Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

Nomination process

The backlog is huge! Is there something we can do to restrict nominations?: There have been complaints about the perceived backlog in reviewing since the Good article status was created in 2006. Generally speaking, we don't want to restrict nominations along their path to GA. In the beginning, as many as 100 nominations were waiting for a reviewer to volunteer. By 2011, each day typically listed 330 nominated articles, of which 260 were waiting. By 2016, 580 were listed, 460 waiting; by 2021, 470 were listed, 300 were waiting. For comparison, today there are currently 720 nominations listed and 609 waiting for a reviewer.; While it may seem overwhelming, a large backlog isn't a bad thing. It shows that many nominators want to use GA as a tool to improve the encyclopedia. It also allows reviewers to choose from a wide selection of articles that interest them. From a nominator's perspective, the main concern is the expected wait time before receiving a review, not the number of articles on the nominations page.
Can't we force nominators to review articles?: Quid pro quo reviewing (editors must review an article before nominating, perhaps after a grace period) was regularly proposed and always rejected as likely leading to lower quality reviews and fewer nominations from excellent content creators who may not wish to review another person's work.
What order do nominations appear on the Good article nominations page?: One advantage of reviewing articles to help the Wikipedia community is the GAN appearance order: the more articles you have reviewed relative to articles you have nominated, the higher up in the queue your nomination will appear on the GAN page. Note that above this, order preference is given to nominators who are new to GA.
What if the nominator is a (perhaps dynamic) IP address?: Any editor with significant contributions to the article may nominate an article for GA status (while only registered users may review), so significant-contributor IP nominators are permitted. Non-significant contributors should follow the advice above for editors who have not significantly contributed to the article. Dynamically changing IP nominators may want to clarify to the reviewer that, despite their signature, they remain the same person.
Can I nominate an article I haven't significantly contributed to?: No. Nominations from editors who have not substantially contributed will be removed unless the nomination shows that the article's regular editors were consulted on its talk page alongside a note on the GAN template showing their commitment to the process, e.g., |note=Adopted following extensive improvement by another editor. In the past, many drive-by nominators did not know the article or its sources and did not respond to questions by the reviewer.

