Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 4

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Pass, fail, and hold?

Okay, I've noticed that there are a lot of "close, needs 1-2 more edits" remarks on talk pages of articles at the top. Not fail, not quite pass... I will start boldly marking these as "pending" or "hold" so that people can go to the next one. Any other ideas? —Rob (talk) 01:42, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I leave quite a few messages like that. I usually think it is best to leave the final promotion decision to another independent editor, so if 'pending' is understood to mean 'already reviewed once, just requires a read through to check comments have been addressed', then I'm all for it. Worldtraveller 02:20, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I like it; it's the GA equivalent of FA's "conditional support". Nifboy 03:56, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I too like this as this makes it more logical. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 16:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Images

I noticed that Tom Cousineau and maybe a few other articles failed GA status because it had no images. Problem with some of those articles especially ones of sports stars of the 70s and 80s is that there is absolutely no free images avalible for them, is this a vaild reason to oppose a GA, having no images?. Note Jack Tatum currently nominated is having the same thing, no free images to use. Thanks Jaranda ^{wat's sup} 01:07, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

There shouldn't be a reason to not make it a GA if there really are no images, the standards do still say images when available, right? Homestarmy 17:18, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It is NOT imperative to have images for GA if images are not available. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 15:57, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Citations vs. references

There seems to be a number of existing GAs that don't have nearly enough inline citations, or sometimes a lack of citations at all. So for things like Maritime history of Florida (which I passed earlier) and Operation Market Garden (which I'm about to review), which are both highly informative articles that happen to lack inline citations, I am inclined to give the articles the benefit of the doubt, take the references at their word and leave off specific inline citations for the FA process (which obviously would require citations, inline or otherwise). —Rob (talk) 19:39, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Hello, if they can leave a link farm at the bottom they can convert them into references easily. Fail with extreme prejudice :P Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 19:45, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

If all that's there is a fairly ambiguous linkfarm and you can't figure out what goes where then I would say its not much in the way of references heh. Homestarmy 21:04, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

• Okay, but there are other ones out there that don't conform to this, so I'm wondering how well it's been tested. It seems that there's about 75% compliance on the articles I've looked at that are already Good Articles. For larger, older articles, the effort may be nearly prohibitive. —Rob (talk) 21:15, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

It's not like they are book references. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 21:13, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

Technically inline references aren't even strictly necessary for FAs (they'd take Harvard references too, for instance). A link farm isn't good enough, obviously, but a dedicated and properly formatted "references" or "bibliography" section is generally considered good enough. The longer the article and the more sources used, I guess the more important inline citations would be. TheGrappler 22:18, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

Good thing I noticed this conversation. I inserted references/footnotes in an article (Mega Man X (character)), abielt neglected to insert citations for them where appropriate. I just finished doing this. -Zero^Talk 00:53, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

• I'd believe that. It doesn't make any sense to have GA standards be more strict than FA standards. I guess what I meant by inline references was... next to a major encyclopedic point in the article, is a reference necessary then and there? Because the previous standard was, oh, if it just has a list of references (even properly formatted) at the end of the article, that's not good enough, when I feel that it absolutely is good enough. I understand this is all subjective to the reviewer, but it still seems that there plenty of good articles out there that got failed because of the lack of inline references even though there was a well-constructed reference section (not just "link farms"). —Rob (talk) 15:06, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Category for articles that fulfil all criteria except references

It seems that there are a lot of articles out there that are exceptionally well-written and comprehensive, yet lack references. Examples include Geographic information system and Tuatara.

I propose creating a project like Good Articles that raises awareness of these articles and allows those who are interested to work on them. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 18:04, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

You could probably add a new branch of WikiProject GA to do this. Good idea though, Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 18:12, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

It is indeed a great idea. There should also be a new branch of Wikiproject GA on this. --Siva1979^{Talk to me} 06:41, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

There is now a very rudimentary draft page for the project at Wikipedia:WikiProject Unreferenced GA. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

A good idea especially given that most article going to FA status normally appear here 1st, success here generally encourages nominations there and references are the first thing that gets picked up on there. Though should there be a suggestion that if references aren't sufficient that the reviewer should first contact the nominator and see it can get fixed quickly. Also what happens when the references are fixedGnangarra 11:14, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I shall put a suggestion on our page that once references are fixed, the article be resubmitted to GA. Usually things are not rejected if a quick fix is available, so the amendment proposed below wouldn't apply. Many thanks, Samsara (talk • contribs) 17:07, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposal to change reviewers' instructions

I propose to change the following section:

If you see an article below under "Nominations" that you don't consider to meet the criteria:

1. Remove it from the list.
2. Replace {{GA nominee}} with {{FailedGA}} on its talk page.
3. Please leave a reason on the article's talk page. You may use the template {{subst:gan-fail}} to explain, with the following syntax:
   

{{subst:gan-fail|(reason)}} ~~~~

To:

If you see an article below under "Nominations" that you don't consider to meet the criteria:

1. Remove it from the list.
2. Replace {{GA nominee}} with {{FailedGA}} on its talk page.
3. Please leave a reason on the article's talk page. You may use the template {{subst:gan-fail}} to explain, with the following syntax:
   {{subst:gan-fail|(reason)}} ~~~~
4. If your sole criterion for rejecting the article was a lack of appropriate references, please add the article to the Unreferenced GA Nominations list.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 10:46, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

• Accepted by Srikeit^{(talk ¦ ✉)} 10:52, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support Gnangarra 11:09, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 17:21, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support Both of the GAs that I have nominated and failed have been lack of references. Gizza^{Chat ©} 11:58, 21 May 2006 (UTC)
• No problem with change. Cedars 05:25, 26 May 2006 (UTC)
• Support. This could even be changed into a number of "exit options," meaning GA noms failing for only one specific reason could be requeued on a page that addresses that specific shortcoming. dewet|✉ 05:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Pending

WHen reviewing an article the nomination really requires to be tagged so that the next person doesn't spend time reviewing the same article only to find that it's been promoted/failed. Suggest that -- pending Gnangarra 01:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC) be tagged after the articles nomination. Then another reviewer knows who is reviewing and when they started, if the reviewer is unable to complete straight away or waiting for a fix then they a note on the articles talk page of where they are at. There nothing worse than spending 1 or 2 hours reviewing, checking ref and image tags only to find it got promoted. Gnangarra 01:03, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Stockholm

I removed Stockholm, but reinserted it again, as I currently don't have the time/interest to go through the Peer Review process and I couldn't find anywhere else to have it graded. / Fred-Chess 15:11, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Harry Potter

It sounds like it's missing something but I can't clearly put my finger on it. It sounds half-POV, half-NPOV so I'm not sure. As for the references, there aren't enough but is looks good for GA. Would somebody give it a review too. Lincher 22:38, 4 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, for starters, I'm hardly without bias in this review (I nominated it) but could you possibly elaborate more on what you mean, specifically, the NPOV issues and what isn't referenced that should be referenced. TonyJoe 02:11, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

I vacillate on POV, but the prose is not compelling (requirement 1a). Viz. all of Publishing History, especially the two paragraphs below the first quote. Overuse of "would go on to" is unappealing (to me). Several paragraphs are small, two sentence affairs that could easily be made single sentences and combined to make larger bits of text. The article's structure could use some housekeeping in order to slim the TOC, "Reception" and "See Also" being ripe candidates. Moreover, the lead is far too short for a 44kb article. At first blush, the references look good to me, and I think it certainly has the makings of a GA.--Monocrat 02:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Wonderful, I will GA-promote it now. Lincher 03:06, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

• I started by addressing some of the publishing history concerns. I struck some (but left some) "would go on to"'s and combined some of those two sentence affairs into existing paragraphs. Retooling the reception section will take some more thought and consultation with other editors but I've always hated the "see also" section.TonyJoe 03:12, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Lichner, I might have been unclear: I don't think it warrants GA status as of yet, because it fails all of criterion 1 (though 1d is probably irrelevant). I'm glad to see my comments have spurred action, and I want to help with the article sometime soon, but it doesn't deserve GA status yet. A small concern is that "Harry Potter" logo lacks a fair-use rationale.--Monocrat 03:36, 5 June 2006 (UTC)

Long articles section

It should be removed since people don't tend to categorize articles in this category, plus the fact that almost all the categories have some articles that are 25kb in them. Lincher 11:40, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. If not everyone uses it, that's no reason to dispose of it. Longer articles take much longer to review, and if they are sitting in the normal sections it clogs everything up. Separating them out helps the process run more smoothly. If long articles are listed in the normal categories it's quite easy to move them. Worldtraveller 11:50, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Good point, anyway we will have a backlog in the longer article list anyway, IMO. Lincher 14:13, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I am getting very annoyed at seeing so many long articles placed in the other categories. I think people don't scroll down far enough to see the long articles section and just throw it in the first category that seems to fit. IMO, we should switch locations of the Long Articles section with the Miscellaneous section. That way, there's no excuse for not seeing that it's a category plus Miscellaneous should be the last section you notice anyways. Also, since long articles take longer, it's good to draw extra attention to them so they're more likely to get done.--SeizureDog 23:20, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Good, done. Lincher 01:09, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Much better. Thanks. --SeizureDog 01:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Good Article Drive and other suggestions

Currently, there are 997 featured articles and 1060 good articles. This suggests that there are many "good" articles out there which have not been spotted or nominated.

This is possibly because more Wikipedians are aware about featured articles. Everyone would like their articles to be featured! However, comparitively few Wikipedians have a goal of getting a good article, and probably fewer Wikipedians know about trhe Good Articles project (compared to the Featured Articles project).

Therefore we should have a Good Article Drive where we read articles and nominate deserving, but unspotted, potential Good Articles. I have nominated Criticism of Microsoft, Chelsea F.C., Gmail and RuneScape.

