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Good article nominations

This is the discussion page for good article nominations (GAN) and the good articles process in general. To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the Add topic link above. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click the link to the Frequently asked questions below or search the Archives below. If you are here to discuss concerns with a specific review, please consider discussing things with the reviewer first before posting here.

1a and 3a in Reception sections with isolated reviewers

In some GANs (looking at books, in particular), the Reception sections are written with dedicated paragraphs summarizing each reviewer in isolation, often with heavy quoting, and little to no attempt to connect themes with other reviews. Sometimes this is by necessity, say, if there are only three reviewers and there is little connection to the other reviews. But most often there are plenty of reviews and opportunities to engage with the guidance in Wikipedia:Copyediting reception sections, weaving reviewers together for a general audience to understand the holistic reception. The latter, to me, is the minimum quality bar for the "well-written" (1a) and "breadth" (3a) GA criteria. In my experience, this also reduces heavy quoting, which pushes the boundaries of fair use paraphrase, even when attributed. It also requires more effort.

For some examples of the variance, see The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey#Critical reception or A History of English Food#Reception for separate paragraphs per reviewer, and Sappho: A New Translation#Reception or How the Red Sun Rose#Reception for combined paragraphs across reviewers.

What is our general working expectation for GANs? Is it sufficient for GAN breadth and writing quality to plop summaries of each review without connection, or are editors expected to connect the reviews for a general audience when available? czar 02:29, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree that this needs more attention, and I consider an unorganized assortment of opinions and quotes to fail the GA criteria. The majority of the time when reviewing an article about some piece of media, I have to ask the nominator to fix the reception section because it's a list of quotes. In this case, I usually consider it a criterion 2 failure in relation to copyright and failing to properly paraphrase the source. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:34, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I certainly don't like quote-plopping, but I see enough people saying things like "any suitably sourced and reasonably complete article can be a GA" that I wonder if requiring "weaving" is overly ambitious for GA. -- asilvering (talk) 03:12, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree that quotes should be used sparingly in reception sections and overuse of quotes in a reception section should be considered both an issue of copyright and poor prose. Even if there are few quotes, reception sections should also be somewhat organized or they risk not being clear (e.g. by academic/non-academic reviewers, by views on certain aspects of the book, or by positive/negative reviewers) ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 12:55, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

The best way to summarize the critical reception will vary from case to case. There are several dimensions to this. The number of reviews, the length of each individual review, the relative prominence of each reviewer in the relevant field, the type of work (e.g. fiction versus non-fiction), and whether the reviewers broadly agree, disagree, or cover separate ground altogether are all factors that determine this. When there is a fairly large number of relatively lengthy reviews that all largely agree on the main points, summarizing by theme is likely to be the best approach. Conversely, a low number of relatively brief reviews that focus on different aspects may be better summarized separately in the body (though the much briefer summary in the WP:LEAD might still be best presented thematically). I have used both approaches in different articles based on what seemed the most fitting to me in each case. We must remember that summarizing different reviewers' viewpoints collectively can also result in WP:Improper editorial synthesis by making stronger or broader claims than is justified by the overall contents of all relevant sources. For this reason, I favour a comparatively conservative approach to doing so. This is an area where our different WP:Policies and guidelines exist to some extent in tension with each other and we have to exercise judgment in finding an appropriate compromise approach that does not go too far in one direction or the other. Reasonable people can disagree about the best course of action in any particular case. TompaDompa (talk) 20:11, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

In the case of too-few-reviews, I don't think summarizing each review in depth offers any actual illumination for the reader. In an example with three reviews, summarized in depth and relying on quotes, it reads like book back cover blurbs (advertisements) or a review aggregator. I wouldn't say that's any greater breadth of prose or good writing than a single sentence for each. I haven't seen an example (including my own older GAs on books) in which a paragraph for each reviewer is a helpful review approach. czar 16:38, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Summarizing a review that the reader is not able to access is helpful. It may not be the optimal approach, but it provides information they did not have and could not get on their own. There are of course better and worse ways of summarizing individual reviews, where a high reliance on verbatim quotes tends towards the worse and writing about the overarching ideas in one's own words tends towards the better. The underlying problem is that we rarely have WP:Secondary sources about what the reviews say, but have to rely on the reviews as WP:Primary sources on themselves. TompaDompa (talk) 16:52, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

