Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 9

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:Good articles. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 5

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Archive 7

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OK to tag for deletion?

OK to tag Wikipedia:Good articles/redesign for deletion? Any other sandboxes out there? --Ling.Nut 14:50, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Stars

Under "Physics and astronomy" I would like to recommend adding a "Stars" sub-section to include the following from the "Astronomy" heading:

16 Cygni — 47 Ursae Majoris — 55 Cancri — Algol — Gliese 876 — HD 217107 — HD 28185 — Mu Arae — Sirius — Tau Ceti — Upsilon Andromedae

Thank you. — RJH (talk) 23:36, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi RJHall,

This is a good idea, so I have made the change.

In future, feel free to make the change yourself. The categories on the good article page fall out of date quickly because they are not frequently updated by users. But the script that updates this page can automatically sense changes to the categories and category icons. So there should be no problem with individual users updating the page.

Cedars 14:29, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Thank you. — RJH (talk) 21:55, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Good Article symbol

I've noticed that all featured articles have a small star in the top right corner designating them as featured articles. Has such an emblem ever been proposed for Good Articles? Just to see how it would work, I created one temporarily here in my userspace based on the same coding as {{featuredarticle}}. Obviously if it were adopted, it would need to be in template space, but this definitely needs to be discussed first. I've also transcluded it on this page for demonstration purposes. AuburnPilot^talk 23:41, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

It was, but there was a fight over it many months ago, and the anti-metadata editors won, so it was deleted I think. Quite frankly, i've never been able to see any merit at all to their arguments against metadata, but meh. Homestarmy 23:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I just found the discussion in the first archive on the Wikiproject page. I think this would benefit the project in the same way the featured article template does...I'll read through the original discussion now. AuburnPilot^talk 23:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

That discussion along with it's TfD are the most insult filled, personal attack riddled, bad faith discussions I've ever seen. Many of the delete comments seemed to be insults to the GA process itself, rather than the template or the articles it appears on. At the time, GA was not official and likely didn't have much support. Now, with firm processes in place, I could see a use for this template. Nearly 7 months have passed since that discussion, but I doubt many have changed their opinions. AuburnPilot^talk 00:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I still am ambivalent about the template, but not so ambivalent that I don't think it would be helpful in some way, if you want to re-create the template, I think a deletion review would be the best way to proceed to make sure the fight stays away from here and in the real discussion this time. Then of course we'll need to see whether or not most people involved with the GA system would support putting it in that top corner, its possible we might be able to convince User:Cedars to program such functionality in that script/hack of his so we don't have to do it manually :). Homestarmy 00:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't find anything wrong with a deletion review as the last one that happened on this template seemed to go by without anyone here even knowing about it. Also many of the objections from the TFD (found here being deleted 32-30) don't seem to apply anymore. Tarret 01:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea to me, and it looks like many, many people agree based on the archived debate. --Arctic Gnome 09:38, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Eventhough I am a GA reviewer, I would oppose the idea of adding a GA symbol to the article itself... it is far too simple to grant an article GA status, so in the end we'd have increased problems with improper promotions...

Fred-Chess 11:13, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

I wouldn't like to have the icon on articles that just got GA rather than trying for FA. The articles that I'm thinking about are the ones that are on too narrow a topic to ever become featured. Putting a GA icon on such an article's main page would let people know that the article is effectively completed. --Arctic Gnome 17:56, 17 December 2006 (UTC)

Articles are never to short to be an FA as Hurricane Irene (2005) has proven, they just are unlikly to be put on the main page. Going back to the icon I think that there at least needs to be limit on how long the article has to be a GA before it gets the little icon. Tarret 23:26, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Good Article symbol ctd.

Previous Discussion may be found here at Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 9

Shouldn't GAs get the green circle plus image in the upper right corner like FA articles get stars. TonyTheTiger 02:04, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. I ask because I want to tag my first GA (Campbell's Soup Cans). TonyTheTiger 02:06, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

This was the topic of a very old debate about the GA symbol, together with the overall metadata argument. It was deleted, the FA one nearly so as well, but it was quite some time ago. There's a recent topic about it on one of these talk pages or maybe in the recent archive here, it should have a link to the debate. I think if you really wanted to pursue using the GA stamp, you'd need to submit a request for undeletion so people don't jump all over you. Homestarmy 02:59, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

Err, not to be a bother, but...

The Good Article collaboration appears to be in trouble, as there's barely anyone really editing much :/. I figured that since its linked from the main page here, maybe I could convince someone to help out for an article or two? Homestarmy 21:24, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Also if anyone else happens to read this but can't edit the current article please leave a nomination on the collaboration page which can be found at WP:GACo. Tarret 12:59, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Don't know where to put this...

I've just given Accounting period a pass. It's a page that discusses business taxation law, but I'm really unsure where to put it. It could either go under 'economics and business' or 'law'. Probably the former would be more appropriate, but none of the subcategories there are appropriate. Any suggestions? JulesH 19:28, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

For now, I've created a new subcategory 'business management' under 'economics and business'. Please change this/move it elsewhere if you feel this categorisation is inappropriate. JulesH 19:32, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

'Awards and decorations' section

Is there really any reason to have a whole category for just two articles? Victoria Cross can go under 'War and military' and Hero of the Russian Federation can go under, I dunno, 'Culture and society'?--SeizureDog 07:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

While these two awards could be categorised like this, there are lots of other awards that couldn't, because they can be granted for a wider range of activities. Whilst it's not currently GA standard, Order of Merit would require this section if it were to be improved enough. JulesH 09:01, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Cedar's script

User:Cedars, before he left, ran this neat little GA script in perl that kept the GA page formatted correctly and updated properly, and I was just wondering if anyone knew how to run it. It was quite useful for cleaning up the list of weird things :/. And if anyone knows how to program in perl that'd be nice, I can only do a little bit of Java heh, and it seems Ceders had to update it often....Homestarmy 14:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Why not try asking User:Beland, the creator of the User:Pearle bot might be able to at least help us figure out how to use the script and possibly update it if necessary. 03:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

American Revolution delisted as GA

Allegedly American Revolution was promoted. I put the delistedGA tag on the talk page, but I can't find the article in the GA index. If anyone can find it, please remove it. —ExplorerCDT 20:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The easiest way was normally when User:Cedars would run his gaauto script that took care of the page automatically, but then he left, i've asked someone about how to run it though and I think I know some people in real life who might be able to tell us how it works heh. However, the person who passed it may of just forgotten to list it, since his timestamp is from today, it should be in the recent GA page history. Homestarmy 20:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I found it and removed it. Homestarmy 20:57, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. —ExplorerCDT 20:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Instructions for editing page

The "recently added good articles" bit at the top needs instructions. I would be bold and just add them but I want to get a sense if anyone disagrees with my assessment of what they should be: add the newest at the top of the list, and when you add one, delete the last one. Make sense? --Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 19:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree. The botscript used to keep track of that, so it was alphabetical, but with it gone currently, this is a much better system. --PresN 19:43, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

OK I'll just go ahead and do it, if anyone disagrees they can always change it!--Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 19:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

"GA" articles with unsourced statements

I've noticed lately that articles are gaining GA status even though they have a "Articles with unsourced statements" category at the time of GA listing. This doesn't appear to satisfy (2a) of "What is a good article?" Should this be addressed? — RJH (talk) 16:23, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the problem is, even a single cite tag causes an article to appear in that category. So an increadibly enormous article with hundreds of references could still be in the category. Homestarmy 16:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm unclear as to why that is a problem. To me the tag is usually a dispute about the factual accuracy of an article; a way of saying "prove it". So how can it be said to be "good" if it does not meet the criteria? — RJH (talk) 17:54, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

P.S. Could this be managed by means of a bot that checks candidates for dispute categories? — RJH (talk) 17:55, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a problem because an ordinarily well-referenced article will be in an unsourced article category when in reality the vast majority of the article might be sourced, but some tiny little obscure fact might not be sourced. Homestarmy 18:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I care for a characterization of some of these issues as citing a "tiny little obscure fact". These are listed as vital articles and are high on the core articles list. Unsourced falsehoods only diminish the quality of the article and make the remainder questionable. The Supernova article, for example, had a number of unsourced facts (when it went GA) that required a fair amount of work for me to get them cited. The Jupiter article had four this morning when it went GA. (I just added one that took several hours of searching to track down, but I've had to add in several more.) — RJH (talk) 23:04, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Just because something has a Citation Needed tag doesn't make it false, that simply means it has not been verified with a reliable source in someone's opinion. (Well, that's how its supposed to work anyway I think). A number of unsourced facts is quite different than one citation needed tag, whether an article has one citation needed tag or fifty, they go in the same Articles with unsourced Statements category. Homestarmy 23:41, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Obviously. However I would still hope that one of the checks made for GA acceptance is to always look at the categories for fixes that needs to be addressed. In the cases I was talking about these were valid citation-needed tags. If an article is rejected for such an issue then it can always be rectified and nominated again. — RJH (talk) 19:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

I'd hope that people aren't promoting articles with fact tags. At the same time, though, an FA I wrote was on the main page, and an editor added a fact tag to it at some point during the day, so we fixed it. If an article is listed as good, but has a fact tag, think about fixing it as opposed to wondering if something needs to be addressed. --badlydrawnjeff talk 23:34, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Extreme option

One way to as it were completely revise the good article criteria would be a very extreme one, which if done right would work. That would be to clearly define another ranking grade, maybe "A', and then, after getting enough people to agree to these new criteria, start the process to delete the Good article pages completely. Like I said, an extreme option, but it recently worked regarding Esperanza. Badbilltucker 20:20, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Delisting campaign and the GA process

I've noticed a lot of articles that are listed as GAs and FAs that should be delisted because they don't come close to meeting the criteria. I started tonight with Captain Falcon which was listed as a GA and was laughably not up to the GA criteria bar. I have a sneaking suspicion, given some of the things I've seen that the kid who wrote it probably had one of his buddies just push the GA through. I intend to go through section by section and delist several articles that I don't believe should be listed as GAs. I think we ought (well it's beyond "ought", "must" might be more appropriate) tighten up the process by which GA candidates are promoted. —ExplorerCDT 09:59, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Isn't that what GA Review is for? --badlydrawnjeff talk 12:22, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Only when you're not sure, to just delist an article quickly, give notice on the talk page about the problems, wait a little bit, (the time isn't defined, I don't even like the waiting rule, so a few hours is probably ok) then delist it if nobody responds to the problems. However, if it wasn't passed correctly or nobody gave a review, I don't think it would be unfair of you to just fail it immedietly. Homestarmy 13:41, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think there are some egregious examples of what a GA is not that are masquerading as GAs (some of which never went though the GA process, but were just "listed") that don't merit a wait period. Those are the ones I aim to get rid of. This will be slightly arbitrary and subjective (after all, the entire process is) but not badly so. —ExplorerCDT 17:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

This sort of thing you mention is exactly why I never liked having to change the rules to wait before delisting articles instead of being able to delist them immedietly, it makes sweeps so annoying.... Homestarmy 18:07, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal concept: regarding the promotion of articles

There's got to be a way to tighten the process. Because right now, GA seems to be a bad joke. The criteria are fine, just they only are as discerning as the least discerning editor who promotes GAs. Perhaps we can tighten it this way:

Appoint a board of a select number of editors who have GA-promoting powers.
Each GA candidate needs to receive three reviewers who endorse it (providing their rationale per GA-criteria), with no outstanding objections.
Candidates that get three endorsements and have no outstanding issues either by objectors or by the GA-promoting board editors, will get promoted.
Candidates that fall short of three endorsements (after all, there are lulls in this sections activity...just look at how dead Peer Review is), do not have outstanding issues or objections, can be promoted by the GA-promoting board editors on a case-by-case basis.

Until the standards are raised around here, GA will continue to be a joke. —ExplorerCDT 18:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Hmm, this seems a bit high. With no outstanding objections, that seems like it could be even more high and bureaucratic than FAC, and its a really big change. The problem is that, what happens, is as you noticed earlier, alot of articles on the list eventually end up being lousy, through either a combination of deficient reviews or abuse. We used to do large sweeps through the list and just delist huge batches of articles at a time, but now that the rules were changed so that we can't do that properly anymore, that can't work so well anymore. We never had much of a real vote on the rule though, just a discussion, and I think I was the only one who saw a problem with not being able to delist (or, as we put it, vetoing someone's pass) articles immedietly when we came across ones which were compleate flops. But really, it doesn't seem to be a total joke, I give fairly small and compact reviews these days and people thank me for it, and I see alot of other articles getting helped when people review them. It's just that without the easy ability to quickly countermand any bad reviews or something, things probably will get weird in time, and from my experience as a caretaker of the GA Review page, its never been more active and articles almost always end up being delisted. The actual speed of GA's being promoted doesn't seem to be speeding up dramatically, its just the rules are too stringent about not being able to quickly fix bad things :/. When we used to do sweeps, we got a pretty big portion of all the problems out of the way all at once. Homestarmy 18:47, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

That means then that we need to do a massive sweep, and continue to do massive sweeps. Like the only way to fix America's illegal immigrant problem...raid, raid and raid again. The worst indicator of the system being wrong is that there are several FA candidates taht think they're ready just because someone made them GAs. American Revolution being just the latest. —ExplorerCDT 20:40, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Actually, after the last sweep, more people had the main GA page on their watchlist, and we stopped most everyone just randomly listing articles or listing articles without giving much of a review. But now that we can't do that quickly again.....I think the idea of letting only certain people list GA's though has some merit, it would made things easier for enforcement reasons, but i'm somewhat concerned it adds unncessary burearocracy, and it makes us look alot more like FA's when we aren't supposed to be grading FA's :/. Homestarmy 20:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think I'm going to watch GA more than I ever did before. It might restore a little credibility to the GA label. Right now, I'm being rather demanding on FAC given the application of the criteria. I'll put a little of that to use here. First though, I'll start the sorely-needed clean sweep. —ExplorerCDT 20:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think it only fair to warn you though, there's not a ton of GA people and not everyone sees these discussions, the last time somebody started massively doing stuff with articles we had an enormous fight with Science article editors and other things. Homestarmy 21:02, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Science and math aren't my fortes. So I'll probably defer on most of them. I know enough to delist the obvious. —ExplorerCDT 21:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I think all that extra bureaucracy is unneeded; what you're suggesting sounds more like "Great" article, not just "Good" article. Editing of articles below "Good" status can probably be done by anyone, whether adding content, checking sources, wikifying, spelling, etc. I think "Good" article status more so indicates more experienced editors are required, and extra effort will be required from more people, to raise the article from Good status to the next level. Thanks for cleaning up the lists! ?James Kidd (contr/talk/email) 02:58, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this idea. The fact that it takes only 1 reviewer to promote an article to GA makes this project lose its credibility, with more eyes more problems will be sorted out. But we shouldn't be too harsh on the articles. M3tal H3ad 05:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I would hate this. It amazes me that humans generally, when left to their own devices, will come up with layer upon layer of bureaucracy - this isn't FA, the criteria is clear, and passed articles that aren't GA's are or no longer meet the criteria are quickly removed. Why is there any need to add this? There's simply no problem to solve. RHB 19:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

I also think it's utterly unnecessary to add bureaucracy per se. However, I think it's not necessarily a bad idea to make TWO people have to agree to promote it as a GA. Currently anyone can come along and do it, as noted, and this can lead to some problems. Currently, when an article gets peer reviewed, often all that happens is an automated set of responses and few if any human eyes; next it comes up for GA, when only one person needs to look at it to promote it. Then someone nominates it for FA and it gets ripped to shreds. In my opinion, the more eyes, the better at this stage of a growing article's development. Furthermore, promoting an article to GA status is one of the bolder things a single editor can do, and I wonder if some people aren't reluctant to do it themselves - "oh, I'm not qualified to do this, I'll wait for ExplorerCDT to do it" and so on. --Dmz5*Edits**Talk* 20:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Can you give an example of a recently promoted GA article, which was properly passed, that was ripped to shreds in a FA nomination? I am just curious. I have looked at FA nominations and they are not that different from the articles I usually promote.

However, it is bothersome to see the different standards that reviewers have. Recently Ben Stiller was failed because it did not explain the words "Emmy-winning", "Frat-pack", "Directional Debut", "VH1 Fashion Awards" and "MTV"; and because it touched upon the subject of Stiller's alleged bi-polar disorder (Talk:Ben_Stiller#GA_nomination).

Other reviewers pass articles that are hardly sourced, or badly written.

So it must be a problem when the passing of an article is more dependant on the reviewer than on the article itself, no? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Fred Chess (talk • contribs) 16:44, 16 January 2007 (UTC).

* Captain Falcon. Passed GA, most likely because a guy had a buddy of his promote it. Re, your last comment. Good Articles is only as credible as its least demanding promoter. Thinking of that, GA either needs to be seriously reformed or abolished. —ExplorerCDT 18:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Could have seperate sub pages for each category of GA, then each nominee gets one section in there, similar to FAC. Having them all on one page would make the page too big. Perhaps also names of reviewers that deal with each category at the top and a reminder of WIAGA etc. A passing/Holding/Failing section, requiring two editors to agree on a Pass, one to Hold and one to Fail. Ideas? RHB 20:03, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm for either requiring two editors to approve an article for GA or having a select list of people who are allowed to promote to GA. The list doesn't have to be exclusive, but it should contain people who actively help out with the GA part of Wikipedia and are reliable editors.--NMajdan•talk 20:24, 19 January 2007 (UTC) I think it makes more sense to start simply by requiring people to perform written, point-by-point reviews of articles before promoting them to GA. People should be checking the articles against each point of the guidelines, anyway, so this is mostly just getting the thought process down on the wiki. Since (in my experience) most articles have some sort of minor revision, at least, to be made before promotion, it should be easy to spot when a reviewer hasn't been doing the job properly. Remember that GA is supposed to be the low-overhead, less prestigious alternative to FA. If we require three concurring reviewers with perfect pitch while passing the Hand of Vecna over the article, the whole enterprise is sort of pointless. Choess 22:39, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this idea. I think that if an article is being reviewed properly then each of the criteria will be carefully looked at anyway. Having the requirement that this is recorded down in some sort of report is a good idea. It'll will make it easier to find articles that are messing with the system this way. It's a good alternative to increasing the bureaucracy of the system. - Shudda ^talk 23:33, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Notice:

I'm starting a GA Clean Sweep and Delisting campaign will commence its work at about 19:00 tonight, EST. All interested in cleaning out articles not worthy of GA-status, feel free to join in. —ExplorerCDT 20:54, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Err, the problem is, the way the rules are written is that you're not supposed to immedietly delist any articles, you have to give them time for editors to supposedly fix the problems. I think anything less than a few hours wouldn't really be in the spirit of that rule, but if somebody set up a poll on it I wouldn't mind. We should be able to look over the list whenever we want and delist obvious fails immedietly.... Homestarmy 20:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I intend to be objective. If it doesn't meet the criteria, it should be outed immediately. Obvious cases. If it's moderately compliant, I'll put it up for review and give it a week or two for repairs before delisting. For oversight, I'll be putting a list here of what is delisted and what is put up for review. —ExplorerCDT 21:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I support this; I think the threshhold for GA status is pretty clear when you come across it. Obvious articles that do not meet the minimum GA status should be delisted--as incorrectly listed. ?James Kidd (contr/talk/email) 21:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I should point out that there is a sweep list which can be used to coordinate sweeping. It is however outdated so if a category is missing feel free to add it to the list. Tarret 21:13, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Many of the articles were actually around when the standards wern't as high, they have changed several times. We did get many of them on our previous sweeps though, but now that there's more articles on the list, there's probably many left to find now. But I still think somebody might get kind of angry if people start immedietly delisting things without most people discussing it first, preferably, getting rid of the wait rule for immediete delisting would be nice. Homestarmy 21:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Make sure you say why it doesnt meet criteria, like unreferenced, trivia, prose etc. M3tal H3ad 05:06, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

An opinion before nominating a page?

Is their anywhere (or any GA user judge) I can go to and ask their opinion before nominating a page? Chaldean 03:14, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, many people who review articles would probably not mind taking a look at an article quickly to tell you its chances if you ask them personally. Homestarmy 23:35, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Better yet, WP:PR -- Selmo ^(talk) 19:33, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I tried WP:PR and it turned out useless. Any users whilling to take a peek? The article is Munir Bashir Chaldean 03:46, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't think at present it would pass, the lead needs to be expanded, and I can't tell whether the "Literature" section is supposed to count as literature referencing Bashir or not, and even if it was, the referencing overall seems a bit too low for most GA reviewers I know to pass it. To expand the lead, I recommend beefing up the first part with more info from the reception and impact section, and beefing up the second with stuff from the style sections. References I can't help with much, but the writing in those style sections is pretty high-level, I don't think many readers would really have much idea what most of it even means heh. I'm not saying re-write all those articles into this article concerning the more technical terms, but a little bit more explanation can't hurt I say. Finally, sentences like "For better understanding it has to be said, that the lute plays a similar role in Arabian music as the piano does in European music: It is the instrument used to impart the most important theoretical aspects in music." looks suspicious, "it has to be said" according to which notable sources, "most important theoretical aspects" according to which experts in the field of music, that sort of thing. Homestarmy 04:18, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

Question about GA-reviewer bias

Is it appropriate for someone to fail a GA candidate based in part on his personal POV? I ask because Level of support for evolution was recently failed by User:Jorfer in part because of NPOV concerns, and when he elaborated on this later he explained that the article contradicts his own POV in that "a Creationist, such as myself, would argue the support exists because of the dogmatic preaching of it in public schools and most universities combined with the rote learning style of today's public school system and not because it is the best explanation" and "it is NPOV that an attempt to discredit evolutionists be included".

He then went on to repeat a host of canards about evolution, as though this refuted the scientific evidence (and as though any of this was relevant to an article about the popular support, not evidence, for evolution): "I just find it ironic that evolutionists, who believe that human nature was formed by millions of years of evolution (it is millions, correct), can so quickly dismiss human's natural inclination to believe in a Creator. The interesting is that people exist today that are not bent on survival of the fittest but are dedicate to help the meek, the unloved, the poor, the hungry. How could this genetic code survive until today in a world where only the strongest surive." And for good measure, he rebuked the separation of church and state: "The Supreme Court and lower courts have effectively outlawed Christianity in public schools. Look it up."

