Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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This is the discussion page of the good article nominations (GAN). To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the New section link above. Questions may also be asked at the GA Help desk. To check and see if your question may already be answered, click to show the frequently asked questions below or search the archives below.

"Quick fails"

As written, the current GA criteria seem to be going out of their way to discourage "quick failing" articles. See, for example, footnote 2. I was rather surprised to see, however, this: "In all other cases, the nominator deserves a full review against the six criteria from the reviewer and is given a chance to address any issues raised by the reviewer before the article is failed." My concern is the demand that reviewers are obliged to "a chance to address any issues raised ... before the article is failed". This seems to be problematic on three counts.

1. It is not always appropriate. Articles are often not going to meet the GA criteria to a degree that reviewers are confident that the article is not currently ready for GA status, and in which they believe that placing the article on hold for x days is not going to help. Nonetheless, the articles in question may not meet the "immediate fail"/"quick fail" criteria.
2. It does not seem to describe current practice. Many experienced reviewers will, from time to time, close GA reviews after offering a full review and coming to the conclusion that the article is not ready to promote at this time. (I'm not naming names, but I know that I am far from the only person who does this.)
3. It does not seem to match up with the "instructions" page, which seem (rightly!) to be quite open to failing articles without placing them on hold. (Concerning failing an article, it says simply "If you determine that the article does not meet the good article criteria, you may fail it by doing the following". On putting articles on hold, it says "If you determine that the article could meet the good article criteria if a few issues are fixed and you wish to prescribe an amount of time for these issues to be corrected (generally seven days), you may put the article on hold by doing the following". Certainly none of the prescriptivism of the criteria page.)

I propose that we bring the criteria page into line with good sense, current practice and the instruction page, and change

In all other cases, the nominator deserves a full review against the six criteria from the reviewer and is given a chance to address any issues raised by the reviewer before the article is failed.

to something like:

In all other cases, the nominator deserves a full review against the six criteria from the reviewer. While it is common to place articles on hold if they do not yet meet the criteria, this is not necessary, and reviewers may fail articles outright after completing a full review if, in their judgement, the article does not meet the GA criteria and is unlikely to do so in the near future.

Comments welcome. Two final notes: First, this is not a solution in search of a problem. I have seen several arguments (some fairly bitter) about fails and quick fails that rest on the assumption (currently perpetuated by the criteria page) that failing articles without putting them on hold is in some way deeply problematic. We don't need to get into those arguments here; particular cases of articles being failed are not really the point. Second, this appears to be the de facto discussion page for all GAC issues, but I will leave a note on other relevant talk pages. Thanks, Josh Milburn (talk) 22:04, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

This change looks like a good idea to me. It has my support. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:10, 3 July 2017 (UTC)

