more work either by nominators or assessors, it's a failure. While the concept of a GA++ is interesting, it seems excessive given that that feels like what FA is for. But this overall discussion and hesistation for it (which I don't take in a bad way, just as good feedback) gives me another approach that I need to think about that involves getting Wikiprojects involved and utilizing the A-class assessment. (The short form is that GA is going to review the article based on site-wide expectations; the A-class assessment on WProject-limited assessments, thus assuring it's meeting both expected content and expected presentation/format/sourcing/etc. metrics). --MASEM (t) 19:01, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

I've always considered that this is what A-Class is (or should be) primarily about. What is needed is a mechanism to inspire activity. For instance, a bot could notify participating WikiProjects when an article with their banner becomes a GA, and request they check the article for quality, and consider it for A-Class. Some WikiProjects already have a set-up which provides similar notifications.

Currently there is some ambiguity as to what A-Class means (does it imply GA?): an option there would be to make the distinction explicit with an A⁺ class, or something similar, meaning "WikiProject checked (A-Class) and site-wide checked (GA)". One might even consider abolishing the anachronistic "GA-Class" (GA is not a WikiProject assessment, so why pretend it is?) or renaming it B⁺-class (i.e., B-class plus site-wide check). Geometry guy 21:56, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

• I don't see setting up an oversight committee per se as worth the overhead it would require to maintain. However, if users wish to informally review passed GANs and take inappropriate passes to WP:GAR, that would be a good thing. –Grondemar 04:05, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN backlog elimination drives/March 2012

Hey everyone! The current number of pending GA nominations up for review has reached 300. Would I be out my "jurisdiction" to coordinate a March GAN backlog drive? Lord Roem (talk) 04:41, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

We just had one in January, and I'm actually still burnt out from that (my lack of GA reviewing's probably why it went back up so quickly). Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 05:22, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Actually it was December. I'm not opposed to a March drive, but maybe it would be better to wait until April. –Grondemar 05:41, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree with Wizardman, also not having done a review since the end of the last drive. I believe this is too soon. How about every six months? As it takes at least a month either side of the drive for admin etc. Jim Sweeney (talk) 09:55, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm cool with doing one in April. :) Lord Roem (talk) 16:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)

April would be good. Are three drives a year feasible? April, August, December, for example? The summer one might be a little bit more relaxed, at least for editors in the northern hemisphere. Geometry guy 00:17, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Those three months look reasonable. Lord Roem (talk) 00:29, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

A drive every four months should be enough rest time between drives. I feel silly getting the month wrong, the months of December and January kinda blended together for me. I like the enthusiasm, I just want to be careful that we don't stretch too thin, else we'll end up with 400+ GANs like we had back in the day. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 04:54, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

Agree on April as I have another idea for March (mwahaahaaa) Casliber (talk · contribs) 08:27, 19 February 2012 (UTC)

GA for Soapy Smith?

Just checking here. Soapy Smith is tagged as a GA on two of the three projects it's listed under (and tagged B on the other), but I can't find a GA review anywhere.RadioKAOS (talk) 04:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

It was mistakenly rated GA. I have changed all of them to B now. AIRcorn (talk) 04:28, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:GAR

If someone has some spare time they might want to close or comment on a few articles at WP:GAR. It is starting to pile up a bit. AIRcorn (talk) 01:59, 2 March 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN backlog elimination drives/May 2012

Proposed. Thoughts? -- Lord Roem (talk) 15:11, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support. Simple as that. Binksternet (talk) 16:15, 7 April 2012 (UTC)

  If this is happening, then the page for that needs to be made ASAP and we need to start getting the word out now. Wizardman _{Operation Big Bear} 16:39, 19 April 2012 (UTC)

• Support -- The backlog is getting pretty long, plus there appears to be several college students nominating article in the psychology section; they may have some kind of project happening at that school, and I'm sure those students would appreciate having their articles looked at before the semester ends. --Tea with toast (話) 06:17, 27 April 2012 (UTC)
• Support has a page been made yet? It's a little late in the game to publicize it at this point. —Ed!^(talk) 20:44, 27 April 2012 (UTC)

If this is happening, I'll put it on the WikiCup newsletter which will go out in eight and a half hours. That'll spread the word significantly. Please do contact me as soon as a page is created if this is going ahead. J Milburn (talk) 14:26, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

User:Greenyu adding GA tags w/o reviews

On April 10, 2012, User:Greenyu added GA tags to a dozen or so song and album articles and talk pages (see [1]), which don't appear to have been through the GA process. Someone with rollback rights should be able to easily deal with this. -Ojorojo (talk) 17:52, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Yea, every edit dealing with GA looks to not be legitimate. Chris857 (talk) 18:04, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

I did notice that his addition of project tags looks appropriate, but wholesale upgrades to GA are not. Chris857 (talk) 18:09, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Applying for good article status

Hello, I'm likely not in the correct location, but can you tell me how I can ask for an article to reviewed for Good Quality? This would be the Mozilla Firefox article. I know the article is not at good quality status, we just need some insight as to how we can improve the article. Thanks, Trewyy (talk) 19:42, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

If you don't think the article is of GA quality then you ought not to nominate it; perhaps asking for a peer review (WP:PR) might be a better option? But see WP:GAN for instructions on how to nominate an article for a GA review. Malleus Fatuorum 20:10, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

GAN backlog

Is there any easy way to post a notice on the forum pages of all WikiProjects, appealing for help in clearing the backlog which currently stands at 357 awaiting a reviewer? --Brian (talk) 19:46, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

It wouldn't do any good to spam them all, because most WikiProjects are inactive or semi-active. Others have no or very few articles that need reviewing. MILHIST and WPMED, for example, are among the most active projects, and articles within their subject area rarely spend more than a few weeks in the queue.

IMO it would make more sense to pick out the subject areas that aren't keeping up, and invite just those projects. Alternatively, we could add instructions to the nomination process that encouraged the noms to drop a note to relevant groups if they are impatient for a reviewer. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:36, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Technical question - anyone got any ideas?

Hi, an article I have been working on, Bronwyn Oliver, was recently reviewed and assessed as GA. It appears on the GA list, it has its little green star, and it is rated GA on the project assessment scales on the talk page. Despite all this, text still appears at the top of the page saying "A B-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Currently a good article nominee." Anyone know how to fix this? hamiltonstone (talk) 14:40, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Try purging and/or reloading the page. That gadget can be slow to update sometimes. It shows up correctly for me though. Imzadi 1979 → 14:44, 25 July 2012 (UTC)

Core contest....

With 250 quid (my damn Aussie keyboard lacks a "pound"symbol...) in amazon vouchers for prizes, get out yer library books...Wikipedia:The Core Contest is a-coming, and have a very literal, verbose, syntactic and referential August, starting on the Horses' Birthday....cheers, Casliber (talk · contribs) 14:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Newsletter

If the editor of the newsletter is gone, why doesn't we chose a new one? I'm available to work on the newsletter. Any other user who can or wants to revive the newsletter as much as I do? —Hahc21 ^{[TALK][CONTRIBS]} 18:54, 14 June 2012 (UTC)

Go right ahead! A newly active newsletter sounds like a great idea! Lord Roem (talk) 01:08, 15 June 2012 (UTC)

Just thought I would say that I created an October 2012 newsletter. It just has to be distributed by a bot in October.--Dom497 (talk) 00:34, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Notification

I started an important discussion regarding the listing of the theatre, film and drama articles at Wikipedia talk:Good articles#Listing of television series + episodes, and hope to hear feedback. I am writing here because that talk page has minimal activity, so it is unlikely that it will be responded to. TRLIJC19 (talk • contribs) 00:42, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

GA reviewer issue.