He also admitted that he had a grand total of 0 references to back up his personal POV that poor education, rather than merit or evidence, was behind evolution's level of scientific support: "I know I am not the only person that feels that the support is because of John Dewey's advocation and not Charles Darwin's theory so I will find sources but the tag should stay up anyways."

I am not so much concerned with JEF/Jorfer's misinformed comments as I am with the idea that they would considered by Wikipedia to be acceptable grounds for rejecting a Good Article candidate. Although I personally agree with failing the article in question (hence I don't see a need to review the vote; as I see it, JEF made the right call for the wrong reasons), on the grounds that it doesn't meet all the WP:GA? criteria, I am greatly concerned about the apparent potential for abuse in this system if it is OK to reject a GA in part for personal POV reasons. Is this really appropriate? Are there no consequences for this sort of misconduct? -Silence 01:33, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

We've had this happen before over Creation-Evolution controversy I think, this sort of thing happens occasionally, but generally speaking, a review normally clears things up more or less for the better to most people. If he made the right call though but some of his reasons wern't correct, i'm not sure there's that major of a problem here, whenever things ended up on review generally it was the wrong call regardless of the reasons :/. If a GA was rejected not for the criteria at all but something unrelated, I dought it would go through a GA/R without being relisted, if not speedily so. Homestarmy 17:48, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Anyone know where to get Perl?

I was going to try running Cedar's gaauto script myself, but with the links listed in the actual Perl article, the best looking one has a broken installer, the one at some distribution site won't work without some C-complication environment which I don't have, and the ported ones include stuff I don't really want. (The link where it says to go here first is a dead page it seems.) Anyone have any ideas? Homestarmy 15:51, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

You didn't say what OS etc you have - this *may* help: http://home.wangjianshuo.com/archives/20021124_install_perl_on_windows_xp.htm

More comprehensive: http://www.perl.com/download.csp

or you could look into LAMP, WAMP, or XAMPP SeanMack 16:29, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! So is all I need to do to run Cedar's script is to open the command prompt, go to the /eg directory in Perl, and type "perl gaauto.pl" when I save his file locally? All I know is Java, so this is sort of new for me.... Homestarmy 20:12, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Sorry don't know much about perl, I considered having a look at Cedars script - or even beg him to come back to the GA project. He's a loss to the project and wikipedia as a whole. Best of luck with it! SeanMack 01:39, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I was just reading the documentation to get that was all. Unless somebody starts shouting at me I plan to run the script pretty soon to see what happens, but I probably won't be able to update it if a need arises :/. Homestarmy 01:59, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

Free download from ActiveState. Several OS catered for. Snowman 10:01, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I think i've got everything set up, but now it's telling me that "cp" and "curl aren't recognized, specifically in lines going "system "cp stamp.time stamp.bac";" and "system "curl \"http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Good_articles&action=edit\" > input_ga.html";". Am I missing a package or update or something? Homestarmy 19:24, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I need cURL..... Homestarmy 19:45, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

This cURL and Libcurl install things are really complicated, I don't suppose anyone knows off-hand how to install Libcurl and Curl properly and bind Libcurl to Perl? (I have the cURL executable, but there's no installer, and the Libcurl file doesn't seem to have one) I've been looking for days and none of this Makefile.PL stuff is doing much of anything... Homestarmy 20:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I googled for the ppm installer thing, I think its bound to Perl now, yet Cedar's script still won't recognize the Curl and cp commands :/. Is his script at User:Cedars/gaauto.pl using the right syntax or something for the latest version of curl? I don't know much about Perl, other than that his script is written with it heh. Homestarmy 21:38, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Is there maybe somewhere to go where I can ask for help with his script? Homestarmy 17:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe WP:VP/T.?NMajdan•talk 17:23, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll mess around with this tomorrow and see if I can get it working. I know a decent bit of Perl. --- RockMFR 05:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, nobodies answered my technical pump post, and the longer time goes by the more work it'll be to clean the list by hand heh..... Homestarmy 05:33, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Anything? :/ Homestarmy 00:52, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Question

If an article has been nominated once as a GA, failed, then renominated, and successful, do we leave the failed tag on its talk page, or remove it when we add the GA tag? SP-KP 17:08, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

There's no rule, but I think it makes more sense to just remove the failed tag and have one tag on the page at a time in this case. The date thing I think is just for reference purposes for reviewers, but nothing really depends on it per se. Homestarmy 19:07, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

In general, the failed tag(s) is/are removed whenever it passes, for both GA and FA. --PresN 18:24, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

You might want to check out {{ArticleHistory}}. --- RockMFR 16:55, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of {{ArticleHistory}}, this template supports GA-related events. How would GA like to handle the variations of Category:Wikipedia_GA_templates, and in particular the CD-selection subcategories? Are these subcategories actually used? It would be straightforward to treat all of these other GA templates as {{GA}}, include the event in {{ArticleHistory}}, and remove the template from the talk page. For an example, see Talk:Euro. Gimmetrow 21:53, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

A-class list

I found the GA list of articles and the FA list of articles but I cannot find the A-class list which is supposed to be in the middle. Can someone point out the list and the candidates page, please? 650l2520 00:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The "A" rank was invented I think for the Wikipedia CD's purposes, the only list would be the category of A-ranked articles, at Category:A-Class articles. Homestarmy 00:51, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

There is no A-class candidates page, but try and find a project related to the article and take it there for peer review. WP:MH runs an A class assessment page, but you could also message some GA reviewers on the page listing and ask for their advice. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 09:42, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

The relevant category for all A class articles is Category:A-Class articles. Each WikiProject has a separate grading and approval system for A class, and many WikiProjects forgo A class and use only GA and FA processes. Check the archives of WP:1.0 for more details. Slambo (Speak) 12:25, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

That's right - A-Class isn't an "award" given by the community, more an internal assessment by a WikiProject. Walkerma 15:48, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Unacceptable section title: "Religion and beliefs"

All "beliefs" do not belong under "religion and beliefs"; only religious (including spiritual, mystical, supernatural, etc.) beliefs belong there. Philosophical, political, scientific, etc. beliefs do not belong in such a section. Therefore "Religion and beliefs" should clearly be simplified to "Religion", or "Beliefs" should be replaced by more descriptive, specific, substantive terms. This same change was instituted in WP:FA some time ago, but somehow this page hasn't kept up with the times. -Silence 11:24, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

If it was truly unacceptable, why does it seem Raul accepted it in the FA discussion about it? Homestarmy 20:06, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

He didn't, once he understood the issues involved. As a direct result of the discussion, he switched it, which is why "Religions and beliefs" is no longer an FA section on Wikipedia:Featured articles. If it was remotely acceptable, this change would never have occurred, because clearly the weight of tradition is a powerful one for as widely-viewed a project as WP:FA. -Silence 03:13, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I think the reason you're confused is because Raul didn't make any more comments once he accepted my reasoning; he just made the change. Hence if you don't read the whole thread it looks like Raul is objecting to the idea, but he changed his mind between my second-to-last and last comments there. "Religion and beliefs" was an error, and a simply one; once it was brought to editors' attention, it was fixed by removing the "beliefs" part (and subsequently replacing it with "and mysticism", then ", mythology, and mysticism"). The same sequence of events transpired when the same error was brought up a second time at WP:0.5. There is thus no basis for perpetuating the error here, at WP:GA. -Silence 03:16, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

GA Collaboration

If anyone reads this can you please nominate an article, vote for an article or edit the current Good article collaboration? We could use a little help keeping it going as it is going through slow times recently? Tarret 02:53, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

Request

Hello, the article Old St Paul's Cathedral, which I nominated was passed today, but the reviewer didn't quite finish the job, as it has not appeared on the list of architecture-related GAs and newly added GAs. I was wondering if another editor would be willing to add it to these lists, please, as it might be seen as being a bit odd if I do it. Thanks in advance. Bob talk 17:17, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

GA count

Sorry to Nehrams2020, given all the hard work, but imho the count will not be that high. The script that cedars ran allowed duplicates over different areas to allow for the fact that certain articles could and most likely should be classified by different areas. This means that an absolute count at the minute will be wrong. The only answer is to remove the duplicates and re-count or we get some help to run the script again. My preference is the script but I see Homestarmy has tried really hard to get it working without much success or help. Perl coders; help! SeanMack 13:11, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm not surprised the count is off, the script hasn't been run in weeks. I have a Calculus teacher who knows Perl and apparently cURL too, but i've never had time to ask him about it :(. (I tried yesterday, but he was busy playing the World of Warcraft trading card game during gaming club heh.) I've gotten all the way to getting cURL and Libcurl to show up under the Perl libraries, (It seems all the main instructions are for UNIX compatible machines, but I finally found some program that makes it work in Windows) but the cURL commands still won't run in Cedar's script, just says they aren't recognized... Homestarmy 13:28, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Homestarmy, I really do give you plaudits for giving this a go, but as a code-monkey myself, MS stuff, not perl, I know that without more documentation or help its just gonna be pain for you. My best advice would be to try mailing cedars and see if you can get some help, even though he has gone he might help with this one thing. Funny about the WOW though, made me smile as this popped into my head :-) SeanMack 13:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Alas, Cedar's e-mail apparently wasn't registered, I can't e-mail him :(. I know his script technically works, it's just two cURL commands aren't registering on my computer, (Binding cURL to Perl wasn't fun, but I think I finally got it, it turns out almost all the cool programming stuff isn't done on Windows heh) so the actual URL of the GA page isn't cURL'ed into the text document his script creates to go over, and some other system command I can't understand doesn't work either, but I think it has to do with cURL too. Homestarmy 14:01, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Might be worth a post on his talk page? I've seen people leave but still keep an eye out. Best of luck again though. I'll ask in work just in case but the chances are slim - MS all the way... SeanMack 14:31, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

I took the page into excel, removed not article lines, alpha sorted and manually removed duplicates. I have updated the count accordingly, seems there weren't as many duplicates as I had imagined. SeanMack 11:12, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I got some more help with the script, it seems it was written using Linux system commands, so I guess Cedar's used Linux.....I changed it to "copy" in one place, and I changed the cURL command to point to a cURL file, but the thing still says it fails to download the page -____-. Homestarmy 22:16, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

What about saving the page in your pc and pointing the code to the file, is that possible? SeanMack 00:31, 10 February 2007 (UTC)

I can't tell, its a bit hard to figure out in the script which parts are dependent on the download or not. The first codeblock after the download just seems to have an if statement to check if the download was a success, but near the end I can't tell if what its doing relates to uploading or not and what should stay if it doesn't upload.... Homestarmy 02:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Julia Lennon

Hi, I passed the article Julia Lennon, but I'm having a bit of trouble finding a category for it to go under on tha GA page. I was wondering if another editor could add it to the appropriate position in the list. Thanks. ErleGrey 15:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Question

Why are peer reviews archived but Good article reviews are not? (Gnevin 01:42, 16 February 2007 (UTC))

They are, look on the WP:GA/R page in the archive box. Or do you mean the actual candidacy reviews? Those are just supposed to be on the article talk pages, if you saw a review happen without an actual review appear, that's not supposed to happen. Homestarmy 19:15, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

I mean i think GA reviews should be put of a sub page like this of the article's talk page instead as in done in Peer review .Instead of just on the main talk page where they get archived and lost (Gnevin 23:58, 17 February 2007 (UTC))

Hmm, a problem is, review format here isn't standardized like Peer reviews, while there is a nifty checklist template, not everyone uses it and its not mandatory. Homestarmy 20:10, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Merge of GA and A-class ratings

There is a discussion going on at the village pump regarding a possible merge of GA into A-Class assessment. Input from those involved in the GA process would be welcomed. Thanks. Trebor 19:29, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the notification. Homestarmy 20:09, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

First Battle of Beruna

This was GAed a little while ago but it's not yet up on the project page. I'm not sure what category to put it in though; it seems like a new subcategory to Literature should be made, like "Events within literature" or something. --Fbv65e del / ?t / ?c || 22:28, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, I made a new section, hope it's okay. It might need renaming. --Fbv65e del / ?t / ?c || 22:56, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Using WP1.0 Bot for GAs

I would like to propose that WP1.0 Bot be used to track GAs. I think this would bring benefits both to the GA project and help resolve confusion & ambiguity with the use of GA-Class in the assessment scheme. The benefits here would principally be (a) the project would have the number of GAs updated nightly and (b) there would be a log tracking all changes - for example if someone bypassess the GA system and just tags their own article with the GA template, or if someone who doesn't like XXXX removes it without formal review (I've seen this, by the way!). Less tangible benefits would be that (a) all WikiProjects would have all GAs noted in their worklists automatically and (b) we would remove the problems between A/GA/B (see the village pump discussion mentioned above!). Please read the proposal and leave comments. Thanks, Walkerma 04:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, it wouldn't be as automatic as gaauto was, but once the initial job of fixing the list is done from whatever damage has happened over the past months or so, I suppose the function of showing articles that are properly passed wouldn't be too hard to implement onto the page, and besides, gaauto didn't print out a log, that's a plus. I don't contribute to much of the WP1.0 grading scale stuff, so if you all want to change how your own system's ratings work, I don't think I have any complaint about that heh. Homestarmy 19:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Feedback requested

Hi guys, I have been leafing through several of the older GAs and found several a bit odd GAs where I would like to hear your feedback first.

David Beckham: on Oct 9, 2005, a user adds the GA tag without any prior nomination. [1]
Graphic novel: on Aug 8, 2006, someone nominates it, and the next day, it is passed with no explanation on the talk page. [2]
Fawcett Publications: promotion without nomination. [3]
National Comics Publications v. Fawcett Publications: another promotion without nomination. [4]

Was it possible back then to pass GAs without any review? I a bit puzzled. I only know the workflow "nominate - review on talk page - fail/list". Thanks for reading. —Onomatopoeia 15:34, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

The first one is technically legal, there wasn't a candidate page before march or so. The second looks illegal though, but the third seems to of been just barely before the candidates page time. The fourth also appears to be fine in terms of legality of passing for being before march-ish. Homestarmy 19:19, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

Duplication of Articles

What is the current guideline on articles being listed in more than one section? I have recently been removing them from duplicate sections and updating the section totals when needed. Is this the best practice? Thanks - Suicidalhamster 23:53, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me. Homestarmy 00:15, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

That will help make it easier to count the GAs without the GAAuto tool. --Nehrams2020 01:01, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

For the GA count, you just need a count of the number of links on WP:GA in the article namespace, excluding WP: and WT: shortcuts? Easy for a bot to do. Current count is 1879, btw. Gimmetrow 01:41, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

This counting also can be done using WP:AWB, which will not double count. Incidentally, over at WP:V0.5, I have found for ease of user use it can be useful to place people in more than one place. Is Leonardo da Vinci a painter or an inventor? Does Hitler come under politics, war, or history? If you want to count articles by specific section you can't do this, but when making an index for the CD I found myself adding in a few duplicates to help the user find things. Walkerma 01:52, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Is it also the policy to remove articles from WP:GA if they become FAs? If so, there are 19 listed GAs which overlap with WP:FA. Gimmetrow 03:54, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Yea, FA just replaces GA status if it was there. Homestarmy 13:25, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

All current overlaps except one are now removed. Gimmetrow 14:23, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

Does this mean the current section totals are correct? If it does, they add up to 1,871 while the current total is at 1,863. Interestingly there seems to be 1,879 articles in Category:Wikipedia good articles (on top of some user and wiki pages etc) - Suicidalhamster 18:03, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

There are at present 1862 articles linked from WP:GA (after one FA was removed). Some articles may be linked more than once. The list of differences between WP:GA and the category is quite large. Many articles listed on WP:GA have been delisted Xbox 360, Algoma Central Railway, while many in the category are not listed (legitimately or not): Coil (band), Aquinas College, Perth, Wesley Clark. Quite a few other articles have been renamed: KISS (band), Tila Nguyen, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Gimmetrow 19:48, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

The only easy way I know to find and correct all those kinds of things is to get someone who's computer can run GAauto. As far as I can tell, Windows machines just won't work, it just won't recognize the curl command, and pointing to a curl file as the command just makes it download nothing. If someone has a spare Linux box, the script should work on it.....Homestarmy 20:07, 27 February 2007 (UTC)

A list to start with

list removed

Is there any way to do this automatically? I corrected the number of GA's by adding up section number a few weeks ago, but rarely do reviewers update the GA total. RHB ^{Talk - Edits} 21:46, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The total could easily be automated, but the scan above showed up 22 delistedGAs still listed, and nearly 50 with {{GA}} never added to WP:GA. Some of the latter are not legit so those 50 links can't simply be added without checking. WP:GA has 1885 unique article links (as currently noted) but the WP:GA list needs maintaining for that number to be valid. Gimmetrow 22:08, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

RH, Gaauto does this automatically. I don't suppose you have a linux box? I could lead you through how to install Perl, the Romans module, and cURL with it if so, that's what the script seems to need to run. Homestarmy 00:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I tried gaauto, but the resulting file had far too many mangled characters. Pages still missing are listed above. Gimmetrow 02:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Did you install the Romans module, I think it needs that to handle final fantasy names or something like that. Homestarmy 16:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I did. Guess that part didn't work. Gimmetrow 16:22, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

What exactly was mangled about the output? Sometimes Cedars said it didn't handle non-English symbols above letters correctly... Homestarmy 16:42, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Exactly. Took quite a while to correct. Gimmetrow 17:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I guess the list really did change a good bit since the script was last ran then... Homestarmy 17:12, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Some of the articles listed here were malhandled GA/R stuff, some others might of been supposed to be on GA/R, i'll try to handle some of them. Homestarmy 17:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I've dealt with every article on this list I think depending on each one's situation besides Wonderbra and Mr. Lady records, as I don't think actually viewing either article to check it could safely be called school-safe. (You'd be surprised how much hubbub my school makes when it actually catches people doing something) Homestarmy 20:28, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, but now there are another dozen articles in the category without links on the WP:GA page. I'll do a few more. Gimmetrow 23:46, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

As of right now (after fixing some talk page vandalism), the page and the category are reconciled. 1913 articles are listed here and in CAT:GA. Gimmetrow 00:44, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

Future events?

Just a small question: Is there any sort of policy that prevents future events, such as 2008 Summer Olympics from becoming GAs? Because obviously the article will be considerably changed in the next year, so maintaining its GA status would be difficult. -- Scorpion 17:44, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this would fail criterion 5, being stable. You know that the article will change drastically in the next year and a half, so its rating of GA would just be rescinded anyway. I nominated Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (film) for a GA recently; it is well-cited on all accounts but it hasn't been released yet, and thus there are no reviews/reaction section. The article in its current stage is flawless, but its current stage is not a wholesome stage. See the difference? --Fbv65e del / ?t / ?c || 17:51, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

There's nothing specific, but in my experience most future event type articles are very unstable in their own right, chances are you can just fail most of that kind of article for stability normally. Homestarmy 17:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Energy section?

Do we really need an energy section? Many articles that would go there could be easily listed under technology, can't it? Tarret 21:03, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

GA promotion

I'm very concerned about the requirements for approval or rejecton of a GA candidate. I have no difficulty with the criteria used to judge a GA; my concern lies with the fact that only one editor is required to pass or fail an article. I believe this is a serious flaw in the process. For instance, even speedy delete decisions require two editors, and articles for deletion are typically not decided upon without the input from at least three editors even in extreme cases. While I have no suggestion on how many editors' inputs it should require to determine the success or failure of a GA, I certainly think it ought to be representative of some kind of consensus. I wish to make an issue of this - can someone suggest where else I might take my argument? Thanks, Denni ^talk 19:22, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

The article Crimson-collared Tanager was promoted to GA on 13 July 2006, but I have recently delisted it. Does this example help here? Snowman 19:35, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

We used to be able to speedy delist articles whenever we wanted to, but three people decided to change that. (I was a fourth trying to stop it, but alone I had no choice but to go along) We used to quickly get rid of lousy articles that were passed under very specious reasons, yet now all the hassle with waiting before delisting an article seems to not be in use at all. GA/R has quickly become inflated with disputes. However, In my experience, the majority of articles that are passed these days are at least reasonably in compliance with GA criteria... Homestarmy 20:04, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, we currently have a very large backlog and it could be difficult to get three people to review each and every article. A lot of the failed articles are improperly nominated or don't meet a majority of the criteria. Good articles are not an official award like FA so that's why we wouldn't need that many people reviewing it. --Nehrams2020 21:31, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it might be a good idea to have two reviewers, though. One person can miss things. And it cuts down somewhat on the unevenness of the process -- since different reviewers have different standards. Time is a concern, but the greatest problem with the current process is this inconsistency in judging, in my opinion. Shimeru 23:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea of having two reviewers. I do not necessarily think it would result in a larger backlog. In my experience I often don't review an article if it is a borderline case (as many nominees seem to be). If I knew that my decision would not be the only thing passing/failing an article (ie too much responsibility) I would be more comfortable reviewing more articles. If this is true for a number of people then having 2 reviewers may reduce the backlog if it encourages people to participate more. - Suicidalhamster 17:06, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

We seem to be gaining consensus to re-institute speedy delisting on the GA/R talk page, often times, I noticed that often served as a second reviewer who can catch things. Homestarmy 17:08, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it should take two editors to pass or fail. It is too easy to miss things with just one editor, and occasionally you'll get significantly bad GA passes or fails (shoot, for featured article, I've seen it opposed because it isn't notable enough). Like Suicidalhamster, I would also be more likely to pass and fail articles if it wasn't completely up to me. -- Ash Lux ^{(talk | contribs)} 21:08, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

