Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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Good article nominations

This is the discussion page for good article nominations (GAN) and the good articles process in general. To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the Add topic link above. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click the link to the Frequently asked questions below or search the Archives below. If you are here to discuss concerns with a specific review, please consider discussing things with the reviewer first before posting here.

splitting the world history sections

at Wikipedia:Good articles/History, there are a few sections that are worth splitting in my opinion:

• Historical figures - politicians (357 articles)
• Historical figures - other (452 articles)
• North American history (217 articles)
• European history (326 articles)
• Monarchs (365 articles)
• Royalty and nobility (303 articles)

they're all getting difficult to read due to the giant walls of text. what are people's thoughts on how to split? ... sawyer * he/they * talk 19:37, 6 June 2024 (UTC)

Could split United States history into a subsection, which would make a small difference although I suspect that subsection would remain in need of splitting sooner rather than later. There are a couple of options for European history, British Isles history seems an obvious one as being easy to define geographically and has quite a few items, splitting on continental Europe geographically is a bit more tricky with anachronisms (eg. what do you do with Hungarian conquest of the Carpathian Basin), although clearly defined regions like Italy might work. There's probably a couple of obvious subgroups for Monarchy, Royalty, and Nobility with 20+ units, perhaps staring with Roman/Byzantine. CMD (talk) 02:34, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

yeah i think splitting geographically will make the most sense, even with edge cases. splitting off British & US-American items would be a great first step ... sawyer * he/they * talk 02:44, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Many of the figures in Historical figures - other are miscategorized. Many of them are nobility, and should be put in the Royalty and nobility section. Some are military figures, and should be put in the military people section. Religious figures should put under religion, artists under their respective sections, etc. There's even some animals, which should be filed under Animal domestic breeds, types, and individuals.

For politicians, monarchs, nobility, etc. it seems like they could be split by continent.

Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 14:15, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Added in animals to their proper section. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 14:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

If shifting Animals from Wikipedia:Good articles/History to Wikipedia:Good articles/Natural sciences, please remember to change the topic on the article talk pages as well. CMD (talk) 14:27, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah. i am about to run and can't do that atm - id really appreciate it if anyone could Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 14:30, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Ah, didn't realise you'd already started. I'll handle the 12 moved, despite personal misgivings that the animals were likely mostly respectable historical figures. CMD (talk) 15:14, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

i'll start moving some of the "other" figures into their proper sections, so that we can know what the actual makeup of the "other" section is. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 15:15, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Done up to the Os of these, was reverted on Nelson (cat) by Tim O'Doherty. There is also Judy (dog) in Warfare. CMD (talk) 15:21, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

Hi CMD, sorry about that. I'd say it's closer to history than natural sciences. Happy to discuss. Cheers - Tim O'Doherty (talk) 15:24, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not strongly opinionated, aside from feeling it would be best to have something clear and consistent for animal individuals. Might split them into their own lv5 for a start, there's about 25 and I'm not seeing the natural link with breeds/types. CMD (talk) 15:40, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

I've split off the individuals (there were 30, although given the articles are just single names the line length is relatively short) and saved Olaf the Peacock. Would be good to hear more thoughts on where they should go. CMD (talk) 16:16, 10 June 2024 (UTC)

Shifted Judy as well and finished the matching. If there is a consensus to move them, should be easier to now move them all together. CMD (talk) 02:01, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

i noticed that too. & i think by continent would work pretty well. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 14:22, 7 June 2024 (UTC)

What to do when a reviewer picks up an article scheduled for a circle

I started a review for an article that I later found out was scheduled for one of the GA circles that GMH Melbourne is organizing. I think those circles are a good idea, but I'm mentioning this here since this conflict will probably come up again and it would be good to make it clear what the expectations are. I think the point of the circles is to avoid substandard QPQ reviewing, but guarantee a review of the participants' nominations. If someone outside the circle picks up one of the articles, I think that's a good thing -- it means the person scheduled to review no longer has to do that review (though we might encourage them to pick up another article instead). I don't think there's any reason for a reviewer to deliberately avoid articles scheduled for circles, though I wouldn't deliberately pick one either. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:50, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

@Mike Christie: I've also been trying to come up with a process for when this situation occurs. Two options I have thought of are a) asking the user to provide comments on the other reviews in the review circle, or b) ask the user to review another article in the GAN list in the spirit of fairness. I also agree that we shouldn't prevent articles scheduled for circles from being reviewed. GMH Melbourne (talk) 12:47, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

