![]() | This recruitment has ended and is now archived. Please do not edit the contents of this page. |
Status: Completed
Date Started: November 30, 2013
Date Ended: January 15, 2014
Recruiter: Quadell
Thanks for your interest in becoming a GA reviewer! I've looked over a couple of your peer reviews here and here, and they are a very good sign that you'll make an excellent GA reviewer. You've shown that you can carefully read through an article and find valuable suggestions for improvement, even examining the sources for further ideas and criticisms. I think the main thing you'll need to learn is exactly what is and is not required before an article can be promoted to GA status. That's what I hope to make you an expert in, starting with Step One.
The official criteria are at Wikipedia:Good article criteria (often abbreviate WP:GA?), and it's essential that you fully understand them. I go back and check those criteria every time I review a GA candidate article. It's also extremely useful to read Wikipedia:What the Good article criteria are not (abbreviated WP:GACN), to see how to apply these criteria in practice, and to learn about common traps that reviewers could fall into. Finally, the guideline at Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles ( WP:RGA) can tell you even more about the process. So please read all three, but the most important one to fully understand is WP:GA?.
When you've read all three pages, and reread the criteria, please list any questions or comments you have below. Is anything unclear? Do any of the criteria surprise you? Do you think an article you've previously examined, such as Hyderabadi haleem, fulfills these criteria?
Once you have read them and we've gone over any questions, I'll make a quiz for you. – Quadell ( talk) 13:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Imagine that you are reviewing a Good Article nominee, and you come across the following situations. For each one, try to determine if it is
In addition, if the answer is (A), please try to determine which Good article criterion is being violated. You can write down your answers if you like, or you can just decide your answer in your head.
When you are ready to see the solution key, go to User:Quadell/Key to see the answers. What did you get right, and what did you get wrong? – Quadell ( talk) 20:41, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
The following case studies should show you a few real-world examples of reviews. There are many ways to perform reviews, and your way may differ a bit from mine, and that's fine. As you'll see, I tend to vary my reviewing style to fit the particular circumstances, so you may find some things you want to do similarly and some you want to ignore.
To start any review, I simply click on "follow this link" on the article talk page, and fill in the required fields. I like to add a note saying who the nominator is, just for my own benefit, but that's totally optional.
Most of the time, you will review and article and put it on hold for 7 days, giving the nominator a chance to fix the issues you have identified. A "quickfail" is when you simply fail the article right away. These are relatively rare. There are only three valid reason to quickfail an article.
(1) I will quickfail an article if it already has specific things that need to be done to improve it, things that the nominator already knows about and has not done. This will be the case if there are cleanup banners at the top of the page, such as {{ cleanup}}, {{ POV}}, or {{ unreferenced}}, or if there are multiple {{ fact}} tags throughout the article. It can also be the case if the article already received a detailed GA review or peer review, but has not yet fixed the issues identified there. The nominator should fix these issues, and then renominate the article. This was the case at Talk:Toyohara Chikanobu/GA1.
(2) I'll also quickfail an article if it is a very, very long way from meeting the criteria, and I simply don't believe the nominator has any chance of getting the article GA-ready in the time it would normally be on hold. I use this very sparingly; it's usually better to simply leave the nomination on hold a week and let it fail at the end of that period. (This is what I did at Talk:Pope Benedict XVI/GA3.) But in cases where the situation is truly hopeless, or where the nominator does not seem interested in improving the article, I'll quickfail for this reason. I still try to give as much specific information as possible to aid either this nominator, or anyone else who might come after him/her. See Talk:Variable Checkerspot/GA1 for an example.
(3) Finally, if you detect significant copyright infringements in an article, you can quickfail it right away. This is because copyright violations are a legal problem that must be dealt with right away. You may want to also add {{ subst:copyvio}} as well, depending on the severity. That's (sort of) what happened at Talk:I Am... World Tour/GA1.