(resetting indent) I feel conflicted here. I certainly do not like the reasoning of "I don't want it up to me". With a small number of reviews required, each review still carries immense weight. If one editor has passed the article and no consensus means a fail with a two review standard, it is still on the second editor just as much as if they were the only reviewer. On the other hand, I would agree that 2-3 reviews should be required for a pass/fail on GA standards. Certainly, a standard requiring more than one subjective voice would be desirable. My own thought is that we are a consensus based community and consensus reqires more than one person. Also, no matter how much we all try to adhere to a NPOV, all of us have subjective perceptions. I'd like to see it as a two pass/two fail system. An article would pass/fail if it had two consecutive reviews of the same judgement. If it had one pass and one fail, then it would essentially be a best two out of three. But again, nearly just as much weight would be placed on individual reviews, so I'm not sure how that would address some the concerns raised above. If that is what is really preventing people from review GA noms, then we'd still be stuck with a backlog, just one filled with noms with a single review. Of course, this is all just my opinion. You're quite welcome to take it with some grains of salt. Vassyana 22:05, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows, it seems I didn't actually notice it immedietly, but on March 7th, the rules for delisting were changed to allow for immediete delisting once again. I don't know if that counts as a second review of sorts to anyone, but in my experience, it certainly weeded out terrible GA's in a smallish amount of time when people were looking over the GA list for a good bit. Homestarmy 00:10, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The process is already drawn out enough, no point in instituting further rules to further complicate it. Delisting is fine. But if we are going to go on a community consensus of multiple editors then why not just skip GA, delete the whole page and just have FA. I can't take any more rules/regulations/guidelines anywhere on Wikipedia. If I see one more "policy" essay, I am going to puke in my mouth. Way, way too much WP:CREEP going on in general, not too say I don't like the speedy delisting or the Good articles page, It's all good. I am just saying. IvoShandor 13:41, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

GAs need two reviewers to pass, if you consider the nominator a reviewer. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually Ivo, the new speedy delisting rule replaces a more complicated rule which required a "reasonable wait time", which from what I can tell was just ignored and people took it straight to GA/R even for the most obvious of fails. Homestarmy 13:48, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I am not against the speedy delisting, I think that is a really good idea. I think it eliminates some of the instruction creep on Wikipedia. We need more thinking like this. : ) IvoShandor 13:57, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Sections

I've just passed William Monahan as a GA, and am having doubts as to where I should list it. Monahan is currently a screenwriter, and has been a novelist, journalist, critic, blah blah blah... :) Should I list under "Cinema", "Actors...celebrities", or "Writers and critics"? I'm leaning towards the last, and would greatly appreciate any input. Thanks, Fvasconcellos 15:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

I would agree with your gut instinct on this one. Screenwriters are still writers, and if he has a long history in a writing career, that's the right way to go. Vassyana 21:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Stability

What exactly entails stability? A lack of changes for a good while? Does an article that changes, but does so in a consistant fashion with no edit warring but rather simple content building qualify as stable or not? I'm curious to hear other editors thoughts on this. Vassyana 22:09, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in my experience, no disputes have arisen since the criteria has existed in its current form, (Which has been quite awhile), and in the meanwhile, it seems like something that replaces large chunks of an article all at once or around the same time period (like, say, over the course of two days) would create a situation which would be defined as instability, at least for me anyway. I think it would be pretty silly if people interpreted it to mean that an article that changes at a sort of mediumish rate was unstable, I mean, articles are supposed to change over time, its a wiki :/. . But when articles change drastically all at once, that runs the risk of new content not being up to GA standards, and technically represents large chunks of article that haven't actually been evaluated at all. Homestarmy 22:51, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Old GAs

Instead of sweeping the list and picking out the older GAs one by one, why don't put all of them in a list for a re-review of their status and then there they can be re-reviewed to see is they meet the current GA status. Tarret 16:59, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think with the current backlog at WP:GAC this would not be a good idea. If we could get more activity on GA reviews to keep the list reasonable, then it would be appropriate to discuss adding more to the workload. Another potential route would be through the various WikiProjects that handle assessements. Vassyana 15:31, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

But, these would be on a seperate list, and they stay listed until they are reviewed. This way we can atleast weed out the old GAs which don't meet the criteria anymore. Tarret 23:14, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Is there any way to sort GAs by the date they were promoted? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 07:54, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Comment: The new bot-generated list (we should hopefully see this in a couple of days or so) will include the date the bot found the GA, which will roughly correlate with the date of promotion. Unfortunately it won't read this information retroactively, but in time this may be a useful feature of these lists. They will be sorted alphabetically rather than by date, though. Walkerma 08:01, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Create another list, sorted by date, and review the oldest GAs first. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:04, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

FYI, the alphabetical lists are now available at Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Good_articles_by_quality. (Thanks, Titoxd!) Walkerma 04:32, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

A class articles

Can A class articles have a mention on the project page for completeness? It seems to me that a count is not kept of A class articles. Snowman 22:33, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I think that is how it is supposed to work. A-class-ratings seem to be given away by the projects right now, and the records are kept separately for each project. They are placed in categories like this: Category:A-Class business and economics articles, but those categories are not added to a general category for all a-class articles.--DorisH??? 09:16, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

According to the page on the assessment scale:

"Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but having completed the Good article designation process is not a requirement for A-Class." (bold added by me)

Perhaps I (and other members of the Good Articles WikiProject) should go through categories of A-class articles, and nominate A-Class articles which have not been previously nominated. As A-class articles should meet the GA criteria, this will give A-class articles the GA status they deserve. Once given the green light, I'll add to the candidates backlog, at the rate of about 10 articles a day. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 13:45, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The A-class articles are tracked here by User:WP 1.0 bot. The WP 1.0 ratings put A-class above GA-class, so there is no need to go through and proactively rate A-class articles as GA-class. CMummert · talk 13:52, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

At the same time, external peer review of A-Class articles by GA reviewers doesn't harm anyone. More eyes = more better. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Does this mean an article can be in both the GA and A class lists?

Yes; they would be classified as A-Class in WP:1.0/I, but would have the GA seal on them on their talk pages. They would also be listed on this page. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:17, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I do not see the point of this duplication and overlap of categories. Snowman 19:43, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

Uh, where would Unfinished work go?

It covers too many categories, I can't seem to find a good place for it.--SeizureDog 06:55, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I would put it in Other Arts. Dooms Day349 21:55, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

How many good articles are there really?

There seems to be a discrepancy between the total number of articles on good article list and Category:Wikipedia good articles (the total number of articles with the GA tag on the talk page). As of right now, it lists 1,960 articles on Wikipedia:Good articles and I count 1,996 articles at Category:Wikipedia good articles. I'm guessing that there are GA reviewers out there that are not adding the articles to the WP:GA list after reviewing and promoting an article? Perhaps a bot could be made to calculate this automatically each night? Dr. Cash 23:24, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Technically, the 1.0 bot does it in the log thing, but it doesn't seem to be working properly at the moment, because it seems to take the ArticleHistory template to mean an article has been delisted....However, for the time period before that log, I think we'll have to set it right by hand again, I did alot of it once :/. Homestarmy 23:29, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

The comparison can be done by script. I'll post again in a few minutes. (I also fixed the category list above). CMummert · talk 23:43, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

Here are two lists of articles that are either on WP:GA but not in the category, or not on WP:GA but in the category. I can't guarantee it's perfect. I removed some of the pairs where the GA list points to a redirect page.

Only in category: Talk:2005 levee failures in Greater New Orleans— Talk:Abraham Lincoln assassination— Talk:Alpha Phi Omega— Talk:Calvin Johnson (football player)— Talk:Galactic tide— Talk:George B. McClellan— Talk:India national cricket team— Talk:London Paddington station— Talk:Panzer I— Talk:Sodium hydroxide— Talk:Stylidium— Talk:Tompkins Square Park Police Riot— Talk:Unfinished work— Talk:White Mountain art— Talk:William Monahan

I've fixed the links on WP:GA for 2005 levee failures in Greater New Orleans, London Paddington station, Calvin Johnson, and Sodium hydroxide. The pages were renamed and the link was previously not updated. Alpha Phi Omega was just reviewed and added to the page in the past day by Eric1985, so I've contacted him on his user page asking him to update the page. Dr. Cash 01:53, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Only in GA list: Talk:Annibale Bugnini—Talk:Battle of Gettysburg— Talk:Calvin Johnson (football)— Talk:Crawdaunt— Talk:Indian cricket team— Talk:Johannes Kepler— Talk:Levee failures in Greater New Orleans, 2005— Talk:Music of the Bahamas— Talk:Paddington station— Talk:Rainhill Trials— Talk:sodium hydroxide—Talk:Triggerplant

Just comparing counts is not very accurate. The category contains several project pages that are not articles. I hope this helps. CMummert · talk 00:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I would think that these project pages should be removed from the category, then. The category exists specifically to denote pages which are good articles. Project pages do not, and will never, fall under that category. Dr. Cash 01:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Also, note that the bot runs every two days, not every day, because it takes longer than a day for it to finish its run. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 01:56, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Using WP1.0 Bot for GAs

Last month I made this suggestion here, namely, to start using WP 1.0 Bot to list articles for the GA project. If there is support for this proposal, I'm willing to set up the infrastructure to do this - once this is done, the bot generates its output automatically.

I originally made the proposal in the context of removing the GA-Class from the WP 1.0 assessment scheme, because it is not a WikiProject assessment grade but an external tag/review. However, I wanted to set up things in such a way that everyone would benefit, including this project. Although that broader proposal was generally favoured, there were clearly several people who opposed it, and I didn't want to force it through. However, I'm proposing we try out using the bot here anyway to help this project. The benefits, as I see it, are:

There will be an accurate count (updated every other night) of all talk pages with the GA tag.
There will be a log (also updated every other night) showing all changes. Those who police this project can check the log to track delisting, look for vandalism, name changes, etc. I have personally restored several GA tags lost through incorrect archiving or vandalism.
There will be a set of lists like this one, listing all the GAs alphabetically, and giving a link to the article version found on the same day the bot found the GA tag (this date is also listed). This last feature can help in looking at changes since an article was promoted.
If this is all done, I propose to have the bot modified so as to report the GA tag in all the tables of the 400 or so WikiProjects that use this bot - this is very easy for Oleg to do. It would appear in the "Version" column just as 0.5 does in lists such as this one. This column is not the ideal place for such information, but it should be clear enough, and anything else would get complicated.

I can't see any real drawbacks for this project, other than the fact that for the information to be useful people here need to check it regularly. Can anyone see anything I'm missing? Do you want me to go ahead and set things up for the bot? Walkerma 06:46, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds useful and if it could pick out the ten "Recently listed good articles" it will also help with the "Recently listed good articles" on the page. Tarret 13:27, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

This sounds awesome. I think it would be very useful. Vassyana 13:33, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

I still support this proposel. :) Homestarmy 13:38, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Anything would help. Only a week ago CAT:GA and WP:GA were fully reconciled. Now the total GA count is off by 6, there are another 7 in CAT:GA not listed on WP:GA, and at least a few of the section counts are off. Gimmetrow 13:49, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

OK, barring a sudden flood of objections, I'll get this set up this weekend. Cheers, Walkerma 01:43, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Anything? :/. Homestarmy 15:40, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

I have a draft of the new template User:Walkerma/Sandbox3. Please take a look. I posted a general request for comments/edits to this on the 1.0 page over the weekend, but got no response so far. I didn't want to risk screwing everything up for the GA project by putting out a template that was broken! Tonight I will contact directly a few people directly, hopefully that will elicit something. If there are people here who are good with templates, please edit/comment as well. It is designed to accept an (optional) category parameter, which matches the categories seen on the GA page; I have found feature that very helpful with {{V0.5}} because I could easily locate all the history articles, etc. Note that the category generation code is in there, but currently "switched off" (a colon in front of the cat link) so that you don't see my sandbox appearing as a GA! Once the template is working, it will only take a few minutes to get the system set up for the bot, though it will take 2-3 days before it is up & running. Walkerma 06:43, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Heh. I was just doing that. ;) Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 06:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Hey, thanks Titoxd! I was just writing a request on your talk page, you must have known! Heck, he even set up the categories! We should watch things at the main index page to make sure the GA project appears there in a day or two (initially redlinked). Many thanks, Walkerma 07:02, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, the table won't be populated until the sandbox template is rolled out to {{GA}}. I can do that, and then run the update manually. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:16, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Lo and behold, Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Good articles by quality. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 07:44, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

For those looking for the page to watch for changes to pages that have a GA related talk page tag, put this log on your watchlist: Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Good articles by quality log Homestarmy 13:13, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Looking at the log for today, there seems to be a bit of a problem. People have been rolling out that ArticleHistory template as of late, and i've noticed many of the Delists the bot is seeing are actually people replacing the GA template with the ArticleHistory template, could the 1.0 bot be modified to handle the ArticleHistory template showing as GA? (Still a useful bot though, it spotted a vandal whom I reverted....) Homestarmy 21:46, 24 March 2007 (UTC)

You would need to modify ArticleHistory to accept the category instead. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Never mind - I just did that. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:21, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

How is the new "topic" paramter going to be used? Ultimately, the CD templates will probably be incorporated into ArticleHistory. Gimmetrow 02:35, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Topic is going to be used, in the GA sense, to link to the top-level categories on WP:GA. Ironically, all of the CD templates got condensed into {{WP1.0}}... Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

The other categories used by GA were already rolled into ArticleHistory. Gimmetrow 02:38, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I did see that. Thanks. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 02:46, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) If the topic parameter is going to be used in the GA template (and not just in the 1.0 template), then won't ArticleHistory need to support it too? I think AH is implemented on a few hundred GAs by now. Gimmetrow 03:06, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

It is not mandatory for GAs; it is just nice to be able to link to GA#Arts, for example. However, if you do intend to add 1.0 classes in the future, it will need to support it as well. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 03:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Adding a new parameter to the template is of course trivial - it's more a question of whether I need to add this to the bot, because if it starts running into {{GA|oldid=123456789|topic=arts}} does it need to keep the topic info? Gimmetrow 03:13, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

To be honest, I don't know; I haven't seen it being used that much. However, if you plan to combine it with the 1.0 template, it will need topic (or "category", as the 1.0 templates call it) information to be stored. Titoxd^{(?!? - cool stuff)} 22:42, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

We'll reach 2000 GAs soon!

How shall we celebrate? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 01:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps it should be mentioned to "The Wikipedia Signpost", as they usually like to mention milestones for FAs, number of users, and number of articles in other wikis. First, we need to determine if it actually the 1960+ (as listed now) or the 1990+ listed above. --Nehrams2020 02:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I count 1983 articles in the category as of an hour ago. CMummert · talk 03:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

As of right now, there are 1977 unique links on the WP:GA page, and 8 additional articles in the category:Talk:Abraham Lincoln assassination, Talk:Galactic tide, Talk:George B. McClellan, Talk:Panzer I, Talk:Tompkins Square Park Police Riot, Talk:Unfinished work, Talk:White Mountain art, Talk:William Monahan. Gimmetrow 04:12, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I have added all of the articles that you mentioned (except for White Mountain art) to the WP:GA listing, and incremented the counter. I count 1,987 articles on WP:GA, as well as the same number in the category Category:Wikipedia good articles. I removed the GA tag from Talk:White Mountain art as I could not find any evidence that it was nominated - the tag was added by a single user. I left a note on the talk page regarding this, so perhaps we'll see it nominated soon.

13 articles to go before #2000! Dr. Cash 22:15, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I removed GA tags from the talk pages of two redirects. As of now, the category and the WP:GA page appear to be reconciled, with a count of 1983 articles. Gimmetrow 22:40, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

There are plenty of GA's up for review, I don't think the count is really going to be easy to call.... Homestarmy 19:50, 26 March 2007 (UTC)

The count list has surpassed 2000 now; do we have any idea which one was the 2,000th? Smomo 18:08, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

The 2000th article was Rhonda Storms promoted by user:Mike Halterman.--DorisH??? 20:14, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

So how shall we celebrate? --J.L.W.S. The Special One 12:14, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I was thinking of a little banner on the talk page, like on the millionth article, but I have a feeling that just seems like a bit of an overkill. what do you think? Smomo 16:36, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

I left a message at the Signpost's tip line about the milestone, so hopefully it'll get mentioned. --Nehrams2020 22:45, 29 March 2007 (UTC)

GA quick fail discussion

Discussion here. Also see the backlog discussion previous it. IvoShandor 09:11, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Guide to Good Articles: DRAFT PROPOSAL

In what started as a discussion on quick-failing at Wikipedia talk:Good article candidates, I realized that what is really needed is a more extensive guide to reviewing Good Articles. I was WP:BOLD and started a Draft version as a subpage of my userpage. The draft can currently be found at: User:Jayron32/Guide to reviewing Good Articles. Please make any changes as you see fit, and leave any comments you have on the talk page. I propose a goal of having the draft finalized within 2 weeks from today (by April 13) and moved to the GA project by that date. Thank you all for your attention to this. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 16:05, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

This is a good idea, but it needs to mention and give details of what to look for when reviewing an article for GA status. I think that while WP:WIAGA is a good summary of what a GA needs we still need something that goes into more detail on it. Also , if this does work out can we shorten the title to something like Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles? Tarret 22:32, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like you have some positive contributions to make. Go ahead and make any additions/changes to the proposal page you wish to, or make any comments on the talk page you want to. Don't be scared to be bold just because its in a user namespace. This is an open proposal, and we seek all the input we can get. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:36, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

1,337

A bit of a silly question, but I must know: which GA was lucky enough to be number 1337teen? --tjstrf talk 04:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Not sure. As articles get listed and delisted, the number fluctuates. The number listed on the WP:GA page is not the total number of articles to ever achieve GA. For example, if there are 2017 articles on the GA list, that doesn't mean that the last one nominated was number 2017. Given the rate at which articles are delisted, it it probably something like the 2200th or 2300th article to be a GA. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:34, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Reworking of the criteria

Please see Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?#Proposed reworking of the criteria. Thank you. — Deckill er 06:14, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Fictional historical person

I just added George P. Burdell under historical people, but I'm not at all sure it was the right subsection. If anyone can figure out a better place to put him, please do. Thanks. Mike Christie (talk) 11:02, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Reorganization of Places under Geography category

I did an overhaul of the geography category, specifically the Places sections. The prior system, based on location by Hemisphere, was both illogical and inconsistent.

Illogical in the sense that place very close in terms of location and culture were separated. For example, British Isles locations, where two cities in England appeared in two different lists. This is a correct organization based on hemispheres (as England lies in both hemispheres) but it seems silly that two English cities should appear in two different categories.
Inconsistent in the sense that some people had placed places in the wrong category, such as a Portuguese city in the Eastern Hemisphere. Yes, portugal is in Europe, but it is in the Western Hemisphere part of Europe. The presence of most european articles in the Easten Hemisphere section may have confused whoever put this here.

To fix this, I reorganized it into continents, so that most places will be near other places that have most in common with. As a side effect, and a rather telling one, we can more easily see now that MOST GA's out there are relating to places in England, Australia, USA, and Canada.... hmmm...--Jayron32|talk|contribs 17:53, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

GA class & wikiprojects

Is GA class a part of the assessment scale because as I was checking the article talk pages I changed the wikiproject assessment box for the article argon but it was changed back. Would anyone care to answer my question? 74.116.113.241 21:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure, some Wikiprojects claim they don't use GA as a designation anymore, but the GA designation still works in their templates. Homestarmy 21:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Finding oldids for the GAs

Would the editors here be interested in going through the 2000+ GAs and adding the oldids to the talk page banner, as discussed here? If so, please express interest or add comments below. Thanks. The ultimate aim would be to enable the GA banners to be properly integrated into {{ArticleHistory}} (hence the need to find the oldids for when the GAs were promoted). At least that is what I think the proposal over there said. Hopefully this will become clearer very soon! Carcharoth 22:10, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. The first one I tried, Architecture of the California missions, I ran into the problem of there being effectively two oldids. One is for when it was initially promoted, back in July 2006. The other is for after the inline citation style was added following a note left on the talk page. I'm now not sure quite which oldid applies. Maybe the GA template needs to be upgraded to include both a promotion oldid, and then any later review oldids? Carcharoth 22:32, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

No keeping up with GA reviews, added, delisted, readded, delisted, readded would be an impossible task. We should just have the latest GA listing which corresponds to the date it was actually added (last) to WP:GA, or it will really be undoable. Unless Gimmetrow disagrees with me; he knows best. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC) (PS, now you'll see how big the problem is ... woulda been so much easier if GA included oldid at the time :-) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:48, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

First, ArticleHistory is only likely to be implemented on articles with failed FACs, so it's only those that could (immediately) help the conversion to ArticleHistory by having oldids in the GA templates (if they exist). Second, it's the oldid from the time it was added that is relevant, the "reviewed version". If an article is listed, delisted at GAR and re-listed, there should be three events and three oldids in ArticleHistory. However, the GA template on its own would have oldid for the most recent addition. Gimmetrow 22:56, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I guess as long as I'm here - are the categories added by the delistedGA and failedGAnominee templates used for anything? Gimmetrow 22:59, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Reply to Sandy and Gimmetrow - in this case, there was no delisting. Just an old promotion. A threat of a review, and a tidying up of the inline citations. Have a look at what I did at Architecture of the California missions and then at Borobudur. I think I did it right. One problem. The script doesn't seem to be working. When I use it, it just comes up with the link to manually enter a date. Anyway, that means I'm manually adding the oldids. Both the ones I looked at were simple to do. Borobudur had an old peer review template - is anything needed to make those GimmeBot-ready? I don't mind trying to rescue oldids for GAs - will be useful eventually, I hope. Carcharoth 23:00, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Three things: 1) You've got to get the script working correctly first, or it will take you forever. Not sure what's wrong there, maybe ask Dr pda. 2) Click on the old peer review, click on history, and make sure there's not an archived peer review that needs to be added back - they often get lost (or watch for other events on Dr pda's script, which could include two oldpeerreviews). 3) As Gimmetrow says above, focus first on What Links Here in {{facfailed}}, finding those that are GA, as they will be converted first. As you get them ready, put a list somewhere so we can check them and botify them. Great work ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:06, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, I still need to learn a few things first. Specifically, see the comment I left on Gimmetrow's talk page. Not spreading conversations out over multiple pages would be a start! :-) That's enough for tonight anyway. I looked through the 22 articles in the Architecture GA section (would you have time to briefly look at what I did?). This should be interesting, and I've learnt stuff from doing it manually, but as you say, I need to get the script working. At least I've learnt the right format for manually entering dates... I was trying 2006-07-14 and getting nowhere. Then I tried 14 Jul 2006 and it worked! :-) Would be even nicer if it found things automatically. Can you point be to a page where it definitely works, and I can try it there. Thanks. Carcharoth 00:12, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

GA at FAS/FASD

Can an admin fix this please? Fetal alcohol syndrome (FAS—the correct medical name and diagnosis) was awarded GA a while back. An editor moved it (and its talk page) to Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD), and removed all traces of FAS from Wiki. FASD is *not* a recognized medical condition. I cut and pasted the relevant parts of the article back to FAS. WikiProject Medicine is trying to deal with the mess, but I can't just move it all back without admin help. Can someone figure out how to straighten out the GA portion? We need to get the GA back to the correct, medical article which was awarded GA. Or, just remove its GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:41, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Can't you just revert the page back to the version right before the page was moved? :/ But i'll leave a note or something telling people not to fail the article if it looks bad now or something, at least for now anyway.... Homestarmy 16:52, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

No, both articles have improved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it appears like there's a pretty good bit of dispute over this issue. Perhaps a double GA review on both articles at once would be better? I'll also look back to see if the article was even passed properly in the first place. Homestarmy 16:56, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

No, reread. There is no dispute. NO one disagrees as to the problem; the discussion is over how to fix the talk pages and the faulty moves. Also, FASD will be reduced to a stub (it is not a recognized medical conditions), so needs no GA review. It was never GA and never should have been; it was a faulty move. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

It looks like it was passed fairly, I once knew the user who passed it, (His username is really hard to capitalize, User:GoOdCoNtEnT or something) I think he was a reasonably fair reviewer, no idea why he got accused of sockpuppeting abusively or whatever. Homestarmy 16:59, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Our messages crossed in the mail. I just fixed it manually since we decided we couldn't move the talk pages. The only reason we haven't completed the work (remove FASD references from FAS, and reduce FASD to a stub) is that we're waiting for more knowledgeable editors to come on board to help. If they don't appear within a week, we'll have to reduce FASD to a stub, as it's not based on reliable sources. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:03, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

By the way, GoodContent was *very* disruptive at FAC. If you think FAS isn't GA, I don't think anyone will object. It looks GA to me, but I don't follow GA. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:04, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually, if the issue is a genuine dispute over content of the two articles, than it may be failed on stability grounds. If it is a case of vandalism/disruption, than I see no reason it could not remain. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 17:10, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm inclined to support a temporary exception for the FAS article for stability, if the user who wanted the two articles has come over to supporting the other side now, I think it would be entirely reasonable to wait and see if this article can be restored properly. But as for FASD, it looks like the focus of the article is quite different from the article which was actually reviewed, I think that one should have to be reviewed on its own, assuming it isn't reduced to a stub. Homestarmy 17:23, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

That should be resolved soon; if MLHarris doesn't surface to help with this work, other WikiProject Medicine editors will do the work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:31, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Ronald Reagan

This process is so random; will someone please deal with Ronald Reagan, who was passed by a brand new editor and then submitted to FAC within a day. Smells like socks. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:12, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

I gave the article a proper review this time, even ignoring the bogus sock-puppet promotion. You can find my review at Talk:Ronald Reagan. The article has serious referencing issues and NPOV issues. It should have been quickfailed on the numerous {{fact}} tags in the article anyways, but I did leave notes for improvement. If the article can be rewritten to provide a more balanced view of the Reagan presidency and if the referencing can be brought up to snuff, than it should be renominated. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:11, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

References in the lead section

I'd like to suggest a change at WP:ATT, but I thought I'd check here first to see if I am out on my own on this one, as the idea came up while reviewing GAs -- more on that below.

