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Given the current backlog of articles I suggest that the use of On Hold be discouraged or resticted to a smaller time frame say 48hrs, as its keeping the lists longer than necessary and realistically if there are issues with an article then fail it or fix them during the review. Gnangarra 05:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
is given as a subsection under both Everyday Life and Social Sciences--- which is it? -- plange 23:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I have been watching the GA candidates being review and they get less and less reviewed (See Vincente Fox's talk page). And in that I mean that people go to just typing which criteria was failed to no message about the GA process on the talk page of the article. WHY? We are suppose to be somewhat of a peer review process along with the GA classification process. So would the reviewers PLEASE give a list of comments with the failed articles. Lincher 15:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
So my suggestions:
NCurse work 07:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I understand. What about the list with interest fields of the participants, reviewers. When I first saw WP:GA page, I was suprised (after working hard on Wikipedia Release Version 0.5) that anyone can pass an article. I know that everybody is afraid of elitism. But what if we would have a relatively small group of reviewers (who've been working on GAs for a long time) and if someone wants to join, then he/she gets a "coach" who'll have to care take of that new member's reviews for a time? NCurse work 14:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the fact that reviewers need to leave improvment comments but I should point out that just as only one person is needed to pass an article, only one person (and a reason) is needed to delist an article. Tarret 15:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
You gave me an idea RHB, I think that we should make a boilerplate for new reviewers to put on their talk page that states what is needed to do when reviewing (in like 3-5 short sentences) in order to help them know what the process is all about. This should also be given to everybody who reviews and needs to refresh what are the rules and things to focus on when reviewing. Lincher 12:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the biggest help to the situation would be for anyone who nominates an article to review at least one in return. This is mentioned in passing on the candidates page, but I think it would be good if we stressed that a bit more. It's too easy for editors to drop off a candidate (or two, or three, or four all at once) and forget about the whole project until they get their little GA tag. If every nominator took the time to review one article per nomination, there would be no back log. Kafziel 15:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think this backlog problem can't be solved from a global view. For example, I review just science-medicine-related articles, and try to clean the whole nomination list (now alone). 2 or 3 reviewers could remove a backlog in a topic. That's why I wanted so much that participants' list with special interests. Groups could work on specific topics. NCurse work 17:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Concerning that welcome template, I don't like how it's worded, "Your new role" sounds like it's telling users they've been given some obligation to do something, and editing Wikipedia is not obligatory at all, it's supposed to be voluntary. Homestarmy 19:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I felt bold, so I created this: Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers... Comments? NCurse work 20:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I, for one, do not review too many articles, as I would find it hard to pass an article from outside the scope of my "expertise", as in no way I could make sure it is comprehensive and accurate. I can fail a really bad article for some obvious reasons (which happened once when I noticed a nomination pretty poor on all accounts), but other than that, I would rather not reivew articles on e.g. gastroenterology or Pakistani history.
Another problem with GA is that the GA status is both low profile and not held in highest regard. The relative easiness to pass and the perceived occurence of abuse is why GA is often dismissed as a proper quality criterion. Another thing is the self-propelling vicious circle of low profile/low prestige, little interest, little reviews etc.
One thing that I have thought about is getting WikiProjects involved in pre-screeing and perhaps also self-assessing articles. For example, the Computer Games WikiProject seems to be submitting relatively good candidates, as they apparently have some internal review process (anecdotary evidence only, so I might be wrong). Some WikiProjects participate in this Version 1.0 Assessment system, perhaps if more of them adopted it, they could make sure they only nominate really high-potential articles. Moreover, this could be a way to split the "accuracy/completeness" and other formal requirements review parts.
Just some random thoughts. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 01:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm creating a splinter discussion off of a very good point that Bravada makes which I think is relevant to our overall problem. The Candidates page includes the note Review carefully—the standards of good articles are only as high as those of the most lenient reviewer! and by extension the corollary The standards of being a good article is only as high as it's weakest article.. Personally, I think we should be a tad more strict in our standards. A Good article is suppose to be a presentation of some of the best that Wikipedia offers, especially of articles that would never be the length that a FA would require. Similarly, for articles that can become FA we should hold them to that standard in order to point them on the right path towards FA status. For a potential FA candidate, the acheiving GA status should be the equivalent of reaching 3rd base in a baseball metaphor with the next step being home plate.
Personally, I think we should be more bold in maybe re-evaluating some articles that have passed. However, if we do de-list then they should be given a detail reason and review of what needs to be improved. A lot of GA are passed by new reviewers who don't necessary appreciate the scope and standards that these articles need to be in order to quaify as GA. I will tell you that when I did my first pass
Ryan Leaf, I didn't quiet grasp those concepts myself and I'm possibly going to de-list that article by the weekend. A newbie mistake.
Agne 04:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
(same subject)
I agree, I see that there is a backlog and I see that there is a need to re-review the old GAs so if we are to coach the newbies, fine with me about leaving the backlog tag but if not, we don't need beginner reviewers listing GAs if they don't understand the process. For the re-review, we should use the list of reviewers and assess like 4 articles/day per reviewer in order to maintain the project healthy and with correct nominations thus being able to show good articles to other people who come to the project.
On the point of removing the part of the quote about having the articles' quality only as high as that of the most lenient reviewer!, it should be removed upon a re-review of the GA articles. Lincher 02:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Lets be clear and go into details about the criteria for GA status :
In
WP:WIAGA, it is stated the criteria very similar to the criteria for featured articles. Then, in regards to small aricles it gets a little vague with mention that prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. I think this needs to be more clear as we define "less then brillant". When I think of
WP:FAC, I think of it as a fine tooth comb and scrutiny similar to how a person's life & words are subjected when they run for US Senate. GAC is more along the lines of running for state Attorney General. I think the standards should be high but with not as nit pick for scrutiny. That said, in response to Lincher...
1a&d. Do the scientific terms need to be clearly defined on the article's page or just a wikilink is necessary.
1b&c; 2d; 3a; 4 & 5. EASY to check.
2a. how can we verify that all sources have been given? Do we WP:AGF and that's it?
2b. if there are no inline citations, is it ok? I would guess so, after the talk we had 3 months ago.
2c. if there are no book sources is it ok? if there are only internet sources, is it ok? If it only cite encyclopedias is it ok?
3b. should we cut trivia sections period? or are we lenient?
6. do we accept Fair use images if they state their rationale?
Thanks for your extensive answers, as of now I am tending to change the criterion 2b with stricter rules. Since 2b was
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory
, it should become something that looks more like :
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lincher ( talk • contribs)
every statement in the article has to be referenced to a source by means of inline citations (at the end of statement or paragraph)
the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory
1: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory upon request
2: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations for contentious statements is mandatory
Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC) Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
Lincher 03:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
This was taken from the previous discussion in order to have people decide or choose an idea over what to do about long articles : Secondly, the alternative name for GA on the early stages of the concept was, AFAIK, "excellent short articles". I believe that an "abridged", summary/overview encyclopedic article should not exceed 32kB. If it is over 32kB, it should be eligible for FA status by itself. If that's not the case at the moment, it should either further be improved to make it an FA, or perhaps trimmed down to create a good "short" encyclopedic article on the topic. I guess a "halfway" article, i.e. a GA expanded, but not quite complete by FA standards, is neither a GA or FA. It's nice to reward people for their work, but I guess we should only assess "complete" (more or less) articles, and not "work in progress". I will also give more rationale for excluding "long" articles from GA above. Bravada, talk - 08:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to assume good faith in this comment and assure you that I am trying to do no such thing. I know from my experience that maintaining NPOV is difficult, and I am sure that the more prominent a controversial article becomes, the more difficult this struggle becomes. With work, and hopefully feedback from a GA reviewer, [HINT] homeopathy may one day make it to FA. However, as I said I dread to think what the review process would be like. TimVickers 22:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If GA is near-FA...why have GA at all? (repeated from above). Worldtraveller would kick me for showing up again to criticize, but: no shit. GA should be scapped (that was my initial thought on it) and the work devoted to FA, where it matters, or GA should be much better specified in terms of its intent (this is what WT talked me into). See here for a long conversation on exactly the long/short article problem and the nature GA.
Note too, WP:ESA (excellent short articles) was actually created... Marskell 19:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I think Worldtraveller makes an excellent point that sums up alot of the value in the GA process. "there's an incentive to improve the latter, adding references and improving the text, which FA does not provide. Click your random article link 10 times and I bet you will be lucky to find one article that's got references - for most articles, FA does not provide an incentive to add them because most articles will only ever be quite short." For articles that will never get a sniff of GA status (not because they're not good but because they can't reach the length and depth required.) there is a continual incentive for improvement. For articles that can be FA, we're here to help them reach that. I say the difference between GA and FA is the "Fine tooth comb" line because you're dealing with the difference of one set of eyes versus several-which aids in uncovering more details and imperfection. A GA review should approach the review with the highest standards but naturally won't be able to detect all the details that a full group can. However, a GA can make damm certain that all the basics of good quality is covered. Agne 19:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I will also note that I really like Marskell idea from his link conversation about having a separate Featured Short Articles and Potential Featured Articles listing. For the "long" articles they would go into the latter category and that could potentially help with the dispute over "Long" articles because then the context they're being reviewed in would be made more clear. Also, since they do take longer to review, this seperate list wouldn't contribute to the backlog of reviewing the quicker, shorter articles. Agne 19:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I strongly oppose any splitting of this project into long and short GA's. When it was tried, the Long ones were virtually ignored. Splitting them off onto separate pages would have the same effect. FA's don't have different standards for long and short one (and yes, there are short ones - its comprehensiveness, not length that is the critera) so GA's should not have different standards for short and long ones either. There is no need to make GA more complicated. It works best as a simple project. Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, an article might be comprehensive when short if there isn't a ton of information about a subject. Also, comprehensive is not the same as detailed, don't mix the two. I think you guys are missing the fact that Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, therefore, we shouldn't be splitting anything on the basis of length. We ask a for lower level here than complete comprehensiveness of course, but the same principle applies. Personally, I don't see what's so broken about GA that we need to fix it. It does a good job of identifying those articles that are good, but that don't meet the stringent FA requirements. That's its original puprose, it works and its useful. pschemp | talk 03:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Not at all, it is not a FA-lite process and it isn't a pause before summit kinda project, it is an assessment project where we, with fixed rules, decide if the article is of that level of quality or not. It is somewhat of a stepdown from FA, in terms of breadth, of quality (not to a big extent), of sources, of quantity of pictures and of length in general. It is a project that reviews articles so they can comply with the assessment scale in stating that the article is no more of B-class but not yet of A-class and that is why the one-reviewer-only is the way it is done. For sure, there will be articles that will slip through the cracks and that is why we have a FA review for those ones. So, in maintaining the GA process functional, we have to give a clear review that if failed, the article missed all those criteria and if passed, the article was this & that but may need some of this and some of that for the FA status or the A-class for that matter. Lincher 14:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I haven't been following this discussion closely because, alas, I wasn't here when it started, but now there's a template on the main cnadidate page saying there was recently some change or something and to see this page, but as far as I can tell, everyone is still discussing the main definitions of GA's. Did something new get decided? Homestarmy 23:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the fast summary, we have to get this bagged up fast because other projects are waiting to find out what will the outcome be and will also be necessary to help with article assessment. Lincher 03:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Since we can't find an agreement on what to do with lengthy articles (that is to say 25kB+ of prose or 32kB+ counting everything), I would suggest an idea that can stir comments or bring us somewhere with this dead-end/no consensus. I think lengthy articles should, when you feel it would be a GA after assessing it yourself, it would be more reasonable to kick that article into the FA process meanwhile letting the nominator know that his article will be going there and that it is outside of the scope of the GA process, for length & quality. Please make your voice heard as this solution would remove 2 things, the on hold procedure where we wait for the article to have the reviewers nit-picks modified and bring more articles to the FA process, thus helping the articles getting better reviewed. Lincher 12:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.
A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.
To :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
Lincher 15:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I will quick answer your questions :
For CTS ... lets do so, and add it to the current criteria.
Pertaining to the re-assessment/sweep at User:Lincher/GA, we can start now and see what we get and work our criteria to meet the current GA batch or fail the ones that don't meet the present criteria. I've had it with the talking about short or long and that is why I made the suggestion above since we wont split ... creating more job for nuttin'. And we wont send articles to PR or FA since if people come to GA in the first place is to know if they are on the good track, let's not get the beaten first thing off while they're newbies, let the gradually go toward FA candidacy. Lincher 16:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is everyone obsessed with retaining the primarily short articles wording? It is clear that through practice, GA has morphed into a vehicle for identifying good article regardless of length that are just not quite FA material. Now, why are we retaining out of date wording that doesn't make sense for this project anymore and as far as I can see just causes arguments over what is long and what is short. Lets be bold and throw out the whole primarily short articles thing especially because that hasn't been practice for a long time. Instead let the wording reflect the current practice. Old things like that are not set in stone, and as the project evolved, its mission has evolved and the statement of it should reflect that. Think outside the short article box. pschemp | talk 16:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
(same subject) Now that everybody is on the same side and is all up to date about GAs and FAs, lets be constructive and have ideas onto werther we change the length issue and what do we do about inline citations (I have moved the discussion over to the WP:WIAGA's talk page for there is disagreement with a WPdian there).
Sorry if you feel that we have hurt PR, I didn't mean too but in a way, it is looking dead or close to dead to me, we should revive it with fresh ideas once the backlog & the sweep is done here (IMO). Lincher 18:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Gosh did we start a fire! It is taking up almost all of my WP time just to catch up with the discussion! I've been thinking quite a bit about the whole issue and I must say many of the things said here gave me a lot of food for thought. Here are my conclusions - I hope they are constructive:
Regards, Bravada, talk - 01:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to weigh in my thoughts on this -- I also see this process as working fine for the most part and see it as a stepping stone to FA. Being new to WP, I like the tiered process of nominating to GA and seeing if at least one person thought it met the criteria and then getting a peer review and an A-class rating, and then nominating to FA. It's a lot less intimidating and helps encourage article improvement, IMHO. Also, I don't think length should be discouraged. Long articles should be held to the same standards as short ones, and though it does sometimes require more work on the part of the reviewer, the ones that are a mess/work in progress are easy to spot and fail accordingly. I think the definition (and placement in the hierarchy on Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment works really well and makes sense to me. -- plange 02:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I was a bit curious myself when I read that in the rules, how long had we had that rule? I might be forgetting some conversation from a really long time ago.... Homestarmy 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
A couple of weeks ago, someone (ironically, an IP user) altered the "How to nominate a page" section to say that only registered users can nominate articles. While that might help keep the nonsense to a lower level, it certainly wasn't discussed or, in fact, even mentioned in the edit summary. It just happened, and I didn't notice (did anyone?) until Tarret removed a few just now. Here's the diff: [1].
Anyway, I've returned the wording to the way it's always been and replaced the nominations. I don't see any discussion about it and, much as I hate to say it, anons can do pretty much anything on Wikipedia. If they can nominate FACs, they can certainly nominate GAs. Kafziel 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
As a supporter, in most cases, of anonymous editing, I am happy to see this change reverted. While there are good reasons from limiting the ability of anons to review articles, I don't see the harm in letting them nominate them. Eluchil404 00:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok I went bold and rouge and made the change to simplify the stated purpose of GA. I'm not adverse to tweaking it if it needs it, but this is the general change I was suggesting. It now reads:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable featured article candidates at the current time.
The makes the length argument a moot point, and explains that while these articles are good, they are not ready to be FAs, though they may become one in the future. I think the previous statement kind of hinted that GAs can never become FAs and that's not quite right. I think this states the current usage of this a place for good articles who aren't ready or suitable for FA in a manner more in line with reality. Its useless to state why each and every article is not ready for FA, the important thing is that they posess good content, which is the focus of this entire project. Good content is the raison d'etre for GA. pschemp | talk 02:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Now all you guys have to work out is what to require/not require in the way of citations and we're good. :) pschemp | talk 03:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
You need to read WP:BOLD. I am not doing anything in an underhanded way. I invited discussion here, and already proposed my change many paragraphs above. No one said don't do it. I did and do pay attention to what other users say, and no one said it was a bad idea. In fact, Lincher said he would do it but was afraid of getting yelled at. How about instead of yelling at me and calling my actions "bad", you discuss it constructively? As for the GA founders, a wiki is a dynamic thing. Their word is not sacred, and as projects change, we changes things to reflect practice. This happens in policy wording all the time which is much closer to being "sacred". In fact, three editors agreed with me, and one disagreed. That looks like consensus to me. pschemp | talk 03:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Bravada, you are going to get your wish for a lengthy discussion because you keep going off topic. I don't think you understand how GA is currently used in practice, and that this change reflects that. If you want to change GA totally, start a new topic about changing it, but right now we are discussing what it *is* currently. I don't, however see a consensus for drastically changing how GA works. Other than you and Marskell, everyone else thinks its fine, with maybe a few tweaks, but not a large overhaul. Everything you are talking about adds complication to what is fundamentally a simple process and should remain so. pschemp | talk 05:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(Edit Conflict)I'm not going to comment on recent exchanges, but do wish to clarify that what is under discussion in this sub section is whether or not to change the wording (that GA is for short articles) to reflect current practice. Let's have a straw poll for the proposed change, which is:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable featured article candidates at the current time.
People who supported - I won't remove their comments, but a poll isn't neccessary. pschemp | talk 05:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Although I support this version as being better than the old one, it still falls short of a good definition. Merely having "excellent content" is not enough to merit being a good article. I recent failed an article that had a lot of excellent content, but in which most of that excellent content was focused on area, making the article rather one-sided. Also, the "excellent content" was not cited. Maybe we could expand the definition further, to match WP:WIAGA? -- NoahElhardt 05:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured articles. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
I just took out the same phrase and re-worked first clause. If this doesn't suit, please propose alternatives -- plange 06:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(tally at this point, 8 for, 2 against) pschemp | talk 05:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(To pschemp) Sorry, was just trying to bring focus back to the question at hand. Was not implying that people had to come back, etc., or we'd disregard their opinion. In other areas where lengthy discussions are going on with a lack of focus I've found that clarifying and simplifying question at hand does wonders in focusing everyone. -- plange 06:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 06:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 06:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Holy smokes, a great deal of discussion over a small wording change. In the most recent version I still wonder if "not suitable" is really what is intended. Some articles never will be. Some just aren't yet but might be at some future point (remember, I regard GA as in some cases part of a progression to FA) ++ Lar: t/ c 17:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC).
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates either at present or ever. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 18:13, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Criterion 2b of WP:WIAGA has been reverted back to the original version. I would like to note again that the original version is ambiguous, in fact contradictory. We say the citation of sources is essential (this effectively means “required” to me). WP:CITE gives three ways to cite sources. Then in the next clause we say “inline citations” are not mandatory. This is contradictory because the three ways to cite sources are “inline citations”. So we either say that WP:CITE is a requirement or it is not. Here is my proposal for the change of criterion 2b to remove the ambiguity:
the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style
No mention is made of the number of citations required. That decision, of course, is left to the authors. It could be 1, it could be 100, but here is where the GA reviewer will need to judge. Contentious articles will need a high density of citations, less contentious a lower density. Please comment on the proposal.
The whole issue of requiring the citation of sources in Good Articles is a no-brainer in my opinion. When I was 16, my teachers required that we cite sources (i.e., provide footnotes and not just a list of references at the end) in our little 5-page, double-spaced papers. For good reason: to teach kids how to make quality, reliable, verifiable reports. Surely we should require citations in Good Articles! RelHistBuff 09:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
How can an article qualify as "good" if it doesn't even qualify as "acceptable"?
At WP:V, it says "Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policies. The other two are Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace."
Every fact stated needs to be supported by a reliable source. If you're doing a comparison, you may need multiple multiple cites for a single sentence, e.g., "The principle agricultural exports of Moldavia are cinnamon (43% of GNP)3, horseradish (41% of GNP)4 and velcro (191% of GNP)5" If "everybody knows" something is true, then there's no reason to mention it. The Water article doesn't mention that water is wet, after all. If something needs to be said, however, then it needs to be supported by a reliable source. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 18:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think it is pretty obvious for everybody here that citing sources should be a GA requirement, so I think we agree in principle. I don't think, however, that any "formal" requirement like "one inline citation per section" makes much sense. I'd say - the articles has to include inline citations (that makes two inline citations per article enough actually for those who are afraid of swarms of them), but the reviewer can ask for any statement to be "inline cited" and the editors that want an article to be promoted should be advised that it's better to have all potentially questionable statements referenced beforehand.
From my own experience I have to say that it is not that hard to have a whole article referenced. Most sources dealing with the subject will in this way or another include obvious information such as "Celine Dion is a singer" etc., so when you have a section that includes many non-controversial and obvious statements, you just need one citation at the end of a paragraph.
Bravada,
talk - 15:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I am quite surprised that, while exhibiting the link to WikiProject Fact and Reference Check in your sig, you have a problem with using
Template:cite web and similar. I found them pretty easy to use and not overly fussy, and I am the laziest Wikipedia editor ever. I guess if WP allows all three formats, we have no reason to require a specific one, though I'd say I have serious problems with accepting "embedded links" as proper citations (not even providing the access date those are pretty worthless), but that's a more general issue.
In conclusion, do we finally agree that we require Good Articles to contain inline citations and that the reviewer can ask for any info in the article to be referenced specifically to a source?
Bravada,
talk - 01:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I see it more like this then (sorry for the wording ... I'm bad at writing criteria) :
the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style, as such, a reviewer may request uniformization of or additional citations
Just one small remark, as I'm confused with this discussion. When I read 3 different citation styles in WP:CITE, all of them are inline citation, CMIIW. If you use embedded citations, you must put it in the article, thus it's inline. If you use Harvard referencing, then you must put (Author, Year) cite format in the article to point to one of the reference in the References section. Thus it is also inline. The cite.php footnote style also yields an inline citation automatically.
So, the WP:CITE as also one of Manual of Style guideline will create automatically inline citations. No matter which style you use. If an editor only puts list of bibliography in the References section, does (s)he follows one of the citation style? I don't think so. This is just my two cents' worth. — Indon ( reply) — 13:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this:
2. (b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is mandatory
WP:CITE spells out usage and what is acceptable and how things should be consistent, etc. -- plange 19:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Any consistant citation style may be used to cite the source for the article's content, as long as the source for any given content is identifiable.