@TompaDompa, your linked guidance on primary sources says we should only use them sparingly, to fill in details not provided by secondary sources. We should be limiting the reviews as sources on themselves and instead only using what little is needed to elucidate the larger theme. When there are only three reviews, this would mean extremely short reception sections, i.e., proportionate to the coverage and not a dedicated paragraph for each review. That seems to be the best compromise when citing a source as primary to itself. czar 21:36, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I'm not convinced that follows. A book review is a secondary source on the book and a primary source on the reviewer's opinion. In a hypothetical case where all the secondary coverage we have is from reviews (which is not uncommon) and the greater part of each review consists of the reviewer's subjective assessment of the book (also not uncommon), do we then discard the majority of the content that the sources choose to focus on? That seems a rather peculiar approach to WP:Due weight to me. I personally think the opinions of reviewers are in many cases—for non-fiction in particular—the most important part of the article. Minimizing this aspect on the basis that reviews are primary sources on the reviewers' opinions would be throwing out the baby with the bath water, methinks. On the other hand, I am very concerned about the risk of WP:Improper editorial synthesis by collating and summarizing different reviewers' opinions collectively too liberally, creatively, or subjectively. I would also note that the weight question is really a separate issue to how the section is structured, as it does not distinguish between

Reviewer 1 identified A as a positive and B as a negative.
Reviewer 2 identified X as a positive and Y as a negative.

on the one hand and

Among the positives, A was noted by Reviewer 1 and X by Reviewer 2.
Among the negatives, B was noted by Reviewer 1 and Y by Reviewer 2.

on the other. TompaDompa (talk) 22:43, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

To bring this back to the core issue, my question is whether (a) A History of English Food#Reception and (b) The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey#Critical reception, i.e., GAs with heavy quoting and dedicated paragraphs for each reviewer, sufficiently meet the 1a (well-written) and 3a (breadth) GA criteria. This would help me calibrate how to handle the Reception sections of current book GANs. czar 00:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

To the extent that there is a problem, it is with excessive quoting rather than with the structure as such. I have to admit that I do not understand how either could be a problem with WP:GACR 3a (it addresses the main aspects of the topic) specifically, however. When it comes to these specific reception sections, I find A History of English Food#Reception to go too far in using verbatim quotes, while The Oxford Guide to the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey#Critical reception is (to me) within acceptable bounds. TompaDompa (talk) 01:35, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

I would personally argue that no, GANs with extensive quoting and dedicated paragraphs to individual reviewers in the reception section would not pass the GA criteria. In my opinion, this kind of reception section violate 1a by making the general reception of the work as a whole unclear, 2d through extensive quotation, 3b for going into excessive detail in the reviewers, and 4 by placing undue emphasis on individual reviewers rather than the broad consensus. Lazman321 (talk) 01:45, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

While I agree that the reception section of A History of English Food does not meet the GA criteria, I disagree with your points about criteria 3b and 4. Your point about 3b doesn't make sense because the same reception section would be wholly acceptable if it were not directly quoted, but paraphrased in the editor's own words; quotes in themselves are not examples of excessive detail unless they would be considered excessive even when paraphrased.

For example, this excerpt:

The reviewer noted that she had seen badger hams on the bar in the West Country pubs of her childhood, and that a tripe seller in Dewsbury market sold "nine different varieties of tripe, including penis and udder (which is remarkably like pease pudding)."

would certainly be excessive. While, this excerpt:

Shilling finds this "an impressive tour" from a well-stocked mind, her approach being "a firmly chronological line across the landscape of culinary history, pausing at intervals to examine objects of interest." She agrees that the book is "opinionated and wildly idiosyncratic", in the tradition of W.N.W. Fowler's "gin-soaked" Countryman's Cooking and Rupert Croft-Cooke's English Cooking: A New Approach. The book gives, Shilling asserts, a "glorious sense of the continuity of English cuisine from the Middle Ages to the present", making it an "engaging, funny and admirably entertaining history."

