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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?

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)

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)

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)

Second Opinion on the page Tumor necrosis factor

I've decided to officially ask for a second opinion on the Tumor necrosis factor GA review (page:Talk:Tumor necrosis factor/GA1 and nominator:@AdeptLearner123) I'm mostly looking for second opinions regarding prose, readability, and broadness. I will also be asking the medicine wikiproject. Feel free to jump in wherever and offer what suggestions you have! IntentionallyDense (talk) 14:49, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

IntentionallyDense, it is not necessary to notify this page if you are seeking a second opinion, especially if you have only just changed the status. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:39, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Yeah I didn’t think it was necessary or anything I just wanted to :) IntentionallyDense (talk) 19:24, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

Statistics: Where from?

Hi,

I'm updating my list of GA reviews and nominations, and my numbers aren't adding up with those next to my name on the nomination page. Would anyone know where this data is sourced from? — Chris Woodrich (talk) 22:55, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

It's from ChristieBot's database; your statistics are accessible through this link. If I had to guess, either there are entries from before the current system, or some went on to be FAs and are thus not counted. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:59, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Thanks AirshipJungleman29. I've been able to reconcile my numbers with ChristieBot (well, two seem to have been excluded because they were co-noms, because now I have 112 by my count). Does ChristieBot also have a list of reviews? I'm missing five in my notes.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:22, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
I checked mine to see if it's a problem elsewhere, and they don't add up either. The GAN stats tool says I have 91 successful promotions with 85 that are still GA. By my count, I've only had 90 successful promotions. Five of those are FA, so 85 is the correct end result. It seems like there's a stray one somewhere that the stats tool thinks was promoted and then demoted, but I'm not aware of any that might have caused this. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:45, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Yeah. One nomination at that level isn't a big deal, but there may be a malfunction or other issue (or, perhaps more likely, my count is off). — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:56, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
    Hi, Chris, glad to see you back editing again; it's been a while. I won't be able to look at the data again until Sunday at the earliest but will see if I can reconcile to your list when I get back. TBUA, I can do the same for you if you have a list I can compare to. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:58, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks, Mike. I managed to reconcile the reviews. I'm going to try the nominations again, because I'm seeing that the bot isn't counting two articles nominated by others (as correct per its programming), so I think I'm missing one.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 00:54, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
    Nix that again - I don't have the failed nomination listed on my page, and that's the one off. Thanks for the offer... I should be squared up now! — Chris Woodrich (talk) 01:05, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Would it be kosher for me to take up this review?

Hey all—I just saw an article I've had on my watchlist since its creation, Religion of the Shang dynasty, just got put up for GAN by its primary contributor. Thing is, I'm probably its distant #2 contributor to date, mostly in the form of style, reference, and copyediting. I'd like this to be a GA and the nomination was a bit of a surprise, but I would like to review it if it's not seen as an issue for me to do so. Remsense ‥ 论 14:39, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

nah i think you're good - if anything, it will mean you can do a more thorough review than someone completely unfamiliar with the topic. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:42, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that reviewers are (or should be) allowed to copyedit the article as necessary so long as it doesn't substantially change the content, so to me it doesn't make a huge difference whether that's during the review or before it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:44, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
You're really underselling that "distant". I was a bit worried and then took a look at xtools - you're fine. Literal lol. I get more authorship on articles by running iabot. -- asilvering (talk) 18:09, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
I would say that's at least partially a function of this article having a very particular edit history, such that the numbers would make a minor contribution look like an infinitesimal one. But thanks all in any case! Remsense ‥ 论 18:12, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Description in Places subsection

Hi, I was just wondering if the descriptions in Places subsection is necessary in its currnet form. "This includes countries, states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, and other political designations in Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Australia and the Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North America, and South America". I don't think there is a need to specify which continents it applies to, especially when it list all of the anywa. I think "This includes countries, states, counties, cities, neighborhoods, and other political designations" would be fine on its own. Alternatively "designations" could be replaced with "subdivisions". Artemis Andromeda (talk) 19:23, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Additional input request

Hello, an article I nominated (Eugenics in Minnesota) was failed, but I don't believe the reviewer specified truly why it failed. After discussing with Viriditas, I have decided to ask for some more input here. Could anyone tell me why this article was failed and how I can improve it? Cedar Tree 03:05, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

I think it is very confusing how it was determined what went in the background section and how it was structured. Apart from the "structural" issues referred to by PARAKANYAA, I wouldn't be happy with whole books being used as references without page numbers, such as ref 27. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 03:24, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
It's an abstract issue, and it's fairly subjective, so I can see why it would be hard to explain. With how the article is organized, it gives the impression that the Baby Health Contest and the Minnesota Eugenics Society were the entirety of the eugenics movement in Minnesota, with some background info and aftermath thrown in for context. Overall, it looks like the author decided in advance what the article should cover and then sought out sources to add those things. Look at the "Tuition waiver helps Native American students in Minnesota" source, for example. The word "eugenics" doesn't appear once in that source, so it almost certainly doesn't belong in the article. And on the other end, why is Ladd-Taylor (2019) only used once? That looks like the sort of source that should be mined until there's nothing left. I've written about this approach at User:Thebiguglyalien/The source, the whole source, and nothing but the source. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:59, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
In addition to the above, I would not pass the article with that lead. It is a very bare summary of the article, and it has two sources, one of which seems unspecific to eugenics in Minnesota. CMD (talk) 04:15, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

GA reviewer demanding copies of printed sources

Here, a GA reviewer is demanding that copies of print sources are e:mailed to them. There are serious problems with this - articles are not owned by individuals and it cannot be reasonable to expect that any one editor has access to all the references that have been used in the whole history of an article - 20 years in this case. If the GA review process can ask for any print source used in an article to be available to be emailed to a reviewer, no matter who added the source and when it was added, then it is an effective prohibition of offline sources (for example, it would prevent people from using print sources from a library as they would no longer have a copy of it). Of course, there is also the issue of copyright, and whether sending copies of whole magazine articles would be acceptable from a fair use/fair dealing point of view.Nigel Ish (talk) 19:33, 4 October 2024 (UTC)

You may want to direct the reviewer to WP:RX. Of course, verifiable sources are not required to be easy to access by most standards (WP:SOURCEACCESS). I hesitate to articulate that the "responsibility" is strictly on them to facilitate the verification of the article to their satisfaction, but it's certainly not on you. Remsense ‥ 论 19:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Sigh. This is the third venue where this discussion is going on. Please see my comments at Talk:Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma/GA1 so I don't have to repeat them here. RoySmith (talk) 19:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Apologies. Remsense ‥ 论 19:47, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
(ec) This is not just an issue for article page as the issue won't just effect one article, but all GA and FA reviews (as there is the requirement to check sources), and by extension all articles - because while offline sources are acceptable according to WP:RS, if the review process demands that sources are always availble, than that places that into question. A GA nominator doesn't own an article, and it would be inappropriate if good sources that are used in the article but not available to the nominator (because they were added long before - in the case of the article in question tat least one of the sources was added by me, not the article nominator, in 2008.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:05, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
As both a nominator and reviewer, I am ready and willing to send any copy of a source at any time, preferably in plain text, as that is easiest. This is a basic requirement. Viriditas (talk) 20:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Agree. No article should be failed because the sources are not immediately available to the reviewer. However, if they cannot be made available to the reviewer by any means, we have a failure of WP:V, and that content should not be in the article as it cannot be reasonably verified. -- asilvering (talk) 20:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
it cannot be reasonable to expect that any one editor has access to all the references that have been used in the whole history of an article
@Nigel Ish: On the contrary, it is entirely reasonable. I won't nominate an article if I can't verify all of the sources used, no matter who added them. This is not a serious problem at all, it's how we do things. If you are nominating an article in good faith whose sources you haven't checked out, that's a problem. Viriditas (talk) 19:58, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
As noted above, I am not the nominator.Nigel Ish (talk) 20:08, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
I wasn't speaking of you specifically, but of anyone who nominates. Viriditas (talk) 20:10, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I suppose I should've phrased my comments above a bit more pragmatically: if the reviewer can't verify to their satisfaction, for whatever reason, then they have no reason to pass the review. Remsense ‥ 论 20:12, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
So the nominator should become WP:OWNer of the article and remove anything that they havn't personally verified? How does that comply with Wikipedia being a collaborative project?Nigel Ish (talk) 20:30, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
No one is saying that. What people are saying is that it's good practice for the nominator to verify the sources themselves, and that it's perfectly reasonable for the reviewer to require access to the sources to verify the information in the article. If neither reviewer nor nominator have access to a particular source, they should find someone who does, so the information can be verified. -- asilvering (talk) 20:34, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
The idea is that by nominating an article to GA status, you are affirming that it meets the GA criteria. If you cannot confirm the verifiability of non-trivial material in the article, then you really shouldn't be nominating it. Hog Farm Talk 20:57, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
This attitude essentially requires the removal of off-line sources from anything in GA, turning it into only the Good Articles of stuff available on the internet now. I don't think this is a good idea. Verifying the material in a source does not always imply the ability to send the source materials to others online without copyright violation. For instance, it may be available only physically as books in libraries. Material of that nature should still be acceptable as a source for GA. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:14, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
What? How does it do that? A person can easily verify something available only as a physical book in a library - by going to the library, requesting an interlibrary loan or scan, or by asking the nominator or someone at WP:RX to send a copy of the relevant pages. -- asilvering (talk) 21:18, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
If material is only available in physical form in libraries, it is unreasonable for reviewers to expect nominators to provide it in electronic form. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:39, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
What I was getting at was that there's just as much value in getting something up to as solid of a state as you can without getting the GA badge as there is in GA itself. I can point to several articles I worked on where I felt that GA wasn't in the cards due to various limitations, but I think those are just as good of a contribution as GA. Yes, I understand the shiny badge is a strong motivator, but not everything that gets polished up needs to go through this hoop. You can keep the content in there if you think that it's accurate, without sending the article through GA. Hog Farm Talk 21:46, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
WP:GAN/I#R3 bullet 1 says This must include a spot-check of a sample of the sources in the article to verify that each source supports the text in the article that it covers. I'm open to other suggestions for how I should do that. If somebody wants to photocopy the material and mail it to me in the paper mail, that works for me. But I suspect your opposition isn't actually to the "in electronic form" part, but rather in the basic idea of verification. That I can't help you with. RoySmith (talk) 21:50, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
It is fairly trivial to take a photo of a couple of pages in a book and email them to the reviewer if you have access to the book. And it is good practice to keep copies (in paper or electronic form) if you can. It does happen occasionally that you no longer have easy access to a source, but I find it rather unusual for that to be the case for more than one or two of the sources of a fresh GA nominee. —Kusma (talk) 22:42, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
It happened to me for only one article, the GA on Brownie Mary. I backed up many of those old newspaper clippings on a spare hard drive somewhere, but if someone was to ask me right now for an exact copy of a sentence from a source, it would take me some time to find it. This is because when I wrote that article, many of those sources were freely available to everyone on Google News archive, which is now mostly defunct. Viriditas (talk) 22:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Note, on a lark, I decided to track down these sources, and I think I've identified the majority of them on my spare hard drive, encoded in a text file. I would recommend more people do this; in other words, save the sources as text in a backup file. Viriditas (talk) 00:04, 6 October 2024 (UTC)
It has happened to me that accessing a source requires significant time and effort (involving filling out an interlibrary loan request, waiting days or weeks, and then physically accessing the library) that I do not wish to repeat merely to convince a reviewer that I accessed it once already. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:22, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
I would agree that in cases like that, the reviewer should be reasonable and not demand such an effort. But 1) a nominator should have verified all information cited in the article at some point in the article development process, and 2) some form of spot-checking is absolutely necessary, with WP:DCGAR being the result when that goes by the wayside. Hog Farm Talk 23:31, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
If the verification process involves somebody to go to a library and look at a physical book, it seems absurd that we should expect that the nominator do that, scan the book in question, and then email it to the reviewer, when the reviewer could just go to the library themselves. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:49, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
It's 2024 now. Most popular books and periodicals are online and library patrons have access to digital versions in maybe 80% of cases, so this isn't as much of a problem as you are making it out to be. Yes, when we are working on niche topics, this becomes far more difficult. I am currently trying to get a hold of death certificates and old newspaper clippings that have been pretty much lost to time, and I can tell you that it isn't easy. But most people don't have to do that, as we rely on accessible secondary sources for our articles. As it stands right now, 90% of my book browsing is digital, but for Hawaii series by Georgia O'Keeffe, which is currently a GAN as of yesterday, at least three of the books I used for that article do not have digital versions, and I had to go to a physical library to use them. If a reviewer asks to see the material, I will send them a copy in text, as I took cellphone pics of all of the pages as a backup. Viriditas (talk) 22:05, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Sure, if the reviewer can do that, they should! That's what I usually do when I'm reviewing. But I have an unusually good university library at hand. Most people don't have that, so as a nominator, I'd be expecting to have to provide copies of sources if they needed them. -- asilvering (talk) 22:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
...assuming they live near a library that has the book. Or live in a place where they can find the book at all, for that matter. Editors come from many different places. AstonishingTunesAdmirer 連絡 22:09, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
All editors can access WP:RX, a most amazing place that helps with exactly this. —Kusma (talk) 22:44, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
But (we hope) the editor who added the source to the article has already obtained access to the source. If the nominator is not that person and has not themselves seen the source... I see no reason to deem it absurd that they take on tracking it down instead of the reviewer. Nikkimaria (talk) 03:58, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

Nigel Ish should probably steer clear of the GA process until they show they understand it on a basic level; the guidelines re. offline sourcing—as well as policies such as WP:ONUS—are well established, and everyone has to follow them. No one gets a pass by getting the reviewer to do their work for them. RoySmith has experienced this at FAC, I know, as many of us have, and it doesn't matter how experienced one is there: if a reviewer wants a source to confirm source-text integrity, you send it to them. And this isn't something which is slightly weaker at GA just because it's a 'lower' classification of the article: WP:C is a policy with legal implications. Roy was not just within his rights to request offline sources from you; he was mandated to do so by policy (C & V). And all talk about this requirement suddenly creating a form of OWNership is nonsense. It's merely asking the nominator to fulfil their obligations under both policy and project guidelines.

(I'm aware Nigel Ish isn't the nominator of the article in question, but they randomly and as far as I can tell without invitation into a discussion between two others, and then started this thread, which means they must want comments directed to him, rather than the reviewer or nominator.) SerialNumber54129 13:13, 5 October 2024 (UTC)

As you are banning me from the GA process, I assume that this means that I am banned from any page that is going through the GA process, or presumably has gone through the GA process. It's a shame that no-one informed me about whatever community discussion that banned me. I will bother you no more.Nigel Ish (talk) 14:14, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
No-one's banning you, Nigel Ish, certainly not me—I couldn't if I wanted to, and I don't!—I'm merely suggesting that questioning fundamental policies and important guidelines and then tying up loads of editors in a discussion which only leads to you getting told the same thing several times is hardly a productive use of your own or other editors' time and energy. Now take that silly notice of your user page and get on with your work!  :) SerialNumber54129 14:27, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
Nigel Ish, I think everyone is talking past each other here. First, no one said banning until you did, and that's not how banning works on Wikipedia. I don't know whether you actually think there was a "community discussion" or if you're trying to make a point, but that doesn't really matter either way—no ban took place. Second, nominating an article for GA doesn't mean "this article looks good". It means "I've verified that this article meets expectations". If a nominator can't verify the sources, then they shouldn't nominate it. I notice you've never actually participated in the GA process. It's far from perfect, but everyone here with experience on the issue has confirmed that verifying sources during a review isn't the problem that you're claiming it is. I've nominated about a hundred good articles now, and I've never once had this issue. Also, if you think that online sources are inherently lower quality, I suggest you check out WP:LIBRARY and the Internet Archive, among other places. This is where most of the project's experienced content writers (including regular GA nominators) get their sources. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:40, 5 October 2024 (UTC)
I have very little to add to this discussion (except to concur with the many wise and thoughtful contributions made by TBUA, SN, Hog Farm, Roy and others), except perhaps a bit of calm and common sense. Whenever I've come across the rather rare situation in which a reviewer has asked for a source and a nominator has said, in good faith, "oh dear, I don't have access to that any more", a solution has been found -- either that particular check isn't too important, the reviewer says "fair enough" and asks for a different one, or that check is important and we have a discussion to see if any additional sources can be found, and make a call on retention/removal based on that. This really doesn't have to be an adversarial or confrontational process unless people choose to make it one. UndercoverClassicist T·C 12:08, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Spot-check

I have seen an uptick in GAN reviews in which a reminder is given to list the sources that have been checked to see if they verify the information or not. So, I wanted to pre-emptively ask if that's absolutely required, bcs I mostly just check that while reviewing the article itself, without listing the ones I have checked? DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:15, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Spot checks are required. However, if you just list the ones you check while reviewing the article itself, that will be fine, no need for another step if you're already checking the sources. CMD (talk) 18:31, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Bot problem

Something is causing ChristieBot to crash on every single run, meaning that nothing will update till it’s fixed. I’m traveling till Sunday with no access to the system so the only way to get it to run is going to be to find the offending nomination template (which is almost certainly what is causing the issue). Whatever the edit was that caused the problem appears to have been made at around 12:00 noon US Eastern time. Usually it’s caused by omitting or misformatting a parameter or parameter value. I have code to catch all the cases I know about but this must be something new. Sorry about this but I can’t even help look at the moment as I’ll be in a car for hours yet. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:17, 2 October 2024 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: Should we be looking at the templates in the GAN lists, on the individual GAN pages, or on the article talk pages themselves? Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 18:29, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
The templates on the article talk pages, I would expect. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Mike Christie, it looks like the bot wasn't running all the way through significantly earlier than that. The last run that affected the WP:GAN page was at 00:52, 2 October 2024 (UTC); the next run where ChristieBot made some edits was at 03:43, when it was working on the just-opened Talk:Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)/GA3: it made three edits, to the review page, article talk page, and nominator's talk page, but never updated WP:GAN. (I didn't see anything on that review page or talk page that appeared likely to break anything.) BlueMoonset (talk) 02:39, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
It really isn't ideal that so much of the GAN process is based around a single point of failure. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:31, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
I agree. Which reminds me of one person who might be able to help. SD0001, if you have a moment would you look at the tail of christiebot-gan.err on Toolforge? The last error might well be me mishandling an exception, but before that it might identify what it was processing before it crashed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:34, 2 October 2024 (UTC)
Looks like this is resolved from Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Can someone not a maintainer read a file on toolforge?. I have been at an event myself and am only seeing this now. – SD0001 (talk) 17:19, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, it’s fixed — I didn’t realize till after I’d pinged you that someone else might be able to look at the logs for me. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:07, 4 October 2024 (UTC)
So I did a search through Talk namespace, for pages with {{GA nominee}} on them, sorted by latest edits. Scrolled down to "Ianto's Shrine" (one of the last pages bot processed on WP:GAN) and went up. One of the next pages is Talk:Holzwarth gas turbine, where an editor failed the nomination, then reverted the edit and put it on hold instead. But the bot already processed the fail. Could that be it? AstonishingTunesAdmirer 連絡 02:30, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I added a signature to Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Green Lantern (film)/1, which was added to GAN during Christiebot's last edit there. CMD (talk) 02:47, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm still receiving the failure emails every twenty minutes, so whatever is causing the crash is still in place. AstonishingTunesAdmirer, the list you created is exactly what I would have thought would find the error, whatever it is, but I've just looked at every article edited since the time in question and can't see any errors in those templates. BlueMoonset, that's a good point; I'll look a bit further back. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:03, 3 October 2024 (UTC)
I've looked at earlier pages and can't see an issue anywhere. I've posted a note on WP:VPT asking if anyone can read the log file to identify the troublesome page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:18, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

The bot is running again, thanks to Hawkeye7, who posted the errors for me to review at VPT. The issue was triggered by edits to Talk:Holzwarth gas turbine reversing a fail and changing it to a hold; when that happens the bot records an error, because the page now has an active template for a review page that the bot thought was inactive because of the fail. That's not particularly rare, but in this case the previous error on the error page User talk:ChristieBot/Bug messages was to record that the bot couldn't write to a page because that page had the {{bots}} template on it, which forbids bots from writing to a page. That template was included in the error message, so the attempt to write the new error failed because the bug message page now had the {{bots}} template too. I've removed the old error message from the bug messages page, so the bot can now run.

The proper fix is for me to change the bot so that when it records the error it doesn't include the {{bots}} template as part of the message. I won't be able to do that till next week, so in the unlikely event that the bot tries to write to another page protected by {{bots}}, it will start crashing again the next time after that that it writes an error. Clearing the bug messages page will resolve it again. I'll post another note here when I've updated the bot to address this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 07:21, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

Thankyou Mike for getting this sorted and for all your work with ChristieBot. Hope your travels go well. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 23:00, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

I believe this is now fixed; the next time the bot runs into a page with the {{bots}} template it should quote the template in its internal error message, rather than transcluding it. No way to tell for sure it's fixed till the next time it happens, but I'll keep an eye on it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:05, 6 October 2024 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 8 October 2024

Moved to Talk:2010 Haiti earthquake § Semi-protected edit request on 8 October 2024

GAN backlog drive update

Hi folks,

There are 197 articles left in the first list for this month's backlog drive (we started with 271). That means we're on track to finish the whole list by the end of the month! If you haven't joined in yet, feel free to do so at any time. -- asilvering (talk) 01:06, 9 October 2024 (UTC)

Review gone awry; where to now

I had nominated Boyd Exell for GA about 4 months ago; my first ever request. One of the October 2024 backlog drive participants took it up, however I felt like they were fighting with me, were non-responsive, and not cooperative. The reviewer failed the review, but I feel they have several misunderstandings about Wikipedia guidelines in general that they were incorrectly operating on during the process. For example, the reviewer:

  1. insisted I violate MOS:US; (that set the wrong tone right at the beginning)
  2. insisted I use his example from essay WP:INTERVIEWS, which he misunderstands, and he would not answer my questions about it; (I had to locate the source of his 'Joe Film' example using an insource search because reviewer didn't provide it, and reading it is when I discovered he misunderstands the purpose behind the 'Joe Film' example)
  3. misunderstands a watermark issue of an image which the photographer specifically gave permission to use and crop for this article, and which has been reviewed, accepted and noted in WikiCommons by another editor. The reviewer's issue seems to be about a cropped-out copyright watermark from the original image and deems that unfixable and causes the review to fail. The reviewer doesn't understand why a professional photographer would upload their images to Flickr with copyright watermarks and later change the license to 'share';
  4. closed out the review just 12 hours after my last edit. (I had planned on working on it tonight)

I am unsure how to proceed from here. I will not 'fix' issues reviewer has now left 'documented' on the article talk page — because they are, frankly, wrong (hindering renomination). And I am not willing to continue to work with that reviewer at this point. But I wanted to document this negative experience and see if there is any chance someone else might look at Talk:Boyd Exell/GA1 to see if I'm interpreting this correctly, and offer direction on how I might proceed from here.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 06:35, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

  • If you do not believe that the issues raised by the reviewer are valid (and having quickly read through the review, I'm inclined to agree with you), there's nothing to stop you from immediately renominating the article. If the previous reviewer's objections aren't problems, a subsequent reviewer shouldn't hold them against you. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:24, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
    I don't love that the solution to "someone pushed me out of the queue" is to be sent to the back of the queue and hope the pushing stops on its own. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:13, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
I think the ideal is extending 2O to articles that have been failed. Hauling someone to WT:GAN every time or accepting another 6 month wait is too much. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 02:19, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
I don't think Alexeyevitch should be reviewing at this time. They take a very narrow, binary approach to a process that isn't necessary black and white. Viriditas (talk) 09:28, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
He just failed a second review, this time Izhorian Museum, claiming that it doesn’t meet RS guidelines without explaining how or why. Also the user is wrong about using local media sources yet keeps repeating this claim. Viriditas (talk) 01:54, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
It was a short review, and it does seem many concerns raised go past what is required for WP:GACR, even if they were correct. I would encourage you to do the work you planned to do, and other work you may consider useful, and renominate. As an aside, I would not pass the article with the current WP:lead, which does not seem to be written as a summary of the body. CMD (talk) 09:55, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
I cannot glean from the reviewer's comments that they were fighting with [you], but cannot say the reverse. Your replies were unnecessarily hostile. For example, [n]o, abbreviations DO NOT TYPICALLY require periods, especially for "US" and "UK". See MOS:US! is an excessive way to correct someone, especially after they have acknowledged uncertainty on the matter. It would have been sufficient to just link to the relevant MOS section without all-caps yelling, and exclamation marking the link. If you disagree with the review – and like Caeciliusinhorto, I too am inclined to agree – then simply renominate the article with or without alteration and another reviewer can pick it up. But please, temper your demeanor. Reviewers are volunteers too. Mr rnddude (talk) 10:06, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for the various advices. I have decided to renominate it for GA, and I hope it can be re-added to the October drive under "Articles by new nominators (<10 GAs)" to give it a chance to get picked up by another reviewer.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 05:24, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

I've added it back to the list where it was. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:41, 12 October 2024 (UTC)
Thank you, PMC.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 18:17, 12 October 2024 (UTC)

Monarch GA split

I have conducted a split of Monarchs into "Monarchs" (177 articles) and "Monarchs - Europe" (204 articles). Editors are invited to check my work to ensure articles are in the correct category. Any help splitting categories larger than 300 articles would also be appreciated: the GA talk archives have previous discussions on this topic and can be a helpful place to find how the community wants to split the large categories. Z1720 (talk) 22:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Moved article page during GA (Fiona to Fiona (name))

Someone had requested for the article name to be more specific so I moved the page and now the bot failed the review; ops. How to proceed? The Blue Rider 00:59, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

The Blue Rider, the article was moved back, so things should be fine going forward. For future reference, if you move the article to a new name, you will need to separately move the GA review page to reflect that new article name, and also adjust the name of the GA review page—or is it the article name?—given in the top couple of lines of the GA review page (I believe there are two instances of it there). BlueMoonset (talk) 01:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Started wrong review

I accidently got confused by two similar articles and started the GAN review of the larger instead of the smaller one as I intended. Can someone fix it and remove me as reviewer? Article is Model (art). DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 08:18, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Tagged for G7. Best, CMD (talk) 08:29, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Regarding name articles

Hey all. I'm currently reviewing the article on Fiona, which is about a given name. It includes sections about its etymology and historical popularity, as well as a list of notable people with the name. I had assumed when reviewing it that the list section should be considered effectively as a disambiguation section, and thus shouldn't require citations to reliable sources like the prose sections (per WP:APOENTRIES). However, I notice that Voorts (talk · contribs) recently quick-failed a review for the article on Tamara (given name), in part because it didn't include citations for its list of names (alongside other issues). Could somebody else comment on this? Should we require citations for every entry in a list section for given name articles? Or should we treat them functionally as disambiguation sections, and thus not require citations? --Grnrchst (talk) 13:23, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

WP:GACR#2b requires that "All content that could reasonably be challenged ... must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph". I'm not sure what content could be reasonably challenged here: is it really reasonable to ask for a reliable source demonstrating that Fiona Bruce's name is Fiona? (I would question the inclusion of Fionna Campbell: is "Fionna" the same name as "Fiona"? Other people with names related to "Fiona" aren't included in the list) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:20, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
That's not what sourcing was needed for in that article. If it's purely a list of names with no other information, I agree no citations are needed. But when you start adding birth dates, occupations, etc., citations are needed, especially for living people. voorts (talk/contributions) 14:22, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
I wouldn't think a brief description of occupations ("Tamara Adrián, Venezuelan politician" is the first entry in Tamara (given name)#Notable people with the given name; "Fiona Adams, British photographer" is the first in Fiona#Notable people with the given name) is really "content that could reasonably be challenged". I would have said that I was pretty hawkish on including inline citations, and I wouldn't even have considered that it might be needed in this case. But maybe I'm wildly out of step with current GA norms? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:35, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
No, that would be wild. If we would have any claims in the list captions that diverge from short descriptions or lead sections of the linked articles, that would need citations, but clerical info that is just copied and pasted from there - or even worse transcluded with the use of {{anbl}} - would just introduce citation overkill in the list article. --Joy (talk) 14:27, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I feel it'd be very silly to require citations for the disambiguation portion of the page; I concur with Grnrchst's point that they don't require citations in normal dab pages. We don't need citations for the short description of pages in a "see also", after all. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:00, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Set Index Articles are an odd set and not really what the GACR was designed for. The Wikipedia:Set index articles guideline states that "List items do not require citations if they only give information provided by the source(s) cited in the introduction to the list. If an item gives more information, that should be backed up by citations." My read on that for this article would be that names do not need to be sourced, but biographical (or other) details do. CMD (talk) 16:50, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis: Would biographical details even as simple as birth/death years, nationalities and professions (i.e. what are usually in short description) require citations? --Grnrchst (talk) 11:24, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Given how unsimple nationality can be, I would cite that. As for everything else, I don't have much experience with SIAs, so I'm working with the guideline as written. I would be interested if anyone knew of discussions that led to that guideline formulation. CMD (talk) 13:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
A huge amount of nationality listings are very simple and uncontroversial, we should cite them only if they are in actual dispute, evidenced by the lead sections of same articles doing the same. If the linked article doesn't make a mountain out of a molehill, neither should a list. --Joy (talk) 14:30, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
I'm of the opinion that such lists should be spun off into their own disambiguation page if they aren't already; there will be hundreds of articles on people with the first name Fiona, and it makes no sense to lump them into an article about the name so that everything else is conpletely overshadowed. If the list on the page itself isn't comprehensive, you need some sort of source for selection criteria anyway. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:59, 11 October 2024 (UTC)
Another option would be to use {{Annotated link}} in such a list, relying on the {{Short description}} in each article to provide the extra text without citation.   ▶ I am Grorp ◀
IMO a more pressing reason to require that article to be fixed based on WP:V would be the laundry list of 'related names' in the infobox. People spam those infoboxes with lists of names that usually seem relevant, but if we're talking good article standard, these should definitely be backed up by citations and not be WP:OR hotspots. --Joy (talk) 14:33, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Need second opinion.

