Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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A good argument for listing all points

Out of curiousity I clicked on Andrés Nocioni which was just failed a few minutes ago, and the reviewer said only that it failed due to lack of images. Problem is, images aren't required, right? Just says it's desirable (can't remember exact language). I didn't read the article to see if it would have failed on other points, but it would have been nice to see that the reviewer reiterated that it met all the others, and, perhaps, by the reviewer having to put each point in there and comment they would have picked up on the fact that lack of images should not make an article fail. --plange 18:14, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I've seen some reviwers in the past mistakenly fail articles for this, it seemed to be more about reviewers not understanding the guideline rather than forgetting what it said. Homestarmy

Once again we need to be clearer about the criteria/guidelines since reviewers still make mistakes while reviewing. The only thing the article would miss would be non-notable stuff about what is the early life of the guy & maybe a picture but this clearly met the GA criteria. Lincher 18:58, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

If someone else wants to start a review of it, then I think it would pass :/. Homestarmy 18:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Should I contact the reviewer? --plange 19:08, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I am taking care of the case now ... re-reviewed and will leave a message on the guys' talk page. Lincher 20:29, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

As Angela said - this, and several other cases, make a good argument to cite all WIAGA points while reviewing, and comment on how the article complies with them (or not). So, I'd like to ask whether anybody else (including people who posted above) supports this idea (we already know who opposes it, I guess). Bravada, talk - 22:31, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought the objection was requiring this to be done if the article was passed. My proposal is, at this point, that if you're failing an article, list all criteria with a pass/fail... --plange 22:37, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

And what's wrong with listing them when you pass? Reviewing article for a pass or for a fail is the same, so you should be able to put down your thoughts after either. This might seem obvious that "if I passed it means it passed", but when a user leaves no note on the user page or just states "I pass it because it is a good article", then you have no guarantee he or she actually read the article! Bravada, talk - 23:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC),

true... I've always been an advocate of leaving something when passing like "this has met all the criteria" but am unsure how making them put the criteria up for passing guarantees the editor read it; they can just paste it in and put pass next to each one. Doing what you suggest does not solve the problem but just creates more bureaucracy. However, what I'm suggesting should help solve the problem of someone failing on something when it wasn't actually failable on the point. I guess I see failing as more serious and that we should respect the editor who worked on it (and waited so long) and at least spell out what passed and what didn't and why, it's the least we can do for their hard work. This isn't a big deal for me though, so if the consensus is to display criteria for pass and fail, I won't have a problem with it. --plange 23:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the point is to describe against each criterion why the article passed. I support Bravada's idea (although I am just an observer) because it brings some legitimacy and transparency to the Good Article program. Of course it's more work for the reviewer... but so what. What's right is what's right. If Bravada's idea were part of the review policy, I might actually start being a reviewer, because I'd feel we were all doing closer to the same thing. –Outriggr § 23:34, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, quite a few editors already do so, so even if its not a part of the policy, it is beginning to be a part of the practice - so I guess you can start now :D What I meant is that after a review you surely have a few comments on most of the criteria, and even if you pass, it can still help people improve the article. You might also explain why you passed despite some deficiencies - and most of all, take advantage of the powerful "on hold" feature to help clear any doubts regarding the nomination (I find this one of the most efficient tools to catalize fast improvement of article quality!) In borderline cases, I just list all of my conclusions and then re-read them to find out whether they allow for a pass. So, either way, I think it is useful, and when I see some comments from the reviewer, I know he or she really delved into the article and not just slapped the badge on. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 23:38, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this example and several of Bravada's point give ample reasons to consider a review template. It doesn't have to be complicated or beaucratic. Just a simple 1-6 listing of the main criteria with a slot to write PASS/FAIL (or Needs Improvement to be nice). We can allow space for if a reviewer wants to add more detail and in the template encourage it for a FAIL mark. Just a simple template to add to the talk the page. Not only do I think that will look more professional and serious of a review, at the very least it will make everyone involved on the talk page more aware of what the Good article criteria is. Agne 23:41, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I'm convinced. My only request is that we allow room to write bulleted problems within the criteria -- Sometimes I'll have a page full of bulleted points (things that have awkward wording, etc.) that I like to put below the criteria it didn't meet. --plange 23:45, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Since there is a consensus (I will add my voice toward the consensus) where is this template? Lincher 23:54, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, such a template already exists, it's called Template:FGAN, and it is already recommended for reviewers who fail an article. The problem with it is that it doesn't explain much, as for example it reads "Well written?", which might be dubious for somebody unfamiliar with the current WIAGA. As I explained above, listing the criteria in full has some advantages (I just copy one of my past reviews and blank the comments :D ), and you of course can always write something like "OK" or "Pass" if you have no comments. Bravada, talk - 23:59, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

Ideas for Review template

Since we do have an emerging template, let's put together some ideas. Starting with the current fail Template:FGAN, I'd like to see a more professional presentation. A shaded box with the 1-6 main criteria listed wiki-linked to the relevant critera (WP:MOS, WP:V, WP:CITE etc). That way if someone has a question about what is "well written" or what do you mean "in-line citation" they can go to that guideline. We can have a section underneath each area that says additional comments. Whether you pass or fail in that area, you can choose to leave a comment. Again, I do think we need to strongly encourage some sort of comment left for a fail mark. Agne 00:04, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not so certain it needs to be mandatory, once again, when people are reviewing articles right now, the reviews sometimes are a bit more limited than they probably ought to be, but the articles do seem to be actual Good Articles most of the time :/. Homestarmy 00:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Understood. But again considering the more professional appearence of a uniformed template box, is it really that much more effort (for a clearly Good Article) to just write "Pass" 6 times? At least then we can be more confident in the awareness of the criteria from both the reviwers and anyone who looks at the talk page. Agne 00:13, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, while I proposed a "template" in the beginning, I am beginning to think it would be counterproductive. What I propose is just to copy the criteria and comment on them on the talk page - example. You have them before your eyes all the time, and so does the reader, so there is no doubt what you are referring to and no need to click any links. Perhaps it is not THAT visually rewarding, but I guess it is quite OK. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 01:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. What I would suggest now is having the criteria in an easy-to-copy way (like a page with them listed using "nowiki") for "newcomers" :D

In the past couple of reviewing, I used to copy all from WP:WIAGA (I need to copy paste, since it changes lately) and then trimmed out to basic facts for easy reading, as in for example Talk:Onion dome (passed) and Talk:Anorexia nervosa (failed). For me it is very practical, more objective and stay focus on the criteria. I will try to expand the template, but not now as I need to sleep ;-). Cheers. — Indon (reply) — 01:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess we all have our own "reviewing styles", so perhaps it would be easier and just say that "a review of the article's compliance with the WIAGA is required regardless of whether the nomination is failed or passed, preferably with reference to specific criteria" - wording here is stricly "working version", especially given that I am half-asleep too. Bravada, talk - 01:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I took a stab at one {{User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate}} (edit) -- feel free to tweak. I did it this way so that we can be free-form within. To use, you'd subst it with the 3 params: {{subst:User:Plange/to do/GAreviewtemplate|Passed|message|~~~~}} and I put little pass/fail images for editors to delete the one that doesn't apply. Let me know and I'll move it to the template space... --plange 01:51, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, all these sound good but if the editors are to nominate they better read the WIAGA so just plain copypasting the criteria isn't gonna help them and it will be too long to read for them especially if the article fails major criteria (which means they didn't even read WIAGA). Your ideas are really good but if we want to KISS then both Bravada's example and Plange's idea are too complex and not downright/ridiculously simple for the editor and even if editors would read the whole of these criteria re-written, they would be in a pêle-mêle of redundant stuff. Also, if you are on the adding comment side, you will take maybe 10kB of the talk page just to review the article which might be unnecessary if there are no editors that are monitoring the article anymore and if they want a concise way to fix their article. Lincher 12:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Lincher. Keep it simple is the whole point of GA. pschemp | talk 13:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

The point(s) is/are:

• apparently, many editors do not read WIAGA so thorughly before nominating, and/or are not sure how they can be applied in practice to their nominated articles
• somebody coming to the article later on might see the review on the talk page and get some ideas how to improve it, so even if nobody will take advantage of it at the very moment, it still might be useful (and hopefully it will be)
• and the rest of the arguments are above already!

Well, as I suggested, why don't we just require the reviewer to leave a review, and RECOMMEND to refer to specific criteria (also see above)? At present, GAN still does not require the review while passing! Bravada, talk - 14:45, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. Angela's template is veruy useful, but I'd rather have it in italics already, so that I could just type in the comments in normal font and avoid reader confusion.

No problem, you can be bold and edit it/trim it as y'all see fit :-) --plange 15:09, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

My idea on a template to help review would be to have yes or no questions to fill in. It now looks like :

{{subst:FGAN
|well written = '''Pass''' (user's entry)
|accuracy = '''Pass'''
|thorough = '''Pass'''
|NPOV = '''Pass'''
|stable = '''Pass'''
|images = '''Pass'''
}}<pre>

but it probably should look like :

<pre>{{subst:FGAN
|well written = P
|accuracy = F
|thorough = P
|NPOV = P
|stable = P
|images = P
<additions>
|additional comments = user's entry
|GA = P or F or OH

}}

Where the P are pass and the F are fail, under additions should be additional arguments that should be in the template for GA, it would changes the heading depending on passing, failing or on hold of the article. And Additional comments should be an argument to let reviewers give additional comments. This would keep it simple but would give out all the criteria without being too big or too fancy. Lincher 15:29, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

As I said, I guess we will never find consensus, as we all have different reviewing styles. What is important is that all reviewers really DO judge the article against the GA criteria and leave review notes to help editors improve the article. We might link to suggested templates from GAN (though I'd change the name of FGAN for obvious reasons), but the most important is to explicitly state that the reviewers have to abide by the above. Bravada, talk - 15:49, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

thought add this to the GA templates {{GA}} and {{FailedGA}} The GA assessment for this article is available [[{{pagename}}/GAassessment|here]] or something similar then the GA assessment is always available, for failed and renominated article the reviewer is able to see what the problems were. When a GA is reviewed then the assessment which shows criteria at that time is also available. Usage would be the assessor would have say notepad open copy criteria list onto that do the assessment then put the correct template up and cut/copy paste the assessment onto the page... Gnangarra 17:03, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the idea of the subpage accessible via the template, that way too, for active Talk pages, the assessement doesn't get buried in the archives and force re-reviewers to sift through to find it... --plange 17:07, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

side advantage is that where malicious promotions have occured then this assessment page wont exist. No page no promotion. Gnangarra 17:10, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

good idea, just like peer-review, right? — Indon (reply) — 17:25, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