There shouldn't be any pressure not to review articles that are listed as available for review. If the list at WP:GAN wasn't representative of the ones actually available, I'd feel less inclined to look through it and start reviewing a nom. They should be available to anyone up until the moment that it's decided the nom is part of a circle, and once it is decided, the review page should be created. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 14:19, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, this. Another layer of friction for reviewers is also likely to be especially offputting for people who have never reviewed before, and discouraging new reviewers seems like a decidedly undesirable outcome. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:35, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

If this initiative is to go forward, perhaps the circles could be organised in advance, allowing those involved to 'soft nominate' articles and only fully nominate them when the circle is agreed. This should allow them to be picked up very quickly by the other members of the circle. CMD (talk) 14:24, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I don't think there's a need for that -- it would add more overhead to the circles, which seem to be moving pretty quickly at the moment (a good thing). I like GMH's suggestion that if a circle article is picked up, the editor who was scheduled to review it should be encouraged to pick a random other article to review instead. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:27, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps one from the "oldest unreviewed" list? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:30, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

I think this would go against one of the purposes for the GA circles which is to help address the backlog. GMH Melbourne (talk) 01:02, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps I should add a message at {{GARC-new-circle}} saying "If another user starts a review you were assigned before you were able to, kindly find another article to review at WP:GAN and inform the circle below." GMH Melbourne (talk) 01:10, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:17, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Slowpoke (Pokémon)

Someone should look at the GAN review. Its not reviewed properly. 2001:4455:36D:9100:395D:8B1D:4133:4588 (talk) 22:06, 11 June 2024 (UTC)

Does a previous failure to meet GA criteria stay on?

I recently reviewed and promoted Tamil Nadu to Good Article status. It was unsuccessfully nominated a decade ago and the old notification of failure to meet GA is on the Talk page. Does that notification stay on the Talk page, even though it's now a GA? It seems to contradict the current status unless read carefully. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:23, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

I tried to merge the new review into the {{Article history}} template. The important bit is to update the "current status". —Kusma (talk) 13:52, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Looks good. Thanks. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 23:38, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

GA quickfail discussion

I recently opened a discussion at WT:USRD#Failed GA regarding a GA review I quickfailed. It would be good if I could get some input regarding my action. Bneu2013 (talk) 22:08, 12 June 2024 (UTC)

Fusajiro Yamauchi

I'm not too sure if this article meets the criteria for what makes a good article. At a glimpse:

• Amateurish prose: Indeed, due to the fact these places...
  • Thus in the goal to inherit the company, Fusajiro was adopted...
  • Fusajiro then has the idea of using the Hanafuda cards of lesser quality...
  • Many other examples of this.
• Awkward wikilinking: Just as Hanafuda cards were allowed again in 1885 so too did occidental playing cards (Standard 52-card deck) become allowed...
• Grammar errors: ...these western cards so called "Trump" by the japanese population...
• Randomly inserted sentences: (The sen is a subdivision of the Japanese yen which became obsolete in 1954.)
• Questionably sourced media (one is straight up ripped from Eurogamer)

The GAN review seems to be lacking as well, with a very light prose check, no discernible source spot check, and no copyright check, which I'm 99.8% sure is just an incorrectly-done review. Should I proceed with a reassessment request, or can this GAN be rescinded altogether? joeyquism (talk page) 01:12, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

That was a very recent GAN, closed 9 June 2024‎, it can be reopened if needed. First step is to raise it with the reviewer. CMD (talk) 01:18, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I believe the lack of source and copyright checking and the amateurish prose are both grounds enough to go ahead and reopen the review. Of course I assume WP:GOODFAITH from both parties, but it seems that this is a case of WP:CIR. I've informed both the reviewer and nominator that the review has been reopened. joeyquism (talk page) 02:56, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

I think "amateurish" and "CIR" are a little harsh. It just looks like people who are working to learn best practices and could use some helpful advice—something that tends to be rarely given for up-and-coming editors. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:59, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Fair enough - I didn't mean any offense by my use of these terms, just for the record. I've also extended a hand to both editors in case they are in need of any help during the GAN process. joeyquism (talk page) 03:07, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for those very polite and well-worded talkpage messages. CMD (talk) 03:01, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Forgot to reply to this - no problem. joeyquism (talk) 03:20, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Do aviators fall under the subject section Transport?