Hi. My article Susanne Craig is going through a review. The editor and I have clashing editing styles and their comments, which I believe I have worked on, are being left in a confusing manner. Was wanting a second opinion to see how this article can move forward. Lisha2037 (talk) 06:28, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

For context, this is continued from Wikipedia:Teahouse#Good Article Editor. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:46, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Hello, I am the reviewer for the GAN. Honestly, I'm going to suggest that nobody bother to read Talk:Susanne Craig/GA1 because it's just too much of a mess. The nominator says it's confusing, the reviewer (myself) says it's confusing, and there's no reason to subject another editor to that confusion and waste their time. It's just not a good use of volunteer time. (To be clear, I am not requesting a second opinion.)
I'm not going to point fingers or compare achievements at GAN. We got into this mess together and it is what it is. I feel that it would be easier to start a new review than to attempt a second opinion on this one, assuming that (1) the nomination does not pass in the next couple days and (2) someone is willing to nominate it again. (I'll briefly mention that two of the GANs I failed in the past I ultimately and successfully took to GA myself, so that's a possibility.)
I suppose this will probably make a couple editors curious enough to look at the review. If anyone cares to dissect it, I stand by my work and am open to constructive criticism. – Reidgreg (talk) 13:33, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien are you able to see what I can do? Lisha2037 (talk) 14:35, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Reidgreg I still want a second opinion on this, even if it’s confusing. The editor is still able to go through the article like a normal editor would and check if it meets the criteria for a GA. They don’t even have to look at your comments which many have already pointed out to me are excessive at points (I am new here so I may not directly realize when an editor is being intense) Lisha2037 (talk) 14:34, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
From your comments, edit summaries, etc., I don't think you want me to have a second opinion. It seems to me that what you're asking for is a new reviewer. (eg: your double revert to the GA nominee template with the edit summary "Well then I want you off this review.") To get a new reviewer, you need a new review. At least I believe that's how it works. I can't close the review without giving you a fair amount of time to make changes to meet the GA criteria. However, you can request that I fail the review, in which case I can close it right away and you can renominate it and get a new reviewer. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Reidgreg A second opinion template means another editor looks at the nomination. It’s not a second opinion from you. Lisha2037 (talk) 16:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Ah. To clarify: I don't think you want me to be provided with a second opinion. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:41, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Reidgreg Is your concern keeping the two reviews seperate? I've incremented the review, so that the next editor's review will be on a separate page.[1] @Lisha2037: This will keep the article's place in line at Wikipedia:Good article nominations. Good luck with the next review, Rjjiii (talk) 16:12, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Rjjiii So so since it’s failed, I’ve re added the template to the article. I hope that’s how it gets nominated again. Lisha2037 (talk) 16:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I reverted that edit. It's already done. Hopefully you won't need it in the future, but the instructions are at WP:GAN/I#N4a. It comes up most often when an editor starts a review but has something come up in the real world that limits their time, Rjjiii (talk) 16:30, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
WP:GAN/I#N4a applies to abandoned reviews. I have not abandoned the review. I am waiting for the nominator to respond to unanswered comments, per the last sentence of my last statement on the review page. Having the nominator turn that around and say that they're waiting for me... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I note that following a double-revert and improper edits to the GA nominee template, the nominator has now blanked Talk:Susanne Craig/GA1. Could someone please talk to the nominator about WP:Disruptive editing. The nominator is not inclined to listen to me about it. Thanks. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:23, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I have re-instated the contents of the review. Blanking was not an appropriate course of action. The least confrontational path from here is for both reviewer and nominator to disengage from each other. It is clear that Lisha2037 wants a new reviewer. It appears that a source review of all sources was conducted, which is well above and beyond what is required of a reviewer. You only need to spot-check a sample of the sources (~10% seems to be standard). This isn't a criticism of the effort, but if an article has hundreds of cites, it'd be a herculean demand of the reviewer to access and review all of those sources. That source review is what gives the appearance that the review is "intense". The mark-up doesn't help. The other elements of the review appear to me to be standard. Mr rnddude (talk) 18:57, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
One additional aside, because it is bothering me. You can safely ignore pigsonthewings demand that you sign every single line of your review. That is not how editors conduct reviews. Mr rnddude (talk) 19:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I have not requested a second opinion, withdrawn as reviewer, passed nor failed the review. Talk:Susanne Craig/GA1 should still be open. Incrementing the GA nominee template is premature. – Reidgreg (talk) 18:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Reidgreg, I think it would be easier if you failed the review at this point. From the comments above you are not ready to pass it and the nominator doesn't want to work with you, so it isn't going to pass. If you revert the blanking and fail it then the next nomination can be picked up by whoever wishes to review it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I absolutely agree that it would be easier to fail it. But it would be premature for me to do that. The review has only been open for 5 days, which is too soon for a non-quickfail fail (WP:GAN/I#HOLD suggests 7 days). The only way I can fail it now is for the nominator to formally request I fail it. Once again, I'm waiting on the nominator. – Reidgreg (talk) 19:55, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
It is entirely up to you to fail it; you definitely don't need the nominator to agree or even comment. The GA process places the responsibility for the decision solely on the nominator. I'm not saying you have to fail it, but you certainly aren't prevented from doing so by not hearing from the nominator. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for that support. But I'm a stickler for the rules and will keep it on hold for a while longer, barring a nominator request. I stand by my record and I want to be able to honestly say that I gave the nominator every chance. – Reidgreg (talk) 20:20, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
There's no rule against failing an article if it doesn't meet the criteria, the putting an article on hold is an option, and the suggested timeframe is an option within that. CMD (talk) 05:47, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
We're making this more difficult than it needs to be. Lisha2037, would you like to fail the nomination so a new reviewer can take it? I'll do it myself; I'm already looking for women's biographies to review for this month's WP:Women in Green event (I recommend you join if you're interested in this topic area, it's a great little community). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:32, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien yes I have repeatedly mentioned that to the editor. I want this article re-reviewed. I have worked on all the comments and yet he says please work on them as if to keep prolonging the process. If you jump in I will provide a full summary to everything I have edited section by section to make it easier to grasp.
Also what’s crazy is that I did get a notification that’s it’s been failed and then I checked an hour later and it was back up so I’m not exactly sure what happened or if he’s just wanting to keep the article to himself. Lisha2037 (talk) 20:37, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
All right. Reidgreg, if you insist on failing it yourself, then you can add Template:FailedGA to the talk page. Otherwise I or someone else will get around to doing it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:53, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien: You see what's happening above? I'm all for being kind to newcomers but competency is required. This could be over with three words from the nominator but for some reason, even when prompted, they can't manage to type them. I put up with this throughout the review. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
I know it's tempting to be snippy about an editor that you are in a dispute with, but it's not a great look even if you are absolutely in the right. It's especially not a great look if you are being snarky about their inability to do something twenty minutes after they did that thing. Indeed, in this very thread they had already said, in answer to the question "would you like to fail the nomination so a new reviewer can take it?", yes I have repeatedly mentioned that to the editor. I want this article re-reviewed. It is hard to see how you could not have understood that to be a request for you to fail the review.
It was very clear that Lisha2037 wanted you to fail the review. Forcing them to use some specific wording out of some misplaced adherence to a non-existent procedure doesn't do anything productive. Neither claiming that you are unable to fail a GA nomination within seven days unless the nominator asks for it (which is not a rule), nor claiming that they have not done something at least twenty minutes after they in fact did so, even under the most mindlessly bureaucratic interpretation, makes it seem as though the competence issue lies with them. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:12, 14 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien the article looks like it’s on the nomination board (so not on hold) - I am new to this so I may be wrong but I think it’s open to have another editor pick this up. And yes I have heard of that project! Will contribute more once I have more experience as I am still learning. Lisha2037 (talk) 20:49, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Lisha2037, I've temporarily removed your new nomination; either Reidgreg or someone else is going to mark the first GA review as a fail shortly, and I don't want the bot to get confused about what's going on. I'm not sure what it will do if it tries to process a failure while another nomination is still open, but I don't want to find out. I'll readd your nomination very shortly. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:00, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Okay, the nominator finally requested a fail. I'll write up a close, but I'm going to have to take my time to keep it clean. – Reidgreg (talk) 21:16, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
If tone is going to be an issue, then I'd encourage you to close without comment. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:26, 13 October 2024 (UTC)
Looking forward to your review. @Thebiguglyalien Lisha2037 (talk) 21:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Cue sports split and question

I have split the "Cue sports" section into "Cue sports events and concepts" and "Cue sports people". Please review my work to ensure that everything is placed where its supposed to be.

In this section, there are articles that are media about cue sports: The Color of Money, The Hustler and Jimmy White's 2: Cueball. Should these be listed here, or moved to their media section? Z1720 (talk) 16:32, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Backlog drive candidate: Talk:John Holder (umpire)/GA1

asilvering, this strikes me as an ideal candidate for the backlog drive, despite the fact that a review is open, because it badly needs a reviewer: the original reviewer hasn't been back since their last post on June 22 despite being pinged and as far as I can tell, it's the nominator's first GAN. Can there be an arrangement for backlog drive credit for whoever takes it over? It would be a shame if a review abandoned for over three months couldn't be taken over and completed in the two weeks remaining in the drive. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 01:42, 17 October 2024 (UTC)

I'll add it to the list, with a note. -- asilvering (talk) 02:13, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

GA passed without spot check

I just came across two GA reviews, from this month and July, that did not have spot checks. Is the proper procedure here to list the articles for GAR? voorts (talk/contributions) 04:06, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

FWIW, no comment on the specific GAs, but I feel the messaging that we have to do spot checks now has not been made very clear to people who don't do a lot of GAs. PARAKANYAA (talk) 04:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
Despite this being raised a few times in the last few years, the reviewing instructions still skip over the actual reviewing part of reviewing. Ironically, the spot check is the only part of the review process that is mentioned. I maintain that we need an overhaul of the "how to review" aspect, but my starting point is still gathering dust. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:08, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
@Voorts both of those were my reviews, so I'll just clarify that admittedly I entirely forgot to add the spot-check when reviewing these. I will at least verify that the sourcing information on the articles was accurate from the sources I looked at in-depth during the other parts of the review process (For both Delibird and Geno I had to double check that several sources were reliable or not, or if they were verifying the correct content or not, for various reasons, and I saw no outward issues with sourcing when giving the article an overview.)
I'll do some retroactive spot-checks later for verifiability's sake, and I'll coordinate with the nominator of both of the reviews (@Captain Galaxy) if I notice anything amiss. Preferably I'd appreciate if I could just handle this editorially with the nom so we don't have to go through the lengthy GAR process, especially since the nom is not at fault here, and I wouldn't want to put them through that due to a mistake on my part. It's an easy enough mistake to rectify, so I'd appreciate if this could be handled in a less complicated manner than what has been suggested. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 16:45, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
If you looked at sources in-depth to check whether they verified the content, isn't that a spot check? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:32, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
@Thebiguglyalien In a sense. I just forgot to actually put down the formal process and directly tell them which sources I had looked at and verified. I am not sure if that qualifies or not, especially since it's not down on record. Has one ever considered Magneton? Pokelego999 (talk) 17:35, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
If you write down which sources you looked at in-depth, that meets the requirements (assuming they did!) and there isn't a need to do more retroactively. CMD (talk) 04:03, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
Got it. Thanks. I have no issues with fixing this outside the GAR process. I probably should have pinged you both as well; my bad for not doing so. voorts (talk/contributions) 18:24, 21 October 2024 (UTC)

Admin elections

There are thirty-five simultaneous admin elections going on in a new format. The idea is to have a discussion that does not include supports and opposes, but which simply presents information about the candidate for people to draw their own conclusions from. I thought it might be a useful contribution to add notes about GAN & FAC participation, and have done so with one candidate, here. Since there are thirty-five, it would be great if two or three others would chip in with comments on other admins on the list. I'll commit to doing the first five, tonight if I have time, and will try to get more done over the next couple of days. The discussion phase only lasts three days, so if this is helpful it should be done quickly. If anyone else is interested, please say so here and indicate which ones you'll add the notes for to avoid duplication of effort. No problem if it doesn't get done, but I think looking at how an editor behaves in content reviews, both as reviewer and nominator, can reveal what kind of person they are, and could be useful to those considering whether to support or oppose each candidate. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:55, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this, @Mike Christie! This is such a huge help. -- asilvering (talk) 23:21, 22 October 2024 (UTC)
And since several have no activity, it's quicker than I was afraid it would be. I'll keep going down the list; if someone wants to chip in and help please post here to say which ones you're doing, but I might even be able to get through the list. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:19, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
  •  Done Robert McClenon
  •  Done SD0001
  •  Done Peaceray
ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 02:39, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! I've only got half a dozen left to do so I think we're there now. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:24, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
All now done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:30, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
Great! I admittedly got waylaid reading a few reviews to help me get to know the GAN process better. — ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 03:51, 23 October 2024 (UTC)
thank you both for doing that! was helpful in my voting (although i don't think it changed any of my votes)! :) ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:08, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
+1 Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 19:27, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Problematic review

Talk:Arrangement of lines/GA1 was started by User:Electrou over a week ago with a two-sentence "review" with no depth, detail, or source checking, and no action to change the actual nomination status of the article. The reviewer is apparently a very new Wikipedia editor. I pinged the reviewer and suggested mentorship, several days later, but have received no response and their only edit after the ping was to claim to go on wikibreak for a week (an odd thing for a brand-new editor to know how to do, but whatever). This nomination is over nine months old; it was, until Electrou picked it up, one of the five oldest unreviewed nominations, and is in the stretch goals for the current reviewing drive, but I am concerned that the outcome of this non-review will be to put it back in the pool after the drive is over and let it continue to languish. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:38, 16 October 2024 (UTC)

  • I've been out of the loop for too long to say if it's couth to consider the review a non-review, but I know as a lay person, I had questions about the comprehensiveness of the lede as well as some of the phrasing ("intuitively") and the fact that the first reference doesn't show up until the fifth paragraph (counting the three in the block). So yes, I agree that this definitely needs a review that looks at the article vis-a-vis the GA criteria. That being said, I felt my eyes glazing over before I reached the end of the discussion of the planes, so I wouldn't be competent to give a review if a new review became needed.  — Chris Woodrich (talk) 23:50, 16 October 2024 (UTC)
    Thanks! This is already more useful for improvement than the review. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:23, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
I’m willing to take over the review if no one more competent than me can (i’m not great at math stuff) IntentionallyDense (talk) 00:49, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Of course it's my first review, anything can be better, and I went on a wikibreak due to rapid edit conflicts. I'll give a more detailed review later. Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 18:39, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
To be blunt: it is not merely a case of "could be better": this review clearly paid no heed to our norms or explicit written guidelines for GAN reviews. An attempt was not properly made. Remsense ‥ 论 18:42, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
@David Eppstein What did you just say! You called me a "new editor". Excuse me, I have 500+ edits, I took wikibreak due to rapid edit conflicts. I even gave you the response, look at the message above. Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 18:41, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
You are inexperienced by GAN standards, and given your apparent ignorance of those standards, this characterization is what you probably want, rather than the alternative being "experienced but clearly negligent". Remsense ‥ 论 18:46, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
It appears I didn't read the GA standards. I'm just not very good at reviewing, trying to get help Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 18:48, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
Before any of this continues, I'd like to drop a quick reminder of WP:BITE. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:44, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
If they claim themselves not to be a new editor, I would presume they would like to hear an unvarnished appraisal of their conduct. Remsense ‥ 论 18:47, 17 October 2024 (UTC)
With an account only two months old and only 462 edits in mainspace, I would like to gently advise Electrou that they are, indeed, very new and inexperienced by Wikipedia standards, and would do well to thoroughly read and understand the guidelines for any focused activity here, whether that be reviewing GA nominations or requesting advanced permissions. ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 00:42, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
@ClaudineChionh shut up, I have 855+ edits it we count all namespaces, I'll thoroughly review the policies and guidelines. Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 02:17, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
For your first reading assignment: never speak to another editor like that ever again. I'm not an administrator, but I wouldn't blame any admin who blocked you the next time you told another editor to "shut up". Remsense ‥ 论 02:22, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense bro I'm not reading a very long policy Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 11:08, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Then stop wasting everyone else's time pretending you want to improve. You do not. Remsense ‥ 论 11:10, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense bro what does that even mean Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 11:21, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I genuinely do hope things go well and you get advice that helps you, but the things I am saying do not seem to be helping, so I'm disengaging from this conversation. Remsense ‥ 论 11:31, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I got a new message on my talk page saying to AGF (assume good faith). Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 01:39, 19 October 2024 (UTC)
civility is one of our 5 pillars and it is expected that all editors, new or not, understand and adhere to it. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 11:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
462 edits is better than the average newcomer Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 02:19, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Per the link to policy above: experienced editors are trying in good faith to give you advice. You need to change your attitude considerably: stop arguing with them as if you would know better or as if you have some impressive reputation you have to defend—you do not. Remsense ‥ 论 02:56, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
@Remsense bro, have you read the good faith policy or it's related policies, the reason why I said "shut up" is because they called me "very new", but I have 855 total edits and 462 mainspace edits. That's literally better than the average newcomer with 10 edits. Do you actually understand who is a newcomer and who isn't? A newcomer is an editor with 10 edits (autoconfirmed). Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 10:47, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
  • Electrou, while you are indeed past the threshold of "new" used to identify autoconfirmed editors, 462 mainspace edits does not mean that you are a seasoned and experienced editor with a firm grasp of Wikipedia and Wikimedia policies, guidelines, and manuals of style. When choosing to review articles at the GA level, at least a basic understanding of the expectations should be shown.
Also, Remsense is correct that your decision to tell another editor to "shut up" is unconstructive; people are trying to advise you, help you learn, and you are rebuffing them in a manner that will only cause offense and alienate them. Continued personal attacks and combative behaviour could readily lead to a block. — Chris Woodrich (talk) 11:03, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Bro, have you read the civility policy that Remsense helpfully pointed out to you? And sure, you have made more edits than most casual visitors to Wikipedia ever make, but constantly showing off your edit count, especially in a discussion that's supposed to be about improving article quality, is giving the rest of us a poor impression of you. — ClaudineChionh (she/her · talk · contribs · email) 11:04, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
I hope you reconsider and take my advice above: frankly, I would expect a block sooner rather than later if you continue with your present attitude, and there's no use in me mincing words about that. Remsense ‥ 论 11:07, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
R.I.P. Now I'm going to get blocked (just a chance). Atleast most of them are only for a few days (like 2). And editors are giving me advice, so the more I listen to it, the less chance of getting blocked. I'll try to thoroughly review the policies and guidelines. Sorry for the rude "shut up". Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 11:12, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
Looks like I have started a conflict, or possibly a war. Electrou (formerly Susbush) (talk) 11:23, 18 October 2024 (UTC)
A minor scuffle and in any case not really something to be proud of. Now how about that in-depth review? —David Eppstein (talk) 17:57, 21 October 2024 (UTC)
If the reviewer does not review the article (seems like they are on a wiki-break), I am willing (and would like) to take it up for review too, as part of the backlog drive. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:42, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
I don't think that as nominator I should be approving takeover reviewers, but I'd be happy to have any willing reviewer give the article a proper review. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:04, 25 October 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, I was asking in general if a new review could be started, as it seems this conversation fizzled out. I should have edited in-source instead of clicking reply. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:07, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Is it possible to retroactively change GA subtopic?

Generally. I know most people don't care, but I do, haha PARAKANYAA (talk) 09:53, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Just make sure you change the location of the link at WP:GA too. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:30, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Reviewer not responding

The reviewer for one of my GANs, was started by an editor (am I supposed to ping them here?) more than 2 weeks ago, and there has been no further reviewing actions from their side for almost a week (and the prev two times they suggested changes was also a week apart). And they have also barely responding to my queries about the progress, answering vaguely. I think they might be too busy to complete the review, and unwilling to step back. Can something be done about it, bcs the GAN backlog drive is ending, and in case the GAN is readded to the list/the review gets completed, it might get reviewed properly more promptly. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:56, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

It looks like they replied and said they were going to do it. If DaniloDaysOfOurLives decides to drop it, however, I would be happy to take it on. Let me know. Viriditas (talk) 19:27, 27 October 2024 (UTC)
What do you mean "not responding"? The last time they replied was yesterday! ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:03, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

Citing gameplay sections of game show articles

At Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Jeopardy!/2, TenPoundHammer argues that the "Gameplay" section of articles such as Jeopardy! or Wheel of Fortune (American game show) are equivalent to a plot summary and can thus be uncited per WP:PLOTREF. I don't believe that factual elements of gameplay can be governed by the writing about fiction guideline, and that the section needs citations. Opinions from others would be helpful. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:29, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

A better guideline for this would be MOS:TVPLOT, especially the last paragraph:

For non-fiction series, such as talk shows, game shows, news programming or reality shows, a "plot summary" may be interpreted as an outline of the show's format or gameplay rules; in such cases, the heading may be changed to "Format" or "Gameplay" as appropriate. This will likely be enough for news programming or talk shows. However, some non-scripted reality series may require summaries similar to scripted series, in which case they should follow the guidelines above.

Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
Of course, MOS:TVPLOT says Plot summaries, and other aspects of a program's content, such as its credits, may be sourced from the works themselves, as long as only basic descriptions are given. Exceptions to this include lost episodes (which are not available to the public to verify), for which editors are required to use secondary sources. Any content that is analytical, interpretive or evaluative should not be in the plot summary, unless it is necessary to clarify an unclear or contentious plot point, in which case it must be accompanied by a secondary source. So the question is to what extent the 3000-word long(!) §Gameplay section of Jeopardy! is a "basic description" verifiable from watching the show. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:10, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Scoring system

Hello, I just wanted to drop in and say that I think the bonus point system (2500 words=1 point) is way better than the bonus system used in the July 2024 drive (.5 points for every 2000 words in a single article), and I would be supportive of it being the system used in future drives. Kimikel (talk) 04:18, 18 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback, @Kimikel! I like it a lot better too. We'll have to see what other people think once when we debrief the experiment. -- asilvering (talk) 17:07, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The Bill reassessment closed too quickly

Hi everyone,

So The Bill was listed as a Good Article Reassessment. An editor was literally in the article today to address the issues raised when someone just delisted it and closed the GAR before they'd had the chance to post what they'd done.

Are you able to list it again and reopen the discussion? It was delisted literally as we were removing the information it was nominated for including and also adding sources!

We didn't think it would just be delisted as nobody had voted whether to keep or delist it. If I'm honest i thought the nominator had abandoned it! 5 albert square (talk) 22:52, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I'll reopen it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:46, 29 October 2024 (UTC)
@5 albert square: and also GAR watchers: If nobody comments in the GAR, I assume that no one is interested in fixing up the article and do not include additional comments. I cannot comment on whether GAR closers look at the article history. It helps immensely if editors who are interested in fixing up the article post their intentions in the GAR. Z1720 (talk) 01:51, 29 October 2024 (UTC)

Editor opened a review for his own nomination.

Putting this here, as I'm not sure what the correct course of action is:

@Absolutiva has started a review for an article he has nominated: Talk:Sex offender/GA1. SSSB (talk) 14:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

In the past when this has happened it's been because the editor didn't understand how GAs work. I would suggest leaving them a note and G6ing the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:18, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

Reviews being done in under a minute??

