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.

• Simultaneous GA and peer review open: Family (1976 TV series)
• Possible failure to closely review the article or to spotcheck sources
  • Talk:The Birds (Alexander McQueen collection)/GA1
  • Talk:Death of Cooper Harris/GA1
  • Talk:Hits Different/GA1
  • Talk:Ontario Highway 6/GA1
  • Talk:Shigi Qutuqu/GA1
  • Talk:Siege of Lankaran/GA2
  • Talk:Snake Ridge Fire/GA1
  • Talk:Suitcase/GA1
  • Talk:Sweet Nothing (Taylor Swift song)/GA1
• Nominations that have been waiting for a reviewer for over half a year:
  • Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed (nom)
  • Serbian Progressive Party (nom)
  • Zail Singh (nom)
  • 64 others (needs urgent attention)
• Miscellaneous shoutout: Great work by Ozzie10aaaa and Shibbolethink at Talk:COVID-19 pandemic/GA4. Now that's a review!

After a month's-worth of these reports, I think a few conclusions can be drawn:

• The default review text may be doing more harm than good. I don't know how many checklist reviews there were before, but this does seem to encourage them. We might consider replacing it with a brief note at the top of the page laying out basic instructions for the review.
• If we're going to have source spotchecks be the norm, we need to be clearer about what this entails at WP:GAN/I and maybe even on the GA review page itself. If the above reviews did spotchecks, they don't say so (or I missed it).
• We need to do something to make sure older nominations get reviewed; six months used to be an unfathomably long time to wait for a review, but now it's increasingly becoming the norm for challenging nominations. Even AfC and its nightmare backlog doesn't keep pages waiting that long.

Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Six months has always been a reality for some GA reviews. I once waited more than a year for one in 2018-2019.

With 600 GANs waiting for review some of them will be waiting for a long time; maybe a backlog drive is in order (willing to coordinate). (t · c) buidhe 02:53, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

"Unfathomably" was probably the wrong word. But there was only a single 6 month nomination on January 1 this year, and it ballooned almost immediately after the sort order changed to stop prioritizing the oldest nominations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

2018 was a particularly bad time for the backlog (see attached). Certainly it seems to have spiked back to that height, after major recoveries from that level. I agree with every take, so to speak; it's very clear from 'returning from a time when there was much less of a backlog', and reading over ~everything that's gone down since the beginning of the year, that all of 'auto-checklist with heavy implication to newbies you're meant to use it as your review', 'divide-by-zero-error reranking', and 'public wall of shame for people whose reviews don't explicitly mention they've done a specific thing' are contributing to widespread issues at GAN.

My hobby horse for GAN is that people don't fail enough, and in particular are too hesitant to fail articles during a review rather than as quickfails. To a substantial degree this cuts at the heart of a rarely-mentioned-but-constantly-extant dispute, which is what is a GA? I can name articles with green badges that I think do not approach good-article status, and I'm sure anyone else here can too. I suspect those lists have very little overlap and very different contentions (in particular: "can very short articles be GAs" is the greatest thread in the history of forums, locked by a moderator after 12,239 pages of heated debate). All Wikipedia-quality-assessment-processes also possess the elephant in the room that their criteria trace back to lists constructed by very few people that amount to "yeah, this sounds good, let's go with it" that have never been particularly tested to see how well they match reader opinion, and much of what we do know about reader opinion to work from implies they at least intermittently come apart. I'm looking to apply for a WMF rapid grant to do some testing on that note, but things have gone a bit pear-shaped in my life now, so I'm not sure if I'll get in under the deadline. Vaticidalprophet 23:05, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

"What is a GA?" really is essential, and the above RfC suggests that we're nowhere near answering it. I imagine I'm not the only one who's feeling less and less inclined to review when I can't even get a straight answer of what a GA review is or what purpose it's supposed to serve. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:31, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

@Thebiguglyalien: Regarding The default review text may be doing more harm than good, is there a way to get data on first time reviewers (per week, per month, and compared to last year or previous weeks, etc.). The goal of having a template was to make the process more approachable to a first time reviewer. If it is not having a positive impact there, and it's having any negative impact, then the next step should be to just revert back to the blank page. Only if it is having a positive impact in recruiting first-time reviewers, should we discuss and revise. Rjjiii (talk) 03:02, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to recognize the connection between increasing standards at GA, and the increasing levels of backlog. Of course no one wants to take on long or difficult articles if they are going to be lambasted for providing a review which spectators decide is insufficiently deep, or blamed for missing errors or copyright issues. Now with spot checking requirements, reviewers are forced to spell out precisely how they read and evaluated what may be dozens of sources, lest they be accused of not spot checking (a standard that's actually more strict than FAC, which only mandates spot checks for first timers!). If the increased sourcing requirement being discussed above gains consensus, I guarantee the backlog will get even worse, because it forces the reviewer to do even more work to prove a stricter-than-FAC standard. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Reviewers are only forced to spell out how they read or evaluated something like 2-3 sources, no high figure gained consensus. This does not seem higher than FAC, each of which gets a source review covering far more than 2-3 sources that is independent of the rest of the reviews. CMD (talk) 12:17, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Source reviews at FAC are distinct from spot checks at FAC. They generally involve evaluating the reliability and quality of the sources and the formatting of the citations. Spot checks at FAC are required only for first-time nominators, otherwise they are to the discretion of the reviewer. (See the somewhat obscure Wikipedia:Guidance on source reviewing at FAC#Spot checking). And of course FAC is a collaborative effort whereas GAN puts the burden entirely on a single reviewer, so any increase in standards falls on one person. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 13:15, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Interesting. How many FACs these days don't involve any source checks? CMD (talk) 15:49, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Most. The only time a source check is required is for a new nominator, or a nominator who has not nominated in a long time (years, at least). Every now and then a reviewer will do some spot checks as part of their review, or because they're looking at the sources anyway, but I would guess less than 1 in 6 FACs is spot-checked. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:25, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Which feels like another way of saying that our content review processes give very low priority to accuracy and only pay lip service to original research issues. And this problem is made worse by the general sense that a weakness in FAC should be magnified for GAN because "FAC is higher". Then any attempt to fix the issue both meets push back and risks depleting the already stagnant reviewer base. Should be an easy fix, right? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:12, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Certainly appears 2 of the last 3 explicitly had none! What an interesting quirk, it provides an aspect by where DYKN can be more thorough than FAC. Perhaps the multiple reviewer format provides a better sniff test buffer, a wisdom of the crowd insurance mechanism that DYK and GA lack? I'm not sure how that might be imported here; a non-new nominator allowance is sadly part of what led to the February large-scale GAR. CMD (talk) 17:13, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

If it makes you feel any better, I have a hunch that most DYK reviewers don't check sources either. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 17:19, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

One thing that helps at FAC is that FAC has an institutional memory, both via the coordinators and because the core group of regulars changes relatively slowly. If a nominator were to start using sources sloppily after having passed their first FAC, there's a reasonable chance that a reviewer would notice something amiss -- multiple reviewers means there are more chances for someone to see something in the article they know is incorrect, or to read a source and realize it doesn't correctly support the article text. I know that for nominators I've seen misuse sources (naming no names since I can't bring any to mind, but this has certainly happened) I would do a unofficial spotcheck, sometimes not bothering to note it in the FAC. It's not a perfect system, and if someone suggested that e.g. the FAC coords randomly nominate articles from experienced nominators for a spotcheck now and then I would probably support that. But I don't think we've had anything slip through on anything like the scale of the Doug Coldwell affair. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:35, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

The thing about Doug Coldwell that everyone tends to gloss over is that he was a known problem for years. There are ANI threads about his issues dating back to 2007. Because he was so prolific and so difficult to deal with, most people who were aware of this simply avoided reviewing his nominations rather than attempting to pursue sanctions (not blaming anyone - I was one of the people avoiding him). It took TAOT getting fed up and taking him to ANI for self-promo issues that finally opened the floodgates.

The lesson from Coldwell is not that we need to apply a microscope to every single person at GAN/FAC under the assumption that they may be bad actors. Most people at DYK/GAN/FAC are not fabricators, self-promotors, or copyright infringers. I can count the number of times I've had to bring up a source-text integrity issue at GAN on one hand, and most of those have been honest and reasonable mistakes. The lesson from Coldwell is that we need to be willing to aggressively quickfail nominations that have serious issues, and we need to more aggressively enact topic bans for repeat offenders. We could have prevented Coldwell from metastasizing if we had had the courage to engage with the issues rather than letting him run wild because he was a prolific content creator. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that virtually no users are intentionally gaming GA nominations, but I do think that text-source integrity issues need to be addressed. I went over my reviews, and of the 21 reviews where I listed my spotchecks in detail, I found some form of text-source integrity issue in 12 of them (and that's not counting close paraphrasing). Two of those 12 were severe enough that they contributed to a fail. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:26, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

There are some experienced FA nominators where I've found text to source issues significant enough to lead to withdrawal. It can happen because of bad faith but is more likely to be accidental or simply a mistaken copyedit that changes the meaning. (t · c) buidhe 00:22, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

We don't apply yet a microscope to anyone, and I'm not seeing how we'd have that capacity even if we'd want to. As for failing, that's not a simple solution. I failed a Coldwell article, it got accepted without changes by another reviewer. As Mike notes, we don't have pass coordinators here, and presumably we have a much larger pool than FAC, so part of the issues here are trying to find mechanisms that might replicate similar engagement functions. CMD (talk) 01:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I failed a Coldwell article, it got accepted without changes by another reviewer. This is exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about, though. It was well known by many people that Coldwell had issues, but people either avoided reviewing his nominations or simply let it drop when he pushed back or renominated. I'm not attempting to single you out - as I said, I'm equally culpable by inaction. But perhaps if people had pushed back earlier and with more force, Coldwell might have been removed from DYK/GA earlier and created less of a mess. Regardless, we're derailing into rehashing Coldwell when that wasn't the original point I was making.

My original point is that there is a direct connection between increasing standards for GA reviews and the increasing backlog. It is more daunting for any reviewer to take on a difficult or lengthy GAN than it has ever been. We are expecting a single reviewer to do more work than is done by multiple reviewers at FAC, and then acting mystified about the fact that we have articles waiting for over 8 months. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:47, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm afraid I don't see how checking a few sources makes GAN more work than FACs. There's a lot of work carried out in FACs which we don't require here. While we don't want basic ticking exercises, we require very little beyond that. CMD (talk) 06:09, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

This gets into the issue that no one really knows what we require. Yeah, we have WP:GAN/I#R3, but you'll notice it's missing one key detail: what's actually supposed to go in the review beyond "basic ticking exercises". If we disallow checklist reviews, we're quite vague about what the minimum is. I tried to compile what I gathered to be the minimum, and it requires a pretty thorough reading of the article. I've also found source checks to be by far the most complicated and time consuming aspect when I review an article, which does make me sympathetic to the idea that GAN reviews might be more intimidating than FAC reviews. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 06:56, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis, follow up: I've since done my first two FAC reviews, and I have to say that it's much easier and faster than doing a GA review. First, a significant portion of my time on a GA review involves checking criterion 2, which isn't an issue at FA. And second, I don't have to worry about looking for specific things (WP:GACN) and can just write down all of the problems as I spot them. The only way I see a GA review being this painless would be if the reviewer just ran it like a peer review, ignoring the GA criteria and skipping sourcing entirely (which I suspect is how many of the more casual GA reviewers already do it). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:35, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

What can make a GAN review more work than a FAC notwithstanding the latter's higher requirement is that GA requires you to conduct a full review of the whole article, whereas with FAC because there are multiple reviewers you can just do a little bit. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 07:37, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes. It would be unusual, but I could conceivably hop into a FAC and say "I've only looked at Sections X and Y because that's where my own knowledge lies" or something like that. But with a GAN, the expectation is all on the reviewer, and that makes it intimidating for new people to take on (not to mention the unclear instructions and increased scrutiny of reviews). Basically, it is not easy for anyone to review difficult articles, it is not easy for new people to jump into GAN, and we have a backlog as a result. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 07:59, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

A separate source verification taskforce that checks all the accessible citations so that the main reviewer doesn't have to seems like it would be useful. JoelleJay (talk) 18:04, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

I for one would be more inclined to review were the autogenerated text removed. It's a pain and actively promotes drive-by reviews. Just point reviewers to the page that lists the templates should they wish to use one. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 03:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Pinging @Tkbrett, Actualcpscm, Jerome Frank Disciple, Unlimitedlead, Infsai, The Corvette ZR1, Floydian, Aza24, AirshipJungleman29, HistoryofIran, Actualcpscm, Vami IV, Cessaune, Benmite, Heartfox, and Ippantekina: as I feel that they should about this conversation considering that their reviews and GAs were called out here. Onegreatjoke (talk) 18:52, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

I'd feel a bit odd speculating as to the review of the article I wrote, and my reviews aren't listed here, but I think they could be, so I'll respond. I didn't explicitly list my spot checks in either of my two reviews: I—and perhaps I was mistaken here—didn't understand that to be required. I just assumed the "5 spot checks" were a precondition to a "pass" in the relevant category, not something that needed to be spelled out. In fact, in Talk:Keith Raniere/GA1, I actually forgot to remove "Have yet to do a spot check" from the review (because I had, mistakenly, said it twice and only removed one instance). But if you read that review or look at the edits I made, it become very obvious I checked almost every source, not just 5 sources.

I'm not totally sure what the precise suggestions are here, but, in general:

1. In both reviews—one of which I didn't finish because it was ultimately a quick fail—I found errors thanks to spot-checking. I think spot-checking is a good practice.
2. As a very new reviewer, I found the template helpful, and I would suggest keeping it: it structures the review in what, to me, feels like a fairly logical way. (Granted, I played around with the categories when I saw fit: While I understand that there might be OR that is attributable to a reliable source—like in a WP:SYNTH situation, in practice, those categories have been very similar for me.)
3. I do think I'd probably feel weird failing an article outside of a quick fail. I hadn't thought of that until I saw it mentioned by Vaticidalprophet, but, upon reflection ... yeah, I can see that. Granted, in my second review, I ended up working on the article itself quite a bit. I read a few other reviews before doing my first GA review, and I saw that reviewers do balance fixing what they can fix themselves with asking the nominator / other editors to address certain things. I don't think I balanced that perfectly—in hindsight, my mindset was more "it's our job to get the article to the GA standard", and, short of an editor insisting on an unsubstantiated statement or refusing to do work on the article themself (and, to be clear, my experience was the opposite of that), I can't imagine that I would have failed.

--Jerome Frank Disciple 19:29, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding failing a candidate, I saw discussion recently that boiled down to this: In the course of the review, if the article is not up to standard, the reviewer is supposed to provide feedback to improve the article to GA standards. The reviewer thus provides general feedback, such as "There are some instances of OR and the article could use copyediting for grammar." From there, only a few outcomes can happen:

A: The nominator understands this feedback and makes the improvements --> Passing feels required for the reviewer, since the article has been "fixed".

B: The nominator does not understand this feedback and asks for specificity. --> The reviewer has to point out specific issues to fix, which is basically just as much work as just fixing them directly; this sucks for both the reviewer and the nominator.

I don't remember where I read about this, but it was in the context of Wikipedia and referred to as something like "draft-decline loop" or "review-fix loop". Actualcpscm (talk) 19:41, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

@Actualcpscm: You probably read it in the same place I did: Mike Christie's essay WP:FIXLOOP. TompaDompa (talk) 19:54, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

That‘s it, thanks! Actualcpscm (talk) 19:55, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping Onegreatjoke, that's very thoughtful of you. I didn't even know this kind of review-review existed.