In my opinion, it should go into the talk page's subpage named Comments just like the wikiprojects reviews. See Talk:Ahmose I/Comments for an example of what is a biographical wikiproject review. Lincher 22:21, 22 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd advise using a different name than comments precisely because of this-- these comments get transcluded into project worklists and so by nature should be very short. Example --plange 23:28, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

As it the GA review/assessment I would suggest that GA is included in the page name Gnangarra 23:47, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Do we have consensus to do this? If so, I can modify template to have /GA assessment link etc... --plange 17:03, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

No consensus yet, people don't agree with any change at the moment and adding another fork to the talk page would just create more free-for-all practises. As it is now, people can work well without having to bother where they add their comment other than adding them to the talk pages and in a section that says GA. Lincher 20:38, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

(no identations) Now, I see some recent articles were passed as GA without any comments at all. Examples are: Drum and bass and Fenix*TX. Or with only one line comment, such as Alex Pettyfer and Flat Earth (although the latter, I would say, is qualified). Maybe template is not a bad idea after all. Either for passing or failing. Should we make an obligation that passing an article have to be with enough comments related to WP:WIAGA items? And if an article was passed without enough GA assessment, then anybody can relisted back to the nomination page. This will let other reviewers assess the article. — Indon (reply) — 14:37, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I think a better idea for those situations would be to make it more clear in the rules that if an article is passed but not reviewed, thereby ignoring the instructions, it can be immedietly put back on the nomination page at anyone's discretion. Making the template use mandatory wouldn't change that, it's mandatory to show a review in the first place :/. Homestarmy 15:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Nice Home, the best idea that came out of this talk so far. No need for a template but a re-run through the GAC process is a good idea. Lincher 19:06, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree then. Who wants to make clear rule about this? So that there is already a justification to relist back those articles. I'm not good at wording. — Indon (reply) — 07:59, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, according to the current rules, it is required to leave a review if one fails an article (Fail instruction 3), but I cannot find anywhere the requirement to leave a review if one passes an article. So one has to change that first. Bravada had a good example and my proposal is a slight modification. From WP:GAC, see the last line.

The process for reviewing an article is:

1. Check that you have logged in, anons may not review articles.
2. Choose an article to review, noting:
   • You cannot choose an article if you have made significant contributions to it.
   • Nominations near the top of the lists are oldest, and should be given higher priority.
3. Read the whole article, and decide whether it should pass or fail based on the criteria listed here.
4. In either case, a review of the article's compliance with the Good Articles criteria is required in the article’s talk page.

It’s just a proposal, but one should agree on adding this requirement first. Then one has to add the instructions for another editor (effectively a re-reviewer) to renominate the article if the original reviewer does not put in a proper review. It is not clear where to put this requirement these instructions. Should it be in WP:GA/R or WP:GAC? RelHistBuff 08:53, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

According to Pass instruction 2, there is a requirement for leaving a note: "...and leave a comment about your reasons for passing the article (with suggestions to improve the article, if you can)." Perhaps, it is not written as a requirement in one separate item. I agree with RelHistBuff and it is appropriate in WP:GAC, because it is instruction of reviewing. However, I might want to add the last item:

4. In either case, a review of the article's compliance with the Good Articles criteria is required in the article’s talk page. Otherwise this article can be immediately listed back in the nomination page at anyone's discretion.

— Indon (reply) — 10:05, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah yes, somehow it escaped my notice. It should be a separate item in the Pass instructions, e.g.,

2. Replace {{GAnominee}} with {{GA}} on the article's talk page. To indicate the reviewed version of a Good Article, use {{GA|oldid=nnnnnn}} on the talk page (replacing nnnnn with the id number of the reviewed version) rather than just {{GA}}.

3. Leave a comment about your reasons for passing the article (with suggestions to improve the article, if you can).

I will boldly modify this. I don't think this is controversial point.

Adding the fourth line in the review rules would then be somewhat redundant, but I think it is important to repeat the message. So I would still support a fourth line. RelHistBuff 11:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with your change, the oldid stuff will also help with the re-reviewing. Lincher 16:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I am afraid the current wording is a bit too vague. I mean, by "leave a comment about your reasons for passing the article" one might understand that e.g. "I am promoting this article because it is well written and has fun images" is OK. It is important to emphasize that all reviews should be made against WIAGA, not somebody's arbitrary feelings about the article, and that more specific review comments are necessary. I must say I like RHD's initial or Indon's wording a lot more. Bravada, talk - 19:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Inline citations

I don't want to make another fork of long discussion about citation, but it is difficult for people that favor Harvard referencing to get GA status. I just got a review that I cannot use Harvard style because it is not inline citation. Here's the message:

The GA criteria requires that only in-line citations be used, so I'm afraid Harvard referencing is not an option. In-line citations are footnotes. Since you already have the bibliography written up, it shouldn't be that difficult to change. For each place you need to cite something, just include the bibliography between < ref > and < /ref > tags at the end of the sentence. For example, I modified the four points on missionary work (Sandra, 1998) to use in-line citations.

I am trying to confince him/her that inline citation is not always footnote, but I'm not sure if I can. Probably I have to change my citation style (*sigh*). — Indon (reply) — 17:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I am personally in favor of the footnote style but I wouldn't fail an article that exclusively used Harvard in it's citation style. For the benefits of WP:V, a Harvard style citation at the end of a sentence still works. (off topic but does anyone else think it's a good time for an archive of the talk page?)Agne 18:10, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Harvard is ok, of course, though it looks ugly, makes the article much less reader-friendly and requires almost exactly the same amount of work as inline citation, but if editors of a given article insist on consistently using Harvard, it is OK with WIAGA. Whoever failed the mysterious article (could you refer us to it) just for that reason and tried to impose "footnote style" is clearly wrong. Bravada, talk - 18:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the support. It's not mysterious ;-), the article is Toraja. It is just the reviewer has another objection, namely the organization of the article. We are still discussing on other subjects. I like the reviewer that s(he) thoroughly read the entire article, though it's a bit weird that the decision (GA failed) is already given, but s(he) hasn't read the whole article. Anyway, if (s)he insists that GA fails merely on Harvard citation, I'll file that article in the WP:GA/R. Cheers. — Indon (reply) —

Just got a message from the reviewer. I have convinced him/her about inline citation style in Harvard. Case closed. Thanks. — Indon (reply) — 19:17, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

The reviewer had failed the article early due to significant grammatical problems that are being worked through with the editors of the article. Gnangarra 23:56, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

John Floyd length problem

The John Floyd (Virginia politician) article is 36kb. It meets every other requirement for GA promotion. Should I promote it to GA or not? --Tjss(Talk) 20:29, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

I would. It is very well written and I agree that it passes the criteria. Excess length is not really a failing mark for Good Article status. Agne 20:35, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Okay. I promoted it. --Tjss(Talk) 21:21, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Discussion on criteria changes

I was told that there would be discussion here about why inline citations are now mandatory for good articles. There doesn't seem to be any info here, from a cursory glance.

As explained at Wikipedia talk:What is a good article?, I propose that inline citations no longer be mandatory. --Kjoonlee 10:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

See Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_candidates#Citation_of_sources_should_be_required_for_GA RelHistBuff 11:15, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I find it absurd that GA criteria mandate what even FA criteria do not demand. Anyway, I think there wasn't much consensus at the talk page of WP:WIAGA. Some people disagreed, and some people were surprised by the change, as was User:Pjacobi and me. --Kjoonlee 11:22, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

FA does require it. The misunderstanding is the phrase "where appropriate" in WP:WIAFA. That clause does not mean inline citations are optional. It means to place the inline citations in the appropriate locations. This is then supported by the WP:CITE guidelines which specifically defines the three citation styles. RelHistBuff 11:34, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Got any sources for that? --Kjoonlee 11:37, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

"In the appropriate location" is very very very misleading. WP:WIAFA does not say that citations should be placed after punctuation or whatnot, but it does say that significant statements need inline citations; that is what "appropriate" refers to. Gimmetrow 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

If you would like to change it, then you are welcome to obtain another consensus. RelHistBuff 11:40, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The consensus has been reached that inline citation is required (see above). — Indon (reply) — 11:42, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

The fact that this change was attempted twice, and reverted twice by different editors, should suggest that your "consensus" was premature. Gimmetrow 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Kjoon. It is very problematic to make citations compulsary for articles on basic scientific topics, such as classical mechanics, special relativity, quantum mechanics, general relativity, quantum field theory etc. These topics are treated in thousands of textbooks and the citation you give for some fact to the original source may not be appropriate for the article. Citations to some textbooks may be more appropriate, but then why one book and not another book (this point was raised by User:Pjacobi, I'm not forgetting to cite source here :) ).

I think that what matters is that there is no dispute about original research and verifiability issues in the article. The talk pages are the place to resolve such disputes. It shouldn't be necessary to "pre-emptively immunize" an article against such issues being raised by including citations. Citations should be included if that improves the article and not for any other "political" reason. Count Iblis 17:04, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Surely there should be clarification that anything uncontroversially appearing in hundreds of textbooks doesn't require a citation. — Laura Scudder ☎ 17:08, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, and what good would citations do anyway in such cases? The people who don't know the elementary facts treated in textbooks will usually not be able to get their hands on the literature anyway. Count Iblis 17:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Many times, facts located in textbooks have been reproduced on the internet somewhere, and therefore can be linked by Wikipedia. Homestarmy 17:21, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, but in such cases it is convenient to cite the textbook in a "see also" section. The point is what to do with an argument or fact in the article. If you omit it, then the need could arise to cite it in an inline citation. But if you give the argumentation in the article, then there is no need to give a citation anymore. Proof that it is not original research or that it is verifiable is not needed for articles on elementary topics for well known (to insiders) arguments/facts. Count Iblis 19:54, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Guys, I'm sorry about the brew ha. I ardently believed that it wasn't fair to de-list an article soley for in-line citations without giving them ample time to work the article to meet criteria 2. I thought that would create more of a ruckus then dropping off a friendly notice of the change before hand. I do think WP:V sums it up best when it notes "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth." Followed by the Section on Burden "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain. Editors should therefore provide references. If an article topic has no reputable, reliable, third-party sources, Wikipedia should not have an article on that topic." This is about more then just in-line citations. This is the rock solid gospel of Wikipedia and we are doing a disservice as a Good Article Project if we don't hold articles to the standards of WP:V. Agne 18:36, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

This seems to imply that listing sources at the end of the article does not satisfy verifiability. Is that what you intend to mean? Gimmetrow 18:50, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