Asking because unlike some of the other subject areas, Transport does not mention related people/professions as included, and none of the nominations currently there are for biographies. AddWittyNameHere 13:14, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

For what it's worth, when I reviewed Jean Batten, the article was placed under world history, historical figures: other. However, there is a section within transport entitled air transport people which might also be an option (and in fact I'm wondering if I put Batten in the wrong place). Trainsandotherthings (talk) 23:31, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

Good to know I'm not the only person uncertain of where to place a nomination, then! Mine might be a little more "squarely" placed in transport than Jean Batten because it's about an aviation pioneer that was also an airline transport pilot, so guess I'll go for transport, I suppose, but yeah, world history - historical figures was my other guess. (It could even technically fit under military because he was a military pilot for a brief portion of his career, too--but that's not what his notability comes from, so not a great fit altogether) AddWittyNameHere 23:39, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

@Trainsandotherthings Yeah I agree that Jean Batten fits better under "air transport people" than "world history, historical figures: other". That historical figure section is massive (400+ articles) while air transport people only has 9. Jean Batten's article and achievement is also similar to Juan Bielovucic, who is already listed within the air transport people category. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 13:57, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

I've moved Batten to air transport people. Hopefully I did it correctly. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:26, 14 June 2024 (UTC)

GAN sorting uses different categories than Good Article nominations?

Is there a reason why User:SDZeroBot/GAN sorting uses a different category system than Wikipedia:Good article nominations? I was looking for a few articles in "GAN sorting" to see how long they had been waiting for reviews, but the categories don't match up at all; the only way to find an article was to do word searches by the article name. For example, Charlemagne is listed under the "History" category in "Good Article nominations", but under "Culture/Biography" in "GAN sorting"; Fair Work Ombudsman v Quest South Perth is listed under "Social sciences and society/Law" in "Good Article nominations", but under "Geography/Regions/Oceania" in "GAN sorting". It would be helpful if both lists used the same categories. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 13:44, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The bot's sorting is done automatically using a machine learning tool, and includes articles under every topic it thinks is relevant (so you will see that Charlemagne, for example, is listed as "Geography/Regions/Europe/Western Europe" and "History and Society/History" among other topics). I imagine they differ because the ORES classification was developed after the already-existing GA system, and they weren't concerned with making them compatible - the ORES system the bot uses is used to categorise e.g. AfDs as well as GAs, which had developed its own categorisation.

I suppose we could change the way the WP:GAN page works to sort articles using the bot rather than the current system, but that seems like a bunch of work for no clear benefit. Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 13:55, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

The benefit is that it makes it easier to use both pages. There is no way to use the Sorting page to sort by the categories on the GA nominations page. Suppose I want to see the oldest article in the History category on the GA Nominations page, to review it because someone’s been waiting a long time for it. There’s no way to do that, because the History articles are scattered about by an entirely different category system, putting Charlemagne in “Culture/Biography”. There’s no way to see the oldest “Law” articles waiting for a review: the decision of the High Court of Australia (Fair work) is sorted under “Geography”. I don’t see any benefit from having a sorting system that isn’t based on the categories used on the Good Articles nomination page. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 14:09, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

There’s also the point that relying on a bot/AI to determine the categories is less useful than relying on the judgment of the nominator who decides which category to put an article in when they nominate it. The decision of the Australian High Court in the Fair Work article is notable as an article about an important legal issue from the highest court in Australia. But the bot ignored that, and decided it was most notable because of its geographic location. Judgment by a human is more accurate here than a bot. Mr Serjeant Buzfuz (talk) 14:15, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

If you don't want to rely on the AI classification (I never do!) then you shouldn't use the bot which uses AI classification. You can use User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms if you want a sortable list which uses the manual categories. (But in the specific case you are talking about the bot did classify Fair Work Ombudsman v Quest South Perth under History and Society/Politics and government; the ability to classify a nomination into multiple relevant categories seems like a useful feature actually!) Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 14:41, 13 June 2024 (UTC)

GA summary 0n list pages

Raising this change for discussion here. Removing the repeated summary seems reasonable, but making the navigation more inaccessible is going to add further friction to the manual cleanups needed by making it harder to switch between lists. Wondering if there is a way to keep some sort of more compact navigation bar at the top. CMD (talk) 14:13, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

It should be consistent between the different GA pages. There's no point if each one has a different style for navigation Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:08, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

All pages used Wikipedia:Good articles/Summary, what this change did was hide it. CMD (talk) 16:21, 15 June 2024 (UTC)

Pinging @Prhartcom as the person who hid the summary (twice).