It is noteworthy that Gmail is a former featured article candidate, and RuneScape's current Good Article nomination is doomed to failure. Given that Featured Article standards are very high, and Wikipedians often wish to see more featured articles, many Featured Article nominations fail. I suggest we review Featured Article nominations. If they are not good enough for Featured Article, but are good enough for Good Article, we could suggest the nominator nominate the article for Good Article instead.

If the purpose of the Good Article project is to spot potential featured articles and develop them into actual featured articles, then, shortly after an article becomes a Good Article, it should be sent for Peer Review so that minor problems can be fixed and it can become a Featured Article.

In addition, although Good Articles is supposed to be an informal proccess, I think allowing a single reviewer to pass the articles is a little too lenient. Right now, I could pass all the Good Article nominations. 3 reviewers would be better. This would also allow reviewers to give feedback on the article and point out what's good and bad about it. This is especially so if the Good Articles project aims to spot and improve potential Featured Articles.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:23, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

We pass GA articles after crosschecking it with the GA criteria list, and some self-judgement. If we find the GA has failed then we must give a good reason to help the wikipedians contributing to the article. As for the GA list, it is perused once in a while and we VETO-delist GA that do not match the GA criterias anymore. I other words, people will come after me to double-check GA I have accepted and if it doesn't conform to the criterias it will be removed from the list and a comment will be given on the article's talk page.

The articles that are de-featured or that didn't pass FAC should for sure be given here to be reviewed by the GA team. In fact, there should be a section accepting these articles. Be the guest on bringing these articles here.

As per the PR process, it is up to the nominators to see if it is in their liking to bring the article to PR and further, FA.

Lincher 14:21, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think this is an excellent idea. I have been reviewing quite a few articles & promoting them to GA & three of them are currently FAC. GA promotion gives the article a certain standard & motivates the contributors to bring it to FA status. Many times after an FAC has failed the main contributor(s) often are disheartened & give up improving the article. A GA nomination & subsequent promotion will definitely motivate them to strive for future FAC.

As for the 3 reviewers suggestion, I'm not sure that's a good idea. That will just make GA a duplicate WP:PR. I personally feel that the one-person review works fine. --Srikeit^{(talk ¦ ✉)} 18:02, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

I think it's a shame that "Good Articles" aren't mentioned at all at Wikipedia:Featured articles. I'm sure part of the reason many people are unaware of Good Articles is that they never check the talk pages. I think it needs to be mentioned at WP:FA if just for a line. Also, Wikipedia:What is a featured article? should have a note somewhere (under #5 perhaps) saying something along the lines of "if you feel that an article mets the rest of these criteria, but is somewhat short, consider nominating it as a Good Article instead."--SeizureDog 02:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I went to the Featured Articles and Featured Article Nominations page and added links to Good Articles. My two edits are linked below.

[1] [2] Please reword my additions, as I believe I did not phrase them in the best possible way. In addition, I don't know how to get the words into the box (where I want it to be) on the FAC page. Could some wiki markup expert help me there? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 10:02, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I have a suggestion, as mentioned on the good article talk page i believe that there should be the good article image in the top right hand corner of the article. Without it people have no idea if the article is good or not, unless they check the talk and lets be honest who does that?. If featured articles can have a star in the corner why cant we have the good article in the top corner. I would make it myself but I'm not to good at that stuff. I do remember a bit ago seeing the icon in the corner of the lost article, had the template been deleted??? If somebody will make one i will add it to all 1000 of the good articles, it doesnt bother me but it just needs making.--Childzy 09:17, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

As far as I know, the consensus is against the idea of a Good Article icon appearing at the top right corner of Good Articles. This is because they are not the "cream of the crop" of Wikipedia.

As a side note, I am sending two articles - Yahoo! and NeoPets - for Wikipedia:Peer review so that we can improve them into Good Articles. Please go to WP:PR and leave your comments on the articles. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 16:13, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Good articles may not be the "cream of the crop" but they are better than the rest of the articles on wikipedia and need recognizing as being so , also a lot of featured articles are good articles first. Who can we complain to higher up in wikidom to get things changed??--Childzy 18:07, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

OK, I was bold and put this together {{Good article}}. I am not 100% certain it will work, but we can give it a shot. -- Avi 18:40, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I think we should replace the Random Article button in the navigation bar with a button that links to the GA page and put it below the FA button. It is after all better than getting a stub or disambig page and it gives an ever increasing variety. Also promoting the good articles list is the job of the Wikiproject good articles so if you have anymore suggestions do bring it up there, we could use more brilliant ideas like the Good article collaboratin of the week. Tarret 19:43, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

• People want FA because FA appears on the front page of Wikipedia. If GA also has a mean to appear on the front page daily, the input in GA will be much larger. THE process in GA is a little strange, I think. --Pedro 14:39, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Good "Lists"?

I see List of titles and honours of Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom is a nominee and I'm tempted to fail it on the grounds of it being a list. We don't really have a "good list" award so I seems kinda odd. Should lists be able to become good articles or should they just shoot for Featured List status? P.S. In this case it doesn't matter as it doesn't have references, but this is a question for the future.--SeizureDog 06:00, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

See, this is a good point, I was opting for the no ref thingy since all WP articles must cite their sources. Well have to have someone else's perspective on that view. I for a fact, think that GA lists is a good idea as long as we have criterias to meet for these nominations. Lincher 11:32, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Awhile ago I asked about lists, but apparently nobody agreed with me that there should be some sort of separate criteria for lists, all I thought about was just ignoring the "Brilliant prose" part since lists aren't supposed to be written in pararaph form :/. Homestarmy 16:07, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that we shouldn't assess lists here, as the criteria are designed with articles in mind. I think if there were to be 'good list' criteria, they should be kept separate from the good article criteria, as they are for featured content. Worldtraveller 16:22, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Home on that but still I would peruse the good list nomination page to promote them if since I would for one ask almost the same questions as a GA article would need except for the fact that the article doesn't need prose and that the bullet list is a main criteria. But I would certainly request and I actually mean force the list makers to give the references for every single point on their list (inline citations in that case). Lincher 17:23, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

To me, a "Good List" nom system would be even quicker than the ordinary nominations, because you don't have to examine prose or see about MoS mistakes, and any POV pushing would be very quick to spot in my opinion. There is already a featured list system anyway.... Homestarmy 18:06, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

The only example I can think of that a "good list" might apply to is a list with nothing but red links. I'm rather of the opinion that they should be ineligible. There really only seems to be 3 kinds of lists: The featured, the incomplete, and everything else. And there are lot of those "everything else" lists. I think it would be too easy if we lower the standards any more than the FL ones. --SeizureDog 23:13, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well im not talking about lowering the standards for lists, im talking about removing standards that would make it impossible for a list to actually be a list :/. Homestarmy 23:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Good article template

In response to the discussion above,I cobbled together the following {{Good article}}. I tested it on this page Necktie. Comments, pejoratives, alleluia's? -- Avi 18:43, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Ah well, I did not realize this had been tried before. Can someone point me to where the archived deletion discussion is? I cannot find it for some reason (I've checked a few weeks in May and April) -- Avi 19:08, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

• Why exactly don't we have this template? I think that being a good article is just as important as being a featured one. The icon for good articles is compact and looks fine when placed in the top corner. If the article was featured then the good listing should be removed because we can assume by default it is also a good article.--SomeStranger^(t|c) 16:48, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Submitters' instructions

I am wondering if we can't modify the instructions a bit for submissions. In the case of a repeat submission, there's no instruction to remove {{FailedGA}} - so we get talk pages like Talk:Lusty Lady where the result of being failed twice is having 2 failure notices (and when the article was submitted, it had both nomination and failed notices). Bugmuncher 22:38, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

As long as WE know what to do it shouldn't be a problem right? You fix the number when you fail or pass it.--SeizureDog 23:15, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Yea, I don't think there is supposed to be 2 failed templates.... Homestarmy 23:52, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, there is no need to have 2 failed templates, in the sense that the latest remarks pertaining to the failed GA will include or exclude the prior comments left on the talk page. Lincher 15:16, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

There is no instruction not to replace the {{FailedGA}} with a {{GA nominee}} either. Anyone looking at the talk page will see the failure reasoning, if the failing editor did his or her job correctly. -- Avi 20:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Peer review before GA nomination?

Should articles be peer reviewed before they are nominated for Good Article status? I submitted a Good Article nomination (for the Dispatcher article) without thinking about the PR process. Now, I'm considering whether I should withdraw that nomination and do a PR first. Any thoughts? -- backburner001 16:10, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

You can do both at the same time or no PR at all and we will still assess these articles on that basis of the GA nomination criteria and thus briefly peer review it for you. Answer : No there is no need to PR before. Lincher 18:17, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Usually articles go through a Peer Review before being nominated for Featured Article. This is because of the high Featured Article standards. However, Good Article standards are not as high, and there is less attention on details. If you have confidence in the article, you don't need to Peer Review it first. If you are not so sure, or think it needs a little more work before becoming a Good Article, by all means, send it for Peer Review. I sent Yahoo! and NeoPets for Peer Review because I think they need a little more work before becoming Good Articles. Perhaps you could review the articles? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:29, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

The only thing I'd say about peer review and GA review is that if an article's listed on one it doesn't need to be on the other at the same time. Worldtraveller 06:34, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

And sometimes peer review isn't particularly active in certain areas. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 17:29, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

I've been inclined to do it the other way around actually. I've helped get several (actually, relative to total numbers, many) articles related to The KLF GA assessed. Now we'll move on to peer review and FAC with some of them. There's no hard and fast rules about this, just use whatever avenues are best. I see GA as a nice "badge" and an informal sign of quality, rather than an essential step on the road to FA, which I think a peer review is. --kingboyk 17:44, 11 June 2006 (UTC)

Useful Tool

Navigation popups - the universal panacea. Get your copy while stocks last!, This is a fantastic tool everyone should have. Especially if you enjoy reviewing GA and FA articles. Thank you User:Lupin.

