Wikipedia:Content review/brainstorming

This brainstorming page is adjunct to the Content review workshop. Here, editors may add criticisms and suggestions of the various content review processes; they may be incorporated into the main page once it is precisely defined its scope.

Specific issues

• Do the stub, start, and B tags achieve anything of real value? Do importance high, mid, low tags achieve anything of real value?

  (Yes, can be a very quick way to find substantial articles to further develop for FA or GA; also a top or high importance article that is lowly ranked may be quickly picked up and improved.)

  (Yes, because they identify general areas that still need to be improved; if too many articles about one subject are crappy, that may be cause to make some outreach outside Wikipedia to get subject experts to edit. Importance tags allow editors to prioritize their time.)

  (Yes, the WP:1.0 project uses this information extensively in putting together collections)

  {It can be used by a WikiProject to monitor progress and set goals, as used at WP:Chem where the system originated}

• Peer review is an agreed upon process but it has a poor record in generating content improvement: too many noms, not enough feedback.

  (Yeah, but can be a good unblocker at any time. Very versatile and can be useful this way)

  (What does that mean?)

• There is redundancy between the FA and GA processes.

  (Hmmm...many don't have the confidence to go for FA initially - I've pushed a few onwards this way)

  (Additionally, FA and GA provide redundancy checks on each other... more eyes are better)

• Despite the various processes there is still no process that explicitly recognizes good, short articles that are unlikely to grow.

  (This should be where GA assumes more of a prominent role)

  (Article length should have little to no bearing on article quality. They are two separate attributes. It is possible to have a very good, relatively short, FA; but also a long GA that doesn't meet FA standards.)

  (FA can and has handled this properly in the past. GA and FA should not segregate articles based on subject or length.)

Pros and Cons of each review process

Currently, there are three major projects on the english wikipedia that focus on reviewing articles; Featured Article Candidates, Good Article Nominations, and Peer Review. This listing is intended to provide a brief listing of the pros and cons of each. Others are encouraged to add or modify these lists as they see fit (remember this is a workshop).

Featured Article Candidates (FAC)

Pros

• Long-standing (oldest) method at reviewing articles.
• Widely accepted (ideally, every editor on wikipedia wants to see their article being "featured").
• Recognition beyond those involved in wikipedia (main page featured articles, the "FA star" added to the top-right corner).
• The criteria are available and followed reasonably well, and enforced by the FA Director.
• Rigorous process raises the standard in article depth and clarity across the internet, upskills editors in rigour and prose-writing skills.

Cons

• General lack of enough reviewers participating in the project. High backlog (though not as much as GAN or PR).
• Lack of "expert" involvement in reviewing.
• Slow rate of growth (there's still only 1,633 FAs on the english wikipedia).
• There's no wikiproject organizing regular reviewers and the project is basically maintained by one person (Raul654).
• Rigorous process can be acrimonious and draining.
• "Fan support" can result in articles passing FAC without rigorous review of sources, content, neutrality and MOS compliance.

Good Article Nominations (GAN)

Pros

• Organization of nominees into categories (easy to find and sort)
• Easier for an article to be promoted since it only requires one editor to pass
• Has an organized wikiproject with over 100 members supporting the program. This allows a better organization of reviewers and it's easier to coordinate things like sweeps and review drives, which have proved fairly successful in the past.
• Faster rate of growth than FA (2,887 GAs currently; nearing 3,000).
• The criteria are made available, published, and appear to be followed fairly well, particularly by the more experienced reviewers.
• Clear "stepping stone" in improving an article to have a crack at FA. Very useful for an article for which there is no existing format of existing similar FA to follow.
• Great way to introduce new editors to having a go at producing a cohesive 'good' article.

Cons

• The "easy to promote" aspect is counteracted by the fact that any user can pass an article, causing some rather lousy articles to occasionally slip through (GA's solution to this is WP:GA/R, and the occasional sweep of GA's to check quality).
• General lack of enough reviewers participating in the project. High backlog.
• Little to no recognition to those outside of wikipedia (no main page coverage, no "GA star" in the top-right corner).
• The project has become a bit more bureaucratic recently, with more instruction creep and other things adding too many details to the project.
• Parallel development with FAC not conducive to coordination within WP - may lead to schism and acrimony.
• Constant infighting between FA & GA reviewers takes time away from actually reviewing articles.
• GA reviewers who may not be familiar with FA standards refer articles immediately to FAC upon passing the article GA, resulting in disappointed nominators who arrive at FAC with an unprepared article.

Peer Review (PR)

Pros

• Reviews are done fairly informally, and no specific "grade" is assigned to the article, unlike FAC & GAN.
• Fairly long and established role on wikipedia (perhaps as old as FAC, though I don't have specific figures for when it was established?).
• Great flexibility; advice can be asked for and given at any stage of article development, unlike two previous entities.

Cons

• General lack of enough reviewers participating in the project. High backlog.
• Little to no recognition to those outside of wikipedia (no main page coverage).
• Lack of "expert" involvement in reviewing.
• No real records are kept of how many articles have undergone PR, nor are there any statistics of how many articles later underwent FAC or GAN and how many of those were successful. So we don't really know exactly how successful this program really is.
• There's no organized wikiproject so that regular reviewers can communicate about recurring issues and other matter of concern to the project.
• There's no single, specific criteria (similar to the FA & GA criteria), and instead, the criteria vary depending on the multitude of subject-based wikiprojects out there, which could be confusing to a reviewer that is not familiar with the individual wikiproject.
• There appears to be a decentralization of PR going on, and separate PR pages are being setup and organized by individual wikiprojects.
• Low activity and lengthy wait for feedback results in further lowering of use/profile/activity.
• The use of bots generating automated reviews is sometimes the only "peer review" that an article gets, and most of the time, this is not helpful at all.

Unified review process

• Is there a need for more collaboration between the various review processes and projects?
• Should there be a more unified means of article reviewing?
• Is there a need for a centralized review process? A single review stream? A central clearinghouse of articles seeking reviews?
• Is rating different than reviews? Should ratings be secondary to quality reviews aimed at continuous improvement?