I'm starting this convo because I'm confused and I'm sure others are as well. I've found three different GANR passed within one minute, all by the same reviewer and nominator. Talk:Jim Dillard (gridiron football)/GA2, Talk:Henry Janzen/GA2, Talk:Tony Pajaczkowski/GA2. I know these are all second time reviews but the reviews being done show no proof that the nominator source checked anything. Pinging the editors involved: BeanieFan11 and WikiOriginal-9. I am a fairly newer reviewer so I could just be missing something here but I am confused. IntentionallyDense (talk) 15:21, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

The points were addressed on the talk pages of the articles, see Talk:Jim_Dillard_(gridiron_football)#GA_comments. Thanks. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 15:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Date Article Talk page discussion GAN Time between GANR and pass
August 22, 2024 (UTC) C. A. Clingenpeel Talk:C. A. Clingenpeel#GA Link 3 minutes
August 27, 2024 (UTC) Cedric Oglesby Talk:Cedric Oglesby#GA notes Link 1 minute
August 29, 2024 (UTC) Lewis Manly Talk:Lewis Manly#GA Link 1 minute
October 30, 2024 (UTC) Jim Dillard (gridiron football) Talk:Jim Dillard (gridiron football)#GA comments Link Same minute
October 31, 2024 (UTC) Tony Pajaczkowski Talk:Tony Pajaczkowski#GA comments Link 1 minute
October 31, 2024 (UTC) Henry Janzen Talk:Henry Janzen#GA comments Link Same minute
As someone not involved with GANRs, I'm curious, is it normal to complete reviews outside of the review page? Hey man im josh (talk) 15:53, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
It is not typically done like this, but I don't think it is a problem for GAN per se. The issue here is the complete lack of evidence of source spotchecks in any of these reviews. Per WP:GAN/I#R3, these must be done. @WikiOriginal-9, please undo your promotions and perform spot checks for these. If you do mass GA reviews, your reviews should be absolutely up to scratch. Your reviews are "prose reviews" only and do not qualify as proper GA reviews. —Kusma (talk) 16:14, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Rather than de-promote, could spot checks just be done, and if there's any issues I'll make sure to address them? I assume that sources are usually checked though; e.g. Talk:Paul Loudon (another nom that I was going to work on) has comments such as "winning All-American honors by Walter Camp." Dont see that in ref 3 / don't see birthdate in ref 1 etc. BeanieFan11 (talk) 16:23, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
In addition to the reviews above, Talk:Kim Bong-hwan/GA1, Talk:Oh Yoon-kyung/GA1, Talk:Madeo Molinari/GA1, Talk:Karl Thielscher/GA1, Talk:Fran Foley/GA1, Talk:Armwell Long/GA1, Talk:Bethwel Henry/GA1, Talk:Rod Taylor (American football)/GA1, Talk:Grant Hermanns/GA1, Talk:Henri Claireaux/GA1, Talk:J. Nash McCrea/GA1, Talk:Graham Kernwein/GA1, Talk:Lonny Calicchio/GA1, Talk:Bob Hainlen/GA1, Talk:Joseph L. Cahall/GA1, Talk:Paul Chadick/GA1, Talk:Fred Narganes/GA1, Talk:Garnett Wikoff/GA1, Talk:Herbert Gidney/GA1, Talk:Cliff Brumbaugh/GA1, Talk:Larry Kennedy (baseball)/GA1, Talk:Herbert Polzhuber/GA1 lack spotchecks (basically WikiOriginal's reviews. Gonzofan's appear to have consistent spotchecks.) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:27, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
This is partially in reply to BeanieFan but doing spot checks after the fact for ALL of these articles seems unrealistic. IntentionallyDense (talk) 16:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I do checks for sources. I just don't specifically write that unless I find anything off. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 16:36, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
If you check sources, then say what sources you have checked in your reviews as is standard practice in GA reviews these days. —Kusma (talk) 16:43, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
I just looked over C. A. Clingenpeel to check if anything important was missed. I do find the lead a bit short. Spotchecks throw up the following issues (both of them small but real). Again, it would be good to know which sources were checked to see whether the reviewer noticed these issues.
  • "Clingenpeel worked for seven years as a journalist for The Kansas City Star" source says he was a pressman, which does not necessarily mean "journalist".
  • A few years later, he began operating a news agency bearing his name. source does not say when he started, could have been immediately. All we know is he was operating it in 1948.
On Ancestry, I found him both as "Clarence Albert" and as "Clarence Albertus", no idea which is true (he signed with both of these names in different places). It is 100% clear that this is the same person from some of the records there, so the primary source for the date and place of birth is fine. He was married (but I did not find out anything about his wife). —Kusma (talk) 17:34, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Note that there's been a previous discussion about these reviews at Wikipedia talk:WikiCup#Is teaming with reviewers in the spirit of the cup?. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:29, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Would it be appropriate to move this convo over there as well? (idk how to do that but i’m sure i could figure it out). IntentionallyDense (talk) 16:30, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
The cause of these problems is the WikiCup, but the need to maintain standards is a GAN issue, so I would prefer the discussion to be here. —Kusma (talk) 16:32, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
This discussion is more about the GA process, regardless of how it affects the cup, but it provides context that might be helpful, as well as GAN stats for BeanieFan11 and WikiOriginal-9. Also, I'll raise the same point that I raised there: WikiOriginal-9 said on 18 October that they spent 3 hours this morning to review the 12 articles he asked me about yesterday, which comes down to 15 minutes per review. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:37, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Sounds good in regards to where this convo belongs. As for the 15 minutes per review part, I personally (and this may just be my lack of experience) find it hard to believe that 12 different reviews took 15 minutes each. I don’t even think my quickfails are that short. I’m not trying to make any accusations here I just find it hard to believe that that level of speed could be established without some of the thoroughness being lost along the way. IntentionallyDense (talk) 16:42, 31 October 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I saw the bolded spot check requirement at WP:GAN/I#R3 but I unfortunately I didn't realize that meant you were supposed to list out the sources that you didn't find problems with. Oops. If you look at my reviews, you can find lots of instances where I look at sources and then question the text. Also, I assumed the spot check requirement was always there, I didn't realize it was just added in 2023. In my past reviews and nominations before 2023, reviewers didn't specifically write out the sources like that, so I didn't realize I was supposed to do that now. Sorry. I'll start listing out all the sources from now on. ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 18:31, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

"Wikipedia:Standard articles" listed at Redirects for discussion

The redirect Wikipedia:Standard articles has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2024 October 31 § Wikipedia:Standard articles until a consensus is reached. TeapotsOfDoom (talk) 22:59, 31 October 2024 (UTC)

GAN backlog drive almost over

Hi all, we have fewer than 90 articles left in the first list (nominations by people with fewer than 10 GAs) and three and a half days to get through them. If you haven't been taking part in the drive so far, it's not too late to join up and take on one of these, or even a handful of them! The goal we set was well in line with previous GAN backlog drive outcomes, so I know it's possible to clear this. Either way it's been a big success - we've gotten almost 200 articles off of that list! - but it would be great to get it right down to the wire.

Thanks to everyone who has participated so far! -- asilvering (talk) 17:13, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone who joined. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 17:18, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
One might suspect that the Internet Archive outage threw a monkey wrench into things, which could be considered an extenuating circumstance if the goal of clearing the first list is not attained. TompaDompa (talk) 19:11, 28 October 2024 (UTC)
I hadn't thought of that, but you may be right. I think a more likely factor is "data insufficient to predict result" - most of the previous drives were held in a different month, in years where we held fewer drives. -- asilvering (talk) 19:15, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Now it's actually over!

Aaaaand done! Postmortem incoming eventually, but for now: thanks to everyone who participated! If you've still got reviews outstanding, that's fine - just try to clear them up soon so that you can get barnstars for all your hard work. -- asilvering (talk) 03:00, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

nomination of a article

So I want to nomination princess Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha I recently just made bunch of improvements of sourcing addition to references I want to edit this page so some can review and I can get it nomination and pass and make it good article so I need permission to edit this page so I can get put nomination for Princess Alexandra of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha Qubacubazamniauser (talk) 03:34, 6 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi Qubacubazamniauser, follow the instructions at WP:GAN/I and a reviewer can pick this up when they are ready :) Before you do, there are quite a few broken references which you should fix; you can see these by installing User:Trappist the monk/HarvErrors. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:08, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Ok gotta fix new error just popped up Qubacubazamniauser (talk) 06:11, 6 November 2024 (UTC)
Ok I just fixed error now there is new one saying lead to short not onrgirzed wil the reviewer fix it or should I ? Qubacubazamniauser (talk) 00:02, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Generally, you should resolve any cleanup banners (like this one) before nominating an article. Nub098765 (talk) 02:14, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
KKKKKKK i will try Qubacubazamniauser (talk) 03:24, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Pentagonal pyramid/GA1

Is WP:ORES considered part of WP:GACR? I mean, the WP:GACR states the six criteria involving the prose, sources, images, section arrangement, neutrality, and stability. But ORES is nothing but a tool to provide the descriptions of measuring how high the article's quality is. While WP:GACR does not says explicitly about the tool, can someone enlighten me in this case? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 01:55, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

ORES is not related to the GACR. They are evaluated by the reviewer. It can be helpful in rating articles but when you get into peer review processes like GA and FA it isn't relevant. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:57, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Hmm... Do reviewers consider ORES as an optional tool? Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:47, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, because it is completely optional and, as Sawyer said below, has nothing to do with evaluating the article based on the GACR. I'd go so far as to say an evaluation with ORES shouldn't be part of a GA review for that reason, although that's my personal opinion and there's nothing forbidding it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:08, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
@Dedhert.Jr Yeah, ORES also seems to evaluate articles based on length. For example, Si Ronda and How Brown Saw the Baseball Game are both short Featured Articles. They seem fine, but ORES gives them both a C rating.[2][3] This kind of makes sense if it's just looking for patterns (C-rated articles are often short and FA-rated often long) but length is not in either criteria, and it's probably not a desired metric. Idk if there are other issues, Rjjiii (talk) 04:19, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
This simply means that ORES does not observe the quality of the article as in the comprehensiveness and broadness coverage, but instead counts how many bytes, words, sentences, paragraphs, and other super long texts might not expected like other FAs or GAs. Anecdotally, I assume a quote of "do not use ORES while reviewing". Lesson learned. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:27, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
ORES has nothing to do with the GACR and it is absolutely not "the bigger problem" (compared to sourcing issues) as @Randomstaplers says. i have an ORES script installed, but i put about as much faith into it as i put in my roommates' dish-washing abilities. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 02:01, 4 November 2024 (UTC)
This obsession with ORES has got to stop. The only thing it knows is what articles look similar. Everything else is guesswork. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:37, 5 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes but why do anything yourself when you can feed it to an algorithm and hope for the best? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:38, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it okay if I nominate an article for GA that I had previously nominated for deletion?

For context, while participating in the 2024 November Unreferenced Articles Drive, I nominated the article for Quiver (video game) for deletion on November 2. After additional reviews were found that led to a clear consensus for keeping the article, I withdrew and closed the nomination on November 7. However, while the nomination was still ongoing, I used the reviews found to expand the article, essentially to get a good sense of what an article for the game would like given the sources.

Since the article was kept and I expanded the article significantly as best as I could, I am actually considering nominating it for GA. Is that okay, or would it be misguided? Lazman321 (talk) 19:10, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Perfectly fine. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:22, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Okay, nominated Lazman321 (talk) 23:00, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
I know of one case where someone nominated an article for deletion and eventually got it promoted to featured article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:16, 8 November 2024 (UTC)
Onto the WP:Deletion to quality list it goes! TompaDompa (talk) 00:58, 8 November 2024 (UTC)

Atlanta Braves nomination

I nominated Atlanta Braves back in February and an editor picked it up for review today. Forgive me if this is the wrong venue, but the editor reviewing appears to be inexperienced in this area and could use some help. Thanks! Nemov (talk) 18:09, 30 October 2024 (UTC)

I sadly do not have time to review an article of such length but that looks like a drive by review to me. Someone should re-review the article again, considering that the reviewer already promoted it to GA. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 20:37, 30 October 2024 (UTC)
Can someone remove the botched review? I realize it's a large article and it's already been waiting several months. This attempt it just a waste of time and it's clear the person who is attempting to review the article lacks the experience to do it correctly. Nemov (talk) 03:34, 1 November 2024 (UTC)

Good article review circles

Hello, I thought I should give an update on good article review circles which has so far fostered approximately 48 good article reviews.

I feel the project has moved past any teething issues and is now working quite well, however in recent months the number of nominations being submitted to the project has plummeted.

If you have an article you needs to be reviewed and are also willing to review someone else's article, please consider participating so we can get more circles running more often. GMH Melbourne (talk) 02:25, 7 November 2024 (UTC)

Sure. If editors' aren't fussy and are willing to do a review, they can always put in someone elses' nom if they don't have one.
Just means that the items in the circle don't get removed for being under review, which means they were reviewed without getting an extra review (your review is then worth two for the backlog). Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 21:40, 7 November 2024 (UTC)
Could you explain the bit after "which means that" please? Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:47, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Chiswick Chap Sure, sorry it reads confusingly. GARC's purpose is to get more reviews to take place. This works by participants agreeing to review an article in exchange for theirs being reviewed. However, if someone outside the pool starts reviewing something in the pool, the nominator of that article no longer is obligated to do a review. So we've lost an extra review. Pools taking longer to fill up makes this more likely to happen. However, if you put an article in the pool it fills up faster and it makes it less likely we lose an extra review. In the case where you prevent one from dropping out, the review you committed to has now ensured a second review will take place. Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 12:21, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Many thanks for explaining. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:26, 9 November 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we should advertise the review circles more clearly on the main nominations page? Looking through the main WP:GA pages, review circles are only mentioned in an easily-skimmed-over part of the Instructions page. We could probably do more to draw nominators' and reviewers' attentions towards it. --Grnrchst (talk) 21:22, 10 November 2024 (UTC)
I had the exact same thought. With GAN, I come and go. So I must have missed this inititive when it was launched - I can't be the only one. When I joined in the October GAN drive, I didn't read the instructions page. Because I assumed it had stayed the same, and I remebered all the important info. Likewise, if and when I nominate an article, I am not going to read the instructions page either. I only know about the review circles because of this thread. If I'm being radical and bold, I almost think it would be worth sending a message on user talk pages when a someone puts in their first nomination/first nomination for a while, with the line from the instruction page: "Consider reviewing two nominations for each one that you nominate or joining a review circle." with some sort of breakdown of the current expected wait time (like {{AfC category navbar}}) to help promote this. As the #Atlanta Braves nomination thread above points out. The wait alone is quite off putting. SSSB (talk) 22:41, 10 November 2024 (UTC)

"Missing" GA review

For Haymarket affair? I guess it should be here, but... if anyone can find it, it'll be appreciated. SerialNumber54129 16:45, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Haymarket affair/Archive 1#Good article nomination on hold. This is Jan 2008, so possibly before the GA nomination process was as well-defined as it is today? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks very much, Caeciliusinhorto, that's helpful. Yes, I suppose back then it wasn't transcluded from a separate page? Cheers, SerialNumber54129 17:02, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Informal discussion

An informal discussion, a "Before opening a reassessment", has been initiated at Talk:Dylan Thomas#Article issues and classification. -- Otr500 (talk) 14:59, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

January 2025 drive theme

I'd like to put forward a theme for the January 2025 GAN review backlog drive (courtesy link for when the page is created): to focus on GA nominations by nominators who have a certain minimum review-to-GA ratio.

Step 2-4 (optional) of the nomination instructions says Consider reviewing two nominations for each one that you nominate, so a 2:1 ratio seems about right.

This assuming it isn't too much of a headache to put together a list of qualifying articles. I feel that it'd be nice to give a nod to those who have maintained a high ratio and maybe remind others of that optional step to encourage more reviewing. – Reidgreg (talk) 14:43, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I believe the idea of the January drive, as part of the thrice-yearly schedule, is to have no theme and to focus on all nominations. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:44, 14 November 2024 (UTC)
Oh, okay. I found an earlier discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 32 § Proposal 1: Regular backlog drives which mentioned this as a possible theme. Maybe for the third backlog drive next year. – Reidgreg (talk) 15:36, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

Moving an ancient GAR to the GAR archives

Hi, I'd like to move Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA1 to the GAR archives (Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/1 as the title based on others I've seen). There were 2 GANs; one I've now moved to /GA2, but the first one is at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA Review 1. The naming is just a mess and it's from 2007 so I figured I'd try to standardize them as I fixed the stranded talk subpages, but not sure how to go about doing it or if i'm mucking up some preservation of preference title norm. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! Sennecaster (Chat) 03:56, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

I'm not sure we usually do this sort of curation of older subpages. I'm not sure what should go where and what has moved already, but at least one entry in the Article history template at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis is now pointing to the wrong page. CMD (talk) 04:19, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
the first GAN is at /GA Review 1, under the old page title. The second GAN was at /GA Review 2, and I moved it to /GA2 without realizing where the GAR subsequently was. The GAR is at /GA1. I'm going to un-muck the article history template once I figure out what to do with the subpages. I'm thinking if the GAR doesn't move to the GARchives then I can move it to /GA reassessment and then the first GAN to /GA1? Sennecaster (Chat) 04:29, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
The one curation we do do is move all subpages with the main page, so whatever is before the /X should be the current (talk) page title. As for the rest, I'm not fully following what is where. The very old GANs were just talkpage sections, so they have no subpage to move. CMD (talk) 05:13, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
GAN#1 is at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA Review 1, GAN#2 is at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA2, GAN#3 is at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA1. I've only moved #2's title. The GAR is at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/Archive 2#Restructure where someone said to delist, it was agreed upon, and delisted. Think I'm just going to shift GAN#3 to Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA3, and move GAN#1 to Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/GA1. I'm cleaning up stranded talk subpages from before the wiki had pagemover rights and it's normal for the few of us that have been working on it to standardize archive names (/archive001 to /Archive 1, for instance), so I once I found this mess I figured I'd do the same. Sennecaster (Chat) 17:21, 20 November 2024 (UTC)
I suppose that makes sense. It looks like the transclusion at Talk:Abortion–breast cancer hypothesis/Archive 3 will need to be edited, but there are no other unique incoming links. CMD (talk) 17:30, 20 November 2024 (UTC)

Drive-by reviews by User:Royiswariii

Hi, will somebody please, in good conscience, gently remind User:Royiswariii to take a break from conducting GA reviews for now, at least until he achieves competency in this area? He doesn't seem to have a very good grasp of some of Wikipedia's MoS guidelines, much less grammar. For instance, in assessing Talk:Itim/GA2 against criterion 1a, he stated All grammars [sic] and spelling are correct, among other vague feedback; he concluded the review by stating run-on, "I checked carefully the article and it's [sic] looks good to me, I'll add all my review comment, I didn't check for now because i'm too busy in my academics." Another thing that surprised me was his unblock appeals showing his not-so-good command of English. Further, he has a history of making drive-by reviews, such as Talk:Elijah Hewson/GA1, which had to be taken over by another reviewer. Nineteen Ninety-Four guy (talk) 11:43, 21 November 2024 (UTC)

Old GARs needing participation

Posting here to encourage participation in reassessments from more people than the regulars at the GAR page. These are older discussions where improvement is not ongoing and which could use more participation.

Any comments on the above would be useful. Many thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:30, 22 November 2024 (UTC)

What to do about reviews opened by blocked users?

Hey all. Today, a user who had opened a review for one of my nominations was indefinitely blocked for disruptive editing. The review page is now empty, with no comments. This is unfortunate, as I've been waiting for a review on this since April, but I notice this user was also concurrently reviewing 3 other GA nominations (technical geography, black holes in fiction and Patricia Bullrich), so I assume those will not be completed either.

What can be done in these cases? I assume the reviews can't be marked as finished in many cases, but does this mean nominators will have to go back to square one and join the back of the queue? --Grnrchst (talk) 09:10, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

I understand the situation, and have no rush. The article of Patricia Bullrich may be closed as failed and then nominated again, I'll just wait for a new reviewer to show up. Cambalachero (talk) 15:14, 11 November 2024 (UTC)

Thanks, done. CMD (talk) 00:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
I was working on finishing technical geography up. I nominated it, and the reviewer took some time to get back to me due to life things. By the time the got back, I was defending my dissertation, starting a new job so a bit busy. I had set aside time this week to finish. This block is shocking to me honestly, the user was pretty upstanding and involved in a number of projects from what I've seen. I'm not sure what happened, and so suddenly at that. GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 18:11, 11 November 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for the update. At the very least, once you have fixed up the sources and page numbers, someone else is needed to carry out a spot check. CMD (talk) 00:01, 12 November 2024 (UTC)
Yes, I'm at a bit of an impass here. Should I renominate and go through again, the process was longer then usual due to life events for both of us, but I think it was almost done.... GeogSage (⚔Chat?⚔) 05:21, 16 November 2024 (UTC)
@GeogSage: Maybe try asking for a second opinion to finish the review? QuicoleJR (talk) 18:38, 27 November 2024 (UTC)

Nominations

I suggest that The Blue Rider's nominations simply be removed, i.e. the articles unnominated. These are:

—Alalch E. 22:29, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

All six nominations have been removed. BlueMoonset (talk) 22:47, 12 November 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Pentagonal pyramid/GA1 again

Sorry. I might need another reviewer in Talk:Pentagonal pyramid/GA1, and there has been no active discussion for over a month. That said, I might declare a second opinion or request a delete and restart the discussion review. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:53, 28 November 2024 (UTC)

Is it worth starting a reassessment for a page that only fails one of the criteria?

This revision of common cold was promoted in 2011. Since then, the article has been improved quite considerably, except in one respect: there are citations in the lead, all of which appears to be redundant with body citations, thus failing criterion 1b. All other criterions appear to be met. Is a GAR worth it? Mach61 07:29, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

If the only thing to be done is remove citations from the lead, per Wikipedia:CITELEAD, just be Wikipedia:BOLD and remove those citations. No need for a GAR. SSSB (talk) 07:34, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
MOS:LEADCITE (which is what I assume you are referring to) states "the presence of citations in the lead is neither required in every article nor prohibited in any article". It absolutely does not forbid redundant citations in the lead. This is not a problem for GA and not a reason to initiate a GAR. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:37, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
(edit conflict)That's not even something to be done. An article can have citations in the lead duplicating those in the body. It just doesn't have to. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 07:40, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
I could have sworn the text in that section was much more negative towards redundant citations; chalk that up to faulty memory. Clearly the answer is "no" for starting a GAR. Mach61 07:43, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
I took too long reading, and the issue is now resolved, but for anyone interested, the editor/physician who originally nominated the article redid the lead in 2016: http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Common_cold&diff=725185876&oldid=700051319 It seems to be more accurate (including sinuses, noting pneumonia) and more generalized in the language (removing "via conjunctivitis"). It's good to see articles continue to improve after getting stamped. In addition to what others note above (no rule against citations in the lead), I'll also add that the advice in MOS:LEADCITE about "complex, current, or controversial subjects" seems to recommend the citations in the third paragraph (the one about treatment); people have a plethora of folk remedies for the cold. At various points, editors have added {{citation needed}} tags to the lead,[4][5] so it makes sense to replace those tags with citations. Rjjiii (talk) 16:38, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

Split 2000 to 2004 song category

At Wikipedia:Good articles/Music I have split "2000 to 2004 songs" into "2000 to 2002 songs" (130 articles) and "2003 to 2004 songs" (96 articles). This allows each category to be smaller and articles easier to find on the list. I hope others will take a look to ensure that articles are put in the correct category. Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 19:54, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

I don't see why "From the Bottom of My Broken Heart" is classified as a 2000 song rather than a 1999 song, but it's been there since the subpage was created in 2012. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:07, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
"Thank God I Found You" is the same way. jlwoodwa (talk) 20:14, 26 November 2024 (UTC)
I would recommend just BOLDly moving them, it's probably just an error that nobody noticed. QuicoleJR (talk) 18:37, 27 November 2024 (UTC)
As I was splitting the section, I noticed other similarly misclassified songs (one was released in 2014 that I had to move!). If mistakes are found, please feel free to fix them. Z1720 (talk) 17:46, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

How should a reviewer evaluate notability?

Prhartcom, how should a reviewer "ensure" that an article meets WP:N?[6] Past discussions have not found consensus to add notability to the criteria.[7][8] The potential for a GAN to evaluate or affect notability has also come up as an issue at ANI.[9] Also, I don't see how "Wikipedia's policies and guidelines applicable to ALL articles"[10] is relevant for the instructions; every page of the Manual of Style is a guideline, but a GA review only addresses certain parts. Rjjiii (talk) 17:39, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

GANs are completely unrelated to notability. If you think something is non-notable, start an AFD like you would for any other article. Don't decline the GAN on notability grounds, because notability is not part of the criteria. QuicoleJR (talk) 17:55, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
All articles, not just GA, must meet Wikipedia policies and guidelines. Articles that meet the P&G may not meet the higher standard of GA. The GA review process formerly checks the P&G first and then the GA criteria. Prhartcom (talk) 18:21, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
There is a seperate forum and process for determining notability: WP:AfD. I don't see why there needs to be an overlap. To answer the initially query in this thread: the reviewer can determine if notability is met by examing if the sources cited show significant coverage. SSSB (talk) 19:03, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

What can I do to speed up the nomination process?