What it does is create small popup windows with details from the wiki link while you hover your mouse pointer over the link. Great for checking copyrights of images, cites, etc Gnangarra 06:30, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

The funny thing is is that I'm using Opera 8. something and every once in a while I move my mouse too fast and there it goes the popups try to open the popup and the Opera bugs and stop. Though its absolutely great. Lincher 03:29, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Stupid question

Well, I have a stupid question about this whole section. Where do you actually place your votes? There doesn't seem to be any actual voting going on on this page. Is it just on the talk page of the articles? I'm confused... bob rulz 21:27, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Another stupid question: I just read the template thing at the top and all it has to do is be approved by a single person? How exactly does that work and what really makes it any different from how we did it before? When people just added the good article template to the article without anybody else's approval? Is it just to make it more organized and perhaps a bit more "official?" bob rulz 21:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes. One neutral reviewer goes over the article and decides if it is GA quality. I tend not to do it so much, I generally just drop in and nag about article needing fair use rationales. Oh well, Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 21:44, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that's right. just one conscientious editor. Typically artical assessment is done by (but not limited to) the more experienced editors, e.g., in WikiProject. But feel free to do the good thing: be bold. Just bear in mind that there is always a group of editors of the article under assessment, who are eagerly watching the assessment process of it. Note that this one-person assessment is only for GA classification. For FA, to much higher standards, the voting process is in place, with all officiality you might require. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:46, 17 June 2006 (UTC).

Basically in theory this means that each article gets review by two people. The first person has a tendancy to be bias though so the second person is there to confirm that it is in fact "good". --SeizureDog 21:52, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Okay, thanks for the clarification. Just making sure I wasn't missing something somewhere. bob rulz 22:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Cloud and Aerith

Why did Cloud Strife and Aerith Gainsborough get deleted? They were on here for a little while now, and other Final Fantasy articles are still on the list. These two shouldn't have been delisted.

I was under the impression these articles were all passed, at least, that's what I remember the edit summaries saying. This is the page for nominating good articles, not for displaying articles which are already good articles. Homestarmy 22:33, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes i passed them--Childzy ^{(Talk|Contribs)} 22:35, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

apology

I acciently deleted some good articles. Can someone retrieve them somehow? --homer s

• Someone already restored it. No harm done :)--SomeStranger^(t) 22:40, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles On Hold

Would anyone object to my writing out guidelines for placing articles on hold in the "Guidlines for Editors" sections of the GA Nominations page?--SomeStranger^(t) 01:14, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

• I think that a good idea something is needed Gnangarra 01:24, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

  Agreed, the list of articles on hold is growing larger and larger.... Homestarmy 02:52, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

---

Here is what I propose:

1. Articles may be put on hold by any reviewer following the criteria for putting articles on hold listed in the good article criteria page. (Criteria listed below)
2. Articles may remain on hold for a period of no longer than one week.
   1. It is the responsibility of the nominator to respond to the on hold request
   2. When nominating an article the nominator should be fully aware that the GA process can take anywhere from two to three weeks to complete and should be available (within reason), to respond to any on hold requests made during that time.
3. If there is no response after a period of one week then the article should be automatically failed with a note explaining that GA is a serious process and the nominator should be more involved in future nominations.
4. "On Hold" articles should be indicated by the "'On Hold" note below their respective nomination which should say somthing akin to "On Hold: Notes left on talk page."

Criteria for On Hold listings:

An article may be considered "on hold" if it does not meet all of the good article criteria, yet one of the criteria listed below is the sole cause for failing the article. Placing articles "on hold" is inherently subjective, it is the reviewer's responsibility to judge accordingly.

1. Missing one or two references
2. Poorly formatted references
3. Weak prose in one section or a few sentences of the article
4. Does not follow the NPOV in one section or a few sentences of the article

If an article is unstable then it should not be put on hold. It is the responsibility of the person who nominated the article to realize this beforehand and wait until the article has calmed down.

---

Feel free to add/remove things from the list above. I think that with the "on hold" system we turn Good articles into more of a peer review type process. I think that the lack of nominator involvement (where one nominator will blindly nominate 20 or so articles and never look back) needs to be dealt with, and implementing the above guidelines should provide an incentive to pay attention to the nominated article.--SomeStranger^(t) 03:54, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

First we need to clarify how many criteria that needs to fall in order to fail an article or what kind of minor adjustments need to be made by the article's editor that we can wait for. Secondly, if the article is on hold and a second person see that it has major flaws the prior assessor didn't realize can he fail the article anyway. How long should we wait for the Hold (a week would be enough ... if there is no response). Lincher 03:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Something else has arisen, is it OK that when I fail articles I let people know that they should re-nominate as soon as the articles have met the failing criteria? Lincher 03:32, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

---

What about this..

Articles may be put on Hold for upto 7 days by the reviewer. It's the nominators responsibility to address the concern quickly. GA isnt peer review, articles should only be put on hold when there is a minor edit/clarification required from the nominator.

1. If an article is unstable then it should not be put on hold.
2. If there is no response after a period of one week then the article should be automatically failed
3. "On Hold" articles should be indicated by the "'On Hold" note below their respective nomination which should say somthing akin to "On Hold: Notes left on talk page.(sign)"
4. SomeStranger's additionOnly article reviewers may put articles on hold. If the nominator wishes for more time before the article is reviewed then he or she should remove the article from the nominations list.

---

If the instructions get to wordy then it will be ignored or cause confusion. I think that specific criteria for holding an artcile isnt required when you review an article you know from experience what should be a quick fix. The message when an artcile is failed should only be the reason. I dont think saying that GA is a serious process and the nominator should be more involved in future nominations. isnt warranted when failing an article. This should be one of the conditions for nomination. Gnangarra 05:58, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm...much better than mine. Anyone else have anything to say? (I added one more rule to prevent HUGE backup)--SomeStranger^(t) 11:03, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea. And I would go with Gnagarra's version - simpler and more liberal as to reasons for putting an article on hold.--Konstable 13:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

I am going to go ahead and put up version two of the guidelines. Since no one seems to be commenting, let's just put them up and see what happens.--SomeStranger^(t) 02:37, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion there are way too many articles being put on hold, and for reasons which ought to be a fail. For example, Francis Crick is on hold because it has a cleanup tag. It's been tagged cleanup since April!! Let's keep the list moving and not clog it up with obvious failures. --kingboyk 15:29, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I think the "On Hold" option should only be used for things such as reference style issues and fair use quibbles (among other things), it's gone into overboard now. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 16:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should be for minor issues only: something which would take a good editor a few minutes to sort out. Anything more serious should result in a fail. After all, {{FailedGA}} says: "There are suggestions below for which areas need improvement to satisfy the good article criteria. Once the objections are addressed, the article can be renominated as a good article." It doesn't say: ""There are suggestions below for which areas need improvement to satisfy the good article criteria. The article will now sit clogging up the queue for a week." --kingboyk 17:10, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

Yep, that's what was intended. The only article I have placed on hold right now is an article with improper reference formatting. This was never intended for things that are major. If you have to think twice about putting it on hold then fail it.--SomeStranger^(t) 17:31, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to add to the new guidelines that another reviewer may fail and remove "on hold" items if s/he considers the problems with the article to be non-trivial. (It may not even be necessary, as any editor in good standing can fail an article, and that ought to apply whether it's on hold or not). My concern is simply to not have placing articles on hold become an easy alternative to failing. If the article has tiny problems, absolutely place it on hold (or even pass it, with comments, if the problem is super-trivial). What we don't want is to have 5 or 10 articles on hold at any one time clogging up the system. Thoughts? --kingboyk 13:13, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

Added the mentioned criteria to the on hold policy. Lincher 18:08, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Articles dealing with fiction

A quick look at several listed articles whose titles mean nothing to me shows that they're about this or that in some "fictional universe" or whatever. I may have overlooked something, but they don't seem to observe this part of WIaGA. I can't pretend that I have any interest in articles about Star Wars, Star Trek, Dragonball, etc etc etc etc etc, but I'm willing to look through the occasional one to see if significance outside the "fictional universe" [is] established and discussed and to check that The focus of the article should remain on discussing the subject as fiction within the context of "our" universe, not on establishing it as a "real" topic in a fictional universe (quotes from WIaGA). If I do this, and if I see that no, the focus of the particular article does not remain on discussing the sunbject as fiction within the context of "our" universe, may/should I fail it? Or do we only pay lip-service to this requirement for a good article? -- Hoary 14:36, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

No, im pretty sure its required, I think there's some stipulation in the rules (WP:FICTION or something) that all articles about fictional subjects have to be written from the context of our universe or something like that. Homestarmy 19:51, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

And it continues

People are still merrily adding nominations that to my mind don't even make a token attempt to meet this criterion. The polite thing to do would be to ignore this failure and call these articles good on the strength of their undeniable earnestness, which would lead to the bizarre result that a large percentage of the "good articles" on culture, etc., would be fancruft unlikely to be of any interest outside those (passionate) fanbases. Other solutions include deleting this criterion for "good articles", which would be tantamount to saying that this or that "fictional universe" (most of which aren't of much interest other than to young anglophone males) is of equal significance to the very real universe: odd in something purporting to be an encyclopedia. Yet another possibility is to put all these applications "on hold" for not meeting the criterion, but this would imply that they're easily salvageable, whereas they aren't; rather, their very existence often seems to represent a rejection of the criterion. -- Hoary 08:08, 2 July 2006 (UTC)

The relevant guideline to point people to is WP:WAF, aka, Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction). It's an essay style guideline with some clear examples, and good tips for writing about fiction using an 'out of universe' perspective. Being serious about this guideline is a new thing around here, so a lot of people may be caught by surprise, but it's an important guideline for an encyclopedia. Many fan-sites and fan-wikis recommend an 'in universe' perspective, so people have a hard time getting out of that mindset here on Wikipedia.Phidauex 15:09, 6 July 2006 (UTC)

Would somebody please look at this?