It's not really your fault, you just hit a few articles patrolled by people who took issue with the idea of their articles not being well-referenced, which is ok, I mean, well-referenced is subjective anyway. (Probably a good thing) Homestarmy 18:45, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that it is the WP:V that isn't up to date to what people really think when reviewing for FA, A-class (in the assessment) and GA. Also, can we have case-by-case solutions for articles in pure physics/chemistry/biology for facts that have been reviewed by so many books that they aren't necessary to be inline cited. I think this would be a GA/Review process in that case. Lincher 18:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Too add my own two cents' worth here...from my own experience, it seems that inline citations in the better physics-related articles are generally offered:

• When a particularly dramatic point is made, to credit the discoverer of the phenomenon, refer the reader to the exciting original publication, or such like
• To refer the reader to a particularly useful reference for better understanding the subject (but these sources are usually just listed at the end)
• To substantiate a claim that is likely to be disputed
• To acknowledge debt to a particular source, which was consulted in the writing of the article

All of this is normal for scholarly work. Citations are normally, moreover, demanded (with the appropriate tag) when another person reads a claim they regard as suspect. In this way, dubious claims are either properly referenced, or weeded out of articles (this is attendant upon the "stability" requirement). But, the average person writing physics articles doesn't have to, shouldn't have to, consult and cite reference works for "proof" of facts like the relativity of simultaneity. An entry in the bibliography can direct the curious researcher to a source where they can look things up for themselves, but it borders on the insane to require these sorts of things to be cited inline, and can lead to an article looking peculiarly ugly, even: lacking the authoritative, confident tone that an encyclopaedia article ought to convey.

I find it disturbing that a tiny group of editors, well meaning as they may be, can get together on a talk page which will be on very few peoples' watchlists, and make a decision which will have an impact on the quality control measures for all Wikipedia articles, without properly consulting the various WikiProjects and canvassing opinions and consensus on their proposals, and what the norms and standards are for that particular field. As far as physics and maths articles go, I can see this ridiculous requirement decreasing the overall quality of the articles as perfectly factual statements not cited inline are summarily removed, or at the very least, precluding most articles in those fields from gaining Good Article status, for what amount to entirely spurious reasons. Byrgenwulf 18:52, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I think an important point is "Who are we writing these articles for?" Are we writing them for the experts? or for the laypeople or even, dare I say, the scientifically ignorant? Is Wikipedia's goal to be a free source of knowledge limited to those who already know that something is a "perfectly factual statement"? I think the overwhelming message of WP:V is that we are not to assume but verify. I think another point that has not been touched upon is that there is no reason why these Math or Science articles have to be considered Good Articles. If the article's editors do not wish to conform to the Good Article Criteria, they have every right not to do so. We can leave it at that. But I think a hallmark of being a Good Article is being a standard of which all articles can be considered by and for readership that may not be able to assume perfectly factual statements are indeed just that. We don't write for the experts. We right for the average person and if we do it right, we have the fruits and the sources of the experts to present to them. Agne 19:10, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I really don't know what the fuss is all about. The current WIAGA simply states, that a Good Article should contain inline references. That's it! Nobody said that obvious statements or general knowledge has to be referenced, it is just to mean that the editors that want to pursue Good Article status for their articles should strive to provide inline references for statements that might be challenged. Reviewers use common sense and usually do not demand inline citations for statements that are obvious or unlikely to be untrue. I believe that in case of the unlikely happening of an article in mathematics or physics being failed due to the lack of an inline citation for a generally accepted principle or theory, the nominators may simply seek a Good Article Review, which is most likely to clear the issue.

Referring to the last part of your post, this change does not impact ALL articles, but only those that are nominated for the Good Article status. This page is probably the most watchlisted of all Good Articles pages, and therefore most of the people interested in developing Good Article standards were most probably aware of that. There are more important, and general guidelines and policies being discussed or changed now without any broader announcement, so I really don't see where the problem is. I believe it is all a big misunderstanding combined with lack of trust in other users' common sense :D Bravada, talk - 19:13, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. I am replying after an edit conflict, but I guess Agne summed it up even better.

What editors who "don't see what the fuss is all about" fail to see is that User:Agne27 has gone around tagging articles that she counted didn't have enough inline citations to satisfy her arbitrary whim for what a good number of these were. She doesn't even have the courtesy to let us know what parts of the articles she think need more inline citations according to this "new criteria" for judging articles. This is bean-counting, it isn't editting. There are definitely good articles that don't need a plethora of in-line citations to remain good articles. Since there is no minimum number, tagging articles as "at risk" for re-review without going through a careful evaluation is the height of arrogance. This kind of behavior needs to stop. --ScienceApologist 20:06, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you that there are some articles that don't really need inline references especially if they aren't controversial or some sections of articles that don't need inline referencing for it is almost a universally accepted fact. That is the reason why the WP:WIAGA criteria don't say where and now many inline citations are required and it is to assume that the reviewer should have enough common sense to request inline citations where he/she see fits. Upon request, criterion review (e. g. not enough inline citations) should be explained by the reviewer (e. g. this passage needs a cite, this line needs a cite, etc.) in order to better the article and not leave the editors with an impression that we just slap-tag articles or subjectively assess articles. Lincher 20:24, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree.

First, let me say that being asked for a cite for something obvious can drive you crazy -- I've been asked for citations in articles on religious topics so basic that we teach our children these concepts -- in elementary school!

Taking a deep breath, however, I've come to see the point some folk have made on this topic. If someone is reading an article, it's probably because they know little about it and want to know more. While we put emphasis here on citations to bolster the verifiability of a statement, there are at least two other reasons why in-line documentation is emphasized in scholarship, especially the humanities. One is to give credit to a person who developed an idea. (a superior note goes back to the first scholar and first source to develop an idea) Another is to allow a reader to explore a subject further with ease. Especially with a long article, works list do not do this well because such sources cover broad topics in great complexity. Where in a 500 page book should I look for the accepted description of how RNA replicates? You might know, but I would not. A few minutes to add the source and page helps our readers a great deal.

So, I, for one, look for at least one reference per section. I believe that to be reasonable for those of us who like books. I always ask for this and put the article on hold if I do not find it. I'm not out to keep articles off GA, but it's how I review. The second opinion process is always open to those who disagree with such. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 20:26, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposed to be verifiable, not verifiable by someone who doesn't know anything about the subject. -- SCZenz 00:07, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Where did you get that bizarre notion? In WP:V, which is official policy, it says "The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. "Verifiable" in this context means that any reader must be able to check that material added to Wikipedia has already been published by a reliable source, because Wikipedia does not publish original thought or original research."

Which part of "any reader" do you fail to understand?

If you're stating a fact, and you can't expect every reader to already know it to be true, you need to provide a source. If you're stating a fact, and you can expect every reader to know it to be true, it doesn't need to go into the article. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 21:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hopefully, well placed "See Also's" would be there to lead a reader who knows very little to other articles which, themselves, would be referenced simply enough to tell a reader something about what the first article's subject is about. Homestarmy 00:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I would also really like to see the inline citation requirement reviewed (and removed) especially now that it is threatening some mathematical articles I was previously quite pleased with such as the homotopy groups of spheres article. I feel some short articles can be just as easily verified using a simple reference at the end rather than a whole lot of footnotes. Is it perhaps time to move to a poll to see whether there is consensus to recommend inline citations in good articles but not enforce them? Cedars 14:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

If you want my opinion, in terms of whether it would make the GA system good or not, not having the inline citation criteria isn't necessarily a bad thing. But having it does stop people from spamming a bazillion books at the bottom of the page, passing them off as references, and tricking readers into thinking articles are verified when in reality it just popped out of someone's head, such as on Aristotle where the "Further Reading" section used to say "references" I think, until some people examined it. Many of these mathematical articles only have a very few references overall anyway, inline or not, and each book on mathematics hardly presents material in an identical manner, especially in higher level math, there can be very different methods of explaining complicated ideas. Homestarmy 14:45, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That's why I think it's a great requirement for long articles. Just not short articles and the good article project was always intended to welcome short articles. Cedars 15:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Edit I just made

There are many people, who can be seen here and on Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject Physics who think the inline citation requirement was too stringent. This being a wiki, I have modified it. See here. If I get knee-jerk reverts because I "don't have consensus," I will be very disappointed—please keep in mind that none of the article-writers that this line is causing problems for consented to the original version in the first place. (I remember when there was no GA review at all, and it wasn't very long ago.) -- SCZenz 00:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't worry, I didn't knee-jerk revert you because you don't have consensus, I knee-jerk reverted you because the rest of us had near-consensus for it :). Homestarmy 00:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The rest of who!? There are many of us at WikiProject physics trying to write articles, and we do not consent. Now please stop ignoring us. There is no reason that your recent addition should have precedence. -- SCZenz 00:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Pretty much the rest of the people who frequent this page, the discussion actually took place on several different GA project talk pages over the span of I think 1 or two weeks of often heated debate, (Would you believe it, some people even thought we should make it mandatory for all articles to use only a single style of citations.) and as I said in my edit summary, we had near consensus, which for a system that is ordinarily support to not be bureaucratic, is really good enough anyway. Homestarmy 00:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

More specifically, the discussion is mostly in the last archive, but I warn you, it gets a bit....long Homestarmy 00:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah... Do you have anyone in your club who writes science articles? -- SCZenz 00:23, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Nothing heavy like Special Relativity, but honestly, until now, very few science articles really seemed to cause many problems, they often had decent numbers of both general and inline citations, you do all realize, if you want to dispute the interpretation people give for a criteria, there's a page for that here, right? Because what one person says doesn't necessarily go, we learned that the hard way on Jyllands-Posten Muhammad Cartoon Controversy and changed the way people can veto and/or review GA's. Homestarmy 00:27, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This is very frustrating. Can I just say that, to me at least, it feels like what you're telling the experts who write physics articles is that we work for you. We weren't given a voice in these criteria, and we don't have time to keep up with them because what time we do have on Wikipedia is usually spent adding content or (more likely) dealing with pseudoscience. And now you come in and say that perfectly good articles are not good anymore, and that we can argue it on a case-by-case basis if we want? -- SCZenz 00:30, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, all this system is basically is a slightly sophisticated suggestion-giving good-looking-article identification, I don't see why people get so annoyed when they don't have a GA template on top of the talk page and their page listed with more than a thousand others on the GA front page. If you can get those articles which have sparse references to FA status, then go for it, GA isn't something an article has to have to actually be "Good", it just means somebody has apparently identified it as such. Homestarmy 00:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