If I'm reading correctly, the issue with my reviews at Talk:Death of Cooper Harris/GA1 and Talk:Snake Ridge Fire/GA1 is that I did not mention whether or not I carried out source spotchecks. For the record, I did, particularly those that were used to support particularly contentious claims about living persons. If I missed something, do let me know.

If there is an expectation to mention source spotchecking in GA reviews, I wasn't aware of it. Likewise, I didn't mention "I checked for OR" or "I checked the history for edit warring" under the relevant criteria (referring here to this review). WP:GAN/I#R3 mentions that a spotcheck must be performed, not necessarily mentioned.

I'm very new to GA review, so my thought process was this: I presumed that having checked the criterion would be implied by marking the criterion as a Pass; I don't need to say "This is fine" for every item that I marked as a Pass with the template. If this goes against established practices or expectations, I don't think I saw that being mentioned anywhere. This situation might have been at least partially a result of me choosing somewhat short and easy candidates for my first reviews; I suppose that most candidates require at least some fixes under every criterion.

Rjjiii and Thebiguglyalien, I also want to address your concern regarding the default review text. As I mentioned above, I'm very new to GA review. So far, I have carried out 5 reviews: Talk:German torpedo boat T2/GA1, Talk:Snake Ridge Fire/GA1, Talk:Death of Cooper Harris/GA1, talk:Vatican City at the 2022 Mediterranean Games/GA1, and Talk:Dimitri Konyshev/GA1. The first 3 passed, the last 2 were quick fails. I really struggled with the default review text. I consider myself quite tech-literate, and I have gotten quite used to the editing interface(s) of Wikimedia/Wikipedia. I'm fine with both visual and source editing, and I often use a mix of both. In my experience, there were two major issues with the default review text. Firstly, it's formatted as basically a wall of text, which makes it difficult to read and interact with in the beginning. Secondly, I wasn't quite sure where I was supposed to make what changes. I particularly struggled with the pass/fail templates, as evidenced by this lovely attempt of using the review template.

I think GA review would benefit a lot from simplifying this aspect in particular. I'd be happy to provide more detailed feedback if you'd like to hear more about my experience! Actualcpscm (talk) 19:31, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Your thoughts on the process are correct. There are no formal expectations or requirements of any sort. If you wanted to, you could just glance at the article for thirty seconds, slap six green check marks on it, and go your merry way. That would make people upset, but there's no mechanism to stop you or to review the review. That's the problem that I was (hopefully) trying to address with this scanning of reviews, but it doesn't seem to make much of a difference. Regarding the default review text, that's a very recent addition to GA, and one that appears to be having unintended consequences. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:39, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Right. I always try to be through with my reviews (see Talk:Charles Edward Stuart/GA1 for an extreme example), but I was not aware that there was any expectation to explicitly declare OR/spotchecking-related verification. I thought that checking the green check marks was already a sign of confirmation that one went through those steps; if this is something that I need to start doing in my reviews, please let me know. Cheers, Unlimitedlead (talk) 21:27, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

Wow, what a thread. To be honest, I didn't understand most of the situations brought up here, but I read it all, and I can agree that GAN review should be consisting of more people than one reviewer. Like many pointed out before, it's easier to spot some sort of mistake or error in article by looking through it with multiple eyes, rather just one pair. Even though I never reviewed a single article in my life, and I probably won't any time soon, I think it would be a neat change, and maybe encourage more people to participate and help. infsai (talkie? UwU) 22:40, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

The article by me that's been brought up on discussion by me is "Hits Different", and I can see why. I was caught off guard when I applied to all of the suggestions of Unlimitedlead to get an immediate pass, even though I haven't fixed something they pointed out when the article passed. I changed it as soon as I could, and I'm still not sure if it's good, because review is over, and probably noone would bother to check it. If I'm being honest, I had the best experience with Kyle Peake, who reviewed half of my GA entries (3 passing, 1 failing), and it was a longer process taking up weeks (or months like it was with "NDA"), and he split review into multiple sections, checking each one from the article. I had a room to discuss with him and come to conclusions, nothing was rushed. And he was really forgiving, because with me constantly changing the content of "NDA", the review should result in failure, and I should come back when i could present a final form of the article (at least that's my opinion by looking at it retroactively, but still huge thanks to you Kyle!). infsai (talkie? UwU) 22:40, 19 June 2023 (UTC)

This is very helpful feedback. As a general note, the GAN reviews are not only a tool for the current editor, but also a resource for future editors to see when and why an article became a GA. It's helpful to see the thoughts that went into the decision. The spotchecking is something we look for because it's easy to note (eg. checked source X and it matched the content), and has in the past been skipped over by reviewers leading to problems. CMD (talk) 00:56, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I do sort of wonder how often past reviews are used as a tool. The only time I ever check past reviews is to make sure the reviewer actually reviewed the article. And it seems a recurring issue is that in addition to the GA criteria not matching common practices (as is discussed in the ongoing RfC), we also have a problem with common reviewing practices not being described in the instructions. I've tried to compile an expanded set of instructions in my userspace that's closer to unspoken expectations, but you can't really enforce unspoken expectations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:57, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

I feel those instructions go beyond basic expectations, but it is useful to have the example of the source check clearly laid out. CMD (talk) 03:26, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

@Actualcpscm: Here is a version of the template with very nearly the same text as the live version but using more conventional wikitext: User:Rjjiii/GAwt Do you think that would be more approachable for new editors? Rjjiii (talk) 02:19, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's much better imo. I have only one suggestion regarding the GAList template comment; I edited your version with my suggestion :) Actualcpscm (talk) 08:33, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the belated ping. If one looks at my review, it is very clear that I only commented on issues I found with the article; there is no requirement to use one of the many different GA review templates. I did spotchecks and looked closely at the sources (I have done 100+ source reviews at FAC&FLC so I am no stranger to their importance) but found no issues, so alas I did not note any issues.

Very Wikipedia-esque an editor to call out 10+ other editors though not alert them; makes it appear that the OP doesn't want their input, just wants to prove a point. I'm sure this strategy is great in the communication and general improvement of content-reviewing practices. Or perhaps it is a "Possible failure" in that regard? Aza24 (talk) 05:55, 20 June 2023 (UTC)

If one looks at my review, it is very clear that I only commented on issues I found with the article - I'm going to chime in even though the original post didn't mention any of my reviews, but I generally do the same thing. My reviews tend to be similar to something like Talk:The Birds (Alexander McQueen collection)/GA1 or Talk:Shigi Qutuqu/GA1). If the ref spotchecks don't reveal any issues, then I usually am only going to say that I didn't find any issues - at most, I might mention the footnote numbers that I checked. This doesn't mean that no spotcheck was done; it just means that no issues were found in the spotcheck. – Epicgenius (talk) 17:40, 23 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, looking at the review itself, it does seem a bit lazy, but I was rushed for time and couldn't be bothered to properly format and all that. I can assure you that my fact-checking and analysis of the content was up to par, though it definitely doesn't look like that, and my assurance means little to nothing. I can go back and re-review the entire thing if necessary and make it look a bit better (referring to the possible failure to spotcheck and closely review the article mentioned above), or someone else can do it. Sorry, my mistake. It won't ever happen again. Cessaune [talk] 15:17, 24 June 2023 (UTC)

I raised an issue a few weeks ago about this review, but now it's been more than a month since this editor has even made an edit to this review (and only one edit since then). And this is the second review of mine they've abandoned. While I appreciate their willingness to review my nominations, this is a process that should not be rushed, but completed in a timely manner. That being said, they appear to have posted most, if not all, of their comments, which I have addressed. I'd appreciate if someone else would be willing to take over the review. Bneu2013 (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello. Édith Piaf is listed at Women in Green, which sparked my interest in hoping to improve it into a Good Article. I haven't done any GA nominations before, so I was hoping that someone might take a look at its current state and suggest what I should focus on? Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 22:42, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Off the bat, I would suggest a longer lead that summarizes more of the article. The individual song discography could possibly be split into its own article, in the vein of "list of songs recorded by X" (we have a bunch of these lists). Right now it takes up a lot of space, has zero references, and the formatting is brutal. You'd need to fix the unreferenced bits. Sourcing might also need a look - I see refs to Little-Sparrow.co.uk, which appears to be a fansite, and books without page numbers (not a failure by GACR standards but makes it very difficult to verify). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:07, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you, Premeditated Chaos for all of those suggestions. I will chip away at the article to hopefully get it up to a GA standard. Regards, MrsSnoozyTurtle 07:54, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I feel like I've been around here long enough to know better if there is such a method, or perhaps I'm really missing something obvious. Seeing as we're able to tally how many reviews a user has conducted, is it possible to curate a list of all GA reviews one has conducted over the years? -Indy beetle (talk) 07:45, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

If you ask Mike Christie nicely. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:11, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Not exactly elegant, but you can look at your Special:Contribs page, filter for talk pages created, and use your browser's search to find the string /GA: in your case I count 23 reviews, which accords with what the bot says. Of course, this only finds GA reviews where you created the page; if you take over a review where the review page already exists it won't find it, nor will it find anything where you've commented on a review that someone else was conducting. And the more talkpages you have created, the clunkier it gets; even relatively prolific editors have often only created a few hundred, but the most prolific editors have created tens of thousands of talkpages. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 08:16, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

@Indy beetle: User:GA bot/Stats keeps an active list of it, but it's subject to the same limitations mentioned by Caeciliusinhorto with the contrib method. This one gives you 24 reviews. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 17:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

Somewhere around here I have code that can produce a page like this for anyone who asks; the count that produces should match the number on the GAN page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:35, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

This edit request to Wikipedia:Good article criteria/GAC has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

1. Remove the period in 0c for consistency for the other fail rationales.
2. Remove the period in 2b, as it produces a period before the semicolon at WP:GACR.

voorts (talk/contributions) 01:43, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

•  Done (t · c) buidhe 04:05, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello. I have taken over the GA review of Hednesford because the old reviewer has been inactive for 30+ days. Is there anyway for me to officially transfer reviewship? The reason why I ask is because I used the GA reviewer tool to place the article on hold, but it showed up as the old reviewer placing it on hold. Cherrell410 (talk) 00:56, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

@Cherrell410: - I'm not sure, but I think all you've got to do is post a note that you're taking over the review. I currently have a similar situation that I mentioned above. Bneu2013 (talk) 04:01, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

There's no way to actually attribute a review to a given editor -- the various tools that determine who the reviewer of a GAN is all do it by looking to see who created the review page. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

...this GA review? It was quite quick by what looks like someone new to the GA process. Nothing specific jumps out to me, just the tempo. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 05:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The timing is confusing, a five minute review, but it starts with "This article looks pretty good at a cursory glance, can't wait to get into it". Perhaps it might have been in draft for a bit. A couple of points where I think policy isn't fully understood (eg. image licencing), and a somewhat expansive claim around inline source integrity, but there's a bit of commentary in the review and I don't see any glaring issues with your article the review missed. CMD (talk) 05:46, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I notice that the reviewer is not extended confirmed, which should probably be encouraged if not a requirement for reviewing. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:50, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, it looks as if they fortunately or wisely picked a particularly tidy article to review. We are torn between wanting GA to be an "intentionally light" process, not bureaucratic, and to achieve a substantially larger throughput of articles than is possible at FAC, with less effort on the part of both nominator and reviewer — and, it seems, wanting GA to be a mark of high quality, a formal review process, with well-defined criteria and some sort of oversight to ensure full and correct application of agreed standards. Well, these two things are in opposition to each other; and in case anyone has been holidaying on Betelgeuse lately, the wait in the GAN queue is getting steadily longer, so that a 6 month delay is not uncommon. If we don't want to train new reviewers, and we don't want to insist on Quid Pro Quo to force nominators to serve as reviewers (what a lot of things we want and don't want!) we need some other way to attract people into the system. At the moment, it's heading for collapse. Indeed, compared to how it used to flow along, it has seized up already. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:35, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yup. I said as much above somewhere. This increased scrutiny of reviews is not particularly encouraging or welcoming to new reviewers. I especially disagree with the now-common practice of bringing reviews here rather than discussing them with the reviewer first. If I were an inexperienced user looking to get into GAN and I saw this talk page, I would be seriously intimidated about even trying. We should be thanking interested newbies and showing them the ropes where they have been imperfect, so they can feel confident about coming back to do more reviews. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:52, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself, but I think an increase in waiting times is definitely preferable to a decrease in standards. I don't really see the point of having a formal quality control process if it's not going to mean much to pass it. TompaDompa (talk) 16:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

The whole point of GA as a process is that it doesn't take much to pass it! It's not supposed to be FA! If we're going to hold GANs to the same level as we hold FAs, we might as well can the process and all move over to FAC. Something which I think gets forgotten at GAN lately is that nominators and reviewers alike are hobbyists doing this for fun. Yes, we want to have as few errors and issues as possible, but perfection across every GA is impossible, and we need to accept that rather than making this process damn-near impossible trying to pursue a level of perfection that even professionals don't achieve. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:26, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware that it's supposed to be broadly attainable for most articles and somewhat experienced editors. What I'm saying is that it's also supposed to be a mark of quality. If it doesn't function reliably as such, the entire process is a complete waste of volunteer time, and we could scrap it in favour of WikiProject quality assessments (B-class and so on) without a formal review (and WP:Peer review for article improvement, I suppose—though GAN is designed to be a reviewing process, not an improvement process). We don't need to (and shouldn't) hold GANs to the same standards as FACs (and we don't), but we do need to hold them to some kind of standard. We can't let it be a crapshoot whether a WP:Good article is actually up to the standards we expect from a decent-quality article, because if that happens the process is not conferring any benefit. TompaDompa (talk) 23:59, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I half agree, but I think it's worth remembering that GA has never been a guarantee of quality and yet it hasn't been a waste of time. There have always been weak reviews, and articles passed which clearly should not have, but we've also had many editors gain useful experience from nominating and reviewing. PMC is right that more negative feedback to apparently weak reviews may drive some reviewers away, and Chiswick Chap is right that there's an unresolvable tension between the need for a quick unsupervised process and the desire for a guarantee of quality. It's also always been true that without reviewers willing to review more than they nominate, the process would have collapsed long ago. In that sense nothing has changed; as Thebiguglyalien says below, the increase in the size of the backlog has been gradual, as it always is. The oldest reviews are now much older than would have been the case a year ago, and that's obviously because of the new sort order, but if in fact the number of nominations and reviews is about the same as ever, that has to mean that some other nominations are getting reviewed more quickly. I wish I could make confident statements about the effect the sort order has had on GAN, but I haven't been able to come up with metrics or statistics that I have confidence on the interpretation of. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 00:21, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

The problem is that it's still not entirely clear how we're supposed to respond to reviews if we're not happy with the quality. My first ever GA got a checklist review, so I made a post to this talk page, which largely went ignored, so I posted it at reassessment (back when it was a months-long process) and it was confirmed as a GA there. We should probably write something to the effect of "if you think a review inappropriately promoted an article, list the article at WP:GAR". That might at least temper the in-fighting that's been developing here. A more challenging problem is getting everyone on the same page about how thorough a GA review should be, or if there should be any thoroughness requirement at all. Right now it seems like there's an unspoken one, but as with most unspoken rules, most people either don't know about it or disagree on what it is. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 00:33, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

I can only speak for myself, but as long as this doesn't become a frequent occurrence I don't see why we couldn't use GAR for this purpose. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:06, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

(EC) Really? Straight to GAR, even if there's nothing actually wrong with the article? How about talking to the reviewer? How about explaining what seems to be insufficient and encouraging improvement? Sample message: "Hello, thank you for your review! I'm not sure if you have much experience with GA reviews but usually reviewers are looking for some comments about the article. Do you think you could take a look and post some more detailed thoughts? Reviews like [some example] and [some other example] might give you an idea of the kind of feedback we're looking for." Tweak as necessary.