I'm not really thrilled with my wording; I'm pretty sure someone else can come up a more elegant statement. But I'd like the sense that editors don't have to use APA/Harvard/Chicago or some other citation style more appropriate to research papers than to an encyclopedia. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 20:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
<ref>World Book Encyclopedia</ref>
<ref>[http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html How to store apples for a long long time]</ref>
<ref>''How to store apples for a long long time.'' '''Retrieved September 5, 2006 from [http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html]'''</ref>
I believe we have at least partial consensus. From this discussion it is clear everyone agrees that:
Where we do not have consensus:
So for the moment, I will change 2b to be just what we have agreed and will use a slight modification of plange's formulation. "Citation" wikilinks to the WP:CITE and "inline citations" wikilinks to the specific section of the article.
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required
We can continue discussion on the other issues and change 2b accordingly. RelHistBuff 07:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The way I read the styles guides and policies, references are required, an editor can feel free to remove anything from an article that is not sourced via some sort of inline citation and articles without any references at all may be recommended for deletion. No specific style is required and consisency in style is encouraged. Am I correct? -- CTSWyneken (talk) 11:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
“ | I can NOT emphasize this enough.
There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. -- Jimmy Wales in WikiEN-l, Tue May 16 20:30:15 UTC 2006 |
” |
Information may be "sourced" and verifiable without an inline citation for that information - which is why GA used to say that "the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory." Note that WP:WIAFA requires a references list, but this is only "complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Gimmetrow 13:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
do we have consensus? I think the only one that objected to Lincher's change was Gimmetrow? -- plange 14:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
... once and for all. It is not necessary anymore as GAs are a stepping stone toward FA and because we should evaluate every articles on the same ground. Since this project falls in the Assessment project also, it would be doubly necessary to forget about the length criterion/idea on the WIAGA page. Lincher 12:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
See last proposed word change under the subheading above "Word Change" - if we get consensus on that, which seems likely, we can change the intro to take out the length phrase. -- plange 15:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I made the change according to the second to last wording proposed. It seems to be the clearest. pschemp | talk 03:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I re-iterate my comment way above about length, can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.
A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.
To :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
And that is to remove the length crieria from the WIAGA page. Lincher 01:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Can we also change the Length criteria on the candidacy page, it is not necessary anymore. Lincher 01:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Support While some GAs have no real chance of becoming FAs, gaining the GA designator seems to be a positive reinforcement for editors who strive toward FA. Durova 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Lincher's proposal. It just puts everything in line and makes sense. pschemp | talk 23:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok we are going for something concise Bravada, something that can merge both criteria and be easy to master, use and understand for the editors and reviewers. The way I said it was the way it unfurled through the lengthy discussion we just had. Please consider making modifications in a way to remove length from the process as the GA process isn't about length anymore (discussion above is full speed ahead in this direction) and more about having GA being a port of entry to FA though some will never reach it (maybe they will, one day, maybe they will). Lincher 02:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The good articles will satisfy the above criteria and will be in accordance with all of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. The good articles candidacte process will aim at bringing articles toward Featured articles by giving constructive comments and by grading articles in an objective way using the above criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing by the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
(unindent) Why don't we just delete the section labeled "Good vs. Featured"? -- plange 14:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I find it ironic that we've been talking about articles being improperly promoted and folks not taking the GA tag seriously and now, for demonstration purposes, an anon user has been adding the GA tag to an article that was recently nominated for speedy deletion. Both myself and another editor have been reverting the tag and I exhorted the user to take the article through the proper GA process. Might be worthwhile for others to keep an eye on it.
Agne 16:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Article:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
User:4.249.0.240
Changes that have been accepted :
Changes that could be implemented but didn't get discussed too much :
Thanks to all who have participated in the discussion ... it gave me ideas on what people feel about GA. It also gives me a dimension of the project and the participants. Now we can work on GA re-review for them to meet the current criteria. Lincher 17:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
As we now have the new WIAGA more or less firmly in place, I decided to start re-reviewing current GAs per the discussion above, and using User:Lincher/GA as a starting point. I have reviewed two articles by now, Richard Branson (though it was actually identified for deletion already by Lincher) and Spice trade - both of them clearly failed to comply with the standards, unfortunately. I guess somebody might have a look at those reviews (see talk pages obviously) and perhaps comment on them. I also encourage everybody to join the process on User:Lincher/GA (just choose an article and review, as simple as that!), so that we could have the list trimmed down to really Good Articles ;) ASAP! Bravada, talk - 00:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
(indent) Ok, Kafziel. Just assess articles for a minute and you will then be able to comment at your leisure but wont be applying the GA tag anymore because the articles are clearly not of GA status yet. There were lenient (not to say lazy) reviewers that just passed tons of articles and it is for that reason that we have to re-review these thousand of articles to make it comply with the standards that were there before the change. If you read what RelHistBuf & Bravada's comments, they say that they use the old criteria to evaluate the articles.
Also, to make it more emphatical just take a look at [2] where it states clearly the same criteria that we have now but in a more concise way. Along the way people (nominators and reviewers) complained that the system wasn't perfect ... or that it needed more tightening for it was tough to evaluate with criteria that aren't strict or clearly stated enough. That was the beginning of trying to expand the criteria to make sure that everything was included, no omissions and no flaws in the system of reviewing. Just so you guys know, the system didn't change much except for the part about citations and maybe requesting better prose and that is all. So there is a need to review articles back when there were no criteria and articles were accepted and in a few days accepted as GA. Once this is done and we have a clear bunch of GAs that solidly meet the criteria, we will be able to build on that and help the reviewers with comparisons. Lincher 15:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
No one should be rushing around delisting articles until the backlog of current articles is at a manageable level. None of the articles previous marked as GA is so horrible that it harm anyone if it stays at that status while the current things are dealt with. This preoccupation with older GA's does nothing to get the list of current articles reviewed, which should be the major focus of people on this project. Remove the log in your own eye before you attempt to remove the speck from your brother's. pschemp | talk 02:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The continual changing of criteria is causing more problems than its addressing. GA needs it criteria to be stable, how can you pass an article today. Suggest that you either accept the current concensus or stop reviewing articles until an agreed criteria is published. Also I suggest that the review of all the current articles be abandoned for now, there is a substancial backlog. Gnangarra 14:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
So for the record, I think it would be good to require inline citations, which is more restrictive than require citations. However, I raised a number of issues about this which were not addressed, and I still feel the change is premature. I was arguing about this proposed change immediately after the "notice" by RelHist and the "nutshell" (yesterday), and one of those points is that this appears to be a stronger requirement than WP:WIAFA. Gimmetrow 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Gimmetrow raised an issue concerning WP:WIAFA. As I understand it, the problem is the clause "where appropriate". In a talk page (I will look for it), it seems the clause means that an inline citation should be placed where there should be one. It does not mean to put them in an appropriate article. Inline citations are still required. I will try to seek more clarifications, but perhaps there are people out there who know the FA situation better? RelHistBuff 15:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
My general concern is whether these criteria changes end up assuring that only good articles get the GA tag. Any set of criteria depends on the editors applying it consistently and fairly, and that generally involves some bureaucratic oversight. I appreciate that GA intends to be "lite" on bureaucracy, but I do believe it is a large part of why FA works well, regardless of the actual FA criteria. Gimmetrow 20:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Partially in reference to what Gimmetrow stated above, I would like to propose setting a standard for the GA review. There is the Template:FGAN, for one, though I found it more appropriate and useful to quote the actual criteria and comment on each point of WIAGA - see examples at Talk:Louvre#GA review and Talk:Sunol Water Temple#GA review. This lets the readers find out easily what the criteria actually are (or were at the time of the review) and also makes one stick to the actual critetion rather than a "general concept" of or feeling about e.g. "well written" (I hope I do stick!) What do you think of those? I guess if the latter review format is found useful, we might use a page with a boilerplate text (in Wikicode) to be simply copy/pasted and filled with reviewer's comments.
Secondly, at present GAC only requires a written review (or simply a comment) when the article is failed (and also GA/R requires one when delisting), but none is requested for promoting the article! This makes for a rather strange situation where it is easier to pass than to fail a GA, which is not quite what we want if we want to up the standards (or, actually, make them abided by in practice). I believe requiring a review on the compliance with all WIAGA criteria will fend off careless/bad faith "promoters", who would neglect the WIAGA. Of course this adds a bit of bureaucracy to the process, but I found that, if you are actually reading the article and actively considering all the criteria, putting it all down is not that time-consuming and makes making final decisions easier on borderline cases. Again, what do you think about that? Bravada, talk - 01:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I stroly oppose any attempt to make such templates madatory for much the same reasons as those given by pschemp. Unless there is consensus that the current process is insufficiently strict (I don't see any), it should not be changed. Eluchil404 21:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
This debate was raised a while ago, and I originally defended the separate GA category. Revisiting this debate, I find that I am increasingly happy to leave GAs behind in favour of an FA-only system.
Here are the points I would ask you to consider (all of which have no doubt been raised before):
I wonder how many more FAs we would have if people had simply gritted their teeth and edited articles, sought sources, taken illustrative photographs etc. etc. rather than getting caught up in stock-taking exercises. As one contributor said above, it is very un-wiki-like.
I do realise that the views I am expressing here are those of an experienced Wikipedian, and that GA may be a fun thing for newcomers to get involved in. However, wouldn't Wikipedia be much better served by direct tutoring of newbies instead?
Yours sincerely,
Samsara ( talk • contribs) 21:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Responding to Samsara:
Finally, GA should not be regarded simply as a step towards FA. Perhaps PR is such a step, but GA should be regarded totally independently. If somebody would want to strive for GA before advancing to FA, so be it, although it might be quite counterproductive for long articles, as currently they are unlikely to pass GA if they are not fit to pass FA. It is a good way, though, to have an article on a more obscure or limited topic brought up to encyclopedic standards. Finally, I believe that "Featured Articles" should list really exceptional articles, the "cream of the crop", so expecting ALL articles to become FA is quite impossible - you have to have the crop to be able to select the cream (please excuse me for the cheesy pun here). While it is good to have many exceptional articles, it is also important to have as many articles as possible simply conform to encyclopedic standards. Bravada, talk - 14:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiousity I clicked on Andrés Nocioni which was just failed a few minutes ago, and the reviewer said only that it failed due to lack of images. Problem is, images aren't required, right? Just says it's desirable (can't remember exact language). I didn't read the article to see if it would have failed on other points, but it would have been nice to see that the reviewer reiterated that it met all the others, and, perhaps, by the reviewer having to put each point in there and comment they would have picked up on the fact that lack of images should not make an article fail. -- plange 18:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
As Angela said - this, and several other cases, make a good argument to cite all WIAGA points while reviewing, and comment on how the article complies with them (or not). So, I'd like to ask whether anybody else (including people who posted above) supports this idea (we already know who opposes it, I guess). Bravada, talk - 22:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I think this example and several of Bravada's point give ample reasons to consider a review template. It doesn't have to be complicated or beaucratic. Just a simple 1-6 listing of the main criteria with a slot to write PASS/FAIL (or Needs Improvement to be nice). We can allow space for if a reviewer wants to add more detail and in the template encourage it for a FAIL mark. Just a simple template to add to the talk the page. Not only do I think that will look more professional and serious of a review, at the very least it will make everyone involved on the talk page more aware of what the Good article criteria is. Agne 23:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Since we do have an emerging template, let's put together some ideas. Starting with the current fail Template:FGAN, I'd like to see a more professional presentation. A shaded box with the 1-6 main criteria listed wiki-linked to the relevant critera ( WP:MOS, WP:V, WP:CITE etc). That way if someone has a question about what is "well written" or what do you mean "in-line citation" they can go to that guideline. We can have a section underneath each area that says additional comments. Whether you pass or fail in that area, you can choose to leave a comment. Again, I do think we need to strongly encourage some sort of comment left for a fail mark. Agne 00:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I guess we all have our own "reviewing styles", so perhaps it would be easier and just say that "a review of the article's compliance with the WIAGA is required regardless of whether the nomination is failed or passed, preferably with reference to specific criteria" - wording here is stricly "working version", especially given that I am half-asleep too. Bravada, talk - 01:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I took a stab at one {{User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate}} ( ) -- feel free to tweak. I did it this way so that we can be free-form within. To use, you'd subst it with the 3 params: {{subst:User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate|Passed|message|~~~~}} and I put little pass/fail images for editors to delete the one that doesn't apply. Let me know and I'll move it to the template space... -- plange 01:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:FGAN |well written = '''Pass''' (user's entry) |accuracy = '''Pass''' |thorough = '''Pass''' |NPOV = '''Pass''' |stable = '''Pass''' |images = '''Pass''' }}<pre> but it probably should look like : <pre>{{subst:FGAN |well written = P |accuracy = F |thorough = P |NPOV = P |stable = P |images = P <additions> |additional comments = user's entry |GA = P or F or OH }}
Where the P are pass and the F are fail, under additions should be additional arguments that should be in the template for GA, it would changes the heading depending on passing, failing or on hold of the article. And Additional comments should be an argument to let reviewers give additional comments. This would keep it simple but would give out all the criteria without being too big or too fancy. Lincher 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
(no identations) Now, I see some recent articles were passed as GA without any comments at all. Examples are: Drum and bass and Fenix*TX. Or with only one line comment, such as Alex Pettyfer and Flat Earth (although the latter, I would say, is qualified). Maybe template is not a bad idea after all. Either for passing or failing. Should we make an obligation that passing an article have to be with enough comments related to WP:WIAGA items? And if an article was passed without enough GA assessment, then anybody can relisted back to the nomination page. This will let other reviewers assess the article. — Indon ( reply) — 14:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, according to the current rules, it is required to leave a review if one fails an article (Fail instruction 3), but I cannot find anywhere the requirement to leave a review if one passes an article. So one has to change that first. Bravada had a good example and my proposal is a slight modification. From WP:GAC, see the last line.
The process for reviewing an article is:
It’s just a proposal, but one should agree on adding this requirement first. Then one has to add the instructions for another editor (effectively a re-reviewer) to renominate the article if the original reviewer does not put in a proper review. It is not clear where to put this requirement these instructions. Should it be in
WP:GA/R or
WP:GAC?
RelHistBuff 08:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
{{GA|oldid=nnnnnn}}
on the talk page (replacing nnnnn with the id number of the reviewed version) rather than just {{GA}}
.
I don't want to make another fork of long discussion about citation, but it is difficult for people that favor Harvard referencing to get GA status. I just got a review that I cannot use Harvard style because it is not inline citation. Here's the message:
The GA criteria requires that only in-line citations be used, so I'm afraid Harvard referencing is not an option. In-line citations are footnotes. Since you already have the bibliography written up, it shouldn't be that difficult to change. For each place you need to cite something, just include the bibliography between < ref > and < /ref > tags at the end of the sentence. For example, I modified the four points on missionary work (Sandra, 1998) to use in-line citations.
I am trying to confince him/her that inline citation is not always footnote, but I'm not sure if I can. Probably I have to change my citation style (*sigh*). — Indon ( reply) — 17:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
The John Floyd (Virginia politician) article is 36kb. It meets every other requirement for GA promotion. Should I promote it to GA or not? -- Tjss (Talk) 20:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I was told that there would be discussion here about why inline citations are now mandatory for good articles. There doesn't seem to be any info here, from a cursory glance.
As explained at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?, I propose that inline citations no longer be mandatory. -- Kjoon lee 10:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Guys, I'm sorry about the brew ha. I ardently believed that it wasn't fair to de-list an article soley for in-line citations without giving them ample time to work the article to meet criteria 2. I thought that would create more of a ruckus then dropping off a friendly notice of the change before hand. I do think WP:V sums it up best when it notes "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Followed by the Section on Burden "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain. Editors should therefore provide references. If an article topic has no reputable, reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topic." This is about more then just in-line citations. This is the rock solid gospel of Wikipedia and we are doing a disservice as a Good Article Project if we don't hold articles to the standards of WP:V. Agne 18:36, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is the WP:V that isn't up to date to what people really think when reviewing for FA, A-class (in the assessment) and GA. Also, can we have case-by-case solutions for articles in pure physics/chemistry/biology for facts that have been reviewed by so many books that they aren't necessary to be inline cited. I think this would be a GA/Review process in that case. Lincher 18:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I think an important point is "Who are we writing these articles for?" Are we writing them for the experts? or for the laypeople or even, dare I say, the scientifically ignorant? Is Wikipedia's goal to be a free source of knowledge limited to those who already know that something is a "perfectly factual statement"? I think the overwhelming message of WP:V is that we are not to assume but verify. I think another point that has not been touched upon is that there is no reason why these Math or Science articles have to be considered Good Articles. If the article's editors do not wish to conform to the Good Article Criteria, they have every right not to do so. We can leave it at that. But I think a hallmark of being a Good Article is being a standard of which all articles can be considered by and for readership that may not be able to assume perfectly factual statements are indeed just that. We don't write for the experts. We right for the average person and if we do it right, we have the fruits and the sources of the experts to present to them. Agne 19:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
What editors who "don't see what the fuss is all about" fail to see is that User:Agne27 has gone around tagging articles that she counted didn't have enough inline citations to satisfy her arbitrary whim for what a good number of these were. She doesn't even have the courtesy to let us know what parts of the articles she think need more inline citations according to this "new criteria" for judging articles. This is bean-counting, it isn't editting. There are definitely good articles that don't need a plethora of in-line citations to remain good articles. Since there is no minimum number, tagging articles as "at risk" for re-review without going through a careful evaluation is the height of arrogance. This kind of behavior needs to stop. -- ScienceApologist 20:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Where did you get that bizarre notion? In
WP:V, which is official policy, it says "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, because Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research."
Which part of "any reader" do you fail to understand?
If you're stating a fact, and you can't expect every reader to already know it to be true, you need to provide a source. If you're stating a fact, and you can expect every reader to know it to be true, it doesn't need to go into the article. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 21:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I would also really like to see the inline citation requirement reviewed (and removed) especially now that it is threatening some mathematical articles I was previously quite pleased with such as the homotopy groups of spheres article. I feel some short articles can be just as easily verified using a simple reference at the end rather than a whole lot of footnotes. Is it perhaps time to move to a poll to see whether there is consensus to recommend inline citations in good articles but not enforce them? Cedars 14:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
There are many people, who can be seen here and on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Physics who think the inline citation requirement was too stringent. This being a wiki, I have modified it. See here. If I get knee-jerk reverts because I "don't have consensus," I will be very disappointed—please keep in mind that none of the article-writers that this line is causing problems for consented to the original version in the first place. (I remember when there was no GA review at all, and it wasn't very long ago.) -- SCZenz 00:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict/unindent) we're not asking for anything that isn't already part of the WP:CITE guideline (which incidentally is a link off of WP:V: "Editors should therefore provide references."). If it meets WP:CITE, and the other GA criteria, then it should pass GA. If it doesn't, and it was specifically over the inline citation criteria, then what we're saying is that there's a review process to have other eyes take a look and make sure the initial reviewer wasn't being unreasonable. We're not infallible, and it is a judgment call, and if someone is asking for a cite on something akin to "apple pie is made of apples" then others will back you up that it's not needed. If you're having issues with what WP:CITE requires (or that WP:CITE is the link off of WP:V on how to provide references), then please bring it up there :-). As far as the notice-- I didn't see what was being put on pages and we can see/discuss if it was inappropriately worded. I know everyone works hard on articles and we do not mean to imply otherwise. Also, FYI, FA is going through the same process and is currently notifying all current FAs that do not have inline citations that they need to work on that aspect so that it won't be put on FAR. -- plange 00:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that the experts DON'T work for Wikipedia. If they were working for Brittanica, they'd be vetted as experts before they started, and their professional reputations - and their ability to pay the mortgage - would depend on their ability to produce reliable and accurate articles. Brittanica has a "truth" standard, and it's be wonderful if Wikipedia could do the same, but when you rely on a bunch of amateur editors, including people who have never registered, and have never visited the site until 10 minutes before, there's no way to maintain a "truth" standard. Instead, Wikipedia opts for verifiability, and even that is a stretch, but official policy says that encyclopedic content must be verifiable.
The Good Article standard isn't an impossibly high standard to reach; every article can and should be Good Article quality. In general, if an article meets the Good Article standard, it is acceptable, and if it doesn't, it's not a Good Article. That's not to say that the article isn't true, isn't clearly written, isn't informative, isn't entertaining to read. It can be all those things - but unless it meets the verifiability standards, unless other editors and readers can see exactly where each statement comes from, it doesn't meet WikiPedia standards. And that's the difference between GeoCities and WikiPedia. There are some wonderful pages at GeoCities, as well as some terrible ones. Here at WikiPedia, we're happy to settle for good articles, if we can avoid the terrible ones.
And the thing is, if you back up every fact with a source, vandalism no longer is a problem. When someone makes an edit to a page you've created, and it's well-sourced, other editors will go out of their way to protect your page against vandalism. A page full of pseudoscience won't have reliable sources cited, because there are no reliable sources for pseudoscience. A "white hat" can waltz into a pseudoscience page and replace unverifiable crap with real science, properly cited, and other editors step in to protect the white hat's edits from vandalism. The Verifiability policy says any editor is free to remove unsourced content; that's not true of content with proper cites.