So what's the purpose of GA? It used to make sense--they were articles that were good, not featured. Now you're saying that featured may be easier to get to than the new rules a bunch of you made up. Are you admitting that your rules make no sense for science articles and that we should ignore them? That's been proposed over at the physics project—but I think it would be a bad thing for Wikipedia. We've been trying to draw your attention to cases where the rules you wrote are problematic, but you're ignoring us. And it's not even everyone in the original discussion who still disagrees—just a few of you who are reverting right now. -- SCZenz 00:38, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(Note that the next section started as a reply to this comment. -- SCZenz 01:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC))

SCZenz is now the fourth independent editor to attempt to change this criteria back to what it was originally before the first change September 14. I see a couple other editors here with fairly strong opinions contrary to the new criteria. Since there never was a formal vote AFAIK, nor even an announced straw poll, maybe you will consider that perhaps, just perhaps, this alleged "consensus" was premature. I feel that a "Good Article" is one that meets the policy requirements of WP:V, WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. While inline citations are a good thing and should be encouraged, I'm still not convinced GA should require more than WP:V does on this point. Perhaps there would be less Kb of debate if the criteria were left alone, and time was spent verifying that articles actually met WP:NPOV and WP:NOR. Gimmetrow 00:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

"We weren't given a voice in these criteria, and we don't have time to keep up with them". Then, for the time being, ignore them. WP:IAR: "If the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them." IAR is policy, GA guidelines are not. That said, not using citations now only makes for more work later. Start using them when you can, and bring others up to standard as time goes on, maybe? Note, GA almost thought to "make it mandatory for all articles to use only a single style of citations" is irrelevant because GA does not produce policy. You can use Harvard, footnotes, or embedded links (which are deprecated, but still acceptable).

And yes, if not clear, GA makes no sense. The process is designing rules in a vacuum. Marskell 00:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, we can ignore GA. The trouble is that it's sort of insulting to get all these messages about our articles being delisted. We work hard on them. -- SCZenz 00:49, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict/unindent) we're not asking for anything that isn't already part of the WP:CITE guideline (which incidentally is a link off of WP:V: "Editors should therefore provide references."). If it meets WP:CITE, and the other GA criteria, then it should pass GA. If it doesn't, and it was specifically over the inline citation criteria, then what we're saying is that there's a review process to have other eyes take a look and make sure the initial reviewer wasn't being unreasonable. We're not infallible, and it is a judgment call, and if someone is asking for a cite on something akin to "apple pie is made of apples" then others will back you up that it's not needed. If you're having issues with what WP:CITE requires (or that WP:CITE is the link off of WP:V on how to provide references), then please bring it up there :-). As far as the notice-- I didn't see what was being put on pages and we can see/discuss if it was inappropriately worded. I know everyone works hard on articles and we do not mean to imply otherwise. Also, FYI, FA is going through the same process and is currently notifying all current FAs that do not have inline citations that they need to work on that aspect so that it won't be put on FAR. --plange 00:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

All I'm trying to do is change it to say that inline citations are required where appropriate! In cases where inline citation is not appropriate, because the facts appear in many sources, it should not be demanded. Do you agree, or not? -- SCZenz 00:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

In reply to SCZ, re ignoring talk headers: I generally remove GA talk headers (particularly the stupid "failed GA" one). Not that I go searching, but just on pages I'm editing heavily. But this annoys people passing/failing, and you don't want to violate WP:OWN. So "allow, but ignore" is my policy. --Marskell 00:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Two brief comments: 1) FA intentionally requires more than policy and is geared to showcase the "best of wikipedia" 2) WP:CITE is a guideline; that it is linked from WP:V doesn't change that. Gimmetrow 00:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

New discussion of expertise

The problem is that the experts DON'T work for Wikipedia. If they were working for Brittanica, they'd be vetted as experts before they started, and their professional reputations - and their ability to pay the mortgage - would depend on their ability to produce reliable and accurate articles. Brittanica has a "truth" standard, and it's be wonderful if Wikipedia could do the same, but when you rely on a bunch of amateur editors, including people who have never registered, and have never visited the site until 10 minutes before, there's no way to maintain a "truth" standard. Instead, Wikipedia opts for verifiability, and even that is a stretch, but official policy says that encyclopedic content must be verifiable.

The Good Article standard isn't an impossibly high standard to reach; every article can and should be Good Article quality. In general, if an article meets the Good Article standard, it is acceptable, and if it doesn't, it's not a Good Article. That's not to say that the article isn't true, isn't clearly written, isn't informative, isn't entertaining to read. It can be all those things - but unless it meets the verifiability standards, unless other editors and readers can see exactly where each statement comes from, it doesn't meet WikiPedia standards. And that's the difference between GeoCities and WikiPedia. There are some wonderful pages at GeoCities, as well as some terrible ones. Here at WikiPedia, we're happy to settle for good articles, if we can avoid the terrible ones.

And the thing is, if you back up every fact with a source, vandalism no longer is a problem. When someone makes an edit to a page you've created, and it's well-sourced, other editors will go out of their way to protect your page against vandalism. A page full of pseudoscience won't have reliable sources cited, because there are no reliable sources for pseudoscience. A "white hat" can waltz into a pseudoscience page and replace unverifiable crap with real science, properly cited, and other editors step in to protect the white hat's edits from vandalism. The Verifiability policy says any editor is free to remove unsourced content; that's not true of content with proper cites.

It really does make sense to cite everything you do, as you write it. Anyone who is writing a science article is going to refer to reliable sources as he writes it anyhow; adding cites takes FAR less time than hunting for the right language to say something. And most people writing science articles have learned to be thorough and methodical. This is something they all should embrace eagerly. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 01:00, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, but there are experts here. We aren't certified as experts by Wikipedia, and we aren't asking you to take our word on anything. Except that, for common facts that we think don't require citation, we be allowed to put a few references at the bottom of the page rather than look up every single sentence. Will you not trust your fellow editors even that far? -- SCZenz 01:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

One thing i'd like to hear is the compleate explanation on how facts that are often not even close to comphrehensible for high school graduates doesn't seem to supposedly need citation in even the most complex of articles with the most technical wording, I just don't understand why Wikipedia should only try to be comphrehensible to people in collage at best :/. I'm a senior in high school right now, and many of these technical articles make AP Chemistry look like 2 + 2 = 4 :/. I just don't see why articles can't spare the time to have some good citations, we aren't asking for perfection here, I for one would think the Mathematics article does a pretty good job of referencing, it doesn't cite every single sentence, but the criteria says well referenced, not perfectly referenced, that's a goal that probably isn't very attainable in most cases. Homestarmy 01:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not saying "well-known by laypeople," I'm saying "well-known and undisputed by experts." Basic facts about quantum mechanics, even if they are incomprehensible to you, are still found in many sources and undisputed. Why spend hours flipping through my old textbook looking for where various facts are explicitly stated, when nobody even disagrees with me about them? -- SCZenz 01:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

One thing i've never understood about people on Science articles is that they always seem to want to use books, but folks, the internet has the answers too, it can't take but, what, 20 seconds to google up some of the basic stuff on Quantum and cite it, then its right there for the world to see. Well known and undisputed by experts seems pretty pointless, if the articles are understandable primarily by experts alone, what's the point? The "experts" would already know most everything about the subject at hand, why would they use Wikipedia? Homestarmy 01:15, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, you have two points of great confusion here:

1. The internet does not have reliable answers on all topics in research-level science. Please don't give me speeches on the glories of the internet; it has its limitations, and I have a pretty good idea what they are in my field of expertise. That's why we use books.
2. Just because a fact is only well-known and obvious to experts does not mean it must be presented incomprehensibly; in fact, presenting things at a basic level is far harder with the standards of proof you require. Why is that? Because for very high-level subjects, the sources only say the complicated version; to make the article readable, the statements must be rewritten and put together, and then exactly the assertion in the article can't be found on a single page in any book. -- SCZenz 01:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you are taking the cult of the non-expert too far, and I request you rethink your position. -- SCZenz 01:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Limitations or not, many of the articles Agne27 was notifying (which created this dispute) had 2, 1, or even no internal citations and nothing at all from the internet, and I know many of these subjects are quite important and certainly would have something on the internet on them more extensive than a few citations on tiny factoids. Its fine if the only way you can render something is in complicated jargon, but one would hope there would be some "See Also's" at the bottom or helpful further reading/external links which would lead a reader to underlying principles or something, and it still doesn't mean you don't have to reference things. A reference also doesn't have to say exactly what the Wikipedia article says, you can use references which back up the main ideas of sentences, or when put together, give a synopsis of a section or something. Besides, think of it this way, you're a computer engineer or something and you're curious about some funky topic on, say, Hubble's law, your probably going to take a look at it, see that there are almost no references on it, and seriously wonder just how much you can trust the editors. After all, who knows what's in that small amount of refs? Were they used for a version of the article which now doesn't use them at all? How much of the article is actually covered by the references, and how much just came out of somebody's head? There is no way a standard reader would be able to know just how well-supported the article actually is by merely reading it. Homestarmy 01:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It's impossible to know how far to trust an article just by reading it, and Wikipedia has never claimed it's possible. You have to look at the history anyway. -- SCZenz 01:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Increased verifiability raises the level of trust a reader can give to an article. They don't have to look at the history, reaserch who all the contributors are, and read all the archives concerning an article's talk page if it has references referring to most questions a reader may have about a certain fact. Homestarmy 01:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, actually, that article seems to of just changed what I thought was its main reference section into "further reading", maybe it isn't so good after all. Homestarmy 01:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Reponse to ClairSamoht: : Sadly, the most careful inline citations do little to prevent vandalism. I have come back to sections of articles I wrote with detailed citations, to find that the article text has been changed and the citation itself modified. I cannot trust these citations unless I go back to a historical version that I supplied or verified. I have also had the misfortune of finding a bogus reference that remained in an article for nearly five years, so I don't think many people "fact-check" the citations. Gimmetrow 01:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Doesn't mean not providing them will help prevent vandalism. For my part, I found that once I got some articles up to spec, it was very easy to keep them maintained since new additions are easy to spot and if they don't have a source, I can revert and ask for one, and the person adding can see the precedent already set in the article and doesn't complain. This is very essential for fighting fan cruft on articles that attract that kind of thing. --plange 01:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

In-line citations don't so much hurt articles as take up time that people could use to make much larger improvements to Wikipedia. -- SCZenz 01:37, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

proposal

How about this, we change 2b to read:

“ the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided) ”

That way if an editor fails an article because there was no cite for "the earth revolves around the sun" you can bring it up on GA/R --plange 01:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That wording seems fair to me, but I am not so sure that GA reviewers will interpret it the way I think it reads. I see nothing in WP:CITE that would require me to cite the statement that "In special relativity, two events occuring at the same time in one reference frame may occur at different times in another." Do you? -- SCZenz 01:26, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

See link at bottom to Common Knowledge. Wikipedia:Common knowledge --plange 01:35, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That says we have to provide references for scientific facts, and I agree. It does not say we have to provide in-line references for individual facts. -- SCZenz 01:39, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm, I also read in Wikipedia:Common knowledge that "Anything where a PhD (or other advanced training) is required in the field to be able to evaluate truth and consistency with the consensus view; for example, quantum mechanics." But quantum physics is almost high school level physics, certainly not something you need a ph.D. to be able undestand. So, it seems to me that anything beyond what lay people know falls in this category and that is the source of the problem here.