That being said, it seems to me that if an article meets the criteria as-is, there is nothing wrong with passing it with minimal feedback. Why do we expect reviewers to leave detailed criticism for an article if it is already well-written, broad, and properly sourced? Why should we force someone to come up with nitpicks just to make the review look more thorough? (I'm not dunking on people who want to review like that, by the way - I do all my reviews FAC-style, but that's my personal preference). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:07, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

All I'd expect personally is a sentence or two. "I checked against criterion XYZ and found no problems." That's it. We can't read people's minds so we don't know what they do unless they say so. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:11, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Ironically I made a proposal at the feedback drive that might have handled the question about the thoroughness of reviews by leaving it up to the nominator to request either full PR-style review or not. It got shot down in flames because people argued that it's up to the reviewer to decide what kind of review they want to do, not the nominator. But obviously it isn't up to the reviewer, or we wouldn't be having these discussions all the damn time. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:28, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

This seems like an overreaction. GA is supposed to mean that one editor (the reviewer) thought an article matched a short list of criteria. That could be considered a "mark of quality", but it should be understood as a rather small one. And if you think an article meets the criteria (and presumably you did, since you nominated it), and the reviewer claims to believe that the it meets the criteria, then why question it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 11:51, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Premeditated Chaos I'll point out that the increase in the backlog has been fairly slow. It has been gradually climbing up, but the number of reviews is pretty close to the number of nominations. The problem is that the sort order on the GAN page was changed in January so that newer nominations now cut in line ahead of older nominations. This means that if you have a nomination where it might be hard to find a reviewer already, then it's made even harder because it will sit in the middle of the queue indefinitely. So now the easy ones have even shorter wait times, while the harder ones have even longer wait times. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:01, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Obviously the sort order had something to do with the recent upswing, but our tendency to jump on anyone who fucks up even a little rather than trying to show them the ropes is not helping to attract people to reviewing in any way. And if we're driving away potential reviewers, we're certainly not decreasing the backlog, are we? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:13, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I think we need to strongly promote mentors, and as PMC says not come on people like a pile of bricks, as tempting as that may be. We should also reassess some of the changes made in the past year and see if any need to be modified. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 02:05, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

New to GAN but made my way to this talk page somehow, so I'd like to state a few things (After reading some of the convos above and most of this one)

FIRST: The template is invaluable to new reviewers such as myself, and I think by removing it the (already limited) flow of new reviewers will collapse entirely.

SECOND: A Quid-Pro-Quo system of 1:1 seems like a great idea to me, and I can not for the life of me understand why one hasn't been implemented. Maybe something to DYK, where after your first X # of nominations you have to start reviewing at least one for each additional nomination? Not to name names, but just scrolling through the nomination list there are a *lot* of nominators that don't have anything close to a 1:1 ratio, or even a .5 reviews for each nomination ratio. Or even a .2 reviews for each nomination ratio! It is frankly ridiculous. This is a surefire way to reduce the backlog, though it may result in less good articles being produced.

THIRD: The lightweight standard of GA's makes most sense to be. It's not supposed to be an FA, it's supposed to be a GA. To quote WP:ASSESS: "Useful to nearly all readers, with no obvious problems; approaching (but not equaling) the quality of a professional encyclopedia." Alexcs114 :) 14:10, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

The template is very recent, and was implemented at the same time the reviewer flow collapsed for other reasons. It's probably a net negative, because people who actually use it keep getting come down on like a ton of bricks for "following what they reasonably assumed to be the instructions". GA templates were quite heavily signposted before one was officially added, so it was easy to use them as a new reviewer; I did for my first few reviews before growing out of the structure.

QPQ has never had formal consensus at GAN, specifically because GA reviews are so unlike DYK reviews. At DYK you have to check about four things, and people still get them wrong often enough to have a thriving ERRORS cottage industry. GA is significantly more complex -- even the 'lower standard' version of it (which I don't subscribe to, but what I do subscribe to is fairly different to what most 'higher standard' people seem to) needs way more, and formally implementing a requirement is doable only if GA is outright reduced to around DYK level. This would certainly result in fewer good articles being produced, regardless of what exactly it did to the number of articles with green plus signs.

I've always found the 'paper encyclopedia' quote interesting. WP:NOTPAPER is the highest law of all in ways a lot of people never really notice, simply because we barely even interact with paper encyclopedias these days. Pick one up and go through the articles; almost all of them, as we'd call it, are stubs. Vaticidalprophet 18:31, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

(Replying solely to the third point) Then it would seem to me that WP:NOTPAPER & WP:ASSESS contradict, as almost all GA articles and 99% of FA articles contain more valuable information than their corresponding entry (or lack thereof!) in a "professional encyclopedia" such as Brittanica (Print version now defunct) or World Book. Note however of course that quantity =/ quality, though I think nearly all of our "GAs" or above are of a higher quality than Brittanica or World Book. Alexcs114 :) 20:18, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, they do. NOTPAPER is policy, and ASSESS was written many years ago and has been a pretty marginal page since. That's not to say the article assessment system isn't important -- well, I consider it important. But I notice my considering it important is fairly unusual, especially for non-peer-reviewed levels (B and below). The specific wording on ASSESS isn't really reflective of how people treat the categories anymore, and hasn't been since about the turn of the previous decade. Vaticidalprophet 09:05, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Interesting, how can we go about getting that updated then? Alexcs114 :) 13:35, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm following the conclusions being drawn here. In what way do NOTPAPER and ASSESS contradict, and how is that meaningful for the purpose of GA anyway? NOTPAPER describes how Wikipedia is not limited by the constraints of physical media. Printed books have limited page space before they become unwieldy. One benefit of Wikipedia is that we are free to cover obscure topics in detail so long as there are sources, because that doesn't mean taking pages away from other things.

ASSESS was created ages ago in service of WP:1.0, and was sort of grafted on to the main project after that without much analysis of how useful it actually might be (not very). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 15:03, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

May I ask as to what about the "tempo" sticks out to you

-The reviewer, DimensionalFusion (talk) 11:11, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Probably the fact that the initial review begins "This article looks pretty good at a cursory glance, can't wait to get into it" but marked every criterion as passed, and then you completed the review only seven minutes later. As a couple of people discuss above, there's some tension between the "GA reviewing should be a lightweight process" and "GA reviews should be a reliable mark of quality" schools of thought, but many people who tend towards the latter view look askance at a review which doesn't pick up on any issues in an article, even if it does meet the letter of all of the GA criteria.

Jo-Jo Eumerus has plenty of experience writing GAs, and a quick glance through the article doesn't show me any glaring issues, so I expect that the article is indeed GA standard and you are right to promote – but reviews which appear to have been conducted very quickly tend to raise eyebrows, even if you in fact spent some time checking everything before you opened the review. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 11:27, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, it seemed to me that the entire review was quick. But it seems like most people here don't see any issues with this particular review, so I guess I was imagining things. And it's true, folks can be reviewing a nomination before officially initiating the review, which won't show up as a timestamp. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 18:14, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Yeah. I see some issues have come up because I reviewed while in draftspace instead of publishing first DimensionalFusion (talk) 20:14, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

That doesn't explain the seven-minute gap between initial placeholder and final review. It should take you far longer than that just to spot-check the references. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:04, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

It was in draft for much longer than seven minutes DimensionalFusion (talk) 21:55, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the review. I don't think there was a significant issue, just a mismatch in available information. Your "This article looks pretty good at a cursory glance, can't wait to get into it" note was a helpful indicator in this regard. Best, CMD (talk) 02:59, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Yea, Johannes Gensfleish.../ 2A02:2F08:B60C:7400:9C5:8EF2:BBCE:9477 (talk) 11:41, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Hello, I have a question. Is using one source for an entire article make it good enough for GA?

So i nominated Gruban v Booth for reassessment since the article only uses one source. Sure, it's a book with multiple pages, but it's still one source. But i've come to realize that there is nothing in the criteria that definitively states that using one source for your entire article is bad and makes an article not a GA. So I've asked this question as I think that it shouldn't make an article a GA. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:43, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

The relevant GAR link is Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Gruban v Booth/1. My view is that the article can't be delisted, per the GA criteria at least, but it definitely can be AFDed or merged.~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:50, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

GA requires compliance with WP:NPOV. While the policy page is vague on this, my understanding is that you need at least a few sources before NPOV can be met. Right now the article consists entirely of what H. Montgomery Hyde has to say about the topic. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:36, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

GAs can be quickfailed for having or needing valid cleanup banners. Among these banners are ((One source)). —David Eppstein (talk) 02:48, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

It is possible to comply with NPOV while only citing one source. For that matter, it is technically possible to comply with NPOV while citing no sources: If a vandal blanked all the sources in an NPOV-compliant article, the article would become uncited, not biased.

However, if you're relying on one source, it would have to be a very unusual source, perhaps one that reviews and summarizes all the views on a subject. I don't think that the source cited in this case is necessarily such a source – though, again, it is possible to write a perfectly neutral article regardless of what appears in the ==References== section. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:02, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I've implemented the change to the GA criteria as suggested in the close to the RfC. I agree with the closer that this is pretty close to what seemed to be a consensus about including BLUESKY. However, this form of words uses WP:LIKELY as the target essay for the phrase "reasonably challenged". It might be better to rephrase slightly in order to make BLUESKY the natural link. E.g. reliable sources are cited inline. All content must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose), except for material covered by WP:BLUESKY, plot summaries, and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:27, 2 July 2023 (UTC)

Link in new c2b

The newly-rewritten c2b now reads:

All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose).

Could reasonably be challenged links to Wikipedia:Likely to be challenged. To me, these two statements are not the same: the link creates the false impression that if something is unlikely to be challenged, it doesn't need to be cited, whereas the criteria say that this only applies if any challenge would be patently unreasonable. I suggest that the link should be removed to take away this ambiguity. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 17:07, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

@UndercoverClassicist and Mike Christie: I've moved UC's new section to Mike's previous topic (WP:RTP). I've also removed the bit dealing with the GA criteria in WP:BLUESKY, since it is now, obviously, out of date. I suggest: All content, except for that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, plot summaries, and material covered by WP:BLUESKY, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose). This puts the focus squarely on the "all content", before making three exceptions. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:51, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of the order, material covered by WP:BLUESKY is a little clunky. It may be wise to steal the "general common knowledge" language from Wikipedia:When to cite. Rjjiii (talk) 03:51, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with both AirshipJungleman29 and Rjjiii: I think it's better to present WP:BLUESKY as an exception to a general rule, and I think "general common knowledge" is a good way to phrase it. TompaDompa (talk) 04:44, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I quite like the wording "could reasonably be challenged": WP:BLUESKY is an essay, so I'm uncomfortable raising it to the level of a hard rule, and by its nature a little flippant: more precise and objective language is helpful since we'll inevitably have editors disagreeing over what constitutes a self-evident statement like "the sky is blue". Someone elsewhere mentioned that plot summaries could be replaced by something like material based on the content of the article's subject itself, which I quite like: it avoids having to cite, for example, that someone was the author of a book when their name's on the cover. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 05:51, 5 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that a link to Wikipedia:When to cite is a good idea. For one thing, since that's FAC's hard rule, that clearly aligns GA's and FA's sourcing rules.

Linking to an essay doesn't "raise it to the level of a hard rule", and if that really concerned you in general, you should be concerned about the actual policies like WP:NOT, which freely link to essays and Wikipedia articles. Linking to essays in policies and guidelines is explicitly authorized in the policy Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:06, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

So the description for the politics and government header indicates Note: This does not include deceased politicians or former heads of state and government, who are added to the World history subtopic but this does not seem to have been the practice as long as I can remember. Looking through there we've got:

So that's 16/50 of that category being deceased political figures. I highly doubt that it would be useful to go through and move all of those nominations and any similar future ones over to world history, and the practice certainly has not been to adhere to that note? Shouldn't we just remove the note and allow nominators the judgment call of where the nominations best go (for instance, classifying Clark as politics instead of warfare)? Hog Farm _Talk 22:53, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

If you actually look at Wikipedia:Good articles/History and its World history subtopic, you'll see that there are subsubtopics for Historical figures: heads of state and heads of government (78 articles) and Historical figures: politicians (352 articles). Given that these numbers far exceed the 16 that have been placed under Politics and government, I would strongly suggest that the note be left in place, and the 16 be moved to where they clearly (by the numbers) belong: World history. BlueMoonset (talk) 00:54, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Without any opinion on what the correct practice is, you are counting different things; Hog Farm is talking about current nominations. I count ten deceased world leaders under Wikipedia:Good articles/Social sciences and society#Heads of state and heads of government (out of 30). Six of the eight articles under #Intelligence and espionage are dead people (and a seventh is an intelligence program which ceased in 1947). I haven't counted how many of the #Political figures section are dead - there's 300+ articles in there.

In general, there's always going to be overlap between different categories; it's unavoidable. Many of my GAs could be classed as either world history or language and literature; one of the articles I'm currently working on (Ithell Colquhoun) could be justifiably nominated in at least three different places. Unless a placement is clearly and obviously wrong, I would be inclined to give nominators and reviewers a fairly wide deal of discretion in deciding where to class a particular article. (And that's not getting into the fact that e.g. Jimmy Carter is currently 98: do we need to remember to reclassify him as world history when he inevitably dies?) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:53, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Anyone else support changing GA Nominations to go in order of date nominated, not whatever's going on now. What a mess. What an awful change. Therapyisgood (talk) 02:21, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

It had consensus in an RFC, so I think that there would need to be an RFC to change it. (t · c) buidhe 02:26, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

The idea was to reward editors who review lots of GA noms and to penalize editors who write lots of good articles but don't review. It saw nearly unanimous support when it was proposed, but the reception since then has leaned negative, and it's unclear whether consensus would support keeping or removing it if an RfC was held about it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:15, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Part of the problem with the reward/penalty aspect is that it does not seem to be clearly communicated. I have dealt with multiple editors who had no idea what the new sort metric is and found themselves frustrated with it. If people don't understand how the list is being sorted, they have no way of knowing that they even can change their sort position, let alone how to do that. The other problem is that even if you understand what's going on, the ratio is very easy to fix at lower numbers, but quite difficult at higher ones. An editor whose existing ratio is 2 GA:1 review can easily do 1-2 reviews to even it up, but someone whose ratio is 245:200 would have to do 20x as many reviews just to break even. (Also, editors like myself who take their GAs to FA have artificially lowered ratios, because FAs are no longer counted as GAs in the ratio).