My take is that this should be consistent across all of the different GA topic subpages, though I see this has been done on all of these pages. A compact navigation bar would be great as well, if that's possible. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Song articles without sigcov of the song

Oftentimes when looking at song GANs, there are several nominations where all of the sourcing is about the album and none of the sources are specifically about the song. This raises some notability issues and goes against WP:NSONG, but how should we handle this at GAN? There's of course the perennial dispute about whether non-notable articles should be passed through GA. But besides that, can these song articles pass criteria 2 and 3 if all of the sources are about the album? These are common enough that I feel some sort of consensus or precedent should be established. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:17, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Well, either the article is notable, and can be a GA, or it's non-notable and should be deleted. AfD is the likely place to work that out. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 09:49, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Nominator temp-blocked as a sock-puppeteer

Hey all. A GA nominator whose article I was reviewing has just been temporarily banned for one month for sock-puppeteering. I haven't had to deal with a case of a nominator being blocked mid-review so I don't know what to do. Should I leave the review on hold, pending their return? Or should I just close the review as failed? (I still don't think it meets GA criteria as of now). --Grnrchst (talk) 10:52, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest failing it; they can always renominate if they still want to after they return from the block. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:25, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

Gone ahead and failed it. Thanks for the advice. --Grnrchst (talk) 12:09, 16 June 2024 (UTC)

I've changed my mind about hard caps on open nominations

In the past, I've objected to hard caps on how many nominations someone can have open at once. My reasoning was that it's unfair punishment to our most active content creators and that it only masks the problem. After running the numbers, I believe these arguments are outweighed by other factors.

As of the most recent GAN report, there are 677 nominations under review or awaiting a reviewer. There are 58 nominators with at least three nominations, making up 340 noms in total. We make up almost exactly half of the backlog. If we emptied the "Nominators with multiple nominations" section by reducing everyone down to two noms, the backlog would instantly decrease by 224 nominations, bringing us down to 453. That's one third of the total backlog just made of those extra nominations. If we limit it to a more generous five noms, that's still 95 extra nominations beyond that limit.

To the argument that limiting noms only hides the full backlog, it's about how the noms are weighted. Right now, these "power users" make up half the backlog despite being a minority of the total nominators. This is unfair to the people who wait months longer in line just so we can double, triple, quadruple dip. To the argument that it makes it harder for efficient nominators to nominate, there's a way to make your nom a higher priority: review! Review the noms above yours in that category, or just review in general to lower the backlog. Even if new noms instantly take their place, those will have a more recent nom date. This way, there won't be one person who still has eight other nominations ahead of you after you review one of theirs. Or you could review for people who only have one nom and won't immediately replace it, which is often a new nominator who should get priority anyway. Alternatively, there's Wikipedia:Good article review circles where you can get a reviewer much more quickly.

Once my current nominations are done, I'm going to voluntarily limit myself to no more than five at a time. But these limits only have significant effect if we adhere to them collectively, and I'm switching to a support !vote on such a measure. I'm also going to ping the few people who have more open noms than I do in case they'd be interested in a similar voluntary limitation: Magentic Manifestations, Chiswick Chap, Aszx5000, Gonzo fan2007, Ippantekina, Aintabli, Epicgenius. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:22, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Frankly, I think this is not a very good idea. The "power users" are often our most experienced and dedicated contributors - so notably, they tend to have articles that are high quality to begin with and thus easier to review. Reviewing a newer editor's GAN is often far more difficult, because they aren't used to all the inns and outs yet - this takes an entirely separate skillset from reviewing an Epicgenius or Chiswick GAN (namely, that only an experienced reviewer would be as good at it!) I really don't looking at reducing the backlog as a numbers game is beneficial; what's important is getting articles reviewed in timely manner, which I don't think the "power users"' GAs are contributing to. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 02:46, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Oh dear, this old chestnut again. I'll just say that it's bound to have something like the Poisson distribution, that's just how nature is. Chiswick Chap (talk) 03:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Yes, generally an experienced editor's work is easier to review, given that the length and complexity of the article are the same. But by sheer volume, one experienced editor with lots of noms, myself included, is going to squeeze out those newer nominators who need the most attention. And like I said above, reviewing those nominations would be incentivized relative to an experienced nominator, as newer nominators wouldn't immediately have another nom ready to go. It's not a numbers game, it's about weight, and it would be fewer articles at a time being reviewed more quickly than a whole block of them being reviewed slowly.