Given the precedent of articles in general being failed without being quick failed, this proposal makes sense and thus, I support it. This wording is similar to the original wording before the meaning was changed by accident during a copyedit in the edit I referenced above. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 00:30, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Define "unlikely to do so in the near future". If an editor puts in 10 hours of work on an article in a week, anything can be fixed. It's unclear under what circumstances it makes sense to not give a courtesy seven days to a nominator. What's the benefit of failing instead of placing on hold? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 01:05, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I think all of this is answered in my original post. I gave three reasons for the change, and no benchmark was defined other than "in the reviewer's judgement". The nature of these review systems is that a judgement call has to be made- exactly the same thing is true in comparable professional and academic procedures. If the reviewer's judgement call was not the best it could have been, that's fine; there's nothing at all stopping a quick renomination, a reopening of the review, or a reassessment. We already have systems in place for this, and this is what goes on in practice. If you don't personally think that a fail without placing an article on hold could be appropriate outside of the narrowly defined "immediate fail" criteria, so be it; I support more reviewer autonomy, not less. Josh Milburn (talk) 01:17, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I do not see the harm in waiting seven days. If they do not resolve it in seven days, fail it. Is there any particular reason you would not want to wait seven days? Kees08 (Talk) 01:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Kees view is basically my own. The damage of failing a review is frustrating the nominator, who's perhaps waited 3+ months for the first review only to find he can't actually respond to it. If we're going to change things, there should be at least enough benefit to outweigh that damage. So what's the benefit? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 02:05, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Again, no one is forcing either of you, or anyone, to close reviews before you want to. But I do think that it is sometimes correct to close reviews without waiting the "expected" x number of days. Let me use myself as an example (noting that I have seen other experienced reviewers do both of these things). I've sometimes kept reviews open for months. Other times, however, I have felt that an article is not close to GA status, and I do not envision it being ready for GA status in the near future. I could run through the motions, and spend a few hours re-reviewing the article x days later, but this does not seem to be a good use of my time and does not seem to be a particularly respectful way to deal with the nominator, insofar as it seems to involve a degree of dishonesty. (I can envisage other good reasons to quickly close reviews, but perhaps shouldn't say them. Maybe other reviewers have other reasons for quickly closing reviews.) Incidentally, can I ask why you are suggesting that closing reviews leads to nominator frustration? That's not necessarily my experience. Also, I'm not really suggesting we "change things"; as I explained in my opening comment, I am suggesting that we should make WP:WIAGA consistent with current practice and WP:GAN/I. Josh Milburn (talk) 02:36, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

In case there is any genuine doubt, may I testify that closing a good article review as a fail without a hold leads to nominator frustration. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 23:00, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Oh dear. Only if you've sworn on your holy book of choice, presumably. I have no doubt that some people have been frustrated by closes of this sort. I've no doubt that some people have also been frustrated by standard quick-fails, fails after holds, and perhaps even passes. And I've no doubt that people have been happy with all of these. I don't think that was really Rob's point. Josh Milburn (talk) 23:28, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Oppose relaxing our commitment to holds before failing a good article review. A good article reviewer expresses respect for the effort of the nominator with a hold prior to a fail. The hold expresses our community's commitment to collaboration. A good article review is a collaboration between two editors: a nominator and a reviewer. The nominator expresses their view that an article meets the good article criteria with the nomination; a reviewer who disagrees is at best a one-on-one push, not a concensus. The reviewer already has the upper hand here, no need to make their club bigger. The reviewer's role should focus on a careful read and generating useful notes, not to second guess what the nominator or another editor or editors are or are not capable of accomplishing in a week. We have a wide range within our editors of skill levels and available time. After all, good article is our entry level quality rung, and we are trying to pass more articles, not fail more articles. Yes, the current policy as written strongly encourages a hold before a fail, limiting fails without holds to four specific situations, and is good policy since it expresses common practice; a hold before a fail is typical, customary, expected, and useful. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 05:48, 4 July 2017 (UTC) May I add I am not a WikiCup participant; previous discussion at WT:WikiCup#Concern: GAR fail with no hold on last day of round. Thank you. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 16:22, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. To clarify: No one is supporting "relaxing our commitment to holds before failing a good article review" and this discussion has nothing to do with the WikiCup. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:27, 4 July 2017 (UTC)

I came across this after seeing the discussion in the context of the WikiCup, in which I participated once some years ago. I have looked at the review and what was noted, and I would say that it does not fit a reasonable reading of "the article does not meet the GA criteria and is unlikely to do so in the near future" unless predicting whether or when the nominator will return is reasonable. I would say it is not reasonable because placing a hold is the obvious way to test for a return. I think the IP editor has been treated very poorly here, especially having addressed the concerns in well under the seven day grace period usually offered, and I think that fails like this are highly counter-productive as they discourage editors and (in the event that there is a re-nomination) do not alter the backlog. On the specific case, since a fail apparently cannot be reversed, I think YE might offer to review the renomination as soon as it is made as a gesture of respect to the IP editor. Cwmhiraeth may also find the temperature of complaints would reduce if YE did not claim points for the review. This would (I think) address the specific question.