I recently nominated the Tupolev Tu-22M as a good article but no one has reviewed it. Is there anything that i can do to speed up the process? Thehistorianisaac (talk) 11:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Usually articles take a few weeks to a few months to be picked up. Reviewing is a volunteer process. In general, the way to speed things up is to review other articles so that yours is more prominent, but obviously that's a very indirect and very diluted effect. There are review circles (see the navigation tabs above), which you could look into, although note that that is up to the discretion of the coordinator. CMD (talk) 12:14, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you Thehistorianisaac (talk) 12:38, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

FAQ updates

Prhartcom, I appreciate your copyediting of the Wikipedia:Good article frequently asked questions overall, but I think you should put back the links. Unlike an article, in which we pretend (in the face of evidence to the contrary) that readers will start at the top and proceed to the bottom in a linear fashion, and therefore they need to have a link only once, in a FAQ, we expect people to normally skip to the one or two relevant questions, and to need the relevant link directly in that question. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:20, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

I see what you mean. I will put some back. Thanks for the comment. Prhartcom (talk) 01:18, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Color scheme

I'm not usually too fussed about appearances, but I noticed today that Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Tab header is a different green than the green in the GA icon. There are a couple of editors who seem to like designing things. Should we ask one of them to update the color scheme for us? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:23, 30 November 2024 (UTC)

The GA icon fill hex is #DED, a very pale colour. The tab fill hex is #90EE90. Same colour, higher saturation.
The link text is #0645AD. Accessibility checkers like WebAIM prefer #DED because it has a contrast over 7:1, whereas the current #90EE90 is 6.01:1 failing WCAG AAA. Help:Link color identifies that the Vector 2022 skin uses #3366CC for link colour. It is a pain to find a colour that contrasts sufficiently with #3366CC to pass WCAG AA, and none will pass WCAG AAA (neither #000 nor #FFF do). To pass WCAG AA whilst retaining the same green it needs to be at least #E4EEE4. That is nearly grey. Alternatively, if the link text can be changed to a higher weight (i.e. bold), then that solves the accessibility issue for any of the colours at WCAG AA and for #E4EEE4 at WCAG AAA.
The borders are different colours. #006622 for the GA icon border and #107020 for the GA tab border. There shouldn't be an accessibility issue here though. Mr rnddude (talk) 00:05, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
@Mr rnddude, does this mean that a lighter fill color is worse contrast with the links? I would have thought that a substantially lighter fill color would make it easier to see the links. (After all, the links would be easier to read on a white background.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Here's a quick little comparison:

Comparison
Old Icon
WP:GA Other WT:GAN WP:GA Other WT:GAN

Is that second one actually worse? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:37, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Lighter
#E4EEE4

Icon fill
#DED

No, the lighter fill is better. But, with the Vector 2022 skin, neither colour contrasts enough to meet WCAG AA. Though, #DED is close (4.43:1), the minimum would be #E4EEE4 (4.51:1). If the link text can be made bold, then #DED is just fine. Mr rnddude (talk) 01:03, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Bold text takes up more width, which is worse for people on narrow screens or with large font sizes. The two colors you mention look pretty similar, and the lighter one is obviously closer to the icon than what we've got:
Shall we swap in that lighter color? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:38, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Sure, the lighter colour works for me. Mr rnddude (talk) 21:23, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
+1 for enforcing accessibility requirements. Thanks, Mr rnddude! —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
I have made the change as discussed. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:24, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Is it possible to have a greener colour that still meets accessibility requirements? Sorry if this was addressed above, it could be double Dutch for all I understand of it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:02, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
That probably depends on whether you're willing to change the color of the links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:48, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

'Greenest' colour
#ABFFAB

Saturated #DED match
#DFD

Nearest #DED match
#DDF1DD

I'm no master of colour – as this comment will demonstrate – but I've gone and 'shopped around' on a colour palette for 'greener' colours that still meet WCAG AA accessibility. To get #E4EEE4 I had increased red (R) and blue (B) values, whilst retaining the same green (G) value (RGB). I hadn't initially applied the reverse solution – I assumed this would make it worse – but this alternate approach finds #DDF1DD as the nearest match for #DED with a 4.52:1 contrast for #36C links. Raising G to its limit gives #DFD also improving contrast to 4.96:1. Finally, keeping G at 255, and reducing R&B till I hit the WCAG AA threshold gives #ABFFAB at 4.5:1 exactly for the 'greenest' colour.
I think #DDF1DD is a touch closer to the icon fill than #E4EEE4. #DFD is a slightly more saturated, brighter version of that and also has the highest accessibility score. #ABFFAB is the nearest match to #90EE90 (the original colour), but carries the original problem of being too distinct from the GA icon fill. Every colour discussed in this thread has the same hue. Mr rnddude (talk) 02:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
One more brief comment: if #DDF1DD isn't 'green' enough and/or #ABFFAB is too 'green' or too 'bright', there may be a happy medium that I can find between them. Mr rnddude (talk) 02:48, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I don't feel like the "greenest" color is a good match for the icon colors, but whatever other people prefer will be fine with me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:34, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Crusading_movement/GA4

This review Talk:Crusading_movement/GA4 by Borsoka would appear to be in bad faith.

Firstly this editor would appear to be WP:INVOLVED as any review to the history and talk would indicate. Secondly, as a regular visitor to the GA review page page they would be aware that this article was listed for review since July and appear to have waited 3 months for it to get to the head of the queue before failing. Thirdly, the taking of an option to quick fail rather a proper view indicates an unwillingness to give any chance to improve the article. Lastly, the rationale for failing is largely spurious. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 17:15, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

Borsoka Norfolkbigfish (talk) 17:15, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
More unkind pushing, as apparently evidenced in the GA reassessment? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 17:18, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Hey @2601AC47, excuse me but I am unclear by what you mean by this? Can you elaborate please? Norfolkbigfish (talk) 17:46, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
This. And still not resolved after 6 months, was it? I'd next try dispute resolution, but frankly, this is beyond petty, and one you two know a whole lot better about. 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 18:04, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
@Norfolkbigfish: I have several times reminded you during the last 4 or 5 years that close paraphrasing and copyright violations are very serious issues and "should be treated seriously, as copyright violations not only harm Wikipedia's redistributability, but also create legal issues." Please also read Wikipedia:GAFAIL. Borsoka (talk) 20:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
That's frustrating enough. You did check every reference for copyright violations with the Copyvio Detector, correct? And how many violations have you found? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 20:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
No, I do not use Copyvio Detector. I compared texts with the cited sources. Two of the copyvios are mentioned in the review and I think there are at least two more cases although I did not review the full article:
  • In theological terms, the movement merged ideas of Old Testament wars, that were believed to have been instigated and assisted by God, with New Testament ideas of forming personal relationships with Christ.
  • "In theological terms, crusading was couched in both Old and New Testament thought. Whereas crusades were presented as parallels to the wars fought by the people of Israel in the Old Testament with the help and on the instigation of God, the spirituality of the indiviual crusader was based on New Testament theology and seen in Christocentric terms as forming a personal relationship with Christ." (Maier, Christoph T. (2006), "Ideology", in Murray, Alan V. (ed.), D–J, The Crusades: An Encyclopedia, vol. II, ABC-CLIO, pp. 627–631 (on p. 627), ISBN 978-1-57607-862-4)
  • One of the objectives of the Crusades was to free the Holy Sepulchre from Muslim control.
  • ".... the pope preached them [those who were present at Clermont] a sermon in which he called on Frankish knights to vow to march to the East with the twin aims of freeing Christians from the yoke of Islamic rule and liberating the tomb of Christ, the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, from Muslim control." (Riley-Smith, Jonathan (2002) [1999], "The Crusading Movement and Historians", in Riley-Smith, Jonathan (ed.), The Oxford History of the Crusades, Oxford University Press, pp. 1–14 (on page 1), ISBN 978-0-1928-0312-2
  • The Latin settlements did not easily fit to the model of a colony.
  • The movement enabled the papacy to consolidate its leadership of the Latin church.

Borsoka (talk) 20:56, 1 December 2024 (UTC)

A few thoughts here. Firstly, given Borsoka's previous involvement with this article (not only did they initiate the Good Article Reassessment this year, but they are the second biggest contributor by both edit count and authorship), and given their previous disputes with the nominator (both Borsoka and Norfolkbigfish have started ANI discussions about the other's behaviour on this article this year [11], [12], [13]), their taking on this review seems to be an obviously Bad Idea which was clearly going to provoke drama. Secondly, when the GAR was closed in May, the closing statement said in part that the article may be renominated for GA status when involved editors are in agreement all copyvio has been removed. Clearly all involved editors are not in agreement that all the copyvio issues have been addressed, and Norfolkbigfish would have been wise to check in with Borsoka before nominating. (Thirdly, I see above mention of Earwig's Copyvio Detector: this is exactly the kind of article which automated copyvio detecting tools are not good at dealing with. See my essay WP:NOTEARWIG for further discussion). Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:36, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Perhaps we could ask someone else to review the copyvio concerns. A third opinion can be useful, especially when editors have very different personal ideas about where something falls on the plagiarism-to-unverifiable spectrum. Diannaa is awesome with this sort of thing, but may be busy at the moment. Perhaps Wikipedia:Copyright problems is the right place to request help? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:42, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't have time to help with this, or even to read this discussion. Diannaa (talk) 04:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Borsoka is a significant contributor to the article, and as such has breached WP:GAN/I#R2—the review is void. I suggest that they request G7 speedy deletion of the review and so return it to the GAN queue. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:44, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Some of these I could see as issues but others there are only so many ways one can say the same thing without distorting what the source is saying. It's not like "free from muslim control" is creative phrasing, and it's not even that direct here. How is that one an issue and not an acceptable paraphrase of the source? PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:35, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
Further the supposed GA3 concern is more of an FA issue than a GA issue. This is certainly broad enough for GA, which does not require FA level comprehensiveness, just all the major aspects. PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:43, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
  • I am not a contributor to the article that was created by a split from Crusades. No text in the article was written by myself. Taking into account the nominator's problematic approach to copyvio I would be careful. Borsoka (talk) 23:41, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
    You haven't added any actual text but you have edited it 94 times and engaged repeatedly in verification / checking citations which I would count as a "significant contribution". PARAKANYAA (talk) 23:46, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
  • The article was created through a split on 4 October 2020, but xtools.wmcloud.org/pageinfo/ counts edits from 17 December 2003. Yes, I used to be a major contributor to Crusades, but this article does not contain text from me. If a review is a significant contribution how could we participate in the peer reviews, GANs and FACs of the same articles? Borsoka (talk) 23:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC)
    It counts since 2003 because it was a redirect to the Crusades article, from which there are six more or less meaningless maintenance edits prior to the split. Those are a drop in the bucket, and by edit count you are the most second most significant editor from 2022 to 2024. Peer reviews can be done by involved editors, but since GANs are done by one person it is slightly different. If you had commented on the GAN or the talk page of the article expressing your concerns that the issues hadn't been fixed after the nomination was started that would have been another thing.
    Some of the issues raised here are fair, but with others I don't understand how one could reasonably be expected to rewrite them to be less close without distorting the facts. Basic facts are not CLOP, only extended or creative phrasing. If the source says [thing] happened in 1995 in France that is a basic fact, and In France in 1995 [blank] happened is little different. Some are more FA-level issues. I think the article may have some remaining structural issues from having been based so heavily on encyclopedia articles for a broad topic, even though those have since been removed. PARAKANYAA (talk) 00:06, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • I am sure I did not add text to this article. Just a question: Norfolkbigfish took me to ANI twice after I opposed their nominations and this fact is raised as an obstacle of my review. Do we really want to urge editors who want to get rid of reviewers to take them to ANI? Borsoka (talk) 23:57, 1 December 2024 (UTC) Borsoka (talk) 00:11, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    I feel that when an editor takes strong issue to a particular article at review, it's best for a third party to do any follow-up reviews so as to look at it with a fresh perspective. The same editor reviewing the same article multiple times doesn't do anything for the process, and no one person should be the arbiter of whether an article meets GA or FA criteria. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 00:55, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Did the article contain more than one cases of close paraphrasing or copyvio, or not? If yes, WP:GAFAIL2 was to be applied. I again emphasise that the nominator has been reminded copyvio by multiple editors for years. Please remember that I initiated the GAR process, not decided it. The nominator's blatant plagiarism was the main reason of the article's delisting. Borsoka (talk) 01:38, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
After I raised the issue, Norfolkbigfish completed the task, at least they think so. Borsoka (talk) 00:15, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • It is worth remembering the principle that GAN is generally an individual process, and so while reviews should follow community principles, GANs remain a two-way discussion are not the same as review processes involving more of the community, or a substitute for content development and dispute processes.
    This article has gone through two community review processes already this year, the FAC and the GAR, which saw wider (albeit overlapping) involvement. No GAN is going to produce equivalent scrutiny for copyvio, an item raised in the FAC and GAR, and again in later talkpage discussions (although these discussions were very limited in length). GAN is not equipped to handle this issue, which should be discussed in the talkpage or other dispute resolution forums.
    As Caeciliusinhorto says, per the GAR, while perhaps not strictly necessary Norfolkbigfish likely should have followed up with other participants of the community processes. At the same time, Norfolkbigfish has clearly tried to raise further discussion on the talkpage following the community discussions, and received little participation. Again, while it is not strictly necessary to participate in talkpage discussions, it is suboptimal to not participate in such discussions and yet jump onto the later open GAN with issues that could have been mentioned in the talkpage.
    For the non-copyvio issues raised, Borsoka's interpretations of 3a and 3b seem more FA-level than GA-level. Others should, like the copyvio, would be best addressed through a talkpage discussion or other process before a GAN. CMD (talk) 01:32, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Outsider view: Boroska is weakening the case for a quickfail rather than strengthening it with some of these criticisms. The kind of grammar failures that cause a quickfail are much more severe than the stuff nitpicked - when to hyphenate 16th century is an unimportant quibble, capable of being handled in a review with "please check for conformance to MOS:HYPHEN, I've fixed a sample one for you here" or the like. And frankly this kind of minor error is fine even in a passed GA. Similarly, while I actually agree with Boroska that some of these details look cuttable and I would probably not include them myself, I've seen reviewers ask in good faith for precisely this kind of extra detail to be added involving which historian says this, etc. It's not an open-and-shut case, but rather one where there clearly exists conflicting opinions. Perhaps the article should still be quickfailed on the content grounds, but the prose / grammar points picked don't give cause for confidence that a quickfail is merited here. SnowFire (talk) 01:41, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    • GACR1b does not include the main MOS page, of which MOS:HYPHEN is one part, so the page doesn't have to comply with it – except to the extent that punctuation could be considered inconsistent with the article being well-written and using correct grammar. My own rule of thumb is to fix simple problems (e.g., improper hyphenation) that are faster to fix than to explain, but for those larger problems, I like your approach of "I've fixed a sample one for you here". WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • What about WP:GAFAIL2? After four years of repeated suggestions, without a full review more than one cases of blatant plagiarism were detected. Borsoka (talk) 01:51, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • The nominator's blatant plagiarism was raised by myself during FAC and GAR procedure, and my concerns were accepted by other reviewers as well. I think instead of proposing the nominator to initiate a new GAN for this article, we should urge them to clean from plagiarism other articles that they heavily edited (I refer specifically to the Angevin kings of England, House of Plantagenet, and House of Lancaster). Unfortunatelly, "Norfolkbigfish's" so called FAs and GAs are a ticking bombs from this perspective. Borsoka (talk) 01:49, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    Some shared proper nouns and common turns of phrase does not equate to plagarism. I admittedly don't have all the context here, but this just reads more like a personal dispute with Norfolkbigfish rather than an issue of article quality. "Blatant plagarism", "so-called FAs and GAs"? Come on, you are both talented editors, and this is clearly wasting time that both you and Norfolk could be using to improve articles that need it. Borsoka, I would suggest that you just let these articles be at this point; no matter the intention, embarking on a crusade of your own against them isn't an effective way to alleviate copyright concerns. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    No, I have to disagree with this take. They were merely so-called GAs and FAs, as they were each shown to clearly not meet their respective criteria, in large part due to the massive plagiarism used to write them. If I can credit Norfolkbigfish with learning their lesson, they've been dragging their heels in doing so. There's one editor really holding up the betterment of this article, and it's not Borsoka. Remsense ‥ 论 02:28, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • If there is still "blatant plagiarism" and you can prove it, then quickfail it on those grounds and don't mention the others. The hyphenation of 16th century is not a quickfail criteria nor alarming to see in an article - it doesn't impede understanding at all (the intended sense is almost always obvious) and it's something easy for people to get wrong who know the rule. Same with stuff like in-text citing which historian believes a particular point - that's cause for a gentle optional suggestion during a full review, perhaps, not a quickfail. I hestitate to cite TVTropes, but see Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking - citing jaywalking causes me to think that this must mean your confidence in the murder accusation must not be very strong. SnowFire (talk) 02:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    These are actionable points that should be improved regardless, no? Perhaps you could say they should've been appended below instead of listed as failures of the criteria, but I think if they were just ignored entirely that would create a potential argument that Borsoka was being intentionally narrow minded in their review. Remsense ‥ 论 02:41, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    It's a point for improvement but Borsoka marked the article as failing that specific criteria over a hyphen. Not just noting it, but marking it as having entirely failed that aspect of the GAC, over a hyphen. That is a problem. PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:47, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • @Borsoka: Allow me to be very blunt since apparently the point is not getting across: even if every single hyphen was incorrect, that would still not be cause for a GA quickfail. It might not even be bad enough to fail a full review even if unfixed. It is an exceptionally minor point where if you really felt strongly about it, then WP:SOFIXIT and just change it yourself rather than discuss it. If you are failing other nominations elsewhere because of hyphenation issues, then you need to stop doing that, because you are imposing a criteria way higher than what GA is seen as elsewhere. (And if you're about to say that you didn't quickfail it because of the hyphen, you did it because of the alleged plagiarism... then see my earlier comment! Then don't mention this at all then!) Same with your other prose concerns, by and large. SnowFire (talk) 03:02, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
    @SnowFire, while we're being blunt, they specifically said typo issues were in no way limited to hyphenation. It is not productive to pretend that that is what they're saying. Remsense ‥ 论 03:04, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • Yes, usually I fix typos myself during GA reviews and I have completed dozens of them. However, if three relatively short sections of an article contain nearly a dozen of typos, it is a clear indication that the article does not meet GA1a either (in addition to further criteria). Borsoka (talk) 03:13, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • @Remsense: The above comment still applies! I've looked at the article, and the alleged typos are nowhere near bad enough for there to be a quickfail here. If you think they are, then you're imposing too high a standard too. GAN isn't supposed to be all hugs, but it's not some sort of hazing test either.
  • Look, here's a case that has come up before: a well-meaning and scholarly editor for whom English is a second language nominates an article. It is very well sourced, but the English is awkward and the prose isn't sterling quality. Even in these cases, this is generally cause for a reviewer who helps point out issues and does a full review, hopeful of encouraging more high-quality content (even if the English is stilted). But at least there, I'd understand a quickfail, especially if the English is truly problematic enough. There's a balance to be struck between being inviting but potentially taxing on the reviewer's time for pointing out issues, and saying "nah you gotta get it better first." The Crusading Movement article is nowhere near that category of merely being borderline on English. GA criteria is not about typos, not even multiple typos. (And as a side note, I've had articles I've quadruple-checked for typos still have a reviewer find a stray typo or two. It's cause for a quick edit or a gentle comment at reviewtime. That's it.) SnowFire (talk) 03:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • @Borsoka: If you don't do this elsewhere then good, but you shouldn't have done it on this article either. The alleged typo problems were not evidence of a quick fail being merited. While too low standards are the more obvious problem, too high standards are still a problem. I'm not even sold your last complaint in that paragraph is even a problem - calling it a "a positive" reads perfectly fine to me. It's nitpicking where you'd rather phrase it how you'd write it rather than how Norfolk would write it, and this applies to some of your other complaints in your quickfail as well. But this is a collaborative project, which means it won't always be written as any one editor prefers. Look, I have no idea whether Norfolk's claims of you being unfairly on their case are correct, but this kind of hard-pressing over petty stuff is helping his case, not yours. SnowFire (talk) 03:24, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • We do not agree on this specific issue: dozens of typos are clear indication of poor editing skills. For instance, I am not a native English speaker, so I always seek assistance at the Guild of copyeditors before nominating an article to save time for reviewers. Norfolkbigfish should also seek assistance to improve their articles before nominating them. Borsoka (talk) 03:33, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Easily: "who also ruled the County of Anjou in France". Please remember, I only compared the first two sections with the cited works and I soon found two cases of blatant plagiarism (yes, blatant). Borsoka (talk) 02:39, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
I would say that is less desirable given that that it flows better as a description of their title, both king and count. "count of Anjou" is a straightforward job description - even if one thought the other was more clear, saying that someone is the count of [blank] is plagiarism? Really? PARAKANYAA (talk) 02:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Johnbod, if you think I am driven by a vendetta please take me to ANI. I am not surprised that you assume bad faith about other editors: you were a co-nominator to the FA version of Middle Ages that I reviewed, finding several cases of unverified claims and marginal PoVs and you did everything to prevent me from reviewing the article (I refer to this and this huge archives). Interestingly, you did not mention the same concern in connection with Norfolkbigfish during the FAR, although you knew that they had taken me to ANI twice for detecting plagiarism during the FAC and GAR of Crusading movement. Borsoka (talk) 02:49, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
To assume bad faith is to assume that you are deliberately and intentionally trying to hurt Wikipedia. AGF is perfectly compatible with seeing an opportunity to help Wikipedia while simultaneously trying to hurt someone else – say, an editor whose contributions someone believes are net harmful, and that Wikipedia would be better off if they could be run off or blocked.
To assume good faith is to assume the editor is trying to help Wikipedia, including those cases in which their efforts are so inept or misguided that they cause enormous problems.
I think the message to you, from this thread, is: If someone nominates an article, and you have any reason to believe that their response to your review could sound like "Borsoka hates me and is seeking revenge!" – even if the nom is 100% completely, provably wrong – then you, personally, should not be the person to fail the article. Let someone else fail it. We might then get a complaint about how the other reviewer did everything wrong, but we can handle that much more quickly and easily than a complaint based on the perception (again: rightly or wrongly) that you are attacking the nom instead of the article. I advise you to stay away from noms with whom you remember (or ought to remember) being involved in any significant disputes. There are enough GA noms out there that you can surely find some to review that don't risk people claiming that you're personally antagonizing them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:51, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
OK, if I want to get rid of a reviewer, I should take them to ANI. This is what you are suggesting. Or if I was taken to ANI, I must follow the rules of IBAN or TBAN voluntarily? Nice new world. Borsoka (talk) 04:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Please take also into account that I was taken to ANI by Norfolkbigfish because I detected dozens of cases of plagiarism. Do you really want to suggest that those who detect cases of plagiarism are to be taken to ANI to prevent them from reviewing the article? Borsoka (talk) 04:05, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes. Yes, that is exactly what is being said above. In the unlikely situation of someone is weaponizing disputes to get favored reviewers, then get them banned at ANI. But given the obvious bad blood here between you two, if a failure needs to come down, it is better if it comes from an unimpeachable, uninvolved source. SnowFire (talk) 04:14, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
OK. So because Norfolkbigfish has taken me to ANI several times for my reviews detecting their plagiarism, and original research, I am the one who should stay aside? Are you sure this is the best approach to improve WP? Borsoka (talk) 04:21, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
To say so again: yes. That's what you've been told several times now. This isn't a principle made up just for you, it's used elsewhere in real-life all the time. You aren't an unbiased source even if you were 100% right about everything in your previous disputes and even if your final conclusion matches up with what a fresh set of eyes would say. Let the fresh set of eyes handle it. SnowFire (talk) 04:34, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
This would set a dangerous precedent: if I took you to ANI stating that you are jeopardising our community's interest by protecting an editor with well documented disruptive history, you could not criticise my acts in the future? I think a TBAN for Norfolkbigfish is the only logical solution. They have been almost exclusively editing this article for years but they have been unable to improve it significantly because cases of plagiarism and original research could still be detected. Norfolkbigfish could concentrate on "his" other articles, because I did not need more than half an hour to find new cases of plagiarism and unverified claims in one of them, so they quite probably still represent a serious legal risk to our community. I do not want to edit the Crusading article and the Crusades article for at least two years which is a voluntary TBAN. Borsoka (talk) 04:43, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
you could not criticise my acts in the future Editors here have suggested you voice these concerns on a review for this article, just not on one that you wield the big stick for. Could you outline what would be lost from pursuing such an approach? Rollinginhisgrave (talk) 04:50, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
OK. I understand. What about my suggestion? Borsoka (talk) 04:56, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
If your suggestion is that you pursue sanctions such as a TBAN, then my suggestion is that you stop being aggressive.
In the meantime, if you'd like to find some editors who are very experienced with what you call "a serious legal risk to our community", then please list the article at the Wikipedia:Copyright problems noticeboard. There are instructions on that page for how to list an article and a list of actions that they would consider helpful.
If you do this with a sincere resolution to accept their judgement, even if it doesn't match yours (it's obvious to me, anyway, that you aren't a licensed attorney with a specialty in copyright law), then we'll likely get this cleaned up to the extent that is actually required. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:23, 2 December 2024 (UTC)
  • (de-indent) Borsoka, if we got into a huge dispute, then of course we could criticize each other's activities, but no, I probably wouldn't review your GA noms, and you shouldn't review mine. Again, this is not some rule we made up just for you. It's extremely common and the fact you haven't run into this norm before is strange, but rest assured, this is not new. I recommend accepting this information cheerfully as one of today's lucky 10,000, but people who have beefs shouldn't also rule on those beefs. It's the exact same reason that someone closing a consensus discussion (like an AFD, a RM, etc.) ideally shouldn't be someone known to have feuded with the nominator. Or why a police officer probably doesn't arrest their ex-wife during a dispute unless there's truly no other choice. SnowFire (talk) 05:31, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Challenging article for GA removal

The article in question for me is Rocket League. I'm sure that the article met the standards for a GA nomination in the past, but it needs work now. Some of the tenses seem off, and little to no information about anything that was added or changed about the game this year has been mentioned. I added a template about this in late November too to no avail.