Strawberry Panic! (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) This article was passed within minutes of listing by somebody who had the article watchlisted. I don't think I would have promoted it, for the reasons stated on the talk page. I'm not sure, however, if my objections are sufficient to delist it. Perhaps I'm being too critical? :) Therefore, I'd like a 3rd opinion: if 3rd opinion is to pass, fine, if fail, we'll have to delist. --kingboyk 14:02, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

I have restored the article to it's original position currently at the end of the nomination group list. I noticed your left a message on the talk page, I added further suggestions, the list is currently about 14days behind nomination so the editors should have plenty of time to address the concerns. Gnangarra 14:45, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

[Edit conflict; I was about to say:] See the article (if you can stomach all that saccharine), my question immediately above Kingboyk's, Homestarmy's answer to that, and the note in the article: Most of the information presented in this article comes from the anime that was subtitled from [sic] the subbing group Doremi Fansubs. -- Hoary 14:48, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Failed it, for many a thing. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 15:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Layout change

First of all, where are the Long articles ... they take longer to assess so they need to be in another category. Secondly, the Nomination categories doesn't even fit with the new layout. Thirdly, there are so many overlap between the sections that there is no point in having any sections so that people will be messed up and place their article in whatever section they like or in the miscellanious section thus the reviewer will have to move it back in the right section. It would be nice, having considered my opinion, to bring the old style back and maybe discuss to get a consensus for the move pertaining to the sectionning of GAN. Lincher 14:28, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I like the sectioning, I can go straight to the subject I like to read about and find potential candidates. I think it brings new people to the idea, they can find new articles easily, and it's generally less work on the brain. Personally, I think Long articles should either be merged into the other categories, placed at the bottom of the page or moved somewhere else. It's just annoying. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 14:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm generally fond of the current layout, with long articles integrated into the main categories, but labeled as long. However, the category choice that places past US Presidents in the same category as video games is a little odd... As a preference, I tend to avoid articles about works of fiction or video games (I'd rather be playing them than editing an article about them), and the current category boundaries make it hard for people to find the type of article they want to edit, whether they have a preference for, or against, fiction articles. Phidauex 18:49, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Hi, I was the one that tagged the articles long, and I wasn't quite sure where to list biographies. I think presidents are under video games because they both have a connection to culture. If you think they should go in People, then that's up to you. Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 18:55, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

In an attempt to be helpful, I've created a 'Media and the arts' section for films, literature, games, and people associated with those things. Hopefully this will be a little more clear... I've also repaired the list of Nomination Categories in the header of the page, per Lincher's suggestion. Phidauex 19:34, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Thank you Phidaeux! Highway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 19:49, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

Sorry for all the hassle, I looks much better this way. There are no duplicates and now we know where to place entertainment stuff. Thanks to all of those who have taken part in giving this a new look (if I may say). Lincher 01:46, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

I really think long articles need to be listed separately. They take longer to review, and in my opinion should be discouraged anyway, because they push GA more towards being merely a lesser FA than a list of excellent content which is unlikely to become featured - the stated aim of the process. Having a separate nomination page for them could be an alternative, if people don't like a long articles section on this one. Worldtraveller 13:52, 5 July 2006 (UTC)

For the reasons I outlined a week ago, and in the absence of objections, I've restored a separate section for long articles. They really would be better off at FAC anyway - the similarity of our criteria should mean they would have a good chance of FA if they have been approved here. Worldtraveller 14:35, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Nicely done - I like it better this way. I meant to reply previously but it fell off my radar. Now that they're at the bottom (they were at the top before) some of them may not get any attention for quite a long time... but maybe that's a good thing? I think we need to include some language on the nomnation page that long articles need to go to the last section, and that we encourage long articles to skip the GA process and be edited with FA in mind. --Aguerriero (talk) 14:49, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't help thinking if they're at the top it makes it look like long articles are our main interest so I'd prefer to keep them at the bottom. I'll add something at the top about where to put long articles. I'll also change the length recommendation to 20kb - there are very few FAs shorter than that, but there's no reason why articles longer than that shouldn't go to FA. The less overlap between FA and GA the better. Worldtraveller 08:57, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well articles over 20 Kb are very often that long not because of merit, but because text may just be a random jumble of OR or nonsense, or they simply do not meet FA standards for many reasons, I don't think its a very reliable way to separate the good from the bad in any sort of average. Homestarmy 05:52, 16 July 2006 (UTC)

Nomination categories

I’d like to suggest more categories for nominations. Here’s one possible set-up.

1. Arts (includes film, literature, music, television, and visual arts)
2. Everyday life (includes education, family, food, games, and sports)
3. Geography
4. History
5. Math
6. Natural sciences (includes medicine and nature)
7. Philosophy and religion
8. Social sciences (includes communication, economics, and government)
9. Technology (includes computing and transportation) Maurreen 16:12, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

At present we have -

• Culture and humanities
• Geography and history
• Media and the arts
• Natural, physical and applied sciences
• Social sciences and society
• Miscellaneous nominations

• "Media and the arts" covers "Arts (includes film, literature, music, television, and visual arts)"
• "Social sciences and society" covers "Everyday life (includes education, family, food, games, and sports)"
• "Geography and History" cover Geography and History
• "Natural, physical and applied sciences " covers "Natural sciences (includes medicine and nature)" and "Math"
• ""Culture and humanities " Philosophy and religion"
• I think we could split Social Sciences to go into Everyday Life and Technology

It kinda covers everything already. Highway ^Batman! 16:22, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

It does, however the breakout is confusing. For instance: Social sciences and society (economy, education, family, food, law, politics, sports, war) - articles on sport are mixed up with warfare, etc., which as an historian looking for articles I can competently review makes it a little frustrating as I have to click on each link to see what it is. How about making them the same as the divisions on Wikipedia:Good Articles? That way it's also easier for people who passed to directly add the article into the same category there. Also makes it easier for Wiki projects to find articles in their purview, etc. plange 14:11, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I support this idea. <small></small> tags should compensate for the long list of categories (in the instructions box) that would result.  -- Run!  14:31, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

How do we go about getting votes on this? plange 02:30, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Edit summaries

I'm going to stick a big red notice on the page informing people of the importance of proper edit summaries, because nearly everyone is ignoring the protocol and it's really annoying. If anyone thinks it's overkill, feel free to remove it, but something needs to be done.  -- Run!  14:29, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with the big red sign... it makes it clear and thus people not conforming to the present status shouldn't be reviewing articles in the first place. Lincher 19:19, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

"Pass" instructions

I've seen people reviewing articles now who don't even bother to say a word on the talk page, not even a "This is a good article" five word sentence, and it occurs to me the pass instructions don't actually say anything about explaining yourself when you promote article. Can we have another step there that reads "Explain your decision on the article talk page" or something like that? Because when I see articles like Charles Etienne Brasseur de Bourbourg that have been passed with no explanation whatsoever, I begin to be concerned that the system really is turning into just a pat on the back -___- Homestarmy 19:34, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Well what do you want them to say? "This article meets the good article criteria"? I thought that was rather implied by its being passed. Seems a bit pointless to start a whole new section on a talk page just for that.  -- Run!  21:15, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

It's just without an explanation, it seems like there's no way to figure out if someone has actually reviwed the article, or whether their just randomly stamping something. Plus, then there's no help for the article, it's just a badge and nothing more if nobody even comments about their review. Homestarmy 23:38, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Good point - having a section would make it easier for anyone to drop a message and contest the review there and then, if they feel like objecting.  -- Run!  23:56, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

The thing of it is, I had always thought the GA instructions already said to write something on your review because most people did that and i've been doing it for a long time, I thought it was odd that it doesn't show up now :/. Homestarmy 00:02, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Because we are a review process after all, I have added a line on that in the Pass instruction section ... please review and rewrite to your liking. Lincher 01:57, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

Rather than just "this is passed", I'd be more interested in seeing suggestions for further improvement. How can the article be made even better, and maybe even work toward FA status? Slambo (Speak) 17:37, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

For examples of that, take a look at Talk:Seinfeld#GA failed which clearly gives insight not only for GA status but FA too and Talk:Spanish_conquest_of_Mexico#GA_on_hold which placed the article on hold and further reviewed the article toward progression of it. We pretty much have to become a system like Peer Review for the articles that will not stagnate at the GA level. Lincher 18:25, 22 July 2006 (UTC)

New proposal

Featured Articles and Good Articles are both Wikipedia processes to recognize quality articles. I created a proposal for greater co-ordination and integration between the two processes, so that both processes will be more successful in their aim of recognizing quality articles. Please read and participate in the discussion on the village pump. Thanks. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

20 kB too small?

I don't know, just look at the long articles list. 66 right now, there are around three additions a day, and the top of the list has remained the same for three days. Can we discuss a bigger size so the long articles list gets less weight? --Enano275 17:49, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

I've personally never liked the idea that small is generally a good idea for articles on almost every subject, I think 25 Kb would be a more fair size. Homestarmy 21:42, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly, and WP:SIZE states that articles that remain too long under 20 kB should be merged with other articles.--Enano275 21:46, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

The mentioned statement is not to be found on the WP:SIZE page. articles that are short can exist because not enough can be found about the subject. Actually, coming from the EB1911, there are very few articles that are over 32kB, so if we have to merge all these articles ... it would be of no use as they are stand-alone articles that can't be merged with higher articles.