It really does make sense to cite everything you do, as you write it. Anyone who is writing a science article is going to refer to reliable sources as he writes it anyhow; adding cites takes FAR less time than hunting for the right language to say something. And most people writing science articles have learned to be thorough and methodical. This is something they all should embrace eagerly. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 01:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Reponse to ClairSamoht: : Sadly, the most careful inline citations do little to prevent vandalism. I have come back to sections of articles I wrote with detailed citations, to find that the article text has been changed and the citation itself modified. I cannot trust these citations unless I go back to a historical version that I supplied or verified. I have also had the misfortune of finding a bogus reference that remained in an article for nearly five years, so I don't think many people "fact-check" the citations. Gimmetrow 01:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this, we change 2b to read:
“ | the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided) | ” |
That way if an editor fails an article because there was no cite for "the earth revolves around the sun" you can bring it up on GA/R -- plange 01:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict/unindent) what the proposed re-wording does, is allow articles to be disputed in GA/R if the editor feels the reviewer went overboard in asking for cites so that things can then be decided on in a case by case basis. Note that the CN page does have a specific entry on technical knowledge and whether a PhD is required, etc. -- plange 01:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
My feelings about this are probably unpopular. Providing a footnote for a sentence, such as the above one for Northern Virginia and the sentence about special relativity is not just unnecessary, it is a bad idea. It makes articles harder to write, it makes them harder to read and it devalues the referencing in general. I think the first two are obvious, but I'll explain the third. Providing footnotes for statements that you could find in any treatment of special relativity (including those in high school physics textbooks) seems nonsensical to me because when I see a footnote, it indicates two things to me: (i) the fact being asserted may be surprising and requires justification, which can be found in the source cited (ii) the source being referred to is authoritative. Who wrote the authoritative demonstration, or literature review, or meta-analysis conclusively demonstrating that Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virgina? Nobody. There is no controversy there and presumably every single book in the references section will mention this agreed upon fact. In this case, the footnote doesn't make verification any easier, because why dig through the stacks to find someone's high school textbook from 1962 to confirm something that a much simpler check will reveal? The only thing having a footnote does is to confuse the legitimate value of the other footnotes, which indicate statements in need of support or clarification.
I mean really, who wants to read an article which cites one randomly chosen textbook, and has sixty footnotes of the form "ibid, p. 311"? (Of course, a number of editors say that it is important to use several different sources. I basically agree, but the point is not to then choose two textbooks at random so that you can randomly assign footnotes to one or the other and make the article appear more pleasing to the Good Article reviewers. The point is that if well-known sources disagree on a point, to mention this and perhaps provide an entry to the specialist literature.) – Joke 03:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(Of course, everything above is predicated on there being a good "References" section to begin with.) – Joke 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
In addition to the criteria change by plange for WP:WIAGA, which I also agree upon, we should have a section pertaining on Technical articles which should read like this :
“ | Articles that are on technical subjects should be accessible to laymen by means of Wikilinks, See alsos and minimal addition of inline citations. This will prevent loss of quality of such articles by the addition of explanatory sentences and will refrain requests by reviewers to have perfect inline citations. | ” |
Lincher 02:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't make too much sense to me. "Accessible to laymen"? I think it depends. Part of the charm about Wikipedia is that you have people who can write an article about, say, the vDVZ discontinuity or canonical gravity or ADM formalism (to pick some things in gravitational physics at random) which are very useful to experts wanting to find something quickly but which are never going to be readable (or particularly interesting) to the layman. I'm in favor of this test: an article should be readable to the people who are likely to go looking for it. – Joke 03:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
So the layreader can get an overview of the topic, enough to know if this is something of interest to them or not. VDVZ discontinuity (Massive gravity) acheives this in one line In theoretical physics, massive gravity is a particular generalization of general relativity studied by van Dam and Veltman; and by Zakharov. For those interested enough to read beyond that line it then tells you a little more, namely that the theory attemps to explain why gravity happens, in terms of some quantum physics.
I do not support this proposal. If an article is inaccessible it is usually because it is poorly written and thus should be covered by criteria one. Cedars 14:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Why should tech articles be different? FAs don't make an exception. Rlevse 11:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Dear Lordy, I just looked away for a moment and now there are too many posts here for me to follow.
Now, is there any real problem? Has anybody failed an article on a scientific topic for it not having a reference for the fact that the Earth is revolving around the Sun or similar? Has anybody even nominated any article on a topic from physics or mathematics since the new WIAGA was adopted for that matter?
The new criterion adopts a very relaxed and common sense approach to inline citations, simply requesting for them to be used and leaving it up to common sense decisions as to what statements have to be cited. I am keeping an eye on the current application of this guideline, and I must say the reviewers are predominantly exhibiting a very rational approach to that.
Now, if the feared thing happens and somebody fails an article for a lack of an unnecessary citations, the Earth won't stop revolving and we won't fall off, it's just a bad review, it happens sometimes for this or that reason, that's what we get GA/R for. We could then discuss an individual case should the need arise (and I believe it would arise much later than anybody here would expect). Only if it is proved in practice that there are significant problems with the application of this guideline will it make sense to make any alteration to this WIAGA criterion.
Moreover, for anybody feeling that "science" articles are unique in that, do you think it would be sensible to require a citation for the statement that Celine Dion is a singer?
Can you just calm down and wait a few weeks to see how the guideline is adopted and whether there are any REAL issues? Frankly speaking, I don't want to see this topic bickered about any more here. Just stop and wait.
Good day or good night, depending on where you are Bravada, talk - 03:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)
I guess, I am at the same timezone as Bravada. When I got online this morning, whooaa it's already a lengthly discussion about the same topic again. I would say I'm 100% agree with Bravada. I would not ask inline citation for such an elementary fact, but I would for history, or say there is 80% improvement compared to other method, and so on. So please don't freak out about inline citation. It is there to help verifiability of the article not to fear the editors. — Indon ( reply) — 08:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Since plange's proposal does not mention the nature of the dispute, it basically looks very much like the WP:WIAFA criterion. I don't know the history of WIAFA's "where appropriate" clause, but in any case they have settled with it and they still make very tough requirements on citing sources. We should just go on. My feeling is that the physics Wikiproject members just panicked when they saw Agne's notices. We as GA reviewers will not fail physics articles so arbitrarily as they seem to think and perhaps they will calm down. I'm a former particle physicist myself so perhaps I'll get more involved on reviewing in that area. RelHistBuff 14:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
In order to avoid spurrious claims that we never reached a consensus (and in fact, we did last time), we should vote on the proposal. RelHistBuff 14:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)
In this context what dose "where appropriate" mean this is where probelms and ambiguaties stem from. Until that is defined i am unable to make any assesment of weather to oppose or support the wording.-- Lucy-marie 23:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Support
Oppose
Neutral
Attempt to find consensus I might be wrong, so please correct me if that's the case, but it appears that a lot of the objections are not to the wording of the clause, but in how notification of the changed criteria was applied in the recent past. Do we agree, that where citations are appropriate, a good article should have them? Where they are appropriate, of course, is something that is worked out in the review process, and if a reviewer was too over-zealous, everyone has the ability to bring it to GA/R to get multiple opinions. If we can agree on this, and that articles will be judged on a case by case basis, then we might have a winner? We can then talk about how legacy GAs are handled. I agree with Walkerma in the last section of this page (in the quote box below) that one week is perhaps not enough time. -- plange 19:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Upon reflection, I'm beginning to think we might have a bit of a tempest in a teakettle. I don't think there are many science-article editors who dispute the paramount importance of WP:V and WP:CITE. I'm also quite sure that most of these authors think that footnotes (in many cases along with a seperate references section) are often necessary for correct referencing. I do however, think people get riled up when they see things like this and this which were pretty jarring to us.
I don't know what others think about this, but my perception is that what most editors would like is to be able to write articles about standard textbook material (like special relativity) without giving every damn sentence a footnote, even if any of the standard references cited could immediately be used to confirm something. There is no "numerical minimum" number of inline references per kilobyte of text – it depends on the case at hand – and there is no requirement to provide a citation for facts that are readily confirmed by looking at the principal references. I'm sure that there are sentences in articles like string theory, special relativity (certainly not the ones tagged above, though) and Hubble's law which really need to be properly referenced, but it is hardly appropriate to just say "I counted the references, and the number is not to my liking" without pointing out specific flaws, or worse to choose statements seemingly at random.
My impression is that most math and physics editors like the good article process and are just a little upset to have been inundated with these poorly thought out mass messages. We are all, just as you are, trying to improve the encyclopedia, and we all agree that proper referencing is vital to having Wikipedia become a trustworthy source. However, we all think there must be a happy medium with an appropriate level of footnoting, and, you know, would like to be given the benefit of the doubt. – Joke 16:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I was asked by plange to comment, since I am both a writer of science articles and I also consider myself a "member of this (GA) club." My area is chemistry, not physics (I teach college chemistry), but a lot of the points are the same. In chemistry peer-reviewed papers it is common to give inline citations even for some things considered obvious to most readers, e.g., "The aldol reaction is an important carbon-carbon bond forming reaction. 1" Such refs would typically be to standard texts we all have by our desks. However, such refs are usually only given once in the paper, we see no need to keep citing the same book over and over for related points. It is simply there to assert, "This is the basic premise of our work, but it's not just our opinion, it has its foundations in the canon of the literature." In most well-cited chemistry Wikipedia articles I've seen, this has also been the approach used, and it would seem to meet plange's version of criterion 2b. You can see my interpretation of this viewpoint at Chemical substance, an article full of very "obvious" concepts. If you read all the refs, the later "uncited" statements are all in fact covered fairly well. I would think that this style could be also used for physics articles perfectly easily. I think the addition of inline refs does improve this type of introductory article, it helps us get away from the schoolboy-type definitions which often pervade this type of article. There are a couple of areas where I am uncomfortable - I think it will take projects several months to bring their articles into line, so the timeline proposed seems too short. I also hope we don't see dozens of "Citation needed" tags added - these are all-too-often nitpicking. Until we get a system of rigorous fact-checking like the one we discussed at Wikimania we should keep the number of inline citations under control. I think the chemistry approach offers a nice middle road. Overall I strongly support the new policy (it was inevitable), and I commend those who have taken the time to inform everyone of its implementation - thanks! Walkerma 04:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you copied this down here – I considered replying to it up above, but decided that it would be a waste of time as the talk page is a mess up there. I very much agree with this comment, and I hope that we can get broad agreement on this. – Joke 17:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
What we agree upon :
What some think and other stuff :
Out of that, can everybody have a take at adding to both lists to see where the issues are and where we can find a compromise.
After such a work will be done, we can now go and create specific criterion to assess such points and leave some to more subjective reviewing in order to have set criteria for a long time. Lincher 00:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I thought my earlier comments had gotten things back on track, but I wandered off to, God forbid, write an article and look what happens. I think we are making straw man arguments here. As a general principle, this is how I interpret User:Walkerma's comments. Please tell me what you think of this:
In addition, I would add, although it doesn't have much bearing on Good Articles:
Although this isn't succinct enough to be a criterion, I would like to see if people agree on this (the first statement, not my addition) as a matter of principle. I have a feeling that a lot of us can find agreement on this. I've been going through some of the articles with cite tags, and aside from the edit to Special Relativity I mentioned above, many of them seem quite reasonable – say, many of those User:Agne27 added to Hubble's Law, some of those on Redshift, etc... So I don't think things are as bad as people are making them out to be above. Physicists and mathematicians are trained to do proper referencing, and much as you might think we're trying to weasel out of it, we're not. Likewise, as some of the Good Article people have mentioned, you're reasonable people and no article has been removed for failure to provide a reference for a statement that seems trivial. – Joke 02:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
So let's see, histrionics aside, if we can get any kind of agreement:
Early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. Then, for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works (and in other works), inline references can be omitted. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. However, for surprising statements or statements for which it would be helpful or necessary to refer to another work, an inline reference is required.
Support
Oppose
Neutral/Comment
Thanks Joke for helping to move this forward. In regards to Lincher's good suggestion, I've modified it below. I agree that criteria for GA might need to be longer than FA due to the fact of our single reviewer process. -- plange 02:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
2. b: the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. For scientific articles, early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. Then, for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works (and in other works), inline references can be omitted. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. However, for statements that are potential violations of Neutral Point of View and No Original Research, inline citations are required. Please see the verifiability policy for questions.
Support
Oppose
Neutral/Comment
In my opinion, FWIW, making exceptions or trying to define when to cite or not in science/technical articles will not be workable. Anyone who has worked in standardisation knows that what works is simplicity (the KISS principle). A complex standard is doomed to failure.
The real problem is not the editorial standard. The problem is fear among some physics authors that some crazy "reviewer/editor" will come along and slap fact tags all over the place or cry out for purportedly unneeded inline cites. I'm sorry to tell them, but even if GA were to disappear all together, those crazy people will still be around, messing around with your articles. That's a basic nature of wiki. Another problem is that not enough credit is given by these physics authors that an experienced GA reviewer will work properly and in good faith. And if some reviewer is not working properly, these physics authors do not recognize that the GA/R process is really there to help them out.
I have written physics papers in research journals and there has always been interplay between me as author and the editor/reviewer. And often I found some of his/her suggestions a bit bothersome. But I learned that it isn't just my opinion that counts. I always respected his/her professionalism just as much as he/she respected me. So if there is a discussion in the article's talk page between a GA reviewer and a physics author, then with the attitude of respect for each other a solution will always be found. I support the original proposal that is basically the same as the FA criterion. RelHistBuff 07:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
User:CMummert's conmment above (I think most science articles are not written "from" sources; they are written "about" a subject. They are usually a collection of basic facts which the author is able to produce without looking at sources. The author knows, however, that the facts are verifable and gives a reference where an interested reader may verify them.) is germane and goes to the heart of the struggle for common understanding here. The GA reviewers slapping on cite tags seem essentially to be suggesting that, without citations, a reader is in a hard position to accept the basic accuracy or verifiability of an article; that only specialists in the field will be in a position to judge. Typically, encyclopedia entries do not need to make particular use of inline citations to provide the reader with such assurances about basic facts because the list of contributors is available and drawn from known specialists in the field. If a leading scholar on Florentine history informs you that the Ciompi Rebellion of 1378 was a seminal event, that it happened because of the Plague, etc..., you will believe it because the author - named, verifiable, etc... - enjoys implied authority. In an article which has no such known scholarly basis (since anyone can edit it), implied authority becomes a greater issue. I am therefore sympathetic to the desire to use citation as a means of providing this verifiability. In fact Homestarmy's comment (anyone can produce an article based on one or two sources) above suggests precisely this kind of thinking: articles are being written by people who do not necessaily have in-depth knowledge of the field. Clearly, the response generated by the tagging of the Metric Expansion, Hubble and Relativity articles has demonstrated that these are not, however, the result of someone with Grade 8 physics, a textbook and too much time on their hands. To have reached the level that they have is the result of informed opinion.
Thus, I would draw from this a general observation. As a matter of course, simply by the rigours of the ongoing editing process, by the time an article has made it to the point where it can be considered for GA status it should be measured based on having acquired the implied authority that would be the case behind single-authored, named scholarly entries. What I think is a flawed approach is to say, give us (laymen) the 10, 20, 30 or so references we need so we can, if necessary, check your authority (i.e. verifiability). That comes across as an undergraduate exercise. Instead, the process needs to be able to generate that trust in implied authority through the review process without resorting to an inline citation policy that, when read by someone with familiarity in the field, would make them laugh. Also, let me reiterate, citation is exceptionally important; in the case I mention above, any responsible entry would leave uncited the claim that the Ciompi rebellion was one of the seminal events of Florentine history (universally accepted by Renaissance historians) and probably provide a citation about its cause being the black death (a matter of scholarly conjecture). These matters, as iterated above in RelHistBuff's comment, can probably best be worked out via the discussion page rather than a firm X citations needed standard. (Sorry about the length of this comment.) Eusebeus 13:23, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
One of the Physics project members (Somewhere among these many conversations) exhorted us to just trust that Physics project is not going to "fuck you over" when it comes to the "correctness" of the science articles. I don't think the request for in-line citations is a statement of distrust for the science editors or the Physics project. It is also not an attack on "science". I, for one, believe that all the items that I tagged in Special relativity and Hubble's law were true and factual--they just weren't verifiable. When the times comes and the editors who are currently watching and working on these articles leaves, then what? How can be we possibly guarantee that Wikipedia will have a perpetual stream of experts that can safeguard these articles from OR and inaccuracies? At the very least with the inclusion of in-line cites, we open up the ease of verifiability to non-experts. Without them, it is virtually impossible to have these articles verified by any other then the experts which we might not always have around. Agne 23:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
At the very least with the inclusion of in-line cites, we open up the ease of verifiability to non-experts. Without them, it is virtually impossible to have these articles verified by any other then the experts which we might not always have around. -- unfortunately this is wishful thinking. If crackpots come in and modify articles that have every line in-line cited but you as an editor aren't familiar with the subject, then you will have a problem when they replace the verifiable text with equally verifiable text from sources that are not reliable. How will non-expert verifier be able to tell when a crank argues that obscure scientific theory verified by text a and text b by an obscure scientific publishing house was disproven by text c and text d published in an equally obscure, yet non-mainstream publishing house. Sorry, Wikipedia will always need experts, and the nature of the beasts is that experts will come and go, but there will probably always be some around. -- ScienceApologist 23:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
A slight modification of Joke's proposal:
Early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. One should avoid inline references for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. For surprising statements or statements for which it would be helpful or necessary to refer to another work, an inline reference is required. In case of disputes about whether a fact is indeed a "commonplace fact" that should not be cited, one should consult the literature about the subject written for the same target group. It is then up to the person(s) claiming that a fact is not "commonplace" to provide for the necessary references that show that such facts are usually cited when mentioned in the literature.
Count Iblis 14:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Might seem much like my first one, but really this all comes down to us following WP:CITE, so the buck (and explanations) stops there. If you have questions on how inline citations should be implemented so that it can pass GA, ask there. If you think that a reviewer did not follow WP:CITE and was over-zealous in your review, you can seek redress here: WP:GA/R -- plange 15:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for what is deemed appropriate)
To RelHistBuff - it was not contradictory. It said "the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory". The text clearly differentiated "citing sources" which is required, from "inline citations", one form of "citing sources" which is obviously desirable but not the only way sources may be cited. Sources may be cited by listing them at the end of the article in a references section - which satisfies CTSWyneken's desire to credit authors and to point to further information. This is also the form common in many encyclopedias, including Britannica. Gimmetrow 21:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) The thing is, I'm not the one claiming it is not allowed, you are. Nevertheless you have not provided any evidence to support your claim. Since your claim is clearly contrary to the historical precedent visible in scores of current GA articles, it is you who have the burden of evidence here. Since you have failed to provide evidence to support your innovation, I have no need to defend against it further. Note again, this is essentially a difference of philosophy and you should be responding below in the philosophy section. I will not respond here again. Gimmetrow 13:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion the GA system is itself already "good" and, furthermore, as recognition of merely "good" articles it ought not to be any tougher. I would suggest that some or many of the complainants here simply don't like GA, and want to turn it into a miniature FA.
Frankly, this is all a waste of time and energy. FA is more important, and is even more broken. Peer review doesn't work any more, and articles take weeks to get through the FA process. It would be best, imho, if we left GA as it is, a fairly informal scheme for recognising above average - but not necessarily excellent - articles, and focussed our energies a) on fixing PR and FA, b) writing articles (as I'm currently doing). -- kingboyk 19:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
The desire to improve the quality of articles is certainly commendable. Philosophically, however, I think of a "Good Article" as a well-written text that meets the policy requirements of WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. While inline citations are generally useful and should be encouraged (as the old criteria wording did), I'm not convinced GA should require more than WP:V does on this point; any article which fails to be recognized as "Good" is de facto a "Bad Article". (I wish the "failed GA" template was rewritten to be more encouraging, as has been proposed in the past.) Stating the GA represents a well-written, mostly complete article meeting the policy requirements has two great benefits: 1) it's a stable definition that nobody can argue about, and 2) it clearly distinguishes GA from the requirements of FA. Meeting WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV is no small feat in a developed article!
It seems like some other editors have a different philosophy on what GA is or should be. Perhaps if that were explained, some parts of this debate could be resolved? Gimmetrow 02:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
The following are different citation styles you can use to insert references into Wikipedia articles:
If someone is wanting to use something other than the above for inline citations, what is it? -- plange 19:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
IMHO at one point of time the correctness and comprehensiveness check and the rating for other merits (good resepectively brilliant prose, didactics, styleguide confirmity) will have to be de-coupled. The former has to be done (a) by domain experts and (b) with Mediawiki software support (which will mark the reviewed version and give easy access to it). -- Pjacobi 19:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Is requiring inline citations compatable with policy Wikipedia:Ignore all rules?
For example, if after discussion, the editors conclude that inline citations are not appropriate, this would then clash with the stricter citation requirements. WP:AIR is policy and WP:CITE is only a guideline. -- Salix alba ( talk) 08:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
it seems to me that there is a problem with the GA process many times bigger than the inline citation criterion.. the problem is how easy it is for an article that doesn't satisfy the criteria to slip through the process and be listed as a GA. it means that a large part of the wikipedia community doesn't respect the GA tag as "meaning anything". the only way the tag will mean anything is if there is more people and more time involved in the review process. i believe there are ways of doing this without causing too much extra work for reviewers.
an idea i had in that direction was that the initial reviewer isn't allowed to pass or fail the article immediately, but the passing or failing decision (perhaps on subpages, like at FAC) has to stand for a certain amount of time (3 days, say).. if at the end no one disagrees with the review (or, in any case, a consensus has been reached about the article), then it is passed or failed accordingly.
in any case, something needs to be changed so that there is a feeling of legitimacy, and even consensus, in the process.. then GAs can win the respect of the entire community (those FA people seem to really look down their noses at GAs at the moment.. which really shouldn't be the case). Mlm42 15:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I run the script for the GA process, so I see articles come and go all the time. Many people who are skeptical of the process don't understand how it works but this same sort of skepticism can be applied just as well to Wikipedia. Tweaking your words a little, "the Wikipedia process I mean seems chaotic...sporadic users can write whatever they want. I mean the 'process' is only one step removed from someone taking a forum message and designating it an encyclopedia article." Some things people may not understand:
In the end, the process, like Wikipedia, seems to "just works" though it does (just like the featured article system) take time to eliminate articles that were passed under lower standards or that have degreaded over time. I remember when flag came to us and I thought this is a pretty ordinary article (but didn't list it for review). I checked back the other day and it was delisted. That said, I welcome ideas for improvement and I have thought of adding a "Random articles" section to the list to stimulate re-review. But in your criticism make sure you are criticising based upon results not perceptions. And, of course, if you find any particularly weak good articles list them here so we can know what articles are slipping through the cracks. Cedars 01:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Since the heart of the matter seems to be the application of WP:CITE in relation to WP:V, the discussion has moved there towards trying to find a consensus compromise that we can all live with and help produce a better encyclopedia with. Working together to get something worthwhile accomplished with this guideline will make all these headaches and frustrations not be in vain. I do think there is room for compromise between what the GA team would like to see for readibility and verification and what the Science editors would like for ease of consistency and professionalism. I invite the editors who have been taking part in these discussions across several pages to lay things to rest here and move over to WP:CITE's talk page so that we can garner consensus there. There is not much that can be accomplished here before things are settled with the guideline. Agne 16:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I would like this article to be completly reviewed and an explannation given with detailed reasons in the talk page of this article if it does not meet the criteria for 'good article' so that it can be improved by it's contributors. Wikidudeman 22:46, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
An idea I am debuting today: a list and quarterly target for bringing an article to FA standard. I realize I've denigrated GA here before, but it occurred to me this might be a good bridge for newer editors who work on this process to try their hand at an FA. Add to the list and see if you can get an article to FA standard by year's end. Marskell 16:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
This article was promoted from a stub (as rated by yours truly) to GA status by an editor who added a lot of information to this article, but I can't find any evidence that it was reviewed for this status. I'm not convinced that this was done without any attempt to prove its quality -- especially as this editor's contributions have been only to this article. -- llywrch 01:51, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
There are tiny articles that will never grow but they will probably get hit on by vandalism and since nobody watches them, then WP will loose credibility for that. Is there a way we can incorporate those into the GA process or to refer them to others who can 1)protect or 2)rate these articles. Lincher 16:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm a fairly active reviewer, and I've noticed that several unregistered users (i.e. IPs) have nominated articles for good article status. My main concern is that the reviewer cannot be entirely certain that they are talking to the same editor who nominated the article and IP users are often unresponsive, slowing down the process.