I'm not sure if this is the right place to inquire about this type of response so I'm truly sorry if it's not. Thanks! Therguy10 (talk) 16:24, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Therguy10, feel free to nominate any article at WP:GAR if you feel they don't meet the GA criteria. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:02, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

Kevin L. McCrudden

There have been several attempts for this name / person that have been rejected or blocked for some reason. I am Kevin L. McCrudden. I have been approached by people that want me to pay them for a Wiki page, which I know is not acceptable, but I do not know why the other attempts have been blocked? 75.167.101.4 (talk) 17:01, 29 November 2024 (UTC)

Hi IP, this isn't the right place to ask, but in the meantime Wikipedia:Notability may prove a helpful page. CMD (talk) 08:01, 30 November 2024 (UTC)
Thank You. Happy Holidays. 2600:4808:10D6:1E01:9C4D:E1C0:D118:6463 (talk) 17:34, 6 December 2024 (UTC)

Assistance with finishing a GA review

Hi. I finished the GA review of Kiddush levana. My initial edit for the review is at Talk:Kidduah levana/GA1

It seems that I did not follow the correct steps, e.g., the fail notice did not appear on the nominator's talk page. If somebody has a chance to glance over my edits, I'd like to learn from my mistakes. ProfGray (talk) 20:20, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

The fail notice appeared on the user's talk page at 20:24. It might that the fail was missed by the previous sweep of the bot? SSSB (talk) 20:41, 10 December 2024 (UTC)

A graph for the backlog report

So, I was checking the backlog report, and I was wondering if we could depict it in a graph (like the graph at the NPP talk page), as the changes are harder to visualize with just numbers. Also, maybe another line could be added in the same graph which visualises the number of noms>90 days, because there should be an emphasis on reducing wait times between nom and review too? Also, the January backlog drive might be a good opportunity to visualise just how much effect the drives have. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:06, 14 December 2024 (UTC)

DoctorWhoFan91, we used to include graphs, but the Wikipedia-wide graphing software has been out of commission for years now, and no estimated time for it to be rewritten and made available. Here at GAN, we dropped the graphs from Progress since it just showed an error; I'm guessing that graphs like the one you linked to at NPP are created off-wiki, turned into an image, and uploaded for inclusion. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:02, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Ohh, thanks for let me know. Yeah, I just checked, a bot updates that graph every week at NPP by uploading a new one. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 06:22, 15 December 2024 (UTC)

Question for independence of source from subject

This is for Saint Peter's Church. For [1], it cites the The Catholic Spirit, which appears to be owned by the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Paul and Minneapolis, who also 'owns' (administer?) Saint Peter's Church. Is it considered unreliable? Is it not independent from the subject? Also do note that this is my first time doing a GA review, so maybe add that to the nominations page Imbluey2. Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 02:57, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Hi Imbluey2, it may not be independent from the subject but that does not necessarily make it unreliable. It is used to cite two points, 1) the date and person involved in the origin of the parish, and 2) current uses. These are not items I would be overwary of using a non-independent source for. CMD (talk) 04:19, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks! Imbluey2. Please ping me so that I get notified of your response 07:23, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Good article mentorship

Just a heads up that there are three pending requests at Wikipedia:Good article mentorship. There are also three that were recently archived without a response at Wikipedia:Good article mentorship/Archive 1 which should really get looked at since the new reviewers went in on their own without guidance. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:54, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: Thanks for bringing these up! I responded to two of the archived reviews: one I thought did a good review and had valid reasons for failing the article; the other I had to provide a lot of notes for, as the review was too short and lacking in any detail to be sufficient (this one really should have gotten an earlier response). The other archived one I held off on, as I notice the review already had a second opinion provided, which I think served as de facto mentorship. --Grnrchst (talk) 10:29, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

The next GAN backlog drive

Is scheduled for the coming January. As in, two-and-a-half weeks from now. I'm happy to pitch in as a co-co-ordinator, but I'm pretty swamped right now and would strongly prefer not to be Responsible for it - anyone want to pitch in? -- asilvering (talk) 19:52, 12 December 2024 (UTC)

@Asilvering My availability for mid January is limited due to finals but I’m able to pitch in during the second half and early days of January if the offer still stands. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 20:33, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
@IntentionallyDense please do! It's the before-January stuff that is most important - setting up the drive, putting out notices, etc. -- asilvering (talk) 21:18, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
I should be able to help out with that aspect as well. Let me know what you need help with and when. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 23:54, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
The answer to that is "all of it" and "whenever you think it's appropriate"! I don't plan on having much to do with it if I don't have to. -- asilvering (talk) 00:53, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
I would like to help- the previous drive had made me realise I really like seeing more and more GANs reviewed. I think I would be available enough from now throughout January, so time shouldn't really be a problem for me. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 22:26, 12 December 2024 (UTC)
Thank you! Both of you, see Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/March 2024 for the most recent similar drive (every article counts, every reviewer equal, bonus points for reviewing older articles). You may want to dig back through the archives of this talk page to see if there are any suggestions you can pick up from March of this year, when we had that big discussion about how we might do backlog drives differently. I've substituted the old way of giving bonus points for word count with the method we used in the last drive, which I think worked really well, but if you hate that or anything else, change it! -- asilvering (talk) 00:36, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
I have added an emphasis on older articles as it was proposal 6 in that discussion, by adding a progress table for it in the progress section (which is commented out for the time being). @IntentionallyDense: feel free to message me here or on my talk page (or WP:Discord) for co-ordination reasons anytime. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 08:39, 13 December 2024 (UTC)
DoctorWhoFan91, I hope you don't mind, but I've set up the Progress section as it has been for past all-nomination drives (with emphasis on old ones). The GAN changes template isn't going to work properly with only a single "Old nominations" column; it's built for two columns, though the "changes from yesterday" and "changes from start" columns only work against a one of those first two columns. It's important that people know the total outstanding nominations. If you do want, in addition to that, the number of unreviewed old nominations rather than the number of unreviewed nominations regardless of age, that isn't available from the stats at the top of the GAN Report page, and has to be counted each day at midnight by some other methodology. (It's easier to backtime the Report page to midnight UTC by checking the history of the GAN page itself; you don't have to be there at midnight. I expect tracking the old noms will be more labor intensive.) In addition to the progress table, last March I also took care of the old noms table, but it looks like you have that under control. If you'd like to be the one in charge of all this, just say the word and I'll step back. BlueMoonset (talk) 05:55, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Well, I can probably calculate the total change in old nominations by checking the changes in the table for old qualifying articles, or by checking this page- might be a bit harder, but very manageable. Thanks for telling me all this- I, and the other co-ord, can do it, but you can help if you find any other change that we should make. (Unless you would like to be a co-ord this time around too?) DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 06:31, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
I'd suggest that you avoid giving yourself extra work that has to be done manually. Don't give yourself extra work until you have some experience with what normal levels of work looks like! Speaking of, @Ganesha811, @Vacant0, any interest in helping co-ord this January? -- asilvering (talk) 15:56, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
It's fine- just need to check the number that remain unopened, and add the ones that have been opened but not finished, which should be 7-8 articles at the peak of the backlog, so just 8 small clicks. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:03, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Sure, I'm happy to help again! —Ganesha811 (talk) 17:03, 15 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks @Ganesha811! (go add your name!) -- asilvering (talk) 16:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
@Ganesha811 is there a way to add a "There is going to be GAN backlog drive in January, sign up here" (or something like that) header to the WP:GAN or WP:GA page? DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 10:19, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
There is, I can take care of that. In a little bit (maybe starting the 26th?) we can also put up a watchlist notice. Do you want to make the request for that at MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages? —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:28, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Yeah, I was thinking of that too, though starting on the 28th, as it only runs for one week, and people might edit, and notice, less between Christmas and the New Year. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 13:34, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Sounds good. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:48, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
I've been very inactive for some time already and I'm unsure whether I'd be able to help with coordinating the next GAN Backlog Drive. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 14:14, 17 December 2024 (UTC)
No worries. Thanks so much for all your help with the previous ones! -- asilvering (talk) 16:49, 17 December 2024 (UTC)

Old nomination

I nominated Atlanta Braves in February and now it's the oldest nominee that hasn't been reviewed. I realize it's a pretty big article. Does anyone want to split up the review to make it easier to digest? When I started this process I didn't realize it would take so long. Nemov (talk) 18:46, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

I am planning to start it on Sunday. The only reason I'm starting it on Sunday and not now (or 4 weeks ago) is that I don't have time to start until Sunday and it seemed unfair for me to "start" a review and not actually start it for a few weeks when someone might pick have picked it up in the interim. SSSB (talk) 19:22, 18 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks so much! Nemov (talk) 19:27, 18 December 2024 (UTC)

New editor incorrectly starting GANRs

Velthorian has opened three GAN reviews in the past 24 hours, and passed and failed one each without any actual review. Can those articles be put back in the queue (especially bcs the upcoming GAN backlog drive encourages the review of older GANs more), and someone help them understand the instructions on how to review properly. I have asked them before on one of the review page and Remsense has also msged them on their talk page. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 13:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Given discussion has already been opened, I have reset Talk:UNICEF club/GA1. Of course, if Velthorian reopens that GAN it can be taken out of the queue again. Talk:Darren Moore/GA1 has already been reset. Talk:Chennai Super Kings/GA4 has not started, so let's see, it can be G7ed. CMD (talk) 14:17, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@DoctorWhoFan91 @Chipmunkdavis, Thank you for bringing this up! My nomination for UNICEF has been active since March 2024, and has been in the "oldest unreviewed good article nominations" box for a number of weeks now. Is there any way that this article could not go through the whole queue again? I understand if that's not possible, its just really unfortunate because of how long the nom had waited. Cheers! Johnson524 14:48, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
It has been reinserted in its old position in the "queue" (in effect, it never left the queue) SSSB (talk) 14:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@SSSB Thank You! 🙂 Johnson524 15:06, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Drive by review

Curtosy ping @CapeVerdeWave and 12george1: I stumbled upon Talk:1873 Atlantic hurricane season/GA1 while looking at older nominations for the January 2025 GAN backlog drive and found this review. There is no evidence that a review took place here and the review was all done within one edit. While I haven't done a thourough read through of the article in question so it may be fine but the review itself does not seem up to standards. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 16:49, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

@IntentionallyDense: So you think I should provide more detail to justify the GA? In what areas, if so? I thought the summary seemed sufficient. CapeVerdeWave (talk) 16:54, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
@CapeVerdeWave Per Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions Read the whole article. Understand its sources. Based on the Good article criteria, determine whether the article should be quick failed. An in-depth review must be provided in all other cases. This must include a spot-check of a sample of the sources in the article to verify that each source supports the text in the article that it covers, and that no copyrighted material has been added to the article from the source.
The part that is missing in your review is the in depth part. Sometimes there is articles where nothing or very little has to be changed. In this case it is more helpful to say something along the lines of "This article passes criteria 1 because xyz, I know this because I checked xyz" (modify as needed ofc). This is especially important when it comes to the sources. For example I would usually write something along the lines of "this article uses reliable sources without plagerising content, I checked sources 2, 4, 8, 19, and 20 and found no issues".
However it is very rare for an article to have absolutely no issues. For example the article in question has some overlinking which while not technically in the GA criteria, can reduce readibility and make it look overly technical. For example, countries are linked which is generally not needed. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 17:04, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Even an article with no issues needs a spotcheck. CMD (talk) 01:37, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Nonsensical review

I believe @Infoadder95:'s recent review of Swim School to be nonsensical. Despite the review claiming otherwise, every single claim in the article is backed up. The review's Lack of Neutrality section accuses the article of containing several quotes that it simply doesn't have. Could someone else have a look?--Launchballer 22:38, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

seems like a pretty clearly Chat-GPT generated review. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:48, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I think we can add Talk:Tudor City/GA1 to that list as well, as it seems to reference a bunch of things that aren't actually in the article. For example:
  • Add more inline citations to the "Notable residents" and "Cultural significance" sections, as some claims lack direct sourcing. - Tudor City doesn't have sections with either of these names, nor is any of the content lacking direct sourcing.
  • - **Cultural Impact:** While the "Cultural significance" section touches on Tudor City's appearances in media, it could delve deeper into how it has influenced perceptions of urban living in New York City. - As mentioned above, this article doesn't have a "Cultural significance" section. It does, however, have a "Critical reception" section, which does include some commentary about that exact topic.
  • However, certain phrases, such as "masterpiece of urban planning," could be perceived as promotional. - That phrase does not appear in the article.
As such, can someone take a look at this as well? I suspect this may have been an LLM-generated review. – Epicgenius (talk) 23:07, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
I would support banning from the entire GA process editors who use LLMs to generate their reviews. I agree that the claims of unsourced claims in the Swim School review are directly contradicted by a brief look at the article and its history, and the wording of the Tudor City review looks canned and generic. At the least, some explanation here by Infoadder95 would be warranted. Further scrutiny of Infoadder95's other edits beyond GA may also be a good idea. This diff, for instance, looks like others I have seen involving the use of an LLM to copyedit paragraphs, in some cases making the wording more promotional. I note that Infoadder95 has a current GA nomination, for Pakistani 75 Rupee Commemoration Notes. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:01, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I am sorry if the article does seem like an LLM, but due to me not being to able to code in Wiki-text, and me not being able to use the visual editor in talk pages or when making reviews so I have to take the help of AI to turn my review into wikitext so it can be used in the article talk page. So some of the passages may seem like "Generic" and "AI generated", due to AI despite being given clear instructions to not alter the content.
If the majority opinion is against my review, I might be able to revise it, this is my first time reviewing nominees so I might make mistakes. If you have issues with specific portions of my review we can discuss it, or even ask for the consensus of other editors as well ask for a second review.
And to reply to the last part of your part of our message, I don't use LLMs for copyediting purposes or editing articles, if you suspect me of such, I am unable to do anything but wait patently. Infoadder95 (talk) 00:08, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I agree with David. You have no business reviewing GAs if your ability is so lacking that you must rely on a text generator to do the work for you, especially when you're not even bothering to make sure that it hasn't hallucinated something. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:13, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Now that the use of LLM for the reviews has been admitted, we should at least cancel both reviews and restore the two articles to the queue with their original nomination dates. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:16, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for not suggesting exiling me in the barren land of banned accounts Infoadder95 (talk) 00:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I thought I could take part in January Backlog drive but this experience has taught me otherwise, thank you for your patience fellow Wikipedians. Infoadder95 (talk) 00:21, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
@Infoadder95, despite these flawed reviews, I wanted to thank you for your honesty. Although editors shouldn't be using large language models for good article reviews (or really, for any kind of content review), hopefully this can be a learning experience so the same mistake isn't repeated in the future. Epicgenius (talk) 03:43, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Infoadder95 (talk) 12:45, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for your suggestion, I think refraining from reviews till I get a bit seasoned is the best option for me now, I might as well spend some time time learning wiki-text.
If you suspect that I lack the capability to review articles and write quality reviews, you are mistaken but if you think that I lack the ability to use wiki-text and edit the source, then you are absolutely right. Infoadder95 (talk) 00:18, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Infoadder95, please nominate both reviews above for G7 speedy deletion, to aid cleanup of the errors. Thanks. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:51, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Ok Infoadder95 (talk) 00:55, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I have deleted them both. You tagged them G11 (the wrong tag), which could have caused a problem if someone else got to them first and didn't understand why they were tagged, but fortunately that didn't happen. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:22, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

@Infoadder95: you just "reviewed" Talk:Alvin and the Chipmunks (film)/GA1 in the same manner? May I ask why when you said less than 24 hours ago that you "I think refraining from reviews till I get a bit seasoned is the best option for me now"? DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 17:38, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I did not use LLMs this time, I copied the wiki-text from my sandbox and pasted it into the sub talk page. And what is your criticism of my review now, that it does not meet your standards or that it was done by me. Is it wrong according to Good article criteria or you just hate me. Please highlight what did you meant by "same manner".
And how am I supposed to get seasoned without reviewing, if the people on the talk page don't object and nominator/s don't object what is the problem I may ask. And do you think I am rubber stamper or someone just afraid to fail a nominee after my last encounter, If so you should read the good article criteria and also don't forget to read the instructions and come and tell me If I violated something and also read this, and tell me if there is something from here present in my review. If the nominators/s have a problem or two I am obliged to listen and reopen the review.
And lastly, what is your purpose to stalk me? Infoadder95 (talk) 18:00, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Nobody is stalking you, but when someone publicly says "I'm not going to do [some thing]" and then immediately goes back to doing the thing, it's not a great look. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:02, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
@Premeditated Chaos Great, so what should I do, should I never do a review again in my life? I have a question; what is wrong with my review on Alvin and the Chipmunks, please I need your opinion so I can improve reviews next in line if I get any Infoadder95 (talk) 18:09, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
You have really got to stop putting words in peoples' mouths. No one has said you can never do another review ever in your life. You yourself said you would be refraining until you were "seasoned", yet you immediately did another review! There is a lot of space between "review again immediately" and "never review again", and waiting even a few weeks would have put you in a position of much less judgement. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:19, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Yes, Infoadder95, all editors are supposed to asssume good faith - which you are not, by asking me why "I hate you" and "am stalking you", which seems to be casting WP:Aspersions. And you also said you would not review before learning, and try to understand what the issues with your reviews were. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:30, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I have been issued a warning on my talk page for using LLMs on Talk:Alvin and the Chipmunks (film)/GA1 which I did not, yes I did use them on the 2 reviews before but I completely wrote this one myself, what seems to be the issue. Infoadder95 (talk) 18:35, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I have replied to that below.
As for why you have warned of LLM usage- even in the case you didn't (which seems weird, as some of the links are missing, which seems unlikely to be done by a human hand), you have copied the format of your last two reviews, which is why they seem LLM generated, even if they might or might not be. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:38, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Ok I quit reviewing, this is probably not a task for me. Infoadder95 (talk) 18:37, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
I'll tell you how the review does not meet the criteria in some time if you want, but I would like to address the other points. "or you just hate me."- I do not, I just brought it up bcs it's wrong according to the criteria- you list issues in the review which very much mean that the article does not meet the criteria yet, or would be if some, if not all, of them were not incorrect. You get seasoned by reading the criteria and instructions properly and seeing other's people reviews.
I'm not stalking you, I was just checking what reviews have been passed/failed today till now as there has many incorrect reviews the past few weeks. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:09, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
@DoctorWhoFan91 Ok please tell me what is wrong with my review, me listing issues does not mean that the article does not qualify, instead they are the areas of improvement. Let me ask you, if you deem that one citation from one section of the whole article is unreliable or does not support the claim it is next to, will you fail the whole well written article or just bring it up so it can be addressed. Or another example; if the lead section is good but it can be a bit shorter, will you just fail the whole article.
And please don't forget to tell me that what is wrong with my review. Infoadder95 (talk) 18:16, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Minor-ish issues: you do not need to explain the GA criteria, just have to say they pass or fail bcs of this or that reason. And you should not highlight your reviews with a background colour, it's distracting.
Major issues- you have passed it despite you saying there are issues. (added after your reply) yes, bring it up, let it be fixed, do not just pass the article, as it very clearly states in the instructions, and what you would know if you had checked other reviews.
major issue 2: travolta is mentioned in ref 2 for the first sentence. The garfield cite is Variety- which is reliable, (and which you have also misplaced from the review, as its blank there). I might be able to find more, but the review is written badly, and it's hard to check what is and what isn't a problem. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:26, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks for highlighting, I think I should not probably not review again, and I think it is for the better of Wikipedia and it's community. Infoadder95 (talk) 18:39, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
You may return, if you read and understand the instructions and have checked how a reviews are supposed to work. Though probably not for a few weeks or maybe months. Wikipedia will always be grateful to all editors who can do whatever they are doing correctly. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:43, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
@Infoadder95 There is no need to make this personal or be self-depricating. When you edit on a public space like Wikipedia, people are going to point out your mistakes. Responding to critisism is a lifelong skill that takes awhile to learn. The best thing you can do is acknowledge your mistakes, clean up your mistakes, educate yourself, do better in the future, and move on. Maybe you're not quite at a place in your Wikipedia editing where you can contribute to qaulity articles. And that's okay. But know your limits. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 20:59, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks Infoadder95 (talk) 14:38, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

I forgot this earlier, but could someone reset the review to it's original state with the original date, to ensure it gets a proper review. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 20:57, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Done, although it's a weird one given it was a pass. If the problems raised are correct and it was a fail, I would not have put it back in the queue, so hopefully they will be addressed. CMD (talk) 01:36, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Discussion at the Village Pump

There's a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (idea lab)#Dealing with drive-by reviews of GA related to good article nominations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:19, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

Inactive GAN review

Hi! I nominated the page 2024 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 4 months since his last edit. Can an admin reset the review page, so it could be included in the upcoming backlog drive. (I also posted about this here in October).

Courtesy ping: @IntentionallyDense. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 13:17, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

I have applied the instructions laid out at Wikipedia:GAN/I#N4a to the nomination. SSSB (talk) 13:46, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
It has been not quite a month since their last edit overall, but combined with the more than 3 months since the last edit to the GAN I have reset the nomination. CMD (talk) 13:47, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Haha, looks like I was beaten to the punch. SSSB (talk) 13:48, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. Vestrian24Bio (TALK) 13:57, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

A streamlining of the GAN review process?

I was looking at some old nominations today that were under review, to check if any could be eligible for the January backlog drive (there are two, and I have pinged the reviewers there)- and I saw many reviews that were abandoned: there had not been a single comments in these reviews for months in many cases. This, plus the above two topics of new reviewers incorrectly starting reviews (and many similar cases in this talk page's archive) was making me wonder if we could make some changes to the process. Some of the changes could include- reviews without comments for a long time could also be seen in the report sub-page (or somewhere more prominent), a change in the template to show on the talk page when a review was started (just like it shows when a nom occurred), some co-ordinators to give at least a cursory glance to reviews: bad reviews might still slip through, but they would very much reduce in quantity. We can't just rely on the nom and reviewer, as even 3rd parties might like to help make it reach GA by nom-ing or reviewing it, and the whole process to ask so on the talk page and wait (which in many cases also sometimes lead nowhere) turns many off. I know some of the changes would be hard to implement, especially bcs of the needed eyes and hands, but I think at least some changes could be made. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 07:59, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

There seem to be two issues here. I'm not quite yet sure how to tackle "substandard reviews", but here are my thoughts on abananded reviews.
  • I certainly agree that we need a better way to track apparently abananded reviews. Currently, Wikipedia:Good article nominations shows where the reviewer is inactive for a certain number of days. (I don't know anything about bots but) I suspect it would be fairly easy to change this to number of days without an edit on review page, which will make it easier to track editors who have abandened reviews but are still active (which is a much bigger problem; and no point having both). (@Mike Christie: who operates the bot which updates this page)
  • Would it be possible to add a section for review's which haven't be edited for a certain number of days onto the Good article nominations report page, again so we can track potentionally abananded reviews. (@Wugapodes: who operates the bot which updates this page) Yes, we already have a section for reviews lasting over seven days. But some reviews will legitamtly last over seven days. And this section is also overpopulated with reviews that were temporily abandened. (i.e. the review is now actively ongoing). This makes it difficult to see the wood from the trees.:*I think we should be more aggresive with following up on reviews. I think that if a review has not been touched for (picking these time frames out of thin air) 14 days we provide a message on the review page, tagging the reviewer, with a message where we chase up the review and if they have not reaffirmed their commitment within 7 days the review will be considered abananded and reset inline with the recommendations at WP:GAN/I#N4a. If they reaffirm their commitment and don't follow through we will also just reset the nomination. If we hardcode that into the instructions it will also (hopefully) rectify part of the problem and enbolden nominaters who feel their review has stalled.
SSSB (talk) 14:32, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
True, and I was thinking also a separate page to list the GANRs with these issues- like inactive noms or reviewers are listed on WP:GAN, but it needs to be searched, which while each, could be made more straightforward. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 20:09, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Splitting sections

Historical figures: politicians

In Historical figures: politicians at WP:GA, I have spun out American figures into "Historical figures: politicians - United States". Considering that over half of the articles were American figures, this seemed to be the logical split. There were some Hawaiian and pre-American Revolution figures that I made judgement calls on where to place, so a second look is appreciated. Z1720 (talk) 20:44, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

George S. Armstrong and Irene Parlby seem to be Canadian, Mabel Philipson British, aside from that the rest seem reasonably placed. If the pre-US figures on the East coast are included, it doesn't seem misleading to include pre-US Hawaiian figures. Are there other Robert Whites we could promote? CMD (talk) 15:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
I moved Armstrong, Parlby and Philipson to the general section. I included pre-US figures on the east coast if the majority of their biography concerns their governance of the colonies. Hawaii was its own civilization and if it wasn't a US state it would probably be considered part of Polynesia/Oceania. I moved Hawaiian figures to US politicians if a significant part of their governance took place when the US controlled the area. I am still open to moving some figures if consensus is otherwise. Z1720 (talk) 15:42, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
Nothing stopping anyone considering Hawaii part of Polynesia/Oceania now! Anyway, from a casual reader POV, I would expect them to expect Hawaiian figures in the United States subsection. Anachronism has its place in navigation, and history was what it was, and now is what it is. CMD (talk) 15:46, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Splitting "Historical figures: other"

I have spun out European figures from "Historical figures: other", which was about half of the listings in that category. I invite editors to take a look and fix any errors I have made. Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 20:26, 23 December 2024 (UTC)

Oh, thank you! I wanted to bring up the historical figures other category - I feel like the vast majority of entries are inproperly placed there. I scanned through and there were lots of political activists and officials that I feel are better placed somewhere else. Additionally, I think there's some which could be spun off into their own category - "Criminals and assassins" def. seems like it could be its own category of historical person, for instance. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:08, 23 December 2024 (UTC)
If you want to shift historical figures within that page (ie, not to another GA list) I encourage you to be bold, it's not the most curated structure. (Same for anything in Music.) CMD (talk) 03:57, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Generalissima: Steve Irwin was someone who I think should be moved, though I do not know which section to put him in (his talk page has him listed in Sports and Rec, but I think he was mostly known for being a conservationist and entertainer). As for new history sections: I agree with CMD. I think criminals is a good idea as it makes the section smaller. I also agree with music, but that might be a discussion for a new section below. Z1720 (talk) 16:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

Historical figures: bureaucrats and administrators split?

After looking at the articles left over in Historical figures: other, another split might be bureaucrats and administrators. This could be defined as government officials who were never elected to their position (and are therefore not politicians). Thoughts? Z1720 (talk) 22:00, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I think that'd be a good idea. One final category of "sort-of-politicians-but-not" could be activists, which I've seen a lot of in that category. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 22:34, 24 December 2024 (UTC)
@Generalissima: After going through the "other" category (again) I think an "activist, revolutionary, anarchist and suffragette" category would be appropriate. Z1720 (talk) 02:57, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Bit of a mouthful - I think "Activists and revolutionaries" encompasses all four Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:31, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
@Generalissima: Works for me. Z1720 (talk) 15:15, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
I have created the "bureaucrats and administrators" category per this discussion. My next step is to go through the "other" category and move biographies to more appropriate categories. Z1720 (talk) 02:57, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Inactive nominations

Hi! It's great that the bot now mentions when there has been a while since a nominator has made an edit. I usually give a talk message to the user before picking up a review, but I don't think there is a requirement for this as of yet.

To streamline our nomination process and take out articles which won't ever have their reviews addressed, could we maybe get the bot to ping users after, say 30 days, of their last edit and confirm they still want the review. If they don't return to editing by 45 days (or whatever), then the nomination is pulled.