Back to the subject, it is OK to have a category with long articles because they take longer to assess and we, in fact, hope at the GA project that these articles will be sent to the FA process because they can reach this status more easily than the GA one. Just to brief you on the GA project, please note that we are a side project for FA which promotes normally smaller articles in order to have a better overall quantity of good articles. Lincher 18:39, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying that the long articles category should be merged with all the others, my idea is that the 20 kB limit is revised, maybe increase it to 25 for example.--Enano275 22:45, 26 July 2006 (UTC)

I would propose that we use 32kb as the cutoff. That makes it really easy to determine whether the article is "long" or not. Just do an "edit page" and Wikipedia will tell you if the article is bigger than 32kb. --Richard 02:34, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

I second that idea about increasing it to 32kb. 20 kb seems too short. Monkey Brain_(talk) 04:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I don't think long articles should have a seperate category. All articles, regardless of length, should be categorized according to topic. A better idea would be to keep long articles in their respective categories but to mark them as long. In addition, although not many articles are over 20kb, most Wikipedia articles are not of stellar quality either.

I don't agree that Good Articles caters mostly to short articles, as a considerable percentage of Good Articles are very long. The three articles I nominated that were promoted - Chelsea F.C., Criticism of Microsoft and Gmail - were well over 32kb. I think long good articles should be considered "potential featured articles". Due to the stringent Featured Article standards, I don't see how "these articles will be sent to the FA process because they can reach this status more easily than the GA one". The Featured Article criteria is more specific while the Good Article criteria is more general; articles which are good generally, and meet the Good Article criteria but are not Featured Article quality due to specific issues should be nominated to Good Article, and when it becomes a good article, more will work on making it featured.

In addition, Good Articles also caters to articles which are unlikely to ever become featured. A possible reason, is, as stated, that they aren't long enough, possibly because there is insufficient coverage on the article's topic for the article to become long. In addition, sub-articles are very unlikely to become featured. For example, Mozilla Firefox is featured, but History of Mozilla Firefox is unlikely to ever become featured, as a sub-article. Microsoft is a featured article, but Criticism of Microsoft is unlikely to ever become featured because it's a sub-article, more so, a POV fork. Such articles, however, can become good articles - I nominated Criticism of Microsoft and it was promoted. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:22, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Personally, I think that listing them separately has had the unintentional effect of them being ignored since they aren't in the category with the regular ones. People look at the categories and then ignore the long article list on the bottom, not only because they take more work, but they are thrown down there like pariahs. I also support leaving them in the normal categories but flagging them as first, it shows what category they are in which is helpful to people with particualr areas of expertise, and second, it makes them harder to just ignore. Separating them out has done nothing to get them reviewed, in fact it has hurt the review time for them. pschemp | talk 12:45, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Not to mention that many nominators ignore the long category and just place long articles in the short articles lists.--Enano275 18:39, 27 July 2006 (UTC)

Exactly. Just leave articles, long or not, in their respective categories, but mark them as long. It would make life easier for both nominators and reviewers. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 05:41, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I have to agree with both your comments in stating that there is not a real need for a section loaded with long articles (I also don't bother about the what size is the fixed limit for a long article). Altough since they are longer, they will take longer to review and they will clog the other sections and the reviewers will not be inclined to review if the system is packed with long articles.

I don't understand what was meant by A possible reason, is, as stated, that they aren't long enough, possibly because there is insufficient coverage on the article's topic for the article to become long because if you take a look at the first articles that have been added from the Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 edition, they are short and probably will never grow because the sources used are so old and so inaccessible that the articles will stay short. Another example of that are the Greeks that are notable because they wrote some paper somewhere but nothing is known about their life so these articles will also stay short.

The reasons given for the GA process to stay focused on short articles are that : 1) they will probably never reach FA status, 2) long articles will one day meet FA status but we gotta give good reviews for that (because the nominators send articles here for reviews also). Lincher 13:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Some articles may have topics that lack external coverage. For example, there is plenty of external coverage (i.e. sources) for Microsoft. However, Google Groups (an article I wrote which recently failed GA) does not enjoy such coverage, and therefore the article is likely to remain short. A new user recently posted on Requests for feedback requesting feedback on the article Soft focus. The article meets most of the Good Article criteria: it is well written and formatted, referenced, and makes good use of images. I suggested the newcomer expand the article and nominate it for Good Article, and received a response that there was not much more to write about on the topic Soft focus. Aren't such articles what the Good Articles process caters to?

Also, do you agree that subarticles, such as Criticism of Microsoft, History of Mozilla Firefox and RuneScape skills will probably never be featured? However, I don't agree that Good Articles does not cater to long articles. Some long articles meet the Good Article criteria but need more extensive work on specific issues before becoming featured. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

Straw poll about length & inclusion

Limit of long articles (20kB, 25kB or 32kB)

1. 32kB. Lincher 13:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
2. 32kB. Monkey Brain_(talk) 14:48, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
3. 25kB. Even though many FA are way above 32kB, some articles have been recognized as featured below 32kB. --Enano275 00:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
4. 32kB. Keep it easy to check - will improve compliance. Phidauex 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Excuse me, Phidauex, but I'm confused. How can you vote to change the limit of the long articles section and vote to abolish the long articles section at the same time? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 06:23, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

He's away on a minivacation, so, without claiming to speak for him, I'll say that I'd guess he's talking of the definition of "long" however the "long" distinction might be used. And if long articles are put together with short ones, they can still be marked as long (if people so wish). -- Hoary 14:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

1. 25kb. Highway ^{Return to Oz...} 14:17, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
2. 32kB This is an online encyclopaedia so let's be geeky; seriously, though, the long articles list is just too long at the moment; it takes too much time for reviews to be carried out - we need to shorten it, and this is an effective mechanism. SP-KP 14:27, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

• Since no consensus has been reached for the length, I have currently placed it at 32kB but the poll is still on to figure out : which is better, 25kB or 32kB? Lincher 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

1. 25kB. Anything to encourage shorter articles would be good. If long articles face a longer queue, maybe authors would shorten them. Ghosts&empties 09:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Include long articles in appropriate sections (not in separate section)

1. For. Lincher 13:58, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
2. For. (This implies that they will still be marked as "long", yes?) jwanders^Talk 14:08, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

   It implies they will be marked as long. See Example. Lincher 14:40, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

3. For Articles should be sorted by category, regardless of size. I don't agree that Good Articles caters only, even mainly, to short articles. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 15:15, 28 July 2006 (UTC)
4. Support. Per my first comment (long articles receiving less attention in the current situation). --Enano275 00:55, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
5. Support. Phidauex 05:45, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
6. Support per J.L.W.S. The Special One, with the extra note that I'm in favor of concision, or anyway a high signal/noise ratio (no trivia, regardless of the way the trivia is packaged). -- Hoary 14:02, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
7. Support. Highway ^{Return to Oz...} 14:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
8. Support (and comments re: limit apply whichever option is chosen re: sections) SP-KP 14:28, 29 July 2006 (UTC)
9. Support becasue this just makes so much sense. pschemp | talk 04:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

• Implemented the removal of the section as per consensus. Lincher 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Comments

• After the changes have been done (it was tedious and a real hassle) the date ordering was lost ... I may change it in the future.
• It would be nice that instead of having 4 tilde (Lincher 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)) for the signature there will be 5 tilde (18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)) thus removing peoples funny and fancy signature that is really annoying when I peruse through the list of nominations. Lincher 18:24, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Name change?

Why is this page located at Wikipedia:Good articles/Nominations? It seems to me that it would make much more sense to have it at Wikipedia:Good article candidates (or Wikipedia:Good article nominations) to keep it consistent with Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Shall we move it? Coffee 16:55, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

I can't see any obvious reason, except for maybe that this page is managed by a WikiProject, and normally WikiProjects create subpages for things rather than completely new pages. Consistency is good, though. I support the notion. :) --Aguerriero (talk) 17:38, 28 July 2006 (UTC)

It makes sense to me too, I don't see any reason to oppose, considering that the current subpage would just remain as a redirect. --Enano275 00:58, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

As long as there's a redirect, no problem with the aforementioned change. Lincher 12:53, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd be fine with that. --jwanders^Talk 22:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

support ;) --Pedro 23:05, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm in, the current name is kinda annoying.-Dark Kubrick 23:52, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

support: consistency is good. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 02:14, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Ok, since it seems to be uncontroversial, I'll go ahead and move the page. Coffee 04:50, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Nagorno-Karabakh War

Apologies. In the edit summary a yesterday, I put Nagorno-Karabakh War as failed when it had in fact passed. Just a note to understand. Iolakana|^T 11:16, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Make up your minds

Why on earth can't we settle on what to do with long articles and LEAVE THINGS THAT WAY? This is at least the second major reshuffle in a month. Let's have a vote and settle it once and for all for crying out loud. I prefer them in separate sections, but for now I just settle for things being stable. Rlevse 19:13, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Please stop complaining and take part in discussions before shouting like you just did. Just scroll up that page to see that there was a discussion and I guess a consensus on the fact that they should not be set apart. If you don't like it then answer to the poll or else you will miss a good opportunity to voice your opinion. Lincher 20:14, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

I'll complain all I want. A whole 3 days of discussion and window of opportunity to chime in. Wow. Why bother now, you've already changed it back. And BTW you've still got long article listed as a nom category.Rlevse 23:02, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Removed the nom category listing of long articles. If everybody adds their vote, the decision can be overturned ... the poll hasn't ended. It won't bother me to do the whole thing again if it clearly doesn't show people's decision. Plus make sure you make your voice heard for the limit to be set for the length of long articles.