To quickfail, just leave an appropriate description on the review page, and then follow the instructions: replace the {{GA nominee}} tag with {{FailedGA|~~~~~|topic=|page=}}, filling in the topic and page appropriately, like this. A bot takes care of everything else.
I'll focus on three article I reviewed: Architecture of Scotland in the Roman era, United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. In each step below, I'll give examples from these three reviews.
Step 1: I always introduce myself and tell the nominator what to expect. (Sometimes they comment back to say hello or to thank me for taking on the review.) My initial introduction is often short and simple, like this or this. If I think I'll take longer than usual to perform the review, or if the nominator has been waiting a very long time for a review, I may mention it. And if I want to use my own particular style of reviewing, I'll let the nominator know, like this. For your first review, you should probably tell the nominator that it's your first, and that an experienced reviewer will be assisting you.
Step 2: Then I read through the article and take careful notes. Sometimes I print it out and use pen, but most often I enter comments in a text editor. Occasionally I edit the review page a little at a time, but I've found it usually works better to perform the main review all at once, so I wait until I have all my issues identified and ready to go. I'll usually mention issues that are not, strictly speaking, GA requirements, in the hopes that they will choose to improve them. Sometimes I copyedit the article myself to fix minor problems, but you don't have to.
Step 3: Then I leave my review on the review page. Sometimes, when the article is already a very strong candidate, I won't have many issues to mention at all, like this, and I'll just list them. Other times, I'll one of our reviewing templates to describe the issues. In this example, I fit all my concerns in the {{ GAList2}} template. In this example, I used both a list to specify the issues, and a {{ subst:GATable}} template to summarize. (In that last example, I went into way more detail than necessary, mentioning lots of issues outside the criteria—but I knew the nominator was planning to nominate it for FA status later, so I wanted to be as thorough as possible, as a favor to him.) Anyway, once all that is done, I tell the nominator that I'm putting the article on hold, and that he/she has 7 days to make the needed improvements. (If they ask for more time, I almost always say that's fine... but it's good to have a deadline, even if it's a soft deadline.) To put the article on hold, I go to the {{ GA nominee}} tag on the article talk page and change "status=onreview" to "status=onhold", like this. A bot automatically notifies the nominator.
Step 4: The next part is up to them. Some nominators just ignore it, and I have to fail the nomination after a week, but most try in good faith to address my concerns. Once an problem is fixed, I indicate that in some way, such as crossing out my concern, moving the issue into a "resolved" section, or using a {{ fixed}} template. If they run out of time and there are required issues that aren't resolved, and it doesn't look like they will resolve them any time soon, then I fail the nomination; but more often, everything gets taken care of. If you look at the final versions of Talk:Architecture of Scotland in the Roman era/GA1 and Talk:Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo/GA1, you can see the discussion that took place as they dealt with issues. ( Talk:United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe/GA1 is still open, so you can watch in real time to see if the nomination passes or not.) If everything gets fixed, I pass the article; I leave a note congratulating them, and I sometimes give ideas for future improvements. Then I follow the instructions here: I replace the templates on the talk page and add the article to the appropriate GA list. A bot will notify the user and add the green plus sign to the article.
And that's all there is to it! I know it's a lot to absorb, but I think if you understand these case studies, you should be ready to go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here. All the best, – Quadell ( talk) 20:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
To start a review, simply look through the articles listed at Wikipedia:Good article nominations and pick one you're interested in. Have a quick look to see what shape it's in. For your first review, it's best to pick a subject you know something about or have an interest in. It will go better if you pick one that is not overly-long with consistent problems of text that goes off topic or has persistent issues of bias. (Those can take a long time to resolve.) But really, I'm willing to assist with any article you pick.
So which article do you think you'd like to review? – Quadell ( talk) 19:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I think the major criteria under which it mainly requires improvement is 3. In terms of 3b, the sections ""Alleged warning" and "Reactions" focus on too much extra details like excess quotations and intricate content which should be omitted when referencing news articles; these sections need to be shortened. I think the entire article needs to be reordered under new sections which group the content properly, there is some stray statements which don't belong here and there. I need some time to think of a better way to arrange the sections and will tell it in the review. 3a: the article currently gives us the idea the the authorities are not sure of the suspects but updated content regarding this is in the rest of the article (Sources say that the Indian Mujahideen members have been arrested) but not merged well into it, for example: the infobox and lead are misleading.