If we want to keep it this way (and I'm not convinced we should), we should figure out a way to communicate the sort method much more clearly, alter the algorithm to consider only recent reviews, and then assess our results. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I think the new system has reduced wait times for frequent reviewers, so it does some of what it was designed for. Nevertheless, I do believe wait time should play some role in the sort order. To make it clearer how things are sorted, perhaps we need a "sort score: N" in each nomination listing. Especially if the sort score (or whatever it is called) is not immediately obvious, we could make it link to a page or footnote with an explanation. —Kusma (talk) 05:25, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I think most people inclined to review at GAN (which you can see from the stats is about five people...) already had a decent working sense of which frequent nominators reviewed a lot and which didn't, and made decisions accordingly inasmuch as this was a factor in their decisions. (In real practice, I think stuff like "does the reviewer find the article vaguely interesting" tends to trump everything else.) Vaticidalprophet 06:13, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I like the current system and have the impression it has not been working worse than the old system. One of the things I particularly like about it is that it groups nominations by the same nominator together (maybe not as the main intended feature, but as a consequence of its definition). This makes it much easier for me to skip over nominators whose articles I might prefer not to review, for whatever reason, compared to the old system where they were all mixed together. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:34, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

There are advantages to either system. But I think backlog drives might have become even more necessary thanks to the system change, so perhaps running one of those should be a priority now. —Kusma (talk) 07:12, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

A new backlog drive right now is abstractly good. Tricky thing is the last one worked out in ways that resulted in a substantial lack of enthusiasm to repeat it for a while (though it's been over a year now), and some of the issues around it (e.g. regarding "what is good enough for a GA review") are only bigger now. I'd be very happy to run another backlog drive -- participating in them seems to burn me out -- using probably a similar points structure to the mid-2021 one, with tweaks accounting for the worsened backlog. Vaticidalprophet 07:30, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Go for it. Try to figure out what caused the lack of enthusiasm, avoid some of that, and advertise a New And Much More Fun Backlog Drive. I will certainly contribute a couple of reviews. —Kusma (talk) 08:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

No, I like it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 07:01, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

• I personally don't think the order listed will make much of a difference (people review whatever they feel like), but I just noticed I am listed as "only" having one GA, and am therefore on the top of the list, which seems unfair, since I have a good deal more, they're just FAs now. Is there any way it can count articles that were GAs prior to becoming FAs? FunkMonk (talk) 00:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  I think I have all the data necessary to make that change; it would require some thought and some testing, and it would mean the number could no longer be checked by reference to the GA counting tool that SDZeroBot maintains. That tool, which is what ChristieBot uses, only counts current GAs. It would also be possible to count failed nominations too -- for example, if someone nominates five articles and each one fails, should they still be top of the list? I think I would want to see a consensus from others that this would be a worthwhile change, but I think it could be done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:26, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  I would be for a system that counted all GA nominations that received a review, I think that is preferable than the current proxy. (t · c) buidhe 02:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

  I don't think that's a good idea, for a few reasons. Firstly, it seems a bit WP:BITE-y since it means that new nominators whose first nomination is unsuccessful are basically pushed to the back of the line. Secondly, it in effect penalizes editors whose nominations receive reviews where (1) the article was not promoted but could reasonably be re-nominated more-or-less immediately or (2) the article was promoted but the review was not up to standards and the promotion needs to be undone and a proper review conducted. Thirdly, it might influence reviewer behaviour if a review that doesn't result in promotion puts the nominator at a (further) disadvantage for all their other current and future nominations. Fourthly, it doesn't produce the effect I want to see in the scenario Mike Christie describes. I don't want someone who makes several unsuccessful nominations without any successful ones to wait longer for reviews, I want them to improve articles to a higher level of quality before nominating them so they are in a better position to have their nominations be successful—and if they are not willing or able to do so, my second choice would be for them to refrain from nominating articles altogether. TompaDompa (talk) 03:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I've only written a couple Good articles, and although I've looked into reviewing a couple nominations I've found I didn't have access to the sources needed so I haven't been able to start/do any reviews, so perhaps my opinion should carry less weight than editors who do more GAs / reviews, but FWIW I agree with FunkMonk that it's unintuitive to count someone as having, say, zero GAs if they in fact have a dozen GAs that became even-better FAs. (I also suspect FunkMonk is right that people review what interests them and what they have the source-access capacity to review, not what's in a certain place on the list, but again, users who do more reviews would be in a better position than me to judge that aspect.) -sche (talk) 17:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

although I've looked into reviewing a couple nominations I've found I didn't have access to the sources needed so I haven't been able to start/do any reviews Spotcheck expectations have not slowed down GAN at all and have had no unforeseen consequences, exhibit n. Anyway: I can name right now, off the top of my head, five easy reviews by experienced writers that are months in backlog, that any newcomer could pick up and review easily if any of them are interested:

• Mississippi Public Service Commission
• Eduardo Maldonado
• I Shall Be Free No. 10
• Lateral line
• Robert J. Parins

Vaticidalprophet 17:38, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, a reviewer started reviewing my GAN for the article Gangnam, but was unable to complete it because of irl time constraints. It's been "put on 2nd opinion" now, but I'm not quite certain what else I should do. Thanks! :3 F4U (they/it) 04:42, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The thread just above about a proposed backlog drive prompted me to try to find ways to look at the data that's been accumulated over the last few months. I came up with these two tables:

The first table shows that 637 reviews have been started in the last three months, by 185 reviewers. 540 of those reviews were performed by just 92 reviewers. The second table shows that 743 articles have been nominated over that time, by 330 different nominators. 535 of those nominations were from just 122 nominators.

Alexcs114's comments, above, about QPQ were another reason I thought these would be interesting numbers to look at. I would summarize this as:

• A small number of regular reviewers who review more than they nominate are the reason GAN does not collapse. I would say there are less than fifty editors in this group.
• Most nominators (that is, more than half) treat GAN as a free service.

GAN has worked that way for about twenty years now, and it can continue to work that way, and the backlog will always grow if so. I've thought some more about what it would take to make QPQ acceptable, and I think at least three things would be needed:

• Some free nominations allowed before a review is required
• A rolling time frame of some kind -- no reason to penalize someone now who had 40 GAs promoted ten years ago.
• Some kind of quality control -- a coordinator function that intermittently sampled reviews to check that there weren't quality problems.

I don't know if those would be enough to make QPQ palatable, but I think that's a minimum. Without some limiting function like QPQ we will always need backlog drives and we should not be surprised when that happens. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:20, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm fairly hard on the idea that QPQ doesn't work at GAN, because it barely works at DYK, which has massively lower standards and already a bunch of free passes. From recentish stats DYK has a 94% acceptance rate; the fruits of this can be seen every time we run bad hooks. (Something also often missed about DYK is that people tend to construe their 'review' for QPQ very broadly, and many nominations receive QPQ-eligible reviews then wait another two months for a real one.) My broad impression from the amount of time I spend looking at GANs is that the pass rate should probably be a little under half. It's way above this, which is because we tend to treat GAs dichotomously as "obvious no-hopers" and "going to pass one way or another", but I don't think QPQs are going to help a low-review-quality problem. I think backlog drives have a low-review-quality problem, but...I'm happy to have two months of low-quality reviews a year be the price we pay, over the alternative of all of them. Vaticidalprophet 22:32, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

My broad impression from the amount of time I spend looking at GANs is that the pass rate should probably be a little under half: I don't know what it is overall (maybe Mike Christie's bot can tell us?) but my records of things I have reviewed suggest that I pass about 75% of nominations. The proportion of FACs I have reviewed at which have passed is marginally lower but around the same rate. Obviously I may have some level of selection bias in what I review (and there are certainly reviews where if I were feeling less generous I would probably have been justified in failing them and letting them nominate again rather than putting in the effort to bring them up to GA) but it's not my impression that fewer than half of the GANs I have looked at should pass. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 23:11, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

Since ChristieBot took over from Legobot on 17 November 2022, there have been 1301 passed GAs and 368 fails; a 78% pass rate. There have been 15 reviewers in that time who have reviewed at least 20 GANs; the pass rate for each reviewer individually varies from 40% to 100% and averages 79%. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:01, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Most nominators (that is, more than half) treat GAN as a free service. – This sentence stands out to me as interesting, and I think it gets at a philosophical issue. It implies (to my reading, at least) that nominating is a selfish act for the nominator and reviewing is a selfless act that a reviewer does for the benefit of the nominator. I don't know if I like that conclusion. Contributing to Wikipedia, including as a reviewer, is a free service. Obviously a nominator wants the article they wrote reviewed because they put in several hours of work, but that's just the thing; they're putting in work to benefit the encyclopedia. Nominating exists to improve Wikipedia, and reviewing exists to improve Wikipedia. The reason that long wait times are an issue is because the nominator has that obligation to respond hanging over their head for longer, but the nominator may no longer be available after a certain period of time. And in the meantime, close familiarity with the article fades away as they wait longer (after a few months, I often have to go back and reread some of the sources to get familiar with them again). Something doesn't seem right to me when content creators are treated as a burden when they ask for collaboration when that's whole point of Wikipedia. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:03, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

It's not that nominating is selfish, but nominating something for review inherently necessitates the participation of another person who does the review. It would be fine if we had a balance between people who love nominating and people who love reviewing without nominating, but we clearly, statistically, do not have that. More of us want to write than want to review, and it creates an imbalance which results in people waiting for 8 months for some articles to be reviewed. I'm not making a moral judgement, but a practical one. If you are asking someone for their labor, it only seems reasonable that you should be asked – in the spirit of collaboration – to give that labor in return, to ensure that everyone gets a timely review without having to beg. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:14, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

One might of course take the perspective that the nominator has already given their labour in writing/improving the article in the first place. TompaDompa (talk) 23:22, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't, because that is a different piece of labor than asking for a review. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:27, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree with PMC here. One could make the improvements to an article prior to nominating, and then not nominate; the labor/article improvement is done irrespective of if the article then goes to GAN or not. By nominating an article at GAN, the nominator is asking another editor to put in time to review the article. This is not a universal or even a majority view, but when I see people with 50+ GAs and no reviews, I think they're unfairly taking advantage of the process and their fellow editors, and ought to be banned from nominating or have their nominations heavily throttled. I do wish we had been much more strict with a maximum concurrent nominations limit to try and address the imbalance (but some will say that's not even a problem, even as other editors wait half a year or more to get a reviewer). Trainsandotherthings (talk) 00:48, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I also agree with PMC. I would put it a bit less harshly than TAOT: I'd prefer to say that if someone does a lot more nominating than reviewing, nobody in the community should feel any obligation to review, because there's no labour to repay. The reason I don't like the previous GAN sort (by age) is because it sends the message that there is an obligation that increases with age -- even the word "backlog" sends that message. I enjoy reviewing GAs, and I've done a lot of it; I like working with new nominators and trying to help them learn the ropes. I think that's more helpful to the encyclopedia than reviewing the 10th GA nomination of an editor who has not done much (or any) reviewing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:12, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Don't have a particular view on this, but just thought I'd throw in the fact that there are plenty of editors like me who were very active reviewers and content creators in their earlier years on WP, but do less of one or the other (or both) now. Any approach to QPQ needs to take into account the lifetime reviewing contributions of the nominator, not just what they have done in the last three or six months. All their reviews have contributed to WP regardless of when they were done. For example, I've done ~350 GAN reviews, and if you include GAs that are now FAs, have successfully nominated around 110 GAs. A 3:1 ratio or thereabouts. Something to think about perhaps? Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 02:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Personally I would prefer to calculate the 6-month and all-time reviewing ratios and use the more favorable one for qpq, if we decided to implement it. (t · c) buidhe 03:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I like that approach a lot. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

So do I. I wonder if we could do a sort of soft QPQ by using the existing collapse templates on the GAN page? Right now those templates are only used if someone has more than 20 nominations. We could set a limiting value for the review/GA ratio and move anything with a ratio below that into the collapse templates. That would mean people who wanted to could still open those templates and review those articles, but they would not be immediately visible. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I think this works iff you have something like "ratio or absolute". We have some incredibly prolific reviewers who have low ratios because they're also incredibly prolific writers, and it seems suboptimal to penalize major contributors (I'm cautious, around 'trying to stop the backlog from being this bad', to avoid overcorrecting to things that harm the underlying backlog cause of 'people are writing and nominating lots of articles'). Something like "with five or more GAs, ratio above 1:1 or 100+ reviews" could work, with some tweaking maybe on the low end (five honestly seems extremely high -- I'd really propose "one or more", but as you can see from below this is not necessarily agreed with). Vaticidalprophet 12:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Just to make sure I understand, you're saying that we would put a nomination inside the collapse template if:

1. The nominator had 5 or more GAs; and
2. The nominator had done less than 100 reviews; and
3. The nominator's review-to-GA ratio was less than 1:1

Is that correct? I would make it 3 GAs in (1), and I'd be more lenient than 1:1 in (3), but those are parameters that could easily be tweaked. I like that idea. I would also suggest per Buidhe's comment that the ratio in (3) should be the most favourable of the lifetime ratio and the last 12 months ratio. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's the shape of the proposal. 3 GAs sounds like a fairly ideal spot for it to kick in. I'm inclined to a relatively strict threshold for the ratio, but something in the neighbourhood of maybe 0.7:1 or 0.8:1 is defensible. We should signpost the collapsed templates fairly well, though, especially given quieter categories might start looking pretty empty. Vaticidalprophet 13:26, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I ran a couple of queries to see what this would do. At the numbers above (no more than 4 GAs, at least 100 reviews, R/G at least 1:1) there would be 432 nominations visible and 250 collapsed. Here are some other possibilities. Note: this does NOT include the tweak suggested above -- that for the R/G ratio we should look at the last X months as well and pick whichever ratio is better. It also does not show collapses due to having more than 20 nominations.

I tried with 50 instead of 100 for the first parameter and it makes almost no difference as you can see above, so I think we could set that to 50, if we were to do this. It's also interesting that the number of nominations that end up in the collapsed box is not very sensitive to the other two parameters. (Which suggests to me that a scattergraph of those two parameters might be interesting to look at; I might do that next.) I would be happy with the most lenient version of this (50/4/0.7); or I could go for (50/2/0.7). Not ready to actually propose this yet, but I think it's a possibility. Vaticidalprophet, I also think it's interesting that you described yourself above as a hard opponent of QPQ, but you find this option worth considering -- that suggests it might be possible to get support for some version of this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

The 50 vs 100 distinction is sort of a distinction about "what behaviour are we focusing on?". My intent for it was to avoid collapsing nominations by people who are very high on both axises -- our most prolific nominator-reviewers are by quick observation split about 50-50 on whether they have significantly more reviews or significantly more nominations, and it'd be awkward (and, I feel, kind of uncharitable) to collapse based basically on "sorry, do another literally 200 reviews because your existing substantial contributions aren't enough". There are a couple people in the barely-under-100 range who I have the same sort of thoughts on -- I could drop it to 75, reasonably -- but there are prolific nominators very close to the 50 mark who are definitely far-nomination-skewed.

And yeah, I think this is substantially more workable than a true QPQ, at least on paper. Unlike some others with very review-skewed ratios, I have no real animosity to people who've made the decision it's not their thing. Frankly, it's not much of my thing some of the time either (I've learned twice over that I can't be a backlog drive participant without burning out). I think GAN already has a problem with reviews frequently being surface-level and not seriously engaging with structure -- the reviews I'm proudest of are often the ones where I've really grappled with an article's coverage, e.g. taking articles that are a "list of things that happened, with some person coincidentally being in the middle of it" and turning them into biographies, but this is more in-depth than people tend to do when they're ticking off QPQs. (It is also, significantly, something that is hard to spot when reading a review as a non-participant after the fact, or to do based on a checklist.) I think it is healthy for the process to have some significant incentive to review, though, and particularly to signpost to newer people entering that we expect to turn people into nominator-reviewers. It may or may not work in practice, but it would be pretty far from the "good-on-paper idea wonkiest in practice" right now. Vaticidalprophet 16:06, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) I openly admit that I submit more GA articles than I review (and have reviewed far more PR and FA than I have ever submitted), but I refuse to feel guilty about that. As I have pointed out numerous times, in the real world, writers write, editors organize, copy editors correct/proof, fact checkers check facts, but on WP, especially for GA reviewers there is an expectation that editors do all of those jobs. I am good at and enjoy research and writing. I am less good at critiquing other people's work and I find it excruciatingly difficult at times to discern whether an article is "good enough" if it is far below the standard to which I hold myself. That said, I rarely fail an article I am reviewing (only in the instance that the nominator is unresponsive or decides to withdraw it) and am willing to take however much time it takes to improve it rather than to fail it. Besides which, failing an article does nothing to improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia, which is for me anyway, always the goal.