And to approach from the other angle, I believe we should more readily (quick)fail nominations that aren't ready for GAN. It shouldn't just be "is it far from the criteria" but whether it fails the criteria in a way that puts an undue burden on a reviewer. These are ones that probably shouldn't have been nominated anyway, but they take up a disproportionate amount of reviewer time. When nominations aren't ready, we can direct editors to peer review, GOCE, the Teahouse, help pages, or wherever depending on where its weaknesses are. I'd say a limit on max noms plus holding nominators accountable for making sure nominations are ready is the best combo. We could get nominations in and out much more quickly that way while using GAN as a lightweight quality assurance/verification process instead of as Peer Review 2. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 03:44, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Unfortunately, the trend has been to increase GA standards rather than to accept that GAs aren't expected to be perfect (and that no article is, honestly). I doubt we'll secure any kind of consensus for returning GA to the lightweight process it was written as. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:29, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Given how little oversight there is, there's really nothing stopping individual reviewers from deciding how strict or lenient they want to be with the criteria, with failing, or with how they think the process should work. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Generally I'd agree, except that people who are "caught" doing reviews that others find inadequate are regularly dragged here and castigated. And when mistakes are caught in a GA that passed, reviewers catch flak for it.

On the other hand, people don't like being the "bad guy" and failing articles that aren't ready, so we give infinite time and chances for articles that frankly aren't up to snuff. Some noms will get upset that you failed their article, and nobody likes being on the other end of that conflict.

Basically, there's a competing social pressure to be incredibly thorough yet infinitely forgiving. Reviewers can't win, they get discouraged, and difficult articles sit around for ages. We need to change the culture around GA reviewing if we ever want to make a meaningful change in the backlog. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:54, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, I'd be willing to strike out everything I said above and go in the opposite direction. We could just as easily say it's a free for all on nominating but then be more firm with reviewing and quickfailing so weak noms don't bog us down. I'm actually more inclined toward that than a hard cap, except right now there's no consistency in reviews, and of course many nominators feel entitled to a pass. I personally am willing to be the one to say "this isn't ready for nomination" (and I have been trying to look for those nominations lately), but like you said, it needs to be part of a broader cultural change.

I'm going off on a slight tangent now, but I believe there are more sub-standard reviews that slip through the cracks than ones that get "caught". I watch many of them go by feeling like my hands are tied because there's also a stigma against accusing people of doing bad reviews, and it's gotten to the point where I just ignore them unless they start reviewing one of mine, in which case I ask them to return it. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 12:34, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I prefer to review the new nominators, starting with the ones who have done reviews, which usually means a higher failure rate and slower reviews for the passes because they are learning. I do this because I believe in encouraging a good review/nomination ratio, but another benefit is that it is an opportunity to teach those nominators how a good review should look. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I strongly disagree there is a stigma against accusing people of doing bad reviews. People do it on this talk page regularly, and the prospect of being publicly shamed creates a chilling effect for new reviewers.

I do want to point out the contradiction between suggesting that we use "GAN as a lightweight quality assurance/verification process" and saying reviewers should basically review how they want, but then bringing up "sub-standard reviews". We can't have speed and perfection. Either we accept that the process is supposed to be lightweight and allow reviews to be lightweight, or we keep tightening the screws and watch the backlog climb. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:12, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm probably part of the problem -- I can't really do "lightweight" reviews. I personally want peer reviews and suggestions to improve my articles much more than I care about another green plus, and so my reviews tend to be in depth and address more than the GA criteria. And nobody calls me out on this, even for monstrosities like Talk:Chinese characters/GA1. I am not sure whether dedicated coordinators who look at every review for some quality assurance would help or harm, but this might be worth brainstorming about. —Kusma (talk) 09:49, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I suspect coordination would start off at what we are de facto doing now in a haphazard and likely arbitrary manner, which is checking that reviews are 1) not checklists, 2) do source checks. I doubt it would crack down too much on being over-picky, especially as there is a lot of grey zone in the criteria. CMD (talk) 11:02, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

I think it's OK to point out issues that go beyond the GA criteria, so long as the nominator is clear that those comments don't need to be addressed to get the article to GA, and so long as there are not too many -- some nominators don't want to bring the article up to FA standards and shouldn't be asked to. But letting them know that a link is dead or MoS issues that are not in the GA criteria is fine, so long as they understand what's a GA comment and what is not. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:31, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Reducing the backlog by artificially throttling nominations does nothing to increase the rate of promotions of GAs. It is hiding the problem (we aren't getting enough GA reviews done and enough GAs promoted) by addressing the symptom of the problem rather than doing anything to improve the unwillingness of editors to do more reviews. We could decrease the backlog to zero by shutting down the whole GA process and cancelling all current nominations; do you think that would be an improvement? —David Eppstein (talk) 04:35, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

To the argument that limiting noms only hides the full backlog, it's about how the noms are weighted. Right now, these "power users" make up half the backlog despite being a minority of the total nominators. This is unfair to the people who wait months longer in line just so we can double, triple, quadruple dip. – Right there in the original post you're replying to. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:38, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

There is no line. Nobody requires review be done chronologically. Nobody will yell at your reviewer and you if your nomination attracts enough interest to get reviewed quickly. And we tried prioritizing frequent reviewers and new participants instead of listing nominations chronologically; it didn't help. —David Eppstein (talk) 04:55, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree with David Eppstein here. When we tried to push first-time nominators and frequent reviewers to the front of the line, it just increased the number of GANs that had been sitting in the queue for six months or longer.