Criteria 4, 5, 6 seem fine. Neutrality does not seem to be a problem, I've checked the images and the licenses seems fine (Maybe could use more pics, I'll see later) and it's stable. For Criteria 1, I've found that the lead needs to be rewritten since it does not summarise properly (above), by LAYOUT the sidebar navigational template goes up and the geo co-ordinates are missing. Also do we need to add the 'Contains Indic text' template?...this question is not for this article, just a random question while reading through WP:LAYOUT; they don't use this in Hyderabad.
I can't check further for criteria 1 and 2 because the article needs to be rewritten first. So should I go ahead and highlight the first para which I posted above in the review? Or should I go further and complete it with the GA review template placing it 'on hold'? - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 21:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
A week has passed and unfortunately, the editor did not seem to have time to respond to my suggestions. I have closed the review and updated the talk page. Got a little confused about the subtopic field while closing it... - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 18:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Hmm...this has turned out to be a bit harder than I thought, mainly because not being familiar with this topic range and this being a veteran user's work—findings areas for improvement or flaws is even harder; I'm not even sure if what I found out is useful. I feel inclined to be lenient and just pass it since at first glance, since it seems to fulfil all the criteria.
This is what is nagging me, I feel that the article is a bit hard on regular/laymen readers. I remember once reading from WP:LINK that a reader should not be forced to click on a link. Since I have only today, studied a bit about Cyclone terminologies, this article itself struck me as too technical and these terms must be explained over there itself. For example in the "Met history" section, "In the middle of December, the monsoon trough persisted along the western Pacific Ocean, spawning a pair of tropical disturbances both north and south of equator. In the northwestern Pacific Ocean, the system became Typhoon Russ.[1] On December 15, a tropical low formed east of the Solomon Islands. During the next few days, the system passed south of the country while slowly organizing." (underlined terms need to be elaborated)
Apart from this main issue, another suggestion would be the make the lead more clearer. Like introduce in the start that it affected X number of cities in Queensland, Australia rather than just mentioning all those cities separately; not everyone is familiar the geography of this area. Maybe also the last section could be rearranged and split for better flow. All these issues are under Criteria 1 and I think the rest (2—6), it will probably pass in.
I did read some GAs on this topic (among the vast collection) and found that no reviewer had issues with the terminologies; I also have read WikiProject Cyclone's style guidelines. Maybe it would be silly for every article to explain these terms repeatedly since all these articles are quite closely similar structure-wise and the individual articles would suffice. So I guess this won't be in the way of the review then....what do you think about it? - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 17:48, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
It looks like you and the nominator have different ideas about the lead sentence. That happens sometimes, and it takes some care to know the right way to handle the situation, especially when the nominator has plenty of experience with Good Articles. You just have to ask yourself, is the way he prefers a true violation of the GA criteria? Sometimes, even if I'm sure my way is better, I'll just say something like "I still think my suggestion would improve the article, but it's not a requirement for GA status." But in other cases, I have to insist on the change, failing the article if it isn't made. Which do you think is more appropriate in this case? – Quadell ( talk) 22:02, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Excellent. The nominator, 1ST7, is great to work with. In a article about such a recent and controversial topic, I'd recommend that you check carefully for problems with neutrality, reliability of sources, and words to watch. – Quadell ( talk) 19:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
In addition to the concerns you identified, I would say that the lead is a bit short, and fails to fully summarize all important sections of the article. Thanks for you attention to detail in this article! Do you think you're ready to post the review, or do you want to discuss it more here first? – Quadell ( talk) 18:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)
![]() | This recruitment has ended and is now archived. Please do not edit the contents of this page. |
Status: Completed
Date Started: November 30, 2013
Date Ended: January 15, 2014
Recruiter: Quadell
Thanks for your interest in becoming a GA reviewer! I've looked over a couple of your peer reviews here and here, and they are a very good sign that you'll make an excellent GA reviewer. You've shown that you can carefully read through an article and find valuable suggestions for improvement, even examining the sources for further ideas and criticisms. I think the main thing you'll need to learn is exactly what is and is not required before an article can be promoted to GA status. That's what I hope to make you an expert in, starting with Step One.