Over the last few years I have made a concerted effort to push myself to do reviews at GA, PR, and FA. (If I am understanding the technical analysis above, weighing only GA reviews would definite penalize people who review to improve articles on other platforms, but maybe folks here don't care about things outside the GA scope.) Despite the fact that I don't think I am good at it, others have told me that they found my reviews helpful. My point is that it is a balancing act – finding time to write vs. reviewing. If a hard rule of QPQ were implemented, I am 100% sure my article creations would go down, and certainly those that I submit to be reviewed, because of the time required to do equal amounts of reviews. That to me would be a loss for the encyclopedia, as I don't submit articles for recognition, but rather for the improvement that results from collaborating with someone else. IMO, which is worth diddly, requiring a QPQ would lead to a loss of quality articles on the whole. SusunW (talk) 17:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

IMO, which is worth diddly, requiring a QPQ would lead to a loss of quality articles on the whole. Yeah, I emphatically agree with this take. I don't think 'reviewing' is a particular strength of mine either, especially as wildly-broadly-construed as it is at GAN; I review a lot anyway because I consider it important, but I completely recognize other people can come to different conclusions on the same basis. I think instilling the sense that "it's important to review articles" to new nominators is important, but I have no illusions either that I could change established habits or that it would be a net positive to do so (because the primary change would generally be 'no more articles being nominated', and the possible secondary one 'more bad reviews'). Vaticidalprophet 17:22, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Absolutely concur with you Vaticidalprophet. The secondary potential hadn't occurred to me, but yes, that would be a significant issue too. SusunW (talk) 17:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, anything that discourages good writers from writing is a bad thing. SusunW, you have 98 GAs and 16 reviews. One possibility that occurred to me is that I would be willing to donate, so to speak, 82 reviews that I've done to your "account". Essentially that would be saying I like your work well enough to take responsibility for the labour required to meet the R/G ratio. That's probably getting too complex, but in principle it's something I would do -- choose editors who I think are worth supporting with my labour. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:32, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I broadly agree with the points made by SusunW (and the addendum by Vaticidalprophet), but I do want to point out that failing an article does nothing to improve the overall quality of the encyclopedia is not necessarily correct. I have worked with nominators to improve the quality of articles to meet the GA standards within the GAN process (leading to an initially subpar article turning into a quality one, and the nomination closing as successful), but I have also seen nominators respond to the feedback I have provided during reviews that I ultimately closed as unsuccessful by committing significant time and effort to improving the article in preparation for nominating it anew later. In the latter cases, the overall quality of the encyclopedia was improved even though the initial nomination was closed as unsuccessful. TompaDompa (talk) 23:52, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

There are also, more cynically, many cases where "improving the encyclopedia" means "not devaluing GA recognition by giving it to a substandard article". Vaticidalprophet 23:54, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I am sorry I did not reply sooner, but just saw this. You are a peach Mike Christie! (In Southernese that is a high complement.) I do think reviews are important and I have increasing made myself do more of them. I am just trying to be honest and transparent that I am probably never going to hit an equal number of reviews to writing. But, my goal is for the number of reviews I do to increase each year. I am trying, balance is hard. SusunW (talk) 16:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Does passing a nomination do anything to improve the quality of the encyclopedia, SusunW? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

AirshipJungleman29 IMO, definitely. Why wouldn't it? Unless one is doing "drive by" reviews, how can it not? (I have only ever had two of those, both reverted at my request.) In my experience, reviewers genuinely provide feedback with the aim of improving an article and collaboration gives the writer an opportunity to ensure that the context is clear to readers. SusunW (talk) 15:14, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

And why would failing an article not do that? Unless you feel that the only acceptable method of reviewing a GAN is to collaborate until it is of sufficient standard to pass, this line of logic doesn't really make sense to me SusunW. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:19, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I am fairly certain that I said that I am willing to work with it until it can pass. Perhaps your experience shows you that failed articles eventually are improved, but to me that is illogical and doesn't jive with my experience elsewhere on WP. Those who are genuinely interested in improving articles do. Those who have other motivations for editing articles generally don't take the time. I've reviewed plenty of articles that weren't submitted for GA, FA, or PR, given lots of feedback and no changes were ever made, so I now try to limit my time to reviewing articles where it seems probable that the nominator wants feedback. SusunW (talk) 15:39, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

OK, let's wait and see if anyone else likes the idea. In the meantime here's the scattergraph I mentioned. Each point represents a nomination; the left axis is the R/G ratio at the time of the nomination; the horizontal axis is the number of GAs that nominator had at the time of the nomination. This leads to smears of points -- e.g. the smear on the axis at a bit over 400 reviews at around 0.1 R/G is a single nominator who had gradually more GAs under their belt at the time of each nomination. If we were to implement some form of this it would be based on GAs and R/G at runtime instead, but I don't have that data quickly accessible. I doubt there's any difference in the outcomes. Also, this graph doesn't take into account the "use most favourable ratio of lifetime vs. last X months". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Any opinions on this approach from others? Does anyone else think this could work? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:27, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

What do you mean by "work"? Do you think it would reduce the actual backlog instead of just hiding it? I am skeptical. Personally, I would like us to use all available carrot (more recognition and love for reviewers) before we add more stick (barriers to participation for non-reviewing nominators). Hiding some nominations may feel like punishment to some nominators, and just hides the backlog instead of doing anything about it. I have come to stop viewing backlog drives as a band-aid on a failed process: their competitive nature makes them something where we focus on and celebrate reviewers, not GA nominators. —Kusma (talk) 06:39, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

By "work" I meant "be beneficial to GAN"; that is, make GAN run more smoothly and better align reviews with nominations. If the above idea were to work in that sense, it would be because more nominators were prompted to become reviewers, enough to make the difference, and eliminate the backlog. I don't entirely agree with you about backlog drives -- yes, the competitive nature helps, but they burn reviewers out, and the result is fewer subsequent reviews, and I suspect the shorter wait time drives up the rate of nominations. It's like bailing a leaky boat -- the water pours in faster the lower the level gets. I have to say that SusunW's response, above, that she writes and nominates articles in the expectation of collaboration at GAN, and would write less if her R/G ration banned her from GAN, is the most discouraging point I've read. I would hate to make a change that reduced her motivation for writing. I am sure there are others like here and I'm finding it hard to see how to accommodate editors like her in any approach to GAN that feels fair but is tilted towards encouraging reviewing. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:42, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure this is a good idea; it looks like QPQ by any other name, i.e. pressure to review. The collapse thing looks and feels like a punishment - if you're bad, your nominations will be hidden. Oh, and we tried collapsing already, and it didn't hide enough articles from enough nominators, so let's collapse a whole lot more by some yet more complicated set of rules. One of several things that seems to be being missed here is that creating GA-quality articles is a skill, and a time-consuming one: work is being given to the project. The skills of creating and reviewing are clearly different, and both are necessary; but it's far from obvious that everyone can be good at both, or that liking one makes one good at the other; or that (QPQ) doing one should oblige one to do the other. If we genuinely believe in QPQ, we should enforce it; if we don't, which seems to be the case, we should not try to enforce it. I don't see that discouraging nominations in any way, for any nominators new or old, is a good move. Wikipedia consists, for its readers, of articles (good or not); I hope everyone can agree that it is better if readers see good articles. We know that GAs are only a small percentage of the total: but if the effort to promote them is well-chosen by topic - i.e. we work on well-visited topics - then the chance that a visitor will encounter a well-written article improves. I agree with Kusma that hiding a backlog is not an improvement; and that backlog drives, which competitive people seem to enjoy, and which seem to work well on collaborative projects like Women in Green, are beneficial, and very likely necessary. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:32, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Creating GA-quality articles is a time-consuming task, but also the fundamental purpose of Wikipedia. Nominating them is neither—it is asking for another time-consuming task to be performed, for very little benefit. There is no effort to promote GAs to the general reader—nearly all have no idea what the green circle or bronze star mean—so the only real benefit is the self-satisfaction of the nominator. That said, we really should be trying more carrots, as Kusma has said, than resorting to the stick and only the stick. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:42, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Readers on mobile devices don't even get to see the little green circle, I've no idea why as it limits GA to a niche audience (I don't mean just nominators and reviewers, but ...). The benefit of GA is however not just self-satisfaction but that articles become better for everyone, whether readers know how their article was prepared or not (a restaurant metaphor comes to mind). Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:28, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

In both the most recent GAs I reviewed (Talk:Maria Mies/GA1) and nominated (Talk:Michael Huber (writer)/GA1), there was very detailed reviewer engagement with the text and a marked improvement of the article, in a collaborative process. We do not have enough things on Wikipedia where people truly work together closely on a single article, and to me the GA recognition by the green plus is far less important than knowing that at least one person really deeply engaged with my article and helped me make it better. —Kusma (talk) 16:02, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't really see the point of putting some nominations in a penalty box. It isn't going to reduce the backlog, it isn't going to change the prioritization, it isn't going to make those other nominations above the penalty box more visible, and it isn't likely to cause boxed nominators to want to continue as contributors to the GA ecosystem. All it's likely to do is to increase the waiting time of some of these penalty-box nominations from months to years, and maybe discourage some contributors from improving articles to GA-nomination-worthy quality. For what benefit? —David Eppstein (talk) 20:10, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I no longer think this is worth trying. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:36, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Review types

Some of the comments above, Chiswick Chap's in particular, have convinced me that collapsing more nominations is not the way to go. I want to respond to Kusma's comment about the review types though. I have certainly had (and performed) GA reviews that resemble what Kusma describes -- detailed reviewer engagement and a marked improvement of the article -- but of course there are other types of review, and often one knows even before the review starts what it will be:

• Detailed reviewer engagement with a high quality article leading to an improved article.
• An article (usually by a very experienced nominator) where there is very little to say, or at least the list of bullet points you come up with is minor. One knows ahead of time that the article is going to pass.
• An article from a new or newish nominator with obvious problems. Usually a quickfail, but sometimes a teaching opportunity. That means the time investment can vary from half an hour to many hours.
• An article from an established editor with limited prose skills -- sometimes the nominator has English as a second language. These are often good in many ways but the prose can be difficult to work with. I find these hard to do because I know the nominator is unlikely to be able to improve their prose skills, but I don't want to say "don't nominate without a co-editor who can write well". I usually end up either fixing the prose myself, if it's a shortish article, or failing it with examples while feeling bad about it.
• An article that goes into great detail about something, usually in pop culture. These are usually long, almost entirely supported by web citations, and vary in quality; they can be a grind to review because one has to immerse oneself in the details to understand the prose. Trying to trim trivia from these can be painful. There's one of these near the top of the current backlog, and I think a lot of reviewers shy away from this sort of article.
• Articles on huge topics, such as logic, which recently passed. These reviews are almost like research projects; just checking that appropriate sources have been used requires more scholarship than most editors are going to have on any particular topic.

I'm sure there are more types. I sometimes think it would be nice if the GAN page was divided up this way instead of by subject. When I review, I open up the article before committing to the review, and try to decide which of the above types it is. I had time to review something this morning, and went looking for the highest priority nomination that I knew would be a fairly easy one, and found one near the top of the list. I have to have a lot more time to commit before I'm willing to pick up some of the other types of review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:39, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

I alluded to 'structural' reviews earlier, which I think is a missing category here. A lot of articles are nominated when they have significant structural concerns that aren't necessarily noticeable at a quick glance. The archetypal example is biographies that aren't particularly 'biographic', and mostly list things with which the subject has been associated without connecting them in a cogent way. To take an example from my past reviews, though the article has fallen a little substandard due to getting massively more edits and attention in the interim (though I'm trying to clean it up, though I think I'm the only current watcher): maia arson crimew looked like this at the time of nomination, and this shortly after becoming a GA.

Articles with these problems at nomination are fairly common, especially for newer nominators, but very experienced ones can and do write them (and they're more likely to pass without structural work in such cases). They overlap quite heavily with short articles, because there's just a ton that hasn't been mined from the sources yet. These shouldn't ever pass without structural work -- they categorically fail 'broad' -- but they do, because many GA reviews are overly prose-focused and don't necessarily notice these issues. A lot of the time reviewers are willing to assume absences reflect source limitations, or nominators try to petition for them to be ignored on that basis (when if the sourcing doesn't exist for broadness, the implications of that should go the other way). I pick up these when I look at them for long enough and get bogged down in "if anyone else reviews this they'll either pass it after fixing 3 typos or quickfail it, and both of those would be bad outcomes", but there's a lot of them and many I just ignore. Vaticidalprophet 19:57, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Another "type" I've sometimes unfortunately encountered is articles that superficially look like they should be of the type described in the second bullet point ("very little to say ... One knows ahead of time that the article is going to pass") but turn out to have major sourcing or text-copying problems leading to a fail. Those can be an unexpected time sink. But I think they are the ones that it's most important to spend that time on, because the alternative is a superficial review that allows them to pass. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:23, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, this is a good summary of how GA reviews generally go for me. It can be very rewarding to push an article to GA by close collaboration with a new nominator who wasn't quite there, but it takes work. Sometimes it's easier to go review an article you're almost certain will pass by someone who already has 30 GAs to their name. The most intimidating, by far, are the last type, on high-level and broad topics; I don't think I've ever done one. —Ganesha811 (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

The current system currently prioritizes (48 reviews, 438 GAs) above (2 reviews, 26 GAs) above (0 reviews, 3 GAs). I would prioritize those in the opposite order. One easy way of tweaking the system to do that would be to replace the current priority formula reviews/GAs by a slightly modified formula. Some experimentation suggests that (reviews+1)/GAs works pretty well. Intuitively, this is easy to explain: it means that we would be spotting each nominator a single free review. With that prioritization, the priorities for (0,3), (2,26), and (48,438) would be 0.333, 0.115, and 0.112, in the order I would prefer. There would not be much change in the relative priorities of reviewers who have both many reviews and many nominations. The effect of this change is mainly to the priorities of newcomers to the GA system. Is there any interest in trying this? —David Eppstein (talk) 05:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I would support free reviews in this manner (anywhere between say 1 and 5), and the proposal seems simple enough to implement. If I recall correctly the topic was discussed before, but we didn't move on it. I don't think the proposed tweak will matter too much at higher numbers, but it seems worth it to provide feedback to newer nominators sooner. CMD (talk) 10:13, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

This would be fairly easy to implement. Because of the earlier discussions about this, the bot already has a similar option implemented. There's a parameter called "Free GAs", which is currently set to zero. If Free GAs is set to 1, then any nominator with that many GAs or less is sorted above every other nominator. So (0,1) would be below (x,0) and above everything else. (0,2) would be sorted as it is now. I don't think this is as good as what David is suggesting, but I mention it in case anyone else likes that approach. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:37, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I like David's proposal - if it's as straightforward to implement as you say, I say we go for it! —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:42, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

If we get three or four more people agreeing, and nobody objects, I'll make the change. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:50, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Seconded. I'm lucky that my first and currently only GA nomination was a high-priority article (Costa Concordia disaster), otherwise I could've expected to wait months. Cessaune [talk] 21:23, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I think it's worth a shot. The main effect should be that newcomers do not get pushed to the bottom of the list upon their first successful nomination. It doesn't keep them at the top of the list either, however, which I think is an important feature that distinguishes it from the "Free GAs" approach. This is all assuming that the order the nominations are listed in is an important factor, which I'll admit I'm not entirely convinced is true (or at least I'm not convinced of the extent to which the order matters). TompaDompa (talk) 20:40, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I didn't think it was that important either and was thus skeptical of the formula change. However, if the backlog rate is similar but the oldest unreviewed articles are getting older, that suggests it does have an impact. CMD (talk) 01:07, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

We should do something to make nominators not fall down so much in the sort order after they have their first GA promoted. This is something in that direction. I don't know if it does enough, but I don't think it will do any harm. —Kusma (talk) 16:49, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I think that's enough agreement to try it. I should have time to look at this tomorrow; if it's easy I'll make the change tomorrow, otherwise it won't be before Thursday. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:20, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

And a P.S. to TompaDompa's comment: I only review intermittently, but when I do I now pick almost solely from the top of the list. I would not be surprised if there are others who do the same. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:21, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

This has been done. Let me know if anyone sees any problems with the new sort order. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:43, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for making the change, Mike! —Ganesha811 (talk) 02:09, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello, more than a week ago, @Prinaki: begun a GA review for the article Jonathan Blow. After more than five days without any comments, I asked Prinaki on their talk page if they intended to do the review at all. They said:

"i don't intend to complete it further. It was a mistake to create it."

and as such I'd like to task the review for deletion per the instructions at WP:GAN/I#N4a.