Why not say that you don't need to cite things in wikipedia if they are usually not cited in contemporary peer reviewed articles or textbooks? If there is a dispute, say SCZenz claims that certain fact is common knowledge then he can point that out by citing textbooks or articles that use these facts without citation. So, disputes about wheter or not to cite things can be resolved and we don't need to cite everything to prove to lay people that it is not original research or that it is verifiable. Count Iblis 01:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

It does, however, say that it is quite good for there to be links concerning the facts, which while isn't necessarily inline citation, is a bit more than just having a bunch of books and one or two factoid citations in an article. Homestarmy 01:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

So there is some discussion that can be had about whether the references are good. No question of that. But we need wording that we agree does not require inline citation for every sentence that isn't common knowledge. -- SCZenz 01:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

As User:ScienceApologist has pointed out several times already, the criteria does not explicitly list a number of citations needed. An article that doesn't have every uncommon fact cited but has a pretty good bit of them cited is possibly well-referenced on its own, but many articles concerning this dispute don't reach that standard. Homestarmy 01:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Fine. I agree to plange's proposed wording above. If it turns out to create excessive problems for article authors, we may need to do this again, but it's ok as far as I can tell. -- SCZenz 01:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(edit conflict/unindent) what the proposed re-wording does, is allow articles to be disputed in GA/R if the editor feels the reviewer went overboard in asking for cites so that things can then be decided on in a case by case basis. Note that the CN page does have a specific entry on technical knowledge and whether a PhD is required, etc. --plange 01:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Concerning this new wording, I think it does introduce some ambiguity which may, should this dispute over technical articles get out of hand again, come back to haunt us, but its better than nothing. I suspect the editors who spent so much time debating this would probably like to chip in though, this whole dispute isn't even a day old yet :/. Homestarmy 01:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree. But it's virtually the same qualifier as is on FA's criteria. On WP:CN it says "Anything where a PhD (or other advanced training) is required in the field to be able to evaluate truth and consistency with the consensus view; for example, quantum mechanics." as an example of when something should be cited. In the example in SCZenz's post I didn't know that about special relativity, for instance, as I'm a historian. Maybe it's as common knowledge to them as "Robert E. Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War." Does the latter need to be cited? Probably not, since it's not likely to be disputed. Is it easy to cite? sure. I can pick up any book on the ACW and cite it. I think what we need to do is bring this discussion over to WP:CITE, as it appears that the issue has to do with that guideline. --plange 02:07, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The trouble, as I've said, is individually citing every fact that's not common knowledge makes editing physics articles take much, much longer. Isn't it better to actually improve other articles, bringing them from say stub to B-class, then to spend that long on detail work? -- SCZenz 02:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

We're talking about bringing something from B to GA (and eventually FA), not Stub to B. If you feel your time is better spent bringing stubs to Bs then that's great. It's definitely needed. I'm a historian (degrees and all) and yep, it's more tedious for me to add cites for facts than when I'm working on my book, but that's the nature of WP. We don't know your credentials or mine and are having to take things on faith if they're not sourced. Asking someone to take it on faith that apple pie is made from apples is fine, but on other things, it might not be, and has to be judged by others if it's needed.--plange 02:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Then don't cite every fact, well-referenced does not mean perfectly referenced. Each person's standards are bound to be different, but believe it or not, when articles cover many different facts in many different aspects of subjects, quantity of references matters when you deal with specific citations. There, I said it, let the parade of "THE NUMBER OF REFERENCES NEVER MATTERS EVER!" begin, because that's the way debate always seems to happen in other places... Homestarmy 02:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

My feelings about this are probably unpopular. Providing a footnote for a sentence, such as the above one for Northern Virginia and the sentence about special relativity is not just unnecessary, it is a bad idea. It makes articles harder to write, it makes them harder to read and it devalues the referencing in general. I think the first two are obvious, but I'll explain the third. Providing footnotes for statements that you could find in any treatment of special relativity (including those in high school physics textbooks) seems nonsensical to me because when I see a footnote, it indicates two things to me: (i) the fact being asserted may be surprising and requires justification, which can be found in the source cited (ii) the source being referred to is authoritative. Who wrote the authoritative demonstration, or literature review, or meta-analysis conclusively demonstrating that Lee commanded the Army of Northern Virgina? Nobody. There is no controversy there and presumably every single book in the references section will mention this agreed upon fact. In this case, the footnote doesn't make verification any easier, because why dig through the stacks to find someone's high school textbook from 1962 to confirm something that a much simpler check will reveal? The only thing having a footnote does is to confuse the legitimate value of the other footnotes, which indicate statements in need of support or clarification.

I mean really, who wants to read an article which cites one randomly chosen textbook, and has sixty footnotes of the form "ibid, p. 311"? (Of course, a number of editors say that it is important to use several different sources. I basically agree, but the point is not to then choose two textbooks at random so that you can randomly assign footnotes to one or the other and make the article appear more pleasing to the Good Article reviewers. The point is that if well-known sources disagree on a point, to mention this and perhaps provide an entry to the specialist literature.) –Joke 03:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

(Of course, everything above is predicated on there being a good "References" section to begin with.) –Joke 03:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I was asked by plange to comment, since I am both a writer of science articles and I also consider myself a "member of this (GA) club." My area is chemistry, not physics (I teach college chemistry), but a lot of the points are the same. In chemistry peer-reviewed papers it is common to give inline citations even for some things considered obvious to most readers, e.g., "The aldol reaction is an important carbon-carbon bond forming reaction.¹" Such refs would typically be to standard texts we all have by our desks. However, such refs are usually only given once in the paper, we see no need to keep citing the same book over and over for related points. It is simply there to assert, "This is the basic premise of our work, but it's not just our opinion, it has its foundations in the canon of the literature." In most well-cited chemistry Wikipedia articles I've seen, this has also been the approach used, and it would seem to meet plange's version of criterion 2b. You can see my interpretation of this viewpoint at Chemical substance, an article full of very "obvious" concepts. If you read all the refs, the later "uncited" statements are all in fact covered fairly well. I would think that this style could be also used for physics articles perfectly easily. I think the addition of inline refs does improve this type of introductory article, it helps us get away from the schoolboy-type definitions which often pervade this type of article.

There are a couple of areas where I am uncomfortable - I think it will take projects several months to bring their articles into line, so the timeline proposed seems too short. I also hope we don't see dozens of "Citation needed" tags added - these are all-too-often nitpicking. Until we get a system of rigorous fact-checking like the one we discussed at Wikimania we should keep the number of inline citations under control. I think the chemistry approach offers a nice middle road. Overall I strongly support the new policy (it was inevitable), and I commend those who have taken the time to inform everyone of its implementation - thanks! Walkerma 04:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'd just like to make a comment on something Joke137 said, High School physics books are not the same as real deal Special Relativity reaserch type sources, because the lower you go grade-wise, the more things are simplified to the point where their just plain wrong. So showing exactly where you got your sources is even more important, because if an article is using just high school stuff on very complicated subjects, your going to get an article which probably isn't overly broad and is likely to be downright false. Homestarmy 14:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Technical subsection

In addition to the criteria change by plange for WP:WIAGA, which I also agree upon, we should have a section pertaining on Technical articles which should read like this :

“ Articles that are on technical subjects should be accessible to laymen by means of Wikilinks, See alsos and minimal addition of inline citations. This will prevent loss of quality of such articles by the addition of explanatory sentences and will refrain requests by reviewers to have perfect inline citations. ”

Lincher 02:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what the "minimal inline citations" part is necessary for, what happens if, for whatever reason, a technical article becomes controversial, and a great many inline citations are thrown around? Homestarmy 03:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This doesn't make too much sense to me. "Accessible to laymen"? I think it depends. Part of the charm about Wikipedia is that you have people who can write an article about, say, the vDVZ discontinuity or canonical gravity or ADM formalism (to pick some things in gravitational physics at random) which are very useful to experts wanting to find something quickly but which are never going to be readable (or particularly interesting) to the layman. I'm in favor of this test: an article should be readable to the people who are likely to go looking for it. –Joke 03:47, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Following Wikipedia:Village_pump (proposals)#Some sort of change where there is a lot of discussion on technical articles. I'd have something like

The lead should give an overview of the topic accessable to the layman. Technical subsections should be at a level appropriate for the expected audience

So the layreader can get an overview of the topic, enough to know if this is something of interest to them or not. VDVZ discontinuity (Massive gravity) acheives this in one line In theoretical physics, massive gravity is a particular generalization of general relativity studied by van Dam and Veltman; and by Zakharov. For those interested enough to read beyond that line it then tells you a little more, namely that the theory attemps to explain why gravity happens, in terms of some quantum physics.

Relying on wikilinks can be problematic, we've had complaints from some reader that they have to engage to a definition chase, to understand concept A, means they have to follow the link to concept B which in turn requires concept C, D and E.

Homotopy groups of spheres is a nice example of a complex subject done well. About half the article is devoted to explaining the concept simply. It does have more technical subsections later on. Its also a case where I don't think a lot of inline citations would help. As a lot of the effort in the article has been put into presenting complex material simply, there are no appropriate point by point citations. All the statments in the article can be verified by the three books specified in the references. --Salix alba (talk) 08:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

If it's presenting complex material in such a way that it is not explained this way anywhere else, that makes it Original Reaserch, and i'm tempted to delist that article myself, if not at least open a review, except I know that would just be stirring up the hive again. Homestarmy 13:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not support this proposal. If an article is inaccessible it is usually because it is poorly written and thus should be covered by criteria one. Cedars 14:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

ARE YOU ALL NUTS OR WHAT?

Dear Lordy, I just looked away for a moment and now there are too many posts here for me to follow.