My recommendation is that only registered users should be able to nominate an article for good article status. What do you think? CloudNine 14:39, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
There are several articles which are currently counted by projects as being Good article quality or better which have never been formally submitted for good article review. The article above is probably one of the clearest examples of problems which can arise from this. One group counts it one grade lower than good article, another group one grade higher than good article. They can't both be right. Would it make sense to have all articles which want to be considered for FA status in the future, or which have been rejected for FA status, candidates for GA status or not? Thank you in advance for your responses. Badbilltucker 00:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Aren't articles supposed to be on hold for 7 days only? There are currently several that have been on hold for weeks. Just how long are they allowed to be on hold? If the person putting them on hold doesn't come back by the end time, can anyone clear the article off the list? Rlevse 17:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
After reviewing this article, I do not believe it meets the criteria, as it seems to lack NPOV, difficult to read, too long, and is haphazertly put together, not to metion that it seems to have a large amount of extra information that is not directly related to the article. Honeymane 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. The article had already been nominated once, but failed. The issued addressed have probably been corrected. However, regardless whether I upset a lot of gamers, I don't think the article is good because it contains too much irrelevant information, as per What Wikipedia is not. It has a long list of levels, then a long list of all enemies in the game.
Is this a valid criteria? What do others think?
Fred- Chess 16:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I've put the GA Nomination on hold while we debate this issue. -- Ritchy 15:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a reason you have to be registered to do anything here? I note that FA has no issues with IPs. 68.39.174.238 22:23, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not particulary support the subsection Mathematics and Physical Sciences (Astronomy, Theory), especially the parathesed part. Why not just call it Mathematics and Pysics? Nick Mks 21:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I reverted the reviews made by Cocoaguy ( talk • contribs • count) after, on being asked why he failed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time he answered this. If the GA criterias and the review process is to have any purpose, such reviewing can't be accepted.
Fred- Chess 17:45, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
“ | I Failed this page beacuse the information was vage and un-interesting. lastly i could not understand a thing beacuse i do not follow the show or own the game. | ” |
Okay cool, I didn't know the whole story and it seems you're right †he Bread 01:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Mmmmmmm. I noticed this by accident. Lotsa editing going on here. Can we get this out in the open and discuss it? Many other people may want to have a say, but may not have noticed the editing going on here. -- Ling.Nut 17:30, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I guess this pertains a little to the above discussion, but how excatly does one learn how to rate good articles? There's a bit of a backlog right now, and I'd like to help, but I don't trust my judgement. The criteria is vague (it has to be or it wouldn't cover every subject) so I have no guidance as to what is a good article and what is not. Should we have a way or place to learn how to rate good articles, or a mentor student thing? I don't know, maybe I'll just stick with nominating and working on articles instead of rating them.-- Clyde Miller 20:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The backlog is still rather crazy right now, and I'm wondering if it might help to split up the nominations a little more. For instance, Arts encompasses all sorts of things - books, movies, video games - can we split those up? Should meteorology get its own subheading since the machines they have working over at that WikiProject are responsible for a majority of that section? I think that if we split some of these headers up, we'll have more people able to review the articles they're comfortable with, and have fewer articles sitting for a month because of how overwhelming it is. Thoughts? -- badlydrawnjeff talk 18:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm also of the opionion that the splitting was a bit heavy. Now it's difficult to find nominations among all the headers, many of which have only one or two nominations. I, for one, didn't have much difficulty looking at a list of eight or nine articles in a list and figuring out which ones I was qualified and interested in reviewing and didn't feel heavily pressured to take only the oldest one on the list. Neil916 ( Talk) 16:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
How long does it take for a GA to get reviewed? It may be better to just go to FAC if it takes so long. Some have been waiting since 4th November for a review, while mine (Paul McCartney) has been waiting since the 12th. Is GA actually an active thing, or is it a passing interest which has died? LuciferMorgan 01:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, I've gotten tired over so many articles being nominated that have simple, glaring problems that can be easily fixed. For these articles, I have invented the quick-fail system. The basic idea is to quickly scan new articles for 'negative' templates, {{fact}} tags, and check the images for fair use rationale. If they have any of these problems, Template:GAquickfail can be added to the talk page. Even though this is just a few problems, they are the most common, and easily 50% of articles seem to fail for at least one of those reasons. This process is only for newly nominated articles though; articles that have been waiting a while deserve a proper review. A couple of users can keep an idea on Wikipedia:Good articles/Candidates on their watchlist and do a quick 10 second quick-fail check on new arivals. This should help stem the flow of nominations to those that are actually ready to be reviewed. Thoughts?-- SeizureDog 08:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's a list of articles that have been on for the longest (quick look, not certified accurate), although doing this, I think that reviewers are doing better at tackling the backlog than at first appeared:
An article I reviewed and failed a while back ( Asian arowana) has since been greatly improved. The original nominator contacted me and asked me to look over it again. Since it has now reached GA level, can I just give it a GA Pass, or should I have him go through the process of re-nominating it first? -- NoahElhardt 05:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Why on earth is there a United States History section all to its own when everything else is shoved into "World History"?! Adam Cuerden talk 09:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Roman-Spartan War was removed off the nomination queue with the edit summary that it is already A-class. However, I think the nominator should decide whether to retire the nomination. A-class assessments are done in the Wikiprojects and satisfy their own internal standards while GA have a wider set of editors with a general set of standards. It may be that the author may have wanted feedback or a quality confirmation from this wider set of editors. -- RelHistBuff 09:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent) Yep, agree with all of the above, except that the nominator of an article has (or should have, I suppose) the right to w/draw the nom for any reason at all, including just being in a bad mood that day. But I agree that the reason "It's already an A in our WikiProject" is not necessarily a good reason. BTW Thanks Titoxd and Walkerma for the clear explanations. :-) -- Ling.Nut 04:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I just updated the table on GA statistics. Does anyone know where one can find the total article number? I would like to fill in the rest of the table and finish the last plot. Also, I think it is interesting that this month has seen a reduction in the rate of increase of GAs. A slow-down in promotions? Or a speed-up in delistings? Probably both. -- RelHistBuff 11:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I just realised I keep forgetting to list the new GAs in the GA list. Is there any bot way to compare the category with the list? I'll do the work of sorting all missed articles in. Adam Cuerden talk 08:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering what the usual turnaround time is for GA - we've had expressionist architecture up there for over a month, does it require a specialist to look at it or should I round up a reviewer and point them in the right direction? -- Mcginnly | Natter 01:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent)I hope to help with the backlog after the 16th or so. Hope to get some serious work done. 'Til then tho, am unable to help. It's that time of year. Others may be in the same boat — final exams, Christmas, depression over credit card bills... -- Ling.Nut 05:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
So let me get this straight. If I want to review articles (and I do, it would give me a purpose on Wikipedia), all I have to do is know the GA criteria and not have made signifigant contributions to the article? If that's all, than that's great. Am I missing something here? It seems to good to be true! Green451 00:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent) welcome to GA! -- Ling.Nut 03:11, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I was bold and unilaterally changed the verbiage of WP:GAC (but you'll note I took the changes to Talk.. other changes have been made recently which I plan to revist after final exams).
The next verbiage that I added says "no less than 2 and no more than 7 calendar days." I feel OK about putting a bottom limit of 2 days to the On hold since putting an article on Hold in the first place is purely at the reviewer's discretion. Anyone who puts anything On Hold must logically be willing to wait at least some time. -- Ling.Nut 14:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I reverted Useamac ( talk · contribs)'s passing of Apple Computer advertising just a short time ago. This was Useamac's first edit. The second edit of the user was to add back a section that was removed and placed in a seperate article as it was making the article incredibly long. The section was clearly summarized with a "main article" link at the top of the section. Useamac continues to reinsert this section and redirect the article on the commercial to the main advertising article. Does anyone have any opinions on what I've done in this situation? Metros232 16:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent).. yeah.. my point was not that it is worthy of a review; my point is, don't get in an edit war or WP:3RR. Let other people delist it. You've done your bit. -- Ling.Nut 19:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I am currently the reviewer of the GA nom for Duck Hunt. I put it on hold so that the nominator could fix stuff, and we have kept an open dialogue. This is my first time reviewing a GA nom, so if a more experienced reviewer has the time, could they please check out the article and my review on the article's talk page to make sure that I'm doing everything right? Thanks, Green451 23:11, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm a new reviewer... and still learning. A week or so ago I passed an article on Billy Sunday. One of the contributors to the article, however, questioned my passing of the article. He feels as if it was too POV, but I wasn't sure. I was wondering if I could get some feedback from other more experienced reviewers on this article. Was I too easy on my passing it? I thought it was a good, well written, easy to read article... it wasn't perfect, but was one of the better articles I read. Balloonman 16:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I was working on an article that was nominated here ( Futurama) and the reviewer put it on hold. I have dealt with the issues listed on the talk page but the article is still listed as being on hold (for more than 7 days). Is there some action I need to take to notify reviewers that the article is ready to be reviewed? I understand there is a backlog but I didn't want it to be left on hold once the issues had been corrected. Thanks for any info, this process is still new to me. Stardust8212 18:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You may put an article On Hold for no less than 2 and no more than 7 calendar days if only minor changes or clarifications are needed. If at least 2 days have expired without an editor addressing the concern(s), the article can be failed at any time, but a decision should be made before or around the week's end.
Is it normal if there is two social sciences sections (and one is empty). Frédérick Lacasse 14:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't have time to work on it myself, but I thought someone might want to review Toilet-related injury, just for fun. -- Beland 10:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I took a quick look and it fails almost all criteria
Someone who really knows the GA project should review the way the requests for review page is organized. The problem is that the categorization on it does not match the categorization of GA articles themselves. That leaves reviewers who know where an article is in the review page the task of trying to figure out where it belongs on the GA listing page. The two should be consistent. I don't want to undertake the task for two reasons: 1. I'm lazy and 2. I don't want to make changes that would have unforeseen repercussions. The latter is the real reason why someone with better knowledge of the project should address this issue. It would actually be nice to see greater automation of this process, but that's would require some real development + Fenevad 15:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Someone who didn't know what they were doing promoted
Slayer as a GA, left no comments on the talk page and didn't add it to the GA list until told on their user talk page. I was hoping a more experienced GA reviewer could take a look, as i would like some feed-back to bring it up to FA standards. Thanks.
M3tal H3ad 06:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
There are some articles that have been there for a long time now...almost a month and some are not even on hold. Could experienced users or people who generally rate good articles clear them up first? Shouldn't the priority be given to the oldest articles first? Just a thought...thanks. Fedayee 07:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Is anybody reviewing these pages? One is tempted to say that one must pull one's finger out, if you'll pardon the expression. andreasegde 17:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I reviewed Dominik Hasek and felt it had some minor problems so I put it on hold. I am allowed to fix them myself and pass it rightt? I am leaving them the way they are now (I did find and install a photo for the article) until I know for sure. Quadzilla99 12:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it possible for an article to be nominated for GA while a peer review is still open? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Why doesn't this article have a Table of Contents? It would be easier to go directly to the topics you like, such as sports, arts, science, etc.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Quadzilla99 ( talk • contribs) 03:18, 27 January 2007.
I know that there is not too much length requirements for GA if its too long, but can it be too short? I was looking through a lot of the candidates and there are a couple that are only four sections of information or so with about 10-15 sources? Is this reasonable or is the topic not considered broad enough. Examples would include: Vestibule (Architecture), Scud FM, or Service flag. I just want to know for sure as I attempt to help weed out the easy ones while clearing the the backlog. -- Nehrams2020 05:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there some way we could make the pass/fail review easier? Right now it takes a bunch of coordinated edits to different pages, and it's basically a lot of work. Is there some way we could us "the system" to do this for us? For instance:
1) couldn't the placement of the nomination on the candidates page be automated by placing the "category" in the GAnomination tag on the article's talk page? That would eliminate one edit.
2) likewise, when moving from nomination to pass/fail, this too could be completely automated as in (1). These changes alone would eliminate four edits.
3) Could a 'bot be used to inform the nominating user?
4) When you do a peer review a new talk page is automatically created. Could this not be done for GA as well?
Maury 21:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Need I say more? andreasegde 20:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now "The Club of GA reviewers". Let's go.... andreasegde 20:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Not necessarily. I supported deleting Esperanza, in fact. I'm warning them for the same reasons though; to moderately alter George Washington's quote, be wary of the baneful spirit of clubs. Don't get too wrapped up in the concept of a club. Dooms Day349 23:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Note; I reviewed something :) I failed it too. I'm trying to clear out the books section so I can have my article reviewed. *cough cough hint hint wink wink REVIEW IT NOW* XD Dooms Day349 23:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
If you're new to GA review articles that are an obvious fail, if you're unsure just leave it. And Andreasegde - Don't try to cheat the system changing the date on your nomination [9] I'm changing the date to the correct one. M3tal H3ad 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello all. I nominated an article on the 4th that hasn't even been touched yet so I wanted to get involved and help with the backlog. I have a question about the reviewing criteria for long articles. I wanted to review the Social structure of the United States article (probably not a good choice for my first review, but...hey, what damage could I really do?!?). It is a long article and I read this in the GA review criteria:
Does this mean I should review it according to Peer Review or FAC standards and pass or fail accordingly? Although the style and prose is excellent, I was leaning towards failing the article based two of the other GA criteria, but really could go either way. If it has to stand up to the more rigorous criteria of PR & FAC I'm afraid I'd have to "fail" it. I am hesitant to fail an article (especially my first review) without being sure. Any advice?-- William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 23:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
As of 23:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC), there are 144 unassessed Good Article Candidates. Note that does not include On Hold articles. I reason that, with an average time of ten minutes to review an article, 1 user could clear the entire backlog with 24 hours of work. 2 users makes that 12 hours. 3 users makes it 8 hours. 4 users make it 6 hours. 5 users makes it 4 hours and 48 minutes. 6 users makes it 4 hours. 8 users makes it 3 hours. 10 users makes it about 2 and a half. 12 users makes it about 2 hours. You seeing the figures? We can clear this backlog easily if we just get enough users dedicated. I've started up a message on the community noticeboard, but if you have any ideas on how else to get support, let's think of em. Dooms Day349 23:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I have twice started reviewing an article (very thoroughly) only to see a review get posted while I was working. There should be a mechanism to claim articles for review to prevent duplication of work, especially if more people start reviewing good article candidates. - Selket Talk 23:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Support - I like this idea. One of the best aspects of it is that the nominators can also see progress, especially while there's a backlog. -- Dweller 10:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The on hold tag states that the tag only stays in place 7 days. If it's been there for that much time and still doesn't pass, should it be failed? There are two in the television section that haven't corrected all their problems as of yet, and the tags have run out. Dooms Day349 20:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
and my section recount just now, a total of 228 articles have been Good articled this month - the best month so far was around 146 reviewed a while ago - the backlog has somewhat stabilised at around 140 articles too, so the drive for review is going well. Getting fairly close to the landmark 2000 too :) RHB Talk - Edits 00:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
A reviewer put the article Jeff Hanneman on hold six days ago and has disappeared. Myself and another user left him a message on his talk page, but no no avail. I fixed the article to meet his "objections" so could someone else maybe take a look. Thanks. M3tal H3ad 10:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Just out of interest, why is it that Good Articles have no template that places the GA symbol on the article page itself, like the Featured Article star in the top right-hand corner of the article? Thanks. Colds7ream 10:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I put a request for assistance at the main community portal to hopefully get more editors to assist in clearing the backlog. Hopefully this will speed up our current pace. -- Nehrams2020 21:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated the article " Leonard Orban", European Commissioner on Multilingualism, as GA candidate and I have listed it under "Law and Politics" section as he is politician, but because an important part of the article is about language policy and language rights should I have listed under the "Lanugage" section? -- Michkalas 14:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
This article was placed on hold on February 16th pending work on criteria concerns raised by a reviewer, which have now been addressed. 7 days is the limit an article can be put on hold, but the reviewer hasn't edited since the 18th despite leaving two messages on their talk page. Can someone objectively review the article and either fail or pass it please? Thanks. LuciferMorgan 22:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I've developed a proof-of-concept javascript tool that will display an article's assessed rating on the article page itself. It currently does so by prepending the rating to "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", so it becomes "A B-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." It also changes the color of the article title to roughly match the color scheme of the grades.
To add it to your User:YourUserName/monobook.js file, add this text:
// Script from [[User:Outriggr/metadata.js]] document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Outriggr/metadata.js' + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></s'+'cript>');
Purposes:
This is fairly "simple" right now and I'd welcome any feedback or ideas. Thanks, – Outriggr § 20:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Why not change {{ GA nominee}} officially to its alternative, {{ GAC}}, to match {{ fac}} Wouldn't even need to move Template:GA nominee, as there's already a redirect. Thoughts? Adam Cuerden talk 22:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Just to let you know, {{ GAquickfail}} has been nominated for deletion here. — Disavian ( talk/ contribs) 17:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
When an editor has been heavily involved in an article or series of articles, that editor should not be involved in writing reviews, as it simply asserting that editor's opinion colored by the content disputes that editor has been involved with, rather than providing an objective e4valuation of an article. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Good morning ( GMT time) all; the above article has been reviewed by myself and rejected GA status in accordance with the GA criteria, and as expressed at my original review. However, a lead editor of the article has been objecting to my review.
I have persevered for around 10 posts, as seen at User talk:Anthony cfc, but am getting nowhere. I would rather not frustrate the user any more (as well as myself :) so I'd like one of my fellow GA reviewers to re-review the case as soon as possible. This is as an alternative to seeking a GA Review, as the way the editor appears to see it my decision was ill-informed in the first place and therefore is not valid.
Kind regards,
anthonycfc [
talk 08:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm the review seems pretty short sighted "Improve it", "Make it better", "add more info", "Go to the library to get info" You need to be specific, what needs to be added? What needs to be improved? don't just say it needs improvement without giving any detail.
For the author -
It's easy to read but all the red links make it not very attractive, could some be reduced? An infobox or/and picture in the top right will pretty much make it formatted better and third paragraph under history is a bit choppy. M3tal H3ad 08:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
IvoShandor 08:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments; I've decided to not care about Good Articles any more, and instead strive to be as good as possible rather than "dumbing down" to the Good Article criteria. Cheers. -- NE2 08:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
There are numerous articles in this part. This will cause to delay. Therefore I suggest to separate Law and politics.-- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 03:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I found that reviewing of nominations is very slow and there is a stack of articles. How can we do it faster?-- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 08:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
WarningThere's accumulation of the articles. I compared December 4 [11] with March 29 [12] and found that about 40 articles have been added to the list. There were 122 articles on December 4 and 160 articles on March 29. Approximately the rate of accumulation is 10 article per month. -- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 15:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Very good point about not reviewing articles you're an expert in, in my opinion. The articles are expert-checked at the A-class-level anyhow. I also agree with Ivo and Jayron that we should access the large pool of participants in the good article project and notify them somehow. A newsletter would be a good idea.-- DorisHノート 06:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to Ivo for the idea. Feel free to add your own additions to this list:
DRAFT BELOW:
The following criteria can be used to decide when it is appropriate to quick-fail a Good Article nominee without an extensive review
1. There is an image in obvious violation of Fair Use or Copyright policies, (EDIT): or large portions of text that are violate copyright policies. IvoShandor 12:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
2. There are NO references at all (note, the lack of inline citations should not be an automatic quick fail. Some articles do not owe themselves to the use of inline citations, but ALL articles should be referenced to reliable sources)
3. Tags:The article should be failed if it has tags like clean up, wikify, etc .
4. Lists: articles titled "List" or article that are mostly lists in content. List articles should be referred to Wikipedia:Featured lists where appropriate. IvoShandor 12:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC) END OF DRAFT
Feel free to add some more ideas above. This could be a useful addition to WP:WIAGA. -- Jayron32| talk| contribs 06:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I propose Tags. -- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 07:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
This page is an archive of past discussions. 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. |
Given the current backlog of articles I suggest that the use of On Hold be discouraged or resticted to a smaller time frame say 48hrs, as its keeping the lists longer than necessary and realistically if there are issues with an article then fail it or fix them during the review. Gnangarra 05:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)
is given as a subsection under both Everyday Life and Social Sciences--- which is it? -- plange 23:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)
I have been watching the GA candidates being review and they get less and less reviewed (See Vincente Fox's talk page). And in that I mean that people go to just typing which criteria was failed to no message about the GA process on the talk page of the article. WHY? We are suppose to be somewhat of a peer review process along with the GA classification process. So would the reviewers PLEASE give a list of comments with the failed articles. Lincher 15:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
So my suggestions:
NCurse work 07:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I understand. What about the list with interest fields of the participants, reviewers. When I first saw WP:GA page, I was suprised (after working hard on Wikipedia Release Version 0.5) that anyone can pass an article. I know that everybody is afraid of elitism. But what if we would have a relatively small group of reviewers (who've been working on GAs for a long time) and if someone wants to join, then he/she gets a "coach" who'll have to care take of that new member's reviews for a time? NCurse work 14:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with the fact that reviewers need to leave improvment comments but I should point out that just as only one person is needed to pass an article, only one person (and a reason) is needed to delist an article. Tarret 15:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)
You gave me an idea RHB, I think that we should make a boilerplate for new reviewers to put on their talk page that states what is needed to do when reviewing (in like 3-5 short sentences) in order to help them know what the process is all about. This should also be given to everybody who reviews and needs to refresh what are the rules and things to focus on when reviewing. Lincher 12:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the biggest help to the situation would be for anyone who nominates an article to review at least one in return. This is mentioned in passing on the candidates page, but I think it would be good if we stressed that a bit more. It's too easy for editors to drop off a candidate (or two, or three, or four all at once) and forget about the whole project until they get their little GA tag. If every nominator took the time to review one article per nomination, there would be no back log. Kafziel 15:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think this backlog problem can't be solved from a global view. For example, I review just science-medicine-related articles, and try to clean the whole nomination list (now alone). 2 or 3 reviewers could remove a backlog in a topic. That's why I wanted so much that participants' list with special interests. Groups could work on specific topics. NCurse work 17:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Concerning that welcome template, I don't like how it's worded, "Your new role" sounds like it's telling users they've been given some obligation to do something, and editing Wikipedia is not obligatory at all, it's supposed to be voluntary. Homestarmy 19:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I felt bold, so I created this: Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers... Comments? NCurse work 20:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I, for one, do not review too many articles, as I would find it hard to pass an article from outside the scope of my "expertise", as in no way I could make sure it is comprehensive and accurate. I can fail a really bad article for some obvious reasons (which happened once when I noticed a nomination pretty poor on all accounts), but other than that, I would rather not reivew articles on e.g. gastroenterology or Pakistani history.