I've never requested a deletion of a page before, however, and I don't know how to do this in the context of GAN. Can someone please task and/or delete Talk:Jonathan Blow/GA1 for me? Thanks, Neuroxic (talk) 13:30, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

G7ed and rolled back the bot to set it up for a de novo review. Courcelles (talk) 13:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Thanks! Neuroxic (talk) 23:01, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Very inadequate reviews, more eyes would be appreciated:

• Talk:Matthew Wright (basketball)/GA1
• Talk:Nestory Irankunda/GA1

« Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:06, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

Why isn't this editor blocked yet? All they've done is submit drafts on non-notable, often previously deleted footballers again and again and again and again without addressing the issues from prior declines, and now they're literally socking to pass their articles through GA. JoelleJay (talk) 00:15, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

@JoelleJay: If you are familiar, please file an SPI. For the moment, unless there are objections, I will roll back the two passes of JRevewier. I have never seen a GAN say "still missing a lead section" or "paraphrasing might have been used from articles seen" before. CMD (talk) 12:36, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/JC Kotisow SN54129 13:46, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I've cleaned up the unrestored GAN tag. Aside from some potential fiddling with the GA list which will be caught by the bots if it exists later, no more action needs to be taken here. CMD (talk) 02:51, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

This user is repeatedly removing the GA symbol on passed articles and changing "listed" to "failed" on talkpage templates - without any other edits. Initially also without explanation, but is now claiming that he doesn't think it's GA and therefore fails. Warning to revert on sight. Kingsif (talk) 21:58, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

That's because I'm the reviewer and I failed the article. Willbb234 22:33, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Willbb234 You were the reviewer for the GAN of Venezuela at the 1956 Summer Olympics in April 2021, which closed as not listed. You however were not the reviewer for the subsequent GAN in July 2021 that resulted in the article being listed. There's been no other activity on the article's talk page since then, and you've not followed any of the steps for a GA reassessment.

As another reviewer listed the article as a GA two months after your review, if you believe that the article no longer meets the GA criteria then you need to follow the process laid out at WP:GAR for a reassessment. You cannot arbitrarily delist a GA without discussion or consensus. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:05, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

It was relisted without the issue being addressed and there was no attempt to reach out to me concerning the issue (whether they agreed or not with me). It's plain disrespectful to do this and undermines the whole point of the GA review process. Willbb234 23:09, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

It was listed, not relisted, after passing a successful GAN, with the reviewer who passed it being one of the current GA coordinators. There's nothing in WP:GAN/I that states that a reviewer who failed the article must be consulted before another reviewer can pass it. However there is a FAQ entry that directly covers this circumstance, the second to last one on the page, which states that If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the GA criteria, you can initiate a reassessment. Sideswipe9th (talk) 23:25, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I must add that your belief that it is "undermining" and "disrespectful" to not ask you for permission before doing another GAN is, I mean, ridiculous. Or were you expecting to be not only consulted, but able to have the final say, on the status of this article in perpetuity? Because that's called WP:OWN - and seemingly attempting to use your misunderstanding of the GAN process as a way to stamp authority on your editing mindset, too. I explained all of what Sideswipe has above to you, and you said, what was it, I found a really long way to say nothing at all? I just hope you understand now. Kingsif (talk) 23:56, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

@Willbb234: it's the wrong way to handle it though. In your review you said, "I'm concerned with the over-reliance on one source. Also, the excessive use of sports-reference isn't ideal as it really only lists results." and you cited this as a reason to not list the article, "I am particularly concerned about the over-reliance on a single, dated source which makes the verifiability of the article questionable, thus failing WP:GACR point 2." If you think the most recent review didn't adequately address that, you can start a reassessment as Sideswipe9th explained. There you can raise those concerns and let other editors weigh in.

Also, there's no obligation for Kingsif to reach out for a future review. Imagine how unfeasible that would be for an editor with a few hundred reviews to be perpetually held accountable for all those articles. Take care, Rjjiii (talk) 01:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Besides the point - the editing behaviour years after it being passed is the concern - but since you've mentioned the user's one issue with it passing, we have to note that their misunderstanding is not just of the process but the criteria: the "single, dated source"? The official report on the event. Of course it's dated, it happened in 1956. It's also clearly the most reliable source. How an official source being contemporaneous with the event makes the verifiability of the article questionable would be the real questionable part. Kingsif (talk) 01:16, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kingsif: Sorry if I made you feel on the spot. My point in quoting the review is not that anything is wrong with the article, but that the concern was initially made in good faith. The problem is not the content but the manual removal of the template, edit-warring to keep it off, and attempting to police future GA reviews. Even if an editor is mistaken, they are still free to open up the review; it just creates a discussion in the page's history for future editors. Rjjiii (talk) 02:56, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Don't worry, you didn't; I was being a bit sharp that it would be (was - I suppose I don't remember, which is also your point) a strange reason to fail a review (that's not what WP:V is about), and so something even stranger to create conflict over years later. Kingsif (talk) 03:10, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

The way the GA review process works is a single editor nominates and a single editor reviews, with the reviewer being the ultimate decider on the outcome of the review. When I failed the article on 2 April 2021, a single day later, the article was renominated without any edits addressing the issue or any attempt to discuss the issue with me. This is not in the spirit of the GA review process as it ignores the assessment of the reviewer. The nominator is more than welcome to disagree with the assessment of the reviewer but at that point, the nom must be willing to open up a discussion with the reviewer and ignoring the issue and bypassing this decision is simply disrespestful towards the reviewer. Asking for a second opinion is a much more reasonable line of action. It also sets a bad precedent for future nominations - if noms are simply allowed to renominate without addressing any issues then this undermines the whole process (one nom and one reviewer) and is also a complete waste of reviewer time (two reviews have to take place instead of just one).

Now I'd like to turn to Kingsif's comments as of late. Following the initial edits, Kingsif went to my talkpage and asked "What the fuck is wrong with you" ([1]). Following the reversion, Kingsif suggested I had "reading difficulties", was a vandal, or had a "massive arrogant ego" and told me to "stay away" ([2]). They then said that my action was "malicious" or "dangerously incompetent" in an attempt to convince an admin to block me, and they also proceeded to remove their previous comments as the likely realised how others would perceive them ([3]). I have to ask why this editor is throwing a temper tantrum over a fucking green circle? I have been considering taking this to ANI over their behaviour as I believe the personal attacks are the only "malicious" thing going on here, to use your own language.

Several editors have suggested that an article reassessment is the best course of action. While I have considered this option, I don't believe it is a good use of editor resources, nor in the spirit of the review process to request a reassessment. This is because issues should be addressed at the initial review stage or the nom should attempt to challenge the comments at the failed review, neither of which were done. I believe the issue is legitimate. How am I to believe that a report written in 1956 is reliable? I don't know the author and I don't know in what context this was written. Just because it is 'official' it doesn't mean it's reliable to the extent that you can base nearly an entire article off of it. Also saying that "it's clearly the most reliable source" isn't a valid argument as we need reliable sources not the most reliable. I would also note that regurgitating results from sports-reference and the official report and then attempting to draw the results into long paragraphs isn't a good way to go and brings the 'well-written' criteria into question. I hope that other editors agree with what I have to say. Willbb234 20:20, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

When I failed the article on 2 April 2021, a single day later, the article was renominated without any edits addressing the issue or any attempt to discuss the issue with me. This is directly addressed in the GA FAQ that I linked in my last reply. The question I failed the article, and the nominator just nominated it again without fixing the problems I identified! is answered with That's okay. There is no time limit between nominations, and this is the recommended process if the nominator disagrees with your review. Let someone else review it this time. The new reviewer is sure to read your suggestions to improve the article while deciding on their review. If your concerns were legitimate, then the new reviewer will doubtless agree with you and fail the article again. If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the GA criteria, you can initiate a reassessment.

It is entirely within the GA process to renominate an article at any point after the failure. That Kingsif did not make any edits doesn't really matter per the FAQ answer I just quoted. What matters is that two months later in July 2021 Lee Vilenski, one of the current GA coordinators, reviewed the article, and through that review listed it as a GA. Because this article was listed within process, by another reviewer, your only choice of recourse is to start a GAR as I've said previously. You cannot unilaterally decide that the second review was invalid because you weren't notified or consulted, and remove the GA listing without going through the GAR process.

As for the diffs from Kingsif on your talk page, this is not the place to discuss those as this is not a behavioural noticeboard. Sideswipe9th (talk) 20:41, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Why do you think quoting an FAQ, the specific section of which your are referring to was written in 2012 is a valid argument to make? Also how does Lee Vilenski being a GA coordinator have any relevance? Are you suggesting that he is any more competent than I am? I am talking about the spirit of the GA review process and you are attempting to make weak arguments. Willbb234 21:07, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Willbb234, everyone here has tried to explain to you that your understanding is incorrect and that you no longer have authority over a review once the review is over. No single person can claim authority or jurisdiction over any article. It would be a good idea to forget about this article and find something else to work on, because it's really inappropriate to try to take charge after the GA review is over. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:15, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's correct. One is a reviewer for the duration of the review. Other processes such as GAR and GAN can run later. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:16, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

This is what the good article criteria looked like in 2011. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:24, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I am currently super short on time, so can't read into this at the detail I'd like to, but if you fail a GAN and then it is relisted, you do not get to choose the result in the process of the second GAN, unless you either pick up the review, or are asked for second opinion.

If you think that the review is substandard, you can post here (more suitable for newer reviewers), or open up a GAR. You can't just unlist something. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:31, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Seeing many fly by passes as of late like Talk:Sybil (cat)/GA1. Do we not review these at all? Moxy- 12:10, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Do you think the review was inadequate in some way, Moxy? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:44, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Moxy Not really, no. The unspoken standards expected of a GA have generally been increasing, but the will to apply them consistently has been decreasing. The main culprit appears to be the pre-load text that was implemented a few months ago, giving inexperienced reviewers a convenient checklist to go through so they can call it a day. Combine that with the vague/unhelpful good article instructions and the general disagreement over what the basic standards for a review even are, and voila. For a while I was tracking the frequency of checklist reviews on this talk page, but that made a few people more upset than the actual checklist reviews themselves. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:46, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

That made a few people more upset than the actual checklist reviews themsleves is not what I got from that thread. Many very experienced editors, including some with several FACs under their belts, pointed out that the length of a GAC review (both in terms of time from opening to pass and pagesize of the review page) has nothing to do with the quality of the review. Moreover, if someone passes a particular criterion, we should AGF and take them for their word that they've actually reviewed the article for that criterion (e.g., if there's no OR, why should someone need to write out "I reviewed the article and didn't find any OR" when there's a handy checklist that indicates that that's the case?). voorts (talk/contributions) 00:24, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I've been watching a steady rotation of 400-word cat articles appear on GAN and disappear a week later. It's not how I interpret GACR, but I don't plan to start workshopping GACR clarifications until after the backlog drive (which I've already set up the scoring system for in a way that should avoid too many of the more controversial reviews). Regarding quickpasses in general: they've always been a thing, and they've always been "controversial but not outright banned". It's reasonable to hold the position that nitpicking just to nitpick when an article already clearly fits GACR is unnecessary; the issue tends to be interpreting what clearly fits GACR. Vaticidalprophet 17:51, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm curious as to how you can quick pass an article when you're expected to do a spot-check at minimum for source integrity/plagiarism at each review :3 F4U (they/it) 20:29, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

You can about as well say "when you're expected to assess any of the other criteria" -- the conceit is that quickpassing is 'when someone has reviewed all the criteria and genuinely doesn't believe there are any issues holding up a promotion'. Vaticidalprophet 20:40, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

pinging @Voorts and Tim O'Doherty: as they should be notified of this. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:07, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't see the issue with the cat articles. I try to make them the best that they can be with the extant information, and I am certain they pass every GA criterion. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:11, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I would also like to add that the main reviewer, voorts, does do legitimate reviews: on Peter III's article for instance, he pulled me up on when I misplaced a few refs, which I fixed; there would be no chance of that happening with a quickpass. I'd advise not to conflate a succinct review with a bad one. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:31, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

There's an unsettled existential dispute about how short is too short for GA, when lack of sourcing crosses into "there just isn't enough for broad coverage of this to be possible", and when WP:NOPAGE applies. A number of these also come up at FAC (see current debates around Pope Sisinnius, and in particular how the article has more than doubled in size since the beginning of the review). I agree with the second point; it's much harder to spot how a review actually went from its review page alone than a lot of people think. Vaticidalprophet 22:32, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I've participated in the Pope Sisinnius FAC. It has my full support as an FA. I won't be nominating any more articles for at least three weeks, so you don't need to worry. When nominating Sybil, I sought Unlimiteadlead's advice on whether it could be a GA, and they responded positively. If you'd like to see any other, longer GAs I've worked on, I worked on Charles III in March through to May. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 22:37, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm aware of your work and have substantial respect for it. It's an observable-fact that editors with a lot of quality-assessed articles tend to have both very long and very short (by 'what they're willing to nominate') articles with a larger raw number of the latter, and this is something I think about when trying to standardize "is there a point where breadth or comprehensiveness just isn't possible?"; there's a real degree to which people's 'stats' reflect different views on what fits GACR or FACR more than it does different writing habits, especially at the GA level due to reviewer variance. There are alternative ways of measuring article improvement impact (e.g. measuring by views), but these also have problems -- I'm fairly sympathetic to the argument where 'good articles on niches' is Wikipedia's strength. Vaticidalprophet 22:50, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you; your work is also noted. I make no bones about the fact I would like to get that particular series of articles to GT, although I won't sacrifice quality for speed. It isn't my main project either, which would be getting Henry VI of England to a readable state. I enjoy reading niche GAs, which is the main reason as to why I'm doing this, not because I like cats or whatever. I began work on the chief mouser articles nearly a month ago, and have gotten just six through as of now; hardly going for quantity over quality. I'd like you to know that I do take care when writing, and I'm not going to nominate any old rubbish for GA. Tim O'Doherty (talk) 23:00, 16 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for pinging me @Onegreatjoke. I did the review, and it was not a "fly-by". As you can see from my review (and the page history), I copy-edited the article before passing. Since the article is short, I also cite-checked every single source (@Freedom4U), both in that article and the other cat articles that Tim has nominated and I've reviewed. I've also searched through available newspaper archives (going beyond what GA reviews require), to ensure that the articles are as broad and in depth as possible; you can see this most clearly from my recent review of Nelson. During my reviews, I've found Tim to be a careful editor who pays attention to detail. The speed with which the reviews were conducted reflect (1) that the articles were short; (2) that Tim has been easy to work with; and (3) that I am a fast researcher and copy editor.