would not be an example of excessive detail, but should be paraphrased to not use excessive direct quotations. I honestly don't understand your point about criterion four, I'm sure case-by-case decisions can be made about what constitutes "undue emphasis" in a given article, but three or more sentences from a single review is hardly "undue" if a review is one of few reviews and provides detailed critical commentary or analysis of a book. ~ F4U (talk • they/it) 02:26, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree with TompaDompa that there is very little in the way of "integrating" the opinions of different reviewers that can be done without straying across the WP:SYNTH line. If three reviewers say a book is informative then, clearly, we can say "Some reviewers agreed it was informative", but for any more individualistic or perceptive comments, we need to deal with reviewers one at a time. Happily, the rules do not say we are forbidden to describe what individual reviewers said. A fifteen-word quote is not obviously excessive under the rules; and if readers are to be given an idea of the tone and substance of a review article, which I would have thought was what a well-written summary of reviews should be about, then a few short excerpts are certainly justified as fair use. If we were to narrow down our interpretation of the rules to say nothing more than some bland mumble about reviews being broadly favourable with some more mixed attitudes (left unspecified), then review sections will indeed be short: and extremely uninformative to boot. There's also the matter of making the reviews seem insubstantial; if the review section is one short paragraph, passing editors may conclude the reviewed book is not notable as nobody had anything substantial to say about it... As for any considerations of undue weight, as long as each reviewer, of whatever opinion, is given about the same amount of coverage, and the review section is not unduly long, that should not be a problem. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:10, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Postmortem: As the GA reviewer of A History of English Food, I appreciate this discussion. I am becoming more cognizant of this issue over time, both in these reviews and in my own writing. I see we are primarily discussing book reviews, but I would appreciate if we could also discuss film reviews. I recently reviewed Time_(2021_film)#Critical_response for DYK, and I noticed the nominator made an exceptional effort to avoid quoting in favor of excessive, but possibly poor paraphrasing, a reverse of the current scenario under discussion in this thread. This also poses a similar problem! Although I covered some of the issues in my DYK review, looking at the current version, I can see potential issues with the lack of quotes, and the reliance on similar wording from the quoted material. While this might be good for DYK at the moment, I think a keen GA reviewer could find issues with the paraphrasing in the reception section as relying too much on the source material. Putting that aside for the moment, this is a problem I've tried to avoid in my own writing, for example in Bad_Faith_(film)#Reception, where I tried to strike a balance between direct quotes and paraphrasing, but where I felt I missed the mark. I would appreciate extra eyes and instructions. Viriditas (talk) 20:57, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Inactive reviewer

AryKun began seven reviews at the same time on August 28 and then went on a wikibreak with six of them still active. Would it be appropriate for someone else to process them or return them to the nominations page?

• Talk:Fishing cat/GA3 (not started)
• Talk:Palaeotherium/GA1 (nominator expressed concern that the review was insufficient)
• Talk:Literature of Botswana/GA1 (nominator responded to the review)
• Talk:Pouyannian mimicry/GA1 (nominator responded to the review)
• Talk:Tiger quoll/GA1 (not started)
• Talk:Evarcha striolata/GA1 (nominator responded to the review)

Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:43, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

I've pinged them on the one they hadn't commented on at all. -- asilvering (talk) 23:33, 22 September 2024 (UTC)

We can G6 that one (Fishing cat), to return it to the queue. Tiger quoll has conversation but nothing substantive. The others have prose reviews but no source reviews, so if AryKun is unable to complete those they will have to be incremented and returned to the queue. CMD (talk) 13:09, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering and Chipmunkdavis: It's true that this user has left comments on every review but mine. Kindly let them know that the pages will be G6ed if they do not complete the reviews within the next 24 hours. Thanks, Wolverine XI ^{(talk to me)} 17:47, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Let's give it until the 28th, a round month since the reviews were opened. CMD (talk) 00:56, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Literature of Botswana, Pouyannian mimicry, and Evarcha striolata were passed as GA by AryKun on the 23rd (without closing hatnotes). I can try and take over Fishing cat and Tiger quoll. Reconrabbit 19:52, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

@Reconrabbit, if you could do Tiger quoll that would be helpful and really kind of you - that review is already in progress. I just pinged again on Fishing cat juuust in case, but since there's nothing there except my pings I think it's fine to just delete that one and someone can get to it during the backlog drive. -- asilvering (talk) 20:22, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering Hi, just came across this thread. I think that I would see to see the Palaeotherium article review back in queue since I’m unfortunately not confident that it would go well. This is ultimately not up to me, so if you can take further action, I’d appreciate it. Thanks. PrimalMustelid (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