Another problem with GA is that the GA status is both low profile and not held in highest regard. The relative easiness to pass and the perceived occurence of abuse is why GA is often dismissed as a proper quality criterion. Another thing is the self-propelling vicious circle of low profile/low prestige, little interest, little reviews etc.
One thing that I have thought about is getting WikiProjects involved in pre-screeing and perhaps also self-assessing articles. For example, the Computer Games WikiProject seems to be submitting relatively good candidates, as they apparently have some internal review process (anecdotary evidence only, so I might be wrong). Some WikiProjects participate in this Version 1.0 Assessment system, perhaps if more of them adopted it, they could make sure they only nominate really high-potential articles. Moreover, this could be a way to split the "accuracy/completeness" and other formal requirements review parts.
Just some random thoughts. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 01:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm creating a splinter discussion off of a very good point that Bravada makes which I think is relevant to our overall problem. The Candidates page includes the note Review carefully—the standards of good articles are only as high as those of the most lenient reviewer! and by extension the corollary The standards of being a good article is only as high as it's weakest article.. Personally, I think we should be a tad more strict in our standards. A Good article is suppose to be a presentation of some of the best that Wikipedia offers, especially of articles that would never be the length that a FA would require. Similarly, for articles that can become FA we should hold them to that standard in order to point them on the right path towards FA status. For a potential FA candidate, the acheiving GA status should be the equivalent of reaching 3rd base in a baseball metaphor with the next step being home plate.
Personally, I think we should be more bold in maybe re-evaluating some articles that have passed. However, if we do de-list then they should be given a detail reason and review of what needs to be improved. A lot of GA are passed by new reviewers who don't necessary appreciate the scope and standards that these articles need to be in order to quaify as GA. I will tell you that when I did my first pass
Ryan Leaf, I didn't quiet grasp those concepts myself and I'm possibly going to de-list that article by the weekend. A newbie mistake.
Agne 04:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
(same subject)
I agree, I see that there is a backlog and I see that there is a need to re-review the old GAs so if we are to coach the newbies, fine with me about leaving the backlog tag but if not, we don't need beginner reviewers listing GAs if they don't understand the process. For the re-review, we should use the list of reviewers and assess like 4 articles/day per reviewer in order to maintain the project healthy and with correct nominations thus being able to show good articles to other people who come to the project.
On the point of removing the part of the quote about having the articles' quality only as high as that of the most lenient reviewer!, it should be removed upon a re-review of the GA articles. Lincher 02:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Lets be clear and go into details about the criteria for GA status :
In
WP:WIAGA, it is stated the criteria very similar to the criteria for featured articles. Then, in regards to small aricles it gets a little vague with mention that prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. I think this needs to be more clear as we define "less then brillant". When I think of
WP:FAC, I think of it as a fine tooth comb and scrutiny similar to how a person's life & words are subjected when they run for US Senate. GAC is more along the lines of running for state Attorney General. I think the standards should be high but with not as nit pick for scrutiny. That said, in response to Lincher...
1a&d. Do the scientific terms need to be clearly defined on the article's page or just a wikilink is necessary.
1b&c; 2d; 3a; 4 & 5. EASY to check.
2a. how can we verify that all sources have been given? Do we WP:AGF and that's it?
2b. if there are no inline citations, is it ok? I would guess so, after the talk we had 3 months ago.
2c. if there are no book sources is it ok? if there are only internet sources, is it ok? If it only cite encyclopedias is it ok?
3b. should we cut trivia sections period? or are we lenient?
6. do we accept Fair use images if they state their rationale?
Thanks for your extensive answers, as of now I am tending to change the criterion 2b with stricter rules. Since 2b was
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory
, it should become something that looks more like :
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Lincher ( talk • contribs)
every statement in the article has to be referenced to a source by means of inline citations (at the end of statement or paragraph)
the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory
1: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory upon request
2: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations for contentious statements is mandatory
Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC) Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory
Lincher 03:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
This was taken from the previous discussion in order to have people decide or choose an idea over what to do about long articles : Secondly, the alternative name for GA on the early stages of the concept was, AFAIK, "excellent short articles". I believe that an "abridged", summary/overview encyclopedic article should not exceed 32kB. If it is over 32kB, it should be eligible for FA status by itself. If that's not the case at the moment, it should either further be improved to make it an FA, or perhaps trimmed down to create a good "short" encyclopedic article on the topic. I guess a "halfway" article, i.e. a GA expanded, but not quite complete by FA standards, is neither a GA or FA. It's nice to reward people for their work, but I guess we should only assess "complete" (more or less) articles, and not "work in progress". I will also give more rationale for excluding "long" articles from GA above. Bravada, talk - 08:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm going to assume good faith in this comment and assure you that I am trying to do no such thing. I know from my experience that maintaining NPOV is difficult, and I am sure that the more prominent a controversial article becomes, the more difficult this struggle becomes. With work, and hopefully feedback from a GA reviewer, [HINT] homeopathy may one day make it to FA. However, as I said I dread to think what the review process would be like. TimVickers 22:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
If GA is near-FA...why have GA at all? (repeated from above). Worldtraveller would kick me for showing up again to criticize, but: no shit. GA should be scapped (that was my initial thought on it) and the work devoted to FA, where it matters, or GA should be much better specified in terms of its intent (this is what WT talked me into). See here for a long conversation on exactly the long/short article problem and the nature GA.
Note too, WP:ESA (excellent short articles) was actually created... Marskell 19:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I think Worldtraveller makes an excellent point that sums up alot of the value in the GA process. "there's an incentive to improve the latter, adding references and improving the text, which FA does not provide. Click your random article link 10 times and I bet you will be lucky to find one article that's got references - for most articles, FA does not provide an incentive to add them because most articles will only ever be quite short." For articles that will never get a sniff of GA status (not because they're not good but because they can't reach the length and depth required.) there is a continual incentive for improvement. For articles that can be FA, we're here to help them reach that. I say the difference between GA and FA is the "Fine tooth comb" line because you're dealing with the difference of one set of eyes versus several-which aids in uncovering more details and imperfection. A GA review should approach the review with the highest standards but naturally won't be able to detect all the details that a full group can. However, a GA can make damm certain that all the basics of good quality is covered. Agne 19:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I will also note that I really like Marskell idea from his link conversation about having a separate Featured Short Articles and Potential Featured Articles listing. For the "long" articles they would go into the latter category and that could potentially help with the dispute over "Long" articles because then the context they're being reviewed in would be made more clear. Also, since they do take longer to review, this seperate list wouldn't contribute to the backlog of reviewing the quicker, shorter articles. Agne 19:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
I strongly oppose any splitting of this project into long and short GA's. When it was tried, the Long ones were virtually ignored. Splitting them off onto separate pages would have the same effect. FA's don't have different standards for long and short one (and yes, there are short ones - its comprehensiveness, not length that is the critera) so GA's should not have different standards for short and long ones either. There is no need to make GA more complicated. It works best as a simple project. Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, an article might be comprehensive when short if there isn't a ton of information about a subject. Also, comprehensive is not the same as detailed, don't mix the two. I think you guys are missing the fact that Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, therefore, we shouldn't be splitting anything on the basis of length. We ask a for lower level here than complete comprehensiveness of course, but the same principle applies. Personally, I don't see what's so broken about GA that we need to fix it. It does a good job of identifying those articles that are good, but that don't meet the stringent FA requirements. That's its original puprose, it works and its useful. pschemp | talk 03:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Not at all, it is not a FA-lite process and it isn't a pause before summit kinda project, it is an assessment project where we, with fixed rules, decide if the article is of that level of quality or not. It is somewhat of a stepdown from FA, in terms of breadth, of quality (not to a big extent), of sources, of quantity of pictures and of length in general. It is a project that reviews articles so they can comply with the assessment scale in stating that the article is no more of B-class but not yet of A-class and that is why the one-reviewer-only is the way it is done. For sure, there will be articles that will slip through the cracks and that is why we have a FA review for those ones. So, in maintaining the GA process functional, we have to give a clear review that if failed, the article missed all those criteria and if passed, the article was this & that but may need some of this and some of that for the FA status or the A-class for that matter. Lincher 14:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I haven't been following this discussion closely because, alas, I wasn't here when it started, but now there's a template on the main cnadidate page saying there was recently some change or something and to see this page, but as far as I can tell, everyone is still discussing the main definitions of GA's. Did something new get decided? Homestarmy 23:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for the fast summary, we have to get this bagged up fast because other projects are waiting to find out what will the outcome be and will also be necessary to help with article assessment. Lincher 03:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Since we can't find an agreement on what to do with lengthy articles (that is to say 25kB+ of prose or 32kB+ counting everything), I would suggest an idea that can stir comments or bring us somewhere with this dead-end/no consensus. I think lengthy articles should, when you feel it would be a GA after assessing it yourself, it would be more reasonable to kick that article into the FA process meanwhile letting the nominator know that his article will be going there and that it is outside of the scope of the GA process, for length & quality. Please make your voice heard as this solution would remove 2 things, the on hold procedure where we wait for the article to have the reviewers nit-picks modified and bring more articles to the FA process, thus helping the articles getting better reviewed. Lincher 12:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.
A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.
To :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
Lincher 15:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
I will quick answer your questions :
For CTS ... lets do so, and add it to the current criteria.
Pertaining to the re-assessment/sweep at User:Lincher/GA, we can start now and see what we get and work our criteria to meet the current GA batch or fail the ones that don't meet the present criteria. I've had it with the talking about short or long and that is why I made the suggestion above since we wont split ... creating more job for nuttin'. And we wont send articles to PR or FA since if people come to GA in the first place is to know if they are on the good track, let's not get the beaten first thing off while they're newbies, let the gradually go toward FA candidacy. Lincher 16:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is everyone obsessed with retaining the primarily short articles wording? It is clear that through practice, GA has morphed into a vehicle for identifying good article regardless of length that are just not quite FA material. Now, why are we retaining out of date wording that doesn't make sense for this project anymore and as far as I can see just causes arguments over what is long and what is short. Lets be bold and throw out the whole primarily short articles thing especially because that hasn't been practice for a long time. Instead let the wording reflect the current practice. Old things like that are not set in stone, and as the project evolved, its mission has evolved and the statement of it should reflect that. Think outside the short article box. pschemp | talk 16:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
(same subject) Now that everybody is on the same side and is all up to date about GAs and FAs, lets be constructive and have ideas onto werther we change the length issue and what do we do about inline citations (I have moved the discussion over to the WP:WIAGA's talk page for there is disagreement with a WPdian there).
Sorry if you feel that we have hurt PR, I didn't mean too but in a way, it is looking dead or close to dead to me, we should revive it with fresh ideas once the backlog & the sweep is done here (IMO). Lincher 18:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
Gosh did we start a fire! It is taking up almost all of my WP time just to catch up with the discussion! I've been thinking quite a bit about the whole issue and I must say many of the things said here gave me a lot of food for thought. Here are my conclusions - I hope they are constructive:
Regards, Bravada, talk - 01:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I'd like to weigh in my thoughts on this -- I also see this process as working fine for the most part and see it as a stepping stone to FA. Being new to WP, I like the tiered process of nominating to GA and seeing if at least one person thought it met the criteria and then getting a peer review and an A-class rating, and then nominating to FA. It's a lot less intimidating and helps encourage article improvement, IMHO. Also, I don't think length should be discouraged. Long articles should be held to the same standards as short ones, and though it does sometimes require more work on the part of the reviewer, the ones that are a mess/work in progress are easy to spot and fail accordingly. I think the definition (and placement in the hierarchy on Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment works really well and makes sense to me. -- plange 02:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I was a bit curious myself when I read that in the rules, how long had we had that rule? I might be forgetting some conversation from a really long time ago.... Homestarmy 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
A couple of weeks ago, someone (ironically, an IP user) altered the "How to nominate a page" section to say that only registered users can nominate articles. While that might help keep the nonsense to a lower level, it certainly wasn't discussed or, in fact, even mentioned in the edit summary. It just happened, and I didn't notice (did anyone?) until Tarret removed a few just now. Here's the diff: [1].
Anyway, I've returned the wording to the way it's always been and replaced the nominations. I don't see any discussion about it and, much as I hate to say it, anons can do pretty much anything on Wikipedia. If they can nominate FACs, they can certainly nominate GAs. Kafziel 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
As a supporter, in most cases, of anonymous editing, I am happy to see this change reverted. While there are good reasons from limiting the ability of anons to review articles, I don't see the harm in letting them nominate them. Eluchil404 00:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok I went bold and rouge and made the change to simplify the stated purpose of GA. I'm not adverse to tweaking it if it needs it, but this is the general change I was suggesting. It now reads:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable featured article candidates at the current time.
The makes the length argument a moot point, and explains that while these articles are good, they are not ready to be FAs, though they may become one in the future. I think the previous statement kind of hinted that GAs can never become FAs and that's not quite right. I think this states the current usage of this a place for good articles who aren't ready or suitable for FA in a manner more in line with reality. Its useless to state why each and every article is not ready for FA, the important thing is that they posess good content, which is the focus of this entire project. Good content is the raison d'etre for GA. pschemp | talk 02:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Now all you guys have to work out is what to require/not require in the way of citations and we're good. :) pschemp | talk 03:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
You need to read WP:BOLD. I am not doing anything in an underhanded way. I invited discussion here, and already proposed my change many paragraphs above. No one said don't do it. I did and do pay attention to what other users say, and no one said it was a bad idea. In fact, Lincher said he would do it but was afraid of getting yelled at. How about instead of yelling at me and calling my actions "bad", you discuss it constructively? As for the GA founders, a wiki is a dynamic thing. Their word is not sacred, and as projects change, we changes things to reflect practice. This happens in policy wording all the time which is much closer to being "sacred". In fact, three editors agreed with me, and one disagreed. That looks like consensus to me. pschemp | talk 03:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Bravada, you are going to get your wish for a lengthy discussion because you keep going off topic. I don't think you understand how GA is currently used in practice, and that this change reflects that. If you want to change GA totally, start a new topic about changing it, but right now we are discussing what it *is* currently. I don't, however see a consensus for drastically changing how GA works. Other than you and Marskell, everyone else thinks its fine, with maybe a few tweaks, but not a large overhaul. Everything you are talking about adds complication to what is fundamentally a simple process and should remain so. pschemp | talk 05:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(Edit Conflict)I'm not going to comment on recent exchanges, but do wish to clarify that what is under discussion in this sub section is whether or not to change the wording (that GA is for short articles) to reflect current practice. Let's have a straw poll for the proposed change, which is:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable featured article candidates at the current time.
People who supported - I won't remove their comments, but a poll isn't neccessary. pschemp | talk 05:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Although I support this version as being better than the old one, it still falls short of a good definition. Merely having "excellent content" is not enough to merit being a good article. I recent failed an article that had a lot of excellent content, but in which most of that excellent content was focused on area, making the article rather one-sided. Also, the "excellent content" was not cited. Maybe we could expand the definition further, to match WP:WIAGA? -- NoahElhardt 05:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured articles. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
I just took out the same phrase and re-worked first clause. If this doesn't suit, please propose alternatives -- plange 06:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(tally at this point, 8 for, 2 against) pschemp | talk 05:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
(To pschemp) Sorry, was just trying to bring focus back to the question at hand. Was not implying that people had to come back, etc., or we'd disregard their opinion. In other areas where lengthy discussions are going on with a lack of focus I've found that clarifying and simplifying question at hand does wonders in focusing everyone. -- plange 06:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 06:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this:
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 06:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Holy smokes, a great deal of discussion over a small wording change. In the most recent version I still wonder if "not suitable" is really what is intended. Some articles never will be. Some just aren't yet but might be at some future point (remember, I regard GA as in some cases part of a progression to FA) ++ Lar: t/ c 17:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC).
Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates either at present or ever. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)
-- plange 18:13, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Criterion 2b of WP:WIAGA has been reverted back to the original version. I would like to note again that the original version is ambiguous, in fact contradictory. We say the citation of sources is essential (this effectively means “required” to me). WP:CITE gives three ways to cite sources. Then in the next clause we say “inline citations” are not mandatory. This is contradictory because the three ways to cite sources are “inline citations”. So we either say that WP:CITE is a requirement or it is not. Here is my proposal for the change of criterion 2b to remove the ambiguity:
the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style
No mention is made of the number of citations required. That decision, of course, is left to the authors. It could be 1, it could be 100, but here is where the GA reviewer will need to judge. Contentious articles will need a high density of citations, less contentious a lower density. Please comment on the proposal.
The whole issue of requiring the citation of sources in Good Articles is a no-brainer in my opinion. When I was 16, my teachers required that we cite sources (i.e., provide footnotes and not just a list of references at the end) in our little 5-page, double-spaced papers. For good reason: to teach kids how to make quality, reliable, verifiable reports. Surely we should require citations in Good Articles! RelHistBuff 09:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
How can an article qualify as "good" if it doesn't even qualify as "acceptable"?
At WP:V, it says "Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policies. The other two are Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace."
Every fact stated needs to be supported by a reliable source. If you're doing a comparison, you may need multiple multiple cites for a single sentence, e.g., "The principle agricultural exports of Moldavia are cinnamon (43% of GNP)3, horseradish (41% of GNP)4 and velcro (191% of GNP)5" If "everybody knows" something is true, then there's no reason to mention it. The Water article doesn't mention that water is wet, after all. If something needs to be said, however, then it needs to be supported by a reliable source. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 18:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think it is pretty obvious for everybody here that citing sources should be a GA requirement, so I think we agree in principle. I don't think, however, that any "formal" requirement like "one inline citation per section" makes much sense. I'd say - the articles has to include inline citations (that makes two inline citations per article enough actually for those who are afraid of swarms of them), but the reviewer can ask for any statement to be "inline cited" and the editors that want an article to be promoted should be advised that it's better to have all potentially questionable statements referenced beforehand.
From my own experience I have to say that it is not that hard to have a whole article referenced. Most sources dealing with the subject will in this way or another include obvious information such as "Celine Dion is a singer" etc., so when you have a section that includes many non-controversial and obvious statements, you just need one citation at the end of a paragraph.
Bravada,
talk - 15:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I am quite surprised that, while exhibiting the link to WikiProject Fact and Reference Check in your sig, you have a problem with using
Template:cite web and similar. I found them pretty easy to use and not overly fussy, and I am the laziest Wikipedia editor ever. I guess if WP allows all three formats, we have no reason to require a specific one, though I'd say I have serious problems with accepting "embedded links" as proper citations (not even providing the access date those are pretty worthless), but that's a more general issue.
In conclusion, do we finally agree that we require Good Articles to contain inline citations and that the reviewer can ask for any info in the article to be referenced specifically to a source?
Bravada,
talk - 01:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I see it more like this then (sorry for the wording ... I'm bad at writing criteria) :
the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style, as such, a reviewer may request uniformization of or additional citations
Just one small remark, as I'm confused with this discussion. When I read 3 different citation styles in WP:CITE, all of them are inline citation, CMIIW. If you use embedded citations, you must put it in the article, thus it's inline. If you use Harvard referencing, then you must put (Author, Year) cite format in the article to point to one of the reference in the References section. Thus it is also inline. The cite.php footnote style also yields an inline citation automatically.
So, the WP:CITE as also one of Manual of Style guideline will create automatically inline citations. No matter which style you use. If an editor only puts list of bibliography in the References section, does (s)he follows one of the citation style? I don't think so. This is just my two cents' worth. — Indon ( reply) — 13:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this:
2. (b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is mandatory
WP:CITE spells out usage and what is acceptable and how things should be consistent, etc. -- plange 19:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Any consistant citation style may be used to cite the source for the article's content, as long as the source for any given content is identifiable.
I'm not really thrilled with my wording; I'm pretty sure someone else can come up a more elegant statement. But I'd like the sense that editors don't have to use APA/Harvard/Chicago or some other citation style more appropriate to research papers than to an encyclopedia. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 20:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
<ref>World Book Encyclopedia</ref>
<ref>[http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html How to store apples for a long long time]</ref>
<ref>''How to store apples for a long long time.'' '''Retrieved September 5, 2006 from [http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html]'''</ref>
I believe we have at least partial consensus. From this discussion it is clear everyone agrees that:
Where we do not have consensus:
So for the moment, I will change 2b to be just what we have agreed and will use a slight modification of plange's formulation. "Citation" wikilinks to the WP:CITE and "inline citations" wikilinks to the specific section of the article.