I agree with @Vaticidalprophet: It's reasonable to hold the position that nitpicking just to nitpick when an article already clearly fits GACR is unnecessary; the issue tends to be interpreting what clearly fits GACR. As to what fits GACR, I do not believe that notability guidelines such as NOPAGE should have any bearing on whether something meets GACR, and I don't think it's the responsibility of a GA reviewer to ignore GACR and sua sponte conduct a review for deletion. If everything has been written about a notable topic that can be written, and that results in a short article, I don't see why that shouldn't meet GACR #3 as currently written. voorts (talk/contributions) 00:01, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

Per above, I'm interested in orchestrating another backlog drive next month. I think the optimal drive strategy, especially under our current circumstances of severe backlog, builds off the July 2021 pattern of bonus points both for old nominations and long articles; our barnstar points setup was built assuming that many sources of points, and became a bit awkward after we abolished the latter. I looked back through the archives to find my statistical rundown of anticipated article lengths:

I ran the numbers for twenty randomly selected articles in the March drive. (Selection method: I put them all in a list, had random.org randomise the list, and picked the twenty at the top.) I used Prosesize to calculate the current length of the articles -- some could have been expanded or contracted significantly in the intervening period, but I sanity-checked a couple for it and didn't find any reason to suspect my numbers would be systematically off. In this sample, I found a median length of 1805 words with an interquartile range of 1445 (25th percentile) to 4255 (75th percentile). The mean was quite a bit bigger than the median due to the effect of one particularly long article, at 2584 words. The total range was from 693 words (Charles A. Cheever) to 8094 words (2nd Infantry Division (United Kingdom)) -- the latter being over three thousand words longer than the next longest article, with no other articles in the sample being above 5000 words. From the totally unscientific method of "looking at the full list", I think my sample may underrepresent articles that were failed during the drive -- not sure what effect that'd have, but worth noting the shortest article was a quickfail. The next decision from here is, I suppose, how often we want people to get bonus points; I'm no GOCE expert, but I do their drives when they run, and I have the impression very few participants get the 5k words bonuses.

I plan to do an analysis like this again, because I wonder if it's generalizable to today -- the shortest article was a Coldwell, which is no longer a factor, but I have the strong intuitive sense that there are way more very short (<800 words) articles in the backlog than I'm used to. Given there hasn't been a drive since the Jan reforms, it's tricky to figure out what from prior drive data is still applicable.

I also think there are some obstacles around the fact the GA criteria are currently even more in flux than usual, and disagreement over what counts under them is more prominent than it's been for a long time -- such disagreements were part of why the previous drive wasn't followed up for so long, and backlog drives (which see both way more quickfails and way more relatively surface-level passes than normal circumstances) are a pretty awkward time to try implement across-the-board reforms. I have the intuitive sense to include some kind of "passing articles below X length doesn't count for points" rule (because short articles have been a historically major source of surface-y drive passes), but I know I'm a hardliner on the GA length question and don't know if this reflects community consensus. I don't want to turn another backlog drive into another major dispute about GACR. Still, I would like us to not have a nine-month backlog at some point. Vaticidalprophet 13:19, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

In previous backlog drives, we did three criteria for completeness:

1. Addresses all the criteria
2. Provides at least one suggestion for improvement
3. Includes spot checks

Then there was an issue with some coordinators feeling that they needed to personally check all of the reviews, although others felt that just doing a sampling was ok especially if there were no issues with that person's reviews. (t · c) buidhe 14:10, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I've never participated in a GA review drive – if I've reviewed during one at all it was due to my usual reviewing practice of picking up whatever article seems interesting, so take my comments for as little as they're worth! – but I would consider coordinators checking every single review a complete waste of time; if a reviewer does 10 reviews there's no need to check every single one unless there's a reason to be concerned. People's time would be much better spent reviewing an article on their own than checking through ten reviews by the same reviewer. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:00, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

That last sentence was the kicker, I believe. I really don't think it should be implemented again—it was just asking for coordinator burnout. An August drive is a good idea—I think we should probably try to make them twice-yearly. Half points for old articles, one point per 4000/4500 words reviewed sounds good enough to me, spotchecks of 5 or 10% of sources, and at least one improvement suggestion is a good, basic criteria set. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:55, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest to redo the points from scratch and avoid half points. Random proposal: base of 5 for each review, 1-5 bonus points depending on age, 1-5 bonus points depending on length. —Kusma (talk) 16:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Can we maybe eliminate the automatically-added tickbox-template from Template:GAN/preload before starting a new review drive? I think it is a big part of the reason we have been getting so many more tickbox-only reviews, and a big part of the problematic aspects of the last review drive. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:44, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm of 1.5 minds to boldly remove the checklist. I outright had a tab open, having clicked 'restore this version' to the pre-checklist and typing in the edit summary, and closed it figuring I might as well ask first. I think we have something good enough for consensus to remove it and don't need to hold another RfC, but I'll at least give a heads-up first that I intend on removing it soon unless there's a sudden groudswell of opposition. Vaticidalprophet 11:34, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

David Eppstein, the tickbox template wasn't present when the last drive took place. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:38, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

I fully agree with removing before we start a drive. The tickbox template was a valid experiment, but it does not seem to have been successful. —Kusma (talk) 16:51, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Glad to see that another drive is being planned. Looking forward to taking part for the first time! Grk1011 (talk) 15:51, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm a new reviewer/editor and didn't know the tick box was only a recent change, but I'm glad it's going away. I definitely noticed pretty quickly that it's not very helpful at all and got in the habit of simply deleting it before starting a review. :3 F4U (they/it) 20:39, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Backlog drive signup page up

I've created the signup page. This is still a little preliminary (note the existence of exactly one coord), but it's committing to it as at least a serious proposal now. I've used generally the July 2021 structure, with some tweaks. Vaticidalprophet 16:25, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I like the point system. Reaching the top three awards tiers should be a probability, not a near-impossibility as it was last time around. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:39, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I'm going to sign up, but I could produce lists of who's reviewed what during the drive very easily, if that would be helpful. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:46, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

Would it make sense to add the tab for this to the top like was done in the past? I'm not sure how others are supposed to find out about this upcoming event. Grk1011 (talk) 16:02, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

@Grk1011 I've just done it. Thanks for the suggestion :3 F4U (they/it) 16:07, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello, the above article has been at GA nomination since 1 May 2023. I was intending to review it, but instead put the cleanup tag. After getting a reply from User:Johnson524, the nominator, I'm not sure if I am right about the tag (see User_talk:Amitchell125#DeepStateMap.Live_fixes). Have I made an error somewhere? Amitchell125 (talk) 14:30, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Just from a quick look, I too would be concerned about some of the social media sourcing. For instance, the first source I checked was for the claim "Deep State UA's work has also been cited by foreign organizations; including ... NBC News[23]" The source given is this tweet, which is from an NBC foreign correspondent. There's no evidence that this is official NBC footage, and I can't see that it verifies that NBC News have cited Deep State's work. Indeed, it's not clear to me that it even supports the weaker claim that that particular journalist has cited Deep State's work: they never specifically name Deep State as a source.

I would also be potentially concerned about WP:DUE. Looking at the "Media attention and use" section of the article, this mostly seems to be cited to primary sources. If no secondary sources have commented on the fact that any random media outlet has used the map, should it be in the article? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 15:58, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

(Similarly re. the Telegram post: maybe it's just because I don't use Telegram, but I don't see anything in this post which demonstrates their first Telegram post was on 1 March 2020, and even if it does, if no secondary sources report that then who cares?) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:02, 19 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Caeciliusinhorto-public (and @Buidhe) for your feedback on this! I really do appreciate any comments and concerns about the article, as I would like to see the page eventually reach GA status, as mentioned above. There are a few things I would like to address: firstly, you make some strong points on the NBC News citation, and while it does look like they are using the map, the name is never explicitly said, and so that will be removed. Secondly, for your concern of WP:DUE, I might have went overboard on mentioning pretty much every new source that has used the map, and I see that, oops. I believe having the section though really helps establish the map's notability to the public (outside of interviews and reports) and should be kept at least in some capacity. Do you think that slimming down the section to just the media with an English Wikipedia article would work, or do you think even further to just the most important Ukrainian officials (the Center for Countering Disinformation, Oleksii Arestovych, Oleksii Reznikov, Ministry of Defence of Ukraine, and the Territorial Defense Forces (Ukraine))? Finally, for your concern about the 1 March 2020 Telegram post, it is the first viewable post you can see from Deep State UA on the messaging service, and with the organization first starting off there, I believe it is important to mention as it signifies the start of the company. I hope this was helpful, and sorry about the length of the reply. Cheers! Johnson524 (Talk!) 06:50, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

It's still original research to say it was the first post. For all we know there were earlier posts that were deleted. (t · c) buidhe 06:53, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

If earlier posts were deleted, it likely would have been done on purpose, so wouldn't that still make this date notable for being the first purposeful post? (albeit, a change of wording in the article to match this may be an order). Johnson524 (Talk!) 06:58, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

This is speculation though (t · c) buidhe 07:41, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

I understand what you mean, the article will changed accordingly. While you're here, what do you think about my proposal to tackle the WP:DUE problem? Johnson524 (Talk!) 07:44, 20 July 2023 (UTC)

@Buidhe and @Caeciliusinhorto-public, I am against double pinging and I'm sorry about that, but I believe I have addressed all of your issues with the page discussed here (including the first Telegram post and the DUE problems, which I slimmed down to just organizations with an English Wikipedia article since there was no comments otherwise). @Amitchell125, do you think that the article is in a state where a GA nomination could begin, or am I still missing some things? Cheers! Johnson524 (Talk!) 03:57, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello all. I have been participating in NPP and DYK. I have also worked on several good articles. I would like to try reviewing an article and I am wondering if anyone would volunteer to check my work? Thank you all and have a great Sunday! Bruxton (talk) 18:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Sure, I'm happy to have a look, just ping me or drop me a line once you're ready. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:57, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Thank you @Premeditated Chaos:. I appreciate it. Bruxton (talk) 22:30, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Hello! @DreamRimmer and I were thinking of co-reviewing an article for good article status. Are co-reviews allowed? I assume so, but thought I’d ask. - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 00:25, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

It has happened, but it's also emphatically something the process doesn't want to establish a habit/expectation about. What specific article are you looking at and what are you envisioning when you picture a co-review? Vaticidalprophet 00:31, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Haven’t decided on an article yet. Probably just one that needs reviewed of a topic we’re interested in. I think we’re envisioning discussing each criteria together and sharing thoughts, improvements, knowledge, and ideas with each other as we’re both new to GAN. - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 00:34, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

If there were a rule preventing you from doing this, it would be best to ignore it. There may some bot-related weirdness to be aware of (like it listing only the creator of the review page at the top), but I doubt you'll run into any major issues. You could also both start your own separate reviews, help each other by double-checking each others' work, and potentially ask for a mentor here. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 00:42, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Generally, the rare contexts people have co-reviewed articles relate to extremely big-topic articles that are difficult for one person to handle alone (e.g. Simón Bolívar), but even such articles are almost always reviewed by a single editor (e.g. Prehistoric religion) -- if usually with commentary from others. (Lot of people make comments when a big article is at GAN.) For new editors looking to get a sense of how GAN works who want explicit supervision, usually people ask somebody either here or directly on their talk to look over a review before they pass it. I'm very willing to do that and have done so in the past -- I can also answer any questions you might have about reviewing in general. Vaticidalprophet 01:04, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I'll also add that the backlog drive (do reviews, receive barnstars) is coming up, and it would be fantastic to see more signups. I'm willing to provide any help necessary to newer reviewers to get a sense of how GANs work before the drive. Vaticidalprophet 01:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I think we’ll attempt to do a co-review, even if it isn’t common. I’ll definitely take you up on the offer for help! - 🔥𝑰𝒍𝒍𝒖𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏 𝑭𝒍𝒂𝒎𝒆 (𝒕𝒂𝒍𝒌)🔥 01:19, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Just be aware the software will probably only pick up one of you as the reviewer (likely the one who creates the page). CMD (talk) 01:48, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes, that's what will happen. If there's a lot of support for recording co-reviewers (and co-nominators) let me know as there would probably need to be an RfC to make the necessary template changes. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:14, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I really don't want to go too far down the co-reviewer slope -- it's a load-bearing GAN vs FAC distinction imo, much moreso than differences in criteria (and in the hypothetical choice between "explicitly set GACR at FACR, single reviewer" and "make GAN multi-party, with a low-threshold reading of GACR" I'd take #1 unhesitatingly). If GAN becomes "multi-party, just with even less agreement about what you're going for than FAC and an even longer backlog before liftoff", that bodes poorly for the process's health. Vaticidalprophet 02:19, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I wrote an experimental user script that aims to help reviewers verify whether a reliable source supports a claim. It is called "Source Verification AI Assistant". It attempts to find sentences in the source that support the claim and quotes them. A few examples can be found at User:Phlsph7/SourceVerificationAIAssistant#Examples.

The underlying AI technology is very new and often gives inaccurate responses. The script is still at an experimental stage and reviewers should not rely on it for their spotchecks. If the script does not encounter any sentence, it does not mean that the source is irrelevant. It only means that the reviewer has to read through the source themself. If it does quote sentences then the reviewer has to ensure that (1) the sentences are from the reliable source and (2) they support the claim. I included various warning messages in the script and its documentation. Please let me know if you have further ideas on how to discourage misuse or how to improve the script. For more details on how to use it, its functions, and its limitations, see User:Phlsph7/SourceVerificationAIAssistant. Phlsph7 (talk) 18:12, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I look forwards to trying out this new tool. (t · c) buidhe 18:20, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Interesting! I've experimented with LLM-enhanced proofreading but not had anything so far that was usable in a review (or for my own articles) -- hallucination rate too high even with careful prompting, but this is probably a temperature problem in part (I habitually set temperatures very high because it's what I prefer for general LLM use, then don't always turn them down low enough when decreasing). I'll test this on known-supported sources first sometime. Vaticidalprophet 04:02, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Is there a policy on reviews by sockpuppets? Talk:Sanctioned Suicide/GA1 was reviewed by new user Kate the mochii who turned out to be a confirmed sock. This doesn't give me a lot of confidence that the review was legitimate. RoySmith (talk) 16:34, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I think their review should be nullified per WP:BMB. ––FormalDude (talk) 16:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

We don't have anything specific (other than obviously you can't sock to review your own nomination), but nomination pages like other sock creations can be WP:G5ed by another editor if they feel it would be the best course of action. CMD (talk) 16:55, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I see it has already been tagged for G5... RoySmith (talk) 17:25, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Depends on the overall quality of the review. AFreshStart had 9 GAs to their name when it was discovered they were a sock account, and consensus at the time was to keep them listed. I've never had a good interaction with a sockpuppet review myself but there are a few that have stood up to scrutiny. I hate to admit it, but sometimes sockpuppets can legitimately contribute to the project.

Taking a look at the review as a whole, I am concerned about the rubber-stamped nature of it all, it raises red flags. There are some questionable sources as well, which shouldn't have been passed. I agree with the delisting for now.