I think the issue here is that the review process is still fairly daunting. No one wants to be yelled at for looking at an article, determining that there are no (or very few) problems, and then quick-passing the article. Conversely, no one wants to be yelled at for looking at an article, seeing that it's riddled with problems, and then quick-failing the article. Quick-passing and quick-failing articles are both seen as problematic, even though there's nothing wrong with the latter.

Therefore, many reviewers find themselves having to conduct intensive reviews, which means that fairly long articles are often skipped over by all except the most experienced reviewers. Many of these long articles come from power editors, which may be why it seems like the power editors are dominating the GAN queue. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:26, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I'm not going to suggest a return to the old sort order (though I did prefer it), but I think it's wrong to say that "all it did was increase the age of the oldest GANs". That's exactly what you would expect from reducing the importance of age in the GAN sort order. It doesn't mean the old sort order achieved anything else, but neither is it evidence that it didn't make a difference. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:30, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I meant to say that the change in sort order increased wait times for nominators near the bottom of the list. Currently, the newest nominations are near the bottom of each section, and the oldest nominations are near the top. Back when we were using the other sort order, we were grouping the nominations by username, so users near the bottom of the list saw their wait times increase. Granted, the other sort order did help decrease wait times for first-time nominators, but I think that came at the expense of everyone else, which is what I was getting at. – Epicgenius (talk) 14:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Wasn't that the point? If the sort order was causing those with better review ratios to have their wait times decreased (new submitters having a perfect ratio), then the system was achieving what it was meant to do. CMD (talk) 17:39, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, in that respect, it was working as intended (i.e. people with better review-to-nomination ratios didn't have to wait as long).

I was trying to make the point that reviewers' limited time was diverted to people who have a lot of reviews and relatively few or no GAs. If someone was a prolific reviewer but an even more prolific nominator, they would be disadvantaged; e.g. if they had 100 reviews and 200 nominations, they were pushed further down the review queue than someone with 100 reviews and 10 nominations. Power users are more likely to have dozens or hundreds of GAs, so under the old sort order, they would be inherently disadvantaged because of the raw numbers of GAs that they had (unless they conducted even more reviews to make up for this).

Perhaps it may be a good idea to consider formatting the GAN lists as sortable tables. That way, reviewers could decide on whether to review nominations by people with better review-to-nomination ratios. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:23, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Epicgenius We could make User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms more prominent somehow. Right now it's just a link above the nominations. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:37, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the link. That is exactly what I was thinking, but I didn't even realize it already existed. – Epicgenius (talk) 18:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I was also unaware of this page until now, and second Epicgenius' comment immediately above. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 19:08, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Thebiguglyalien, Epicgenius, Trainsandotherthings: this would be easy to do, and I agree it might be beneficial. That part of the layout is hardcoded in ChristieBot at the moment. If someone mocks up a GAN page header they think would be preferable, I can change the bot to hardcode that text, or possibly to transclude it. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:38, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Quickfails are not problematic in the slightest, as long as the reasoning is there. The difficulty is merely in the length of the average review. When people say "I'm not good at reviewing", what they actually mean is "I find reviewing tediously boring and don't want to do it", which is perfectly understandable.

To prevent WP:DCGAR happening again, we have decided that quality reviews must be directly enforced through the GA criteria. Now, each review must go over the prose, images, sourcing, and do a source spotcheck. At FAC, this is handled by multiple people, and the source spotcheck is not needed after the first successful nomination. We have got ourselves into a situation where the "lightweight review process" is multiple times more onerous than the heavyweight process.