Now, is there any real problem? Has anybody failed an article on a scientific topic for it not having a reference for the fact that the Earth is revolving around the Sun or similar? Has anybody even nominated any article on a topic from physics or mathematics since the new WIAGA was adopted for that matter?

The new criterion adopts a very relaxed and common sense approach to inline citations, simply requesting for them to be used and leaving it up to common sense decisions as to what statements have to be cited. I am keeping an eye on the current application of this guideline, and I must say the reviewers are predominantly exhibiting a very rational approach to that.

Now, if the feared thing happens and somebody fails an article for a lack of an unnecessary citations, the Earth won't stop revolving and we won't fall off, it's just a bad review, it happens sometimes for this or that reason, that's what we get GA/R for. We could then discuss an individual case should the need arise (and I believe it would arise much later than anybody here would expect). Only if it is proved in practice that there are significant problems with the application of this guideline will it make sense to make any alteration to this WIAGA criterion.

Moreover, for anybody feeling that "science" articles are unique in that, do you think it would be sensible to require a citation for the statement that Celine Dion is a singer?

Can you just calm down and wait a few weeks to see how the guideline is adopted and whether there are any REAL issues? Frankly speaking, I don't want to see this topic bickered about any more here. Just stop and wait.

Good day or good night, depending on where you are Bravada, talk - 03:52, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

This came up because one of our editors did put a notice on some physics articles saying it needed sources. I agree with the above, and is the reason I suggested this change to the guidelines, precisely so it can be brought to GA/R if a reviewer went overboard.

the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)

--plange 04:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I said that I don't want any more comments on that, but since I really like and respect you, Angela, I will respond - well, if that makes people feel better, let's add "where appropriate" and that's really enough. The WIAGA rules should be compact enough for an editor to be able to skim thorugh them quickly and check an article against them before submitting. WIAGA is already longer than WIAFA (I am not proposing making it any more compact at the moment, as there just was a change, and I would also like us to gain a few months' experience in working with the new WIAGA and using it as a basis for reviews), so expanding points by rephrasing the obvious several points is the last thing that we need. I guess people just need to cool off and wait for actual things (i.e. reviews) to happen and see how it works. Hugs & Kisses for Everybody, Bravada, talk - 04:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Bravada +1... NCurse _work 05:36, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess, I am at the same timezone as Bravada. When I got online this morning, whooaa it's already a lengthly discussion about the same topic again. I would say I'm 100% agree with Bravada. I would not ask inline citation for such an elementary fact, but I would for history, or say there is 80% improvement compared to other method, and so on. So please don't freak out about inline citation. It is there to help verifiability of the article not to fear the editors. — Indon (reply) — 08:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Another person from the timezone desert votes for plange's proposal. All I can say is that there seems to be a lot of people who value their green badges... ;-) RelHistBuff 10:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't really like this "where approporiate" idea at all, because the focus of the dispute seems to be that on technical articles, editors involved feel that citations are almost never appropriate for basically the entire article. Homestarmy 12:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Then I guess I'll put forth again my other proposal, that we kick this over to WP:V and WP:CITE for their opinion. --plange 13:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

That's not true. The dispute is not about editors of scientific articles not willing to include citations. It's about the fact that there are some GA articles which have very few citations or none at all. These articles do comply with the wiki guidlines concerning original research and verifiability.

E.g. the article on special relativity mentions very clearly that special relativity was develped by Einstein and a link is given. However the article doesn't contain any inline citations, because it isn't necessary. If the quality of the article would improve by giving a citation then that would be done. But one shouldn't say that just because the article has zero citations it cannot retain GA or FA status.

There is a class of scientific articles which can contain a relatively low number of citations. These are articles about well established, non controverial topics, such as special relativity , qquantum mechanics, general relativity etc. These are topics that to lay persons look very technical but to insiders (and most editors are insiders) these topics are actually not technical at all. As a consequence, these articles are written in a similar way as non technical articles on a well established non controversial topics are written, say the article about Santa Claus which has only a few inline weblinks.

There are other technical articles that are about active topics of scientific research, and these typically contain a large number of citations, take e.g. the article about dark matter. To the lay person it won't be clear why one article contains only a few citations and why another one contain 50 citations given that to him/her they both look very technical.

So, in conlusion, I would say that lay persons cannot go about counting citations in what looks to them "technical articles" and make judgements based on that. Count Iblis 14:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

We're writing an encyclopedia, not a club for experts to have their "non-controversial" articles just sit there and do nothing, because laypeople won't get anything if they can't understand it, and a real expert wouldn't be using Wikipedia in the first place, they would already know everything about the topic. There's no denying that the articles can have a low number of citations because, of course, their right there now and have a very low number of citations, but there's a difference between "can have a low number of citations" and "should be recognized as a Good Article even with low verification". Homestarmy 14:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Since plange's proposal does not mention the nature of the dispute, it basically looks very much like the WP:WIAFA criterion. I don't know the history of WIAFA's "where appropriate" clause, but in any case they have settled with it and they still make very tough requirements on citing sources. We should just go on. My feeling is that the physics Wikiproject members just panicked when they saw Agne's notices. We as GA reviewers will not fail physics articles so arbitrarily as they seem to think and perhaps they will calm down. I'm a former particle physicist myself so perhaps I'll get more involved on reviewing in that area. RelHistBuff 14:16, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree -- we have not said there has to be a certain number/density. (And yep, I cribbed the line from WIAFA) Are the ones objecting okay with what Walkerma wrote above under proposal? That was from a fellow scientist. --plange 14:23, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Calling all GA project members

In order to avoid spurrious claims that we never reached a consensus (and in fact, we did last time), we should vote on the proposal. RelHistBuff 14:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand consensus. A lot of people who were affected by your new rules weren't aware of the discussion. -- SCZenz 16:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

the citation of its sources using inline citations is required, where appropriate. (Content must be verifiable. See citing sources for information on when and how extensively references are provided)

In this context what dose "where appropriate" mean this is where probelms and ambiguaties stem from. Until that is defined i am unable to make any assesment of weather to oppose or support the wording.--Lucy-marie 23:21, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Support

1. Support. TimVickers 15:02, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
2. Support. — Indon (reply) — 15:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
3. Support. — I actually believe the stuff in parentheses is redundant, but inline references are easy to make, don't hurt and help weed out OR statements that somebody sneaked in. Bravada, talk - 15:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
4. Strong Support — I think the "where appropriate" was a given but if clarifying eases some troubled minds then I support it. In-line citations are vital to WP:V and consistent with Jimbo's call for us to increase the quality of ALL articles, not just long ones. Agne 15:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
5. Support plange 15:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
6. Support — We should not stand still. GA is evolving. It is getting better and in my opinion we see the results: better articles AND better reviews. RelHistBuff 15:28, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
7. Support — Not only for verifiability, but also to credit scholars and sources and to give readers a way to find their way to more info on the subject. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 16:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
8. Support, we need some form of inline citations' requirement for the editors used to argue with the original writing and said but you criteria don't say that or since it is not mandatory why should I give any?. Lincher 17:25, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
9. Support - "where appropriate" takes care of all exceptions in my mind, and I don't like it when noms say that since it isn't mandatory, they're not going to do any sort of rational citation, in-line or not. --PresN 20:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose

1. Strong oppose — I have been with the project since March, I run the GAAuto script and I believe this runs counter to the intent of the project. In that it forces short articles (that could be adequately referenced by listing one or more sources at the end of the article) to use inline citations. I support references, I support inline citations for long article, I don't support the inline citations requirement for short articles. Cedars 14:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   While we are unable to verify the text using references for most of the time, aksing an editor to provide an inline citation for a dubious statement can reveal whether there is actually any basis for such statement. Moreover, it helps verifying when the case becomes really dubious, as you can check for the statement in the specificsource rather than try to look for it in all sources provided. Bravada, talk - 15:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - but short articles are potentially future long articles and we do future editors a favor by providing these. --plange 15:13, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

2. mild oppose - I'll go along with the change, but I'm not as eager to make this a specific requirement. I'm another early participant in the GA process. While GA can be used as an initial grading on the path to FA, it wasn't initially designed that way. I fear that this could lead to a slippery slope toward more pedantic reviews rather than quality reviews. Slambo (Speak) 15:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - GA should not be used as an initial whatever for FA, GA is a separate thing. But GA status means the article conforms with basic encyclopedic standards, and, as I mentioned above, inline citations are very helpful in increasing the verifiability of articles, while they don't hurt, bite or kill small children. Bravada, talk - 15:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   I agree that inline citations are helpful and that they are easy to implement and use, I just don't agree that their use should be a requirement in every article. I almost put my comments into the neutral section, but the question was whether it should be a requirement not whether they are useful. Slambo (Speak) 15:26, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   So, what do you hold against them being a requirement? Can you point towards any article that can really be 100% verifiable without them? Bravada, talk - 15:31, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   I got one, a stub I created, Harold Glucksberg, that one link is basically everything there is :) Homestarmy 15:32, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   but would you be submitting that for GA?? --plange 16:09, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   well....hmm...I think it's NPOV! :D Homestarmy 16:14, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

3. Strong oppose. This criterion, as it has been applied, seems to expect that anything that a particular reviewer didn't learn in high school requires a citation. Per Joke's comment below, this prevents physics article writers from writing about basic subjects without spending many times more effort. Things that are controversial or disputed should require inline citation, not things that you personally don't know. I despair of anyone paying attention to my statements here, but I think my views reflect those of most physics editors. My proposal at WikiProject Physics is to depricate all reference to Wikipedia:Good articles in all physics topics if this requirement remains in place. -- SCZenz 16:40, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
4. Oppose - too stringent to require in-line citations in all cases and too vague to say "where appropriate" without spelling out what that means. Johntex\^talk 16:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - I used the same wording as WIAFA so that articles where it was not needed so much could still pass and put the paranthetical line so that the links there could do the spelling out for us) --plange 17:04, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

5. Oppose - for a good counter-example see [1]. --Pjacobi 16:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
6. Mild oppose for now. This is better wording, but still seems contrary to my philosophy on GA. I believe the most "stable" meaning of a "Good Article" is a well-written article that meets the requirements of policy, eg. WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV. It's certainly good to encourage inline citations (as the old wording did), but I do not believe GA should require more than WP:V requires. Gimmetrow 17:03, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
7. Oppose with extreme prejudice: the kind of hounding that is being done in the name of "proper citation" is borderline ridiculous. There are real issues with demanding that citations be made for common knowledge facts, especially when you are asked to just "choose a source", something that would basically amount to spamming for a particular textbook. Unless these issues are address, there can be no reasonable consensus on this issue. --ScienceApologist 18:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
8. Oppose, just take a look at the example given by Pjacobi above. Let me quote from the relevant article (Agne27 inserted the "citation needed" tag):

   "If it was possible for a cause-and-effect relationship to exist between events A and C, then logical paradoxes would result. [citation needed] For example, if A was the cause, and C the effect, then there would be frames of reference in which the effect preceded the cause."