The change I'd like is something along these lines:

Lead sections do not always require citations, if the information in them is properly sourced when it appears in the body of the article. If there is disagreement over whether the information in the lead correctly reflects the sources cited in the body, this can be resolved either by placing a citation in the lead section, or by changing the text to reflect the information in the body.

The justification is to avoid cluttering lead sections with footnotes, when the lead almost invariably repeats and summarizes information which should be correctly cited in the body. I think the lead looks better without cites, and is more inviting to a new reader.

I found a debate in the WP:V archives about this topic: see this archived discussion. Carcharoth proposed a version of the above, among other things; the subsequent discussion mostly focused on the other things so although he didn't get much support I feel it may be worth raising the question again.

Examples: see James McCune Smith, which is tagged with an {{Unreferenced}} tag. The article was tagged with the edit summary "intro needs them"; the rest of the article is sourced. Or see Asser which (full disclosure) I worked on and have nominated for GA, and which was tagged by the same editor for the same reason. When I queried the tag he took it off. See Ace Books for an FA I worked on which does have a cite in the lead; it was a point that seemed correctly placed there and not usefully repeated below, so it had to be cited there.

The reason I'm raising this here is that the focus here is "what makes an article good"; and I think an uncluttered lead is good. If nobody agrees, no problem; but if others agree then perhaps this is worth suggesting at WP:ATT, which is where this sort of debate would belong. Mike Christie (talk) 23:41, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm guessing the editor who added the tag was thinking of the "first in the world" statement, which needed a citation. Fortunately it was easy to find a related statement among the references. Also reference#3 had incorrect author/publisher. I've fixed that and added publisher info to the citations.

As for the lead, unusual statements and quotes should probably be cited regardless, but generally the lead is a summary of the article. Uncontentious statements in the lead would generally not require a citation if discussed later in the article. Gimmetrow 16:51, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for fixing that; and I see someone has it under review now for GA.

You say "Uncontentious statements in the lead would generally not require a citation if discussed later in the article", but this is not stated anywhere in citations policies and guidelines as far as I can see. At least one editor, SlimVirgin, disagreed, "because the lead section, in my view, should be referenced in exactly the same way as any other section. It's part of the article: that it should sum up the contents of the article doesn't make it a thing apart. In addition, we want to encourage referencing, not make it even more complicated by specifying that lead sections have to be treated differently." That's why I was considering going to WP:ATT and suggesting some such guideline.

If anyone can spot a policy statement supporting less refs in the lead, please let me know; otherwise the current interpretation of WP:ATT appears to be that leads are not to be treated any differently than the body of the article.Mike Christie (talk) 19:58, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

There is long-standing consensus (ask on talk at WP:FAC) that the lead is a summary of the entire article; hence, need not include references, as statements should be referenced in the body of the article, and summarized back to the lead. Exceptions occur, of course, including direct quotes, surprising or contentious claims that occur in the lead, etc. but in general, the lead isn't referenced, as it is a summary. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

That's what I was looking for, and that was almost certainly where I saw it, then. I will ask over there if anyone can cite policy. I'd prefer to have a supporting reference if I remove a tag asking for sources in the lead. Thanks for the pointer. Mike Christie (talk) 20:20, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

You are not going to find a policy answer; it's a guideline, and an issue that enjoys consensus. There is not a policy to cite. See WP:LEAD SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:25, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates/archive22#References in lead section and Wikipedia talk:Lead section#References in the lead section. As far as *policy* is concerned, the lead is not an exception - all statements there should be verifiable/attributable/reliably-sourced or whatever term we're using today. But *policy* does not require inline citations at the point of the statement, only that the material be referenced in the article. Rules should be interpreted in light of how they are applied - and the consensus at WP:FAC illustrates how the policy is actually implemented in practice. Except for quotes and such exceptions, uncontentious statements covered elsewhere in an article do not require citations at the point of the statement in the lead. Gimmetrow 20:28, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

To highlight SlimVirgin's concern and address it; no article should ever be held up for excessive referencing (except when it is done maliciously, such as a WP:POINT violation). While the lack of references in a lead section should not hold up an article for GA or FA citation (provided no outrageous claims are made, yada yada yada), no one should feel the need to remove such references or avoid adding them. If you want to fully reference a lead section, by all means do it; however consensus at FAC and here would seem to indicate that most reviewers do not require referencing of the lead as a requirement for promotion. (edit conflict) Gimmetrow makes a great point right there. Policy does not require inline citation after every sentance, only that claims made by the article can be directly linked to references. If the lead is an actual summary, then all claims made in the lead SHOULD BE adequately referenced in the body, thus policy is being followed. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 20:33, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with all the above; I was just concerned that comments such as SlimVirgin's final comment here would put me in conflict with opinion at WP:ATT. So, given the above, if I see a non-specific {{unreferenced}} tag applied to a lead which seems to me to have all material well-referenced in the body, and if I can't see any controversial assertions, I will feel free to remove the tag with an edit summary saying the references are in the body. Let me know if I still don't have this right.

I'd like to see this stated somewhere, in WP:LEAD or WP:ATT, whichever is appropriate. The archived discussions make it evident the topic comes up repeatedly.Mike Christie (talk) 20:44, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it comes that often; I do think Gimmetrow has summarized it well, SV misunderstood and hasn't been all that active at FAC, and adding it somewhere could amount to instruction creep, per Gimmetrow's explanation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:59, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, it might be instruction creep, but the extensive previous discussions (several due to me - and it was interesting reading those old threads I started) show that this is something that even experienced editors are uncertain about. It would be nice to have some written guidance (even if very nuanced) somewhere for when someone asks this question again in the future. Carcharoth 04:01, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I also found this discussion, which reminded me of how 'leads' vs 'main text' of articles is similar in some ways to 'overview' (summary style) articles versus 'main' (daughter) articles, with regards to both synchronisation (keeping both updated, synchronised and consistent) and referencing - the references should work together as well. Carcharoth 04:10, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Criteria reworking complete

Due to no outright objections in roughly three weeks and all suggestions being answered, the revised criteria have been implemented at Wikipedia:What is a good article?. — Deckill er 00:53, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Accuracy of statistics

Exactly how accurate is the given number of GAs? Wouldn't it be better to have a bot find the number of GA templates and have the stat updated automatically? --Cryptic C62 · Talk 03:34, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I think that the bot could also canvas the Talk pages and also update the list of good articles daily (removing those that are no longer GA and adding newly passed ones). This system of adding manually the articles is somewhat of a pain. I know there is some discussion of getting a bot to count the GA nominees, so maybe this could be added as one of the bots tasks. Biomedeng 16:58, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

If by "canvas the Talk pages" is meant look for the GA template, that's the same as checking the GA category. (Note Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Good articles by quality and statistics.) A bot could remove probably remove delisted pages, but how would new articles be added to appropriate categories on WP:GA automatically? Gimmetrow 17:15, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

The first script used to update the GA page automatically, GAAuto, did this very same function, though it was some pretty deep Perl programming, I dunno how it figured out categories, though it sometimes messed up. Homestarmy 17:21, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

It did not automatically categorize articles - for every new article it asked in which category/subcategory it should go. I suppose if someone did this regularly the categories would become familiar, but this was not an easy process. Gimmetrow 17:24, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

If you put the category into the GA template, a bot could then "auto" categorize the articles. howcheng {chat} 05:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

GA award

I have proposed a WikiProject award, the Good Article Badge. Though it is a project award it is meant to be handed out to anyone for great contributions to GAs or GAC or GAR etc. See the proposal at : Wikipedia:Barnstar_and_award_proposals/New_Proposals#WikiProject_Good_articles, voice your opinion and discuss there. Thanks. IvoShandor 12:03, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Head Count

I just attempted a physical head count of GA's, and came up with a total of 2,155 (as of see timestamp). Does anyone want to check my math on this? If I'm right, we should update. Chubbles 06:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

Poor introductory text

The description of good articles on this page is awful. The first paragraph is bulky and pretty useless - at any rate, can't somebody make sure that there aren't two sentences starting "Currently, ... articles ..."? 172.143.52.186 17:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Updating Counts

Pass step 4 (final step) at Wikipedia:Good_article_candidates indicates to increment the GA count in both the article section at Wikipedia:Good_articles and the total count. It looks like the total count is automatically generated by a JavaScript reference. I suspect this is an improvement that hasn't made its way into the documentation, but didn't want to update the documentation myself since I'm only 75% confident. Edurant 21:33, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

The Simpsons

There are now so many Simpsons GAs (22 out of 27 television episode articles) it might be a good idea to separate it under a catagory of its own. This has been spurred by this featured topic drive. I was thinking of even subdividing the episodes according to series, although this may prove more viable as even more episodes are added. If no-one objects, I'll siphon the Simpson's articles off the TV episodes catagory. JameiLei 18:35, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know. I probably wouldn't, its better to have 27 in one category than 22 in one and 5 in another, when they are essentially the same thing. Maybe if all of the first nine seasons are ever promoted. Gran² 20:27, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Total updated by manual count; reorganizing too

I have just done a manual recount of the total articles. Individual categories have been recounted, and the totals added to get the "big number" at the top of the page. If someone could check my math, that would be great. Also, I am going to start a reorganization of the page, given the following issues:

Biographical articles are all over the place. For example, monarchs are listed in several categories; politicians in several different ones; religious figures in several different ones. I am going to try to make the articles better organized. A top-level Biography category may be appropriate at this point to better organize things as well, but I will let that for future discussion.
Some categories are getting too large. I will be spliting these into reasonable sized categories. Specifically, I was thinking of spliting the Tropical Cyclone category by location (atlantic, pacific, indian).
A few misplaced articles need better homes.

If anyone wants to check my work and clean up after me, feel free.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 02:56, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

Where should mythical religious figures with religious claims of existence go?

Interesting conversation has emerged regarding Religious figures and leaders vs. Myths. And that is where do we stick religious figures for which there is limited evidence of their existence yet there is a religious belief they actually exist? We are all over the place. For example we assert the non-existence of Ganesha and thus we deny the Hindu claim that Buddha was an avatar of Ganesha. We casually dismiss the existence of Apollo and Inari, King Arthur (who has the best case for existence of all the people I've mentioned). Yet we assert the existence of Isaac and Jesus. When evaluating the article on Ishmael I certainly treated it much more like an article on Batman then like one on Winston Churchill. We know (from an academic POV) what when proto Judaism emerged and it wasn't until at least 500-1400 years after the dates associated with the existence of Abraham.

So anyway here is a debate from talk pages.

Thanks very much for the review. I had a question. In the "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" section, I think "Religious figures and leaders" would be a better place. Would you please let me know what you think. Thanks --Aminz 21:11, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm responding to [5]. The reason I went for myth rather than religious figure is that there is no claim he did anything as part of any particular religion. He is revered primarily for what he is rather than what he did. In other words he is a subject of worship (so to speak) not a politician guiding people in the proper manner of worship. Further his actual existence is part of religious traditions and disputed, unlike say the middle ages popes.

Hope that explains my position on the matter. I can understand if you want to dispute where I listed him and if you would like to do something on the talk page (Wikipedia talk:Good articles) I'd have no objection. IMHO it most certainly is biased that Jesus is listed in the one category and Ishmael in the other (I think they should both be in myth) so I wouldn't mind opening this entire issue up. Anyway very nice job on the article! jbolden1517 ^Talk 21:30, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I understand your position. While the stories around Ishmael are widely considered as legendary in academia, it is not improbable that the person of Ishmael existed. I was able to find academic sources on Isaac#Academic_view but couldn't find anything for Ishmael though I think these two should have a similar story.

I think placing the article in myth section is following an academic point of view, but after all it is a POV. Further, we can never know what really happened about 3000 year ago; much of what is argued in academia are nothing more than probable speculations. On the other hand, Ishmael being a "Religious figures" is everybody's POV I think. --Aminz 21:44, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm letting you know I did open this up. Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles#Where_should_mythical_religious_figures_with_religious_claims_of_existence_go.3F. You have a valid point regarding Acadmic POV vs. religious POV. I don't consider him a religious figure since I consider existence a prereq and I am positive of his non existence (there was no proto judaism in 2000 BCE). But you are absolutely correct that I'm assuming an academic POV in making that claim. I'm not really sure what the alternative is to that other than complete chaos. So from my perspective Ishmael isn't a religious figure for the same reason Mickey Mouse isn't a famous actor. Anyway, we'll see if there is a consensus one way or the other on this. Regardless though, I am fixing the anti muslim bias with Ishmael being a myth and Jesus being a religious figure. .... jbolden1517 ^Talk 23:26, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the cases of Jesus and Ishmael are different. Most historians believe that Jesus was a historical figure. Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, et al are more disputed. --Aminz 23:38, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

So the question is do we have any kind of objective criteria for who gets in what category? Has this issue come up before? jbolden1517 ^Talk 23:17, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

In addition to this, labeling a category with the name "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" is implicitly against religous POV. --Aminz 23:25, 8 May 2007 (UTC)

OK doesn't look like anyone else is going to join in. I thought of a compromise: Protohistory. This way we aren't asserting existence of non existence rather simply the lack of good contemporaneous written records. Can you live with that? jbolden1517 ^Talk 15:45, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

It works for me. --Aminz 04:58, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

Jesus

Should it go to divinities? Muslims don't consider Jesus to have been divine for example. What about religous figures? --Aminz 05:00, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

In Islam he's a religious figure. But Islam is ecumenical when it comes to prophets. Jesus as properly understood by his followers is a supernatural being who preexisted the universe, and in fact was the agent of creation. His only claim to humanity is a hypostatic union, an even his followers admit that this claim to humanity some mystery which is declared incomprehensible to any person. Sorry, that's a god in my book.

In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom he made the universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. So he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

Islam is a different story, and I agree to them he is just a prophet. But generally I think its best to classify these gods as their followers would classify them. Otherwise all the pagan gods have to be listed under demons jbolden1517 ^Talk 11:04, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with jbolden1517. Christians don't consider Allah to be divine either. Epbr123 12:42, 10 May 2007 (UTC)

To jbolden1517, I thought you were strictly following Academic POV rather than religous POV: An excerpt "Encyclopedia of Religon" , Vol. 14, p.9360, on Trinity writes: "Exegetes and theologians today are in agreement that the Hebrew Bible does not contain a doctorine of Trinity, even though it was customary in past dogmatic tracts on the Trinity to cite texts like Genesis 1:26, "Let us make humanity in our image, after our likeness" (see also Gn. 3:22, 11:7, Is. 6:2-3) as proof of plurality in God. Although the Hebrew Bible depicts God as the father of Israel and employs personifications of God as Word (davar), spirit (ruah), Wisdom (hokhmah), and Presense (shekhinah), it would go beyond the intention and spirit of the Old Testament to correlate these notions with later trinitarian doctrine.
Further, exegetes and theologians agree that the New Testament also does not contain an explicit doctrine of the Trinity."

Epbr123, Please see Allah. Allah is the Arabic word for God and Arabic-speakers of all faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word "Allah" to mean "God". Plus, According to F. E. Peters, "The Qur'an insists, Muslims believe, and historians affirm that Muhammad and his followers worship the same God as the Jews. --Aminz 01:14, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

No that was your term. If I were following academic POV Isaac, and Ishmael would be under fiction not protohistory. As far as the trinity, that quote is from the new testament. Moreover, it doesn't matter what objectively the NT teaches, what matters is what Christians claim it teaches. Remember from my perspective this is like trying to find "the real" story behind Daffy Duck's jealousy of Mickey Mouse, there is no real story. On your final point, I disagree strongly with your Allah article, and the Peter's quote. Many Christians do deny they are worshipping Allah. The Southern Baptist convention (largest US protestant denomination) rejects that Allah is God. al-Faruqi, Christian Mission and Islamic Da`wah: Proceedings of the Chambèsy Dialogue Consultation, pp. 47-48 explicitly notes that Allah and the Christian God have different properties substantial enough that in the absence of (Sura 29:46) one could argue they are in fact different gods. But that's a better argument for the Allah page. The point is that Jesus's followers believe him to be a supernatural being. Ergo he is not a religious figure but a god. That was the core pointjbolden1517 ^Talk 01:43, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

jbolden1517, I know that mainstream Christianity considers Jesus to have been God but that's a POV not shared by uniterian Christians and several historians. Jesus also exists outside Christianity. Also, yes, there are Christians who do not consider Allah to be their God. Fine.

My whole point is that we should not subscribe to the POV of anybody in wikipedia. Do you think according to Christianity, Jesus is *not* a religous figure. I think he is both God and Man in Christianity. --Aminz 03:16, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes I don't believe that according to Christianity that Jesus is a religious figure. He's a subject of worship not a teacher / leader primarily. The core creeds don't mention any of his teachings, but spend a great deal of time on his properties, the same way they speak about God the father and the holy spirit. The quote above I think is pretty clear cut:

"For we are dead to Adam and reborn in Christ Jesus" -> clearly symbolic use
"...he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world..." -> Who judges the world? Humans judge individuals
That his body is "glorious, incorruptible, and powerful"
"In the beginning was the Word (Logos), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God....In him was life; and the life was the light of men"

I could go on and on and on. This is not in any meaningful sense a person they are talking about. I pointed you to the article which says quite clearly that even the Christians belief in his humanity given the traits attributed to him requires an explanation permanently unknowable to man. Think Krishna for a second. Is he a religious figure or a divinity? Jesus is a Christian divinity that Muslims treat as a religious figure.

As for Unitarians he is still a god (or at least a demigod). Jesus is a union between the Logos (a component of God) and a human being, that's a 1/2 god 1/2 man combinations. What unitarians are denying is that he the divine aspect of Jesus is a separate person of the godhead (i.e. that God has 3 spirations) but rather that he is a unified being. jbolden1517 ^Talk 11:02, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

jbolden1517, according to the Jesus article, he is the "centeral figure of Christianity". Do you have any suggestions of a borad category that works for everybody? --Aminz 22:17, 11 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah stick him the same place the other "central figures" like Allah, Quetzalcoatl and Zeus go. Under divinity. You haven't made a counter argument yet that hasn't been factually false. jbolden1517 ^Talk 04:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Random good/featured articles

I've created "random redirect pages" for featured and good articles. The list of GAs/FAs ist updated hourly. Link if you want, don't if you don't :) --Dapete ?? 08:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Mythodea

I've noticed that the composition Mythodea is under both the "Architecture" and "Recordings and compositions" subcategories on WP:GA; it would appear (to my untrained eye) that someone saw architecture on the cover and so listed it under architecture, but I could be wrong, so would anyone object to me removing it from the architecture listing? MarcK 04:19, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Splitting

Any one else have views on splitting the project page? From my perspective at 104 kbs or so it is getting a bit slow to upload and deal with. --VS ^talk 11:09, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Differences between early good articles and recent good articles, in terms of standard

I removed The Band and Sonny Rollins from GA status. They were listed as GA not long after the GA process was invented, they are a long way from the good articles of today in terms of quality.--h i s s p a c e r e s e a r c h 19:06, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it would be most advisable to return to the re-review concept and go through the current list, perhaps section-by-section, to make sure all the article are up to standards. Anybody would like to join? If so, we might set up a list similar to the GAC reviewer list and start going (provided there are enough experienced reviewers to man the intiative so that we can complete it within a reasonable time, i.e. a month or so) PrinceGloria 19:42, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

People used to do sweeps of the list many months ago, but there's a whole lot more articles now, it'll take quite a mediumish group of people nowadays.... Homestarmy 23:40, 17 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, it's 2200ish articles on the list now, it is quite a number, but then there are quite many people on the "GA reviewers list". If everybody would review one article a day, we could be done in 30 days with 73 people (tall order, I know), 60 days with 37 people and 90 days with 25 folks (not THAT impossible). I also believe there are quite many articles on the list that can be failed quite quickly, as they e.g. have scanty or no sources, warning tags (POV etc.), so it could go faster than it seems. Also, some articles added recently would have more detailed reviews, so it's just a matter of checking against the text whether the reviewer wasn't too "liberal".