Is there a better way? After DCGAR, I remember that SandyGeorgia was encouraging the institution of GAN coordinators who would check reviews, as the FAC coordinators do. I think that option, in combination with lowering GACR standards, could help encourage reviewing—but only, of course, if editors with high nomination/review ratios want to pick up their own slack. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:05, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

I agree, quickfails should not be problematic if done correctly. However, I noticed that nominators sometimes challenge GAN quickfails even if the reviewer has done everything correctly, e.g. this thread from a few days ago. I was trying to make the point that some reviewers may be afraid to quickfail articles because they fear being confronted by the nominator; sorry if that isn't clear. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:32, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Indeed, and not even just quick fails, but any fail that takes less than a day or two. There are a couple of noms I've had on my mind for awhile that have been submitted with eg. unsourced sections, but the idea of pulling them out and failing them feels like more effort than it is worth. CMD (talk) 17:41, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

• Some thoughts generally agree with the above discussion that throttling noms doesn't solve the problem, that being stricter on reviews (i.e. quick failing) may push people to improve the quality more before nomming and that having a backlog in and of itself isn't necessarily a bad thing. My own reflections on the challenges of WP:GAN come down to a lack of incentive for reviewing articles. When I started nomination articles at WP:GAN, I told myself that I would keep a 2-to-1 ratio of reviews versus my own GAs. I did that mostly out of fear of being ostracized by the community for not reciprocating. WP:DYK and WP:FLC provide good examples of the extremes (where WP:GAN is in the middle). DYK requires QPQ, increasing the QPQ requirements for frequent DYK users during backlogs. WP:FLC on the other hand, limits you to one active nomination at a time (allowing for a second nom after your first has substantial support). I would argue that neither process is running very well, with backlogs or lack of reviews still being a challenge.

I think the most important thing to remember is that the purpose of recognition is to incentivize and encourage content creation. So long as WP:GA encourages me and others to create fairly well-written articles, it's doing its job. To conclude on that point, I wouldn't support any changes that would limit the incentive for users (especially users who create a lot of good content) to keep writing. That little green icon will get up there at some point, it really doesn't matter when though. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 15:07, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

After reading the replies, I can say that I'm back in the "I don't know" camp, but at least we got a discussion going! I'm sympathetic to PMC's point above, and others that have expressed similar thoughts, that it's more of a cultural issue than anything that can be directly solved by fiddling with how we organize nominations. But it just happens that most of the people close to GA's "culture" monitor and participate in this talk page, so this is where any concentrated change would happen. Personally I've been trying to be more open to failing nominations that weren't ready to be nominated. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Replying to myself so I can think aloud and express general thoughts. My takeaway here is that consensus is against limiting our own nominations as a means to reduce the backlog, and instead we should be more willing to fail nominations if they're not ready for a GAN review. Maybe we should be a little more firm with nominators who make a scene about reviewers who fail a nom, in the same way that we're being more firm with nominators who make a scene about inadequate reviews. I still don't love that the most active content writers have such a disproportionate number of nominations, but good points have been raised about other factors at play there. At the end of the day, like SusunW said, there's really no way to incentivize reviewing for someone whose focus on Wikipedia isn't reviewing and trying to do this can be counterproductive. And like I've said before, GAN reviewing is harder than other reviews because all of the pressure is on the one reviewer, even if they're better at reviewing some aspects than others (looking at you, source reviews). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:40, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

My answer to this problem has been the same for a while now: I don't review nominations of those who refuse to meaningfully contribute to reviewing (and have a decent number of GAs, I'm not punishing people doing their first ever nomination). But when I see someone with 50 GAs and 0 reviews, I cannot in good conscience ever take up one of their nominations. I work hard to keep my review/GA ratio close to 1, so I'm not expecting anyone to do something I wouldn't do myself. We need a cultural shift towards this mindset, in my opinion (and some will disagree with me, which is their right). We also have the age-old problem of how to incentivize reviewers, which many brighter than I have tried to solve.

I think large numbers of open nominations are in part a symptom of these known issues, excluding the (thankfully rare) bad actor nominating crappy articles en masse (and I'm sure some of you know exactly who I am referring to). Bottom line - when I see people argue so strongly against any reform yet refuse to do any reviews themselves, I really have no sympathy for them. If you don't want to do reviews, fine, but don't expect others to prioritize your nominations. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 18:52, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