Just for your infomation, GA is still in its BETA version if I may say. The criteria are still changing, the layout isn't set and we still gotta do a lot before we figure out how good the articles have to be. Please consider helping in the bettering of the GA process as it will be easier if we all lend a hand. Lincher 12:33, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, this is a wiki and things are expected to evolve. Maurreen 16:07, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

not to mention that this issue has been discussed for months, no just three days, but its scattered all over the place. pschemp | talk 04:12, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Encourage nominees to review an article

Brief thought: why don't we add a bit at the end of the nomination proceedure encouraging (note: not requiring) nominees to pick a different article from the list to review themselves. This would,

1. help avoid backlog
2. help nominees get a better idea of what their reviewer will be looking for, and
3. ahh.. make the world a better place for everyone(?... sorry... I really thought I'd have three points...)

WP:MEDCAB does something similar. Thoughts? --jwanders^Talk 03:43, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a great idea. In fact I did that myself when I nominated my first two in the spirit of not asking others to do something I'm not willing to do myself :-) plange 03:47, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Not that the idea isn't well meaning, but wee need to keep an eye on instruction creep. Davodd 06:33, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree. Some people seem to just skim the instructions and end up doing something wrong (hence the need for the increasingly-big red box, which some people still ignore). They're more likely to read them if they're short and concise, and that means keeping only the very necessary instructions rather than the optional ones. Even step 1 for nominators doesn't really need to be there. Not only is it rare that anyone will nominate an article that is already good, but such articles will get weeded out of the nominations list extremely quickly. Every bit of space saved helps.  -- Run!  08:08, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Those are good points; I took a crack at streamlining the nomintion instructions (and implemented my encouragement proposal) in a draft version here. Please take a look and let me know what you think. --jwanders^Talk 09:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

The left bit looks far better. I've made lots of changes to the right bit (on your experiment page) to whittle that side down too.  -- Run!  10:50, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Can we request for a 5 tilde signature that removes the excess fancy bit that comes with personnalized signature? Everything else sounds good to me. Lincher 16:29, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I have been bold in changing some of the text and removing non-necessary procedures that can be done by reviewers. Like placing the name as Lastname, Firstname|Firstname Lastname as it can be changed by people perusing the GA list. Lincher 16:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree that bright, flashy sigs can be distracting, but wonder if we wouldn't be losing something in not easily being able to see who made each nomination? --jwanders^Talk 18:38, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

then we could use the Template:User which looks like that {{user|Lincher}} -> Lincher (talk · contribs)? Lincher 01:30, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Good idea. Meanwhile, is there any opposition to the proposed replacement? I think it's ready.  -- Run!  14:04, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

TOC

Jwanders added a TOC but I think it's a bit confusing. Half of it links to stuff above the TOC, and clicking on a TOC link doesn't exactly take you to any of them without a bit of confusion. The only thing that a TOC really needs is the nominations categories, and these are already listed in the instructions box.  -- Run!  08:03, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Yup, I conveniently demostrated your point about users not reading everything, and completely missed that the relevent section links were already there ;-) I've removed it.

Of course, I suspect one of the reasons I missed them is because I was expecting the more standard TOC box, so we might think about changing the formatting at some point. Kind of trivial, though, compared to actually reviewing articles. --jwanders^Talk 09:17, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0 Project banners

I've noticed that with articles that have WP 1.0 assessments in project banners that when a reviewer passes GA they may or may not update the project tags accordingly. When Raul passes FACs he does update those banners now. Perhaps an extra sentence in the passing procedure is needed on the lines of: "If an article has an Wikipedia 1.0 assessment change the class= parameter to class=GA in addition to adding {{GA}}." When a B, Start, Stub or Unassessed class article passes a GAN it should also be promoted to GA-class, so Mathbot can pick it up in its runs. It might also be an idea (though this is more contentious) to drop an A-class assessed article to B-class if it fails at GAN, and add instructions to that effect. That is because GA-class is between A and B, if it cannot pass a GAN it shouldn't be A-class IMO.--Nilfanion (talk) 14:45, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

This seems very instruction creepy, something we're currently trying to improve even in the current instruction set (see section "Encouraging..." above). To me, this seems like it won't come up often enough to warrant inclusion in the instructions here. --jwanders^Talk 14:55, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thats true and pointless creep is bad. I think if the regular reviewers of are aware of the tags and know their purpose that would save a bit of time. Its not a serious problem if its not done, just means a wikiproject editor would follow up with a edit to adjust things. Those tags seem to be getting more common as more projects start using it though.--Nilfanion (talk) 15:02, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

I do adjust the banners to GA if I pass an article but dropping from A to B is very difficult as GA isnt a requirement for A class and therefore failing GA it can still be an A-class article. If the article does have serious faults then I leave a note at the project page explain my reasons, some do then adjust it back to B class, I've even suggested B class back to start class one article. Gnangarra 00:26, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

Stability, vandalism and Edit wars

When we're evaluating the stability of an article, do we discount vandalism, esp. if it is promptly reversed? This is my operating assumption. Before I act on it, I thought I'd see if I'm on the same page with you all. (I'm a newbie here, after all, please don't bite! 8-) )--CTSWyneken^(talk) 22:40, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

We had a bit of a fight over it on the disputes page, but yes, stability now only refers to content disputes spilling over into edit wars or high amounts of content being changed for some reason, vandalism isn't included. Homestarmy 00:02, 4 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm 0 for 3; it's that typical?

I've reviewed three article here so far (History of Money, American and British English spelling differences and Solar System) and ended up failing them all. Is that typical of other reviewer's experience, or am I perhaps being too harsh? --jwanders^Talk 00:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

your reviews all seemed agreeable, the only thing I noticed was that on History of Money you said it failed the "references" criteria because of a lack of inline citations, rather than a lack of references in general :/. Homestarmy 00:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I also think your reviews are pretty good. I also would have failed History of Money and American and British English spelling differences. I probably would have also failed Solar System but I didn't look at the article that closely. Though a lower standard than featured articles, the good article standard is still pretty high. Cedars 00:41, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Nomination categories (2)

Further up the talk page someone suggested that the nominations categories should be the same as the Good Article categories, as this would help people specialise when reviewing and it would also make it very simple to promote an article to the GA list. Before we move to vote... what do people think? (i reposted this because there didn't seem to be any interest or no-one was watching that particular section)  -- Run!  07:17, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I suggested having more categories, but I don't think we need as many as the Good Article categories.

The current categories and the number of number of nominees are:

Culture and humanities -- 8

Geography and history -- 43

Media and the arts -- 32

Natural, physical and applied sciences -- 30

Social sciences and society -- 41

Miscellaneous nominations

Option A

1. Arts (includes film, literature, music, television, and visual arts)
2. Everyday life (includes education, family, food, games, and sports)
3. Geography
4. History
5. Math
6. Natural sciences (includes medicine and nature)
7. Philosophy and religion
8. Social sciences (includes communication, economics, and government)
9. Technology (includes computing and transportation)
10. Miscellaneous

Option B – Separate:

1. Geography and
2. History.

Option C – Separate:

1. Social sciences (economy, law, politics, war)|
2. Society (education, family, food, sports)|

Option D – Do both B and C.

Maurreen 16:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

I support, in order of preference: A, D, C, B plange 18:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, so far, I have split geography and history. More later. Maurreen 21:01, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea, as long as we KISS to add articles and to figure out which category it should be in. Lincher 02:06, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

My Good Article Nominee

Do you think my article Basketball (ball) Good article criteria. --Showmanship is the key 15:46, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

Well you'll have to wait for someone to review it. From a glance I can see that the article doesn't not conform to the Manual of Style, so you might want to take a look at that.  -- Run!  20:24, 5 August 2006 (UTC)

GA nom for Cyclone Tracy

Cyclone Tracy was stripped of FA status yesterday (see the FAR commentary) and I submitted it to GA to see if in its current state it met WIAGA. It has already been promoted and I feel a bit dissatisfied with how it has been handled. At the time it was the last entry in the geography list and it was promoted by an anon whose only edits were those needed to pass the article (incidentally it is in the wrong place on the GA list). I was hoping that it would get some constructive feedback which would help with improving it further.--Nilfanion (talk) 11:31, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Try requestiong a Peer Review. I would have thought that you'd get feedback for why it was delisted as an FA anyway. In any case, you should take this conversation to the Disputes page (this page concerns the project rather than the articles flowing through it)  -- Run!  13:49, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, thats true, but then I feel it is GA so why else would I nominate it? The main reason I brought it up here as opposed to as a disputed GA is that this is more a question about the procedure than the actual status of the article in question. It just feels to me that the article got short-circuited through, as opposed to being properly GA reviewed in the first place. I wonder if allowing that sort of thing to happen actually devalues GA as a whole slightly?--Nilfanion (talk) 14:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

That sounds like a very suspicious nomination, if leaving comments was mandatory instead of optional, this sort of thing could be avoided :/. Homestarmy 14:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I have to admit I'm highly suspicious that it was passed by an anonymous user. And I agree with the implication that anonymous users shouldn't really be allowed to get involved in reviewing, as it's so hard to keep track of them. I shall renominate it. But still, I think Peer Review is the best place to go for FA feedback.  -- Run!  14:13, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you there. The thinking in the tropical cyclone project was it is clearly not FA, but is it at least a GA? When we get it back up to getting close to a fresh FAC it will be PRed again.--Nilfanion (talk) 14:30, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Quality Monitoring

I've been wondering about this since I first found the good article project, and after been involved with it over the past week, have decided to bring it up here. I'm concerned that as good article's are only reviewed by one user and thus good article status is highly dependant on that one user, that there will end up being a large variation in quality between one "good article" and another. If the low end of this variation dips too far, the value of being promoted as a GA will obviously become diluted.