   You can see this (even if you are a lay person) by just using the informaton that's already in the article. So, there is no need to give citations. And if it's not clear then why not first ask for clarifications on the talk page? That discussion could lead to modifications in the way things are explained or, if deemed necessary, a citation. Count Iblis 17:18, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - Actually your example is also a good reason to support the new clause. This way if you disagree with a reviewer you can take it to GA/R and if indeed the reviewer is being unreasonable in requests for cites, the others will back you up. --plange 17:33, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

9. Oppose inline cites are not always the most appropriate way of citing mathematics articles. Frow WP:CITE If you add any information to an article, particularly if it's contentious or likely to be challenged, you should supply a source.. By the process of mathematical proof the mathematical statments are on the whole not contentiuos and can often be verified by the reader through aplication of algebra. WP:CITE The main point is to help the reader and other editors. The mathematical content of an article will frequently be repeated in many mathematical text books, in principle we could add inline cites with the page numbers of one particular text book. But does this help the reader? On the whole, no, as they will more than likely have a different textbook. Further, to gain an understanding of the subject, the reader will actually need to read the whole of the text book. In this situation references to a variety of textbooks at the end will do a better job of helping the reader. --Salix alba (talk) 18:12, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Comment - ?? that's why we added the "where appropriate" phrase that we're voting on... --plange 18:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

   Well, some editors (like User:Agne27) have taken it upon themselves to decide for us that we need to add dozens of inline {{fact}} tags without discussion to elementary facts at special relativity and Hubble's law. So who decides what is an isn't appropriate? --ScienceApologist 21:20, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

10. Oppose. Any policy that seems to imply that a citation is needed for the definition of group (mathematics) is completely at odds with the norms of scientific writing. Such detailed references would only hide the content that actually requires verification. CMummert 18:50, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
11. Oppose I agree completely with the spirit of providing references. However, the policy as it has been formulated has been demonstrably applied in a way that contravenes common sense and good practice. This needs to be addressed and I suspect consensus can be found quite easily. Eusebeus 18:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
12. Oppose. The practice of adding an inline citation to every fact (no matter how trivial or non-controversial) is not used by any serious publication. The reason is that the inline citations clutter up the text and make it hard to read, and the added benefit is marginal at best. The more sensible practice of collecting inline citations at the end of a few key sentences in the introduction combined with a few additional footnotes on key points works very well. dryguy 20:44, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
13. oppose - a good article can be written from just one source if that is all that exists. Take cosmetology articles for instance. Textbooks are few and far between and when all of the info is from one source, it doesn't need inline citations and requireing them is detrimental. pschemp | talk 21:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
14. strong oppose - I mostly work on mathematical articles and adding inline citations for facts in a maths article which should be obvious to anyone capable of understanding the article is really just obfuscation rather than clarification. It is also at odds with standards for publishing mathematical materials elsewhere. Madmath789 21:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Neutral

1. I know that its a convienent criteria for weeding out badly referenced articles more easily, but I think we'd still be holding articles up to a pretty, well, good standard with or without this criteria, after all, "well-referenced" sort of also implies that references be accessable and easily able to check i'd think. Homestarmy 14:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
2. A for the "spurious" claims – I don't know who made these, – but a lot of people have been saying: "this has been discussed, and a consensus has been achieved." Consensus, on Wikipedia, is a dynamic thing and as more editors, with different concerns, are drawn into a process, the consensus can change. There is nothing spurious about that. I don't have any strong feelings about the proposed wording except that it seems ambiguous with the "is required, where appropriate," but probably that ambiguity is helpful. It is certainly an improvement on the previous wording. –Joke 16:26, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
3. I do think that for essentially all articles, there needs to be some form of inline citations. However, I do realize that, for example, there's difference between stating part of an excepted theory, and stating where/when it was published, or what the scientific communities' reaction was. The phrasing "where appropriate" is just too vague for me, and I fear will lead to more arguments like the one above. --- The Bethling^(Talk) 21:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Attempt to find consensus I might be wrong, so please correct me if that's the case, but it appears that a lot of the objections are not to the wording of the clause, but in how notification of the changed criteria was applied in the recent past. Do we agree, that where citations are appropriate, a good article should have them? Where they are appropriate, of course, is something that is worked out in the review process, and if a reviewer was too over-zealous, everyone has the ability to bring it to GA/R to get multiple opinions. If we can agree on this, and that articles will be judged on a case by case basis, then we might have a winner? We can then talk about how legacy GAs are handled. I agree with Walkerma in the last section of this page (in the quote box below) that one week is perhaps not enough time. --plange 19:08, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem wasn't time, the problem is that other wikiprojects haven't been notified. Well, I'm sorry for that but if the other projects are to lend in a hand at working with the GA process then we wouldn't be arguing on a criterion. And for that fact I have pinpointed the reason why consensus isn't here anymore and it is because such users as CMummert, Eusebeus, Count Iblis, Pjacobi, SCZenz (made 1 removal) never took a part in the reviewing process but they now want to argue the criterion change that was done earlier. The problem is wherther you take part in the reviewing/talking about criteria or not/not talking about criteria.

As for the option you just had, I agree that everybody thinks articles need to be referenced to a certain point and for that reason we have to find a compromise to the amount of referencing. There are no articles on WP that don't need inline citations and if there are pile them somewhere so we know what they look like. As for the inline referencing, there is no rule as to how many is needed to the articles, we thus have to go case-by-case to figure out what needs to be cited and what doesn't need to be. I hope we can find a consensus at least on the fact that we need inline citations to begin with. Lincher 19:24, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I am actually quite interested in the GA process, although I haven't done any GA reviews myself. I am particularly interested in getting certain foundational articles up to that standard, and have noted this on their talk pages and my user page. I read the GA criteria once, and assumed they would not significantly change. Thus any change in the standard is of interest to me, and likely to many other editors who don't follow the GA talk pages. I think that if it had always been policy to require useless inline references, it would have been apparent that there was no consensus, because you would have heard from people like me. You didn't hear from me before because when I read the GA criteria originally they didn't seem oppressive. CMummert 19:48, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Plange, the applications in the recent past were very unpleasant and frustrating for us. Users like User:Homestarmy and User:RelHistBuff seem to be backing up the interpretation embodied by the edits to special relativity, and so it seems that it's more than one or two people who are advocating an unnaceptable interpretation of the current rules. I absolutely do assume good faith on the part of everyone involved; the problem here is ignorance of sources and accepted theories in specific academic fields and of academic standards of writing, and a lack of awareness of the effects of that ignorance. This issue can be solved by greater clarity in the criteria, but the wording "where appropriate" is probably not specific enough to avoid this problem; I therefore personally insist that the wording make it clear that statements which are undisputed within an academic field need not be inline cited. Otherwise it would appear that there is no consensus at all for requiring inline citations. -- SCZenz 19:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I haven't joined in on that article as I haven't had a chance to look, but maybe we need to go back to WP:CITE and see if what you're asking is acceptable to them, since it's their guideline we're trying to follow. --plange 19:59, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Nothing at WP:CITE requires that individual facts must in-line cited, unless they are controversial or likely to be. -- SCZenz 20:06, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

To save you the trouble of looking at the history Special relativity, it is this edit that is entirely unacceptable. I believe very strongly that whatever criterion we adopt explicitly make clear that that density of citations for un-controversial facts is not required. It is sufficient for non-controversial facts to be supported by the general references, as is the case here. The summary is also wrong; WP:V does not require that articles be verifiable line-by-line by people who know nothing on the subject.-- SCZenz 20:15, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I admit I am a newcomer to the process, but the statement that I have not participated in a GA review is not entirely true: see Talk:Marcel_Proust. That small point notwithstanding, the issues raised are certainly worth discussion. That much is clear. I would propose that now you have the attention of a wider group of people, the debate be reopened to establish a review model that can accommodate the kinds of issues that have been recently raised. Eusebeus 21:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Can a compromise be found?

Upon reflection, I'm beginning to think we might have a bit of a tempest in a teakettle. I don't think there are many science-article editors who dispute the paramount importance of WP:V and WP:CITE. I'm also quite sure that most of these authors think that footnotes (in many cases along with a seperate references section) are often necessary for correct referencing. I do however, think people get riled up when they see things like this and this which were pretty jarring to us.

Okay: So you live back in 1420 and someone opines that ... "The earth isn't flat" (say WHAT?) ... that in fact: "There are maps, and evidence in the form of calculations and experiments ... that suggest that... (oh, oh, here it comes)... the earth may be a round thing". If you were a thinking person, wouldn't you want to see/know "the evidence"? POINT: wikipedia is an infant learning to walk. Until the infant is on its feet it needs all the guidance/help/assistance (aka "evidence") it can get/muster. Discipline to cite a source is a tough but necessary builder of "academic character". Let the in-line cites begin! (They can always be removed later). wvbaileyWvbailey 00:40, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what others think about this, but my perception is that what most editors would like is to be able to write articles about standard textbook material (like special relativity) without giving every damn sentence a footnote, even if any of the standard references cited could immediately be used to confirm something. There is no "numerical minimum" number of inline references per kilobyte of text – it depends on the case at hand – and there is no requirement to provide a citation for facts that are readily confirmed by looking at the principal references. I'm sure that there are sentences in articles like string theory, special relativity (certainly not the ones tagged above, though) and Hubble's law which really need to be properly referenced, but it is hardly appropriate to just say "I counted the references, and the number is not to my liking" without pointing out specific flaws, or worse to choose statements seemingly at random.

My impression is that most math and physics editors like the good article process and are just a little upset to have been inundated with these poorly thought out mass messages. We are all, just as you are, trying to improve the encyclopedia, and we all agree that proper referencing is vital to having Wikipedia become a trustworthy source. However, we all think there must be a happy medium with an appropriate level of footnoting, and, you know, would like to be given the benefit of the doubt. –Joke 16:10, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Can the ones who are objecting, please read Walkerma's post above and let us know if what he says is fair or not in your eyes? Here it is as it seems to have gotten lost.