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required
We can continue discussion on the other issues and change 2b accordingly. RelHistBuff 07:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The way I read the styles guides and policies, references are required, an editor can feel free to remove anything from an article that is not sourced via some sort of inline citation and articles without any references at all may be recommended for deletion. No specific style is required and consisency in style is encouraged. Am I correct? -- CTSWyneken (talk) 11:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
“ | I can NOT emphasize this enough.
There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. -- Jimmy Wales in WikiEN-l, Tue May 16 20:30:15 UTC 2006 |
” |
Information may be "sourced" and verifiable without an inline citation for that information - which is why GA used to say that "the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory." Note that WP:WIAFA requires a references list, but this is only "complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Gimmetrow 13:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
do we have consensus? I think the only one that objected to Lincher's change was Gimmetrow? -- plange 14:35, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
... once and for all. It is not necessary anymore as GAs are a stepping stone toward FA and because we should evaluate every articles on the same ground. Since this project falls in the Assessment project also, it would be doubly necessary to forget about the length criterion/idea on the WIAGA page. Lincher 12:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
See last proposed word change under the subheading above "Word Change" - if we get consensus on that, which seems likely, we can change the intro to take out the length phrase. -- plange 15:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
I made the change according to the second to last wording proposed. It seems to be the clearest. pschemp | talk 03:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I re-iterate my comment way above about length, can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.
A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.
To :
These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
And that is to remove the length crieria from the WIAGA page. Lincher 01:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Can we also change the Length criteria on the candidacy page, it is not necessary anymore. Lincher 01:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Support While some GAs have no real chance of becoming FAs, gaining the GA designator seems to be a positive reinforcement for editors who strive toward FA. Durova 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I agree with Lincher's proposal. It just puts everything in line and makes sense. pschemp | talk 23:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Ok we are going for something concise Bravada, something that can merge both criteria and be easy to master, use and understand for the editors and reviewers. The way I said it was the way it unfurled through the lengthy discussion we just had. Please consider making modifications in a way to remove length from the process as the GA process isn't about length anymore (discussion above is full speed ahead in this direction) and more about having GA being a port of entry to FA though some will never reach it (maybe they will, one day, maybe they will). Lincher 02:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The good articles will satisfy the above criteria and will be in accordance with all of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. The good articles candidacte process will aim at bringing articles toward Featured articles by giving constructive comments and by grading articles in an objective way using the above criteria.
For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing by the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.
(unindent) Why don't we just delete the section labeled "Good vs. Featured"? -- plange 14:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
I find it ironic that we've been talking about articles being improperly promoted and folks not taking the GA tag seriously and now, for demonstration purposes, an anon user has been adding the GA tag to an article that was recently nominated for speedy deletion. Both myself and another editor have been reverting the tag and I exhorted the user to take the article through the proper GA process. Might be worthwhile for others to keep an eye on it.
Agne 16:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Article:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
User:4.249.0.240
Changes that have been accepted :
Changes that could be implemented but didn't get discussed too much :
Thanks to all who have participated in the discussion ... it gave me ideas on what people feel about GA. It also gives me a dimension of the project and the participants. Now we can work on GA re-review for them to meet the current criteria. Lincher 17:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
As we now have the new WIAGA more or less firmly in place, I decided to start re-reviewing current GAs per the discussion above, and using User:Lincher/GA as a starting point. I have reviewed two articles by now, Richard Branson (though it was actually identified for deletion already by Lincher) and Spice trade - both of them clearly failed to comply with the standards, unfortunately. I guess somebody might have a look at those reviews (see talk pages obviously) and perhaps comment on them. I also encourage everybody to join the process on User:Lincher/GA (just choose an article and review, as simple as that!), so that we could have the list trimmed down to really Good Articles ;) ASAP! Bravada, talk - 00:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
(indent) Ok, Kafziel. Just assess articles for a minute and you will then be able to comment at your leisure but wont be applying the GA tag anymore because the articles are clearly not of GA status yet. There were lenient (not to say lazy) reviewers that just passed tons of articles and it is for that reason that we have to re-review these thousand of articles to make it comply with the standards that were there before the change. If you read what RelHistBuf & Bravada's comments, they say that they use the old criteria to evaluate the articles.
Also, to make it more emphatical just take a look at [2] where it states clearly the same criteria that we have now but in a more concise way. Along the way people (nominators and reviewers) complained that the system wasn't perfect ... or that it needed more tightening for it was tough to evaluate with criteria that aren't strict or clearly stated enough. That was the beginning of trying to expand the criteria to make sure that everything was included, no omissions and no flaws in the system of reviewing. Just so you guys know, the system didn't change much except for the part about citations and maybe requesting better prose and that is all. So there is a need to review articles back when there were no criteria and articles were accepted and in a few days accepted as GA. Once this is done and we have a clear bunch of GAs that solidly meet the criteria, we will be able to build on that and help the reviewers with comparisons. Lincher 15:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
No one should be rushing around delisting articles until the backlog of current articles is at a manageable level. None of the articles previous marked as GA is so horrible that it harm anyone if it stays at that status while the current things are dealt with. This preoccupation with older GA's does nothing to get the list of current articles reviewed, which should be the major focus of people on this project. Remove the log in your own eye before you attempt to remove the speck from your brother's. pschemp | talk 02:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The continual changing of criteria is causing more problems than its addressing. GA needs it criteria to be stable, how can you pass an article today. Suggest that you either accept the current concensus or stop reviewing articles until an agreed criteria is published. Also I suggest that the review of all the current articles be abandoned for now, there is a substancial backlog. Gnangarra 14:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
So for the record, I think it would be good to require inline citations, which is more restrictive than require citations. However, I raised a number of issues about this which were not addressed, and I still feel the change is premature. I was arguing about this proposed change immediately after the "notice" by RelHist and the "nutshell" (yesterday), and one of those points is that this appears to be a stronger requirement than WP:WIAFA. Gimmetrow 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Gimmetrow raised an issue concerning WP:WIAFA. As I understand it, the problem is the clause "where appropriate". In a talk page (I will look for it), it seems the clause means that an inline citation should be placed where there should be one. It does not mean to put them in an appropriate article. Inline citations are still required. I will try to seek more clarifications, but perhaps there are people out there who know the FA situation better? RelHistBuff 15:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
My general concern is whether these criteria changes end up assuring that only good articles get the GA tag. Any set of criteria depends on the editors applying it consistently and fairly, and that generally involves some bureaucratic oversight. I appreciate that GA intends to be "lite" on bureaucracy, but I do believe it is a large part of why FA works well, regardless of the actual FA criteria. Gimmetrow 20:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Partially in reference to what Gimmetrow stated above, I would like to propose setting a standard for the GA review. There is the Template:FGAN, for one, though I found it more appropriate and useful to quote the actual criteria and comment on each point of WIAGA - see examples at Talk:Louvre#GA review and Talk:Sunol Water Temple#GA review. This lets the readers find out easily what the criteria actually are (or were at the time of the review) and also makes one stick to the actual critetion rather than a "general concept" of or feeling about e.g. "well written" (I hope I do stick!) What do you think of those? I guess if the latter review format is found useful, we might use a page with a boilerplate text (in Wikicode) to be simply copy/pasted and filled with reviewer's comments.
Secondly, at present GAC only requires a written review (or simply a comment) when the article is failed (and also GA/R requires one when delisting), but none is requested for promoting the article! This makes for a rather strange situation where it is easier to pass than to fail a GA, which is not quite what we want if we want to up the standards (or, actually, make them abided by in practice). I believe requiring a review on the compliance with all WIAGA criteria will fend off careless/bad faith "promoters", who would neglect the WIAGA. Of course this adds a bit of bureaucracy to the process, but I found that, if you are actually reading the article and actively considering all the criteria, putting it all down is not that time-consuming and makes making final decisions easier on borderline cases. Again, what do you think about that? Bravada, talk - 01:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
I stroly oppose any attempt to make such templates madatory for much the same reasons as those given by pschemp. Unless there is consensus that the current process is insufficiently strict (I don't see any), it should not be changed. Eluchil404 21:43, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
This debate was raised a while ago, and I originally defended the separate GA category. Revisiting this debate, I find that I am increasingly happy to leave GAs behind in favour of an FA-only system.
Here are the points I would ask you to consider (all of which have no doubt been raised before):
I wonder how many more FAs we would have if people had simply gritted their teeth and edited articles, sought sources, taken illustrative photographs etc. etc. rather than getting caught up in stock-taking exercises. As one contributor said above, it is very un-wiki-like.
I do realise that the views I am expressing here are those of an experienced Wikipedian, and that GA may be a fun thing for newcomers to get involved in. However, wouldn't Wikipedia be much better served by direct tutoring of newbies instead?
Yours sincerely,
Samsara ( talk • contribs) 21:52, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Responding to Samsara:
Finally, GA should not be regarded simply as a step towards FA. Perhaps PR is such a step, but GA should be regarded totally independently. If somebody would want to strive for GA before advancing to FA, so be it, although it might be quite counterproductive for long articles, as currently they are unlikely to pass GA if they are not fit to pass FA. It is a good way, though, to have an article on a more obscure or limited topic brought up to encyclopedic standards. Finally, I believe that "Featured Articles" should list really exceptional articles, the "cream of the crop", so expecting ALL articles to become FA is quite impossible - you have to have the crop to be able to select the cream (please excuse me for the cheesy pun here). While it is good to have many exceptional articles, it is also important to have as many articles as possible simply conform to encyclopedic standards. Bravada, talk - 14:07, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Out of curiousity I clicked on Andrés Nocioni which was just failed a few minutes ago, and the reviewer said only that it failed due to lack of images. Problem is, images aren't required, right? Just says it's desirable (can't remember exact language). I didn't read the article to see if it would have failed on other points, but it would have been nice to see that the reviewer reiterated that it met all the others, and, perhaps, by the reviewer having to put each point in there and comment they would have picked up on the fact that lack of images should not make an article fail. -- plange 18:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
As Angela said - this, and several other cases, make a good argument to cite all WIAGA points while reviewing, and comment on how the article complies with them (or not). So, I'd like to ask whether anybody else (including people who posted above) supports this idea (we already know who opposes it, I guess). Bravada, talk - 22:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I think this example and several of Bravada's point give ample reasons to consider a review template. It doesn't have to be complicated or beaucratic. Just a simple 1-6 listing of the main criteria with a slot to write PASS/FAIL (or Needs Improvement to be nice). We can allow space for if a reviewer wants to add more detail and in the template encourage it for a FAIL mark. Just a simple template to add to the talk the page. Not only do I think that will look more professional and serious of a review, at the very least it will make everyone involved on the talk page more aware of what the Good article criteria is. Agne 23:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
Since we do have an emerging template, let's put together some ideas. Starting with the current fail Template:FGAN, I'd like to see a more professional presentation. A shaded box with the 1-6 main criteria listed wiki-linked to the relevant critera ( WP:MOS, WP:V, WP:CITE etc). That way if someone has a question about what is "well written" or what do you mean "in-line citation" they can go to that guideline. We can have a section underneath each area that says additional comments. Whether you pass or fail in that area, you can choose to leave a comment. Again, I do think we need to strongly encourage some sort of comment left for a fail mark. Agne 00:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I guess we all have our own "reviewing styles", so perhaps it would be easier and just say that "a review of the article's compliance with the WIAGA is required regardless of whether the nomination is failed or passed, preferably with reference to specific criteria" - wording here is stricly "working version", especially given that I am half-asleep too. Bravada, talk - 01:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I took a stab at one {{User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate}} ( ) -- feel free to tweak. I did it this way so that we can be free-form within. To use, you'd subst it with the 3 params: {{subst:User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate|Passed|message|~~~~}} and I put little pass/fail images for editors to delete the one that doesn't apply. Let me know and I'll move it to the template space... -- plange 01:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
{{subst:FGAN |well written = '''Pass''' (user's entry) |accuracy = '''Pass''' |thorough = '''Pass''' |NPOV = '''Pass''' |stable = '''Pass''' |images = '''Pass''' }}<pre> but it probably should look like : <pre>{{subst:FGAN |well written = P |accuracy = F |thorough = P |NPOV = P |stable = P |images = P <additions> |additional comments = user's entry |GA = P or F or OH }}
Where the P are pass and the F are fail, under additions should be additional arguments that should be in the template for GA, it would changes the heading depending on passing, failing or on hold of the article. And Additional comments should be an argument to let reviewers give additional comments. This would keep it simple but would give out all the criteria without being too big or too fancy. Lincher 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
(no identations) Now, I see some recent articles were passed as GA without any comments at all. Examples are: Drum and bass and Fenix*TX. Or with only one line comment, such as Alex Pettyfer and Flat Earth (although the latter, I would say, is qualified). Maybe template is not a bad idea after all. Either for passing or failing. Should we make an obligation that passing an article have to be with enough comments related to WP:WIAGA items? And if an article was passed without enough GA assessment, then anybody can relisted back to the nomination page. This will let other reviewers assess the article. — Indon ( reply) — 14:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)
Actually, according to the current rules, it is required to leave a review if one fails an article (Fail instruction 3), but I cannot find anywhere the requirement to leave a review if one passes an article. So one has to change that first. Bravada had a good example and my proposal is a slight modification. From WP:GAC, see the last line.
The process for reviewing an article is:
It’s just a proposal, but one should agree on adding this requirement first. Then one has to add the instructions for another editor (effectively a re-reviewer) to renominate the article if the original reviewer does not put in a proper review. It is not clear where to put this requirement these instructions. Should it be in
WP:GA/R or
WP:GAC?
RelHistBuff 08:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
{{GA|oldid=nnnnnn}}
on the talk page (replacing nnnnn with the id number of the reviewed version) rather than just {{GA}}
.
I don't want to make another fork of long discussion about citation, but it is difficult for people that favor Harvard referencing to get GA status. I just got a review that I cannot use Harvard style because it is not inline citation. Here's the message:
The GA criteria requires that only in-line citations be used, so I'm afraid Harvard referencing is not an option. In-line citations are footnotes. Since you already have the bibliography written up, it shouldn't be that difficult to change. For each place you need to cite something, just include the bibliography between < ref > and < /ref > tags at the end of the sentence. For example, I modified the four points on missionary work (Sandra, 1998) to use in-line citations.
I am trying to confince him/her that inline citation is not always footnote, but I'm not sure if I can. Probably I have to change my citation style (*sigh*). — Indon ( reply) — 17:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
The John Floyd (Virginia politician) article is 36kb. It meets every other requirement for GA promotion. Should I promote it to GA or not? -- Tjss (Talk) 20:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I was told that there would be discussion here about why inline citations are now mandatory for good articles. There doesn't seem to be any info here, from a cursory glance.
As explained at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?, I propose that inline citations no longer be mandatory. -- Kjoon lee 10:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Guys, I'm sorry about the brew ha. I ardently believed that it wasn't fair to de-list an article soley for in-line citations without giving them ample time to work the article to meet criteria 2. I thought that would create more of a ruckus then dropping off a friendly notice of the change before hand. I do think WP:V sums it up best when it notes "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Followed by the Section on Burden "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain. Editors should therefore provide references. If an article topic has no reputable, reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topic." This is about more then just in-line citations. This is the rock solid gospel of Wikipedia and we are doing a disservice as a Good Article Project if we don't hold articles to the standards of WP:V. Agne 18:36, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is the WP:V that isn't up to date to what people really think when reviewing for FA, A-class (in the assessment) and GA. Also, can we have case-by-case solutions for articles in pure physics/chemistry/biology for facts that have been reviewed by so many books that they aren't necessary to be inline cited. I think this would be a GA/Review process in that case. Lincher 18:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
I think an important point is "Who are we writing these articles for?" Are we writing them for the experts? or for the laypeople or even, dare I say, the scientifically ignorant? Is Wikipedia's goal to be a free source of knowledge limited to those who already know that something is a "perfectly factual statement"? I think the overwhelming message of WP:V is that we are not to assume but verify. I think another point that has not been touched upon is that there is no reason why these Math or Science articles have to be considered Good Articles. If the article's editors do not wish to conform to the Good Article Criteria, they have every right not to do so. We can leave it at that. But I think a hallmark of being a Good Article is being a standard of which all articles can be considered by and for readership that may not be able to assume perfectly factual statements are indeed just that. We don't write for the experts. We right for the average person and if we do it right, we have the fruits and the sources of the experts to present to them. Agne 19:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
What editors who "don't see what the fuss is all about" fail to see is that User:Agne27 has gone around tagging articles that she counted didn't have enough inline citations to satisfy her arbitrary whim for what a good number of these were. She doesn't even have the courtesy to let us know what parts of the articles she think need more inline citations according to this "new criteria" for judging articles. This is bean-counting, it isn't editting. There are definitely good articles that don't need a plethora of in-line citations to remain good articles. Since there is no minimum number, tagging articles as "at risk" for re-review without going through a careful evaluation is the height of arrogance. This kind of behavior needs to stop. -- ScienceApologist 20:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
Where did you get that bizarre notion? In
WP:V, which is official policy, it says "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, because Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research."
Which part of "any reader" do you fail to understand?
If you're stating a fact, and you can't expect every reader to already know it to be true, you need to provide a source. If you're stating a fact, and you can expect every reader to know it to be true, it doesn't need to go into the article. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 21:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I would also really like to see the inline citation requirement reviewed (and removed) especially now that it is threatening some mathematical articles I was previously quite pleased with such as the homotopy groups of spheres article. I feel some short articles can be just as easily verified using a simple reference at the end rather than a whole lot of footnotes. Is it perhaps time to move to a poll to see whether there is consensus to recommend inline citations in good articles but not enforce them? Cedars 14:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
There are many people, who can be seen here and on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Physics who think the inline citation requirement was too stringent. This being a wiki, I have modified it. See here. If I get knee-jerk reverts because I "don't have consensus," I will be very disappointed—please keep in mind that none of the article-writers that this line is causing problems for consented to the original version in the first place. (I remember when there was no GA review at all, and it wasn't very long ago.) -- SCZenz 00:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict/unindent) we're not asking for anything that isn't already part of the WP:CITE guideline (which incidentally is a link off of WP:V: "Editors should therefore provide references."). If it meets WP:CITE, and the other GA criteria, then it should pass GA. If it doesn't, and it was specifically over the inline citation criteria, then what we're saying is that there's a review process to have other eyes take a look and make sure the initial reviewer wasn't being unreasonable. We're not infallible, and it is a judgment call, and if someone is asking for a cite on something akin to "apple pie is made of apples" then others will back you up that it's not needed. If you're having issues with what WP:CITE requires (or that WP:CITE is the link off of WP:V on how to provide references), then please bring it up there :-). As far as the notice-- I didn't see what was being put on pages and we can see/discuss if it was inappropriately worded. I know everyone works hard on articles and we do not mean to imply otherwise. Also, FYI, FA is going through the same process and is currently notifying all current FAs that do not have inline citations that they need to work on that aspect so that it won't be put on FAR. -- plange 00:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that the experts DON'T work for Wikipedia. If they were working for Brittanica, they'd be vetted as experts before they started, and their professional reputations - and their ability to pay the mortgage - would depend on their ability to produce reliable and accurate articles. Brittanica has a "truth" standard, and it's be wonderful if Wikipedia could do the same, but when you rely on a bunch of amateur editors, including people who have never registered, and have never visited the site until 10 minutes before, there's no way to maintain a "truth" standard. Instead, Wikipedia opts for verifiability, and even that is a stretch, but official policy says that encyclopedic content must be verifiable.
The Good Article standard isn't an impossibly high standard to reach; every article can and should be Good Article quality. In general, if an article meets the Good Article standard, it is acceptable, and if it doesn't, it's not a Good Article. That's not to say that the article isn't true, isn't clearly written, isn't informative, isn't entertaining to read. It can be all those things - but unless it meets the verifiability standards, unless other editors and readers can see exactly where each statement comes from, it doesn't meet WikiPedia standards. And that's the difference between GeoCities and WikiPedia. There are some wonderful pages at GeoCities, as well as some terrible ones. Here at WikiPedia, we're happy to settle for good articles, if we can avoid the terrible ones.
And the thing is, if you back up every fact with a source, vandalism no longer is a problem. When someone makes an edit to a page you've created, and it's well-sourced, other editors will go out of their way to protect your page against vandalism. A page full of pseudoscience won't have reliable sources cited, because there are no reliable sources for pseudoscience. A "white hat" can waltz into a pseudoscience page and replace unverifiable crap with real science, properly cited, and other editors step in to protect the white hat's edits from vandalism. The Verifiability policy says any editor is free to remove unsourced content; that's not true of content with proper cites.
It really does make sense to cite everything you do, as you write it. Anyone who is writing a science article is going to refer to reliable sources as he writes it anyhow; adding cites takes FAR less time than hunting for the right language to say something. And most people writing science articles have learned to be thorough and methodical. This is something they all should embrace eagerly. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 01:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Reponse to ClairSamoht: : Sadly, the most careful inline citations do little to prevent vandalism. I have come back to sections of articles I wrote with detailed citations, to find that the article text has been changed and the citation itself modified. I cannot trust these citations unless I go back to a historical version that I supplied or verified. I have also had the misfortune of finding a bogus reference that remained in an article for nearly five years, so I don't think many people "fact-check" the citations. Gimmetrow 01:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
How about this, we change 2b to read:
“ | the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided) | ” |
That way if an editor fails an article because there was no cite for "the earth revolves around the sun" you can bring it up on GA/R -- plange 01:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(edit conflict/unindent) what the proposed re-wording does, is allow articles to be disputed in GA/R if the editor feels the reviewer went overboard in asking for cites so that things can then be decided on in a case by case basis. Note that the CN page does have a specific entry on technical knowledge and whether a PhD is required, etc. -- plange 01:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
My feelings about this are probably unpopular. Providing a footnote for a sentence, such as the above one for Northern Virginia and the sentence about special relativity is not just unnecessary, it is a bad idea. It makes articles harder to write, it makes them harder to read and it devalues the referencing in general. I think the first two are obvious, but I'll explain the third. Providing footnotes for statements that you could find in any treatment of special relativity (including those in high school physics textbooks) seems nonsensical to me because when I see a footnote, it indicates two things to me: (i) the fact being asserted may be surprising and requires justification, which can be found in the source cited (ii) the source being referred to is authoritative. Who wrote the authoritative demonstration, or literature review, or meta-analysis conclusively demonstrating that Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virgina? Nobody. There is no controversy there and presumably every single book in the references section will mention this agreed upon fact. In this case, the footnote doesn't make verification any easier, because why dig through the stacks to find someone's high school textbook from 1962 to confirm something that a much simpler check will reveal? The only thing having a footnote does is to confuse the legitimate value of the other footnotes, which indicate statements in need of support or clarification.