@PrimalMustelid, since that review has already started and has substantial comments, we shouldn't be deleting it. You can relist it yourself, however: see WP:GAN/I#N4a for instructions. -- asilvering (talk) 23:08, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I just double-checked whether this would reset the queue position or not, and it doesn't - so if any of you do this, let me know so I can add the article to the backlog drive list. I won't notice it in the queue otherwise. -- asilvering (talk) 23:12, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Alright, I relisted Palaeotherium for an available GAN slot. PrimalMustelid (talk) 23:15, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I've fixed the Palaeotherium relisting; not only does the page field need to be incremented by 1 in {{GA nominee}}, but the "onreview" (or any other current status) needs to be deleted from after "|status=". I've made a similar fix to Talk:Fishing cat, where the review page was deleted. (Both errors showed up on the WP:GAN page.) BlueMoonset (talk) 00:01, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @BlueMoonset, I thought the bot would sort that out on its own. -- asilvering (talk) 21:19, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Is there a requirement for GAs to be reassessed every so often?

Given that I just stumbled on an article that has been listed as a GA for just over 17 years (specifically Era Vulgaris, originally listed as a GA in September 2007), it seems that the answer to my question is "no". In that case, I think we definitely should require articles previously rated as GA (and for that matter FA) quality to be reassessed periodically to determine if they still meet the criteria and, if not, to remove their GA status. As I have not been very involved in any aspect of the GA nomination process for many years, I wanted to post this suggestion here so that others who know much more about this process can share their thoughts. IntoThinAir (talk) 11:55, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

There are 40,000 articles currently marked as Good Articles. Automatically reassessing even a small portion of them would overwhelm the already under-populated GAR process. There is an open project to review a subset of older articles with issues - see Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Sweeps 2023, but it too has minimal participation. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:30, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

@IntoThinAir: I have been reviewing GAs to ensure that they meet the good article criteria for a couple of weeks and nominating some of the articles with the greatest concerns to WP:GAR. While it is more likely that an older article will need a significant amount of work, it is not always guaranteed and I think the community would feel overwhelmed if we mass-GAR'ed all articles promoted before a certain year. My process is to quickly review articles in a category, and post a message on the article's talk page if I am concerned that an article does not meet the GA criteria. If no one responds in about a week, I will post the article at WP:GAR. I also use this tool to mass-review good articles for uncited paragraphs and orange banners, which helps me select which articles I review. I also try to nominate articles from various categories so as not to overwhelm a group of editors. For example, I will nominate music article a week, then wait a week to nominate the next music article to GAR. If you have any questions, feel free to ping me here or post on my talk page, as any help to review GAs is appreciated. Z1720 (talk) 13:35, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

For Featured Articles, there's the similar WP:URFA/2020, which does aim to at least get eyes on every FA which hasn't been reviewed for a long time. Of course, there are a lot fewer FAs (6,500 vs 40,000 GAs) and they're generally in rather better shape than very old GAs can be. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:48, 23 September 2024 (UTC)

Over the past two years I've taken a look at a number of the older rail transport GAs and brought a number of deficient ones to reassessment. But I only bring a few at a time at most to avoid overwhelming the process. I wonder if individual editors targeting certain categories of older GAs (particularly on topics they are familiar with) might help with reviewing older GAs. It would also be useful to see which older nominations still have active nominators. While the nominator being inactive doesn't guarantee an article is deficient, and conversely an active nominator might not have maintained their promoted GANs, it gives us some basis to gauge if attention might be needed. I can't speak for all nominators, but I make a concerted effort to make sure all my successful nominations are maintained to at least GA standard if not higher. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:10, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

October backlog drive begins soon!

The aim for this month is to completely eliminate a subset of the GAN backlog: we want all nominations submitted before 1 October 2024 by editors who are relatively new to GA to be out of the queue by 31 October. If you're an editor with fewer than 10 GAs, get those nominations in before October begins! As a stretch goal, we're also going to try to eliminate the backlog of GANs by all nominators who have reviewed more articles than they've nominated. -- asilvering (talk) 23:48, 24 September 2024 (UTC)

I have a few questions related to this if you don't mind;

1. What counts as relatively new?
2. Are there enough "new nominations" to earn any of the higher end awards? (e.g. The Order)
3. Is this backlog drive restricted to those nominations?