On the general question, Josh, I think the "unlikely to do so" clause as a reason for an immediate fail is wide open to gaming, to upsetting editors, and to fostering ill-will. Gaming in the WikiCup is not really the GA project's problem, but it could cause problems for the GA project. Suppose an editor irritated by the current case decided to fail several of YE's nominations by noting issues and then judging they were unlikely to be addressed quickly enough... since fails are irreversible, this would delay consideration of YE's articles for potentially several months. Alternatively, WikiCup editors could go looking for cases to review and immediately fail (as opposed to quick fail) to earn points more easily by not having to follow up on improvements. Either of these examples (and they are meant only as examples) would face WikiCup judges with problems but also produce disgruntled editors, about which the GA project should be concerned. I can think of articles that look complete but have something large missing where a review-and-immediate-fail would be justifiable under this caveat, but it strikes me as something to be used in only the most egregious cases because the cost of waiting a week is small compared with the potential issues with editor retention and enjoyment of Wikipedia participation.

I readily admit that my GA experience is small, but I would like to offer an example. When I nominated the rhodocene article for GA, it looked like this and was 745 words long (page size 17 336 bytes) supported by 15 references. The review was encouraging but offered some general comments that pointed to substantial areas for improvement. These are the changes that I made in response to the review, and when it was made a GA it was 1260 words long (page size 25 989 bytes) and supported by 24 references. Would it have been reasonable for the reviewer to say that improvements adding 49.9% to the page length, 69.1% to the word count, and 50% more references is article development that is "unlikely to occur" inside a week? It could certainly be argued that that amount of development is unlikely, yet it happened, and my first GA nomination was successful. Had I been failed, I would have been very discouraged and not looking to renominate (it was early in my wiki-career)... instead, I pushed on and got the article to FA standard, adding even more during the FA review than I had during the GA, bringing it to 4289 words (page size 75 620 bytes) with 60 supporting references. 6 years later, it's still an FA, I've contributed plenty more content, and the encyclopaedia and its readers are (I hope) better off. My points are that what development can be achieved in a week and what is unlikely are difficult to guess and that the consequences in discouragement / disillusionment for not allowing a hold are unknown and potentially significant. EdChem (talk) 12:15, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. To repeat, this proposal has nothing at all to do with the WikiCup. It's about making a particular page in the GA system consistent with good practice, current practice, and other pages in the GA system. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:04, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, do you think there is a better way to word the alternative text so that it is not open to gaming? Josh Milburn (talk) 13:39, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe just return to the pre-early 2016 wording that was changed for no apparent reason that I can find? The wording was "For most reviews, the nominator is given a chance to address any issues raised by the reviewer before the article is failed." YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 15:16, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I've no opposition to that. I certainly think it's preferable to the current wording. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:20, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I think it's a judgement call. Without wishing to name names, I seem to remember TonyTheTiger had a habit of bringing half-formed articles to GA then doing all the legwork including substantial expansion during the review. Although I got annoyed with this, as I think people should bring articles to GAN in the best possible state they can up-front, it worked because I knew his track record of article writing. If a brand new editor turns up and offers a severely deficient review (see below thread), I'm less accommodating. Ultimately, I think it's a judgement call on how likely you think the article can meet the standards in the time specified. Ritchie333 ^{(talk) (cont)} 13:04, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Support - I don't oppose failing w/o a hold period - I've done it once myself - but I do think such circumstances are rare. I do think that when done, the reviewer should provide a detailed explanation. I also think the reviewer should add the page to their watchlist and be prepared to review immediately if the changes are made in a timely manner. Argento Surfer (talk) 13:12, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

A detailed explanation is good advice, but I disagree that they should be required to add the page to their watchlist and review immediately if changes are made. Besides defeating the point of not holding it puts pressure on a volunteer workforce already lacking. We need to encourage reviewers, not add extra workload to the few who do. AIRcorn (talk) 06:32, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