The problem is that (as far as I know) we have no formal process for monitoring how bad the worst articles passing GA are. For all we know, there could be sock puppets nominating articles so their actual users can log in and pass them. Without some sort of quality monitoring on the process, we could end up discovering that the GA badge has become all but worthless.

I expect this point was brought up and discussed ad nauseum as the GA process was being set up; I did browse through some of the talk page archives around the project, but didn't see it. If it has and someone could point me to it, I'd be more than happy to read through the previous discussion instead of forcing it to be rehashed here ;-) --jwanders^Talk 20:59, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There is a sort of quality monitoring going on: anyone can delist a GA as easily as they can list one. It's by no means perfect, but requiring second opinions would slow the project down to a crawl.  -- Run!  21:05, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

There is some related discussion in the main GA page archives, especially under "quality levels". Maurreen 21:09, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

I, for one, try to re-assess the articles and give another review if it's been a long time on the GA list. Or, let the writers know that some part doesn't meet the criteria anymore. May this process continue to be reviewed and continue to have sucess. Lincher 02:04, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Broken links on project page?

Looks to me as if the links within the categories (i.e. the links that say "your addition here") should be edited to point to "Good article candidates" rather than "Good articles". The redirection gives an odd outcome -- an edit comes up, but saving it shows you the redirect page. I don't quite see what's going on there, but presumably changing the links would fix it. I'm posting a note here simply because I'm not certain I really understand what's going on; if someone can enlighten me that would be fine. If nobody responds in a day or two I'll probably just go ahead and try to fix it myself. Mike Christie 03:05, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I went and fixed them, or at least I hope I did. [3], [4], and [5], for each of the GA templates. Iolakana|^T 11:03, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

"LONG"

When people add this to the side of the article, is there any point in doing so? Is it not just easier to move the article to the #Long articles section? Iolakana|^T 14:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Never mind: Just read more closely! Iolakana|^T 14:43, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

"Pass" critera

I move to make writing a section on the article detailing the review mandatory instead of optional, it doesn't have to be anything fancy or drawn out, but i've seen too many articles passed with no comment at all to tell anyone whether or not the article is, in fact, representative of a good article. Homestarmy 20:08, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Seems logical to me. Although I probably go overboard the other way..... --4u1e 22:22, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, there is a necessity for it. Lincher 23:41, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Well, presumably it wouldn't be passing if the person passing it didn't think it met all the criteria, so just stating it met it is somehow helpful? If you're wanting feedback on how to improve it for FA then Peer Review is the more proper channel for that. plange 23:52, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

It is very encouraging to hear a positive evaluation of the work done. I do that all the time with my review of speech pieces I judge first rank. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 01:22, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, positive feedback is always nice, but I thought this was supposed to be an alternative process which was low on beauracracy? Perhaps one where silly little things where missing ISBNs weren't a huge deal? watching this page, you guys are requiring more and more of potential reviewers, and you wonder why there's such a backlog. And then people who read the articles can't even tell what they're supposed to be about. Decide what your purpose is, describe it faithfully on the page, and then do it. Don't claim to be something you're not, and don't allow instruction and work creep simply to make people feel good, if it defeats the purpose of the process. 02:25, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If I remember correctly, a long time ago, we were obligated to actually write up our review. I'm not thinking of anything crazy like "Write a five paragraph essay explaining how it meets the criteria" or something like that, even one sentence would work maybe in some cases. It's just when people pass articles and leave no comment, I think it looks plain suspicious, and it's difficult to tell whether something has been passed in good faith or not or passed according to the criteria. Also, if somebody can't tell what an article is about, that's probably either too much jargon, or it strays from the subject, failing GA status :). Homestarmy 02:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

My suggestion would be, when passing or failing an article, to leave a note on the article's talk page, which would explain which of the good article criteria it meets, or doesn't meet.

Recently, a relative newcomer posted a request for feedback on his new article, Basketball (ball). I told him that the article was excellent, but pointed a couple of problems that needed to be adddresses. He then fixed some problems and posted on my talk page asking me whether the article met the Good Article criteria.

Please read the reply I left on my talk page - it's an example of the type of note I'm talking about.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I do that if it fails or if I put it on hold. I list exactly which things made me put it on hold or made it fail. For me to pass an article straight off (without being put on hold first) is very rare for me. In fact it hasn't happened yet, but if and when that day happens, I think it rather silly for me to have to go back to the criteria and cut and paste the criteria (and so showing that it met them) so that I can verify for someone else that I did my job properly? Is there a particular incident that has made you bring this up Homestarmy? Perhaps that should be addressed rather than requiring a bureaucratic encumbrance to this process. Maybe you can be sort of in a police role and look at the articles that do get passed without being put on hold, etc and see if it meets your criteria, and if not, withdraw the GA and state why. plange 03:36, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with plange. If there is someone abusing the system and passing articles that don't meet the criteria, then how will this stop them? They will simply add a comment, as is being proposed. Furthermore this will reduce the suspicion because people will see the comment and immediately think "This article is definitely good, no need to check it", thinking that it is some sort of official seal of genuinity. It actually defeats the idea of the proposal in the first place.  -- Run!  08:33, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

To Plange, actually, there was no particular incident, (Just a pattern I was watching), but another editor I think has summed up the problem quite nicely on the Wikiproject GA talk page here: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Good articles, he just tried to do a short sweep through articles and many of them failed, many with absolutly no explanation when they were passed in the first place, and he said even one the editors were surprised it was promoted because it wasn't ready. Homestarmy 16:26, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I saw that discussion, but wasn't that because those were old GAs before the nomination process started? I really think this is needless bureaucratic stuff/instruction creep, and that we should actually work on solving the problem rather than giving busy editors "busy work". I'd follow the suggestion put here and on that talk page to set up a sort of policing group that works independently (so that it won't affect the backlog here) that checks on GAs and delists them if they don't meet the criteria. I agree with Run, the only way to verify is to read the article yourself. Notes on a talk page that simply say it passed all criteria isn't going to help you and might fool you into thinking the article is okay. plange 16:49, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

That's just it, we have no way to tell when they were passed unless somebody goes through the history page by page to figure out when the articles were passed, and for old GA's, reviews were the norm. I added in on the candidates page to offer suggestions as well if you can, that should encourage people to give more helpful reviews. Other than that, sweeping the GA list occasionally should hopefully fix all this mess. Homestarmy 16:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

The GA template could be modified to include the date, in the same way that some of the other templates do.  -- Run!  10:05, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Instruction set revision

The instruction set revision's up! (To any that weren't aware of it, it was discussed and refined in the "Encourage..." section above; feel free to bring up any concerns regarding the new version here!) --jwanders^Talk 06:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Why did you remove the {{gan-fail}} template? That was my favorite thing, next to a cold Newcastle. --Aguerriero (talk) 16:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Appropriate length

The Good Article process underemphasizes an important aspect of the Featured Article criteria: length defined as "staying tightly focused on the main topic without going into unnecessary detail." The Good Article page mentions "proper length", but making articles the appropriate length is very important for improving wikipedia's usability. The appropriate length for a given topic is based on what the length and level of detail the reader wants in the editor's judgement. Some of the articles being nominated are obsessively long, which doesn't lead to a good encyclopedia. Editing for length (even if it means deleting less important content) is an important part of good writing, especially for an encyclopedia. Reducing length is not that difficult and does not require much specialized knowledge. We should probably be putting more nominations On Hold while they are trimmed down.Ghosts&empties 07:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Many times, content which bloats the article is actually very necessary for long topics, especially city articles, otherwise they could never hope to be sufficiently broad. If an article is too long and goes into too many silly details, that means it's off-topic i'd say, and therefore wouldn't be a GA for that reason rather than simply being too long. Homestarmy 17:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Ghosts&empties - some of your articles are being brought up in Disputes. plange 17:27, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

It's true that some articles accumulate more information than is appropriate for the topic. Rather than just trim it, though, if the material is factual and of interest to some reader, then I think it's sometimes useful to try to figure out where the material could be moved to. This could mean a sub-article (e.g. "For main article see 'History of Foo'"); or it could mean replacing a lengthy explanation with a short explanation and a link to a new article with the details. Mike Christie 17:39, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Quality standards

I made some comments and questions concerning the quality standards of GAs on the project talk page. I am not sure if that is the right place to talk about it as I noticed the discussion is not too lively there. Seeing that there are more project members here, I ask if someone would take a look at the link. I am somewhat concerned as it appears a significant portion of existing GAs did not pass through the nomination process at all! Or am I mistaken? --RelHistBuff 13:41, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I was similarly curious after reading through some of the project's intial talk pages; I got the impression that originally, GA status was something which could be added and removed by any user at any time, in a sense like the opposite of a clean-up tag. Not sure if that's accurate, when the process changed, or whether old GA's were grandfathered in. --jwanders^Talk 14:07, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm quite sure you are not mistaken. There are editors who may not understand the GA process, and who may add the template to an article without coming here first. I have even seen this occur with FAs. While the GA standards are more relaxed than FA, so is the process; only one editor must determine whether the article meets the GA criteria. Some editors are strict, some are not. I think more articles here fail than pass. The problem is, there is no "audit" process in place, as you point out. People in this project are overwhelmed as it is, and there seems to be a relatively small number of editors who regularly pass or fail articles.