I mean really, who wants to read an article which cites one randomly chosen textbook, and has sixty footnotes of the form "ibid, p. 311"? (Of course, a number of editors say that it is important to use several different sources. I basically agree, but the point is not to then choose two textbooks at random so that you can randomly assign footnotes to one or the other and make the article appear more pleasing to the Good Article reviewers. The point is that if well-known sources disagree on a point, to mention this and perhaps provide an entry to the specialist literature.) – Joke 03:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
(Of course, everything above is predicated on there being a good "References" section to begin with.) – Joke 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
In addition to the criteria change by plange for WP:WIAGA, which I also agree upon, we should have a section pertaining on Technical articles which should read like this :
“ | Articles that are on technical subjects should be accessible to laymen by means of Wikilinks, See alsos and minimal addition of inline citations. This will prevent loss of quality of such articles by the addition of explanatory sentences and will refrain requests by reviewers to have perfect inline citations. | ” |
Lincher 02:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
This doesn't make too much sense to me. "Accessible to laymen"? I think it depends. Part of the charm about Wikipedia is that you have people who can write an article about, say, the vDVZ discontinuity or canonical gravity or ADM formalism (to pick some things in gravitational physics at random) which are very useful to experts wanting to find something quickly but which are never going to be readable (or particularly interesting) to the layman. I'm in favor of this test: an article should be readable to the people who are likely to go looking for it. – Joke 03:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
So the layreader can get an overview of the topic, enough to know if this is something of interest to them or not. VDVZ discontinuity (Massive gravity) acheives this in one line In theoretical physics, massive gravity is a particular generalization of general relativity studied by van Dam and Veltman; and by Zakharov. For those interested enough to read beyond that line it then tells you a little more, namely that the theory attemps to explain why gravity happens, in terms of some quantum physics.
I do not support this proposal. If an article is inaccessible it is usually because it is poorly written and thus should be covered by criteria one. Cedars 14:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Why should tech articles be different? FAs don't make an exception. Rlevse 11:56, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
Dear Lordy, I just looked away for a moment and now there are too many posts here for me to follow.
Now, is there any real problem? Has anybody failed an article on a scientific topic for it not having a reference for the fact that the Earth is revolving around the Sun or similar? Has anybody even nominated any article on a topic from physics or mathematics since the new WIAGA was adopted for that matter?
The new criterion adopts a very relaxed and common sense approach to inline citations, simply requesting for them to be used and leaving it up to common sense decisions as to what statements have to be cited. I am keeping an eye on the current application of this guideline, and I must say the reviewers are predominantly exhibiting a very rational approach to that.
Now, if the feared thing happens and somebody fails an article for a lack of an unnecessary citations, the Earth won't stop revolving and we won't fall off, it's just a bad review, it happens sometimes for this or that reason, that's what we get GA/R for. We could then discuss an individual case should the need arise (and I believe it would arise much later than anybody here would expect). Only if it is proved in practice that there are significant problems with the application of this guideline will it make sense to make any alteration to this WIAGA criterion.
Moreover, for anybody feeling that "science" articles are unique in that, do you think it would be sensible to require a citation for the statement that Celine Dion is a singer?
Can you just calm down and wait a few weeks to see how the guideline is adopted and whether there are any REAL issues? Frankly speaking, I don't want to see this topic bickered about any more here. Just stop and wait.
Good day or good night, depending on where you are Bravada, talk - 03:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)
I guess, I am at the same timezone as Bravada. When I got online this morning, whooaa it's already a lengthly discussion about the same topic again. I would say I'm 100% agree with Bravada. I would not ask inline citation for such an elementary fact, but I would for history, or say there is 80% improvement compared to other method, and so on. So please don't freak out about inline citation. It is there to help verifiability of the article not to fear the editors. — Indon ( reply) — 08:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Since plange's proposal does not mention the nature of the dispute, it basically looks very much like the WP:WIAFA criterion. I don't know the history of WIAFA's "where appropriate" clause, but in any case they have settled with it and they still make very tough requirements on citing sources. We should just go on. My feeling is that the physics Wikiproject members just panicked when they saw Agne's notices. We as GA reviewers will not fail physics articles so arbitrarily as they seem to think and perhaps they will calm down. I'm a former particle physicist myself so perhaps I'll get more involved on reviewing in that area. RelHistBuff 14:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
In order to avoid spurrious claims that we never reached a consensus (and in fact, we did last time), we should vote on the proposal. RelHistBuff 14:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)
In this context what dose "where appropriate" mean this is where probelms and ambiguaties stem from. Until that is defined i am unable to make any assesment of weather to oppose or support the wording.-- Lucy-marie 23:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Support
Oppose
Neutral
Attempt to find consensus I might be wrong, so please correct me if that's the case, but it appears that a lot of the objections are not to the wording of the clause, but in how notification of the changed criteria was applied in the recent past. Do we agree, that where citations are appropriate, a good article should have them? Where they are appropriate, of course, is something that is worked out in the review process, and if a reviewer was too over-zealous, everyone has the ability to bring it to GA/R to get multiple opinions. If we can agree on this, and that articles will be judged on a case by case basis, then we might have a winner? We can then talk about how legacy GAs are handled. I agree with Walkerma in the last section of this page (in the quote box below) that one week is perhaps not enough time. -- plange 19:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
Upon reflection, I'm beginning to think we might have a bit of a tempest in a teakettle. I don't think there are many science-article editors who dispute the paramount importance of WP:V and WP:CITE. I'm also quite sure that most of these authors think that footnotes (in many cases along with a seperate references section) are often necessary for correct referencing. I do however, think people get riled up when they see things like this and this which were pretty jarring to us.
I don't know what others think about this, but my perception is that what most editors would like is to be able to write articles about standard textbook material (like special relativity) without giving every damn sentence a footnote, even if any of the standard references cited could immediately be used to confirm something. There is no "numerical minimum" number of inline references per kilobyte of text – it depends on the case at hand – and there is no requirement to provide a citation for facts that are readily confirmed by looking at the principal references. I'm sure that there are sentences in articles like string theory, special relativity (certainly not the ones tagged above, though) and Hubble's law which really need to be properly referenced, but it is hardly appropriate to just say "I counted the references, and the number is not to my liking" without pointing out specific flaws, or worse to choose statements seemingly at random.
My impression is that most math and physics editors like the good article process and are just a little upset to have been inundated with these poorly thought out mass messages. We are all, just as you are, trying to improve the encyclopedia, and we all agree that proper referencing is vital to having Wikipedia become a trustworthy source. However, we all think there must be a happy medium with an appropriate level of footnoting, and, you know, would like to be given the benefit of the doubt. – Joke 16:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I was asked by plange to comment, since I am both a writer of science articles and I also consider myself a "member of this (GA) club." My area is chemistry, not physics (I teach college chemistry), but a lot of the points are the same. In chemistry peer-reviewed papers it is common to give inline citations even for some things considered obvious to most readers, e.g., "The aldol reaction is an important carbon-carbon bond forming reaction. 1" Such refs would typically be to standard texts we all have by our desks. However, such refs are usually only given once in the paper, we see no need to keep citing the same book over and over for related points. It is simply there to assert, "This is the basic premise of our work, but it's not just our opinion, it has its foundations in the canon of the literature." In most well-cited chemistry Wikipedia articles I've seen, this has also been the approach used, and it would seem to meet plange's version of criterion 2b. You can see my interpretation of this viewpoint at Chemical substance, an article full of very "obvious" concepts. If you read all the refs, the later "uncited" statements are all in fact covered fairly well. I would think that this style could be also used for physics articles perfectly easily. I think the addition of inline refs does improve this type of introductory article, it helps us get away from the schoolboy-type definitions which often pervade this type of article. There are a couple of areas where I am uncomfortable - I think it will take projects several months to bring their articles into line, so the timeline proposed seems too short. I also hope we don't see dozens of "Citation needed" tags added - these are all-too-often nitpicking. Until we get a system of rigorous fact-checking like the one we discussed at Wikimania we should keep the number of inline citations under control. I think the chemistry approach offers a nice middle road. Overall I strongly support the new policy (it was inevitable), and I commend those who have taken the time to inform everyone of its implementation - thanks! Walkerma 04:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm glad you copied this down here – I considered replying to it up above, but decided that it would be a waste of time as the talk page is a mess up there. I very much agree with this comment, and I hope that we can get broad agreement on this. – Joke 17:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
What we agree upon :
What some think and other stuff :
Out of that, can everybody have a take at adding to both lists to see where the issues are and where we can find a compromise.
After such a work will be done, we can now go and create specific criterion to assess such points and leave some to more subjective reviewing in order to have set criteria for a long time. Lincher 00:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Well, I thought my earlier comments had gotten things back on track, but I wandered off to, God forbid, write an article and look what happens. I think we are making straw man arguments here. As a general principle, this is how I interpret User:Walkerma's comments. Please tell me what you think of this:
In addition, I would add, although it doesn't have much bearing on Good Articles:
Although this isn't succinct enough to be a criterion, I would like to see if people agree on this (the first statement, not my addition) as a matter of principle. I have a feeling that a lot of us can find agreement on this. I've been going through some of the articles with cite tags, and aside from the edit to Special Relativity I mentioned above, many of them seem quite reasonable – say, many of those User:Agne27 added to Hubble's Law, some of those on Redshift, etc... So I don't think things are as bad as people are making them out to be above. Physicists and mathematicians are trained to do proper referencing, and much as you might think we're trying to weasel out of it, we're not. Likewise, as some of the Good Article people have mentioned, you're reasonable people and no article has been removed for failure to provide a reference for a statement that seems trivial. – Joke 02:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
So let's see, histrionics aside, if we can get any kind of agreement:
Early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. Then, for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works (and in other works), inline references can be omitted. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. However, for surprising statements or statements for which it would be helpful or necessary to refer to another work, an inline reference is required.
Support
Oppose
Neutral/Comment
Thanks Joke for helping to move this forward. In regards to Lincher's good suggestion, I've modified it below. I agree that criteria for GA might need to be longer than FA due to the fact of our single reviewer process. -- plange 02:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
2. b: the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. For scientific articles, early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. Then, for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works (and in other works), inline references can be omitted. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. However, for statements that are potential violations of Neutral Point of View and No Original Research, inline citations are required. Please see the verifiability policy for questions.
Support
Oppose
Neutral/Comment
In my opinion, FWIW, making exceptions or trying to define when to cite or not in science/technical articles will not be workable. Anyone who has worked in standardisation knows that what works is simplicity (the KISS principle). A complex standard is doomed to failure.
The real problem is not the editorial standard. The problem is fear among some physics authors that some crazy "reviewer/editor" will come along and slap fact tags all over the place or cry out for purportedly unneeded inline cites. I'm sorry to tell them, but even if GA were to disappear all together, those crazy people will still be around, messing around with your articles. That's a basic nature of wiki. Another problem is that not enough credit is given by these physics authors that an experienced GA reviewer will work properly and in good faith. And if some reviewer is not working properly, these physics authors do not recognize that the GA/R process is really there to help them out.
I have written physics papers in research journals and there has always been interplay between me as author and the editor/reviewer. And often I found some of his/her suggestions a bit bothersome. But I learned that it isn't just my opinion that counts. I always respected his/her professionalism just as much as he/she respected me. So if there is a discussion in the article's talk page between a GA reviewer and a physics author, then with the attitude of respect for each other a solution will always be found. I support the original proposal that is basically the same as the FA criterion. RelHistBuff 07:52, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
User:CMummert's conmment above (I think most science articles are not written "from" sources; they are written "about" a subject. They are usually a collection of basic facts which the author is able to produce without looking at sources. The author knows, however, that the facts are verifable and gives a reference where an interested reader may verify them.) is germane and goes to the heart of the struggle for common understanding here. The GA reviewers slapping on cite tags seem essentially to be suggesting that, without citations, a reader is in a hard position to accept the basic accuracy or verifiability of an article; that only specialists in the field will be in a position to judge. Typically, encyclopedia entries do not need to make particular use of inline citations to provide the reader with such assurances about basic facts because the list of contributors is available and drawn from known specialists in the field. If a leading scholar on Florentine history informs you that the Ciompi Rebellion of 1378 was a seminal event, that it happened because of the Plague, etc..., you will believe it because the author - named, verifiable, etc... - enjoys implied authority. In an article which has no such known scholarly basis (since anyone can edit it), implied authority becomes a greater issue. I am therefore sympathetic to the desire to use citation as a means of providing this verifiability. In fact Homestarmy's comment (anyone can produce an article based on one or two sources) above suggests precisely this kind of thinking: articles are being written by people who do not necessaily have in-depth knowledge of the field. Clearly, the response generated by the tagging of the Metric Expansion, Hubble and Relativity articles has demonstrated that these are not, however, the result of someone with Grade 8 physics, a textbook and too much time on their hands. To have reached the level that they have is the result of informed opinion.
Thus, I would draw from this a general observation. As a matter of course, simply by the rigours of the ongoing editing process, by the time an article has made it to the point where it can be considered for GA status it should be measured based on having acquired the implied authority that would be the case behind single-authored, named scholarly entries. What I think is a flawed approach is to say, give us (laymen) the 10, 20, 30 or so references we need so we can, if necessary, check your authority (i.e. verifiability). That comes across as an undergraduate exercise. Instead, the process needs to be able to generate that trust in implied authority through the review process without resorting to an inline citation policy that, when read by someone with familiarity in the field, would make them laugh. Also, let me reiterate, citation is exceptionally important; in the case I mention above, any responsible entry would leave uncited the claim that the Ciompi rebellion was one of the seminal events of Florentine history (universally accepted by Renaissance historians) and probably provide a citation about its cause being the black death (a matter of scholarly conjecture). These matters, as iterated above in RelHistBuff's comment, can probably best be worked out via the discussion page rather than a firm X citations needed standard. (Sorry about the length of this comment.) Eusebeus 13:23, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
One of the Physics project members (Somewhere among these many conversations) exhorted us to just trust that Physics project is not going to "fuck you over" when it comes to the "correctness" of the science articles. I don't think the request for in-line citations is a statement of distrust for the science editors or the Physics project. It is also not an attack on "science". I, for one, believe that all the items that I tagged in Special relativity and Hubble's law were true and factual--they just weren't verifiable. When the times comes and the editors who are currently watching and working on these articles leaves, then what? How can be we possibly guarantee that Wikipedia will have a perpetual stream of experts that can safeguard these articles from OR and inaccuracies? At the very least with the inclusion of in-line cites, we open up the ease of verifiability to non-experts. Without them, it is virtually impossible to have these articles verified by any other then the experts which we might not always have around. Agne 23:00, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
At the very least with the inclusion of in-line cites, we open up the ease of verifiability to non-experts. Without them, it is virtually impossible to have these articles verified by any other then the experts which we might not always have around. -- unfortunately this is wishful thinking. If crackpots come in and modify articles that have every line in-line cited but you as an editor aren't familiar with the subject, then you will have a problem when they replace the verifiable text with equally verifiable text from sources that are not reliable. How will non-expert verifier be able to tell when a crank argues that obscure scientific theory verified by text a and text b by an obscure scientific publishing house was disproven by text c and text d published in an equally obscure, yet non-mainstream publishing house. Sorry, Wikipedia will always need experts, and the nature of the beasts is that experts will come and go, but there will probably always be some around. -- ScienceApologist 23:59, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
A slight modification of Joke's proposal:
Early in an article on an established subject it suffices to make an inline reference to one or two well known and respected works about the subject. One should avoid inline references for commonplace facts that are easy to locate in these works. This makes articles easier to read and does not hamper verifiability. For surprising statements or statements for which it would be helpful or necessary to refer to another work, an inline reference is required. In case of disputes about whether a fact is indeed a "commonplace fact" that should not be cited, one should consult the literature about the subject written for the same target group. It is then up to the person(s) claiming that a fact is not "commonplace" to provide for the necessary references that show that such facts are usually cited when mentioned in the literature.
Count Iblis 14:01, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
Might seem much like my first one, but really this all comes down to us following WP:CITE, so the buck (and explanations) stops there. If you have questions on how inline citations should be implemented so that it can pass GA, ask there. If you think that a reviewer did not follow WP:CITE and was over-zealous in your review, you can seek redress here: WP:GA/R -- plange 15:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for what is deemed appropriate)
To RelHistBuff - it was not contradictory. It said "the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory". The text clearly differentiated "citing sources" which is required, from "inline citations", one form of "citing sources" which is obviously desirable but not the only way sources may be cited. Sources may be cited by listing them at the end of the article in a references section - which satisfies CTSWyneken's desire to credit authors and to point to further information. This is also the form common in many encyclopedias, including Britannica. Gimmetrow 21:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
(unindent) The thing is, I'm not the one claiming it is not allowed, you are. Nevertheless you have not provided any evidence to support your claim. Since your claim is clearly contrary to the historical precedent visible in scores of current GA articles, it is you who have the burden of evidence here. Since you have failed to provide evidence to support your innovation, I have no need to defend against it further. Note again, this is essentially a difference of philosophy and you should be responding below in the philosophy section. I will not respond here again. Gimmetrow 13:47, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
In my opinion the GA system is itself already "good" and, furthermore, as recognition of merely "good" articles it ought not to be any tougher. I would suggest that some or many of the complainants here simply don't like GA, and want to turn it into a miniature FA.
Frankly, this is all a waste of time and energy. FA is more important, and is even more broken. Peer review doesn't work any more, and articles take weeks to get through the FA process. It would be best, imho, if we left GA as it is, a fairly informal scheme for recognising above average - but not necessarily excellent - articles, and focussed our energies a) on fixing PR and FA, b) writing articles (as I'm currently doing). -- kingboyk 19:05, 28 September 2006 (UTC)
The desire to improve the quality of articles is certainly commendable. Philosophically, however, I think of a "Good Article" as a well-written text that meets the policy requirements of WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. While inline citations are generally useful and should be encouraged (as the old criteria wording did), I'm not convinced GA should require more than WP:V does on this point; any article which fails to be recognized as "Good" is de facto a "Bad Article". (I wish the "failed GA" template was rewritten to be more encouraging, as has been proposed in the past.) Stating the GA represents a well-written, mostly complete article meeting the policy requirements has two great benefits: 1) it's a stable definition that nobody can argue about, and 2) it clearly distinguishes GA from the requirements of FA. Meeting WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV is no small feat in a developed article!
It seems like some other editors have a different philosophy on what GA is or should be. Perhaps if that were explained, some parts of this debate could be resolved? Gimmetrow 02:51, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
The following are different citation styles you can use to insert references into Wikipedia articles:
If someone is wanting to use something other than the above for inline citations, what is it? -- plange 19:41, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
IMHO at one point of time the correctness and comprehensiveness check and the rating for other merits (good resepectively brilliant prose, didactics, styleguide confirmity) will have to be de-coupled. The former has to be done (a) by domain experts and (b) with Mediawiki software support (which will mark the reviewed version and give easy access to it). -- Pjacobi 19:35, 29 September 2006 (UTC)
Is requiring inline citations compatable with policy Wikipedia:Ignore all rules?
For example, if after discussion, the editors conclude that inline citations are not appropriate, this would then clash with the stricter citation requirements. WP:AIR is policy and WP:CITE is only a guideline. -- Salix alba ( talk) 08:14, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
it seems to me that there is a problem with the GA process many times bigger than the inline citation criterion.. the problem is how easy it is for an article that doesn't satisfy the criteria to slip through the process and be listed as a GA. it means that a large part of the wikipedia community doesn't respect the GA tag as "meaning anything". the only way the tag will mean anything is if there is more people and more time involved in the review process. i believe there are ways of doing this without causing too much extra work for reviewers.
an idea i had in that direction was that the initial reviewer isn't allowed to pass or fail the article immediately, but the passing or failing decision (perhaps on subpages, like at FAC) has to stand for a certain amount of time (3 days, say).. if at the end no one disagrees with the review (or, in any case, a consensus has been reached about the article), then it is passed or failed accordingly.
in any case, something needs to be changed so that there is a feeling of legitimacy, and even consensus, in the process.. then GAs can win the respect of the entire community (those FA people seem to really look down their noses at GAs at the moment.. which really shouldn't be the case). Mlm42 15:24, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I run the script for the GA process, so I see articles come and go all the time. Many people who are skeptical of the process don't understand how it works but this same sort of skepticism can be applied just as well to Wikipedia. Tweaking your words a little, "the Wikipedia process I mean seems chaotic...sporadic users can write whatever they want. I mean the 'process' is only one step removed from someone taking a forum message and designating it an encyclopedia article." Some things people may not understand:
In the end, the process, like Wikipedia, seems to "just works" though it does (just like the featured article system) take time to eliminate articles that were passed under lower standards or that have degreaded over time. I remember when flag came to us and I thought this is a pretty ordinary article (but didn't list it for review). I checked back the other day and it was delisted. That said, I welcome ideas for improvement and I have thought of adding a "Random articles" section to the list to stimulate re-review. But in your criticism make sure you are criticising based upon results not perceptions. And, of course, if you find any particularly weak good articles list them here so we can know what articles are slipping through the cracks. Cedars 01:17, 2 October 2006 (UTC)
Since the heart of the matter seems to be the application of WP:CITE in relation to WP:V, the discussion has moved there towards trying to find a consensus compromise that we can all live with and help produce a better encyclopedia with. Working together to get something worthwhile accomplished with this guideline will make all these headaches and frustrations not be in vain. I do think there is room for compromise between what the GA team would like to see for readibility and verification and what the Science editors would like for ease of consistency and professionalism. I invite the editors who have been taking part in these discussions across several pages to lay things to rest here and move over to WP:CITE's talk page so that we can garner consensus there. There is not much that can be accomplished here before things are settled with the guideline. Agne 16:55, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
I would like this article to be completly reviewed and an explannation given with detailed reasons in the talk page of this article if it does not meet the criteria for 'good article' so that it can be improved by it's contributors. Wikidudeman 22:46, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
An idea I am debuting today: a list and quarterly target for bringing an article to FA standard. I realize I've denigrated GA here before, but it occurred to me this might be a good bridge for newer editors who work on this process to try their hand at an FA. Add to the list and see if you can get an article to FA standard by year's end. Marskell 16:42, 3 October 2006 (UTC)
This article was promoted from a stub (as rated by yours truly) to GA status by an editor who added a lot of information to this article, but I can't find any evidence that it was reviewed for this status. I'm not convinced that this was done without any attempt to prove its quality -- especially as this editor's contributions have been only to this article. -- llywrch 01:51, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
There are tiny articles that will never grow but they will probably get hit on by vandalism and since nobody watches them, then WP will loose credibility for that. Is there a way we can incorporate those into the GA process or to refer them to others who can 1)protect or 2)rate these articles. Lincher 16:13, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
Hi,
I'm a fairly active reviewer, and I've noticed that several unregistered users (i.e. IPs) have nominated articles for good article status. My main concern is that the reviewer cannot be entirely certain that they are talking to the same editor who nominated the article and IP users are often unresponsive, slowing down the process.