Another way would be for everybody interested and experienced in reviewing to take one group of articles (going by the topical groups on the list) - this allows everybody to choose a group of an appropriate size given one's time constraints, as well as a topic interesting enough for one to be more involved in reviewing, as well as being able to judge e.g. the broadness and depth of the article appropriately (that said, it would be a tad improper for one to review articles from a group they are too involved in, so, as a member of WikiProject Automobiles, I'd rather not do "Road transport", but I will gladly take "Architecture").

ANYWAY, if anybody but me would lake to take part, please indicate that here, and if there would be a more substantial number of us, I will gladly prepare a framework for us to be able to start, say, on the 1st of June. Thanks, PrinceGloria 21:06, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

One good thing

Upon consideration, I must approve one development: the speedy delisting of Bertrand Russell. (Some would say that this was a compliment to the article; but that's another question.) If this project moved to a general system by which any two editors could list an article, and any one editor could delist it, it would be a lot less time consuming, and move towards a status where listing would be a consensus decision of Wikipedia as a whole, not of a handful of editors here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:33, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Any two editors, even those who have heavily edited the article, or any one editor, who may have a personal vendetta against the article's subject or the way it is presented? (The latter of which has happened before) Homestarmy 23:34, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

In the detailed proposal below, I suggest that one of the supporting editors and any opposing editors must be uninvolved with the article (something for an admin to determine, if it comes to that). But the real protection against the solitary crank is that he is outnumbered; if it really is a good article, two uninvolved editors will say so. If he keeps on, and convinces noone, he will end up violating 3RR. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Concrete proposal

Category:Wikipedia proposals The above discussion reflects the concern many editors have for GAR and similar processes. I made a proposal at WP:GA/R#Georg Cantor, which I outline below.

The reason that this process is broken, in my opinion, is that it is at odds with the entire philosophy of Wikipedia, which should be a collaborative effort, not an adversarial court-room style battle. I am not at all against reviews and reviewers: there is an important job to do here, but the system at the moment is not delivering as much improvement of articles as it could, and is demoralizing dedicated editors in the process. It is not working because it operates in complain mode, not in "lets-try-to-fix-it" mode.

My concrete proposal is the following:

No one can comment on an article at GAR until they have made at least ~~five~~ six edits (~~however trivial~~ see below) aimed at improving it (and by that, I mean textual edits, not adding tags).

They are then of course, quite free to point out all the other defects in the article. This has several advantages: such a reviewer has shown willingness to make the article better; they will have invested something in the article; GAR will yield more improvements to articles; reviewers will be more familiar with the articles they review. Of course, such familiarity may reveal that an article is even worse than the reviewer first thought, and should be delisted, but that's fine: at least the review process will yield concrete suggestions, rather than a lot of tags and generic complaints. Geometry guy 10:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. Reviewers need not be afraid that they lack expertise to edit an article: this is a wiki after all, and all edits can be fixed. There are always plenty of minor issues of presentation which can be improved.

This, of course, is your opinion. I have had no such experience at GA/R or GAC. I suggest people spend more time preparing an article before nominating it. IvoShandor 12:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The idea that an editor contribute textually to an article raises COI issues and is basically pointless, you say yourself, "no matter how trivial." So, then it becomes, okay I added five "thes" to the article, etc... Pointless in my opinion. Your proposal is anything but concrete, it's more subjective than the system you decry. IvoShandor 12:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, not to mention that the article you point out above at GA/R contains plenty of thoughtful comments aimed at improving the article and the encyclopedia which is what GA is all about anyway. This article was clearly warned regarding inline citations, which you may hate but are required for any information likely to be challenged/ Clearly, based upon the review plenty of the info in that article is likely to be challenged. You don't like the comments or disagree with them at GA/R so you propose this radical and pointless alteration of the process? How does this help? IvoShandor 12:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi IvoShandor, thanks for commenting on this. I think you misunderstand my motives, though: I wish to promote discussion about the philosophy behind processes such as GAR. I did not join in the debate about Cantor because I am fond of the article and wanted to defend it; I joined in because I was unhappy about the nature of the process. The thoughtful comments you refer to only started appearing after I began promoting such debate. I did like them and agree that many of them are valid criticisms: I was happy to play a small role in provoking such comments, instead of the vague policy-citing that preceded them.

It is interesting that you raise COI. This is an adversarial perspective on the process, and this is precisely what I am questioning. The language "The article was warned" is similarly adversarial. In the end, we all have the same goal: improving articles. I am trying to think of ways to encourage editors to take a more constructive and collaborative approach to doing this through processes such as GAR. As you point out, an editor could still just add five particles and then call for delisting with a comment like "1.c. and MoS issues", but even if only one additional editor engaged with the article, I would regard that as worthwhile. I fail to see how this is radical, and hope it would not be pointless. Anyway, this particular idea is just one suggestion. If you have any other ideas, then please contribute them here. Geometry guy 13:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally I regard the idea as radical because whether or not you see the idea that conflicts of interests are adversarial, they do exist, pretending they don't won't help, IMO. Sure, some comments are unhelpful, but many are very helpful, not everyone is as dedicated as you or I or some of the other users, some just lack the time, this is all volunteer work after all. I think requiring someone who has already volunteered their time as a reviewer to also edit the article is a bit much, and I think, pretty radical alteration of the process. Though I don't like this particular idea I am open to ideas, I think in general, whoever archives review discussions should weigh the comments carefully and determine where consensus lies as opposed to simple vote counting, but I am not sure everyone here feels the same way. IvoShandor 14:33, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

In general people are taking these processes way to seriously, they really are just another way to improve articles. And none of my reviews have ever been the cursory glance from previous discussions, I read the article and assess it according to whatever the current criteria is, all of the submissions I have made have been treated similarly. I like the process because it always provides me with quality feedback from quality editors. Call it whatever the hell you want but there isn't any reason to do away with a process like this because some editors don't dedicate whatever others see as appropriate amounts of time to the process. IvoShandor 14:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I fully agree; this process has been taking itself far too seriously for years. This is why I propose to give a name which does not demand attention or imply "official" standing; any Wikipedia process is just a bunch of editors.

My experience differs. I have literally never seen a GA review which suggested that the reviewer was a competent editor, or had any familiarity with the subject matter of the article involved - either in technical fields or the humanities. (I am not speaking of articles I edit, either.) Geometry guy's proposal is an interesting change of dynamic, and might improve things. I would go further, and abolish review altogether. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to clarify, when you say GA review, do you mean the review coming with the article's candidacy, or GA/R's? Homestarmy 23:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

GA/R's, as this is the part of the process which is most broken. Geometry guy 20:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(To Homestarmy). I agree with Geometry guy; but my comments elsewhere, on not having seen a good review, are about initial reviews. It is true that I have seen fewer of these, since they're not centralized. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(undent) See this section below. IvoShandor 00:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have replaced five by six in my original proposal for compatibility with WP:GAD. I have also deleted the "however trivial" part of the proposal, as it was clearly not necessary.

However, I no longer favour the original proposal, but prefer the idea introduced in the next subsection, which is, furthermore, only a minor modification of existing procedures. In this modification, delisters should be required rather than recommended to make half a dozen edits before delisting. Geometry guy 20:08, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Alternative idea, building on this: no review

I would make the following process:

Any editor can nominate; any uninvolved editor has three choices:

accept as GA
Fix and accept as GA
Make ~~five~~ six edits and reject/leave as nominated.

Once an article has been accepted, any uninvolved editor has the same three choices:

Retain
Emend
Make ~~five~~ six edits and reduce to nominee or reject.

Any article which remained as a GA under these conditions would have had every editor who looks at it either conclude that it was a Good Article or that it was too far out of his competence to be rejected. Single crank opponents of an article could demote it, but it would be nominated and accepted again by other editors. Footnote counters could throw out all the articles that don't meet their private standards; other editors could throw out the abominably written or PoV screeds they leave. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I like the idea Septentrionalis has just proposed. One of the great benefits of GA (as compared with FA) is that it is lightweight: it only requires one uninvolved editor to promote a nominated article. The GAR process weighs this down: a promoted or rejected article can be taken to GAR immediately, where the whole process is potentially just as heavy as FAC or FAR. Replacing GAR by another lightweight process is an excellent solution to this problem. A quick glance at some of the talk pages associated with GAR soon reveals the concerns of reviewers that there are too many articles to check and too little time: this is why processes such as "speedy delisting" have been introduced. The proposal here is the ultimate speedy delist.

All that is needed is some criterion to ensure that the uninvolved editor doing the listing or delisting is competent enough to pronounce on the issue. My ~~five~~ six edits approach is one way to do that, although now that it is only a requirement on one editor, it can be strengthened (e.g., the edits should not be trivial, answering some of User:IvoShandor's concerns). There may be alternative ideas.

There is still a potential job for editors at GAR to do: this could reform as GARfC (requests for comments) or GARfA (arbitration) to deal with:

editors listing or delisting without demonstrating sufficient competence;
edit wars where two competent editors disagree over whether an article was listed.

This would almost certainly apply to significantly fewer articles than GAR, and hence it could be carried out more carefully. Further, as a procedural exercise rather than an evaluative exercise, it would be easier to carry out anyway (cf. WP:AfD vs WP:DRV). Geometry guy 19:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I appreciate the good faith attempts to improve the process but the above just seems to scream over bureaucracy and instruction creep which is a temptation that the GA process has went for previously to little benefit. If the process is going to be reformed, I don't think adding more bureaucracy will be the way. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 19:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Huh? This is decreasing bureaucracy, markedly. The only bureaucratic institution it leaves is Geometry guy's remaining part of GAR, which is purely proceedural, and requires no more bureaucracy than DRV. It would have only two questions to answer, both questions of fact:

Was a deleting/approving editor uninvolved with the article?
Did she make the requsite edits before rejecting/demoting it?

If it makes this any easier to swallow, we could suggest that DRV undertake it.

If somebody thinks approving/delisting/demoting was the wrong decision, they don't come to GA/R; they do the right thing themselves, discussing it on the article talk page. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:57, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Bureaucracy is reduced by allowing a single editor to handle the delisting process. My GARfC idea is not an essential part of the proposal, and I'd be happy for it to be dropped if it is considered too bureaucratical. This could instead be handled by the usual edit-war procedures, or by DRV as Septentrionalis suggests. Geometry guy 20:12, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

A single editor is already allowed to handle the delisting process, and they don't have to make five edits of any type to an article to do it, they just have to give a valid reason for delisting an article. Homestarmy 23:41, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

The whole point of the GA process is to have it reviewed by an editor not involved in editing the article (though we, I mean the reviewers, tend to fix the articles ourselves sometimes obviously). With regard to that, the GA process maintains the link to the FA process, where the reviewers also have to be impartial, and therefore the whole process makes sense. The reduction of the number of reviewers to the minimum of one speeds up the process, perhaps sacrificing the quality assurance level to a certain excent, which is why Good Articles are deemed, in general, inferior to FAs (though they don't have to be, but the process cannot guarantee they aren't).

Aaaaaanyway - forcing the reviewers to edit the article would totally remove any claim to legitimacy of the process. It is also quite improper to require people to edit your article if they want to review it. If I go to see a stage play and want to write a review, should I be asked to play a bit role in it before, or perhaps sew some curtains or arrange some props? By submitting the article to GAC you kindly ask other reviewers to devote their time to review an article you found meeting the Good Article Criteria. I believe it is enough to ask for one favor at a time.

I deny that this process has any legitimacy now; it is only out of respect for history that I have not moved to delete it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

If you don't like the process, that's fine, but it doesn't mean it should all be scrapped. There is no obligation to participate in any way. PrinceGloria 08:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

False. The very name of this project implies that only articles it accepts are good; those it rejects are bad. This implication compels decent editors to waste their time interacting with this project, when they could be doing something useful. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

On top of that, editing is proposed to be required only for failing or delisting an article. Obviously, if the process is to make any sense, it should be easier to fail or delist and article than to list it, in other words, it should be reasonably harder to get and remain on the list than not to. Otherwise, it would just be a, pardonnez les mots, pointless circle jerk.

In other words, if the problems with the article can be fixed, or at least made tolerable, with half-a-dozen edits, do so. It's a service to Wikipedia. If they can't, make the edits anyway, as a guide to the regular editors. What's the problem? Septentrionalis PMAnderson

The problem is that this is no an "Article Fix-it" facility, it is an appraisal facility. Articles should be prepared beforehand and honed to an appropriate standard (there are other facilities in WP that can help you with that, like the League of Copyeditors et al.), and in general it is expected that the article meets WIAGA when nominated, the reviewer is only here to assert it, not to help develop it. If you need help with developing an article, there are another ways to ask for it. PrinceGloria 08:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I know some people are frustrated with how hard it is to get a certain article on the GA list, and that sometimes the reviewers seem to pose requirements not to overcome - but then again, it all boils down to the list of reasonable standards derived from Wikipedias core principles and policies being applied. Reaching the limits of how far you can develop an article does not mean the article has to be deemed "good" to celebrate your work. I myself have a lot of such "unfinished" articles I don't feel I can develop more at the moment, but I also know they aren't good yet. PrinceGloria 20:53, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

PS. As an explanation to Geometry Guy - how can you claim an editor is uninvolved if he is supposed to edit the article? This doesn't make sense! Moreover, this would work like that - I see a really bad article on the list, but I can't fail/delist it unless I make edits. So, either I have to fix the article somebody was too lazy to fix themselves or make some pretty pointless edits which won't fix it anyway. This is schizophrenic, to say the least! If an article is NOT a Good Article, it should be delisted/failed. Period. That's the point of any appraisal process. If you fail your exams, should the examinator be obliged to teach you something before giving you a bad grade???

This is not an essential part of the second proposal. It is not even necessary to provide a competence criterion for delisting, I just thought it would be helpful. Editing does not violate neutrality, since this can take place post judgement, and the edits can either demonstrate deficiencies in the article or add to its strengths, it is up to the editor. The point is to demonstrate competence. If a reviewer truly can't find a few things that they themselves could improve, then they are either just as lazy as the editors or not competent to judge the article. However, there are surely other possibilities than my ~~five~~ six edits proposal, and I'm not wedded to it: I just wanted to stimulate discussion, and so far it has.

Finally, no, the idea was not that the delister has to fix the article, only that they should demonstrate their competence to judge it. The examiner in exams has usually demonstrated their expertise. You would be pretty annoyed if a five year old had failed your master's thesis. Geometry guy 21:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This is not a protest from disgruntled authors of failed articles; as far as I recall, no article I value has been up for GA. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Won't this proposal basically mean an article can never fail? That seems a bit too, how should I say it, coddling maybe. I mean, not every article is up to GA even after dozens of edits, which means it could be listed for months and, eventually ignored, thus just clogging up the already clogged GAC page. Just because the process isn't perfect (nothing is) doesn't mean it should be changed into something so unwieldy and neverending. There has to be another way to do this. Have the reviewer recruit another reviewer from a WikiProject? If everyone knew that was the way things were done it would address the competency issue (in many cases). I really don't see the big deal if an article fails or passes or whatever, just renominate it. It seems everyone has lost site of the purpose of these types of processes. Not feathers in caps and green plus signs! Wikipedia improvement, making us real encyclopedia editors and our output a real encyclopedia. IvoShandor 23:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

It was my understanding that many critics of the way articles are graded these days did not like people holding articles up to very high footnote standards, if "Footnote counters could throw out all the articles that don't meet their private standards", doesn't that mean that the articles I presume you (Septentrionalis) and other people would want to pass would just continue to be failed? Homestarmy 23:39, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

(EDIT CONFLICT) For the record, and I am not sure if your comment was aimed at me so I am basing this upon your indentation, I always use footnotes. If I had my way footnotes would be mandatory in a good article. But I don't care that they aren't, an article that requires footnotes is obvious when someone challenges something, just footnote it. IvoShandor 23:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Guess I should have read the conflicted text. : ) IvoShandor 00:01, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

FYI, When I find an article with footnotes, I usually remove them. I don't know what sort of articles you write, but the articles that I read are often poorly written. Excessive footnoting is a symptom of cloudy thinking and unsteady prose. If its worth saying, say it. If its not worth saying, then footnotes are not an excusable hidey-hole for such unfinished, ill-fitting thoughts. linas 03:55, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I guess what is meant by "footnotes" here are inline citations. I agree with both you and Ivo on the issues you have raised, respectively. PrinceGloria 08:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Footnotes are not equivalent to in-line citations for me. I would distinguish several issues.

Some footnotes are used for parenthetical remarks; I consider this poor practice in print and even worse in web pages.
Some footnotes are used for page numbers with respect to works listed under references; this is not my favorite style, but is acceptable.
Some footnotes give complete citation details; I consider this an abomination for both editors and readers.
Some "Notes" sections are deliberately set in microscopic size; I see no good reason for this, and would ban the practice.

The {{Citation}} templates allow Harvard style references with automatic links, which suits my taste. These are kind to readers, work well in print, and cannot be confused with footnotes. --KSmrq^T 08:30, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have been surprised to discover from this discussion that the second part of this proposal, at least, is but a minor variation on existing practice at Wikipedia:Good article delisting, which states

We also recommend trying half-a-dozen edits towards fixing the problem. This may be enough; if it isn't, it will at least demonstrate your intentions, your competence, and your good will to regular editors of the page.

Exactly! The second part of this proposal simply enhances this recommendation to a requirement. I believe that this will reduce the amount of unqualified delisting and hence the burden on GA/R.

The first part of the proposal is independent, but extends the same idea in a reasonable way from good article delisting to rejections of GACs. The six-edit requirement for the reviewer should certainly be waived if the nomination is frivolous (for example, a renomination of a delisted article without any improvements), but otherwise, it seems quite reasonable to me.

With these two proposals in place, the bureaucracy and time-wasting at GA/R could be reduced significantly by making it procedural rather than evaluative. However, this does not have to be done, and the idea can also be considered independently. Geometry guy 20:39, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, that wording is compleatly new, added by Septentrionalis when he/she made a new page for the instructions, i've already brought it up on that talk page. Homestarmy 00:32, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. The earlier wording, nevertheless advises delisters that:

If the problem is easy to resolve, it might be better to be bold and fix it yourself.

The existing procedures therefore do not regard reviewing and fixing problems as a conflict of interest, which seems to be a point of contention here. Of course, I find the revised wording to be even better advice, for the reasons stated in the wording itself. Geometry guy 01:25, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It is advised that articles which have simple problems be fixed instead of delisted for good reason, although I guess I didn't think about it much, if an article has, say, a Fair Use violation yet the rest of the article is ok, instead of delisting an article, just give a Fair Use rationale or remove the image, and problem solved. It's not too often that an article fails only one part of the GA criteria that's very simple to solve like that though.... Homestarmy 01:38, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Another idea

It seems there is some support for altering the GA process into a project wide A-class review process. The details of how to do this would need to be worked here, but here is an "official" proposal section where opposition and support can be voiced and discussion spurred. IvoShandor 00:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I would only support such a process if it were a project wide endorsement of individual WikiProject A-class ratings. In other words, it would not have the power to list or delist A-class articles, only the power to provide or withdraw a project-wide endorsement of the A-class rating. Geometry guy 00:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I understand the distintion between "listing" and "endorsing", but I would very much support a project-wide article rating: A "good housekeeping seal of approval" issued by a project, warranting the accuracy and quality of the article. This rating should be "signed" by the project. The system should also allow multiple endorsers: thus, for example, WP:M could declare an article to be A-class; and if the citation police agree, they could also put their own A-class seal of approval on it. linas 03:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that Wikiprojects are in general more qualified to judge articles more on their content than their form, and are the appropriate place for this level of review, which some Wikiprojects such as WP:WPM already host. I wouldn't want to see that kind of review superceded by the beancounters here. Re the idea of multiple endorsers: the possibility for this already exists, to some extent, in the ratings banners provided by the projects, and I agree that it is a good idea for articles relevant to multiple projects. —David Eppstein 03:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. Perhaps there should be an Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Style and Form that deals with the sytlistic aspects, so that they could be one of those granting a seal of approval. And perhaps this page should be renamed to Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Style and Form. I am lead to believe that this is the focus of this group. The goal here is to wrest away the control of "good article" status from the footnote police, and grant it to well organized groups (of which the more-footnotes crowd could be recognized as peers, rather than as overlords). The issue is one of "who's in charge": I sense a resentment of the power that the good-article judges wield, a resentment born of exercising poor judgement. The obvious answer is "take the power away", and don't let an odd minority have control over the concept of "good articles". linas 04:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[An old Russian joke: "There is no news in Pravda (The Truth) and no truth in Izvestia (The News)." (? "??????" ??? ????????, ? ? "?????????" ??? ??????.)] Please, even if this project judges more on style than on substance, my taste in style is different. We can politely agree to disagree, as Alfred Tennyson and Emily Dickinson surely did. But I would not cede an exclusive role of style arbitration to this group, which is why I suggested a more neutral name, in the spirit of Fields Medal and Nobel Prize. --KSmrq^T 05:45, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Conceivably we could have two quality gradings for an article: one for content, and one for form/style (and possibly further gradings for more aspects, like the use and quality of images). That would at least clarify some issues. I do not see the point in "nominating", "listing" and "delisting" articles. Requesting a review of an article is not "nominating" it, and does not imply that anyone is championing the article. Instead of having "Start class", "B class", "Good Article", "A class", "Featured Article", why don't we have something like "D", "C", "B", "A", "?", "??", "???", where a grade of "D" basically means "embarrassingly bad, needs serious clean-up", and "?" that the article conforms to the FA criteria in the aspect judged. For reaching FA status an article would need to have at least ?-grade in both aspects. The outcome of an article review would not be a binary "yes/no" like it is now, but grades on the quality grading scale. Instead of having separate processes for GA review and FA review, there could be one process for Wikipedia-wide reviews. Separate WikiProjects could have project-wide reviews, which should not be able to assign higher than A-grade (but can leave an assigned grade of ? or up unchanged). --Lambiam ^Talk 06:43, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The last thing that we need is yet more assessment grades. The whole point of the assessment scheme is to be able to see a large, coarsely-grained picture of a significant group of articles in toto. As the articles are expected to be always in flux, the importance of each article being accurately graded to the n-th degree is not as relevant. The assessments need only to give a general idea of where the articles stand, so that both the strongest ones can be identified and tweaked for FAC and the weakest ones can be brought to at least a minimum acceptable standard. Think of them less as grades or value judgements and more as zones. Girolamo Savonarola 07:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that in house A-rating should take the traditional place of GA, but we already have a grading system and don't need another.--Cronholm144 07:21, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I am all for the merger of the A-Class and GA on the quality scale, but not necessairly for any process revolutions. I believe there are too many quality tiers at the top and too little below GA, if anything, but I guess we could live with the present system if the duplicity between A-Class and GA was eliminated.