Hi folks, There is an issue about how involved a GA reviewer can have been with the article previous to being the reviewer. Any clarification would be welcome. [2] Hobit (talk) 00:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I once withdrew from a GA review after suddenly remembering that I had made some edits to the article several years before, even though I wasn't sure if any of the material I had added was still in the article. It's not good if article editors think a GA reviewer is pushing a position they've previously had on the article, whether in fact they are or are not. Conflict-of-interest guidelines (in the real world, not just WP) serve to protect both parties. So I would say, when in doubt, don't review. Wasted Time R (talk) 00:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Assistance requested in categorizing an article

Please comment at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Calling a vote for unclassified article.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 21:05, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Participant clean-up

Hello again! I was thinking that over the years, out of the current 222 participants there's got to be some users that are no longer interested with the WikiProject. With that, what if we could do some "participant clean-up" thing to figure out who is still interested and who isn't. We could set up a page that everyone who is interested can sign. Anyone who doesn't sign will get there name removed for the participant list. Because some users aren't on Wikipedia as much as others, we could give a month's deadline. Finally, I could get the message out to all the current participants by using the EdwardsBot. Sound good?--Dom497 (talk) 20:42, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I note that Dom497 (talk · contribs) has simply decide to proceed with this, without any actual discussion taking place, having set up a "triage list" in userspace at User:Dom497/Active Good Article Participants, and posting triage notices like User talk:SMcCandlish#WikiProject Good articles (Participant Clean-up). At least two objections have actually been raised, at User talk:Dom497/Active Good Article Participants (on the basis that immediate response to a threat to be deleted from, or demoted to "inactive" in, the project is not a good way to gauge participation, especially in a project in which any participation at all is a net gain, and no minimum level of participation is needed from anyone (not to mention that actual editorial participation cannot really be determined without editors self-reporting what they are doing here on the project talk page). — SMcCandlish   Talk⇒ ɖ∘¿¤þ   Contrib. 19:24, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

RFC

A request for comment has been initiated by me and is about the future of the drives. Anyone that wants to participate may follow this link: User:Hahc21/Requests for comment/Future of GAN Backlog Elimination Drives. The RFC is stored there. Cheers. — ΛΧΣ21™ 02:24, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Question - alternate text

Not sure where to ask this; it appears that the GA help desk is not used for questions. The context is that I'm somewhat newer at GA reviews. I've done 2-3 before, and now have taken on about 4 of the oldest un-reviewed ones. Should alternate text be required on images in order to pass GA? And, if there is no clearcut answer, roughly what is the norm regarding this? Thanks. North8000 (talk) 14:49, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

No, alternate text is not required to meet the GA criteria, nor the FA criteria come to that. You could mention during the review that it might be an idea to add alternate text to aid accessibility so long as you made it clear it wasn't required by the GA criteria if you like. I rarely bother though, largely because most editors seem to be completely hopeless at writing alternate text, and the caption is often sufficiently descriptive anyway. Malleus Fatuorum 16:16, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! North8000 (talk) 18:28, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

How to cut down the backlog

Hurdles to entry for reviewers

I'm an experienced editor who has been somewhat new to GA reviewing (I think I reviewed 2 about 1-2 years ago and have recently taken on about 6-7 to help with the backlog.) I might be the perfect poster child to discuss the hurdles to entry for someone who is experienced enough to be a reviewer.

The biggest problem is the most easily solved one. Instructions regarding the MECHANICS of reviewing an article are hidden and vague. I know that when you take a look at it with they eyes of expertise you'll think I have rocks in my head (you'll say "it's all right there on the nomination page") but I'll stand by what I just said. The whole problem could be solved by a few links phrases and tweaks. Here are the problems and solutions:

• Problem: The main page has no mention or link of "how to review an article". Solution: put a link in there (in the list) for that

• Problem The instructions for how to review an article do not say how to pass or fail an article, or put it on hold or ask for a second opinion. Yes, the info is available just below it but separated, not mentioned in the instructions, and missing the all important "instructions" moniker. Without that all-important moniker, the potential reviewer has no assurance that that list is EVERYTHING they need to do vs. there being something else they need to do so that they won't "screw it up". I know that this stopped me for a while. Solution Put links/pointers to those four little boxes into the "how to review an article box, and upgrade the titles on those four little boxes. The wording for these links/pointers and titles should say: "How to pass an article", "How to fail an article", "How to put an article on hold" "How to ask for a second opinion". (BTW, I still haven't found any explanation on when/why a review should be put "on hold" vs. the normal waiting periods that occur during a review) North8000 (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I'd be happy to make the above tweaks if you wish. North8000 (talk) 12:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

• Problem An important offering is a place for newer reviewers to go to for help, advice, double-checking their thoughts. A new reviewer doesn't want to make a big mistake. The link for help goes to an unusued page, not to the REAL help page which is THIS page. Solution Kill the unused page, and change the "get help" link to go to THIS page. North8000 (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Correct: the instructions are not on the main page, if you are referring to the main page as Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles, but neither are the nominations. The nominations are are on Wikipedia:Good article nominations and that is where the instructions and the links are. It actually states: How to nominate an article, How to review an article, Pass, Fail, etc. Are you really stating that someone who is experienced enough to be a reviewer and experienced editor can't review them because the instructions are on the same page as the nominations, which is where you would naturally expect to go to choose an article to review, and not on the Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles page? Pyrotec (talk) 17:12, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

No, I'm not suggesting "can't review", but I am suggesting that it is unnecessarily hard/ unintuitive to find. If the page provides provides a list of 14 links (many even less related) on the top level page, they would tend to think that that list is that place to look for "how to review". Again, one extra item on the list would solve it. North8000 (talk) 17:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It states:

'How to review an article'

When choosing an article to review, keep in mind:

• that only registered users may review articles—make sure you are logged in;
• you cannot review an article if you are the nominator or have made significant contributions to it prior to the review;
• you should not pass an article that was put on hold by another editor without assessing the problem;
• nominations towards the tops of the lists are older, and should be given higher priority, except where the nominator has other articles under review.

1. Start a review page, either by following the start review link in the nomination's entry on this page, or by using the link from the template on the article talk page. If you wish, you can add an initial review or other remarks to the bottom of the review page before saving it. A bot will change the Good article nominations page to indicate that you are reviewing the article.
2. Before reading the article in detail, check it for immediate problems. If you believe a detailed review is premature, add your reasons to the review page and use the fail process; otherwise continue with the next steps.
3. Read the whole article, and decide whether it should pass or fail based on the Good article criteria. You can also put the article "on hold" or ask for a second opinion. The review process itself should take, at most, two weeks.
4. Provide a detailed review of the article on the review page. If you wish, you can organize your critique using checklists such as {{subst:FGAN}}, {{subst:GAList}}, {{subst:GAList2}}, {{subst:GATable}}, {{subst:GABox}}, {{subst:GAProgress}} or {{subst:GAHybrid}}, and inform the nominator of your actions using {{subst:GANotice}} or {{subst:GANotice2}}.

Where the article meets the Good article criteria, you might like to consider making suggestions for further improvements if appropriate. Where it does not meet the Good article criteria, explain which criteria are not met, and detail the problems to help other editors improve the article. If a problem is easy to resolve, you are encouraged (but not required) to be bold and fix it yourself.

Review carefully—see Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles for more advice or you can ask questions at the Good article help desk.

What are you proposing to add; and why? Pyrotec (talk) 17:42, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

There seems to be some confusion on what I wrote, but I'll skip past that and on to your question and distill the suggestions:

• Add an item and link to the list on the main page "How to review a nominated article"
• Add a sentence to the instructions on the nominations page: "See below for instructions on how to pass or fail and article."
• Change the headings on the four little boxes (pass/fail,hold,second opinion) on the nominations page using the following as an example: Change "Pass" to "How to pass an article".