λ NegativeMP1 23:37, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

1. <10 GAs total
2. yes
3. yes.

Right now there are just a handful of example list items on the drive page right now, but a couple of days before it begins I'll put up the full list and we'll be able to see how many we actually have. It won't be fully finalized until the drive actually starts, because I'll have to update the list manually. -- asilvering (talk) 23:50, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

Alright, thank you for responding! λ NegativeMP1 23:58, 25 September 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering: If you need any help with adding articles, I'll be here, just ping me. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 10:29, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I don't think it will take all that long, but if I find it's way more of a bother than I thought, I'll shoot you a ping and we can each take one of the lists. -- asilvering (talk) 18:52, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

@Vacant0, it wasn't too bad after all. I'll add the last bunch right as we tick over to Oct 1 UTC, but if you'd give the GAN page a quick skim to see if I might have missed any once I do that, that would be great. -- asilvering (talk) 21:40, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't have time now, but from a quick look at a few sections, everything appears to be alright. From the history page, I see that the newest addition, Matthew Webb, should be added. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 23:23, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Full list is up! -- asilvering (talk) 00:10, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Nice. Good job! Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 10:59, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

October is also going to be hosting a drive for Women in Green (Sign up here!. If you review an article about women or women's works, feel free to double dip! Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 18:57, 26 September 2024 (UTC)

The lists are up! They'll be a bit subject to change (anything on the list now that gets a review started before Oct 1 will have to come off, and anything applicable that's submitted before then will have to be added), but it looks like we have 260 articles on our first list, and just under 400 when we add the stretch goal list. We can do this! We can get these backlogged lists completely cleared out! -- asilvering (talk) 22:58, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/October 2024#Target articles CMD (talk) 02:13, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Second opinion(s) wanted

I'm currently reviewing tumor necrosis factor which was nominated by @AdeptLearner123, you can see my review so far at Talk:Tumor necrosis factor/GA1. So far I've done a source check and image review but I'm a little stuck with the prose review part. I feel like the article may be a bit too technical but I would appreciate some extra opinions on the topic. I'm also not sure if it is over technical to the point of not qaulifying for GAC or if it's fixable. IntentionallyDense (talk) 20:08, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I think the lead ought to be somewhat more accessible, but I'm not sure if the body needs to be. I'd want to know when students normally learn about the concept before saying anything about the body, since I don't think there's much point in writing something to a high school level if the concept isn't taught until graduate school. -- asilvering (talk) 20:27, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

I think that seems fair. My main concerns were with the lead as that’s what most people read. I did ask that they spell out some of the abbreviations they used just cause there is a lot in some of the sections. IntentionallyDense (talk) 23:19, 27 September 2024 (UTC)

At a very quick run through, while there are a lot of short paragraphs that perhaps could be looked at, the prose itself is technical but not badly written. Looking at WP:ONEDOWN, I feel it would be a very ambitious high school that would be teaching this; the study of individual proteins can be PhD-level research. I added a couple of wikilinks, which I do suggest for any particularly technical terms. Get the lead as accessible as possible, perhaps clear up parts of the body you feel wouldn't be comprehensible to a late-year undergraduate student, but overall I don't really know how else you'd write a protein article. CMD (talk) 02:35, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Sounds reasonable to me. I’m currently working with the nominator to make the lead more accessible but I’m mostly leaving the body as is (aside from anything I find during my third read through). IntentionallyDense (talk) 03:07, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

Inactive review

Hi! I nominated the page 2024 ICC Men's T20 World Cup for GA on 25 August and User:Vkwiki100 started reviewing it on 1 September 2024. Then, in two days he has gone off-wiki and hasn't returned yet; it's been almost a month now. The GA review has been on hold for a month now, could someone care to takeover or something? Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 06:33, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

The review so far is very minimal, if they haven't returned by tomorrow this should go back into the queue for a fresh review. CMD (talk) 11:51, 1 October 2024 (UTC)