What I proposed sometime ago is the "certification" of certain WikiProject review processes, so that they could automatically produce GAs (technically they can in the present system, if you have different members of the WikiProject both nominating and reviewing an article). So, if the process guarantees meeting GA standards (the reviewer has to be uninvolved with the article, WIAGA standards are used etc.), while also adding the expertise of members of the WikiProject to assess the topic-specific issue, it is for the better. E.g. WikiProject Military History, IIRC, has a really good assessment system that even goes beyond GA in maintaining high standards. If anybody thinks this might make some sense, please comment, and I will be glad to expand on the details further. PrinceGloria 08:22, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The essence of my suggestion is not to have a binary "yes/no" decision, but a graded outcome of article reviews. Whether there are five grades (as now) or less or more is a detail. For comparison, here is how I see the correspondence between the grades I mentioned and the current classes:

D — Needs cleanup

C — Stub/Start class

B — B

A — GA/A

? — FA

So these are not really more assessment grades (except perhaps D), and this is not really a "new" grading system. But I prefer neutral labels: "Good" being denied implies "not Good" and thus suggests "Bad". Whatever form reviews take – grading, classification, (de)listing – how could this not involve quality judgements? Personally I think it is maybe less spectacular but actually more important to improve articles worth having at all from D to C, than to go from B to FA. --Lambiam ^Talk 08:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, the "not good" articles are not good in fact, they don't meet Wikipedias standards for encyclopedic articles. It doesn't mean that they should be purged, but ideally all articles should be upgraded to GA ASAP, or at least be written according to those standards from day one.

That said, if you'd feel better that way, I find the merger of A and GA to "A-Class articles" equally appealing as the other way around, though I believe it would be easier to just keep GA and somehow declare that FA and GA are sub-groups of the A-Class. You could then expand the role/standards for the B-Class and add more letters if you please.

I wouldn't like, however, to substitute the GA process for a "general appraisal". WikiProject are assessing articles by themselves, they just can't award GA or FA without external review at present. The rational expectation is that an article nominated for GA is of near-GA standard at least, and if it is not, I don't think it's the reviewers duty to decided whether it is more of B or Start - it is more important for the reviewer to leave detailed comments on what to improve. PrinceGloria 10:05, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

To reply to your first paragraph, the idea that GA is enforcing the "bare minimum" standards is simply not true. A glance at the criteria can tell me this is true. Articles don't need to meet WP:WTA, except in that they need to meet the core content policies. Same goes for the policies on embedded lists, etc. These are not minimum standards. In examining actual debates, we see that in practice GA strays even further from the actual standards. For instance, people in the Cantor debate were talking about things like "every paragraph requires a citation;" that goes beyond even the featured article standards. It might be nice to have a system that finds articles taht are minimally acceptable, but GA is not that system. Christopher Parham (talk) 15:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Those two are parts of the Wikipedia:Manual of Style - why in the world is it so absolutely wrong to expect an article to comply with it? Anyway - you have misquoted me. I am not saying the WIAGA are "bare necessities", what I am saying is that if the article is to be deemed "good", it should comply with certain standards and guidelines adopted by Wikipedia, which were handily collected in the WIAGA list. Not all articles have to, or can reach the "featured" standard, but it is quite natural to have a standard of what is "really good". I can't explain it to you better at the moment.

Please read the post to which you are replying. Christopher Parham did not say that it is absolutely wrong to have a footnote for each paragraph (it is sometimes pointless, but that's another question). He said that it was not, and it is not, a minimally acceptable standard, next above B-grade. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

As concerns citations - I know this is an issue under intense discussion Wikipediawide. I don't recall having any major problems with it in my personal experience, but if people in the GA/R or GAC require an article to have citations for citations' sake, it's clearly wrong. But if there is some doubt about the verifiability of some bits, requesting a citation is 100% legitimate IMHO. PrinceGloria 17:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Please also read WP:GA/R. It is common, and in fact quite normal, to have a delist !vote based on "This article only has (however many) footnotes" and nothing else. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:49, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yet Another idea

My idea is to not move the page, and to also not radically change the system at all. I never said it was a very popular idea, but surely somebodies gotta throw it out there, so that somebody might as well be me. As with anything in Wikipedia of any degree of contention associated with it, stuff is going to happen that doesn't make everyone happy. But outside of Science and Mathematics wikiprojects, who don't seem to be fond of GA much at all even with their own WP:SCG guideline now in the criteria, and a few oddball GA/R's here and there, I don't see massive rioting by many members of the community who dislike the way their nominees were handled or how a GA/R went, (Indeed, the majority of GA/R's seem to have no feedback from page editors at all, not even a sign that its been noticed by anyone.) and from my perspective, there's no radical problem that makes editors from all arenas of Wikipedia have problems with the GA system, so why should there be a radical solution? Homestarmy 03:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I presume no one else is complaining, because no one else is as active. I'd rather see that this group rename themselves as the "article style" group. Then, this group could declare an article to be "good", from the style point of view; while other groups could assert that an article is "good", from the content point of view. This would allow for articles with A-class content and B-class style. The problem being, of course, that many of the articles listed as "GA" shows that they're A-class style, and B-class content. And there's the rub. linas

I agree with Homestarmy. Some of the reforms proposed here seem like they will just complicate the process further or not really solve any issues simply by changing the name. The best way for the whole process to be better organized relies on more interaction by editors. With only a select few (a little over a hundred) editors reviewing articles, and a much smaller margin taking part in GAR, you are going to encounter the same people over and over again taking part in the process. Instead of discussing new names and possibly merges, the process would benefit from more editors taking some limited time each week/month to keep up with the GA criteria, becoming more involved with GAR, and maybe reviewing an article or two. But with more people involved with the process, this will limit any weight that the current GA participants may have. I know this may not solve some of the issues raised above, and I'm sure we're not going to see an explosive growth in people taking part in the GA process. It's very easy for me to suggest that more people become involved, but I'm sure it's not that simple as editors have their own priorities and just may not want to get involved with the process any more than just nominating. --Nehrams2020 04:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

In response to Linas: no, I think others are active and some at least are not running into problems. I've had eight or nine GA noms go through and have nothing I feel I need to complain about (not that I've agreed with every comment, of course). I am not dismissing the issues that caused this proposal to be raised. However, it's pretty clear to me that GA is actively beneficial to most articles. If it's not benefitting the scientific and mathematics articles, that's a problem that needs to be fixed, but renaming it doesn't seem the right answer to that. Mike Christie (talk) 04:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that over the last week or so, we might have gone through about 100 articles (I mean 100 GA reviews were made, not counting re-reviews of the already-listed articles and GA/Rs). Most of the people involved did not seem to have any issues with the process itself, the nominations are inflowing from various users, and more and more people join the reviewers cohort. I have personally reviewed quite a few articles from a frequent nominators, and although we've had some rather intense discussions on particular articles and reviews, he never raised the issue of the legitimacy or appropriateness of the GA process. So, I believe that Wikipediawide, there aren't that many concerns with the project and no revolution is necessary. PrinceGloria 08:17, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, that may be your impression. Now, I'm mostly an interested bystander in this process; like everyone else, I am interested in high-quality articles. However, perhaps you folks aren't aware if it, but outside of this circle, you are viewed as uneducated, incompetent dolts who have somehow managed to distort a reasonable, objective process into a miasma of nutiness. Now, don't cite me for civility: this is the kind of language, and much worse, that has been posted about quite a bit for the last year. The above is serious call for a reform, as this process is clearly broken. There already are sentiments that suggest that this project should be censured, and be brought up to the wikipedia community at large, as being out of control. So don't just sit here and say that "nothing needs to be done", as this is indeed part of the problem. Again: I'm just the messanger. Although I've written a few GA articles, my editing interests lie elsewhere. But the complaints about this project are rampant and legion, and if you are not aware of them, it is only because you have stuck your head in the sand. linas 13:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Any examples, never had anyone complain about my reviews except for an indefintiely blocked user. If it's so common and rampant why is there was never any call for some kind of reform until this pointy requested move? IvoShandor 16:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Check the archives for this page and for WT:WIAGA; also see WP:PRO, which is primarily inspired by this project. You may well be an exception, an unusually competent reviewer; if you want to post some diffs, I will look at them. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:23, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I would wait until some more general uproar against GA will actually materializes or perhaps the GA process is deleted by office action in response to an overwhelming majority of disgruntled Wikipedians. In the meantime, I believe that trying to be the spokesman for the entire Wikifolk is not a good use of your Wikitime. PrinceGloria 17:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

This is a general uproar. I am one voice of many. Please read reviewed articles better than you have done here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:54, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree there are many who are unhappy about this, but it requires time and effort speak out and articulate the concerns editors of articles have about the GA process. I hope that a way can be found to address these concerns. Geometry guy 01:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

It is a very astute observation that the large source of "uproar" over the GA process stems from the math/sciences folks. Looking at WT:WIAGA archives like Pmanderson recommends pretty much confirms that. There might be an isolated occurrence of an unhappy editor from another subject areas but there is nothing close to a unified complaint that you see with the math/science editors. I don't think its beneficial to completely ignore the clamor from that segment of the project but I do think any "reform" shouldn't be singularly focused on how to appease that one discipline of articles. Even within the sciences you do have articles like on Tropical Storms being submitted to GA standards with little or no problems coming from that angle. I think any reform should take into consideration the small scale of discontent and function more as "tweaks" to the process rather then a massive overhaul.Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 17:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I have to say, considering the number of FAs that are produced out of this process (4 removed from the WP:GA list in the last few days alone), comments like this are a bit odd to see and certainly demonstrates a pointed POV. I would hope that someone who wants to "reform" a process would have a little more respect and good faith in the work of their fellow editors. The root of reform starts with taking the positive in the process and working on accentuating that while removing the more negative and hindering elements. Comments like the one above does not seem to demonstrate a "reforming" attitude.Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 18:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

This is partly because WP:FA has, in less serious forms, the same problems as this page: A FA can be counted on to have pretty pictures and useless footnotes; it is likely, but not as certain as it was six months ago, to be a tendentious, incomplete, and dishonest article; because it is reviewed by editors who read carelessly, and have insufficient knowledge of the field concerned to recognize its problems - whether this is mathematics or history. Partly, because of irresponsible nominations of bad articles produced by this process by the regulars here, a self-fulfilling (and meaningless) prophecy. Insofar as FA is better, it is because editors ignore this page and fix their article to FA standard anyway. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

"Insofar as FA is better, it is because editors ignore this page and fix their article to FA standard anyway." On this, I agree with PMA. I used to remove GA tags on articles I was taking to FA. That annoyed people, so now I simply ignore them. The people who edit GA heavily might not realize the degree to which GA is viewed as just more tag cruft by other editors. A GA review, IMO, proves nothing and improves nothing. If the process disappeared, it would create few ripples.

I disagree with the substance of the rest of the last post from PMA, however, which is basically a Citizendium argument. Not that Citizendium-type arguments are wrong. In fact, they may be quite right—but you should leave Wikipedia if you don't want to deal with amateurs. The project exists because of them. And I would not denigrate FA so totally; a good FAC is without question the best type of review we have, and even the merely decent ones usually achieve content improvement. Some, of course, are definitely starved for comment. Marskell 20:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. Many of our featured articles are excellent, and I've seen some amazing FACs. However, there is also nothing wrong with a quality scale or rank, especially for those who want to raise a group of articles to a standard that is not as high as FA due to time or source/material constraints. Something like GA serves as a nice middle ground, as long as the process and whatnot are optimal (and GA still has requires at least some tweaks). — Deckill er 20:13, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Marskell: For the record, I think Citizendium a failure; it gives too much power to cranks with credentials, and some of our cranks have gone there. But for what I mean, see the next section: If an editor will review a mathematical article, he should either know the relevant meaning of "complex" or use a dictionary. Likewise, if an editor reviews an article on Fooian history, he should be able to recognize Barlandish propaganda, if necessary by studying the subject first. This would average out if GA became a mass opinion poll if you suggest below. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(ec; this is to Deckiller) I have suggested before that GA could be a truly mass tag drive; literally, tagging pass/fail on the order of six digits. Don't carry on with the pretence that there's some real improvement drive happening, but rather accept a pan-site "quick check". Not that that wouldn't create its own problems, but at least it would be a distinct process with its own definite aims: a yes/no for everything we have. If anyone has underscored the failure of the process as it stands, it's Homestay, who's been intimately involved: "Indeed, the majority of GA/R's seem to have no feedback from page editors at all, not even a sign that its been noticed by anyone." Doesn't that speak volumes to you? What's the point of this? Why are Deckiller and Marskell here when they could be commenting on FACs?

Perhaps the best way to put it: GA is half-pregnant. It's never properly decided whether it's mass tag or precise review. Precise review does not appear to be working, and won't every work, while anyone can pass/fail an article. And the list goes on: supposedly, it's been differentiated from FA (not sufficiently, AFAICS); apparently, it's non-bureaucratic (no, again); uneven decision making will decrease (don't see that happening). *Shrugs.* Marskell 20:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Those are some good points. I tried to differentiate the criteria during the revision (ideally, I think we shouldn't even have a stability criterion for GA, and the "broad in its coverage" criterion needs to be reworded to further differentiate from comprehensiveness). I'm burned out right now; I had a big ramble planned about how we can restructure everything to optimise efficiency, grading, and centralize article review, but I just don't have the energy to go into detail right now with so much else going on. — Deckill er 20:48, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Marksell, many of the GA/R's that get no commentary are articles that were promoted a very long time ago, when the standards were much weaker, or didn't exist, or even back when it literally was just people going and tagging articles they thought looked good. (I even tagged a few myself) Many of the articles with no commentary also do not seem to have any editors looking after them, even an FAC or PR might likely be no help, as no editors familiar with the article would be willing to fix any problems, since there would be no editors for the article at all. Homestarmy 00:11, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Why this process is a failure

It encourages a culture of superiority and complaint: a GA reviewer is just another editor, who has made himself a self-appointed critic and can't be bothered to fix any of the flaws he finds.
One editor above protests that actually fixing an article would destroy the impartiality of the review process; but the actual instructions for delisting, when I found them a few minutes ago hidden under a sheet of blue wash, recommend that a defective GA be fixed, rather than delisted. The same should apply to the initial review. These instructions are, in effect, the simple and straightforward plan which Geometry guy proposed above. (Neither of these give me any confidence in the average GA review.)
Reviews made by editors writing of a field of which they are simply ignorant, and about which they are unwilling to get up from Wikipedia and do even the most elementary research. The first, if combined with humility, would be genuinely useful; with the second, it is deeply harmful. As an example, this edit from the discussion of Georg Cantor: any dictionary would have led the reviewer to the mathematical sense of "complex"; any good dictionary to the mathematical sense of "stronger". I do not mean to single out Homestarmy; he is the most reasonable of the regulars here, and it is his frankness that permits me to quote this example.
Reviewers (both in initial review and in subsequent GAR) invent standards having nothing to do with article quality. I remember, the last time I looked over this calamity, seeing an article which had been brought to GAR because the initial reviewer had failed it for using a full reference to its sources. Now we have an article being turned down because it doesn't use the template {{citeweb}}.
Footnotes have limited utility and decay rapidly. I have never seen a GA reviewer actually check the footnotes to an article, just count them; without that, the count is worthless.

But if its prejudicial name can be removed, I promise to go away and ignore this waste of edits. Won't that be nice? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:02, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that it is ridiculous that reviewers are not following the GA criteria when reviewing articles; they are making up ridiculous standards that have nothing to do with the criteria. The GA criteria were revised for conciceness for a reason, and if reviewers are too lazy to read the criteria, then they are harmful to the project. So yes, I agree we need to do something about that. As the GA criteria introduction clearly says, GAs are at a minimum standard of decent quality, not FA Junior Grade.

Another thing I've always hated was this "pass/fail" nonsense; I refuse to say that. What's wrong with using more level and community statements "Article XXX looks fine" or "Article XYX needs more work" instead of the ridiculous "pass/fail"?

So, I agree that we need to make some minor adjustments, but nothing as grand as a mass renaming or historical marking. — Deckill er 19:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I just took a stroll through GA review. I see users citing the featured article criteria instead of WIAGA, making "broad in its coverage" out to be as strict as "comprehensive", and other issues. Most reviwers probably follow the GA criteira, but others are too lax, or, in the case of GA review, potentially too strict. — Deckill er 20:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't suggest a mass renaming; just moving the handful of pages with this prefix (the dozen here that are neither redirects nor archives), and rewriting the four or five templates the project actually uses. The present names would continue to be redirects; they would be as harmless as the redirect from Wikipedia:Votes for deletion to AfD. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:26, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Sounds simple enough, although I'd prefer to see the structure changed as well. For example, getting rid of the excessively formal "candidates" page but keeping the reviews page. That way, readers don't have to endure the ridiculous backlog at the candidates page, which often leads to rushed reviews. We also have to find a way to prevent the ridiculously high standards of some reviewers. Although renaming the project might help out in the shorterm, there would still be the problems of ridiculous backlogs due to the current system, or people setting the bar too low or too high (as opposed to reading the GA criteria). — Deckill er 20:36, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

The purpose of the candidates page was to require two approvals; the nominator (who could be an author) and the reviewer (impartial). Not a bad idea; can we do it by having a candidate/approved line in each section, like the one in WP:RfC/USER? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:58, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind being singled out here in your comment Septentrionalis, (err, is there a way to say your name shorter?) but ever since Wikipedia:Good article review/Archive 16#American Civil War, i've become convinced that trying to fix mistakes in articles that would require me to write my own facts would be a very bad idea. For example, in this particular review I made, (Scroll down until you see the huge lists of bullet points) one sentence had a quote by one "Calhoun". There was no reference, and the first thing that popped into my mind was President Calhoun, but I simply commented that it wasn't attributed to someone clearly. It turns out, if I had gone with my hunch, I would of been dead wrong, the unidentified Calhoun in this article was a southern senator who's last name was also Calhoun. Because the person who responded to my review was apparently an expert on this article, he was able to correctly identify within the article which Calhoun was being talked about, among a very long list of other fixes, more than a couple of which I would of guessed wrong on how to fix just like my Calhoun example here. In the end, this expert fixed up the article really well, I was somewhat surprised too, I really let that article have it, but after all that work by the guy who fixed everything that I identified, the article was clearly up to standards, I almost feel guilty putting the guy through all that, if any article deserves a Most Improved to Reach GA Status award, American Civil War is it, and it pretty much looks like it was only because a non-involved, relatively uneducated reviewer looked at it and pointed out instances where there might of been flaws, and an expert came along and fixed or explained every possible problem that was identified. In my little world of perfect GA/R's, this would be how its always done. Homestarmy 00:26, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

As for a short form, most people use Sept, which is fine with me.
I would be amazed if American Civil War has actually become a good article; I will take a look at it. But this brings up a general point, which deserves its own section. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I've just read through the Georg Cantor review, and I'm starting to see what the fuss is about. It is shameful; this kind of nonesense would not be tolerated at a number of the places where I've worked, and I see no reason why it should be tolerated here. My gut impression is that this project owes an apology to PMAnderson and Geometry Guy. linas 04:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean the Gregor Cantor review that has resulted in substantive changes to the article and which said changes improved the article to the point that no less than 3 editors originally strongly voting to delist it subsequently changed their votes to a full support of the article? Or is there another review you are referring to? Maybe it was the Michael Jackson review which resulted in a massive overhaul of the article; and again led several reviewers to change their opinions of the article. The truth is, when the custodians of a particular article are willing to work through the process and improve their articles, the process leads to better articles. If they sit around and pout and say "this isn't FA so I am not changing anything" Well, nothing gets better. The whole point is, the process works best when its not about winning some award for an article, so the talk page can just get a green plus sign. It works best when it results in better written, better organized, and better referenced articles. Do substandard articles get listed from time to time? Yes. That's why the review process exists, and I would posit that the Gregor Cantor example you cite above, while contentious at times, ultimately resulted in a better written article than had the contentious debate never taken place. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you're right. Sure the objective is to get more decent articles written - that's the only objective in the whole of the Wiki-community. But some (not all) people are motivated to do better in order to get that little gold star (or little green plus...whatever). I certainly would not have nit-picked "my" two FA's until they passed FA unless there had been the little gold star and fame for a day at the end of the process. I'll freely admit that I was motivated more by the ego-trip of having my article on the front page (and the little gold star oin the article) than I was by getting even the most stupid little problems ironed out in the articles. If it were not for the possibility of fame I would have stopped working on them a couple of months before when they provided the information people needed and we're merely "OK" articles. The prestige of those little gold stars is no small thing. When I was interviewing for my present job (I'm a computer games programmer) I was asked about my writing skills - when I mentioned that I had TWO featured articles on the Wikipedia front page - and a couple of GA's under my belt too - that answered that question conclusively. It goes beyond a small award - it's become a qualification. So that's why we need FA's - what about GA's? Well, from the point of view of a 'Start' grade articles' author, FA seems utterly unobtainable . Having an intermediate (but still recognised) 'GA' level gave me something to aim for first - and having got there, FA didn't seem so far off all of a sudden. GA's requirements and approval process may be much easier to pass - but articles that are not worthy regularly fail. So - yeah - we shouldn't need these little ego boost - but human nature is what human nature is - and some of us are power mad egomaniacs who won't stop until they get the gold star! SteveBaker 05:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I entirely agree with you there. Hell, getting it to meet the standards has been a big motivation for me too. The whole point is, at GAR, when an article is brought up for possible delisting, a common response is "Gimme my green plus and forget everything else". If a reviewer says "I think the lead needs to be expanded since it doesn't meet WP:LEAD requirements and that is part of the Good Article Criteria", that comment gets two responses. One is "I tried to fix it up, how does it look now?" and the other is "I don't think I have to fix anything since WP:LEAD is just a guideline, and GA isn't FA anyways, so there should be no reason to change anything." It was THIS type of response that I had in mind when I wrote my comments above. I would agree with you that the motivation of the green plus or the gold star is a HUGE motivation towards making better articles. The problem is when people want the green plus without doing any work to improve the articles.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

When you reject an article you have to be prepared to point to the exact words in the GA standard and say something like: "reject: Section 4 subsection 5 of WP:WIAGA says a GA must contain at least three words beginning with the letter "Q"" - and your article only has two!". Then there is no dispute - it's a black and white issue. If the the article doesn't meet WP:LEAD and the WP:WIAGA says that "The article must meet WP:LEAD" - then it's clearly irrelevent whether WP:LEAD is a guideline or not - the WP:GA standard is clear. If the WP:WIAGA doesn't say that you have to meet WP:LEAD then you are wrong to require editors to do that. You have to realise that the editor believes he's met the criteria - if you don't think he has - then you either have to fix it yourself - or explain in great detail which clause of the standard he failed to meet and why. If reviewers don't explain what the problem is in enough detail to allow the editor to fix it then the WP:GAC process is indeed all about handing out awards and not about improving articles. Ideally, the lure of the little green plus is what brings editors here - and the remarks of the reviewers is what results in better articles. Both parts are important! SteveBaker 13:45, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I Still agree with you, Steve, 100%. No arguement from me here on any point you just made.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:36, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Many of these comments seem to posit that there are custodians of articles, that reviewers are defenders of the GA standard, and that these two sides meet at GA/R to enter into battle. It is this adversarial approach which I am questioning. In fact there are only editors, who have many interests and limited time.