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:21, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I might try doing a few of these (a semi-bold edit  :-) )North8000 (talk) 14:34, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Time consuming fire drills

Probably no nominated article is 100% ready to pass, which means there there needs to be somebody involved to respond to the reviewer. Some articles that I reviewed were just multi-week periods (including pinging the nominator to see if they wanted to be involved, and then watching the nomination page, the article page, and the pinged person's user page) just to prove out that nobody is involved in such a way on the article in which case there is no route available to a "pass". This wastes the scarce resource of reviewer time which could be going to reducing the backlog. Solution Tell nominators that a part of the process is to see if there are 1 or more people who are willing to help respond to nominators, and to note that in the nomination. Notice that I DIDN'T say "willing to take responsibility for doing that" because few volunteers are going to be willing to consider that to be a responsibility (vs. just being willing to help). This would thin out the fire drills. North8000 (talk) 12:11, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Fire drills have nothing to do with this. You choose to review the articles, so it is your responsibility to manage the review, and that could include advising the nominator that the review has started. The nominator does not have to respond to any of your requests. It is also your responsibility to decide whether to pass the article, put it On Hold and decide how long for and then review it after that period, or to fail it. If you are not prepared to accept that responsibility, don't review nominations. Pyrotec (talk) 17:53, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Huh? What you just said makes it appear that you misread my post. I NEVER ever said I didn't want to do that or didn't want to have that responsibility; I gave it as a suggestion to reduce the backlog. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:05, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I might have misread your post, but it did make me question as to whether you understand the requirements. As reviewer, you review it and decide whether it complies, or not, you can also fix minor problems if you want to. If it has minor noncompliances, the review can be put On Hold for say one week and then reviewed after one week (in an earlier post you stated: I still haven't found any explanation on when/why a review should be put "on hold" vs. the normal waiting periods that occur during a review). At that point the reviewer can pass or fail the nomination depending on whether it is considered to be compliant or not. There is no need to pinging the nominator to see if they wanted to be involved, and then watching the nomination page, the article page, and the pinged person's user page (I'm using your words), just put the /GA1 page and the article page on your watch list and go and do other work. The nomination process does not require the nominator to fix problems, but most of them do fix the problems and are very happy to do so, or even to see if there are 1 or more people who are willing to help respond to nominators, and to note that in the nomination (I'm using your words). This Solution not part of the nomination process as it currently exists. Pyrotec (talk) 18:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the info regarding the norms. I believe that what I'm hearing that the "if no response" handling does not have to be as time consuming as I have been making it be. In which case the reviewer time spent on "fire drills" can be very small. To clarify I would like to ask about the following example which I believe is common. I do a preliminary review of an article, and during that preliminary review I identify and note some things that are definitely going to need to get fixed. The spotted problems are not huge, but are enough (e.g. requiring access to off-line sources) that I'm not willing or able to do the fix myself. I watch the review page and the article page, and there is absolutely NO response to my comments. After a time period of no response (1 week? 2 weeks?) is it within the norm to simply fail the article due to no response? Thanks. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 19:20, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It's the reviewer's choice. If the reviewer decides to put the review On Hold, rather than "fail it", the (silent) questions are: are these minor problems that could be easily fixed, could someone fix it in say one week (or two) if they went to a library and got out these book-references or did a computer search, is anyone likely to fix it? If the nominator has done no edits in two months, it may not get fixed by the nominator anyway but some else might do it. A one-week hold is typical and there is a template Template:GANotice that can be put on the nominators talkpage with "one week hold", but it does not have to be one week: if the nominators states "I'm on holiday for a week/ I've got exams, can I have two weeks?, then that's also OK if the reviewer agrees. Some reviewers seem prepared to wait three months, six months, but complaints do get raised here about "slow reviews" or "lack of decision making". At the end of the Hold period, or one week after, you can just close the review which technically means "article not listed", if you choose; you might fix the problems yourself, or might "fail" it with full reasons for the failure. The reviewer can do any of these actions: that is what I meant elsewhere, when you review you have responsibility and you can use it. Pyrotec (talk) 19:57, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for that excellent info! North8000 (talk) 21:43, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

About nominating good article

How an article is nominated for good article?--180.234.65.192 (talk) 13:58, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

It is on Wikipedia:Good article nominations in a green box at the top of the page called How to nominate an article. Pyrotec (talk) 17:10, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

Cut down on the cruft to help improve GA?

I'm a fairly infrequent GA reviewer, but recently I noticed that the backlog around here is getting pretty out of hand. This doesn't exactly appear to be raising morale among the folks who nominate an article and then sit around for months waiting for it to get reviewed. Since this process operates by nature of a virtuous circle, with nominators eventually becoming reviewers, we can expect that the more new nominators leave in a huff with their articles unreviewed, the more dramatically the number of reviewers will dwindle, contributing to the problem of lots of frustrated new noms and a tiny number of increasingly overworked, cranky reviewers.

For me, personally, one of the major reasons for this is quite clear: the process of reviewing is byzantine and highly confusing for those who aren't regularly engaged in it. I'm not referring to the good article criteria, which are actually very simple and straightforward. What I mean is that the number of different instructions on the transcluded and auto-populated templates, which are confusing and contradictory. Every time I get excited about the prospect of reviewing an article, my enthusiasm is immediately dampened by having to relearn the complex system of talk page and template edits I have to make before I can even start.

I'm not sure if this has already been discussed before, but would there be any interest in a cleanup drive of the process itself? Specifically: getting rid of the outdated instructions (the ones suggesting you add a new review to the WP:GAN main page, even though editing that page brings up a huge infobox telling you not to edit that page...) and rewriting the existing templates and infoboxes to be less tl;dr? I'm game if you all are, and I guarantee you that even small changes to the bureaucracy will increase interest in GA work project-wide. Accedie^{talk to me} 05:48, 25 November 2012 (UTC)

Just wanted to chime in here after my friend Accedie brought this to my attention. I couldn't agree more. Back in the day (circa 2007) I did more than 100 GA reviews because it was easier and much more fun to do than FA. I felt like I could really make a difference on my own. I quit doing GA reviews when it was moved to the complex subpage system for reviewing. There are many ways GA reviewing can and should be made simpler. A big start would simply be doing them on the Talk page of articles. Steven Walling • talk 03:17, 26 November 2012 (UTC)

I can't agree with that last comment. Instead of doing a review on say Talk:article-X, it's done on Talk:article-X/GA1. On the template Talk:article-X/GA1 you have to (in effect) keep all the text within the same section, but subsections can be used. There is no real difference in doing it all in one section on a talkpage. I'm not even sure that it is a virtuous circle. In some topics with long queues, but not all of them, editor's are only interested in getting their own article(s) reviewed. Some topics (and I don't need to name them here, since the discussions are in the archives) nominators in that topic are not reviewing other editor's nominations. The reviews in effect sit there until there is a backlog drive. Pyrotec (talk) 16:31, 26 November 2012 (UTC)\

Please don't go back to the talk page reviews. They are hard to find on large talk pages and many of them are hidden under deceptive (unintentially) headings. Having the subpages keeps everythin consistant. I don't think starting the review is very difficult, in fact it is probably easier as you just click on "start review" at WP:GAN and simply start the review. The listing is a little bit of effort and could probably be simplified (it would be awesome if the /GA page had two links, one for listed and the other for delisted, and you just clicked on what you wanted and bots did the rest). AIRcorn (talk) 16:17, 8 February 2013 (UTC)

Good article top-5000 goals for 2013?