Review process

I want to review an article. Do I have to review the oldest unreviewed nomination first?: Thank you for deciding to review an article for GA. You may review any nominated article you are not involved in, regardless of the nomination's age or position in the queue.
As a reviewer, I want to help the nominator improve the article, but it already meets the criteria. What am I supposed to do now?: The purpose of a GA review is to determine whether the article meets the GA criteria. Article-improvement discussions are intended to prevent near-misses in nominated articles that almost meet the criteria. If the article already meets the criteria when you first review it, then explain exactly what you've checked in each of the main criteria (e.g., "I have verified there is no original research, copyright violations, plagiarism, unreliable sources, bias, edit wars, or untagged images.") and list it as a Good article. "Quick passes" are as legitimate as quick fails, although they are less common. Please do not make a list of nitpicky details or exceed the written requirements of the Good article criteria in an effort to make the review look rigorous. Instead, thank the nominator for presenting such a polished article, and encourage them to submit another.
Who can respond to the review?: The nominator is expected to respond to the reviewer's suggestions to improve the article, while everyone interested in the article is encouraged to participate in the review, not just the person who happened to nominate it. Nominators have no special privileges over other editors except that they can withdraw the nomination.
Should nominators respond to reviewers' concerns? And what should reviewers do if they don't?: The nominator has an interest in seeing the article become GA, so the nominator will likely want to respond to the reviewer to improve the article. In fact, all editors interested in the article are encouraged to respond to reviewers' concerns. However, nobody, including the nominator, is required to. If the reviewer identifies concerns directly related to the good article criteria and no one addresses the concerns, then no one should be surprised if the reviewer declines to list the article. If the article does not meet the Good article criteria after the reviewer has waited a reasonable amount of time for the nominator to make improvements, the reviewer is sure to fail the nomination. Future article editors may benefit from review comments on how to improve the article.
The nominator disagrees with the reviewer. Can another reviewer take over?: If your GAN experience is not going well or if you are disagreeing with the reviewer's decisions, then you may allow the review to fail, take the reviewer's suggestions into account, then renominate the article immediately (to get a different reviewer). If the reviewer has not yet failed the nomination, you may try asking them to ask for a second opinion. Other than these, another reviewer does not normally take over an active review. To prevent avoidable disputes, reviewers should either not make comments unrelated to the Good article criteria, or they should carefully label those suggestions as optional (e.g., "I know that citation formatting is not required by the Good article criteria, and I will not consider this when making my decision, but if you might send this to Wikipedia:Featured articles later, then that process requires consistent citation formatting").
Does an article have to be on hold for exactly seven days?: No. Whether to place the nomination on hold at all, and the length of any such hold, is for the reviewer to decide. Depending on the quality of the article and the responsiveness of the nominator, a hold may not be necessary. If the reviewer decides that it is, they may choose longer or shorter periods of hold time. The reviewer may even modify the {{GA nominee}} template on the article talk page to include a "time" parameter, for example, "time=fourteen days", and the {{GANotice}} template used to convey messages to the GA nominator to include a "days" parameter, for example "days=fourteen". Keep in mind that protracted reviews show up as exceptions on the GA nominations report page.
What should I do if a review page becomes inactive?: This can happen for a number of reasons. Review pages should only be started by reviewers who are willing to take an active interest in the article and are committed to completing their review of the article in a timely manner. Sometimes another editor (such as the nominator) starts the review page by mistake. A reviewer can fix this by placing their signature after "Reviewer:" towards the top of the review page, but if no reviewer is forthcoming, it may be best to delete the review page: requests for such deletions may be posted at the discussion page. If a new reviewer is truly needed, follow the instructions page under "If a review seems abandoned". Do not use this process to void a review you disagree with.
I failed the article, and the nominator just nominated it again without fixing the problems I identified!: 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 comments while independently deciding on their assessment. If your concerns were legitimate, then the new reviewer will doubtless agree with you and also decline to list the article as GA. If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the good article criteria, you can initiate a reassessment.
How can GA be reliable when a single reviewer decides?: The quality of a Good article is only as reliable as the most recent review and articles may deteriorate if unattended. The GA process deals with both of these issues by allowing repeat reviews by any registered user at any time. The process aims to encourage article improvement and build consensus on quality through multiple reviews—even though a single reviewer makes the decision whether to list the article according to the GA criteria. Any editor may contribute to any review discussion and reassessment is available when the "one reviewer decides" model breaks down.
What if I have concerns about the quality of a review or need to resolve a dispute over the GA process?: You can bring those concerns to the GA nominations discussion page to get help from other editors. Remember, however, to notify all users about whom concerns have been raised or who are involved in any dispute that you have.

Archives

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Shortcut

WT:GAN

Merging sub-sections

Should the "Archaelogy" sub-section be merged with the "World history" one? I see no reason to keep a fairly quiet category when we often have a backlog here. DCItalk 19:41, 28 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merging subsections will be a lot easier than splitting them. There are a few fairly quite cats that could be merged and it might reduce the overall length of the page. AIRcorn&nbsp:(talk) 08:49, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've always wondered why "Farming and cultivation" and "Food and drink" were separate sub-sections. Neither have ever been very busy. maclean (talk) 04:59, 31 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The collapsed box below may help in deciding a better format for the lists. Those with less than 100 current good articles may benefit from merging if there is an appropriate topic to merge into. I am not sure why the nomination topics are not in alphabetical order or the value of "Everyday life" as a major heading. AIRcorn (talk) 04:47, 3 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Current page format and numbers of current good articles under each heading (in brackets)

Arts

Art and architecture (460)

Music

Albums (470)

Songs (634)

Delaware Route 41

I noticed that Raunaq.sarcar (talk · contribs) reviewed Delaware Route 41 and passed it. However, a review page was not created. I left a message on the talk page advising him about it. Dough 48 72 19:15, 29 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Raunaq appears to be a new editor and is probably unaware of the process. The article at the very least needs a short blurb saying that it has been checked against the criteria and passes. If you don't get a response to your message I would recommend undoing the pass. AIRcorn (talk) 08:59, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've reverted the page back to nomination, as it's clear from looking at the editor's contributions that a review was never done. MathewTownsend (talk) 14:42, 30 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, well now the editor created the page... and has abandoned the article, apparently. --Rs chen 7754 19:29, 6 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It has been a week. What should be done with the incomplete review? Dough 48 72 01:43, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to delete the page so that a new reviewer can get it; this is ridiculous. --Rs chen 7754 01:48, 11 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA bot missing some actions