@RoySmith, I can grab GA2. I'll get around to that later today. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 18:24, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

FYI I'm contesting deletion because the page doesn't qualify under G5. Edge3 (talk) 19:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I have deleted it and adjusted the numbering; banned users don't get to review things. The deletion discussion was not substantial editing that would need to be preserved. —Kusma (talk) 19:17, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I was in the process of contesting the applicability of G5... so speedy deletion should have been avoided as a controversial measure. Would you mind reverting, or should I go ahead an open a request for undeletion? Edge3 (talk) 19:25, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:STICK RoySmith (talk) 19:56, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Lol. I do feel so strongly that the discussion was ended prematurely. Also, Kusma ended up deleting our policy discussion along with the review itself. Talk about throwing out the baby along with the bathwater... ^_^ Edge3 (talk) 20:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Also, STICK applies when debate has "has come to a natural end". Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a "natural end" when it comes to CSD. Due to its very nature, speedy deletion allows admins to put debate to an abrupt end, without allowing the community to fully flesh out its ideas.

I'll see if I request undeletion later today. I'm on my phone so I can't fill out the form until I get back to my laptop. Edge3 (talk) 20:21, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kusma: Oops! Forgot to ping you :-) Edge3 (talk) 20:51, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Articles deleted under CSD G5 are not eligible for undeletion requests. You could take it to WP:DRV, but better yet would be dropping the stick. It was a clear cut case of G5. ––FormalDude (talk) 20:58, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Only cases that are clear candidates under G5 get to be speedily deleted. In any case, where does it say that undeletion requests are not allowed? I think DRV would be extreme.... Edge3 (talk) 21:03, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

WP:Requests for undeletion lays out the specific scenarios that qualify for undeletion requests and none of them are G5. It also says "If you feel an administrator has erred in closing a deletion discussion or in applying a speedy deletion criterion, please contact them directly. If you try to discuss but are still unable to resolve the issue on their talk page, it should be raised at Wikipedia:Deletion review, rather than here." ––FormalDude (talk) 21:13, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

That page also states, Please do not request that pages deleted under speedy deletion criteria F7, F9, F11, U5, A7, A9, A11, G3, G4, G10, G11 or G12 be undeleted here. Since G5 is not a listed exception, one can reasonably infer that an undeletion request may be filed in lieu of DRV.

Anyway, might be best to wait for Kusma to chime in on how they want to handle this. Edge3 (talk) 21:18, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Edge3, regardless of what the procedural issue is, I don't think there's going to be much will to undelete. It was created by a sock, which is the most common case for applying G5. If you think there are some extraordinary circumstances involved, it's going to be an uphill battle to convince anyone. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:31, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Procedurally, G5 can't be used when the page has been "substantially edited by others". At the very least, the deletion discussion -- which centers on our interpretation of policy -- should have been segregated and kept, while the rest of the page was deleted. Nobody has argued that the contested deletion discussion fell within the scope of G5.

Also, since the deletion discussion has been deleted, I can't take this to DRV or any other appeals process because the underlying discussion is not available for review. So again, procedurally we're in a difficult spot because a G5 was challenged, but the path forward is unclear. Edge3 (talk) 22:24, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

The article nominator agreed with nullifying the GA review. Edits outside of the sock GA review were only concerned with whether the review should be deleted or not, and had no substantive content otherwise. That a user is banned means they are not allowed to edit, and to enforce that we do not keep edits by banned users around if we don't have to. A substandard GA review is not a reason to make an exception to this. It is standard practice to delete the "contesting" of a speedy deletion together with or soon after the page is deleted; that the discussion was on the same page instead of a separate page (in most cases the contesting happens on the relevant talk page) does not change this. As the review has been nullified, there is currently no way for the DYK nomination to proceed; that can only happen after the page has been through a proper GA review by a non-banned user. @Edge3, I still don't understand what you need the page for that would override showing a banned user the door. —Kusma (talk) 22:40, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Edge3: The path forward, in fact, is very clear. A new GA1 has been started by a non-sock (hallelujah) and the sock's edits remain buried per WP:DENY. The only editor who is in a "difficult spot" seems to be you, because you have a bee in your bonnet over procedure. WP:NOTBURO applies in cases involving arseholery intended to disrupt the project. Cheers, SN54129 22:46, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Serial Number 54129 Careful what you wish for there. Maybe I'm Kate in disguise, or a representative of the cabal. You can never know these days, most of the time I don't even know myself. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 23:26, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Kusma: I was the reviewer for this article at DYK before I even knew that a sockpuppet was involved. See Template:Did you know nominations/Sanctioned Suicide. The reason I'm paying such close attention to this article is because of its controversial subject matter. There's even a separate thread at WT:DYK on whether this article should be withheld from the Main Page, for fear of promoting suicide. Accordingly, I am trying my best to conduct the most thorough DYK review possible, which is even more important now that the GA reviewer was a sock.

At Talk:Sanctioned Suicide#GA Review, the nominator (Freedom4U) responded to the banned user's comments, but I don't even know what those comments were. Deleting the GA review page has removed important context into the article's history. Apparently, there was some discussion about:

• "scare quotes" — Which phrase uses scare quotes?
• a reference to "sodium nitrite" — What was the comment here? Did the reviewer express a sourcing concern?
• "unnecessary detail" — What was the comment here? Did the reviewer express a concern that we're being too descriptive in a particular way? What was the motivation behind the concern?
• Were there other concerns that were raised but not immediately apparent from reading Talk:Sanctioned Suicide#GA Review?

Now that the GA review has been called into question, I would like to explore these specific concerns and see whether I agree with them. Admittedly, I should have asked these questions before approving the DYK nomination, but hindsight is 20/20 and I'd rather ask them now before the article ends up on the Main Page. Of course, I am quite grateful that Etriusus has picked up the review, and once the second review completes I will read those comments as well. But as a DYK reviewer, I maintain that it is important to be thorough in understanding every editorial concern that has been raised, especially for a controversial topic such as assisted suicide.

WP:BRV does not mandate deletion in every case, and it allows us to retain the edits when they are helpful. I probably could have expressed my concerns better earlier today, but I was out running errands, became very concerned once I checked my phone and saw what was happening, and could only write brief messages through the mobile editor. I strongly object to any insinuation of hyper-proceduralism and disruption. I do feel that this article is sensitive enough to require the most stringent review possible before showing up on the Main Page. Edge3 (talk) 23:48, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

@Edge3, I have moved the sock review to your userspace for your perusal. See User:Edge3/Sanctioned Suicide/GA1. When you no longer need the page, tag it with ((db-user)) and we can delete it again. —Kusma (talk) 21:44, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

FYI for everyone involved, I'm starting a new review page now. Because @Kusma deleted the original review by User:Kate the mochii, it'll default back to GA1 when I create it. Please don't delete the updated review. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 20:20, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I promise I will not delete it :) —Kusma (talk) 20:23, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

One of those rare instances Wikipedia's gotten a IRL laugh outta me. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 20:30, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

AFreshStart had 9 GAs to their name when it was discovered they were a sock account, and consensus at the time was to keep them listed -- not to reawaken any sleeping dogs, but would this be the AFreshStart of Jack Renshaw (terrorist) and Alice Butler-Short? My concerns with that editor's articles were completely unrelated to their sockpuppetry... Vaticidalprophet 00:45, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

I think for the most part we have to trust that the GA reviewers did their due diligence, but we might want to look at Talk:Coughs and sneezes spread diseases/GA1. It was both nominated and reviewed by socks. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:14, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The only AFS GA at a glance I'd personally pass is Jeremy Pemberton (priest), though I need to look a little closer at the other BLPs (Mike Gapes is probably fine, though if renominated would need a couple more citations). Most of the contentious ones are obviously questionable. No comment on the circumstances under which NGS was sockblocked. Vaticidalprophet 01:25, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Could you elaborate slightly more on the concerns you had, or link to a place they were discussed? It appears most of their GA work was on the topic of British politics, so if the issue relates to that it would affect all the articles. CMD (talk) 01:34, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

The two I gave as examples (Jack Renshaw (terrorist) and Alice Butler-Short) were both quickfailed for serious BLP/NPOV/DUE issues -- see Talk:Jack Renshaw (terrorist)/GA1 and Talk:Alice Butler-Short/GA1. My comment in the former review about "It puts almost as many words to the subject's dog licking the penises of other dogs than it does to the subject's childhood" is...a fairly good summary of the issues. Looking at articles that passed, I have some real concerns about Michelle Mone, Baroness Mone on the same spectrum. Vaticidalprophet 01:41, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet I was involved with Qanon's GA review, a very extensive review involving 4 editors. While I can't vouch for the current state of the article, in fact it appears to be too unstable just browsing the edit history, at the time it was generally agreed upon that due-diligence was performed. The archive discussion about AFS is here, nothing ever came of this but it was also because we were restructuring at alot of WP:GA at that time. User:AFreshStart got to 14,000 edits and 9 GAs before being discovered, which is either a testament to the fact they occasionally did good work, or that we've got a serious problem here at GA.

Seeing how prolific they are, there's a decent chance they're still hanging around somewhere. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 02:49, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Michelle Mone, Baroness Mone has been expanded by 50% since I passed it as a GA back in January 2022. She's a controversial figure in British politics and I agree the current version doesn't look particularly good. Mujinga (talk) 13:28, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

I've made a potential update to the default template that uses more conventional wiki text. The transcluded rules could be substituted (subst:) for the finished version and it could still be nested in the template that allows you to choose a preferred template or delete the default. This is similar in format to a version I originally drafted, but the language is almost the same as it is now.

Hopes:

• Blank spaces instead of boxes to tick will encourage more engagement.
• Formatting using more conventional wikitext will reduce trepidation about something breaking the template and lower the barrier to entry.
• This can be easily copied into draft space and even filled out with the visual editor, which will further reduce the barrier to entry.

I believe most established reviewers just delete or replace the template, so this is largely targeted at new reviewers. Let me know what you think, Rjjiii (talk) 01:21, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Pinging various editors:

• Jerome Frank Disciple and Alexcs114, you mentioned that it was helpful to have the template. Would the same be true of this version?
• Actualcpscm, Unlimitedlead, Cukie Gherkin and Aza24, you all mentioned that the previous version either encouraged box-ticking or didn't encourage verbose written notes. Might this be more clear for new editors?
• David Eppstein, Vaticidalprophet, and Kusma, you all discussed removing the template prior to a backlog drive. Would you have any objections to letting this less-checkable template run at least until the drive starts to see what impact it has, if any? If you're fine with it, feel free to update the text.

And if I missed folks that commented in these pings, don't take it personally; it's the NyQuil, Rjjiii (talk) 09:28, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I did? - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 09:29, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I seem to have mixed you up with another reviewer who did a source check without listing the sources in the review page. You can disregard my confusion, Rjjiii (talk) 10:46, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

That said, it does seem like a significant improvement. - Cukie Gherkin (talk) 01:27, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, that's better imo. Thanks! Actualcpscm (talk) 09:54, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

It is a significant improvement over the current preload template. I am unsure whether we should have a preload template at all, though. Happy to approve any experiments. —Kusma (talk) 11:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

That's my opinion also. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:11, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

+1 Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:51, 11 July 2023 (UTC)

I think I've set this up right in the sandbox. Olivaw-Daneel, (or someone else more experienced than me with bots and so on), could you check that it's fine to push the sandbox live? Rjjiii (talk) 00:34, 12 July 2023 (UTC)

@Rjjiii: Sorry I was offline for a few days. The sandbox version isn’t set up correctly. To fix it, you could use either option 1 - which just copies your text into the preload - or option 2, which nests it and makes it easier to delete. Any preference? Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 20:20, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

It's no problem, thanks for the reply! option 1 is my preference because it will look the most clear to a new editor. I have other thoughts, but don't want get too clever until we see if this addresses the recent issues with checklist reviews. Thanks again for working this out, Rjjiii (talk) 06:01, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

It's live now. Olivaw-Daneel (talk) 16:26, 17 July 2023 (UTC)

I'm a fan of the preloaded template: since we (I?) often end up making observations for general improvement, which are sometimes not strictly required for GA, it's helpful to have the criteria in black and white when moving from that phase into deciding whether the article has done enough to pass. Perhaps a note at the top about expectations regarding checklisting would be helpful (something like "you should read the article carefully and make any suggestions for improvement before filling in this template"?) UndercoverClassicist (talk) 11:39, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Wouldn't all of those points also apply to Rjjiii's version? —Kusma (talk) 09:34, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I meant that reply in specific response to I am unsure whether we should have a preload template at all: yes, they do. UndercoverClassicist (talk) 09:41, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

I liked having the thing to check off, and having at least some of criteria right there, but the two times I've reviewed a GAN recently the current layout was wayyyy too confusing and made it hard for me to figure out what I'd already checked and, yes, I felt extremely awkward about putting random comments in the template itself. SilverTiger12 (talk) 18:44, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Rjjiii: the drive is coming up fairly soon. Per your prior comments, would you object to removing the autofill for at least the period of the drive? We can reassess after if it seems to have been a negative. Vaticidalprophet 03:44, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

First, if you want to remove it for the duration of the drive, I am fine with that. Also, the current pre-loaded template has been updated away from a potential checkbox format. Regards, Rjjiii (talk) 03:47, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

@Vaticidalprophet: It seems the notices are going out this weekend. You mentioned removing the autofill for the backlog drive, so I thought I would remind you. Oh, and good luck coordinating the drive! Rjjiii (talk) 07:19, 30 July 2023 (UTC)

I have nominated an article for the first time ever. I'm thinking of politely asking a specific editor to review it, because 1. They're very experienced, 2. They seem to be pleasant and patient, and this would come in handy for a newbie like myself, and 3. They're participating in the current WP:GAD. Is this allowed, or is it a breach of etiquette? 〜 Festucalex • talk 08:34, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

As long as they're going to do a proper review, why not? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:54, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: Just trying to avoid a faux pas here. I haven't found anything in the guidelines, but for all I know, a direct request could be in bad taste. 〜 Festucalex • talk 08:59, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I have, on occasion, left a polite note on an editor's talk page, saying "I've nominated this article at GA, we've talked about it/I know you're interested in the topic, so I thought I'd let you know if you're interested in reviewing it." As long as the review is up to standard, I can't see anything wrong with it. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 09:02, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29: Very well, thank you. I'll go for it. 〜 Festucalex • talk 09:06, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I've shaved 20 words off the procedural explanation at Wikipedia:Good articles/Summary. I don't consider it controversial but I thought I'd mention here as it might go unnoticed under the daily bot edits. — Bilorv (talk) 15:14, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

I recently submitted two articles and both were reviewed within a week or so. Wow, what a pleasant surprise! The last time I submitted something, it was more like 6 months before it got reviewed. Obviously a huge amount of effort has been put into digging out of the backlog by the reviewers, so thank you very much to all of you who have made this happen. RoySmith (talk) 16:02, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

You're very welcome! I've been encouraged to see our progress. It's especially big for older noms -- on day 1 we had 14 nominations 270+ days old and 65 180+ days old, now down to 0 and 11 respectively -- but newer nominations are getting picked up too. Vaticidalprophet 18:51, 6 August 2023 (UTC)

Recently, there was a lengthy discussion on the GA verifiability criterion and it was modified to be more strict. In response to this, I compiled the following list of articles that are likely to have verifiability problems. The list was generated with this user script. The list shows all GA articles that, according to the script, have 6 or more unreferenced paragraphs. The script ignores some paragraphs that do not require references, such as lead paragraphs and paragraphs in sections called "Plot" (see MOS:CITELEAD and MOS:PLOTSOURCE). But it has various shortcomings. For example, it is not able to detect references in the deprecated parenthetical style and falsely counts paragraphs that only use this style as unreferenced.^[a]

It would be necessary to look at each article individually before starting a Good article reassessment to make certain that there actually is a reference problem. If someone wants to do this, the script User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages might come in handy.^[b]

The full list of all 37999 GA articles and their number of unreferenced paragraphs is found at User:Phlsph7/GA list of unreferenced paragraphs.