I was asked by plange to comment, since I am both a writer of science articles and I also consider myself a "member of this (GA) club." My area is chemistry, not physics (I teach college chemistry), but a lot of the points are the same. In chemistry peer-reviewed papers it is common to give inline citations even for some things considered obvious to most readers, e.g., "The aldol reaction is an important carbon-carbon bond forming reaction.¹" Such refs would typically be to standard texts we all have by our desks. However, such refs are usually only given once in the paper, we see no need to keep citing the same book over and over for related points. It is simply there to assert, "This is the basic premise of our work, but it's not just our opinion, it has its foundations in the canon of the literature." In most well-cited chemistry Wikipedia articles I've seen, this has also been the approach used, and it would seem to meet plange's version of criterion 2b. You can see my interpretation of this viewpoint at Chemical substance, an article full of very "obvious" concepts. If you read all the refs, the later "uncited" statements are all in fact covered fairly well. I would think that this style could be also used for physics articles perfectly easily. I think the addition of inline refs does improve this type of introductory article, it helps us get away from the schoolboy-type definitions which often pervade this type of article. There are a couple of areas where I am uncomfortable - I think it will take projects several months to bring their articles into line, so the timeline proposed seems too short. I also hope we don't see dozens of "Citation needed" tags added - these are all-too-often nitpicking. Until we get a system of rigorous fact-checking like the one we discussed at Wikimania we should keep the number of inline citations under control. I think the chemistry approach offers a nice middle road. Overall I strongly support the new policy (it was inevitable), and I commend those who have taken the time to inform everyone of its implementation - thanks! Walkerma 04:11, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

--plange 16:38, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad you copied this down here – I considered replying to it up above, but decided that it would be a waste of time as the talk page is a mess up there. I very much agree with this comment, and I hope that we can get broad agreement on this. –Joke 17:01, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think I disagree either, although I'd have to look at examples. The problem is people putting {{fact}} in every single line in articles like special relativity. We need to be clear that such citation is not being required by the GA folks—or if it is, we should be clear on that too and consider compromise a lost cause. -- SCZenz 17:07, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not privy to why Agne did that, was she specifically asked by any of you to show which things needed cites? Anyways, I guess what I'm saying is that the "where appropriate" clause is in there so that articles like yours can be treated on a case by case basis. As long as the reviewer and editor are both in agreement on how Walkerma has expressed this. --plange 17:22, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I also disapprove of what Agne for I wouldn't have done it myself but she had her reasons and we gotta WP:AGF. What I think is that there is no need for a specific number of required citations for it depends on the subject and it depends of what reviewer asks it. What I think the GA shouldn't do is tagging articles with {{fact}} tags, what they should do is take unverified statements and copy them to the talk page and say why they need a citation. After that a discussion happens and it can be resolved in a more civilised manner and not by coming back to changing the WP:WIAGA criteria again.

My view on everything in GA, if it doesn't work with that reviewer, ask another one for help. See Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers for reviewers in your field. Lincher 17:43, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm still somewhat mentally unstable due to these troubles, but let me give it a honest try to explain, why inline-cites are not a cureall for WP:V problems. You can't atomize scientific knowledge. Even giving a cite for each single sentence wouldn't achieve verifiabiliy by previously uninformed laypeople. You must know the context, and perhaps even solved some exercises, before you gain the level to evaluate the quality and failings of articles like special relativity. There are textbooks given which can give you a good start to be able to evaluate the article, if you are willing to invest time and effort.

OTOH, for historical facts, first publications, opinions and other similiar stuff, inline cites are fine. User:Mpatel is in the process of adding such inline-cites to General relativity. Perhaps you want to look there, whether this is the way we can agree on.

Pjacobi 17:54, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes I like the chemical solution. Articles of any length will have a mix of technical information where one cite to a textbook is appropriate and other information, particularly history sections, which may need a denser number of sites. Having two different styles of cites makes for a messy reference section, which this soultion would eradicate. I think it would be good if this method of citing was added to WP:CITE and the GA criteria changed to article should use one of the citation styles described in WP:CITE. --Salix alba (talk) 19:42, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes i think Agne acted in good faith, a shock at the time, but I think it has helped spark a much needed discussion on citing scientific/technical articles. --Salix alba (talk) 19:46, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

GA criteria does say to use one of the styles on WP:CITE, so we're already half way there. As to getting what Walkerma states added to WP:CITE, I believe it already is. Three ways to cite are given: embedded HTML links, Harvard, and CMS/ref and it's recommended that the article be consistent on which it uses (no mixture of styles in same article) --plange 19:56, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Quoting from Joke above:

I don't know what others think about this, but my perception is that what most editors would like is to be able to write articles about standard textbook material (like special relativity) without giving every damn sentence a footnote, even if any of the standard references cited could immediately be used to confirm something.

That is exactly what I expect, and I believe it is a common point of view. I dislike the example of Chemical substance because the inline citation at the beginning makes it appear that the definition is nonstandard or doubtful. CMummert 20:55, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

What we agree upon - change of criteria or not

What we agree upon :

1. Inline citations are required.
2. Texts shouldn't have a required amount of citations requested.
3. Inline citations requested by the GA reviewer must be related to WP:V, WP:NPOV & WP:NOR issues.
4. Inline citations shouldn't be required for down to earth facts (e.g. stuff that can be found in every text books).

What some think and other stuff :

1. Inline citations should be soooo important there should be a number required for each articles.
2. Tagging articles with {{fact}} is evil or not.
3. Should good articles be really technical or not (if not it will create textbook long articles).
4. Adding inline citations wont improve the verifiability.

Out of that, can everybody have a take at adding to both lists to see where the issues are and where we can find a compromise.

After such a work will be done, we can now go and create specific criterion to assess such points and leave some to more subjective reviewing in order to have set criteria for a long time. Lincher 00:28, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with your characterization of the situation somewhat. You are still thinking in terms of the absolute number of citations, which is not the issue. The issue is which facts need to be cited and which don't. {{fact}} is not a bad thing, it is only bad when it's added to things that don't need to be cited inline, and which appear in many textbook sources in the article's reference section.

I think the way forward is to change "inline citations are required" to "inline citations are required in cases XYZ", where XYZ is stuff we can all agree on (controversey, specific peoples' opinions, etc.). Then we can continue to discuss the places where we don't agree. -- SCZenz 00:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Some people obviously don't get enough attention in real life. Now, what makes all the guys here think that all the reviewers would suddenly start requesting inline citations for obvious facts? Even if Agne has actually requested them (I am sorry, I am not even remotely considering reading all the blabber you have deposited here while I was dealing with some actually important matters), this should have gone to GA/R, and I am almost sure, based on what was said here, that it would have been found an improper reason to fail an article. I guess after this lengthy discussion no editor would even dare to attempt anything, and even if some newbie would, there are enough editors here to convince him or her that he or she would be wrong in GA/R.

Seems like some people just cannot face the possibility that they just could sit down, take a deep breath and admit everything is OK. Bravada, talk - 00:44, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I, for one, work in a Biochemistry lab and when we write papers, we cite the first articles that did experiment A and the other article that stated B and so on even though they are rock-hard facts that have been printed into books. In that case, why shouldn't WP/GA in that case request such. Anyway, like I said before, this will never be settled unless you have a take at the criteria (I mean write a criteria that is universal and includes what you think and we can vote on) and the GA will stay the way it is with 1 subjective reviewer. Lincher 00:49, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

However, not everyone here agrees with you, as the lack of consensus in the above "vote" shows. -- SCZenz 00:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, Bravada, there is a serious point of debate here. The issue is not whther inline cites can be demanded for "obvious facts," it's whether they ought to be demanded for facts that are not obvious to the layperson, but are nevertheless settled within a scientific field and appear in a number of textbooks. -- SCZenz 00:51, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand small children would die and several endangered species would become extinct if you added some references like that, wouldn't they? Bravada, talk - 00:55, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

In many cases, it would waste a lot of time and not enhance verifiability by laypeople in the slightest. Your sarcasm and efforts to demean my concerns are not appreciated. -- SCZenz 00:57, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

O RLY? Well, I conversely would like to ask you to reconsider the demeanor towards "laymen" and accept that an encyclopedia is for everybody, and everybody should be treated the same way, no matter whether they consider themselves experts or not. Bravada, talk - 01:00, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. If you are an expert in your field, providing references off the cuff should be next to no problem for you.

PS2. Replying to your comment on my talk page, with all due respect, I honestly believe you are making a fool of yourself by your stubborn insistence and the way you are trying to gain the upper hand in this discussion. I was hoping for you to realize that

Providing references "off the cuff" is dishonest. Referencing a text means locating the text, which may be at the office when you are at home, finding the statement you want, and then referencing it. If this must be done multiple times to edit one section, productivity is eliminated. CMummert 01:13, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

You misunderstand my position, and read things into my wording that I don't intend. It is a fact that professional physicists will be able to cite papers that people in other professions won't understand, and that this will be necessary in some cases. That's what I mean when I say that adding citations would "not enhance verifiability by laypeople in the slightest." The sources are hard to evaluate without expertise; it's unavoidable. As for things taking time, even material I know is in a textbook takes a few minutes to locate. Please assume good faith, and see the note I just left on your talk page; just because you "think I'm making a fool of myself" does not justify sarcasm and rudeness. -- SCZenz 01:06, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand your position completely, and I do believe I should have told you what I told you. Writing articles that nobody would understand is pointless. If you want to create an article for specialists, publish it in a specialist medium, like perhaps an external topic-specific Wiki. Why should we expect Pokemon articles to be understandable to all editors and not expect physics articles to be so? Bravada, talk - 01:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

What makes me think that reviewers will start requesting inline citations for obvious facts is that the criteria suddenly changed to "require" them and then a reviewer started requesting inline citations for obvious facts. A clearer policy would make it more clear that this is not required, thus simplifying the GA review process. Moreover, who is to say that new guidelines for GAs won't infect the guidelines for FAs? There is a comment higher on this talk page that WP:V is out of date, which I may have misread. I thought the comment implied that the new GA policy represents the opinions of some about the future of citation standards in wikipedia:

"... I think that it is the WP:V that isn't up to date to what people really think when reviewing for FA, A-class (in the assessment) and GA. ..." from Lincher 18:44, 26 September 2006 (UTC) above.

In the face of opinions like that, it is natural enough for editors to speak up if they like the current WP:V which does not require the pedantic inline citation that the new GA guidelines can be interpreted to require. I agree with the proposal of SCZenz 00:37, 28 September 2006 (UTC) above. CMummert 01:09, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Can I ask you to simply submit all articles that were failed or delisted because a reviewer found that it lacked a citation for what you believe is an obvious fact to GA/R? Bravada, talk - 01:14, 28 September 2006 (UTC)