This is not such a problem for GAC, where there is a nominator, who may indeed be determined to fix the article in response to the comments of the reviewer. But at GA/R this is not the case. The adversarial approach just doesn't work, as editors need to be drawn in to improve the article.

There were no "custodians" to be seen at the GA/R for Georg Cantor. Those few recent editors of the article went off to do more worthwhile things than chase fact tags and deal with the "You were warned" approach of the nominator. What happened instead? Well, first, yours truly came along, neither a custodian nor a reviewer, just an editor (but not of this article - I am not interested in biographies), and prodded the reviewers to

make more substantive and constructive comments than "1c and MoS issues", "bloat and embellished language" and "only has 4 citations at present";
read their own guidelines (1c isn't one of them; this is not mini-FA) and also WP:SCG.

Several reviewers responded to this and I commend them for it. However, it wouldn't have led to much if it had not been for the second thing that happened: an editor completely new to the article, User:Ling.Nut came along, got the article's source (Dauben) out of the library, started reading it, and inserting inline cites with page references. That showed amazing dedication and simply is not going to happen in most cases.

So where would Georg Cantor be had these two things not happened? Before the review it was an article with good content, a number of sources, and a few editors working on it occasionally, but it had weaknesses of presentation, and was not sufficiently clear about its sources to enable a reader to verify some of its assertions. Without Ling.Nut's dedication, we would instead be left with an abandoned article covered in fact tags, which no reader would touch with a barge pole. Geometry guy 11:24, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Delisting is tricky - editors who have the coveted green plus are bound to be hurt and upset that their article is up for delisting. The very fact of being added to the delisting queue has by its' very nature created an adversarial situation - the person who added the article to the queue and the original editor(s) are at each other's throats from the get-go. I have no clue how you avoid that. I would add that we should note that there are really four categories of delistables:

Articles that should never have been GA's in the first place.
The circumstances surrounding the error should be carefully investigated - but swift delisting is clearly necessary in these cases.
Articles that have actually gotten worse because edits subsequent to GA award were ill-concieved.
If the article has gotten worse since being awarded the coveted 'green plus' - then a simple revert (albeit one that spans hundreds of edits) might suffice - but the howls of anguish of all of those editors might turn this into an adversarial situation of horrific scale! The tricky thing is when an article was good - but lots of well-meaning (but inept) editors have added information that's actually very valuable - but failed to provide references for it - or these 'add-on' editors used poor grammar/spelling or didn't use encyclopeadic style. Fortunately, these kinds of problem are often easier to fix than to cause a delisting. We should make sure that we don't even put these articles onto the delist queue if they are easily fixable. The 'owner' of the article may actually be relieved to see this happen because very often he/she is in constant battle with these pop-up editors to keep the article clean and tidy - and could use someone batting on their side.
When the subject of the article has changed such that the article is simply no longer true.
Articles about current news events, scientific discoveries, products, companies, living people - all of these need constant work to keep them up to date. When they lag behind they need to be delisted. I might argue that articles on these kinds of subject are dubious as GAC's - the article is good today - it might not be good tomorrow.
When the GA acceptance criteria change, articles that formerly met the criteria may no longer do so.
I think we should tread especially carefully when it's a case of GA rule drift. The 'owner' of the article is going to be very hurt. "I earned that green plus - I've done nothing wrong and now you're taking it away!"...yeah - that's going to be popular! One way we could fix that would be to tag the GA green plus with a revision number - "This article meets the criteria for a Good Article under version 1.2 of those guidelines - it may need revision to meet current Good Article criteria." That allows us to remove much of the sting of delisting for this cause.

It would be good for the maintainer(s) of a delisting candidate article to be told clearly which of those things is the case.

SteveBaker 11:58, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree that GA standards are far too close to FA standards. See Talk:Early Middle Ages#Failed GA. It "failed" because it only had 20 citations. Gizza^Chat ^© 12:20, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Woah - hold on there. This is dangerous thinking! The number of references in an article is irrelevant. The standard says that a GA "cites reliable sources for quotations and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged". It does not say "more than 20 references should be present in the article". What matters is that every significant factual claim that the article makes is backed up by a reference. If all of the facts in a particular article can be backed up by just a couple of really solid book references - then two references is enough and the GA standard has been reached. On the other hand, an article like Alexander_Litvinenko_poisoning (which has 177 references but which still makes important claims that are totally unreferenced) falls woefully short of the required standard. I don't know whether Early Middle Ages was failed for fair reasons - but if there are lots of uncited factual claims in there then it's irrelevant that it has 20 references down at the bottom of the article. The relevent standard is that your references must be sufficient to cover the territory. SteveBaker 12:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The entire discussion there seems to focus on the process rather than the article or review. I believe the rationale given by the reviewer is clearly wrong, but the editors/nominators of the article should have rather requested the reviewer to e.g. provide you with a list of places where an inline citation would be appropriate 2) submit to GA/R, which should end with a speedy relisting on GAC, as the reviewer surely didn't do a good job. The rule that ANYBODY can review has this by-product of inappropriate reviews done by careless reviewers, but it has nothing to do with the purported "FA-ness" of the process or any other fault mentioned. PrinceGloria 12:52, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I just looked at Early Middle Ages - I agree with the GAC reviewer - there are long stretches (multiple paragraphs) of fact-packed text - with no ref tags whatever. There are lots of facts you can point to that might well be challenged but which have no references. That article fails to meet the required standard. Now, the problem was that the reviewer failed to articulate the precise nature of the problem - which was certainly a failing of process. The editors of the article were hurt because they felt that 20 references were plenty - the reviewer (presumably) looked at the article and decided (as I did) that the references didn't cover all of the contentious facts. What went wrong was that the reviewer said "Not enough references for an article of this length" when he/she should have said "The following facts need references...(1) in paragraph 3 it says '...' without a reference, (2) in paragraph 8, it says '...'". The trouble is that there are a LOT of those - the reviewer should at least have listed five or six examples and then simply punted, saying "sorry - there are too many others to list". My biggest frustration (more often with FAC than GAC) is when a reviewer says "Poor grammar" or "Not encyclopeadic" or "The prose wasn't compelling" - the poor editor who has been sweating blood to polish his article and believes it meets all of the 'compelling and encyclopeadic' criteria is left at a dead end. What PRECISELY is wrong? Give me a handful of examples! Better still, fix it for me! SteveBaker 13:06, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

This can be rectified by requesting the reviewer to be a tad more verbose when leaving their comments, i.e. not a comment, but a review. I have personally amended the wording of the WP:GAC instructions for reviewers to reflect that, though I obviously know that we will never be able to completely avoid such abuse of the process. That said, a simple question to the reviewer might be a lot more helpful here than scrapping the whole process. PrinceGloria 13:16, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

American Civil War

This raises a fundamental question of process: is (if all goes well) promotion to GA a one-time event, not intended to be changed while the article and the standards remain the same? Or is it, as Marskell would have it, a continuous process, in which each editor can re-evaluate an article until only those articles with project-wide consensus are listed?

If GA evaluation is going to be the work of one evaluator (subject to possible occasional review) then American Civil War should not have been evaluated by an editor who does not recognize the name of John C. Calhoun, Vice President and Senator. He will miss the basic problems of the article: it is inherently PoV. It is continually rewritten by neo-Confederates. While this is almost as easy to catch as straight vandalism, it does make the article unstable. Beyond that, it reflects the PoV of the editors who wrote it. One of them imposed a PoV, drawn from the Southern Revisionists of the 1920's, on the causes of the war. His citations were correct, although almost invariably partial, and almost always dated.

If, on the other hand, evaluation and re-evaluation are a continuous process, then Homestarmy can do what he's good at, and other evaluators can look for bias, and downgrade if necessary. (I'm not sure I can be one; although I have not edited the section concerned, I did straighten out another mare's nest.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:09, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Like FA, GA status should be able to be changed, just looking at American Civil War, the lead looks much longer than when I last saw it, (Perhaps even too long now) and articles are not static, through changes over time, articles can lower in quality or change drastically. Evolution, a former featured article, is a good example, though I wouldn't advise trying to read everything in the talk archives that's gone on with that article. (Much of it is very complicated and long winded) You could of told me specifically that the Calhoun I didn't know of in the article was both a southern senator and the future president, there was absolutly no way to be sure with what the line had said before (Once again, nothing but a last name was there) and the quote wasn't exactly one of the most obvious 100 lines in U.S. history or something like that. Besides, the quote was uttered while he was a senator, so the article is correct anyway by referring to him as a southern senator when he made that quote. Anyway, when I reviewed that article, there were problems, oh yes, there's no doubt about that. But I haven't looked at it again closely since that GA/R, how am I responsible for it going downhill again in totally new ways, if it even has at all? Quite frankly, with the article's emphasis on slavery as the main ultimate cause of the civil war, most people seemed to feel that it was too pro-Union, though the references backing up the article's emphasis on slavery seemed to consist of the biggest names in Civil War historical reaserch, so eventually I just couldn't see any reason in voting to fail for the article for it. If the article has truly changed for the worse, another GA/R would probably be in order, just as FA/R's are in order for FA's that lower themselves in standards. It seems rather consistant to do it that way. Homestarmy 19:48, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I see that John C. Calhoun is spelled out and linked at both the first two references now. But this leaves the questions I asked:

Do we want to encourage editors to evaluate articles about fields they know?
Do we want to encourage continual re-evaluation of articles?

I think we must do one or the other, and I join with Marskell in preferring the second; but I will accept the first. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 21:47, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

The bottom line?

The trend here (which has certainly become long and winding) seems to be reaching some sort of consensus. Permit to try to sum it up.

GA/R needs to be less adversarial and more instructional when bringing articles up for delisting. The ultimate goal is better articles after all, so correcting the problems and having a genuine GA class article would certainly be the best outcome.
Resolve the GA process' standing within W.P. 1.0. Eventually specific wikiproject A-class reviews will become the norm (I hope), but as it stands now the GA system is not ready (nor wants) to become historical. That said, there has been some discussion of changing the name of the project to something other that GA and I have yet to see any consensus on that issue (this might be a moot point).
Use scientific citation guidelines for scientific articles. This has been addressed already if I'm not mistaken. The GA system has decided to adopt it.
The GA process and scientific articles and wikiprojects should remain at a respectful distance when possible. (I am just throwing this one out there.) There has been a history of animosity between these two groups, and since Mathematics (and physics?)has an established in house A class review system, I think keeping a distance will not be very difficult. Some time will allow for the healing of old wounds.

If I have missed something, please fill it in. Cheers--Cronholm144 13:35, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

I think that is a good summarily though I think a side note to the WP:SCG part should be that if a GA reviewer thinks that an article needs verification beyond what the SCG provides they should start a discussion with the editors on the article's talk page rather then WP:IAR and just fail on that criteria. The SCG was a good faith effort by the math/science folks to improve the reference and citation standards of their articles and while it may not be perfect, it should be an stepping stone to open conversation.Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 17:50, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Good list, Good picture?

How come there's good article but not good list or picture? But all of them have featured section. OhanaUnited 13:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Not as much requirement creep in those, so there's no need for one. --tjstrf talk 17:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I have noticed that certain types of lists can never qualify for WP:FL, and it seems there should be some way to acknowledge those. Is there a reason (other than the name) that WP:GA couldn't review lists? Gimmetrow 17:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Really? Which types of lists are those? --tjstrf talk 18:38, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I had in mind pages which explain field-specific jargon. Since these pages do not usually contain many links, they did not qualify as "useful". I see the WP:WIAFL criteria changed back in February though, so maybe this is no longer the case? Gimmetrow 19:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, Featured Lists are much easier to come by than Featured Articles. If the truth be told, since there is little prose, and there are likely a small set of unambiguous and reliable sources, any list that would meet a hypothetical "Good List" criteria is likely to meet the current "Featured List" criteria as well. The hold up on Featured Articles is usually the Brilliant/Compelling writing requirement. With so little writing, lists just don't have that problem. There just wouldn't be enough of a difference between "GL" and "FL" to warrent a process for that. To get an article from GA to FA status often takes months of solid work. A featured list can be created in short order; the two lists I have created and brought to featured status actually spent less time from creation to nomination than from nomination to promotion. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know a list does not have to have links if the items in the list are not notable enough for individual articles. See point 3. in part (a) of section 1. on WP:WIAFL. - Suicidalhamster 22:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Again, let me reiterate that's a NEW criteria, so maybe things have changed. Gimmetrow 04:20, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

More suggestions.

GAC is a lightweight process - most of us agree that it should continue to be. I very much like the idea that nobody can either remove from GAC or actively demote an article without making a significant effort to fix it. However, there are some tricky issues floating around that. Suppose, for example, you have an article that is absolutely marvellous - gorgeous prose, fantastic layout, great photos - but not one single reference of any kind. If you are not an expert in that field, how will you ever manage to make six meaningful edits? You can't add references because you probably don't own the relevent books or even know which books to look at. However, a totally unreferenced article shouldn't make it through to GA status...not matter how good it otherwise is. So you have a body of articles that cannot be passed into GA status because they clearly don't qualify - but cannot be removed from the GAC list because none of the reviewers can make six meaningful edits to it - over time, the number of articles in GAC limbo would increase without limit.

For the purposes of this discussion - there are three classes of problem an article can have and I think we need to treat them differently:

Problems with copyright, referencing, notability, etc.
In these cases, a reviewer ought to be able to see that there is a problem - complain about it and reject (or demote) the article without having to contribute to it. We can't expect a typical reviewer in a lightweight process to be able to replace copyrighted text or images - they probably won't have access to the right books to do great referencing or have any way to fix notability issues short of referring the article to WP:AfD. The demand that they perform six edits before rejecting is impossible (or at least totally unreasonable) to meet - so let's not require that in these cases.
Well, I was thinking of making it a suggestion, and seeing what happens. But Geometry guy doesn't actually require six edits to fix the problem; just six substantive edits. And anyway, rewriting a copyvio, or finding some source (not the best, or the one the original author used) for some fact in an otherwise excellent article is not all that hard. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
But what if the problem is that an article on "Outer Mongolian Cuisine" that relies upon three particular photographs in order to make it's key point - but all three are clear copyvio's. What about an article about an amateur rock band who havn't released an album yet - then there are no concievable sequence of six edits - substantive or otherwise - that can help these articles. They are not good articles - and there is no easy way for our reviewer to make them good. The proposed rules prevent us from rejecting the article - and we certainly can't give it the "good article" seal of approval - so now what? SteveBaker 13:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
If the article contains an essential copyvio, remove the copyvio and rewrite the information - it is sourced, after all. (You could also speedy it.) If the article fails notability, {{prod}} it, and if contested, take it to AfD. Not everything needs to be handled by this process. (I would say that both of these are the sort of substantial involvement contemplated by Geometry guy, if you want to fail the hapless articles as well.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:31, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Problems of language, layout, illustration, etc.
In these cases, any competent Wikipedian can (in principle) fix the problem - spelling, grammar, layout - anyone with a moderate amount of Wiki experience can either fix these things - or in extreme cases, perhaps reject on the grounds that there is vastly too much work involved. I applaud this because it removes the adversarial nature of the process and puts the reviewer and the original editor on the same team.
Thank you for putting the case so clearly. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:52, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Problems of fact and technical content.
In these cases, a reviewer who is not very familiar with the topic of the article may not even realise there is a problem - let alone be able to fix it! We could have articles on obscure subjects be total gibberish yet still have the look of a well referenced, nicely written article. Sure, a reviewer could (in principle) check all of the references - but in practice that's a heck of a big job, it's not even done at FAC stage, let alone at GAC. So this is a tough one - if we allow a wide range of reviewers to promote articles to GA, we have no way to tell whether the articles are utter crap or not. My best suggestion is to require a second "OK" from a member of a WikiProject that relates to the topic. I suggest that the process be to get through (1) and (2) above and if the reviewer thinks the article should be promoted, shoot a note off to the relevent WikiProject saying something like "I plan to promote this article to GA status - does anyone have a problem with that?" - no adverse replies within a week means you can promote the article.
I would prefer to make this a recommendation to Hold while you ask rather than a requirement. Keep It Simple. But the recommendation is a good idea, and I'll go include it. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - something like that. But there has to be a mechanism to have reviewers get expert advice when reviewing technical articles. SteveBaker 13:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
The Math project people show up here so often because Jitse Niesen's bot tells us when a math article is up for GA or GAR; would it be enough if the other projects had a similar one? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:13, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

SteveBaker 21:42, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

If interruption is a problem here, feel free to reformat. But you had three interesting points to which different replies were due. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:51, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

No - that was fine - I've added more of my own comments in amongst yours. SteveBaker 13:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

In your example, there was once a project designed specifically for unreferenced articles, called Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Unreferenced GA task force It appears to of stopped due to lack of interest, not because of any opposition to the idea. Of course, making new classifications for other kinds of articles seems like a fine idea if people are interested in it, but why not simply make the new wikiprojects or new project pages for the idea, instead of trying to remove or radically alter parts of the GA system? If GA doesn't change, that doesn't stop anyone from making their own classification project(s). Homestarmy 23:56, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Urgh - please - no more new task forces - no new categories of award - keep it simple! Adding more and more complicated and subtle variations on the basic GA/FA mechanism simply divides the available pool of reviewers. Having fewer reviewers will inevitably mean either (a) long (and growing) backlogs or (b) shoddy reviews due to lack of time spent on doing the review. Keeping the system to two clear stages means that we keep the effort where it's needed. SteveBaker 13:29, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

This is horrible...WT:GA just turned into WT:RFA. bibliomaniac 1 5 An age old question... 05:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

"My best suggestion is to require a second "OK" from a member of a WikiProject that relates to the topic." - This sounds like a fantastic idea to me! I am, as it appears, the sole checker of references. Or at least one of few. I do check every reference in most of my GAN reviews, which is proof I've never read the FA criteria because I assumed they did this. Well, anyway. I verify that every reference says what it is claimed to say. Talk about time consuming, and people wonder why my reviews take days. This would be much more simple if an editor familiar with the topic, but not involved with the article, could read it over and make their assessment. It would also shave hours off of my reviews which, for topics I'm not familiar with, involve a lot of side reading to understand and verify content. LaraLove ^T/_C 04:18, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The GA/A gap

Whatever happens, we should at least do something about the odd GA/A gap (The GA/Ap?). It's strange that GA has to be approved through a process, A is (ignoring some WikiProjects, at least) handed out like B or Start, then FA is a process again. This results in A-Class being under used, and articles marked as A-Class that are not Good Articles can be confusing to those who don't understand the current situation. Pagra shtak 20:37, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the best thing is to regard GA, whatever it turns out to be, as a process on its own, and remove it from the sequence of evaluations. In this discussion, we have seen it (effectively) placed below B as the minimum standard to escape deletion; and suggested that it be merged with FA. This is a sign that it is outside the scale. If it becomes the mass evaluation suggested above, it would be a changing pool of articles for B, A, and FA to look at, because GA would be articles that at least two editors like, and that more editors insert than remove. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:50, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

I've always seen GA as B-class (my comments above about anything lower being deleted were poorly thought out and half sarcastic, influenced by all the stress I've been under outside Wikipedia). Anything lower is below a good standard, and the letter grade "B" is usually considered "good", while A is "excellent", and A+ is the best (featured). As long as there is some sort of benchmark between mediocre articles and featured articles, as well as some icon and criteria for those standards, I'm happy. — Deckill er 20:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I don't change A class article status even if an article loses GA status, unless its obviously a pretty terrible article, its just too hard to tell what A class really means. I know that the 1.0 people once discussed possibly removing the GA designation from their templates, and I know the Chemistry wikiproject once refused or currently refuses to allow articles to be classed as GA class in their templates, (Don't ask me how that makes sense, if they don't want any articles classed as GA class, then why does their template allow the classification?) but from my point of view, removing the GA classification from the wikiproject rankings would be better discussed on some 1.0 talk page somewhere, didn't they make the classification scheme in the first place? Homestarmy 00:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

You may be thinking of this. The main reason is simply historical - nothing against GA! The 1.0 assessment scheme evolved out of this scheme, not the other way round. The last substantial edit to this assessment scheme was in May 2005, many months before the GA project existed. We could perhaps update it, including the possibility to allow GA officially, though we do like to encourage people to put a tag based on the opinions of the WikiProject. Walkerma 03:52, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

It's not really the idea that they don't have a GA classification that gets me, its just that i've bumped into people reverting the GA class in the templates to B or something, and I really don't understand why their template even accepts GA class as an option. Homestarmy 04:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

GA class can be useful as a tag that is better than unassessed-class, so I can see a reason to allow it. But we'd really prefer the project to judge as A or B. Maybe we should officially add GA to the scheme, but at this point it's moot - any GA should've been assessed by the project long before. There is certainly no obvious hostility at WP:Chem towards GA; we had a run of delisted GAs recently, which hurt (see the comments I'm adding later), but I like to think we still maintain a good attitude towards the GA project! Walkerma 04:31, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

How about switching A-class with GA-class (and vice versa)? A-class will be an article that is considered a better version of B-class and there're no cleanup tags. GA-class will be superior to A-class. Once the new A-class has been reviewed and passed the criteria then it's GA. Of course, the criteria for GA is more relax than FA. OhanaUnited 07:35, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

(unindent) It doesn't always work out like that, because the GA and ratings processes operate in different ways, with different goals, and with different criteria. (See below.) For example, I recently added a rating to a GA article, and the result of my assessment was "Start-Class". Geometry guy 09:05, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Requested move (May)

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

I believe the major problem with this page is its name. WP:WIAGA is largely formal - and its criteria are being applied entirely formally. An article can be approved here and be a badly written polemic; it can be a good article and rejected, either from the caprice of the initial reviewer, or through purely formal defects. Yet the name of this page implies that what it lists are good articles; what it delists are bad articles. This is divisive and inflammatory. If it is moved to a neutral name, I foresee no further reason ever to interact with this project again, doubtless a relief to both of us. Any move would of course apply to all subpages and the templates should be rewritten.