The official criteria are at Wikipedia:Good article criteria (often abbreviate WP:GA?), and it's essential that you fully understand them. I go back and check those criteria every time I review a GA candidate article. It's also extremely useful to read Wikipedia:What the Good article criteria are not (abbreviated WP:GACN), to see how to apply these criteria in practice, and to learn about common traps that reviewers could fall into. Finally, the guideline at Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles ( WP:RGA) can tell you even more about the process. So please read all three, but the most important one to fully understand is WP:GA?.
When you've read all three pages, and reread the criteria, please list any questions or comments you have below. Is anything unclear? Do any of the criteria surprise you? Do you think an article you've previously examined, such as Hyderabadi haleem, fulfills these criteria?
Once you have read them and we've gone over any questions, I'll make a quiz for you. – Quadell ( talk) 13:40, 30 November 2013 (UTC)
Imagine that you are reviewing a Good Article nominee, and you come across the following situations. For each one, try to determine if it is
In addition, if the answer is (A), please try to determine which Good article criterion is being violated. You can write down your answers if you like, or you can just decide your answer in your head.
When you are ready to see the solution key, go to User:Quadell/Key to see the answers. What did you get right, and what did you get wrong? – Quadell ( talk) 20:41, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
The following case studies should show you a few real-world examples of reviews. There are many ways to perform reviews, and your way may differ a bit from mine, and that's fine. As you'll see, I tend to vary my reviewing style to fit the particular circumstances, so you may find some things you want to do similarly and some you want to ignore.
To start any review, I simply click on "follow this link" on the article talk page, and fill in the required fields. I like to add a note saying who the nominator is, just for my own benefit, but that's totally optional.
Most of the time, you will review and article and put it on hold for 7 days, giving the nominator a chance to fix the issues you have identified. A "quickfail" is when you simply fail the article right away. These are relatively rare. There are only three valid reason to quickfail an article.
(1) I will quickfail an article if it already has specific things that need to be done to improve it, things that the nominator already knows about and has not done. This will be the case if there are cleanup banners at the top of the page, such as {{ cleanup}}, {{ POV}}, or {{ unreferenced}}, or if there are multiple {{ fact}} tags throughout the article. It can also be the case if the article already received a detailed GA review or peer review, but has not yet fixed the issues identified there. The nominator should fix these issues, and then renominate the article. This was the case at Talk:Toyohara Chikanobu/GA1.
(2) I'll also quickfail an article if it is a very, very long way from meeting the criteria, and I simply don't believe the nominator has any chance of getting the article GA-ready in the time it would normally be on hold. I use this very sparingly; it's usually better to simply leave the nomination on hold a week and let it fail at the end of that period. (This is what I did at Talk:Pope Benedict XVI/GA3.) But in cases where the situation is truly hopeless, or where the nominator does not seem interested in improving the article, I'll quickfail for this reason. I still try to give as much specific information as possible to aid either this nominator, or anyone else who might come after him/her. See Talk:Variable Checkerspot/GA1 for an example.
(3) Finally, if you detect significant copyright infringements in an article, you can quickfail it right away. This is because copyright violations are a legal problem that must be dealt with right away. You may want to also add {{ subst:copyvio}} as well, depending on the severity. That's (sort of) what happened at Talk:I Am... World Tour/GA1.
To quickfail, just leave an appropriate description on the review page, and then follow the instructions: replace the {{GA nominee}} tag with {{FailedGA|~~~~~|topic=|page=}}, filling in the topic and page appropriately, like this. A bot takes care of everything else.