The resources of reviews are low enough to not have to address reviews of inactive nominators. An example of this happening manually can be found here: [14]. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:19, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Lee, are you thinking of the same approach as suggested here? Or just for nominations where the review has not yet been started? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:25, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Not yet started. Whilst I appreciate it's hard when doing a review for a non-active nominator, I'd like to avoid it before we get that far. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:30, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Inactive reviewer

I have already asked for a review in Talk:Pentagonal pyramid/GA1, and the reviewer previously has gone AWOL. See discussion. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:55, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

New reviewer required

Hello, could I kindly request a new reviewer for the article Halimah Yacob? The previous reviewer has been inactive for some time and was unable to complete the GA review. Many thanks in advance. Pangalau (talk) 05:10, 27 December 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately it looks like the reviewer had a bit more of the article to go. I have reset the nomination. If the reviewer returns they are welcome to reopen the old GAN. CMD (talk) 05:21, 27 December 2024 (UTC)
No worries. I hope someone else would start this nomination again. Many thanks! Pangalau (talk) 15:22, 29 December 2024 (UTC)

Second opinion on review

Can I get a second opinion on Talk:Hilda Heine/GA1 to confirm that nothing was missed? I ask because History6042 has already had their reviewing scrutinized at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 30#Potential issue with review of Arithmetic (again), and since then they have passed Talk:Texas Centennial half dollar/GA1, Talk:Serbia Against Violence (coalition)/GA1, Talk:Charles Brenton Fisk/GA2, Talk:National Gathering (Serbia)/GA1, Talk:Branislav Djurdjev/GA1, and now this one without taking the feedback on board. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:08, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

What was wrong with Serbia Against Violence (coalition), Charles Brenton Fisk, National Gathering (Serbia), and Branislav Djurdjev, no issues were brought up about those. History6042😊 (Contact me) 04:16, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
Also, I might not be fully sure what a spot check is, the only thing I could find just said see if the sources are good and say what they are. Am I wrong? If so someone please explain to me what a source spot check is. History6042😊 (Contact me) 04:21, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
If necessary I can go back and do one one Hilda Heine once I understand what a spot check is. History6042😊 (Contact me) 04:24, 1 January 2025 (UTC)
I did that now. History6042😊 (Contact me) 01:34, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Former GA

Is there a list of all delisted GAs by when they were delisted? I want to see the newly delisted articles. History6042😊 (Contact me) 23:47, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

If you want new ones you could watchlist Category:Delisted good articles. CMD (talk) 05:32, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
I think most of the GARs since the change to remove the individual GAR option end up getting logged in the reassessment archives, although I can't guarantee that those are fully comprehensive. Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Archive 82 is the most recent one; the ones delisted from that are Joseph Franklin Rutherford, USS Texas (BB-35), Forbes Field, United States constitutional criminal procedure, Melbourne Airport, 1997–98 Manchester United F.C. season, Tristan da Cunha, Temper (film), 1st Brigade, 7th Infantry Division (United States), Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (song), Anuel AA, National Register of Historic Places, Fantastic Four in film, Mitch Daniels, Portland Monthly, UConn Huskies women's basketball, and Teleological argument. You can also check the various topical subpages of WP:GA and look in the page history, although anything by FACBot to "update good article list" is an GA being promoted to FA, not a delisting. Hog Farm Talk 05:39, 4 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you. History6042😊 (Contact me) 01:08, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Crusading_movement/GA5

In the context of the backlog drive this one could do with a little help to get over the line. It has been on the list since July 2024 and in review for a month now. Mea Culpa it used to have issues with overly close paraphrasing of sources but it should be sorted now. AirshipJungleman29 (talk · contribs) is doing a source check. IntentionallyDense (talk · contribs) did check in at Christmas and there was some objective points raised that are now all resolved. What would be really great is if another editor or editors could have a look and give additional feedback/comments. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 09:17, 3 January 2025 (UTC)

As I have said, the review is in progress. I am waiting to gain access to a couple of books. Of course, "Comments are welcome from any editor who has not nominated or contributed significantly to this article", especially with regard to source-text integrity. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:42, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
That's good to hear. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 12:50, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
My impression was that Airship had this review handled. An article of this size is bound to take awhile. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 19:28, 3 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you @IntentionallyDense and apologies for my impatience @AirshipJungleman29. I shall sit on my hands for a while. Norfolkbigfish (talk) 16:16, 5 January 2025 (UTC)

Taking into account that the nominator has failed to clear the article of close paraphrasing and copyvio during a series of reviews for more than four years, I think the reviewer's precaution is quite reasonable. Now, I do not want to refer to several cases of unverified claims and misinterpretations. If I were Norfolkbigfish, I would be extremly patient and grateful. Perhaps, they could meanwhile clean "their" other articles of close paraphrasing and copyvio. Borsoka (talk) 10:20, 4 January 2025 (UTC)

Citation style in GAN

I haven't found an in-depth conversation about this so I'm going to be the one to ask. Is a consistent citation style required for GAN? I ask because MOS:LAYOUT requires it per "Editors may use any citation method they choose, but it should be consistent within an article." However footnote 3 on Wikipedia:Good article criteria says "Using consistent formatting or including every element of the bibliographic material is not required, although, in practice, enough information must be supplied so that the reviewer is able to identify the source.".

I always assumed that the actual criteria itself would outweigh the footnote but I'm not sure. I've never personally failed an article over inconsistent citation style, however I do bring it up or fix it myself when I see it. Is there situations where it would be appropriate to request people use a consistent citation style? Welcoming anyone more experienced than me here. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 17:48, 6 January 2025 (UTC)

I haven't got more expirence than you but will provide my opinion regardless. The way I see it is that: an article should use a conaistent formatting style, but it is not something that you should fail or hold up a GA nomination for. SSSB (talk) 17:51, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
The baseline for GAN as I understand it has always been that the footnotes provide sufficient information to accurately identify sources, for example urls needing access dates and long sources sometimes needing page numbers. I wouldn't look at the dotting i's and crossing t's though, that's more FA. CMD (talk) 18:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
That's totally fair. Would it be appropriate to bring up in a review regardless (as in "hey this is a minor issue"). IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 18:05, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
It is best practice to emphasise when reviewer suggestions are optional and not part of the GA criteria (but I sometimes forget to be explicit about it). —Kusma (talk) 18:08, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Yeah this makes sense and while I was under the impression that consistant citation style was needed (still unclear) I will take this approach moving forward. Thank you. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 18:10, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Agree, GA should be a light-weight process. When you edit an existing article, it's very time consuming to get all the citations you keep in the same format without much benefit to our readers. The GA criteria should trump MOS:LAYOUT. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
IntentionallyDense, you say you're still unclear -- it's definitely the case that GA does not require a consistent citation style. Any mixture is fine at GAN. You're free to mention to the nominator that it would be beneficial to regularize the citations, but promotion should never be held up for it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:09, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for clarifying! To be clear I’ve never failed a nomination for it in the past but I have mentioned it before. I’ll make sure to mention it as optional from now on though! IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 22:52, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
no, a consistent citation style is not strictly required at GAN - it's required at FAC. as CMD said, it's really more about having citations that are clear and have enough information to identify the source. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 21:55, 6 January 2025 (UTC)
Although the GA criteria require complying with MOS:LAYOUT, inconsistent but functional citations shouldn't be the sole reason to fail a GAN. However, you ask "[Are] there situations where it would be appropriate to request people use a consistent citation style?" – yes, in my opinion, if the inconsistency is so bad that it becomes difficult to verify content. For instance, if the inconsistency in ordering and formatting of citation elements (author, title, publisher; or various dates) leads to confusion about which is which. Toadspike [Talk] 10:21, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
+1 ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:33, 8 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Stephen Curry/GA2

I do have concern over the article, especially the editor is only 3 months, they suspiciously reviewed thos big article and think the article is almost to be promoted when there are visible issues. 2001:4455:389:2700:68AF:4149:23D4:B384 (talk) 19:09, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

Just to reiterate what I said on the review page, so other people get a balanced view- it's a good review, and it's on hold, not "near passing". If they read and understood the instructions properly, which they seem to have done, then there being new is not a big issue (also, politely- you are an ip? how do you know what a newer editor can or cannot do?). Nothing suspicious about reviewing big articles- they might like the topic or want more bonus points at the backlog drive or for whatever reason they like. And there are not "visible issues", the issues are actually quite small for an article of this size, and they seem to have mentioned most of them. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 19:30, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Frankly, this seems like a perfectly well-conducted review. The points you bring up aren't part of the GA criteria or are entirely up to personal taste. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 19:44, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
I think your definition of "spotchecking" is different from everyone else's. As a hint, WP:GANI states "a spot-check of a sample of the sources" (emphasis mine). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:55, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
(remove the G in GANI, and that is where the IP should be sent to) 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 19:56, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
I'd also note that contra what the IP claims at Talk:Stephen Curry/GA2, the inclusion of citations in the lead is not a problem. WP:CITELEAD explicitly says that citations are not prohibited in the lead, and notes various cases in which citations in the lead may actively be desirable or even required. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:25, 7 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes, everything seems to be in order in the review. Chiswick Chap (talk) 17:00, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Inactive reviews

I was checking inactive reviews due to the backlog drive coming up, and I saw the following:

  • Talk:Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)/GA3: I think the reviewer said they are fine with a second reviewer, but haven't marked it as such. Plus the nom has been inactive for 24 days.
    Relisted.
  • Talk:Jonna Adlerteg/GA1: The reviewer has been inactive for more than a month, but it does look almost finished, so maybe it should be marked as needing a second opinion?
    Luckily this review seems substantially complete, unlike a couple of others from the same reviewer, and the reviewer seemed broadly positive on it. If there are no objections, this one might take a light lookover and pass.
  • Talk:IMac (Apple silicon)/GA1: Have had no review despite being open for more than 3 months
    Relisted.
  • Talk:Andhra Pradesh/GA3: Also have had no review even after being open for three months
    Reviewer has not edited since the ping three days ago, giving this one a bit more time.
    Reviewer has returned.
  • Talk:Amos Yee/GA1: The reviewer barely started and have been inactive for more than a month
    Relisted.
  • Talk:Mating of yeast/GA2: Had no edits for a month, then had a week of reviewing, and then again has no edits for a month
    A bit more of a confusing one, probably should be relisted, but I've dropped a note on the reviewer talkpage.
    Reviewer has not replied despite editing again, relisted.
  • Talk:June/GA2: The reviewer had filled out a review template, but has said nothing, or failed it (as they marked in the template), maybe they are inexperienced
    Opened just this month, dropped a note on the user talkpage.
    Reset.
  • Talk:Yang Youlin/GA1: New reviewer did not review, just marked it GA on the talk page, and has not been editing for two weeks (after having not edited for 3.5 months)
    This one is a bit weird, usually I'd wait longer given the review just opened, but, given the talkpage action, the lack of activity in general, and the upcoming drive, not opposed to relisting sooner.
    Failed.

Can something be done about these- either marked as needing another reviewer, or reset, as seems best? DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 07:11, 28 December 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for checking all this. I've relisted three obvious cases in line with my understanding of our precedents, other comments above. CMD (talk) 08:01, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Thanks. There are even more GANRs similar to the above, but they were all started around less than a month ago, so I only mentioned the most egregious ones. Might do a similar check around the middle of next month. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 08:08, 28 December 2024 (UTC)
Reviewer came back for Andhra Pradesh, I'm going to try and second opinion Jonna Adlerteg. This is the second time Mating of yeast has been relisted, which is a bit of a shame. Otherwise the rest are handled. CMD (talk) 16:18, 2 January 2025 (UTC)

Cady Noland article - sources

Hi all! I nominated the article for Cady Noland back in October, I figure it'll still be a few weeks or months until it gets reviewed given its length and complexity. But I wanted to note that I'd be happy to share any of the sources used in the article that I still have access to or personal copies of (which I believe would qualify as fair use if sent 1:1 strictly for the purposes of reviewing/fact-checking/improving the article). Feel free to jump on my Talk page or flag it in the review if sharing anything would be helpful. I've never gone through the GA process before, so I want to get some experience with the reviewee side of it all before contributing with reviews myself. Hopefully after I have my footing there I can contribute more on the review side as well. Thanks in advance to anyone who is eventually able to review! 19h00s (talk) 22:48, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for holding onto sources, that may be helpful for the reviewer. Sorry the wait can be so long. CMD (talk) 02:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Tuvalu at the 2024 Summer Olympics

I would like to know if Arconning's GA review of Tuvalu at the 2024 Summer Olympics is valid. I think that it has the same scope as the Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics article and that's a GA. I was also told that there is unsourced info but I can't find any. If this is actually not passable, I accept that, but I just don't understand how other articles of the same scope are GAs but this was quick failed. History6042😊 (Contact me) 04:11, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Honestly, I don't know if I would pass either Tuvalu at the 2020 Summer Olympics or the 2024 equivalent - I've noticed a trend where sometimes, when one article that's not really meeting broadness gets passed by a lax reviewer, folks look at it and assume that similar articles must hit the criteria. I think this is what has happened with a lot of Olympics articles; even these relatively minor countries' performances can be expanded quite a bit, as shown by the existence of much longer and more detailed GAs on such performances. I think for something that would otherwise be bordering on a stub, you really have to get as much detail as you can. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:16, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Also pinging Arconning since they were mentioned. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:16, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
So would you suggest me just adding as much details as possible if I want this at GA? History6042😊 (Contact me) 05:17, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Arconning is pretty seasoned in this respect, so I would look at stuff they've done to see what kind of details are looked for here. Liechtenstein at the 2024 Summer Olympics and Belize at the 2024 Summer Olympics are both GAs for countries that only competed in a single sport that Olympics, so that would be about a good as a guide as any. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 05:27, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
Alright, thank you. History6042😊 (Contact me) 05:34, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
The review in question is Talk:Tuvalu at the 2024 Summer Olympics/GA1. CMD (talk) 05:18, 11 January 2025 (UTC)
To take the tangent elsewhere, Tuvalu at the Olympics is 412 words, and yet for some reason it has to have five extremely short sub-articles??? I mean, ten points in the "making wikipedia as reader-unfriendly as possible" contest, but 0 points in the common sense one. BRB, going to start a merge discussion. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:23, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Good Article visibility

I have raised a discussion at the village pump about the visibility of Good Article status on articles in general, and also when viewed on a mobile device, that may be of interest. Iskandar323 (talk) 16:22, 11 January 2025 (UTC)

Add co-nominator after review

Hello, I was wondering if any knew whether or not it is possible to add a co-nominator to a GA after the review has already begun. For reference, I was asked this in Talk:History of the National Hockey League (2017–present)/GA1. Thank you. Kimikel (talk) 16:13, 10 January 2025 (UTC)

Co-nominators have no recognition in the statistics, which only pay attention to the nominator named in the GAN template. Hence you can list co-nominators in the notes or the review itself, at any point, with no effect on the stats. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:20, 10 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes, it's a great pity as recognition would help to encourage co-operation to improve articles to GA status, and represent GA effort better. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:57, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

Headings

I had expected MOS:HEADINGS to state a preference toward easily understood headings over complicated technical headings. No such preference was stated. Am I missing something?-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:51, 12 January 2025 (UTC)

This subject is currently at issue in regards to Techtonic Setting vs Background at Talk:2020 Sparta earthquake/GA1-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 13:53, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Going to mention this at Wikipedia:Village pump (policy).-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 15:31, 12 January 2025 (UTC)
Depending on the context this could fall under the criterion 1a, being understandable to an appropriately broad audience. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 00:51, 13 January 2025 (UTC)
Thx.-TonyTheTiger (T / C / WP:FOUR / WP:CHICAGO / WP:WAWARD) 06:54, 13 January 2025 (UTC)

Aggressive/adversarial reassessment campaigns

Hello all,

I don't usually call people out, but the user in question keeps saying that if we don't like it we bring it to the attention of this forum.

As some of you are perhaps aware, User:Z1720 nominates several articles a day for reassessment. The main goal of this campaign has strayed from something meant to improve an article, to a crusade intended to diminish the numbers of "unworthy" GA articles.

Being on the receiving end of "you need to do work within a week or this thing you feel good about gets taken away" is hurtful. GAR could be a collaborative process, but the way it's currently being carried out by Z1720 is an adversarial one meant to force you to do work immediately. I assume it makes Z1720 feel powerful to make all the little editors dance to their will with threats of delisting. The practice has been described by other editors as a GAR shakedown, which is something that describes perfectly how this process felt to me. I have also tried to describe it here. Ultimately I retired from Wikipedia as a result of how violating this whole process was. (This post being a brief return with no intention of staying)

These practices have also been questioned several times for overwhelming the process with too many nominations [15] [16] [17], as well as criticism of the delisting-as-a-first-resort crusade. [18]

I would like to open a discussion on whether the focus of GAR should be to improve articles collaboratively or whether we should continue to allow an adversarial process meant to force work on an accelerated timeline.

Or perhaps the goal should be to nominate as many articles as possible with the goal of having them delisted when nobody can start working on all of them within a week. In that case, I suggest 100 articles a day to get it done faster. Downside is that you don't get to make editors dance as much.

Acebulf (talk | contribs) 05:42, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

The focus of GAR is to improve articles. If improvements are happening or are intended to happen, GARs can stay open for quite awhile. Some FARs have stayed open over a year, but I don't know of any GARs have hit that yet. Is there an example of a GAR where improvements were happening and/or scheduled that was still delisted within a week? CMD (talk) 05:53, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
From a quick sample, it appears that Z1720 first leaves a comment on the talkpage of the article identifying the most pressing reasons they feel it may no longer meet the Good Article criteria. Then if nobody replies on the talk page and no edits to fix anything have been made within a week or two, they will open a GAR.
@Acebulf: what would help here is if you can identify a (or ideally, multiple) GAR that was opened prematurely - i.e. while discussion was ongoing on the talkpage, or while active edits making substantial improvements to resolve GA criteria issues were happening. A GAR being opened does not mean an article will be delisted - as CMD has said, they can remain open for months if an editor/multiple editors have concrete plans to work on it within a reasonable timeframe. Alternatively, please identify where Z1720 has "rushed" editors who are actively planning to work on an article. It is not anyone's responsibility to wait forever - if you wish to "babysit" an article and ensure it remains a Good Article, it's your responsibility to monitor the talk page for concerns (whether by watchlist or otherwise) and respond to them in a timely manner. In other words, if the editor/editors want an article to remain a Good Article, they hold the responsibility of letting others know they're aware of issues and planning to fix them within a reasonable time. I for one maintain all the articles I've brought to GA status on my watchlist for this very reason - so that if any other editor brings up any concerns or possible improvements I'll be able to see them.
If you can't identify these examples, then I suggest you retract your statement as a whole... but especially things like "you need to do work within a week or this thing you feel good about gets taken away". Even though this obviously is not intended to be an exact quote, the implication of it (that Z1720 is trying to "power trip" or something) is quite uncivil, as is the statements about "mak[ing] editors dance" and similar. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 06:12, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Personally, I feel that the fact a significant amount of time is provided to save articles at GANR is a mercy given to editors as is. It's a noticeboard for articles which no longer meet the criteria; if there is community consensus that the article isn't reaching one of those points, then it shouldn't be listed. The reason time is provided to fix it is because not all editors are monitoring all of the past articles they have contributed to all the time, so giving them a heads up is a good idea.
But it's not like Z1720 is going through and sending all of a particular editor's articles to GANR at the same time, so it seems like it's not really their fault if no one volunteers to bring an article back up to quality over the weeks provided. Any interested editor can always take a former GA back to GAN if they feel they've resolved the issues; it's not really that big of a deal. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:28, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
And to Z1720; thank you for your work here! When I look at the list of GAs, I want to see a list of articles that meet our standards, not a list of quality articles mixed in with ones from 2009 that someone looked at once and thought was okay. Pouring over these and seeing what isn't cutting it anymore is pretty thankless, but very well appreciated by some of us. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:30, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
"I would like to open a discussion on whether the focus of GAR should be to improve articles collaboratively or whether we should continue to allow an adversarial process meant to force work on an accelerated timeline. "
The purpose of Wikipedia is to improve articles collaboratively. Every content process you can name "forces work on an accelerated timeline"—that is, if the article is to be improved. There is no responsibility to "need to do work within a week", just to engage with the process and you are given the time you need: to take a current example, Muboshgu has been working on one current GAR for almost a month now, and if they need more time, they can have it. If you are unaware of the history, the GAR process was largely near-inactive for several years, and was revamped in the 2023 proposal drive. As a result of the inactivity, there is a several-year-long backlog of articles, some of which were already sub-standard a decade ago.
In my experience, most of the "adversarial" behaviour comes from editors feel GA status being removed from an article is an attack on them, when in reality it is just maintaining of standards. Examples can be seen above, such as "I assume it makes Z1720 feel powerful to make all the little editors dance to their will with threats of delisting", which is, to be blunt, a far more "violating" comment than anything Z1720 has done. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:43, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Hey everyone, I woke up to a lot of pings in this discussion: I will need to take some time to thoroughly read through the above (and any additional comments left below). If helpful, I will give an extended response below: if there are any questions about my process, feel free to ask below. I am happy to read any comments on how to improve my review process, and less happy to read personal attacks. Thanks everyone, and happy editing! Z1720 (talk) 13:18, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think any of this is intended to be adversarial or aggressive. I have disagreed with Z1720 about the urgency of taking certain articles to GAR (Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Martha Hughes Cannon/1 being the prime one), but for the most part, these articles being taken to GAR are nowhere close to the modern standards. When Mark Kellogg (reporter) and Gettysburg Cyclorama were taken to GAR, I had to rewrite and resource large chunks of both of those. There's been GARs last for months if somebody's actively working on it. They send more articles to GAR at once than I would personally be able to keep track of, but I think they do a pretty good job of not having too many from a subject area open at one time. Hog Farm Talk 14:11, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
GA is there to certify that an article meets specific minimum requirements of quality. If someone is trying to keep something listed as a good article when it doesn't meet those criteria, they're not just being unhelpful. They're being dishonest. If you want an article to be GA, then improve it so it meets the criteria. I thank Z1720 for doing the heavy lifting in correcting the status of these false GAs. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:02, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
+1 Acebulf could stand to assume better faith of Z1720 ... sawyer * he/they * talk 17:07, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I largely agree with everyone else who has responded to this. I assume this thread was triggered by Talk:Algo Centre Mall#GA concerns, but Z1720's behaviour there looks fine to me. As a timeline:
So after Acebulf responded to the initial talkpage post less than a day after it was made, Z1720 did not bring up the possibility of GAR for more than four whole weeks of no further improvements to the article, and when their {{cn}} tags had been unaddressed for more than two weeks. For Acebulf to characterise Z1720's attitude as you need to do work within a week or this thing you feel good about gets taken away without providing any of the context which would show what actually happens leaves a pretty unpleasant taste in my mouth. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:23, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Despite all the pushback here, I think Ace has a point. Not in the imagined intentions of the nominators, perhaps, but in the timing of some of their actions. To pick an example (one that has recently concluded, I think with the correct result): Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Alfred North Whitehead/1 has just concluded with a delisting after nobody stepped up to fix the issues with the article. So far, appropriate. But if we look more carefully at the timing: the first hint of an impending GAR was made on December 23, two days before Christmas, the GAR itself was initiated on New Year's day, and it was closed on January 10. If I happened to be the sole editor who cared about improving that article, and happened to be traveling over the holidays and not checking my watchlist until I returned, I would be rightfully pissed off. That is too short and too inconvenient a timescale.
When we initiate Good Article nominations, we can choose when to do it and how many nominations to keep open at a time in order to balance our own personal workloads. When someone else chooses that a GAR must happen right now, it has the feeling of someone imposing unwanted work on us and demanding that we do it. I don't think this means that we should not have GARs, and I don't think there was an actual problem in the Whitehead GAR, but we might think about making the timelines of GARs a little less immediate. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
If this is an issue, it's an issue with GAR as a process and not Z1720. The WP:GAR instructions do not require any pre-review notice period – they say Consider raising issues at the talk page of the article or requesting assistance from major contributors and After at least one week, if the article's issues are unresolved and there are no objections to delisting, the discussion may be closed as delist. In the case of Alfred North Whitehead, issues were raised on the talkpage with no response for a week, and the review was open for more than a week. The GA nominator/primary contributor had not edited for nearly two years and they have made fewer than 100 edits in the past decade. I do not think that the timing of the GAR was the issue here.
Sure, Z1720 could have chosen to wait until after the Christmas/New Year period to start the review (though it might in fact have turned out that someone who would have been interested in rescuing the article would have been free over Christmas but busy afterwards – Wikipedia is a multicultural project and we shouldn't assume that everyone celebrates the same holidays that most western Christians do!), but the actual review itself wasn't opened until New Year's Day and remained open for ten days into January. Editors definitely looked at the review because two commented – both to agree that the article was not at GA level. If two and a half weeks of nobody even registering any interest in improving the article is insufficient, how much time should GAR take? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
(ec) I agree that Z1720 is blameless in this, and nominating GARs is a net benefit to the encyclopedia. I think David's point about time is reasonable, but as you say, it is the GAR process definition that would have to change if we want to allow more time. I think it would be harmless to require 30 days before delisting. Perhaps with an exception for unanimous consent of at least two editors in addition to the nominator for obvious cases? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Thirty days of open review time seems reasonable to me, with I hope in addition some attempt to bring attention to an impending GAR some time before it happens (as happened this time) to avoid the formal process when it can be avoided. In this case, I thought that 9 days of pre-warning coinciding with a major holiday period and 10 days of open GAR were too few. I don't think the outcome this time would have been different, but what's the rush? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I think there should be an ability to close after less than 30 days if a clear consensus has formed. I don't see a reason why Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Siege of Gythium/1 would have needed to be kept open for 30 days. Although that's a special case, as it was originally improperly awarded GA status by a since-blocked sock. Hog Farm Talk 21:21, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
There are some reviews that may not need to be open for 30 days, but I think keeping all GARs open for a minimum period of 30 days is a net benefit. On the grand scheme of things, it does not matter whether an article that has been sub-GA standard for five years keeps the green plus for another month, but needlessly pissing off a good contributor by delisting their articles without giving them a chance to fix the issues matters and needs to be avoided. —Kusma (talk) 22:09, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Indeed. Especially when you consider that many of these old GAs are by editors who no longer edit as frequently as they once did, leaving them open for a month seems like basic courtesy. -- asilvering (talk) 14:05, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I will not say anything further, but I did raise concerns with Z1720 on his talk page about the quantity of reviews he was launching. Cremastra (u — c) 21:55, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Just chiming in, but it doesn't feel like you are assuming good faith here, Acebulf. I'm been very active in trying to write/review good articles, and while I've only ever opened a couple GARs myself, I think it's good that Z1720 is taking initiative to ensure that all articles listed as good articles are, in fact, good. Anonymous 20:20, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
We have to keep up the standard of GA articles, or it's pointless to have the status at all.
I'd argue that trying to get an article through GAR is both unrewarding, and quite resource heavy. Anyone actively looking out problematic articles should be celebrated. Any article that has a response with a "yeah, we can fix that soonish" and has someone working on it is unlikely to be demoted. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:44, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Note: this was previously discussed here. 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 22:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
It is much more of a problem if an article that should not have WP:Good article status does ("false positive GA") than if one that should does not ("false negative GA"). For this reason, it should be easier for an article to be delisted than to be listed in the first place. I don't think it makes sense to have lower requirements for an article to remain a GA than for it to become a GA; an article that does not meet the WP:Good article criteria should not have GA status, so a GA that would fail a WP:Good article nomination in its current state should be delisted. GA status is supposed to be an indicator of a certain level of quality—if it doesn't reliably function as such, what's the point? Delisting a GA that is not up to standards is a good thing; bringing it up to standards instead is preferable. Cynically, if the prospect of losing GA status is what it takes for certain articles to be maintained to standards, then we should welcome articles being brought to WP:GAR to a greater extent. TompaDompa (talk) 21:47, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

A very long response by Z1720

Hey everyone, I appreciate Acebulf initiating this conversation, even if I have a different perspective and would have used different phrasing. I like how this has initiated many different conversations about GAR.

Personal attacks happen all the time in GAR work. Through a completely-unresearched-only-anecdotal perspective, I read personal attacks towards me about once a week or two, and not always from the same editors. I usually ignore those attacks, as they don't lead to article improvements. However, if someone personally attacks another editor, especially a new editor, I would warn them or report it. Some personal attacks made me reconsider GAR work, and I've seen editors leave FAR for this reason. I've sometimes avoided topic areas because I think specific groups of editors will attack me. I don't think this avoidance is a net-benefit to Wikipedia.

So what are my motivations for reviewing GARs? I don't think it is to "feel powerful to make all the little editors dance to their will". I'm already an arbitrator on en-wiki (and some community members think this gives me power, but I disagree). In real life I teach people how to dance, so I already get people to literally dance to my will (even if my choreography is horrible). I don't think either hypothesis is accurate.

My GAR work is an extension of my work at FAR and WP:URFA/2020. I want Wikipedia to be truthful about its "status" articles like GA and FA. Readers bestow respect on these articles, unless they see an article with that status with uncited text or orange banners. Editors use status articles as templates for their own work, adopting the good and bad techniques into articles they are working on.