So.. what can you do? Be bold and start an auditing task force. Even if the task force is just you at the start. :) If a GA didn't go through the nomination process, delist it. Let me know if you need any help. --Aguerriero (talk) 14:23, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd get behind that, and have already been trying to check newly listed articles as they pass—setting up a coordinated review process would help insure that we're not checking the same articles. The downside is this would take editor time away from GAC and increase the wait time/backlog potential here, but I think the advantage of having some quality monitoring of GA articles is worth it. --jwanders^Talk 14:34, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I will help out. I started going through another category (History). Out of the first 10 articles, 8 of the 10 were just people slapping the template up. One tip: one signature of this is looking at the history of the talk page around December 2005. Several editors seem to have given away free GA status at the time (no nomination template previously). --RelHistBuff 14:54, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

My only concern would be that articles added to the list before the nomination page was created shouldn't be summarily delisted. They should be reviewed to ensure that they meet the criteria and delisted if they don't. The main GA page predates the nominations page by two months, and the nominations page was originally created as a way to "self-nom" articles. BTW, I've been keeping an eye on the Rail transport sections since we started with GAs. Slambo (Speak) 14:59, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I haven't made any blanket delistings. Just those that did not cite any sources. When you examine the number of failed nominations based on that reason alone in the current nomination process, it seems unfair that the earlier articles retain GA status under easier criteria. The message I left in the talk pages is

"It seems that this article did not go through the GA nomination process. Looking at the article as is, it fails on criteria 2 in that it does not cite any sources. Most Good Articles use inline citations. I would recommend that this be fixed and submit the article through the nomination process."

Just to make this efficient, I will be auditing the History and Religion sections --RelHistBuff 15:09, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I've also noted mistakes such as articles on the candidate page without the template on their talk, failed item template on talk while entry is still on the candidate page, etc.

I think it good to be sure all the procedures are (were) followed. If something wasn't reviewed, I'd be all for changing the template to candidate status and listing it for review.--CTSWyneken^(talk) 16:08, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Sometimes there is a "failed" template before the item is removed because the reviewer is still in process of doing things. Our process is a little out of order, because it tells you to remove its nom and place the failed template BEFORE you type out a reason on the talk page. That doesn't work, because often people are monitoring the page and the first thing they see is that the article failed GA, without seeing a reason why. We might want to amend the "fail" procedure to type out the reason first, then place the fail template, THEN remove the nomination. --Aguerriero (talk) 16:17, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

If there is going to be an audit group or page, it might be good to start with the oldest GAs and then work from there. That should ensure that they all get a second look, and the oldest would have the most time to have changed in either direction. Maurreen 17:01, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I just did a "first-pass" sweep of two sections (History and Religion) looking for old GAs (pre-nomination process). First, I looked through the talk history to find them. Second, I checked for a basic simple criteria (2b) and delisted it if it did not pass. Finally, I left a message in each talk page. I must have delisted 10%-20% of the articles. Someone caught me halfway through the job as I updated the GA list that I should put in edit summaries. Sorry about that! Anyway I hope this has helped out. --RelHistBuff 14:16, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

What if any editor could "fail" GA noms, but only one or a few appointed editors could "pass" them? Many of the GAs I've seen are not what I would call "good". I'm not expecting perfection, but I do expect a GA to have reasonably decent prose, contain at least a bibliography list, and be generally in line with MOS. Gimmetrow 15:49, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

If there's going to be a change, it would be better to need two people to second the nomination, instead of setting up a different class of people. Maurreen 16:36, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

It works for FA. Gimmetrow 16:48, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

How do you mean? Anyone can participate in FAC, which says it is decided by consensus. Maurreen 16:58, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but in FA (like RfA) a beaurocrat-like person makes the decision. This could be implemented here in a less-formal way: a nomination is up for (say) 2 weeks during which anyone can fail it, after which a beaurocrat-like person looks it over and decides. Gimmetrow 17:12, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

Failing others' noms

If you are not the nominator or reviewer, can you fail the article if it doesn't answer the reviewer's concerns within a week? I'm asking this because Bionicle has been at the top of the media list for a week now, and it's on hold because Minun thinks it needs a copyedit. It hasn't had a single edit since Aug. 2, 3 days after the on hold notice, and I see no copyedit notices on the article page. Other articles are waiting. -Dark Kubrick 18:50, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I'd say go for it. They can always reapply, right? Isopropyl 18:56, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Rule of thumb, if you think the article fails then it should be failed (don't wait for it to be in the GA page and then delist it). Next, if the article passes, then pass it or leave it to the first reviewer. Lincher 23:28, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Son Goku (Dragon Ball)

The article Son Goku (Dragon Ball) was recently put up for GA, but it failed. A user nominated it again directly after the fail, before we could get a reason as to why it failed. Once we did get one, though, we saw that the article needed alot of work. I don't want the talk page to get another failed GA template, as it will make it look bad and the decision to re-list it was never discussed. I was wondering if somone would be kind enough to remove it from the list so we can work on it (delaying it won't work, we need alot more than 7 days). Thanks.--KojiDude 21:20, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

I removed the extra template as it was redundant. Homestarmy 21:30, 8 August 2006 (UTC)

Chronological order

Just to let everyone know that I ordered some entries that were not chronological after the long category was removed. I hope it doesn't cause any problem. --enano ^(Talk) 18:42, 9 August 2006 (UTC)

No problem in my opinion. Lincher 13:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Use of templates

I've encountered one case in which the active editors were unaware of the GA nomination because the template was never put on the talk page, and another case in which at least one active editor on the article feels it is weeks away from a GA nom. A "failed" nomination in these cases seems a little overboard. I actually wonder if the "failed" template is a good idea at all; since it does not link to any subpage (like a failed FAC), it doesn't seem to serve any purpose, and can appear rather prejudicial. Opinions? Gimmetrow 22:13, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

If the template was never on the talk page, that's not right, unless somebody reviewed it properly. Homestarmy 22:32, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

We all need to be careful about this. I've seen it, too, and the reverse. I'm on the lookout to clean up these as I see them. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 23:07, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

I delisted a nomination with agreement of an active editor. It seems to me that {{FailedGA}} says "this is a bad article" and I don't see how that helps anyone. Providing feedback in the talk page helps. If there must be a "failed" template, I would prefer it say something like "this article was once nominated as a good article, but did not fully satisfy good article criteria; please help to improve the article, or if you think it has improved and is now a good article, consider renominating it." Gimmetrow 02:19, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Gimmetrow's example makes much more sense than the current failed template. The present one does make articles feel like they are "bad." On topic, I have too seen nominated articles without the nominee template, but that's just because nominators don't follow the instructions. When I reordered nominations chronologically a few days ago, I saw new entries at the top of the lists, and even an unsigned one without edit summary. There's really not much we can do if people don't follow the instructions. --enano ^(Talk) 07:10, 11 August 2006 (UTC)

Time for stability?

Have any of the previous versions of the categorisation really been all that wrong? I'm getting slightly dizzy trying to find where things I've put up here for review have gotten to (most recently because sport has moved from 'social' to 'everyday life'). I'm not proposing it be moved back, however, just observing that all systems of categorisation will be wrong for some cases and perhaps it's now time to just stick with one for a few months and see how it goes? (thanks to everyone for their efforts in passing/failing, by the way :-)) --4u1e 20:32, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

The categories were most recently discussed here. There was agreement, but I have not accomplished all of it.

As far as I know, no cats have been "wrong," but some systems are better than others. I think adding one or a few more than we have at this moment is still a good idea. Maurreen 20:40, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

I'm not arguing for or against any particular system - but perhaps this set of changes (once finished!) should be the last one for a while? 4u1e 23:44, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, that's good with me. Maurreen 23:56, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'm done. Maurreen 01:16, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The new sectionning looks good. Thanks to those who gave a helpful hand in changing them. Lincher 18:17, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome! I'm glad you like it. Maurreen 18:26, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

New seperate section for natural disasters?

With the amount of natural disaster stuff coming through (currently all chucked at history - Hurricane Charley, July 2006 Java quake, Typhoon Ewiniar, 2003 A.H.S., Hurricane Danny and Hurricane Nate), should there be a new section for such articles? Chacor 07:35, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

I think they belong more under "Natural sciences" than "History." Maurreen 18:28, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Maybe following academic models where meterology and weather fall under Geography. Davodd 23:09, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

That's the problem, no-one knows where to put it. It could technically fit in all three categories, thus qualifying it for a 4th - misc. nominations. Chacor 13:04, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I think either science or geography would be better than history. If "Weather" or "Natural Disasters" was added to the subject line, that should make things clear enough. Maurreen 17:07, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Pay attention

Please pay attention to your edits on the nomination page. Articles on hold drop off without being closed out properly, hold lines mysteriously move under an article they are not associated with, etc. Rlevse 12:51, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

WP:LEAD alert

It seems WP:LEAD was recently changed to no longer include the "3-5 paragraphs long" part, now it's some weird guideline thing at the bottom based loosely on character count, (No idea how to check that, copy-pasting into word wouldn't work because of headers and pictures) just thought i'd say something because I often failed articles which were above five paragraph leads :/. Homestarmy 15:09, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Rule of thumb (again) if nominated article tagged LONG then 3 to 4 paragraphs in the lead section. If small than that 1-3 paragraphs and if a stub (i know we wont have these in the GA process), no need for a lead section. Lincher 18:03, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

The character count guideline has been there for at least a year. Just open the page to edit it, paste it into a text editor, save and look at the size of the file (or run it through wc or similar). —ptk✰fgs 18:15, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

It's just before it said in the very beginning something like "3 to five paragaphs", and the guideline on the bottom sounds like a recommendation, rather than the rule that was once at the top. Homestarmy 18:45, 13 August 2006 (UTC)