I'll focus on three article I reviewed: Architecture of Scotland in the Roman era, United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe, and Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo. In each step below, I'll give examples from these three reviews.
Step 1: I always introduce myself and tell the nominator what to expect. (Sometimes they comment back to say hello or to thank me for taking on the review.) My initial introduction is often short and simple, like this or this. If I think I'll take longer than usual to perform the review, or if the nominator has been waiting a very long time for a review, I may mention it. And if I want to use my own particular style of reviewing, I'll let the nominator know, like this. For your first review, you should probably tell the nominator that it's your first, and that an experienced reviewer will be assisting you.
Step 2: Then I read through the article and take careful notes. Sometimes I print it out and use pen, but most often I enter comments in a text editor. Occasionally I edit the review page a little at a time, but I've found it usually works better to perform the main review all at once, so I wait until I have all my issues identified and ready to go. I'll usually mention issues that are not, strictly speaking, GA requirements, in the hopes that they will choose to improve them. Sometimes I copyedit the article myself to fix minor problems, but you don't have to.
Step 3: Then I leave my review on the review page. Sometimes, when the article is already a very strong candidate, I won't have many issues to mention at all, like this, and I'll just list them. Other times, I'll one of our reviewing templates to describe the issues. In this example, I fit all my concerns in the {{ GAList2}} template. In this example, I used both a list to specify the issues, and a {{ subst:GATable}} template to summarize. (In that last example, I went into way more detail than necessary, mentioning lots of issues outside the criteria—but I knew the nominator was planning to nominate it for FA status later, so I wanted to be as thorough as possible, as a favor to him.) Anyway, once all that is done, I tell the nominator that I'm putting the article on hold, and that he/she has 7 days to make the needed improvements. (If they ask for more time, I almost always say that's fine... but it's good to have a deadline, even if it's a soft deadline.) To put the article on hold, I go to the {{ GA nominee}} tag on the article talk page and change "status=onreview" to "status=onhold", like this. A bot automatically notifies the nominator.
Step 4: The next part is up to them. Some nominators just ignore it, and I have to fail the nomination after a week, but most try in good faith to address my concerns. Once an problem is fixed, I indicate that in some way, such as crossing out my concern, moving the issue into a "resolved" section, or using a {{ fixed}} template. If they run out of time and there are required issues that aren't resolved, and it doesn't look like they will resolve them any time soon, then I fail the nomination; but more often, everything gets taken care of. If you look at the final versions of Talk:Architecture of Scotland in the Roman era/GA1 and Talk:Jean-Joseph Rabearivelo/GA1, you can see the discussion that took place as they dealt with issues. ( Talk:United States v. White Mountain Apache Tribe/GA1 is still open, so you can watch in real time to see if the nomination passes or not.) If everything gets fixed, I pass the article; I leave a note congratulating them, and I sometimes give ideas for future improvements. Then I follow the instructions here: I replace the templates on the talk page and add the article to the appropriate GA list. A bot will notify the user and add the green plus sign to the article.
And that's all there is to it! I know it's a lot to absorb, but I think if you understand these case studies, you should be ready to go. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them here. All the best, – Quadell ( talk) 20:11, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
To start a review, simply look through the articles listed at Wikipedia:Good article nominations and pick one you're interested in. Have a quick look to see what shape it's in. For your first review, it's best to pick a subject you know something about or have an interest in. It will go better if you pick one that is not overly-long with consistent problems of text that goes off topic or has persistent issues of bias. (Those can take a long time to resolve.) But really, I'm willing to assist with any article you pick.
So which article do you think you'd like to review? – Quadell ( talk) 19:04, 4 December 2013 (UTC)
I think the major criteria under which it mainly requires improvement is 3. In terms of 3b, the sections ""Alleged warning" and "Reactions" focus on too much extra details like excess quotations and intricate content which should be omitted when referencing news articles; these sections need to be shortened. I think the entire article needs to be reordered under new sections which group the content properly, there is some stray statements which don't belong here and there. I need some time to think of a better way to arrange the sections and will tell it in the review. 3a: the article currently gives us the idea the the authorities are not sure of the suspects but updated content regarding this is in the rest of the article (Sources say that the Indian Mujahideen members have been arrested) but not merged well into it, for example: the infobox and lead are misleading.