I failed Sherlock Holmes (play) and GA bot denoted the action with a maintenance edit summaary. This has been happening frequently with passes and fails lately.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 07:44, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

copyvio GAN

I found copyvio in The Dirty Picture. Couldn't check the whole thing because my browser freezes on some citations. I notified the nominator and put it in the copyvio queue. Should it be removed from the GAN queue? MathewTownsend (talk) 17:06, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

If it's to a large and invasive degree, then surely it should be quick failed. If it's a few minor incidences that could be readily fixed without an extensive rewrite then I'd keep it on hold to be seen to. GRAPPLE X 17:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I was two full sections that were completely copied from an article, so I quick failed it. (I labelled the sections in the article.) There may be more. MathewTownsend (talk) 20:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

LivingBot

It seems that StatisticianBot (talk · contribs) and GA bot (talk · contribs) are now operating correctly for the most part although I am not sure I agree that when an article goes on review and then is failed in the same 10 minute GA bot cycle it should be chalked up to maintenance. LivingBot (talk · contribs), continues to have issues with human error. It seems to miss both instances where the reviewer passes the article on its talk page but fails to list it on the proper WP:GA subpage and fails to put a proper topic in the topic field (see Talk:About a Girl (Sugababes song)) as well as instances where even though it is listed on the proper subpage, the reviewer forgot to change the article talk page field from subtopic to topic (see Talk:Non-fatal offences against the person in English law). These are just two very recent examples of human error problems in passing articles. I am wondering about the variety of types of human error in the passing of articles. Most importantly, is there a check for talk pages with the {{GA}} template that are not listed on any WP:GA subpage?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:31, 14 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Bot question: hiding empty sections from TOC

Currently the TOC of WP:GAN shows all sections regardless of the current nominations. Could it be possible for Bot to make empty subsections a level lower then others and tuning TOC to hide them (see Help:Section § Limiting the depth of the TOC). This would give a benefit of showing the choice of current GAN topics in a glance. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:03, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

GA bot feature

And another thing about GA bot. Can it be tuned to notified the subscribed users of the new nominations via talk pages (the way RFC bot does it). It should be possible to tune the notifications on topics via GAN and kind of events. I wanted to go to Wikipedia:Bot requests for this, but may be GA bot would be a right bot to do it. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 13:20, 16 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Followup to page overhaul

I see that the page was overhauled this morning. The instructions need to be amended to keep up. Also, are we going revise the WP:GA subpages? If so we will need to revise the section links in each WP:GAC subsection.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 14:38, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Actually I would be happy to see a rationale for such overhaul: it doesn't look sane at all. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 21:40, 17 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I assumed there was a consensus to make the change. Was I wrong?--TonyTheTiger (T/C/BIO/WP:CHICAGO/WP:FOUR) 17:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I only noticed the discussion when the changes were made. I'm concerned about "Computing" section as it is my scope of interest here. I would prefer merging "Computing" with "Video games", and the "Engineering" with "Physics". To me this merge is more natural: eg. Space Shuttle Main Engine clearly doesn't belong to the same section as "Computing", while Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness probably not; though Topology (electrical circuits) goes agaist my take. — Dmitrij D. Czarkoff (talk) 18:17, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Primary Sources in law articles

I as considering revieing Narragansett land claim and when I looked at it it was entirely based on publically available court documents - which I would consider primary sources. I would be very reluctant to giving GA status to an article that relied this heavily on primary sources - but I realize that in legal articles the use of court documents is not that uncommon. Is there any precedent for promoting articles with no secondary sources - particularly legal articles? Extra eyes on Narragansett land claims would ge appreciated - perhaps I am being to harsh. ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 16:59, 18 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]