My recommendation is that only registered users should be able to nominate an article for good article status. What do you think? CloudNine 14:39, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
There are several articles which are currently counted by projects as being Good article quality or better which have never been formally submitted for good article review. The article above is probably one of the clearest examples of problems which can arise from this. One group counts it one grade lower than good article, another group one grade higher than good article. They can't both be right. Would it make sense to have all articles which want to be considered for FA status in the future, or which have been rejected for FA status, candidates for GA status or not? Thank you in advance for your responses. Badbilltucker 00:17, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Aren't articles supposed to be on hold for 7 days only? There are currently several that have been on hold for weeks. Just how long are they allowed to be on hold? If the person putting them on hold doesn't come back by the end time, can anyone clear the article off the list? Rlevse 17:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
After reviewing this article, I do not believe it meets the criteria, as it seems to lack NPOV, difficult to read, too long, and is haphazertly put together, not to metion that it seems to have a large amount of extra information that is not directly related to the article. Honeymane 03:33, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Reviewed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time. The article had already been nominated once, but failed. The issued addressed have probably been corrected. However, regardless whether I upset a lot of gamers, I don't think the article is good because it contains too much irrelevant information, as per What Wikipedia is not. It has a long list of levels, then a long list of all enemies in the game.
Is this a valid criteria? What do others think?
Fred- Chess 16:55, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
I've put the GA Nomination on hold while we debate this issue. -- Ritchy 15:12, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Is there a reason you have to be registered to do anything here? I note that FA has no issues with IPs. 68.39.174.238 22:23, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I do not particulary support the subsection Mathematics and Physical Sciences (Astronomy, Theory), especially the parathesed part. Why not just call it Mathematics and Pysics? Nick Mks 21:23, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
I reverted the reviews made by Cocoaguy ( talk • contribs • count) after, on being asked why he failed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time he answered this. If the GA criterias and the review process is to have any purpose, such reviewing can't be accepted.
Fred- Chess 17:45, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
“ | I Failed this page beacuse the information was vage and un-interesting. lastly i could not understand a thing beacuse i do not follow the show or own the game. | ” |
Okay cool, I didn't know the whole story and it seems you're right †he Bread 01:12, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Mmmmmmm. I noticed this by accident. Lotsa editing going on here. Can we get this out in the open and discuss it? Many other people may want to have a say, but may not have noticed the editing going on here. -- Ling.Nut 17:30, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
I guess this pertains a little to the above discussion, but how excatly does one learn how to rate good articles? There's a bit of a backlog right now, and I'd like to help, but I don't trust my judgement. The criteria is vague (it has to be or it wouldn't cover every subject) so I have no guidance as to what is a good article and what is not. Should we have a way or place to learn how to rate good articles, or a mentor student thing? I don't know, maybe I'll just stick with nominating and working on articles instead of rating them.-- Clyde Miller 20:38, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
The backlog is still rather crazy right now, and I'm wondering if it might help to split up the nominations a little more. For instance, Arts encompasses all sorts of things - books, movies, video games - can we split those up? Should meteorology get its own subheading since the machines they have working over at that WikiProject are responsible for a majority of that section? I think that if we split some of these headers up, we'll have more people able to review the articles they're comfortable with, and have fewer articles sitting for a month because of how overwhelming it is. Thoughts? -- badlydrawnjeff talk 18:46, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm also of the opionion that the splitting was a bit heavy. Now it's difficult to find nominations among all the headers, many of which have only one or two nominations. I, for one, didn't have much difficulty looking at a list of eight or nine articles in a list and figuring out which ones I was qualified and interested in reviewing and didn't feel heavily pressured to take only the oldest one on the list. Neil916 ( Talk) 16:25, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
How long does it take for a GA to get reviewed? It may be better to just go to FAC if it takes so long. Some have been waiting since 4th November for a review, while mine (Paul McCartney) has been waiting since the 12th. Is GA actually an active thing, or is it a passing interest which has died? LuciferMorgan 01:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Frankly, I've gotten tired over so many articles being nominated that have simple, glaring problems that can be easily fixed. For these articles, I have invented the quick-fail system. The basic idea is to quickly scan new articles for 'negative' templates, {{fact}} tags, and check the images for fair use rationale. If they have any of these problems, Template:GAquickfail can be added to the talk page. Even though this is just a few problems, they are the most common, and easily 50% of articles seem to fail for at least one of those reasons. This process is only for newly nominated articles though; articles that have been waiting a while deserve a proper review. A couple of users can keep an idea on Wikipedia:Good articles/Candidates on their watchlist and do a quick 10 second quick-fail check on new arivals. This should help stem the flow of nominations to those that are actually ready to be reviewed. Thoughts?-- SeizureDog 08:48, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Here's a list of articles that have been on for the longest (quick look, not certified accurate), although doing this, I think that reviewers are doing better at tackling the backlog than at first appeared:
An article I reviewed and failed a while back ( Asian arowana) has since been greatly improved. The original nominator contacted me and asked me to look over it again. Since it has now reached GA level, can I just give it a GA Pass, or should I have him go through the process of re-nominating it first? -- NoahElhardt 05:16, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Why on earth is there a United States History section all to its own when everything else is shoved into "World History"?! Adam Cuerden talk 09:18, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Roman-Spartan War was removed off the nomination queue with the edit summary that it is already A-class. However, I think the nominator should decide whether to retire the nomination. A-class assessments are done in the Wikiprojects and satisfy their own internal standards while GA have a wider set of editors with a general set of standards. It may be that the author may have wanted feedback or a quality confirmation from this wider set of editors. -- RelHistBuff 09:54, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent) Yep, agree with all of the above, except that the nominator of an article has (or should have, I suppose) the right to w/draw the nom for any reason at all, including just being in a bad mood that day. But I agree that the reason "It's already an A in our WikiProject" is not necessarily a good reason. BTW Thanks Titoxd and Walkerma for the clear explanations. :-) -- Ling.Nut 04:27, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I just updated the table on GA statistics. Does anyone know where one can find the total article number? I would like to fill in the rest of the table and finish the last plot. Also, I think it is interesting that this month has seen a reduction in the rate of increase of GAs. A slow-down in promotions? Or a speed-up in delistings? Probably both. -- RelHistBuff 11:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
I just realised I keep forgetting to list the new GAs in the GA list. Is there any bot way to compare the category with the list? I'll do the work of sorting all missed articles in. Adam Cuerden talk 08:22, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Just wondering what the usual turnaround time is for GA - we've had expressionist architecture up there for over a month, does it require a specialist to look at it or should I round up a reviewer and point them in the right direction? -- Mcginnly | Natter 01:31, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent)I hope to help with the backlog after the 16th or so. Hope to get some serious work done. 'Til then tho, am unable to help. It's that time of year. Others may be in the same boat — final exams, Christmas, depression over credit card bills... -- Ling.Nut 05:10, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
So let me get this straight. If I want to review articles (and I do, it would give me a purpose on Wikipedia), all I have to do is know the GA criteria and not have made signifigant contributions to the article? If that's all, than that's great. Am I missing something here? It seems to good to be true! Green451 00:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent) welcome to GA! -- Ling.Nut 03:11, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I was bold and unilaterally changed the verbiage of WP:GAC (but you'll note I took the changes to Talk.. other changes have been made recently which I plan to revist after final exams).
The next verbiage that I added says "no less than 2 and no more than 7 calendar days." I feel OK about putting a bottom limit of 2 days to the On hold since putting an article on Hold in the first place is purely at the reviewer's discretion. Anyone who puts anything On Hold must logically be willing to wait at least some time. -- Ling.Nut 14:05, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I reverted Useamac ( talk · contribs)'s passing of Apple Computer advertising just a short time ago. This was Useamac's first edit. The second edit of the user was to add back a section that was removed and placed in a seperate article as it was making the article incredibly long. The section was clearly summarized with a "main article" link at the top of the section. Useamac continues to reinsert this section and redirect the article on the commercial to the main advertising article. Does anyone have any opinions on what I've done in this situation? Metros232 16:41, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
(undent).. yeah.. my point was not that it is worthy of a review; my point is, don't get in an edit war or WP:3RR. Let other people delist it. You've done your bit. -- Ling.Nut 19:24, 9 December 2006 (UTC)
I am currently the reviewer of the GA nom for Duck Hunt. I put it on hold so that the nominator could fix stuff, and we have kept an open dialogue. This is my first time reviewing a GA nom, so if a more experienced reviewer has the time, could they please check out the article and my review on the article's talk page to make sure that I'm doing everything right? Thanks, Green451 23:11, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm a new reviewer... and still learning. A week or so ago I passed an article on Billy Sunday. One of the contributors to the article, however, questioned my passing of the article. He feels as if it was too POV, but I wasn't sure. I was wondering if I could get some feedback from other more experienced reviewers on this article. Was I too easy on my passing it? I thought it was a good, well written, easy to read article... it wasn't perfect, but was one of the better articles I read. Balloonman 16:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I was working on an article that was nominated here ( Futurama) and the reviewer put it on hold. I have dealt with the issues listed on the talk page but the article is still listed as being on hold (for more than 7 days). Is there some action I need to take to notify reviewers that the article is ready to be reviewed? I understand there is a backlog but I didn't want it to be left on hold once the issues had been corrected. Thanks for any info, this process is still new to me. Stardust8212 18:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
You may put an article On Hold for no less than 2 and no more than 7 calendar days if only minor changes or clarifications are needed. If at least 2 days have expired without an editor addressing the concern(s), the article can be failed at any time, but a decision should be made before or around the week's end.
Is it normal if there is two social sciences sections (and one is empty). Frédérick Lacasse 14:24, 19 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't have time to work on it myself, but I thought someone might want to review Toilet-related injury, just for fun. -- Beland 10:09, 31 December 2006 (UTC)
I took a quick look and it fails almost all criteria
Someone who really knows the GA project should review the way the requests for review page is organized. The problem is that the categorization on it does not match the categorization of GA articles themselves. That leaves reviewers who know where an article is in the review page the task of trying to figure out where it belongs on the GA listing page. The two should be consistent. I don't want to undertake the task for two reasons: 1. I'm lazy and 2. I don't want to make changes that would have unforeseen repercussions. The latter is the real reason why someone with better knowledge of the project should address this issue. It would actually be nice to see greater automation of this process, but that's would require some real development + Fenevad 15:14, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Someone who didn't know what they were doing promoted
Slayer as a GA, left no comments on the talk page and didn't add it to the GA list until told on their user talk page. I was hoping a more experienced GA reviewer could take a look, as i would like some feed-back to bring it up to FA standards. Thanks.
M3tal H3ad 06:52, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
There are some articles that have been there for a long time now...almost a month and some are not even on hold. Could experienced users or people who generally rate good articles clear them up first? Shouldn't the priority be given to the oldest articles first? Just a thought...thanks. Fedayee 07:01, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Is anybody reviewing these pages? One is tempted to say that one must pull one's finger out, if you'll pardon the expression. andreasegde 17:56, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
I reviewed Dominik Hasek and felt it had some minor problems so I put it on hold. I am allowed to fix them myself and pass it rightt? I am leaving them the way they are now (I did find and install a photo for the article) until I know for sure. Quadzilla99 12:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Is it possible for an article to be nominated for GA while a peer review is still open? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Why doesn't this article have a Table of Contents? It would be easier to go directly to the topics you like, such as sports, arts, science, etc.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Quadzilla99 ( talk • contribs) 03:18, 27 January 2007.
I know that there is not too much length requirements for GA if its too long, but can it be too short? I was looking through a lot of the candidates and there are a couple that are only four sections of information or so with about 10-15 sources? Is this reasonable or is the topic not considered broad enough. Examples would include: Vestibule (Architecture), Scud FM, or Service flag. I just want to know for sure as I attempt to help weed out the easy ones while clearing the the backlog. -- Nehrams2020 05:13, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Is there some way we could make the pass/fail review easier? Right now it takes a bunch of coordinated edits to different pages, and it's basically a lot of work. Is there some way we could us "the system" to do this for us? For instance:
1) couldn't the placement of the nomination on the candidates page be automated by placing the "category" in the GAnomination tag on the article's talk page? That would eliminate one edit.
2) likewise, when moving from nomination to pass/fail, this too could be completely automated as in (1). These changes alone would eliminate four edits.
3) Could a 'bot be used to inform the nominating user?
4) When you do a peer review a new talk page is automatically created. Could this not be done for GA as well?
Maury 21:44, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Need I say more? andreasegde 20:30, 10 February 2007 (UTC)
Ladies and Gentlemen, we are now "The Club of GA reviewers". Let's go.... andreasegde 20:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Not necessarily. I supported deleting Esperanza, in fact. I'm warning them for the same reasons though; to moderately alter George Washington's quote, be wary of the baneful spirit of clubs. Don't get too wrapped up in the concept of a club. Dooms Day349 23:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Note; I reviewed something :) I failed it too. I'm trying to clear out the books section so I can have my article reviewed. *cough cough hint hint wink wink REVIEW IT NOW* XD Dooms Day349 23:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
If you're new to GA review articles that are an obvious fail, if you're unsure just leave it. And Andreasegde - Don't try to cheat the system changing the date on your nomination [9] I'm changing the date to the correct one. M3tal H3ad 10:28, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello all. I nominated an article on the 4th that hasn't even been touched yet so I wanted to get involved and help with the backlog. I have a question about the reviewing criteria for long articles. I wanted to review the Social structure of the United States article (probably not a good choice for my first review, but...hey, what damage could I really do?!?). It is a long article and I read this in the GA review criteria:
Does this mean I should review it according to Peer Review or FAC standards and pass or fail accordingly? Although the style and prose is excellent, I was leaning towards failing the article based two of the other GA criteria, but really could go either way. If it has to stand up to the more rigorous criteria of PR & FAC I'm afraid I'd have to "fail" it. I am hesitant to fail an article (especially my first review) without being sure. Any advice?-- William Thweatt Talk | Contribs 23:13, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
As of 23:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC), there are 144 unassessed Good Article Candidates. Note that does not include On Hold articles. I reason that, with an average time of ten minutes to review an article, 1 user could clear the entire backlog with 24 hours of work. 2 users makes that 12 hours. 3 users makes it 8 hours. 4 users make it 6 hours. 5 users makes it 4 hours and 48 minutes. 6 users makes it 4 hours. 8 users makes it 3 hours. 10 users makes it about 2 and a half. 12 users makes it about 2 hours. You seeing the figures? We can clear this backlog easily if we just get enough users dedicated. I've started up a message on the community noticeboard, but if you have any ideas on how else to get support, let's think of em. Dooms Day349 23:11, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
I have twice started reviewing an article (very thoroughly) only to see a review get posted while I was working. There should be a mechanism to claim articles for review to prevent duplication of work, especially if more people start reviewing good article candidates. - Selket Talk 23:25, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Support - I like this idea. One of the best aspects of it is that the nominators can also see progress, especially while there's a backlog. -- Dweller 10:34, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
The on hold tag states that the tag only stays in place 7 days. If it's been there for that much time and still doesn't pass, should it be failed? There are two in the television section that haven't corrected all their problems as of yet, and the tags have run out. Dooms Day349 20:59, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
and my section recount just now, a total of 228 articles have been Good articled this month - the best month so far was around 146 reviewed a while ago - the backlog has somewhat stabilised at around 140 articles too, so the drive for review is going well. Getting fairly close to the landmark 2000 too :) RHB Talk - Edits 00:59, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
A reviewer put the article Jeff Hanneman on hold six days ago and has disappeared. Myself and another user left him a message on his talk page, but no no avail. I fixed the article to meet his "objections" so could someone else maybe take a look. Thanks. M3tal H3ad 10:23, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Just out of interest, why is it that Good Articles have no template that places the GA symbol on the article page itself, like the Featured Article star in the top right-hand corner of the article? Thanks. Colds7ream 10:34, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I put a request for assistance at the main community portal to hopefully get more editors to assist in clearing the backlog. Hopefully this will speed up our current pace. -- Nehrams2020 21:27, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I have nominated the article " Leonard Orban", European Commissioner on Multilingualism, as GA candidate and I have listed it under "Law and Politics" section as he is politician, but because an important part of the article is about language policy and language rights should I have listed under the "Lanugage" section? -- Michkalas 14:04, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
This article was placed on hold on February 16th pending work on criteria concerns raised by a reviewer, which have now been addressed. 7 days is the limit an article can be put on hold, but the reviewer hasn't edited since the 18th despite leaving two messages on their talk page. Can someone objectively review the article and either fail or pass it please? Thanks. LuciferMorgan 22:42, 23 February 2007 (UTC)
Hello, I've developed a proof-of-concept javascript tool that will display an article's assessed rating on the article page itself. It currently does so by prepending the rating to "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia", so it becomes "A B-class article from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia." It also changes the color of the article title to roughly match the color scheme of the grades.
To add it to your User:YourUserName/monobook.js file, add this text:
// Script from [[User:Outriggr/metadata.js]] document.write('<script type="text/javascript" src="' + 'http://en.wikipedia.org/?title=User:Outriggr/metadata.js' + '&action=raw&ctype=text/javascript&dontcountme=s"></s'+'cript>');
Purposes:
This is fairly "simple" right now and I'd welcome any feedback or ideas. Thanks, – Outriggr § 20:48, 24 February 2007 (UTC)
Why not change {{ GA nominee}} officially to its alternative, {{ GAC}}, to match {{ fac}} Wouldn't even need to move Template:GA nominee, as there's already a redirect. Thoughts? Adam Cuerden talk 22:47, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
Just to let you know, {{ GAquickfail}} has been nominated for deletion here. — Disavian ( talk/ contribs) 17:25, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
When an editor has been heavily involved in an article or series of articles, that editor should not be involved in writing reviews, as it simply asserting that editor's opinion colored by the content disputes that editor has been involved with, rather than providing an objective e4valuation of an article. ≈ jossi ≈ (talk) 22:39, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Good morning ( GMT time) all; the above article has been reviewed by myself and rejected GA status in accordance with the GA criteria, and as expressed at my original review. However, a lead editor of the article has been objecting to my review.
I have persevered for around 10 posts, as seen at User talk:Anthony cfc, but am getting nowhere. I would rather not frustrate the user any more (as well as myself :) so I'd like one of my fellow GA reviewers to re-review the case as soon as possible. This is as an alternative to seeking a GA Review, as the way the editor appears to see it my decision was ill-informed in the first place and therefore is not valid.
Kind regards,
anthonycfc [
talk 08:08, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm the review seems pretty short sighted "Improve it", "Make it better", "add more info", "Go to the library to get info" You need to be specific, what needs to be added? What needs to be improved? don't just say it needs improvement without giving any detail.
For the author -
It's easy to read but all the red links make it not very attractive, could some be reduced? An infobox or/and picture in the top right will pretty much make it formatted better and third paragraph under history is a bit choppy. M3tal H3ad 08:25, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
IvoShandor 08:44, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for the comments; I've decided to not care about Good Articles any more, and instead strive to be as good as possible rather than "dumbing down" to the Good Article criteria. Cheers. -- NE2 08:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
There are numerous articles in this part. This will cause to delay. Therefore I suggest to separate Law and politics.-- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 03:15, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
I found that reviewing of nominations is very slow and there is a stack of articles. How can we do it faster?-- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 08:34, 26 March 2007 (UTC)
WarningThere's accumulation of the articles. I compared December 4 [11] with March 29 [12] and found that about 40 articles have been added to the list. There were 122 articles on December 4 and 160 articles on March 29. Approximately the rate of accumulation is 10 article per month. -- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 15:20, 29 March 2007 (UTC)
Very good point about not reviewing articles you're an expert in, in my opinion. The articles are expert-checked at the A-class-level anyhow. I also agree with Ivo and Jayron that we should access the large pool of participants in the good article project and notify them somehow. A newsletter would be a good idea.-- DorisHノート 06:42, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks to Ivo for the idea. Feel free to add your own additions to this list:
DRAFT BELOW:
The following criteria can be used to decide when it is appropriate to quick-fail a Good Article nominee without an extensive review
1. There is an image in obvious violation of Fair Use or Copyright policies, (EDIT): or large portions of text that are violate copyright policies. IvoShandor 12:03, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
2. There are NO references at all (note, the lack of inline citations should not be an automatic quick fail. Some articles do not owe themselves to the use of inline citations, but ALL articles should be referenced to reliable sources)
3. Tags:The article should be failed if it has tags like clean up, wikify, etc .
4. Lists: articles titled "List" or article that are mostly lists in content. List articles should be referred to Wikipedia:Featured lists where appropriate. IvoShandor 12:13, 30 March 2007 (UTC) END OF DRAFT
Feel free to add some more ideas above. This could be a useful addition to WP:WIAGA. -- Jayron32| talk| contribs 06:54, 30 March 2007 (UTC)
I propose Tags. -- Sa.vakilian( t- c) 07:57, 30 March 2007 (UTC)