Would anyone else like to commit to getting a (consistent) top-5000 page view article, or several, up to GA status for 2013 (see User:West.andrew.g/Popular pages for a list)? And to commit to doing as many good article reviews as nominations, say "Yes". Happy Holidays! Biosthmors (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

• Malaria as a co-nominator and pulmonary embolism. Yes. Biosthmors (talk) 22:14, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm waiting for a GA review on George S. Patton, Jr. (#4648) and I see Martin Luther King, Jr. (#348), Circumcision (#976), American football (#1148) and Mortal Kombat (2011 video game) (#1992) are up at GAN waiting for reviewers, too. —Ed!^(talk) 20:34, 15 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point. It's good to see three have now made GA with Circumcision and Mortal Kombat still waiting. Biosthmors (talk) 01:35, 26 January 2013 (UTC)

New Proposals for GAN, Part I

Main page: Wikipedia:Good article nominations/New Proposals for GAN, Part I

Also posted on WIkipedia talk:Good article nominations

Okay. I have started this RFC to propose and evaluate all the new proposals to replace the backlog elimination drives, as well as new proposals to encourage users to become reviewers, or to increase the level of active reviewers, etc. Note: This RFC is not to choose which proposals will be implemented, but to work on the proposals brought up, evaluate them, tweak them and get them ready before we vote for the ones that will be implemented (which will be handles on the Part I of the RFC). Therefore, I invite all users to go ahead and write the proposals they might have in mind to solve any of all the issues that the GAN process is dealing with. Regards. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 20:03, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

RFC on quickfail criteria

Opened at Wikipedia talk:Good article criteria#RFC: New wording of the quickfail criteria. AIRcorn (talk) 05:23, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Help -- Improperly assessed GA

Here is an instance where an article was classed as GA, but no assessment was ever done: [3] . Queries: Is a GAR the proper way to go? As the particular article will fail GAR, it would then, in one sense, qualify as a "former" GA. I'll look for guidance here. – S. Rich (talk) 16:35, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Its not a GA, some editor just added a WikiProject Economics GA assessment. However, the WikiProject Economics GA assessment instructions requires that the article be both nominated at GAN and that it gained GA-status - neither of which were done/happened. All that needs to be happen is that the WikiProject Economics assessment is removed or adjusted to (for example) Start class: the article is somewhere between Start and C class and I'd suggest that "Start" is more appropriate. Since the article was never submitted to GAN, a WP:GAR is unnecessary - its not a GA, so also remove the GAR template from the article's talkpage. 17:29, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

(e/c) I would contend that it being listed as a GA is entirely invalid. The person who worked on the article self-assessed it as a GA without any review, which is something he can't do. It's unfortunate no one has seen this oversight for nearly 3 years but this was never listed at WP:GA so it's never been acknowledged as one anywhere but in the wikiproject box. but it's pretty clear cut to me that the article should just be changed to a stub or C-class article; there was never an "assessment" to begin with, so there's nothing to reassess. —Ed!^(talk) 17:30, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! – S. Rich (talk) 17:52, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Thanks S, for dealing with the GAR; it's a good thing that no GAR is needed. I'll keep it in mind for future cases. --Forich (talk) 21:55, 10 February 2013 (UTC)

Clear video game backlog?

There is a discussion going on at the Video games WikiProject about cleaning out the backlog for video game nominations. As you know, there are some month-old GANs that are in need of reviewing there, but there are also second opinion requests for these as well. If anyone is willing to step up and clear out the backlog, please do so. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 05:19, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

The backlog there is due to one editor who has burnt a few bridges when it comes to reviewers. AIRcorn (talk) 05:48, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Yes, he has burnt a few bridges when it comes to reviewers. The editor in question, Niemti, is currently the subject of an ongoing RFC for disruptive behavior related to video game articles and it seems unlikely he'll be responsive to the RFC. At this point, what is the best possible solution? Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:07, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I have no idea. A limit on how many nominations an editor could have at once would help with the backlog in these situations at least, but that has failed to get consensus the last few times it has been proposed. It also doesn't solve the underlying issue. I guess we could propose a motion to ban them from submitting articles here, but I don't know whether that would gain consensus either. There is no real ban worthy issue with the nominations that I can think of. It just seems to be a case of an editor that doesn't play well with others. AIRcorn (talk) 06:41, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Part of the RFC is about his behaviour at GANs as detailed here. Niemti (as HanzoHattori) was previously banned because of chronic incivility and inability to cooperate with others back in 2008, was unbanned in 2012 and he narrowly avoided that same fate this past November. We should go ask the VG project about this matter. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 06:48, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I would say that any decisions regarding his Good articles should be discussed/made here (or even better at WT:GAN as it has a higher traffic flow). Looking at the VG thread most of the respondents seem to have wiped there hands of this. AIRcorn (talk) 07:03, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

I have started a centralised discussion at the GAN talk page and I also feel that this backlog cleanup needs to happen sooner rather than later. The discussion can be found at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Clearing out the VG backlog. Please direct your comments there. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:28, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Really need a qualified 2nd Opinion on Talk:Thomas Traherne/GA1

I nominated Thomas Traherne for GA in December, it finally got a reviewer (User:Michael!) but from his comments he seems to not have read large swaths of the article he's reviewing, admitted he's not qualified to finish the review right from the start, and exhibits being rather oblivious to policies/guidelines. His rigor seems to be demanding the scrutiny of a FAC, asking for expansion of content that goes beyond the wise limits of WP:SUMMARY and WP:DETAIL and frankly inappropriate for a simple GA nomination. I'd like a second opinion from a qualified reviewer, because his comments are becoming incredibly frustrating.--ColonelHenry (talk) 17:10, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Blocked reviewer

I posted this at the help desk, but have been advised to take it here. I'm in the process of having Bradley Wiggins reviewed, but the reviewer GAtechnical has been given an indefinite block. Of course I'm not going to wait until it's lifted, if ever. What's my next move? Does it need to be closed and renominated? BaldBoris 17:47, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. I don't know whether you should close & renominate because that would look like the GAR failed. It seems that GAtechnical is the sock of a banned user, not just simply blocked. So, why don't you go and remove GAtechnical as the reviewer? What you'd need then is a new reviewer. Someone from this project might pitch in, or you could post notices on the talk pages of the various WikiProjects which pertain to your article. It looks like you've already addressed the editing concerns, so the review should be quick. (Sorry, I'm not in a WP:DIY mood right now. ). – S. Rich (talk) 18:27, 14 March 2013 (UTC)

GAN discussion

After Futuretrillionaire quick-failed Jill Valentine due to sourcing concerns as explained at RSN, a discussion about GANs has started over at WT:GAN#Problem: reviewers often not knowing/understanding policies/guildelines, and/or choosing to "ignore" them. Your comments would be appreciated there. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 17:07, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

User conduct discussion regarding Niemti

I don't know if everyone is aware of this, but there is an ongoing user conduct discussion regarding Niemti, which may be of interest to members of this WikiProject, since he contributes to many good articles. It can be found here. If you comment there you may wish to review the rules for user conduct comments first. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 21:30, 22 March 2013 (UTC)

Adios

Just so everyone knows, I will be taking a temporary Wikibreak for at least 5-7 days to let off some steam and get myself reenergized. Some of the stress has got to me, so I think it's best if I should take a couple of days off. I also have final exams coming up as well. Till then, adios. Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:26, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

How do I know how many GA reviews I've made?