I've seen several articles improve substantially because of a talkpage notice or a GAR. I've seen fantastic collaboration to "save" an article from delisting, improving the information Wikipedia shows readers. I've learned about cool people and events while reviewing. I am happier when an editor responds to a notice and starts improving the article. I am most frustrated when an editor keeps saying they want to improve the article, but makes no edits while contributing elsewhere on Wikipedia. I can get impatient when editors insist a citation does not need to be at the end of every paragraph. Sometimes I do not respond because I think a wall of text is becoming disruptive, and want new voices to post their thoughts and help us arrive at a consensus.

In my perfect world, editors would be regularly reviewing their "status" articles, looking for new sources and fixing uncited material. In my perfect world, reviewing good articles would be a waste of my time because they all follow the criteria. With some topics (Agriculture and Food) I think we are close to achieving that. In other topic areas, there are a lot of articles that need updates.

Some editors above have outlined concerns with the GAR process. I have some ideas on how to improve this, but that might be a different conversation. If anyone is interested, I am happy to create a new page outlining how I do my work. Some editors have seen my techniques in real life, so I can ping them if editors want a different perspective on what I do. I might also present my procedures at WikiConference North America 2025. As users above suspect, I am purposefully trying to spread out my nominations amongst several topics. Any help with reviewing articles would be appreciated, and any constructive feedback on how I can do better will be taken into consideration. Z1720 (talk) 21:54, 14 January 2025 (UTC)

This has become rather a hot discussion, and the case may have been stated rather too firmly, but I think there is a valid point here, which is that GAR is basically designed as a tool of last resort: it was never meant to be a daily thing, still less a way to slim down the list of GAs. I don't know the solution here, but the current frequency of GAR nominations does feel way beyond anything we ever experienced before. The comment that good work has been done in response to some of the GARs - I for one have fixed many articles now in that situation - is with respect very slightly missing the point, which is that the good work is being done under a new and wholly unwelcome kind of duress, in what has for many years been a relaxed regimen at GA, in stark contrast to the more high-pressure FA system with its demand for "comprehensive" coverage (mm, how can that be done in 100,000 bytes or less when there are a dozen textbooks on the topic, hmm...). GAN/GA/GAR, in short, is being manoeuvred in a wholly new direction by an unfamiliar interpretation of the old rules, which were always tacitly understood to be there in case of desperate need. I suggest we try to find a way to re-establish GAR as what we do when an article really has got into a truly parlous state, the likely editors and WikiProjects that could possibly fix it in slow time (there is, after all, no hurry if an article is years old and will exist for many more years) have declined to get involved, and the necessary changes to bring it back to something vaguely reasonable seem way too difficult. Pulling the GAR firing lanyard when there's nothing worse than a couple of ORish paragraphs inserted by an overkeen IP or newbie is frankly overkill. This should be measured, perhaps, against the greatly increased delay in getting an article of any complexity reviewed at GAN: short popular articles often get taken up within a day, while major topics can languish for months, so GAR usage that delists a batch of articles daily, with no more than a week's notice, threatens to grossly unbalance a gentle old process. My tuppence 'orth. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:10, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
While I have been sad watching the GARs sweep through a topic I have an eye on, I don't understand this concept of duress. It is waiting till articles slip into a "truly parlous state" that unbalances the article rating system, which is again being proposed on the pump as being made more prominent for readers. I suspect the timing is already measured against the GAN time, as issues have often sat around for years. It is unfortunate that articles steadily degrading is perhaps the natural process, and that there are fewer editors around than we'd like, but neither of these are the fault of the GA/GAR system. CMD (talk) 22:52, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
It's the short fuse on GARs that makes editors of those articles feel under duress. The initial GA review also has a relatively short fuse, but in that case it's in response to a nomination made by the nominator. In contrast, GARs feel like they can come at any time out of the blue over a span of years and demand a response within a span of a few days. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:08, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
GARs can come out of the blue, they demand a response in short order, the stated concerns often feel superficial, and they divert volunteer time and energy from things that we want to work on to things that we feel we have to work on, or else we let our specialties down. I felt a lot better after I stopped caring whether any article gets or loses the GA sticker. The natural end result of these pressures is a severe deficit of GA's on any subject that requires expert knowledge to cover properly, but hey, it's not my problem. XOR'easter (talk) 23:58, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't really see the link being proposed here. There's no need to divert to an article if you don't want to. The GA/not GA status doesn't change the content that is there, so any content quality deficit already exists. CMD (talk) 07:55, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
If you know you're one of three or four active editors with the subject-matter knowledge needed to fix an article, then yeah, you can feel pressured to drop your other projects and try to fix it. XOR'easter (talk) 18:08, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
That is about the pressure, but it doesn't explain the supposed deficit being created. As I mentioned elsewhere I have seen the GARs sweep through a topic I'm one of few editors in, so this isn't something I'm unfamiliar with. The GARs raised accurate points that I didn't have space to go through. One day I might get back to them. CMD (talk) 23:14, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
This basically comes down to "we should lie to everyone and say these meet the good article criteria even though we know they don't". If they meet the criteria, then they should be designated as such. If they do not meet the criteria, then they should not be designated as such. If someone wants an article to remain designated as a GA for whatever reason, then it was on them to fix the article several years ago. If someone feels an article is "entitled" to be designated as a good article when it doesn't qualify, then those people are here to cause problems. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:11, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
We were talking earlier about the bad-faith assumptions of the poster on this thread. Your comment here is just as much full of bad-faith assumptions. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:15, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
I didn't make any assumptions. I described the unfortunate implication of an approach, and then I described what I think should happen in particular situations. An assumption would be like "the reason you harass people on GANRs is because you feel entitled to validation", but that's not the angle I'm approaching this from. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:43, 14 January 2025 (UTC)
Your message was, essentially, "the people who want more time to clean up GAs are only doing so because they intend to cause problems". How is that not a bad faith assumption? —David Eppstein (talk) 00:35, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
The last one I did was Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/1st Airborne Division (United Kingdom)/1. I picked this up when the project was notified. The original author (Jim Sweeney) is no longer active so I took it. I do not agree that the article was in a "truly parlous state". The cited issue was uncited paragraphs. A check of the version of that passed GA shows that it was fully cited then, so the problem was that the article was probably not stewarded since Jim left. But anyone could have reverted the article back to its original state. All the required references could be found from the reference list. So I simply took out the books and added them. But this is, as XOR'easter, says, a diversion of my time. Proposed reforms to GAR should include a QPQ system, where nominators have to work on an article. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
But anyone could have reverted the article back to its original state. It would be a pretty sorry state of affairs if reverting 167 edits made over 13 years was a desirable outcome. I cannot imagine that anyone invested in the article enough to be upset by it being brought to GAR would appreciate someone doing that. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 00:25, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I see two problems here: we are incorrectly telling ourselves and our readers that some articles meet 2024 expectations for Good Articles when they don't and in addressing that problem we are sometimes causing undue stress and making unrealistic expectations on those who might rework the articles to meet standards. I think as we come up with solutions (the 30 day one seems like a good idea, while I'm less convinced that the QPQ is a good one) we also recognize that many of the articles do not have someone at all interested in doing the work. And so perhaps there is a way of having a way of separating those two groups (articles w/an interested maintainer and articles w/o an interested maintainer) and go on different tracks for each. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 00:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I think we need to remove the misperception that there is a one-week deadline to improve articles at GAR. As stated above, right now there's an expectation that an editor will volunteer to address concerns within a week: afterwards, they are given as much time as they need, but also should give periodic updates if the progress is paused or complete. Z1720 (talk) 00:34, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
The current practice is that if they don't rush in to commit their time to that improvement within that short timeframe then the GAR gets closed. Why do we need to close it so quickly? What's the rush? These articles have slowly deteriorated over years; another few weeks here or there won't make much difference in our standards. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:37, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
There also isn't the expectation from what I've seen to actually get the article done in a rush; a statement of intent to work on it and at least sporadically continuing work is good enough to keep it open for a good chunk of time. Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Gettysburg Cyclorama/1 was kept open for over a month on what was a pretty short article and I'm sure would have been kept open longer if needed. FAR will sometimes put a nomination on hold for a few months if it's going to be a particularly big amount of work; I'm sure something like that could be implemented for GAR as well. Hog Farm Talk 01:00, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
The last FAR I did was Hanford Site, and it took me four months to complete. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:42, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I have no issues with a GAR being open for even longer than that, so long as work is actively ongoing. Wikipedia:Featured article review/Concerto delle donne/archive1 has been open since May 2023, although nearly two years may be a bit on the excessive end for GAR. One thing we do want to avoid is creeping up GAR standards to FAR standards - GA is a much lower bar, so the detailed polishing (which I've found to be the most tedious part in articles I've written) isn't necessary. Hog Farm Talk 03:48, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree with both Z1720 and David (because I think they're agreeing with each other). We need to change the misperception there is a deadline of a week and we need to make clear there is no rush as long as there is someone willing to improve the article. This sounds like something that could be improved by changing the wording of the templates we use. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:09, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I really appreciate Z1720's quality control efforts, which continue despite the personal attacks they've received in several different GARs. WP:SWEEPS2023 is being slowly worked through for the most part because of their efforts. Also, like it or not, GAs are often used as templates for similar articles and if an article with the stamp is subpar, you risk the same issues spreading elsewhere.
Still, I was going to suggest a possible limit to how many GARs can be open at once (for reference, the current number is 35), but the main issue raised seems to be the time available before delisting. I wouldn't be opposed to increasing this from one week, though I do feel 30 days is overly long, so I'd prefer something like two weeks. Sgubaldo (talk) 00:52, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Thirty days is reasonable, but only if I have only one to do. If a dozen are dumped on me at once, then they should run consecutively, so I have twelve months to do them. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 02:28, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
This might limit the number of GARs in a given topic to twelve a year. I question why this limit should exist in GAR, but not for GAN. Z1720 (talk) 02:33, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I agree; I don't think there should be any cap. Keeping the GA indicator as an accurate indication of quality is important; we can't reasonably expect to see them all saved at GANR. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:49, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
To add on, it isn't hard to see that a lot of the articles that Z1720 has brought to GAR were written/nominated by editors who have been inactive or semi-active for years. It would be a waste of everyone's time to be required to wait on their behalf. Anonymous 04:22, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Whose time is being wasted? Put it on a list, come back 30 days later, do other stuff in the meantime. You don't need to sit there, stopping all your other editing to repeatedly refresh the page every minute in hope they come back. It is difficult to distinguish users who have totally left from users who check in every few weeks to see if something needs their urgent attention; this waiting period would allow us to make that distinction. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:39, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Because if you put limits on how many articles can be at GAR at any given time, we will have an impossible-to-fill backlog of substandard GAs! When we have thousands upon thousands of GAs, the number that fall below the standard is larger than twelve in any given topic per year Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 06:42, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
This is a problem only because of artificial limits you are imposing to make it into a problem. If you keep unchanged the limit on how many GAR nominations can be started in a given time period, but allow each one to run longer, there is no problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:47, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Oh, fair enough, I misunderstood. I would be fine with that switch-up. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 07:07, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Changes

Alright, based on what seems to be unobjectionable in this discussion, I have boldly edited the GAR guidelines to:

  • change the expected time limit from one week to one month;
    • to include the "one week with unanimous strong consensus" exception;
  • to make more prominent the practice of holding GARs open (within reason) if someone intends to work on them;
  • and to prohibit more than three nominations on closely-related topics being open simultaneously.

Hopefully, the above changes should remove the undue stress and unrealistic pressure some editors feel/perceive. If anyone disagrees, of course feel free to revert (EDIT: as they have now been). Also notifying @GAR coordinators: ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:04, 15 January 2025 (UTC)

Happy with everything except the "not more than three". If Editor A has saturated the GAR queue and editor B comes along and notices a severe problem with another article that has not improved after tagging and talk page notifications, then editor B should be encouraged to open a GAR immediately, not told to wait their turn. We can prohibit one editor from nominating more than three articles, but we should not restrict GARs by others. —Kusma (talk) 13:19, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I do not think changes to GAR process should be made with less than 24 hours of discussion on some proposals, and with proposals buried inside a thread that was started as a complaint against me. I would prefer a more structured environment like WP:GAPD23, focused on GAR, where I can comment on each proposal and make my own proposals. Z1720 (talk) 13:27, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
By all means you should make your own suggestions, but I would hope we can find consensus with a structure that reflects the number of editors who care about it. The structure you're proposing is well suited to project wide discussions with large scopes or where there has been a complete inability for more relaxed forms of consensus building to work. Neither is true here (at least not yet). Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 17:21, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
If there are enough proposals that formalised discussions is necessary, then we can go to a GAPD23 structure—which, as you may remember, is exactly how GAPD23 came about. You are perfectly welcome to comment on each proposal and make your own in an unstructured discussion. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
The change to "After one week, if three or more editors, including the nominator, unanimously agree the article does not meet the GACR" reshapes GAR to be an explicit delisting process. The point of holding the GAR open is to see if anyone is working on it. We do not expect editors, as far as I am aware, to go into less than a week old GARs with delist !votes. (I would also prefer that we not encourage drive-by personal attacks as a mechanism of change.) CMD (talk) 13:41, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I am also not a fan, as I remarked above, of Acebulf's hypocritical statements on "violating" behaviour, but it seems a waste of time to ignore all subsequent discussion becaue of it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:46, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
It's not just Buro. The initial post meant the subsequent discussion was not focused, which can be seen by the result shifting GAR to make it a more delisting process, which seems to be exactly the opposite of what is wanted! CMD (talk) 23:15, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
Your assumption is that people will mass-vote "delist" within a week. That happens extremely rarely. A look at current reassessments shows only Gilbert Perreault fulfilling that criteria, where ten years of a seventeen-year career are missing.
What seems to be wanted overall (i.e. not from just the initial hostile post) is that GAR becomes less adversarial, which is what the other changes (month-long discussions, topic limits) are intended to fix.
As the person who has probably closed above 80% of GARs since GAPD23, I think I can best speak on how much participation GAR currently attracts. I can tell you that if the number of people actually making GAR work was anywhere close to the number of people commenting here about how GAR should work, the process would immediately be around twice as collaborative. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:48, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
That's not my assumption, it's an implication of the text. Currently we don't expect people to do this, the new instructions suggest it should be happening. CMD (talk) 01:15, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Agree that any sort of limits on types of nominations is a non-starter. The idea of the entire good articles and reassessment process is not to get shiny medals for people to burnish their electronic egos, it's to have quality articles. There's no mechanic for limiting nominations, so in a practical sense the GAR process is already unable to reasonably handle the number of subpar articles out there. Until we limit noms at GAN, we should never limit at GAR. Der Wohltemperierte Fuchs talk 16:03, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think we need the "unanimous strong consensus" exception - I really don't see any harm in holding them all open for a month, and if we get one that's so obviously delist material that we should shortcut the month (eg, driveby promotion by a sockpuppet, immediately listed at GAR), that's what WP:IAR is for. -- asilvering (talk) 17:10, 15 January 2025 (UTC)
We're assessing articles, not selling guns. Forcing a 30 day hold no matter what is foolish extra bureaucracy. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Eh? There's no bureaucracy involved in simply waiting for 30 days. -- asilvering (talk) 12:15, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I'm not a huge fan of the 30-day period being the new length. Is there any reason why it would have been helpful for Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Siege of Gythium/1 to run for a full month? Or Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Giselle/1? Now granted, one was promoted by a sock and the other was written by a sock, but that's still a case we need to keep in mind. I would prefer maybe two weeks as standard unless there was a very strong consensus or other factors (such as socking or hoaxing - see the ColonelHenry mass FAR from a couple years ago). With the 30 days being for the silent consensus closing. Hog Farm Talk 00:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

That was a quick delist, and very untypical of the many I see on my watchlist. In the vast majority the key issue is a lack of citations, and adding these is often extremely time-consuming (if I do work on this it is very rarely my own work I am adding references to - I've never really done GAs). I think the situation is often not helped by the inital GAR "enquiry" suggesting all sorts of fundamental "wouldn't it be nice if" reconstructions, which are not very relevant to the GA criteria, and usually not thought through. The very few editors who respond to the GAR call are happily distracted into discussing these, normally without intending to actually do anything themselves. Johnbod (talk) 05:34, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
A lack of citations is grounds for a WP:QUICKFAIL during the nomination phase, so it seems reasonable to not have the reassessment phase be drawn out if that's the issue. A delisted article can always be nominated anew if and when it is brought up to standards. TompaDompa (talk) 06:40, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Re-nominating an article is an extremely heavyweight process. I tend to plan for it taking a full week of my Wikipedia editing time, at a random time not in my choosing sometime in the next few months when someone finally gets around to looking at it. It would be much preferable to get a favorable result from a GAR (difficult when multiple GAR participants are often very vague and contradictory about what they think it would take to get them to agree) and even more preferable to head off the GAR before it starts. Our goal should be to bring these articles back to GA status, and secondarily to retain the good will and participation of the editors who can do that, not to delist articles as quickly as possible and to demoralize editors in the way that Acebulf has obviously become demoralized. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I disagree. The goal of the GAR process, specifically, should be to ensure that articles with GA status are up to GA standards. Article improvement is part of that (and the best outcome, obviously), but so is removing GA status from articles that fall short. TompaDompa (talk) 07:03, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
You misunderstand. Obviously we should not pass articles that do not pass our criteria. But if we have a choice of improving an article to meet the criteria and passing it, or failing to improve it and failing to pass it, we should choose the first. We should not push for changes that would make the first less likely and the second more likely. Similarly, if we have a choice of retaining the good will of editors and encouraging them to improve articles so that they can pass, or of pissing off those editors and getting them to flounce from the GA project and maybe from Wikipedia altogether, then obviously we should choose the first. We have clear evidence in this long thread that the second has been happening. The attitude expressed by you here that we must take a hard line and not even attempt to nurture our articles and our editors may be a big part of why. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:09, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
That is not what I said, and you know it. But either GA status means something, in which case false positives should be kept to a minimum, or it does not, in which case removing GA status should not be a big deal. If there is a significant delay between a GA ceasing to meet the criteria and either being improved such that it does or being delisted, then it is for a significant amount of time a false positive GA. TompaDompa (talk) 07:33, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I question whether 30 days instead of half that is actually a significant amount of time in the lifetime of a GA, and whether temporarily having a green star on an article is so damaging to the encyclopedia that we must rush to bite editors and delist articles instead of waiting to try to get the article improved. Why don't you want to try to get articles improved? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:47, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I have no idea why you think I don't want articles to be improved. A much more reasonable conclusion from what I said would be that articles should be brought to GAR sooner and either improved or delisted in shorter order. If an article has GA status for 5 years, but only meets the criteria for the first two, then it is a false positive GA for the majority of the time it is listed. I think that's a problem. I don't want editors to feel rushed to improve the article after five years in such a case, I want them to have already improved—or, failing that, delisted—it after two years. If, hypothetically speaking, more GAs are false positives than actually meet the criteria at a given point in time, the process has failed catastrophically. What percentage of false positives would be required for the process to be considered a failure can be discussed, but I think it is way, way below half. TompaDompa (talk) 08:41, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I have to agree with David here. And I don't think it is fair to look at GAN when deciding what the process should be for GAR. When an article is nominated to GAN, it indicates that the nominator thinks it meets the criteria. Therefore we would expect any changes made to be minor (e.g. the odd source needs adding here and there). And therefore non-minor changes are considered quickfails. When an article goes to GAR, it means that it used to meet the criteria, but over several years the quality has slipped, and in some cases become quite poor. I think it is reasonable to allow significantly more time to allow the article to be fixed. SSSB (talk) 07:55, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I disagree. If the article is, as you say, quite poor, we should not grant it significant time to improve while retaining GA status, it should be delisted and only get GA status again once it actually meets the criteria. For relatively minor issues, the kind that would be expected to be fixed during the GAN process (as opposed to the nomination being failed), it is reasonable for the article to retain the GA status while the issues are fixed—assuming that this is done in a timely manner. Having at one point in time been successfully nominated for GA status should not mean that an article is not held to the same standards thereafter. TompaDompa (talk) 08:54, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
You are proposing a significant change to current processes. GAR and FAR are currently designed to be more collaborative than adversarial and already GAR nominators face all kinds of accusations. Being quicker to delist may improve the theoretical accuracy of the GA plus but I can't see it improving the atmosphere. —Kusma (talk) 10:18, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I mean, the entire point of GA status being something that is conferred upon an article and then remains in place unless it is actively removed, rather than GA being a one-off thing like e.g. DYK, is that it is supposed to be an indicator of quality. There seems to be general agreement that article quality decreasing over time to the point where the GA criteria are no longer met, sometimes by a substantial margin, is a relatively common occurrence. If GA status is to remain a decently reliable indicator of quality, the threshold for seriously considering removing GA status from an article that no longer meets the criteria needs to be fairly low. That means both that the threshold for bringing articles to GAR needs to be low and that the threshold for delisting articles once they are there if the issues are not addressed in a timely manner needs to be low. The alternative is to fundamentally change GA to a snapshot quality assessment that does not confer any ongoing status to the article at all (which would also mean that GAR would go away entirely since there would be no GA status to remove). This would still encourage article improvement and recognize a job well done by editors via user talk page messages (same as e.g. DYK out barnstars), but would remove the benefit to readers of indicating article quality. This is not my preferred option. TompaDompa (talk) 12:34, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Sure, in an ideal world all of our article ratings would be accurate at all times. A fundamental question is whether ensuring the meaningfulness/accuracy of the green GA plus is worth the cost in terms of volunteer labour and bruised egos of article writers. We should not aim for an abstractly perfect process, just for something that roughly works. —Kusma (talk) 13:25, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
There we agree: the process needs to be decently functional, not perfect. As to your question about whether it is worth it, I say yes. If we have to prioritize between the core purpose of the GA process—quality control—and avoiding conflicts between editors, I think we should go with the former. We should of course always avoid antagonizing editors needlessly, but it is not possible to please everyone and this is an instance where the other considerations have to take precedence. If we don't think the GAR process is worth the hassle in order to ensure that GA status accurately and reliably reflects the level of quality it is supposed to, we should stop having GA symbols on articles in the first place and scrap GAR entirely. TompaDompa (talk) 14:49, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
"Quality control" is NOT "the core purpose of the GA process". The purpose is quality improvement, by providing a process that incentivizes editors to do that improvement. It is really not important to the world that we are accurate in assigning green stars to some articles and not to others. Its importance is as a reward to editors for deserving the green stars they get. When too many articles have green stars and don't deserve them, it devalues that reward, and so we should work to keep it meaningful, but it is a problem only because it reduces the incentivization. Having a few stars on articles that don't deserve them doesn't reduce the quality of the encyclopedia in any way, and taking away those stars is not an effective way of trying to control that quality. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:19, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
As I said above, the entire point of GA status being something that is conferred upon an article and then remains in place unless it is actively removed, rather than GA being a one-off thing like e.g. DYK, is that it is supposed to be an indicator of quality. [...] The alternative is to fundamentally change GA to a snapshot quality assessment that does not confer any ongoing status to the article at all (which would also mean that GAR would go away entirely since there would be no GA status to remove). This would still encourage article improvement and recognize a job well done by editors via user talk page messages (same as e.g. DYK out barnstars), but would remove the benefit to readers of indicating article quality. Thus, the core purpose of the GA process inasmuch as the result is something that it is bestowed upon articles rather than editors is quality control. We could award editors with barnstars or the like without any indication of the process being present either at the article or its talk page, but that's not the way we do it. For that matter, we could prominently display the editor(s) responsible for bringing the article to GA status in the first place, but we don't—if the main idea is to incentivize editors, why do we undercut that effort by not doing something so simple? I think it's telling that you switch between talking about editors being rewarded and articles having green stars—there is no reason the two have to go together since we can reward editors without adding good article symbols to articles. You are also completely overlooking the question of whether there is any benefit to readers, whom the entire encyclopedia is ostensibly meant to serve above all, that there is an indicator of quality in the form of good article symbols on certain articles. To my mind, this is rather simple: if there is a benefit to readers we need to ensure the accuracy of the indicator or else the benefit is lost, and if there is no benefit then these reader-facing symbols should be removed across the board. TompaDompa (talk) 22:24, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Its importance is as a reward to editors for deserving the green stars they get, this may be the issue. I've never considered the green stars as being given to editors, they are assigned to articles. If that's not clear we should make it clear, and make it clear that a GAR is not a slight against any particular editor. CMD (talk) 22:46, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Much of that is plainly true. I'd like to say that all the article's that I've rescued (is that the word) or defended or whatever have been brought through GA by other editors. It's not that it's a slight in those cases, just that working to improve a WikiProject at one end while the thing is falling to bits at the other end feels, well, a bit flaky. I mean, I know that all life is in a gigantic Yin/Yang Bright/Dark whirl of creation and destruction, but the idea of GAN being a collaborative and constructive process that aims to improve articles and projects is a good one; the idea there is that all editors of good will are helping to make these objects ever better, even if it's only punctuation. Turning GAN into one end of a gigantic, ever-rotating meat grinder with GAR ever smashing things up at an equal rate is, hmm, less appealing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 18:48, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
But GAR isn't smashing things up, it's only raised when the supposed 'smashing' has already happened, and provides the groundwork to unsmash(?) the article. CMD (talk) 23:59, 19 January 2025 (UTC)
And also to remove the "this article is not smashed" symbol. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:03, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
There are two additional reasons for bringing an article to GA: to allow it to be run at DYK, and as part of a Good or Featured Topic. In the latter case, a GAR has the potential to disrupt a great deal of work, so one can expect a great deal of push back. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 01:27, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
A GAR shouldn't affect DYK, as within the DYK timeframe it is the usual practice for the GAN to be reassessed. For GT the delist work period is 3 months. Has anyone seen how that timeframe might interact with an extended GAR? Does "Hold" often win out to cover any delays? CMD (talk) 01:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The process as it is allows indefinite time for the article to be fixed. The article that prompted this discussion never even hit the formal GAR stage. CMD (talk) 08:19, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Strictly speaking, not all GAs have fit the criteria - many were done with insufficient reviews, esp. the further back in time you go, while others might have been GA quality initially but have not kept up with changing standards (for instance, the necessity of spot checks on the sources) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 14:54, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Good article reassessment: Good article reassessment (GAR) is a process used to review and improve good articles (GAs) that may no longer meet the good article criteria (GACR). Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:21, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Add to Step 5 in WP:GAN/I#N5

After the first paragraph:

If your nomination passed: congratulations! The article will be listed as a good article.
The article will now transition to a maintenance phase: it is recommended that interested editors regularly check good articles to ensure that they still meet the GA criteria. This is especially important for biographies of living people, recurring events, and active institutions (like sports teams or schools) as these articles can become outdated if new sources are not incorporated. Interested editors should also regularly check that all necessary article text is cited to reliable sources, especially text added after the article's GA promotion. If an article no longer meets the GA criteria, it may be nominated at WP:GAR.