• Oppose as a net negative. The policy already states one can quick fail an article if it is far from meeting one of the six criteria. That is equivalent to being unlikely to meet GA criteria in the near future. Tacking on a sentence that says it's not necessary to hold when it usually is will just result in confusion for reviewers and frustration for nominators. The "positive" of quick-failing is to prevent the reviewer from needing to enumerate all the ways an article falls short if it's clear that it falls well short. There is no positive to quick-failing if you've already delivered a full review, which is why we use holds in that circumstance. There is simply no downside to saying "wait 7 days" and seeing what happens and a massive downside to quick-failing when the nominator actually does return promptly and make fixes. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 14:14, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

  Would you be opposed to changing it back to what it was early last year, as per Yellow Evan's suggestion? I'm happy with that as a compromise position. It is striking (troubling?) that this change, apparently made without discussion, has led to what many have taken as a key prescription of the GAC process. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:27, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

  @J Milburn: First, we need to figure out what the positions actually are of everyone here. I think we're mostly talking past each other. I'm saying "Oppose, we should only quick fail when things are far from meeting the GA criteria". You're saying "Support, we should quick fail when things aren't likely to be fixed quickly". Ignoring the Oppose/Support, those positions sound like the same desired outcome of policy. If we're not actually fundamentally agreeing on what action is appropriate, then it's an issue of unclear wording and that's what we should focus on. Am I correct that we're basically taking the same position? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 16:30, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

  Yes, thanks, great question. Here's what I think we all agree on (all allowing the usual IAR caveat): 1) If an article meets the quick-fail criteria, it is permissible to fail it without placing it on hold and without even offering a full review. 2) If an article does not meet the quick fail criteria, it warrants a full review. 3) It is usually appropriate to place an article on hold after offering a full review to allow nominators/others to make fixes/respond before closing the review. 4) It is sometimes appropriate, after a full review, to pass an article without placing it on hold. If there is a substantive disagreement and we're not just quibbling about wording, then I think it's this: I hold (I think along with David Eppstein, Yellow Evan, Argento Surfer and Ritchie333) that it is occasionally appropriate, after a full review, to fail an article without placing it on hold (in symmetry with how it is sometimes appropriate to pass an article without placing it on hold). Some people (e.g., 13.54.152.171), if I am understanding them correctly, do not, and would rather see all articles that do not meet the quick-fail criteria and are not ready to be promoted at this time be placed on hold (IAR situations aside). There is, I think, a separate and less interesting disagreement about who is proposing that policy is changed. As I see it, we've always failed articles in this way, and it has always been OK according to at least some GAC process pages, though it has never been common (and I don't think anyone wants it to be common). Thus, anyone who thinks that we should force reviewers to put articles on hold is proposing a change. I think others see me as trying to "invent" some "new" way to fail articles. Josh Milburn (talk) 16:54, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

Symmetry? Really? Where did that come from? Would you support requiring holds on passes in order to, what, preserve "symmetry"? Obviously, symmetry between passing and failing is not required: if a reviewer wants to pass an article, that makes two editors who agree it is good. Yes, it is occasionally appropriate to fail a good article without a hold, in the case of a frivolous nomination, as specifically provided at WP:GACR#Immediate failures, not at the unfettered discretion of the reviewer, sorry, and a hold is required in all other cases; this is not the opinion of "some people" but rather our community's long-standing practice and also btw explicit P&G. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 18:58, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

With respect, you are twisting my words (I have not argued that symmetry requires anything), begging the question (I, and many others, dispute your claim that "a hold is required in all other cases") and making claims that are straightforwardly incorrect (it is not "our community's long-standing practice" that a hold is always required before a fail, and it is only explicit in WP:WIAGA [neither, incidentally, a policy nor a guideline] because someone put it there apparently without discussion, before which the page most certainly did not say that a hold was required). It's very hard for me to engage with you in a productive way while you are doing these things. Josh Milburn (talk) 19:41, 5 July 2017 (UTC)