I got a message from the new recruitment initiative asking if I want to recruit new reviewers. It requires that I've made 15 reviews. But I have no idea how many GA reviews I've made, I've never counted. How can I find out?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 23:37, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

If you start a new review or nomination, an estimated count will show up in parentheses after your name on the WP:GAN page, anywhere your name shows up. But it's not 100% accurate. —Designate (talk) 00:58, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok, anyway of finding out which articles Ive reviewed?User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 01:23, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Hi Manus, finding out how many reviews you've completed is actually pretty hard if you don't keep count.....I don't even know my actually number. For the Recruitment Center, the number of reviews that this says is the number of reviews you've "completed" (yes it may be off, but its the best we got). According to the bot, you have completed 12 reviews so if you review 3 more, you can become a recruiter.--Dom497 (talk) 01:48, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

That probably undercounts Maunus' work, since it only counts reviews in the last few years, and Maunus's first review was probably in 2008, before subpages were used. Try this tool to find diffs that will shed light on his early noms and reviews. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:26, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Maunus, you can become a recruiter if you wish....12 reviews does seem kinda low and no tools to help find ga reviews are working. Kinda makes me wish that we could develop a tag that when a user creates a sub-page, a tag for the edit is placed so we can find the review easier.--Dom497 (talk) 23:11, 11 June 2013 (UTC)

Interwiki links and GAs

Hey, GA folks. I've never worked at all in this area, so if I've posted this in the wrong place, someone feel free to move it. Anyways, recently I stumbled onto a massive interwiki conflict that involved, among many other articles on several projects, the recently-promoted GA Wheel of Fortune (U.S. game show). Of the links I removed from the article, only one, ja:ホイール・オブ・フォーチュン (テレビ番組), was actually correct (although the Hebrew link was a borderline case; we'll see what the consensus is on Wikidata). Now, obviously interwiki links are a trivial concern relative to most of the work that goes into making a Good Article, and I wouldn't want to ask contributors here to do any more work than they already have to, especially on another project (since resolving a conflict like this on Wikidata can be very very tedious), but these links are ultimately part of the page's content, so could there maybe be a minor criterion for GAs that's like "Verify that the interwiki links are correct, and report them to the Wikidata interwiki conflict team if they are not"? — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 21:57, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

One question for now – how easy will it be to "Verify that the interwiki links are correct"? Especially as many (if not most) reviewers will only speak English? - Shudde ^talk 02:44, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Fairly easy. I mean, for an article with 50 sitelinks or something, if one or two is wrong, that's not the end of the world. But in a case like this, you know, load a few tabs and look for any anomalies, either by using Google Translate, or checking the infoboxes for data you can understand. If it's an article on a person, check to see if the images and dates of birth match; if it's on something biological, compare who discovered it and when. In this case, a giveaway would have been the countries, television channels, and airdates. In fr:La Roue de la fortune, for instance, you can see the French flag and the words France and Français in the infobox. Also, if there's any "oldschool" interwiki links left in the article, that's usually indicative of something amiss. If there are articles linked locally that aren't on Wikidata, or vice versa, that's a problem. — PinkAmpers&^{(Je vous invite à me parler)} 07:35, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Who can nominate GANs?

Hi. Can anyone nominate articles for GA or does it have to be major contributors who are working on articles? I am looking for a Yes/No answer and the reasoning behind these. Thanks, Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 00:30, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, anyone can, though it's helpful and courteous to discuss it with major contributors first. (WP:GAN/I: "Articles can be nominated by anyone, though it is highly preferable that they have contributed significantly and are familiar with the subject") I can't tell you the original reasoning behind the policy, but I would assume that it comes down to WP:OWN; since an article doesn't belong to any one, there's no reason that another editor shouldn't try to bring it to GA status. -- Khazar2 (talk) 00:43, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Short answer, anyone (including IP) can nominate but only registered users can review. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 07:58, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Did_you_know/Good_Article_RfC#Closure

Project members may be interested to see this closure, the implementation of which is being discussed here.--Gilderien Berate|List of good deeds 20:49, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

No 2013 Backlog Elimination Drives

Why were there no backlog elimination drives this year?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 07:46, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The system was very flawed and it was decided that there should be no backlog drives until a new system is created....something that has yet to happen.--Dom497 (talk) 10:51, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

The last one used an unusual system. Why don't we go back to the older formats?--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:02, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

@TonyTheTiger: the main problem was that participants were reviewing nominations just for the barnnstar and didn't care about the quality of the review (which lead to several bad reviews). The only solution I can think of is removing all barnstars and make it that there is no "reward" at the end. But in todays society, I don't think that would work (I'm all in for trying this).--Dom497 (talk) 15:52, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Suggested tweaks in instructions for failing due to nobody being involved with the article

During the "ideas to eliminate the backlog" discussion, we had even discussed the possibility that having an involved editor be a requirement for nomination. Not that I advocate going that far, but I think that it should be a pretty straightforward that if an article needs some work to pass and there is no editor involved, and it is no big deal to non-pass it. I think that we should clarify this. The instructions (inadvertently) in essence say that we're supposed to do a complete review even if there is no editor involved. (by saying that the areas that need fixing need to be noted) IMHO such a fire drill would be wasteful and disrespectful of the reviewer's time which could be better used to review article which have a chance and need a thorough review. So just to be clear, a typical article is which:

• at first glance looks reasonably good
• but where it looks to the reviewer like some work by an involved editor would be needed to get it to GA
• there is no response to the initial "needs work" item
• the reviewer has not yet spent the several hours to review and write up all of the areas needing work.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 18:04, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Colonel Henry at ANI

ColonelHenry's competence and behaviour toward others when assessing GA nominations is being discussed at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#ColonelHenry GA review ownership issues and personal attacks. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

December/January Backlog Drive

Another Backlog Drive is in the works. Click here to find out more!--Dom497 (talk) 00:24, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Turn off "New section" link in {{good article tools}}

Will it be ok if I add to the above template? Since we're not allowed == Level 2 == headers in reviews, the new section interface isn't of any help. RainCity471 (whack!) 21:53, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

ASIMO

Hello GA-ers! I would like to ask something about the ASIMO article. According to its talk page the article has been assessed for GA-class. However, there is no GA template that recognizing the article as a GA. Also, in its review, I don't know if it passed or failed. The reviewer did not make a single edit on the article. So what would be the assessment of this page? Thanks. :) Mediran (t • c) 11:38, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

That's a tricky one. You're right that the review appears to have had no conclusion.[4] But the page's history is complicated--could we just be missing it?

I'll ask on the article's talk page about its status. If no one replies in a week or two, I'd say it should be delisted. -- Khazar2 (talk) 13:33, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

My view is that this is not a GA. There is certainly a review on 19 July 2007 (as listed above) and the article was initially given a WP:Japan GA assessment, but the article never seems to have been listed as a GA. It was also later given a WP:Robotics GA assessment, down-rated to B-class and then reinstated. I came into Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force/Sweeps (see also here) towards the end and the aim of that project (which was achieved) was "to double-check every Good Article passed before 26 August 2007 for continued compliance with the good article criteria.". To be able to do that we had a list (here ). The article is not on that list, it has no GA-star and it's not listed here in Category:GA-Class Good articles. Conclusions: it was never listed at GA, it only has two WikiProject GA listings and both of those WikiProjets in their quality statements require GA-class articles to have gone through the GA process: which was in fact started but not completed. Pyrotec (talk) 11:13, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

WikiCup 2014

Hi there; this is just a quick note to let you all know that the 2014 WikiCup will begin in January. The WikiCup is an annual competition to encourage high-quality contributions to Wikipedia by adding a little friendly competition to editing. At the time of writing, 106 users have signed up to take part in the competition; interested parties, no matter their level of experience or their editing interests, are warmly invited to sign up. Questions are welcome on the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 20:39, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Signature by bot posts is improper

This is with regards to the notices that the bot posts notifying the nominator that a review has been started. Having such a notice is a GREAT idea, and thanks for the efforts of whoever is handling. But the signature that the bot is placing on those posts is that of the reviewer. (and IMHO the "on behalf of" notice earlier in the post does not make this OK) I hate to get tough on this, but it is saying things that I would not have said and putting my signature on the post....this is a violation of policy.

Having such a notice is a GREAT idea, and thanks for the efforts of whoever is handling.

Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 14:55, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I also wrote at the bot page and they said to come here. Also, the bot is putting false information which is that the review will take less than a week, and then signing my names as the author of the false information. Can someone tell me who controls the bot text? The bot is violating policy by signing other peoples names to something tat they didn't write. I've moved one baby step up the "ornery" scale regarding this. Could someone respond? Thanks. Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 15:43, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

COI Request

I have a COI with Viralheat. The GA reviewer mentioned the article may not be stable enough, because this discussion has not yet resolved. There are no edit-wars, however, consensus on the proposed changes is unclear. I was hoping someone might be willing to review the discussion and edit boldly so we can check it off the GA list as I don't feel it is appropriate for me to make any changes in this area on account of my COI. CorporateM (Talk) 16:56, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

WP:The Core Contest

running for a fifth time - 10 Feb to 9 march....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:25, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Backlog reduction drive results

Hello. I'm AmericanLemming, and I maintain the GA stats page. Now that it's February, the results of the backlog elimination drive are in! Here they are:

1. In December 2013, the net number of articles promoted was 219.

2. In January 2014, the net number of articles promoted was 252.

We can compare these results with those from November-December 2012 backlog elimination drive:

1. In November 2012, the net number of articles promoted was 166.

2. In December 2012, the net number of articles promoted was 215.

3. In January 2013, the net number of articles promoted was 318.

Other interesting numbers include:

1. The net number of articles promoted in 2013 was 2629, an average of 219 per month. AmericanLemming (talk) 19:52, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Revisit one idea for backlog reduction

I'd suggest revisiting one idea for backlog reduction. That would be a requirement for nomination that there be an editor who, to an at least limited extent is willing to engage in the review discussion. In my medium amount of experience (57 reviews) articles without that never pass and are a waste of reviewer time / resources. I'm guessing that this describes 20% of the articles I reviewed and all were non-passes due to other problems. The "fail" instructions make this worse by in essence calling for a full review of failed articles, even when there is nobody there. There is no graceful way to "fast fail" these. Not that this is totally accurate, but, roughly speaking, just imagine where the backlog would be if that "20%" of reviews had instead been directed at articles that didn't have this issue. The answer: zero backlog. North8000 (talk) 14:47, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

A long while back, we used to have "quick fail" for articles that are nowhere near ready. But then rational thoughts gave way to WP:BUREAUCRACY because some believe that it "sometimes irritates editors who are keen to improve the article" (per exact wording on Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles) so that "quick fail" was stripped down to bare bones and discouraged from using it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:48, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Still, even offering constructive feedback allows a future editor to see those notes as a mini-peer review (hopefully). But yes, can be a problem I agree - no easy way around this. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:31, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Reviews by IP addresses

An IP address appears to have started a GA review page at Talk:Sachin Tendulkar/GA4, with no comments added until now. Since IPs are not supposed to be reviewing good article nominees, should the review page be deleted (and the article removed from Category:Good article nominees on review) so that another editor can start a valid review? jfd34 (talk) 05:44, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

I have nominated it for speedy deletion using {{db}}. Adabow (talk) 06:29, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

Requiring re-assessment every so often

It is well-known that, due to its systemic bias, the topics that not only have articles about them, but have the best-written articles, are those that its editors are most interested in. Consequently, there are articles that were assessed as good articles years ago that have clearly deteriorated considerably since then (e.g. Ted Frank). This usually happens because they were about a relatively technical and/or obscure topic. I am proposing that we require every good article to be reassessed every four years so that they can remain up to these standards, because the current system seems to resemble a high school student cramming for an exam during the last week he has to do so, making a really good grade on the exam, then completely forgetting about the topic immediately thereafter. Jinkinson talk to me 21:53, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

Is the reason for that article's deterioration due to it being a niche topic, or because it's a BLP? BLPs reqire regular updating, so while a lack of updates for other types of article may have less overall impact on quality it can become quite pronounced in this type of article. My first thought is that regular reviews may place a high demand on reviewer time. How many of the 20,000 Good Articles were promoted before 2010? That's going to create a sizeable backlog. That said, restricting the re-assessment to BLPs would reduce the number needing to be re-reviewed while ensuring that articles more likely to degrade over time get some attention. Nev1 (talk) 22:36, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

We did a round like this back in 2007 and it took 2.5 years to review 2,810 GAs. With about 19,640 GAs we have right now, that would take about 17 years to review them all (assuming that the review rate is at the same speed and no articles are added to the GA list during those 17 years). In other words, while your proposal has its merits, it will consume far too much time and effort for the community to do it. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 23:16, 16 March 2014 (UTC)

It would be mathematically impossible. How about a system where if someone sees on that looks like it might not be up to GA standards, they could cause it to be re reviewed. Thant way, only the ones in question would need re-review, which would be mathematically feasible. Oh wait, we already have that system.  :-)  :-) Sincerely, North8000 (talk) 00:05, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

The problem here is that while someone has to do it, no one wants to (like being an exterminator or something). Another thing that seems to happen a lot with articles about albums, for example, is that lots of people put tons of work into improving the article in the several months before and after it is released. This happened with, for example, 21st Century Breakdown, Stone Rollin', and Channel Orange (ie they were all nominated successfully as GAs within 4 months of their release date). Shame that the bounty board had to be closed down. As someone who wants to objectify as many things that have historically been considered subjective as possible, I think we should require reassessing them if they have a certain number of citation needed tags and cleanup infoboxes on them. Jinkinson talk to me 02:58, 17 March 2014 (UTC)

Quickfailing unreleased media

Discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Quickfailing unreleased media czar ♔ 21:08, 5 June 2014 (UTC)

Leaflet For Wikiproject Good Articles At Wikimania 2014

Hi all,

My name is Adi Khajuria and I am helping out with Wikimania 2014 in London.

One of our initiatives is to create leaflets to increase the discoverability of various wikimedia projects, and showcase the breadth of activity within wikimedia. Any kind of project can have a physical paper leaflet designed - for free - as a tool to help recruit new contributors. These leaflets will be printed at Wikimania 2014, and the designs can be re-used in the future at other events and locations.

This is particularly aimed at highlighting less discoverable but successful projects, e.g:

• Active Wikiprojects: Wikiproject Medicine, WikiProject Video Games, Wikiproject Film

• Tech projects/Tools, which may be looking for either users or developers.

• Less known major projects: Wikinews, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, etc.

• Wiki Loves Parliaments, Wiki Loves Monuments, Wiki Loves ____

• Wikimedia thematic organisations, Wikiwomen’s Collaborative, The Signpost

For more information or to sign up for one for your project, go to:
Project leaflets
Adikhajuria (talk) 10:58, 18 June 2014 (UTC)

Query

Can short articles like that of Peter Ostrum be promoted to the GA status? RRD13 (talk) 06:55, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Per WP:GA?, A good article is...Broad in its coverage: it addresses the main aspects of the topic". Length alone is not a While notability is not in the GA criteria, a non-notable article is likely to be nominated for deletion, whether a GA, GA nominee or otherwise. See also WP:GVF, which compares GA and FA criteria, "Neither has absolute length requirements, although featured articles tend to be long and one of the original purposes of the GA process was to recognize good quality short articles." While I haven't looked into this article deeply, it seems there is little information about the actual film and reception of Ostrum's role. Furthermore, there is information in the lead which is not mentioned in the body (MOS:LEAD). I would recommend the creation of an "early life" section or similar.... Anyway, shortness alone does not prevent GA promotion. Adabow (talk) 07:11, 27 March 2014 (UTC)

Proposal to change syntax of WP:GA subpages

Who handles updating the WP:GA subpages? Please see WT:Good articles#Proposal to change syntax of WP:GA subpages. Johnuniq (talk) 23:49, 18 April 2014 (UTC)