been watching this conversation quietly - completely agree with the above that this is a cultural problem that really needs a broader informal shift rather than acute reforms addressing only the symptoms. ... sawyer * he/they * talk 01:08, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Comment – Every time these discussions come up I am less inclined to participate in the GA process, if I am being honest. I find the pressure to review more articles disheartening. Encouraging reviews is fine, reforming the processes is good too, but discouraging writing and limiting collaboration for improving articles is counter-productive. The entire point of GA, IMO, is improving article quality, but if all we are to do is focus on pushing reviews through, the processes begins to focus more on quantity, which to my mind is how we end up with so many poorly written articles to begin with. We are a very diverse community of volunteers. Not everyone's skill-sets are the same and assuming that we can all do the same tasks equally well fails to recognize our diversity. The constant chastisement of people who don't review more doesn't encourage people to participate, but in fact does the opposite, at least for me. (For the record, I have nominated only 1 GA all year (at the request of the reviewer). Although I have written articles that would benefit from collaboration, I have not nominated them, but forced myself instead to review other's work. I spent over a month helping an editor at peer review prepare their first FA nomination, reviewed 5 FA/GA nominations. Not big numbers to some people's standards, but that required a huge amount of effort for me, as my reviews are meticulous, and I am incapable of making them less so. I see no value in holding anyone to my standards, but rather think that all contributions which lead to a better encyclopedia are valuable.) SusunW (talk) 20:59, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

My comment was not directed at you, I specifically pointed the finger at people who refuse to review at all. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:36, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Trainsandotherthings, I didn't mean to imply that it was. If I did, I apologize. Communication is sometimes quite challenging SusunW (talk) 21:41, 17 June 2024 (UTC)

Generally I think we should try to be more positive about all contributors here. Perhaps we should celebrate reviewers more (COI alert: I tend to review more than I write) instead of looking down at non-reviewers (although it is a very human thing to do). I like reviewing SusunW's biographies (and I really enjoy working with her) so I am sad there have been so few of them here recently.

I am very interested in seeing whether the review circles idea can work as a (completely voluntary) way where people who are OK with doing some reviewing get their own nomination reviewed faster. If this becomes popular, people will have a choice: do a review to get your own nom reviewed very soon/put your nom on the pile with no questions asked about reviewing (and that means you may have to wait until the next backlog drive). —Kusma (talk) 09:32, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Thank you Kusma I enjoy working with you too a lot. I am going to rip a bandaid off here and be vulnerable for a minute, but maybe it will help some people understand that reviewing is not simple for everyone. When I review I file, I tell myself, this time I am just going to read it, make comments, do a spot check and move on. But that never happens, ever. I read through the article. I start a 2nd read through and when I get to the first citation, I check it. I tell myself at the second citation to just accept it, but my brain says, what if it doesn't verify the information or has a copyvio? You have to sign-off that it's okay, so I check it. And this continues through every single citation. If I find an inconsistency, instead of just asking the question do you have a source that supports this?, I must know if there is a source. Or, I encounter something that the context is unclear. If a source is off-line do I AGF? Totally depends on whether other checks have had no problems. So I research (sometimes for hours) to find a reference that supports the data, provides context, or is accessible. Only if I cannot find a source do I just ask the question.

By this time, an entire day has passed and I am probably only 1/3 to 1/2 way through the article, so I post what I have from my notes to WP. I rewrite each query to make sure that what I am asking is clear and a suggestion, not a demand. I preview it and rewrite it again before I finally save it and move on. Day 2 and Day 3 are more of the same until I finally reach the end of the article, drained and exhausted. I hope that the nominator will take at least a day to respond to give me time to regroup. I review the responses as meticulously as I did the queries and finally make a decision on the outcome. Instead of feeling successful, my feeling is relief that it's over. And then I see a post on this page, admonishing people about not doing enough reviews and I force myself to do it again. The struggle is real, and it is hard. Howie Mandel once said I know my approach is not logical, but in spite of that I am compelled to do the illogical. That's me. We cannot assume we know why people don't do reviews, but we can change our approach to one which encourages people to do what they can. (And yes, I rewrote this 5 times.) SusunW (talk) 16:04, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to write this out Susun. The work you have done over the years to improve articles on here has been amazing and very inspiring, it has always been a pleasure to read what you have written and to work with you not only on reviews but other projects too. It's heartbreaking to hear you have been so discouraged by these periodic discussions on reviews, and I apologise profusely if I have contributed to that discouragement. Discouraging others from doing such good work should never be what we aim to accomplish here, and it is not a good sign if we are going in that direction. I agree completely that we need to reevaluate how to encourage more reviews without discouraging nominations, and to be more holistically positive towards each other. --Grnrchst (talk) 19:40, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

GAN page not updating

It appears ChristieBot is getting partway through its run and then crashing before it can update the GAN page. I suspect I know what the problem is but I can't do anything about it till I get home this evening about eight hours from now, so GAN is not going to update until at least then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:22, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

The problem with bots like this is that they often have a bus factor of one. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 13:46, 18 June 2024 (UTC)

Eight hours of decreasing backlog though. CMD (talk) 13:55, 18 June 2024 (UTC)