Move. While tempted by Wikipedia:Articles with footnotes, I could live with WP:WikiProject Criteria or even WP:Article format. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 20:27, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment. I suspect that this request shades towards a violation of WP:POINT. But in case anyone wonders what the (serious and significant) concerns are that brought things to this state, see this discussion of the recent Bertrand Russell non-review at WT:WPM, or many previous similar discussions on past math GA/Rs. —David Eppstein 21:03, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- I hope not WP:POINT; this is something I actively prefer. I do not believe this process either prefers or selects better articles, but I do not wish to spoil the fun of those who wish to engage in it. If it ceased to imply that the articles it likes are good, and to deprecate its delists, I see no reason not to ignore this process completely. Geometry guy's comments at ANI to the effect that this process is essentially in complaint mode are the fundamental flaw. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment. Some of the wording of this proposal suggests WP:POINT, but I hope editors will look beyond that. This is a really serious issue: GA/R is in trouble at the moment, and it either needs to reinvent itself or be moved to a more neutral name: WP:Well-presented articles well-referenced with citations would seem to me to fit better the current practice (and it is no bad thing to have such articles).
- I could live with WP:Referenced articles. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

At the moment GA fits uncomfortably into the Wikipedia 1.0 rating system (the scale Stub-Start-B-GA-A-FA) because WP:WIAGA is applied so exactingly in areas of presentation and (especially) citation, that an article which survives GAR can be nearly ready for FAC already, so what is the point of A class? This problem is particularly bad for technical articles, which often begin their lives as being already technically accurate, but incomprehensible and unsourced: such articles need to be encouraged to improve step-by-step, rather than make an impossible leap from B to GA. I have also seen poor articles promoted to GA, and good articles demoted, because the reviewers were not in a good position to appreciate the deficiencies or the qualities of the article. I have commented on this issue at WP:ANI#confrontational user and WP:GA/R#Georg Cantor. Geometry guy 21:43, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

And not just in mathematical/scientific subjects; the present review of Anaximander is just as bad. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 22:09, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

It's not a problem with the criteria (see Wikipedia:Compare Criteria Good v. Featured); it's a problem with the users who aren't reading the criteria correctly. They still think GA is FA minus one, yet they probably haven't bothered to look at the revised criteria. GAreview has a lot of issues, as do certain GA reviewers. I'm generally proud of the criteria (remember, it says plainly that it measures a minimum standard of decent quality); I'm just sickened with the process. — Deckill er 15:07, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't Move, the process not being perfect doesn't seem like a very good reason to re-name the page, that certainly won't get rid of any problems with bad reviews here and there. What the page tries to list are articles which are pretty good by Wikipedia standards, but with so many in the list now, there's bound to be some problems here and there, and I really don't understand how moving the page somewhere else is going to cause it to become perfect. Yes, i'm well aware that many people in Science and Math related articles are unhappy with most GA reviews as of late, because generally the articles are not passed for one reason or another, but Wikipedia doesn't revolve around Science and Math articles, and I don't see why the page ought to be moved specifcally to somehow make Science and Math articles pass or whatever. I'm not arguing that there aren't problems at GA/R though, right now, because the initial review of articles are called Good Article reviews commonly, that looks rather confusing sometimes, but all of my requests to move the page back to its original name, Good Articles/Disputes, failed. (I think it was moved because Disputes sounded too hostile to someone....) Homestarmy 23:32, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
- It's not that many articles aren't passed, it's why the articles aren't passed: generally the review proceeds by counting the number of footnotes (and ignoring any other kinds of references) rather than any real assessment of writing quality, technical accuracy, or appropriate level of detail. —David Eppstein 23:48, 28 May 2007 (UTC)
  - Even if that is a problem, I don't see how that is a reason to re-name the page, that sounds more like a reason to suggest changes to the criteria. Besides, the Scientific Citations guideline is already in the GA criteria now, and for example, the Georg Cantor article is certainly not in compliance with that criteria by any means, the criteria calls for a few reliable citations to be at the head of sections which are then assumed to cover all content below in the section, but almost none of the sections have any inline citations at all, much less any at the beginnings of the sections. Homestarmy 00:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
    - Your insistance on bringing up here only the frequency of citations in that example, and not discussing its other qualities, rather proves my point I think. —David Eppstein 01:28, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
      - I did discuss its other qualities in the GA/R, its just you talked about citations here, so I talked about citations. Frequency of citations has nothing to do with SCG, its where the citations are that matters, and the citations are not where they are supposed to be in this article. Homestarmy 02:55, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- I have just as much a problem with the fact that inadequate articles often are passed. Inline citation is as much a tool to promote WP:POV (for example by providing more or better sources for one point of view than another) as it is a tool to satisfy WP:V. Science and math folks are unhappy not because of numbers of passes and fails but because the whole process focusses on presentation and citation, and is totally inadequate for verifying the quality of an article.
Regarding Georg Cantor, the relevance to this discussion is minor: it is far from being a model GA article, but it essentially has one main source, and this source is now cited, with explanation, in the introduction. Geometry guy 01:32, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't move per Homestarmy. Quadzilla99 02:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment I would actually be open to a move to some other adjective then "Good" (because I also don't like the Good/Bad dynamic) but I don't think a suitable alternative will come from such a point driven proposal. Agne ^Cheese/^Wine 03:01, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Move: I think the Good/Bad dynamic is what editors object to most furiously. The idea being that if your article is delisted as a "good article", then it is no longer good in the traditional sense. To have your article devalued in such a way, especially for seemingly trivial reasons, can be a source of major frustration for the dedicated editors who put so much effort into the article in the first place. To add insult to injury the GA/R folks only point out faults in the article before they summarily delist it. I understand that this is the same process that FA class article receive before they are demoted, but understand that whatever they say at the demotion, your article was FA class. When delisted from GA class the article is demoted to lowly B class. There is no solace for that editor in knowing the article was once GA, because now it is a B-class failure with a stain on its record. Perhaps finding a better name and system dynamic for the entire process would be a "good" idea.--Cronholm144 08:00, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment. FAC also works better because the prestige of FA class and pride in Wikipedia often mobilizes many editors, including some of the reviewers, to make a collaborative effort to improve the article and fix its defects. There's more wrong with GAR than just the good/bad dynamic. It is adversarial and superficial. I just read the following at Talk:GA/R
"I had to quick fail two more wrestling articles, ... Wrestling editors should take note."

This illustrates perfectly (to me at least) one of the main problems with GAR. I have the impression that many reviewers regard themselves as defenders of a holy site against the hoards of invaders who are attempting to slip substandard articles through their defences. Confrontation is then inevitable. Surely this is not the spirit of Wikipedia, which is a collaborative effort. I made a concrete proposal to improve the process at the Cantor review, which I will copy over below. Something like this would surely help. Geometry guy 10:35, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Move The name must surely change. To what, we can debate; but here's why. Vigorous opposition to the current criteria and process from numerous (almost all?) experienced editors in the mathematics and science communities makes it indisputable that this effort has no Wikipedia-wide consensus to claim this "good" is the good of all. As well, "good" is never good enough, so inevitably the demands will escalate. Maybe the second difficulty could be ameliorated by "pretty good"; but that does not address the first issue. Perhaps the name could honor a paragon of writing, as in a "Hemingway Prize Article". Outside of Wikipedia, such recognition is common, and different organizations have differently named awards with different criteria. We even have the "Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest". And within Wikipedia there is ample precedent in Wikipedia:barnstars. For, "de gustibus …" and all that; many of us are uncomfortable in Procrustes' bed. --KSmrq^T 08:34, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- Where is this "vigorous opposition to the current criteria"? We had a well advertised revision of the GA criteria for 2-3 weeks a couple months ago, and I haven't seen any complaints then or since. People need to start speaking in the centralized locations to get their voices heard. Again, if it's renamed, it should be renamed to something like "Acceptable articles", since the GA criteria are meant to really measure what an article should be at a minimum level. — Deckill er 15:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  - Where is the opposition to these criteria? Here! Some of us have been protesting this project, as it has become more and more a WP:PRO violation. These criteria are neither sufficient to assure adequacy, nor are they generous enough to ensure that all adequate articles are included. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:40, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Weak oppose. I'm sympathetic to the problem, but it seems to me the right answer is a review of the citation standards for GA to see if mathematics and science articles should be treated differently. My own experience at GA is that while editors vary in style and dedication, every reviewer is honestly trying to apply the standards and help the article improve. If GA standards are not appropriate for a class of articles, the right answer is to fix the standards. What citation standards do the math/science editors think would be appropriate? Mike Christie (talk) 11:17, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
If only. But a recent summary by a notably moderate and congenial editor states:
- At some time some people suggested that perhaps the overall consensus on Wikipedia was against the GA guidelines on how a "good article" should look. The response to this by the GA folk was that it's their WikiProject and so they have no obligation to follow consensus from outside it.
Nor is it a matter of the topic of the article; we find opposing views on what to look for in any article. The move proposal reflects the reality of the situation. It frees everyone to follow their own path without further conflict. --KSmrq^T 11:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I just took a look at ANI, per another comment, and was led from there to Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines, which I hadn't seen before. My own background is in maths and physics, and these look sensible to me, though I certainly see where they conflict with GA standards as written (and presumably with other guidelines elsewhere). If GA were to use these guidelines where appropriate, would that address the concerns? (I'm not expressing support yet, as I've only glanced at them so far.) Mike Christie (talk) 12:13, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- Comments. Yes, standards for scientific citation already exist in the form of WP:SCG, and they are actually already part of the GA standard, officially at least: see footnote [2] in WP:WIAGA 2.b. Unfortunately, they are often ignored, as is the word "preferably" in 2.b. Also, common sense would suggest that subjective criteria such as "likely to be challenged" should not be interpreted as rigorously for GA articles as for FA articles. Instead, however, one finds comments like "every paragraph needs an inline citation", and "citation is not negotiable". Geometry guy 12:27, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I just read (some of) WP:GA/R#Georg Cantor, and it does seem that the fact that WP:SCG is explicitly part of GA criteria is not well known. I'd suggest moving it up to the body of the text (and will start that discussion at WIAGA since it is relevant regardless of the outcome here). For now I am going to stick with opposing, since I'd rather try to bring your goals and GA into line with each other first. Mike Christie (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I have just begun that discussion at WIAGA, for those interested. Mike Christie (talk) 13:38, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Interestingly, WP:SCG was in the body of the text a couple of months ago: it was footnoted on April 18 as part of a general revision of the rules. Although the revision was much discussed, footnoting the scientific citation guidelines doesn't seem to be mentioned. Geometry guy 14:42, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

This has been a major source of friction, but the schism goes deeper. We see a radical difference in focus, which might loosely be styled as form versus substance. For example, I would ask of an article:
Is it correct?

Is it reasonably complete and balanced?

Is it clear?

Is it compelling?

Is it reasonably accessible, given the topic?

Is it written grammatically, with correct spelling, and with good typesetting?

Is it appropriately illustrated, if applicable?

Is it well linked?

Is it helpful in providing references and additional resources?

These kinds of questions will be familiar to anyone who has written and reviewed for a journal, but these are not the prominent questions being asked for GA status. And the things that are demanded not only show little interest or sensitivity with respect to content, but may actually damage the article in so far as these criteria that I care about. Thus I do not see a strong positive correlation between "GA" tags and articles I consider good, and the trend has been towards a negative correlation.

A strength of Wikipedia is the diversity of passions and expertise. I don't contribute to Pokémon articles, but I don't object to them either. If some folks want to get together and judge articles by the present GA standards and banish outside voices, fine; but please choose a less controversial and nettlesome name, and don't pretend to special status. --KSmrq^T 13:54, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Do not move Yes there are problems but the baby should not be thrown out with the bathwater. Mike Christie's comments above in relation to remembering to apply good faith for the vast majority of reviewers is a timely one - Wikipedia is subjective and always will be and I would be very interested to see if a system of review could be created which removes all possible subjectivity. Reviewers are trying hard and where they fail, well those articles can always be re-nominated for another review, and where they delist, that process can be refuted. Whilst a tighter set of standards would probably help - it is more important in my view, that the failing or delisting editor not take a further part in the next review - other than providing solid and informative points why the article does not meet WP:GAC at the time of the failure or the delist.--VS ^talk 11:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- 'Comment to closing admin. Please consider this !vote, and others, as directed to the deletion proposal. This move proposal is an effort to consider that there may still be a baby in the bathwater, and to move the tub to a non-prejudicial name, leaving its contents intact. Arguments directed to preserve this project against deletion proposals, which shall follow if this is not moved, should be postponed until it is made. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Move overtop of Wikipedia:Excellent short articles and return this project to its original purpose of providing a spot for articles that aren't large enough to become FA. In time, and with approval, it can be moved to Wikipedia:Featured short articles. "Ah, but I want to work on long articles that aren't quite at FA-level." Then go to peer review and FAC where the project needs you and quit the needless divergence of editing time that GA creates. Marskell 11:59, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
There are FAs as short as 1200 words. What would featured short articles provide? And wouldn't that split editing resources too? The GA rating never really fit well with the rest of the rating scale. What if GA were viewed as an outside (general) A-level review for projects without their own "A-level" review? That would make GA analogous to project A-review like PR is analogous to project peer-review. Gimmetrow 12:36, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Our last discussion on FA length ended indecisively. In practice, very few 5 to 10k articles wind up at FAC although, as just stated below, they constitute a great deal of the encyclopedia's content. If we are going to have different processes they should at least be focused on obviously different metrics—GA and FA are not, while short vs. long would be.

Barring that, the merging with "A class" would be a good idea; I suggested something like it seven months ago in my last attempt to fling mud around here. Perhaps we should call it B+ class, though... Marskell 15:50, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't care what it's called: See my comments below . . . IvoShandor 14:43, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Also, Gimmetrow's idea isn't a bad one. Currently, there is confusion project wide as to what the heck A-class means and how one attains it. A move to a project wide A-class review (albeit probably in an altered form from the current GA process) could be a good idea. The only really big problem there, is, how do you figure out what to do with current GAs, massively delist and have thousands of articles resubmitted for A class reviews? That seems a bit rash, but depending on how it would work many current GAs may not be up to A-class. Again, I don't care all that much because of views posted in the following section. IvoShandor 14:49, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Do not move or conditional move — GA is no longer just for short articles. The point of reworking the criteria was to make it clear, especially the difference between GA and FA. It's our minimum standard of acceptable quality; anything less than GA is absulutely unacceptable on Wikipedia until it reaches GA status. Featured Articles our are very best work; what about those articles that are decent and show the typical standard? GA measures those. Ideally, I wouldn't mind a move to "Acceptable articles", since I think articles that don't reach GA within one year should be deleted. Heck, I wouldn't even mind getting rid of that entire grading system and replacing it with "Unacceptable", "Acceptable (GA)", and "Featured". — Deckill er 14:52, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
- Your deletion suggestion would mean jettisoning 99.8% of our material (unless by some miracle throughput increases by two orders of magnitude). Less than GA is acceptable and will continue to be so—and having an inclusion threshold based on a process as uneven as this one would be a bad idea.
- And the fact is, a majority of our articles are short. Short articles constitute the vast majority of our content and we have no means of recognizing those of good quality. Encouraging polished post-stubs strikes me as a greater systemic improvement then handing out green stickers for (merely) decent material that is better covered at PR and FA. Marskell 15:37, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
  - ...Yea, Deckiller, that seems like a pretty extreme attitude, if something is compleatly unacceptable for Wikipedia, that means it should be deleted immedietly, and there's plenty of reliable information to be found in non-GA or non-FA articles. Homestarmy 16:21, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
    - I forgot to add the word "just" in the first sentence. GA isn't just for short articles, although it makes it easier for short articles to be included due to the criteria. As for the second half, I guess the sarcasm wasn't clear. People wanted the difference between GA and FA made clear, and that's what the reworking did. And now people are complaining that the system is flawed because all GAs aren't near-FA quality. Thus, the rest of my comment was dry sarcasm. However, I do believe that the GA criteria is written so that most articles can meet it with relative ease (unless it's a stub or something similar, in which case it needs to be properly organized, AKA merged). — Deckill er 23:56, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Comment — The ideas espoused by Gimmetrow, Marskell and Geometry Guy (if I read you all correctly) that we should remake GA Articles into A-Class Articles is attractive to me. I understand the concerns about Good vs. bad articles and this would help to reduce the friction caused by that. Also, I never really saw the point of A Class Articles... Most editors who participate in the assessment and review of articles (rightly or wrongly) want to advance articles up a notional ladder and assure the requisite quality at each level. I think having a clear path from Stub to Start to B to A to FA makes sense. Not every article will make it up the ladder, but there are criteria and reviewers acting in good faith can make this process have integrity. Argos'Dad 19:30, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Comment I like the idea of merging the GA and A classes as well, whether A-class into GA-class or the other way around. When I first learned about the assessments processes, I actually thought that GA and FA were types of "A" class (based on their abbreviations among other things) and the existence of another, proper, A class in addition to them confused me to no end. (Especially considering that articles can be both GA and A class.) This wouldn't be a particularly difficult change either, at least compared with most of the alternatives, since the majority of A class articles seem to also GA class and all of them should be of at least the GA standard. (I'm not claiming they all actually are, but they're supposed to be.) --tjstrf talk 23:51, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
Move. This is all good fun. I like PMAnderson's proposals below: good articles should be sheparded by domain experts, rather than the whims of the oft-unreasonable citation police. Further below is a proposal to rename this page to Wikipedia:WikiProject Article Style and Form, so that project participants could grade articles based on style and form, which is what all this arguing seems to be about. This way, the concept of a "good article" could be shared with the technical proejcts, instead of being exclusively monopolized. linas 03:34, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Delete entirely - this project is an endless exercise in red-tape, shifting goalposts (creeping ever-closer to FA), and ambiguity. There is no good reason to have a second level of distinction - all articles can and should meet FA quality. Having GA as a pat on the head may be nice psychologically, but serves no larger function for the encyclopedia per its goals and intentions on the whole. Devolve the class into A-class and delete the project. I'm sorry if that sounds harsh, but I've been on the wall about suggesting WP:GA for deletion for some time now. Girolamo Savonarola 06:31, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't move I'm not seeing the crisis here and think the system is a very good idea overall. Howard Cleeves 12:20, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't move. I don't see the problem. If some editors aren't interpreting the WP:WIAGA requirements properly, try to discuss it with them. If the requirements are the problem, they can be edited. If the process is the issue, the process can be revamped. But references to "Good Articles" are all over Wikipedia, and changing the name or something would just lead to a hell of a lot of bot work and menial fixing up for no good reason. "Good articles" is a perfectly good name for this, so there's no reason to move. Mango juice^talk 15:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Tag historical. The idea behind the good article system has moved so far away from what it was meant to be, namely a non-bureaucratic system of simply tagging an article as good, which any editor could remove. I think it's time to put it out of its misery. It seems Wikipedia can't do fast and easy, process always creeps in. Hiding Talk 15:41, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Do not move: "Point" or not, the reasons for moving seem very frivolous to justify such modification. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Perón (talk • contribs)
Do not move: There needs to be a lesser standard than FA - FA is tough to get through and editors need some kind of encouragement along the way. 'Good' is a nice name for something that's on it's way to FA but not there yet. This process also serves as a gateway to prevent an awful lot of junk articles from impacting the FA reviewers - who have enough work on their plate as it is. If the process involved in awarding and de-listing 'Good' articles needs to be revised - let's revise it - but hard working editors need a level of reward below FA - and this is it. One change I would make would be to require GA to have been awarded before an article is even allowed to be added to FAC. It should be a simple matter to automate removal of non-GA articles from the FAC queue - which I'm sure would come as a great relief to the FA reviewers. SteveBaker 21:10, 30 May 2007 (UTC)
Don't move. The solution to silly criteria is to change the criteria. -Amarkov moo! 04:11, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

It was requested that this article be renamed but there was no consensus for it be moved. --Stemonitis 17:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)