GA Cup

We are proposing a competition that could finally put a dent into the massive GAN backlog. Click here for details (and use the talk page there to leave your opinion).--Dom497 (talk) 01:32, 31 August 2014 (UTC)

Comment on the WikiProject X proposal

Hello there! As you may already know, most WikiProjects here on Wikipedia struggle to stay active after they've been founded. I believe there is a lot of potential for WikiProjects to facilitate collaboration across subject areas, so I have submitted a grant proposal with the Wikimedia Foundation for the "WikiProject X" project. WikiProject X will study what makes WikiProjects succeed in retaining editors and then design a prototype WikiProject system that will recruit contributors to WikiProjects and help them run effectively. Please review the proposal here and leave feedback. If you have any questions, you can ask on the proposal page or leave a message on my talk page. Thank you for your time! (Also, sorry about the posting mistake earlier. If someone already moved my message to the talk page, feel free to remove this posting.) Harej (talk) 22:47, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

Linking requirement

Yesterday, the "Links" section of WP:LAYOUT was removed on the grounds that it is not a layout issue and is already covered in other MOS pages. In theory, this means that the linking requirements are no longer part of the GA requirements. Our choices are either to let linking be dropped from GA requirements, or to add Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Linking (or part of it) to the GA requirements to maintain the status quo. SpinningSpark 00:45, 18 December 2014 (UTC)

Since there does not seem to be much activity at the Wikiproject, I have moved this discussion to Wikipedia talk:Good article criteria#Linking requirement. SpinningSpark 11:09, 27 December 2014 (UTC)

Legobot

I don;t know what is happening but it seems like Legobot is malfunctioning. It is notifing User:Example if articles passes/fails instead of the nominator. Look at User_talk:Example. Also ping AmaryllisGardener. Jim Carter 13:33, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Good Article promoted in 2013, nominated for deletion

Critical response to She Has a Name, Good Article promoted in 2013, has been nominated for deletion.

Please see discussion at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Critical response to She Has a Name.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 23:39, 13 January 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Pride!

You are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride!

• What? Wiki Loves Pride, a campaign to document and photograph LGBT culture and history, including pride events
• When? June 2015
• How can you help?

  1.) Create or improve LGBT-related articles and showcase the results of your work here

  2.) Upload photographs or other media related to LGBT culture and history, including pride events, and add images to relevant Wikipedia articles; feel free to create a subpage with a gallery of your images (see examples from last year)

  3.) Contribute to an LGBT-related task force at another Wikimedia project (Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikivoyage, etc.)

Or, view or update the current list of Tasks. This campaign is supported by the Wikimedia LGBT+ User Group, an officially recognized affiliate of the Wikimedia Foundation. Visit the group's page at Meta-Wiki for more information, or follow Wikimedia LGBT+ on Facebook. Remember, Wiki Loves Pride is about creating and improving LGBT-related content at Wikimedia projects, and content should have a neutral point of view. One does not need to identify as LGBT or any other gender or sexual minority to participate. This campaign is about adding accurate, reliable information to Wikipedia, plain and simple, and all are welcome!

If you have any questions, please leave a message on the campaign's main talk page.

Thanks, and happy editing!

User:Another Believer and User:OR drohowa

Copyright Violation Detection - EranBot Project

A new copy-paste detection bot is now in general use on English Wikipedia. Come check it out at the EranBot reporting page. This bot utilizes the Turnitin software (ithenticate), unlike User:CorenSearchBot that relies on a web search API from Yahoo. It checks individual edits rather than just new articles. Please take 15 seconds to visit the EranBot reporting page and check a few of the flagged concerns. Comments welcome regarding potential improvements. These likely copyright violations can be searched by WikiProject categories. Use "control-f" to jump to your area of interest.--Lucas559 (talk) 22:24, 25 June 2015 (UTC)

WikiProject X is live!

Hello everyone!

You may have received a message from me earlier asking you to comment on my WikiProject X proposal. The good news is that WikiProject X is now live! In our first phase, we are focusing on research. At this time, we are looking for people to share their experiences with WikiProjects: good, bad, or neutral. We are also looking for WikiProjects that may be interested in trying out new tools and layouts that will make participating easier and projects easier to maintain. If you or your WikiProject are interested, check us out! Note that this is an opt-in program; no WikiProject will be required to change anything against its wishes. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you!

Note: To receive additional notifications about WikiProject X on this talk page, please add this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject X/Newsletter. Otherwise, this will be the last notification sent about WikiProject X.

Harej (talk) 16:57, 14 January 2015 (UTC)

Good Lists

There is a proposal to set up a new classification level, Good List. Please add your comments there. --Redrose64 (talk) 10:14, 4 May 2015 (UTC)

Erhard Heiden

The GA-review was opened on 12 May this year, but nothing has happened yet. I messaged the reviewer and he said he would "shortly get to it", but still nothing has happened. I would be very grateful if someone else would take time to review the short article. Cheers, Jonas Vinther • (speak to me!) 12:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Proposal to tweak Good Article Criteria for copyright violation and plagiarism

Please review and discuss here. Thank you. –Grondemar 23:25, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

Deletion to Quality Award

I've created the WP:Deletion to Quality Award.

This recognizes editors who've taken a page previously considered for deletion — to Featured Article or Good Article quality.

The award is inspired by the Wikipedia:Million Award, the Wikipedia:Article Rescue Squadron, and the Wikipedia:WikiProject Quality Article Improvement.

Please see Wikipedia:Deletion to Quality Award.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 12:17, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Procedure for cleaning up "Good Articles" that never went through a GA review?

I'm not sure if this is the best place to post this question, but I recently discovered a few articles that claim to be "GA-Class" on their Wikiproject templates, but apparently never went through a GA review. Specifically, Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari, Gillespie v. United States Steel Corp, Resource, and Suffolk University Law School (and I am sure there are others) all claim to be GA-Class in their quality assessments, but I can't find GA reviews for these articles, they are not listed at the list of good articles, and they do not have the GA icon in the upper right-hand corner of the articles. Is there a procedure for dealing with these articles? I assume the best way to proceed is to simply reassess the articles' quality on their respective talk pages, but I thought I should check here first. Thanks in advance for you help! Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 21:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Yes. If there was no GA nomination or review (for example: Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry seems to have just had an IP editor adjust the rating without comment in 2011) the proper thing to do is to revert it. The distance of time does not grant an error legitimacy. --PresN 21:27, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the prompt reply, PresN. I'll go ahead and reassess these articles. Best, -- Notecardforfree (talk) 21:31, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Proposal for next GA Cup

I was inspired to write a proposal for ways to improve the next GA Cup to better encourage reduction of the GAN backlog. You can see the proposal here; I would greatly appreciate any feedback. Thanks! –Grondemar 06:20, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Requested review

As loathe as I am to try and "cut in line" for a review, I just wanted to ask if anyone is interested in reviewing Matt Bevin, the current governor of Kentucky. Governors of Kentucky is a good topic, but with Bevin's election, it now contains one article that is not yet GA, which is grounds for de-listing. I would like to remedy that as soon as possible. Thanks. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 19:50, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

GA Template on moved pages

Template:GA is used at Talk:Territorial possessions of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, but the link to the review is broken because at the time of review, the article was titled Hospitaller colonization of the Americas. Is there a workaround for this, or does the template need to be updated to account for these types of moves?--3family6 (Talk to me | See what I have done) 05:37, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

• Now fixed, I changed it to an Article history template and did a bit of tidying up. Pyrotec (talk) 08:47, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Gun show loophole/GA1

Hello everyone! I am turning to this talk page for guidance by more experienced GA reviewers on how to deal with a specific situation that arose in this GA review. The problem at hand is that the title of the article is disputed due to concerns that it violates Wikipedia's NPOV policy. After several discussions on the article's talk page, the matter was taken to Administration, were it was archived with no resolution. My personal opinion is that the article does not violate NPOV, but that does not resolve the conflict. The question is now: Does this dispute stand in the way of the article becoming GA, even if the rest should meet GA standards? As far as I can see, no edit-warring is taking place over the issue at the moment. Zwerg Nase (talk) 08:46, 5 October 2015 (UTC)

• The article was listed as a GA by the reviewer (which appears to be you), and the article is still a GA. If someone objects strongly enough the article could be sent to WP:GAR and either the current GA will be upheld, or, if it is considered unworthy of GA, delisted (time could be give to corrective action if there are only minor problems). I hope there was no edit-waring (not vandalism) going on during the review: that would have made it an unstable article. Pyrotec (talk) 09:01, 31 January 2016 (UTC)

A proposal: GA director and delegates?