I would disagree with "It is sometimes appropriate, after a full review, to fail an article without placing it on hold", yes. Frankly, I'd usually disagree with passing without a hold, since it tends to indicate a low-quality review. There are some exceptions – I've had at least one review quick-passed by an editor I know gives good reviews – but it's the exception, not the rule. I'm still waiting to hear the benefit of skipping the hold, and I'd need to see that before talking wording. There should be some sensible argument (even if I disagree with it) for why a change is a net benefit before we fully consider it. What's the argument? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 04:15, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Ok, then there is a substantive disagreement; some people believe that failing without holding can be appropriate, some people believe it can not. As for "what is the argument", I'm not really sure what you're looking for that has not already been raised. Here are a few thoughts, but mostly just repetition from above: 1) The acceptability of failing without holding was explicit in WP:WIAGA until it was changed without discussion or fanfare some months ago. 2) The acceptability of failing without holding is still suggested by WP:GAN/I. 3) Our guidelines should be descriptive, not prescriptive. Many experienced reviewers will fail without placing on hold. 4) The fact that many people are (occasionally) using this approach suggests (though I accept, does not prove) that there are at least a few cases in which it is appropriate. 5) Some articles, upon being reviewed, appear to be a very long way from meeting the GA criteria (or contain other issues) such that they are deeply unlikely (in the good-faith judgement of the reviewer) to be GA-ready in a reasonable amount of time. 6) Placing articles doomed to fail on hold may not be a particularly productive use of time, and may not be the most honest/respectful way to treat nominators. // There may be other reasons; instruction creep springs to mind, and clarifying the criteria page may help avoid future upset/tedious procedural arguments, it seems to be respectful of reviewer autonomy/judgement, there may be certain cases in which keeping a review sitting around and open would be in some way damaging (I'd rather not say more)... And so on (perhaps). Let me be clear: I do not envision my proposal as being about changing practices, and nor do I see it as being about forcing anyone to do anything. It's just about clarifying an instructional page. Josh Milburn (talk) 13:02, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Under benefits, might you mention that fails without holds simplify the scoring of the WikiCup, which is organized in multiple rounds each with strict start and end dates, and a fail without hold avoids the problem of how to score a good article review that straddles rounds? 13.54.152.171 (talk) 18:14, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I wouldn't personally include that, no. It's hardly a secret that I'm a big supporter of the WikiCup, but I don't really see that consideration as a particular advantage (or disadvantage), I don't think that WikiCup considerations have any place in a discussion like this, and it's not something that has affected my view of the matter. Josh Milburn (talk) 18:48, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

@J Milburn: Of the above, 1 and 2 are simply a description of what things used to be (appeal to tradition, naturalistic fallacy). 3 states that because some may break a rule or guideline, we should change it (Nirvana fallacy – all rules are broken sometimes, nothing is perfectly descriptive). 4 is a claim that the fact someone has done something means it must be positive (a rather odd twist on appeal to tradition, naturalistic fallacy – if I shoot someone in the street, it doesn't imply I was justified even though I would only shoot someone if I felt justified by self-defense, etc. You actually need a reason why it's appropriate). 5 is a statement of what is, not what should be done about it; you don't identify any benefit. And 6 is the only point that actually attempts to identify some benefit of not holding. But what time? The time lost is the 30 seconds it takes to write the hold comment and check back into the article a week from now. That outweighs the costs I detailed? Clearly no. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 18:59, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

You're overlooking another cost of holding: The added frustration to the nominator of rushing to get through the week deadline for improvements when the reviewer wasn't going to pass the article anyway. A slow fail could be more frustrating than a quicker one, so once we reach a decision to fail we should do so expeditiously. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:10, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