I am reading a lot about editors who feel pressured to improve an article in a short time period. I think the GA process (and FA process) needs to emphasise that an article is not "done" when it achieves a status. However, if the article were slowly maintained over a longer period of time, the article would not need to go to GAR. Hopefully stating that the article needs to be maintained will encourage editors to regularly check their articles to ensure they still meet the criteria. Z1720 (talk) 15:17, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

I don't see how this would hurt, but I am doubtful that it would help. I think that if editors were willing and able to do that, an encouragement in the instructions wouldn't be necessary. This does nothing for situations where the editor originally responsible for the GA promotion has retired, for example. And putting this reminder in the GA instructions won't get it in front of editors who are interested in the subject matter but had no involvement in the GA process. Such editors could be reached, perhaps, by posting at relevant WikiProjects with a notice that says the article was promoted to GA and explicitly suggests watchlisting it. (Yes, there are "article alerts", but not everyone knows about them, and they don't really provide the opportunity to congratulate the nominator, thank the reviewer, and remind the community that keeping an eye on the article would be good.) XOR'easter (talk) 20:11, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
This feels like an improvement over what the instructions have now. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 22:17, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I think this is a good suggestion. If nothing else, it gives us something to point to that states these points explicitly. TompaDompa (talk) 22:27, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
I suggest removing the phrase The article will now transition to a maintenance phase. This sounds like there's some kind of formal process involved and might confuse people. The rest of the paragraph makes your intent clear so I don't think this sentence needs to be replaced with anything. -- asilvering (talk) 12:17, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
+1 ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Proposal: Text to add to the WP:GAR "Reassessment process"

Add to "Reassessment process" #1 (new text starts with the second sentence):

1. Editors should discuss the article's issues with reference to the good article criteria, and work cooperatively to resolve them. Comments should focus on the article's contents and adherence to the good article criteria. Comments on an individual's editing or reviewing abilities will be considered a personal attack: this may result in the comment being removed or the offending editor being banned from the GAR.

Inserting as "Reassessment process" #3:

3. Interested editors can indicate their intention to fix the article and give updates on their progress in the GAR. Reviewers should periodically check the GAR and give additional comments when necessary. Wikipedia is not compulsory and editors should not insist that reviewers, interested editors, or past nominators make the suggested changes, nor should they state that edits should have been completed before the GAR was opened.

Hopefully, this better defines the possible roles in a GAR. This will hopefully prevent WP:SOFIXIT arguments that are constantly directed to reviewers so that the GAR is focused on the article's content instead. Z1720 (talk) 15:48, 16 January 2025 (UTC)

  • I think Comments on an individual's editing or reviewing abilities will be considered a personal attack is too categorical and risks derailing discussions to be about user conduct instead of article content—precisely the opposite of the intended effect. Other than that, I find this to be a good suggestion. TompaDompa (talk) 22:33, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
    There is a different issue. Comments on the salience of the review comments to the topic of the reviewed article can be very relevant. However, adding this text risks situations where appropriate discussion of this nature (for instance, discounting review requests that display misunderstanding of the topic) are misinterpreted as being about the competence of the reviewer, causing unnecessary friction, derailing the review, or even leading to a situation where the competent editors are shut out because they dared to point out that the remaining reviewers' comments are based on misunderstandings. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:41, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
  • I don't think anyone involved has the authority to ban people from GAR, and I can't recall AN/I cases on GA/GAR civility that resulted in action. Making it clear that comments should focus on the article is good, but a statement about WP:CIVIL likely has to be more vague to be accurate. CMD (talk) 22:51, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
  • I do not think that putting up a civility reminder / implicit threat is a good idea. This isn't ArbCom. Civility is a policy everywhere. I don't see any issue with making it clear that comments should be on the article, though I'm not sure I support the current wording. I haven't been very active lately and though I spent about 15 minutes reading through this thread I don't have strong opinions on the correct course of action just yet. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:44, 16 January 2025 (UTC)
There are no reviewers at GAR; it is a workshop process. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 00:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
  • My impression is that this would put reviewers in a category above responders, create a first-mover advantage/chilling effect, and potentially lead to the original nominator being "banned" from their own articles. Not sure its practicable or desired. Ceoil (talk) 00:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
  • This needs a lot of work. There are no reviewers at GAR; civility is an expectation everywhere; if the GAR reason is that a full stop was missing, editors should be perfectly entitled to point out the ludicrousness of the nomination. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:43, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Given the feedback above, let's workshop this. I think the underlying idea is good. Let's go sentence by sentence:

  1. "Comments should focus on the article's contents and adherence to the good article criteria." – I think this is good and does not need to be changed.
  2. "Comments on an individual's editing or reviewing abilities will be considered a personal attack: this may result in the comment being removed or the offending editor being banned from the GAR." – I think this needs to be either changed significantly or removed entirely, and others seem to agree.
  3. "Interested editors can indicate their intention to fix the article and give updates on their progress in the GAR." – I think this is good and does not need to be changed.
  4. "Reviewers should periodically check the GAR and give additional comments when necessary." – I think this is good; those who think the article does not meet the WP:Good article criteria should check in every now and then to see if it has been improved sufficiently for that to no longer be the case. Objections have been raised against the use of the term "reviewers"; I have no specific suggestions about alternatives.
  5. "Wikipedia is not compulsory and editors should not insist that reviewers, interested editors, or past nominators make the suggested changes, nor should they state that edits should have been completed before the GAR was opened." – I think this is good; the above point about "reviewers" applies here as well. I might clarify what "past nominators" means here (I'm guessing it refers to past WP:Good article nominations?).

Thoughts? TompaDompa (talk) 19:00, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

  • I object to these proposals. The problem at GAR is when bullies harass people for helping the project by removing an inaccurate classification. This is not a solution, it is appeasement. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
    • Might you perhaps elaborate on what you find to be appeasement here? TompaDompa (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
      • GAR should be ready to say WP:SOFIXIT if someone gets upset that a non-GA still classified as a GA is no longer going to be classified as a GA. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:58, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
        • I see. I read "Wikipedia is not compulsory and editors should not insist that reviewers, interested editors, or past nominators make the suggested changes, nor should they state that edits should have been completed before the GAR was opened." as saying pretty much the opposite—those who think the article should retain WP:Good article status should not insist "fix the problems instead of bringing them up at GAR". TompaDompa (talk) 20:50, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
          Okay, thank you, I misread that part. I still believe that this is a problem with individuals rather than with the system, but I see where you and Z1720 are coming from on these points. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:05, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
          I take the position that since systems can be better or worse equipped to handle problematic individuals, we should try to improve the system either way: if the system is the problem we should fix it, and if individuals are the problem we should make the system better at dealing with those individuals. It is of course also possible for both to be part of the problem. TompaDompa (talk) 21:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
"Comments should focus on the article's contents and adherence to the good article criteria." should be expanded by adding that "The comments should be as specific as possible and must not exceed GA criteria requirements." For example, instead of "The history section should be updated." say "The history section should be updated with XYZ." In the given example, XYZ must be one of the main aspects of the topic since GACR 3a requires that the article "addresses the main aspects of the topic". I am aware that this requires nominators to gain some (minimal) knowledge of what would be the main aspects of the topic, but otherwise it is legitimate to create review workload out of curiosity if there's something new in the field. GAN reviewers face the same burden, so why not expect it from GAR nominators? Tomobe03 (talk) 20:01, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't think it's helpful to outright prohibit comments that go beyond the GA criteria. The important part is that only adherence to the GA criteria determines whether the article remains a GA or is delisted. The former encourages replies of the type "you're not allowed to say that", while the latter encourages replies of the type "that doesn't matter for our purposes here". We should want to focus the process on content rather than conduct. TompaDompa (talk) 21:04, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Some respondents to GARs want specific comments, others respond with hostility when every uncited statement is tagged or listed in the GAR. Giving specific concerns wastes a reviewer's time if no one offers to fix the article. If someone offers to make improvements, specific comments can be requested. As for comments outside the GA criteria: there are often disagreements to what is and is not included in the criteria. I would rather that a GAR not become a debate about this, and adding that type of statement might cause that to happen. Z1720 (talk) 23:26, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I am fine with adding 1, 3, 4, and 5, while striking 2 as not having consensus. I wish the consensus was different, but understand that I'm in the minority. Perhaps "Reviewers" can be replaced with "commentators". "Past nominators" in #4 refers to the editor(s) who nominated an article to GAN. Z1720 (talk) 23:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Restricting only the number of nominations per field in a given period makes little sense unless it is to prevent unwarranted nominations made out of curiosity. Such throttling of the nominations, if I read it correctly, e.g. one warship per month... is like restricting the monthly number of articles where one may add a citation needed tag where one is specifically warranted. If a GA criterion is not met specifically, it should be pointed out, but generally speaking, only specific comments are actionable. If the GAR nominator is not required to be familiar with the article topic or specific GA criteria, we should scrap the GAR process as it is now, and automatically nominate GAs for review by a bot. Tomobe03 (talk) 08:07, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

Templates in nominator signatures

See this discussion. If a nominator has a template in their signature, it causes problems for the GANReviewTool script. Templates in signatures are forbidden. Kusma suggested that ChristieBot could notice the issue and flag it as an error. I'm trying to avoid major changes to the bot at the moment, but I think this would be a very simple change, so I could probably get it done. Do we want to do this? The effect would be that the GAN updates would look like this one, with an edit summary starting "Errors listed!", and the error section at the bottom of GAN would show something like "Nominator for Example has a template in their signature". The error would continue to appear on every GAN update until the signature was cleaned up, which could be done by any user. Also pinging Novem Linguae, the author of the GANReviewTool script. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:07, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

By "until the signature was cleaned up", do you mean specifically the signature in the GAN template? If it avoids complications with the GANReviewTool script it seems of marginal benefit, although it's probably rare enough that you shouldn't feel much pressure to look into it. CMD (talk) 13:23, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes -- it could be substed or the whole signature could just be replaced with a link to the editor's user page. I know there are a few regulars here who notice when the bot puts an error in that section, and clean it up if possible; this is a little extra work for those editors, so I don't want to do it unless people agree it's worth fixing. If it doesn't get fixed it would keep showing up, meaning that the other real errors would be less likely to get noticed. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:09, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Related: https://github.com/NovemLinguae/UserScripts/issues/209. It's a rare bug but I've gotten 3 bug reports about it. Patching it would be a decent amount of effort because RegEx (how I do most of my GANReviewTool wikicode parsing) is not good at handling nested template syntax. –Novem Linguae (talk) 13:39, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Yet another way to deal with this could be to make {{GA nominee}} throw up an error (and add a tracker category) if any of its entries contain templates. No idea how difficult that would be to code, though. —Kusma (talk) 14:17, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Maybe I was wrong about the frequency, it happened again. Well, the Error reporting works. CMD (talk) 12:53, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

I think that means I don't need to do anything -- if the GANReviewTool makes a mistake, it will show up here as an error, and then someone will fix it. It'll get fixed later in the process, rather than earlier, but at least it is flagged when it goes wrong. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:57, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Reviewing instructions at GA instructions

This has been raised a few times now if I remember correctly, but there are still no instructions at WP:GAN/I telling people the actual review process. It doesn't mention that you should provide feedback on the criteria, that you're encouraged to list the sources you checked, or any other expectations. Neither GAN/I nor WP:GACR give any advice on how to check specific criteria. Should we consider workshopping something to this effect, or does someone need to WP:BOLDly add something? I know at one point there was also talk of merging GAN/I, WP:RGA, and WP:GANOT into a single streamlined page. Is there any support for doing this? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:25, 19 January 2025 (UTC)

Should we prominently link WP:RGA in WP:GAN/I#R3? CMD (talk) 00:02, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
That could work. It might be a good idea to clean it up a bit then, make it a little easier to follow for someone who's not entirely familiar with the process and update it to reflect current standards and expectations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:05, 20 January 2025 (UTC)
Yes, I think that we could try to make RGA more prominent (as it is really the actual guideline). If GANI, RGA, and GANOT could be merged, that would be good. I remember you had done some work on User:Thebiguglyalien/Good article reviewing guide, but it needs some work to incorporate GANI. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:31, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Consistent citation style

May I please ask (1) what is meant by "inconsistently formatted citations" in good article reassessment, and (2) are verifiability cleanup templates such as {{Citation style}} included in the set in WP:QF? Because if they are not, should the criteria not be updated to exclude {{Citation style}} since currently they seem to say they are included?

The context for these questions is article Perth Underground railway station (talk), which is currently rated as a good article (GA), having been found to satisfy the good article criteria.

However, Good article reassessment currently says common problems (including [...] inconsistently formatted citations [...]) are not covered by the GA criteria and therefore are not grounds for delisting. However, this seems to contradict WP:QF, which says [a]n article may fail without further review (known as a quick fail) if, prior to the review: [...] It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid, since inconsistently formatted citations may be tagged for verifiability cleanup using {{Citation style}} where [t]he most common correct use of this template is to identify an article that uses more than one major citation style. {{Citation style}} adds a cleanup banner to the article, presumably to promote the helpful standard practice of imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles [...]: an improvement because it makes the citations easier to understand and edit.

My instinct here is that each good article is expected to have a consistent citation style (whatever citation style is chosen for that particular article), and that an otherwise good article with an inconsistent style (because it mixes multiple styles) is just shy of being a good article. However, I would like to check with this group here if that is a goal of the good article (GA) rating, and whether or not Perth Underground railway station ought to be reassessed. Elrondil (talk) 07:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

I agree that it is a good idea to cause articles to have a consistent citation style, but the clear past consensus is that it is not a Good Article criterion. That said, if you can figure out whether the citation style should be Citation Style 1 or Citation Style 2 (usually by going through the history and finding the last consistently styled version) then it is easy to get the citation templates to enforce this for you by adding {{CS1 config|mode=cs2}} (or mode=cs1). It is so easy that I would feel comfortable enough doing this as a reviewer rather than even bringing it up. If citations are manually formatted rather than templated, then getting them consistent is more work. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:45, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
So WP:QF ought to be updated to clearly and explicitly exclude verifiability cleanup banners such as {{Citation style}}, right? Currently it seems this is tribal knowledge (that I didn’t know) and consequently spent time and effort going in the wrong direction, which is a waste and unless changed could repeat. Elrondil (talk) 08:48, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Quickfailing is always optional. You can QF for having unaddressed maintenance banners, but you're not obliged to. As a reviewer, you can do whatever you feel is right, including as David has suggested, just fixing it yourself if it's simple enough. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 09:05, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: The specific dispute here doesn't involve CS1 vs CS2, but short citations vs full citations. Your point still stands though. Steelkamp (talk) 13:47, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
@Steelkamp: Actually, the context, Perth Underground railway station, is about using BOTH short and full at the same time (when all the guidelines say we should chose which and then use it consistently). It was NEVER about "vs".
This HERE is about two questions and possibly updating of the guidelines to capture one of the answers so nobody else is likely to waste the time and energy I did. Elrondil (talk) 14:33, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I think part of the issue is the interpretation of the word "consistent" in this instance. If I decide to format the citations such that short journal articles use full citations, while longer articles (with more extensive page ranges) or books use short citations (to enable specification of the specific page#), in my mind, that's still using citations "consistently". This approach (used in the Perth Underground railway station in question) is allowed at FAC. Esculenta (talk) 14:47, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
That sounds to me like you are using multiple styles, but have organised when you use which style. That isn’t consistent with a style, just consistent with your organisation of which style to use when ... but you’re using multiple styles. Elrondil (talk) 15:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I do this at many of my FACs, and it's not considered to be inconsistent. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Not only is it consistent, but also, it might be the least bad out of our available styles. It allows for citing multiple different page ranges within the same document without a lot of garish superscripts interrupting the main text, while still having the full details for many references only a single click away, and also being friendly to the addition of new single-use references via the Visual Editor. XOR'easter (talk) 23:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The guidelines do NOT say we cannot mix short and full footnotes. It is an entirely consistent style to use a full footnote for the first instance of a source and then to use short footnotes to refer to other points in the same source. This is getting far far into the weeds beyond the Good Article criteria. It should not hold up GA status and it should not merit a cleanup banner. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:37, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I think it's a disconnect between users as to when it's appropriate to throw a cleanup tag on an article. If there's only one or two inconsistent citations out of dozens, it's unlikely to be significant enough to merit an entire cleanup tag. On the other hand, if the article is 50% one style and 50% another, then that's enough imo for a cleanup tag and to not promote to GA until it's fixed. In other words, if it's just one or two, WP:SOFIXIT applies (i.e. don't fail the article, just go into it and fix those couple citations yourself, if you're reviewing/commenting). On the other hand, if the citations are so different from each other as to merit the cleanup tag, it's not GA material. -bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez | me | talk to me! 07:46, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
In this concrete example, the ratio is 24 vs 77 inline citations, so just over 23%. The main author is adamant they wish to use multiple citation styles at the same time, citing other GAs as precedence, and while I’m prepared to migrate the minor styles to the predominant style, it would probably just be reverted which is just a waste of everyone’s time and effort ... and unnecessary since, as Hawkeye7 said clearly, a consistent citation style is not required at Good Article level. Elrondil (talk) 09:06, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
A consistent citation style is not required at Good Article level; it is a requirement at A-class, the next level up. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 08:42, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you, that is very helpful 😀. Elrondil (talk) 08:46, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

Wishing to avoid a repeat of this waste of time and effort, may I please update the good article criteria to clearly and explicitly exclude a consistent citation style as a requirement for GA, turning this tribal knowledge into public knowledge? For example, by making the following additions?

  1. In WP:QF: “It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid except for any relating to a consistent citation style, such as {{Citation style}}”
  2. In WP:GACR6: “it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline; except that while a consistent citation style is encouraged it is not a requirement at Good Article level”

Elrondil (talk) 09:55, 17 January 2025 (UTC)

If we're going to add that sort of clarification, shouldn't it be more general? E.g. "It has, or needs, cleanup banners that are unquestionably still valid and which refer to noncompliance with the GA criteria"? Not very fluent, but my point is that surely there are other clean up banners that also don't justify a quick fail. GACR doesn't require compliance with all of the MoS, for example, so there are probably some MoS-related banners that one should ignore for GA. I don't know if the wording does need to be changed as you suggest, but if we do clarify that sentence I think it needs to cover all bases. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:15, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
But the criteria IS the definition, so you can’t defer to it when defining it. Elrondil (talk) 11:27, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The Quickfail criteria can refer to the general GA criteria. —Kusma (talk) 11:29, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
True. Elrondil (talk) 11:32, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
As I read WP:GACR6, it is VERY specific about which subset of the MOS it includes, but currently it covers ALL the citation style guidelines. Elrondil (talk) 11:38, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
In the guidelines the consistency is a "should", not a must. That means that although it is expected, there is a little bit of discretion with good reason. I don't know if this particular case has that good reason, but in general this does mean that the GACR doesn't need to enforce this strictly. Note on the QF, that the criteria is "large numbers of [citation needed], [clarification needed], or similar tags", which implies small numbers of tags (and I would consider citation style a minor one like these despite not being inline) do not necessitate a QF. CMD (talk) 11:51, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
The layout style guideline refers to WP:CITEVAR, which says a helpful standard practice is imposing one style on an article with inconsistent citation styles, which {{Citation style}} promotes (its most common correct use [...] is to identify an article that uses more than one major citation style), which is a cleanup template currently covered by WP:QF. But according to Hawkeye7 a consistent citation style is not required at Good Article level, which everyone seems to be agreeing with, and all I am suggesting is that we write that down for the benefit of others that come after me. Elrondil (talk) 15:25, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
I don't read the citation style cleanup tag as being currently covered by WP:QF in that way. A reword might specific the tags that are being looked for, but it is probably trickier to list all the tags that aren't being looked for. In some respects it is down to reviewer interpretation and situations will vary. CMD (talk) 15:30, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
Looking at WP:Template index/Cleanup there are several banners that I would be less concerned about than {{citation style}}, for example {{metricate}} or {{USRD-wrongdir}}. I don't see a compelling reason to make an explicit exception for citation style-related banners. I wouldn't object to changing the QF guidelines to say that it only applies to cleanup banners which relate to WP:GACR6, though I can also see an argument that if a problem is bad enough that it merits a cleanup banner that's an issue for GA status even if it would be acceptable in moderation. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:57, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
[C]hanging the QF guidelines to say that it only applies to cleanup banners which relate to WP:GACR6 sounds great. Elrondil (talk) 15:36, 17 January 2025 (UTC)
At that point we're just repeating QF criterion 1. Might as well just delete QF 3 entirely. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:17, 18 January 2025 (UTC)
That is an excellent point. If I may echo this back to check I understood correctly, QF2–5 are not the same as QF1 but, rather, are INDEPENDENT reasons that "stand on their own two legs" for QF'ing an article. That is also how I read WP:QF at first.
That is, QF2–5 are in ADDITION to QF1:
  • sometimes to state and highlight – clearly, unambiguously and directly – an important reason for QF'ing (such as QF2 that equates to WP:GACR6 item 2.d, and QF4 that equates to WP:GACR6 item 5),
  • in the case of QF5 to say "issues found previously are also issues now, and we're not going through GA assessment again until these existing issues are fixed first", and
  • in the case of QF3 to say "a GA-rated article can't need non-trivial cleanup (the purpose of which is to drive it towards satisfying MOS as required by WP:GACR6 item 1.b), and as marked in the article with one or more cleanup banners, or even just large numbers of cleanup tags throughout the article".
Elrondil (talk) 05:35, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I still believe the good article criteria may be made clearer.

I am therefore now proposing the following additions.

  1. In WP:QF: "It has, or needs, cleanup banners, or even just large numbers of cleanup tags, that are unquestionably still valid and that are within the scope of the six good article criteria."
  2. In WP:GACR6: "it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;[3][X]", where [X] is a new footnote (with whatever number X it ends up) that reads "A consistent citation style is not a requirement for a Good Article rating."

The purpose of the first addition is to clearly and unambiguously qualify QF3 to the scope covered by WP:GACR6, and to untangle the cleanup banner and tag bits a little better. The purpose of the second addition is to clearly and unambiguously state that a consistent citation style is not required for a Good Article rating, but a little out of the way by dropping it into the foot.


It is also now very clear to me that there is no hope for consensus on what a "consistent citation style" is, even just amongst this group. Let’s be honest: we have a room full of cats, worse, a very large room with lots of especially unwilling cats. Everyone will do what they want, and this has persisted going back to the dawn of Wikipedia, so I doubt there will EVER be consensus. Which is fine: the diversity of humanity is a gift, not a curse.

BUT as David Eppstein suggested, this IS beyond GA rating, ... and, as an aside, perhaps there doesn’t NEED to be consensus if Wikipedia adopts a model–view–controller approach for citations. That is, (1) we as editors express citations in source (the model bit), (2) the readers decide through preferences and settings how they want to see these citations (the view bit) – as full, or as short, or as a hybrid, or whatever other scheme someone comes up with, and then (3) Wikipedia presents it to that user the way they want to see it (the controller bit). Which then means we wouldn’t decide how citations are presented, but delegate that decision to the reader. Until that becomes reality we just need to live with the plethora of approaches we currently have. Elrondil (talk) 06:14, 18 January 2025 (UTC)

I support the proposal of @Elrondi. In fact, I just had this problem in a GA review: the reviewer suggested that the citations needed to be consistent. I was very confused because that is an FA requirement, not GA (FA: "consistent citations: where required by criterion 1c, consistently formatted inline citations using footnotes—see citing sources for suggestions on formatting references. Citation templates are not required.")
I don't think the GA criteria should remain silent. The lack of clarity caused me a lot of grief.
Is there anyone that objects to adding "consistent citation formats are not required" to the GA criteria? Maybe a footnote would be enough?
Noleander (talk) 21:20, 22 January 2025 (UTC)
Related notes:
Rjjiii (talk) 05:59, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Favre's Dad Game/GA1

I have never had this, but two weeks without a response and the reviewer hasn't edited for 12 days. Anyone want to jump in and do a quick review? The reviewer's review was really good, don't want to waste it. I know there is no rush, but I don't like having open nominations for too long. Any help would be greatly appreciated! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:45, 28 January 2025 (UTC)

GAN gone stale

What is the process on a GAN gone stale? All Tomorrows No Yesterdays (talk · contribs) started to take up Vince Gill on January 5, but as of today, has only left one singular comment on the article's quality and the GAN has progressed no further. When DoctorWhoFan91 (talk · contribs) called them out for their slow speed, All Tomorrows started arguing with DoctorWhoFan91, and said, I'm pretty discouraged from editing.I personally don't like being constantly critiqued on my edits and contributions, it feels a bit discouraging. I do have a lot to learn, I understand that, however, I think giving me time to improve and learn might be a better option since I don't really handle criticism too well. Its not like this is an RFA, plus if you have any problems with my contributions, just refer to my talk page. I don't think this GA review is the best place to talk about this.

It seems All Tomorrows is more interested in being confrontational and making excuses instead of moving to progress on the GAN. Is there a way I can throw it back out there for another editor to take on? Ten Pound Hammer • (What did I screw up now?) 23:11, 20 January 2025 (UTC)

Talk:Vince Gill/GA1. I'm not sure the GAN is better than the talkpage to raise this, but digging into it it may be worth raising their reviewing. DoctorWhoFan91, was your comment based on just this review or are you aware of a wider history? (Noting their username was Sangsangaplaz:) Two recent GANs are Talk:Kiruko/GA1 and Talk:Seunghan/GA1, which don't really discuss the criteria or check sourcing. As for the current review, my instinct is to raise in on their talkpage, but as they are on wikibreak and thus won't be continuing the review for almost a month more, if there are no objections I'll close the GAN and send the article back into the queue. CMD (talk) 02:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
They also have Talk:Dick Simpson (politician)/GA1 in a similar state, and they also had a slow-ish review at Talk:Zug massacre/GA1 at that moment(they have since passed it). I also checked the two reviews you mentioned (they were partially why I checked the review, as one of them was started as the same time as the two. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 07:57, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
I've relisted Talk:Vince Gill/GA1 and Talk:Dick Simpson (politician)/GA1, and dropped a short note to the reviewer. I don't currently have the capacity to look at the already closed reviews, and see if any actions should be taken there. CMD (talk) 16:14, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Thank you for closing and relisting them! I have looked at all three, and they are all short-ish, and none has any spot-check. Though I'm not sure if the reviews were fine and comprehensive or not. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 16:21, 21 January 2025 (UTC)
Is there a discussion to still have over the GA nominations and reassessments? 2601AC47 (talk·contribs·my rights) Isn't a IP anon 02:08, 29 January 2025 (UTC)
What do you mean? Relisted GANs can be reviewed normally, reassessments are always a discussion. CMD (talk) 02:59, 29 January 2025 (UTC)

Also stale: Talk:The Cock Destroyers/GA1. I addressed @GhostRiver:'s concerns, pinged a few days ago, and I just noticed that she hasn't edited since 17 January. This was one of seven GANs of mine to start their reviews in less than a week and I hit a wall trying to address all of them, so I am very eager to draw under a line under that group altogether.--Launchballer 16:06, 25 January 2025 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis, Talk:Andhra Pradesh/GA3 also needs relisting. DoctorWhoFan91 (talk) 18:09, 27 January 2025 (UTC)

Done, relisted to original nomination date. CMD (talk) 02:18, 28 January 2025 (UTC)
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