I'm not sure whether RfC will be the correct place for this proposal eventually, but I thought I would bring it here first. As the title suggests, I was thinking about how there are Featured Article and Featured List directors and delegates and why there are not similar positions for the GA process. Although GAN is certainly a different process than FAC or FLC, particularly in that GAN is a singular review while FA and FLC are a discussion that requires consensus, thus requiring coordinators to close these discussions adequately. Obviously, GAN does not require this type of discussion closing, and I don't suggest that this should be amended--I like the process. But GAR, and community reassessment in particular, does require consensus. Currently, any editor can close a discussion, but I would like to propose that there be one director and three delegates, as in FAC or FLC who could clearly be trusted to close these discussions. In addition, I think these officials, who would have a lot of experience with the GA process, could tend to other tasks as well such as judging the GA Cup, keeping track of old on hold and second opinion nominations, and resolving disputes. Obviously, this wouldn't change for the upcoming GA Cup, and the details would have to be ironed out. But I think it's a solid idea and would like to promote discussion. I'm not sure how officials are chosen at FAC and FLC or how and if they are ever changed, but I'm sure it's a fine process that would work well here as well. Thanks, Johanna^{(talk to me!)} 03:51, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

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What if more than one author worked on a GA

When I nominate an article for FA, I can name co-authors. When I nominate for GA, not. Can we change that? Sometimes a major contributor even shows up during the review process. Some recent examples:

• Requiem (Fauré), nominated by me, but Tim riley did the groundwork and helps with the review questions
• BWV 143, nominated by me, but Nikkimaria had written a major section and helped with improvements in response to the review
• BWV 71, nominated by me, but Thoughtfortheday had written a lot and is helping to fix review questions

Ideas? --Gerda Arendt (talk) 16:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I agree that a clearer means for naming conominators would be useful. I've seen people use the note= parameter on the nomination template to name conominators, but this isn't really a solution. It surely wouldn't be too hard to add nominator2=, nominator2=, etc., parameters to the template. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:15, 3 April 2016 (UTC)

I also agree with this statement. Only one editor can currently be considered the nominator of a GAN. Just a few minutes ago, another editor agreed to support me in a particular GAN, but I knew that it is not really possible for more than one of us to be noted in the reporting as the official nominator. The GA process is almost entirely automated and this type of change would have to be an enhancement to User:Legobot, but I happen to know an enhancement to Legobot's GA process is not possible right now. Prhartcom (talk) 16:09, 4 April 2016 (UTC)

Provisions for GAN with contested content or other possible POV concerns

This is a question which occurred to me once before, and I have reason to think maybe it might arise again. I am aware of at least a few instances where, for whatever reason, possibly including application of ArbCom discretionary sanctions, content on certain topics can be sometimes edited primarily, if not solely, by one side in a long-running dispute. In such cases, it might be possible for someone who is seeking to nominate a GA to construct the content in such a way that it might, barely, meet GA standards for sourcing, although there might be serious questions about whether the material so sourced might meet FRINGE or MINORITY standards rather than regular standards. I seem to remember being told that there are specific provisions for Israel-Palestine related GANs regarding these provisions, and was wondering whether there might be any sort of way to responsibly perhaps GA review standards to perhaps include a broader range of topics if circumstances might seem to call for it, such as over-selling what might be a minority or outdated viewpoint. Anyway, any comments? John Carter (talk) 14:56, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

Isn't this entirely covered by GAN criteria 4: "Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each."? If a reviewer feels that, however well sourced, the article is pushing a fringe viewpoint, then it's not meeting all criteria. Getting into more specifics about trying to fix the bias vs. if the reviewer is just biased the other way are out of scope for the GAN criteria, as they would need to be addressed on a case-by-case basis. --PresN 17:21, 31 May 2016 (UTC)

How broad should the coverage be?

I am reviewing United States Army Herald Trumpets for GA, but it seems the article is way too short as sources to add more content (if there are any other than those used) are inaccessible to the nominator, LavaBaron. One of his/her GANs, Federal Emergency Plan D-Minus, failed a few days ago due to similar reasons. My question is: how broad should a GAN be in its coverage if the topic is not covered well in reliable sources (at least by those sources which the nominator could gather), but is fine in all other aspects? Thanks. Sainsf (talk · contribs) 05:48, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for asking this question as I'm curious myself. For the record, I'm satisfied with whatever decision you make (pass or fail) as my primary interest in GANs is to improve articles via the feedback process, not to collect green icons. My understanding has always been that "broad in coverage" means it covers everything that has been written about the topic, even if very little has been written about. I based this understanding on the observation that the criteria state broadness "allows shorter articles." That said, I may be misinterpreting it so will defer to the community. LavaBaron (talk) 06:39, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

Good article reassessment: World War II biography

Hi, a community good article reassessment has been started for the article on Hyazinth Graf Strachwitz, which falls within the scope of this project:

• Wikipedia:Good_article_reassessment/Hyazinth_Graf_Strachwitz/1

Interested editors are encouraged to take part and comment on whether they believe the article still meets the GA criteria, or to provide suggestions about how it could be improved so that it can retain its GA status. Regards, K.e.coffman (talk) 01:09, 12 June 2016 (UTC)

Don't we expect more from reviewers?

Please have a look at my complaint about some questionable reviews. Chris Troutman (talk) 20:02, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

Stand-alone lists being nominated as Good Articles

FYI

 – Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations#Request for comment on stand-alone lists being nominated as Good Articles

--Redrose64 (talk) 22:59, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Note that one of the three proposals in this RfC involves creating a separate "Good Lists" rating and process independent of the GA process. BlueMoonset (talk) 18:19, 5 December 2016 (UTC)

new proposal

I have a proposal to better specify our criteria. I welcome your input. Chris Troutman (talk) 14:10, 17 January 2017 (UTC)

"Quick fail" criteria

I have raised some concerns about the "quick fail" criteria here. Comments welcome there- it's best if this can be kept in one place! Josh Milburn (talk) 22:08, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Time for a new drive?

There are now over 550 articles in the backlog, 260 of which are over 90 days old. I jumped on about 16 article reviews this weekend but only seems to be a drop in the bucket. Sensing some frustration from the nominators. Perhaps time for a new drive? I note we haven't had one in a bit. —Ed!^(talk) 00:28, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Bot logic

Jarry1250's User:LivingBot does not seem to be working consistently at Wikipedia:Good articles/recent. When it added the disambiguated page name Charles Reynolds (cleric) it added it as Reynolds, Charles (cleric), but the subsequent addition of Charles Matthews (basketball) was done as Matthews, Charles rather than Matthews, Charles (basketball).--TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:20, 19 February 2018 (UTC)

Hi Tony. The bot copies the link text as added to the relevant WP:GA page. See [5] and [6]. Best, - Jarry1250 ^{[Vacation needed]} 08:58, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

O.K.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 18:07, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

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