Criteria 4, 5, 6 seem fine. Neutrality does not seem to be a problem, I've checked the images and the licenses seems fine (Maybe could use more pics, I'll see later) and it's stable. For Criteria 1, I've found that the lead needs to be rewritten since it does not summarise properly (above), by LAYOUT the sidebar navigational template goes up and the geo co-ordinates are missing. Also do we need to add the 'Contains Indic text' template?...this question is not for this article, just a random question while reading through WP:LAYOUT; they don't use this in Hyderabad.
I can't check further for criteria 1 and 2 because the article needs to be rewritten first. So should I go ahead and highlight the first para which I posted above in the review? Or should I go further and complete it with the GA review template placing it 'on hold'? - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 21:23, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
A week has passed and unfortunately, the editor did not seem to have time to respond to my suggestions. I have closed the review and updated the talk page. Got a little confused about the subtopic field while closing it... - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 18:21, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Hmm...this has turned out to be a bit harder than I thought, mainly because not being familiar with this topic range and this being a veteran user's work—findings areas for improvement or flaws is even harder; I'm not even sure if what I found out is useful. I feel inclined to be lenient and just pass it since at first glance, since it seems to fulfil all the criteria.
This is what is nagging me, I feel that the article is a bit hard on regular/laymen readers. I remember once reading from WP:LINK that a reader should not be forced to click on a link. Since I have only today, studied a bit about Cyclone terminologies, this article itself struck me as too technical and these terms must be explained over there itself. For example in the "Met history" section, "In the middle of December, the monsoon trough persisted along the western Pacific Ocean, spawning a pair of tropical disturbances both north and south of equator. In the northwestern Pacific Ocean, the system became Typhoon Russ.[1] On December 15, a tropical low formed east of the Solomon Islands. During the next few days, the system passed south of the country while slowly organizing." (underlined terms need to be elaborated)
Apart from this main issue, another suggestion would be the make the lead more clearer. Like introduce in the start that it affected X number of cities in Queensland, Australia rather than just mentioning all those cities separately; not everyone is familiar the geography of this area. Maybe also the last section could be rearranged and split for better flow. All these issues are under Criteria 1 and I think the rest (2—6), it will probably pass in.
I did read some GAs on this topic (among the vast collection) and found that no reviewer had issues with the terminologies; I also have read WikiProject Cyclone's style guidelines. Maybe it would be silly for every article to explain these terms repeatedly since all these articles are quite closely similar structure-wise and the individual articles would suffice. So I guess this won't be in the way of the review then....what do you think about it? - Ugog Nizdast ( talk) 17:48, 22 December 2013 (UTC)
It looks like you and the nominator have different ideas about the lead sentence. That happens sometimes, and it takes some care to know the right way to handle the situation, especially when the nominator has plenty of experience with Good Articles. You just have to ask yourself, is the way he prefers a true violation of the GA criteria? Sometimes, even if I'm sure my way is better, I'll just say something like "I still think my suggestion would improve the article, but it's not a requirement for GA status." But in other cases, I have to insist on the change, failing the article if it isn't made. Which do you think is more appropriate in this case? – Quadell ( talk) 22:02, 28 December 2013 (UTC)
Excellent. The nominator, 1ST7, is great to work with. In a article about such a recent and controversial topic, I'd recommend that you check carefully for problems with neutrality, reliability of sources, and words to watch. – Quadell ( talk) 19:10, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
In addition to the concerns you identified, I would say that the lead is a bit short, and fails to fully summarize all important sections of the article. Thanks for you attention to detail in this article! Do you think you're ready to post the review, or do you want to discuss it more here first? – Quadell ( talk) 18:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)