David: Agreed! Rob: I reject your claims that I am engaging in all the forms of fallacious reasoning of which you have accused me; I think you were correct earlier when you said that we were talking across each other. I fear at least one of us has misunderstood the other. As such, I'm not sure anything productive will come from us continuing this back-and-forth, so I'm going to stop here. Josh Milburn (talk) 19:33, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

• Support Failing without holding (which is different from quick-failing) has and should always be an option for a reviewer. The reviewers time is important too and if in their opinion the article is a long way from passing they should not be obliged to nurse a substandard article through the process. Leaving some advice and encouragement is often the kindest and best option for some nominations. AIRcorn (talk) 06:28, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
• Comment - if the wording was changed without any discussion, it should be reverted back immediately. That might make the guidelines less ambiguous too. FunkMonk (talk) 13:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)
• I also support reinstating quick-fail as it was removed without discussion. Somebody sneaking by a minor word substituting that results substantial change to the criteria without being noticed until now doesn't mean the change should have happened in the first place. Default action is to revert back. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 19:05, 8 July 2017 (UTC)
• Support reverting to the status quo. The GA process has always left a lot of leeway to the reviewer's judgement, and this is by design, to make it a lightweight process. Placing articles on hold is a courtesy to the nominator when there is a reasonable chance that the article's deficiencies can be remedied in a reasonable amount of time, and not a bureaucratic requirement on the reviewer. GAN is not "Article Improvement Workshop": a nominee should generally not need a hold to pass the (not really very onerous) criteria, or it shouldn't have been nominated in the first place. Similarly, taking on a GA review is not a blood oath that obliges you to bend over backwards to get the article passed or suffer the censure of your peers: it's an assessment of one article against the criteria, and anything more is courtesy or extra effort. --Xover (talk) 05:20, 9 July 2017 (UTC)
• Oppose, If the reviewer does not have the time, they should not review the article. Nothing stops one from taking a look and not choosing to review an article if they think it will be too much effort. It is also quite possible to leave comments and suggestions on the article talk page without doing a GA review on it. • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 08:08, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Estimate of the frequencies of fails without holds

The prevalence of good article review failures without holds in current practice is estimated.

The good article reviews commenced in the first week of October 2016 were selected as a sample. This interval was chosen as outside the Wiki Cup.

Article	Hold?	Pass/Fail
British National Corpus	Y	Fail
California (Blink-182 album)	Y	Pass
Cliff Clinkscales	Y	Pass
Deus Ex: Human Revolution	Y	Pass
Dorchester, Dorset	N	Pass
Dual graph	N	Pass
Fortinet	Y	Pass
FUNCINPEC	N	Pass
Geography of Somerset	N	Pass
Indium	N	Pass
Madeline (video game series)	N	Fail
Metroid Dread	N	Pass
Northampton War Memorial	N	Pass
Ocepeia	N	Pass
Pop Warner	Y	Pass
SMS Erzherzog Albrecht	N	Pass
Sri Lanka
Worms Armageddon	Y	Pass

18 good article reviews were started between 1 October 2016 and 7 October 2016, inclusive. Of these, 15 passed, 2 failed, and 1 was not reviewed. One of the fails was after a hold; the other was not, but the fail outcome was arrived at by consensus of the nominator and reviewer after discussion.

7 of the completed reviews offered a hold and 10 did not. Some of the reviews (for example, Madeline (video game series) and Ocepeia) that were not formally held exhibited an "informal" hold, that is, the reviewer never assigned the article a hold status, but the nominator improved the article by addressed the review issues before the conclusion of the review. Of the 7 formal holds, 6 resulted in good articles.

13.54.152.171 (talk) 17:58, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

I'm not really sure what this proves, not least because it's a tiny sample. As far as I am aware, no one believes that failing without hold is a particularly common practice, and no one believes that it should be. What's your point? Josh Milburn (talk) 18:55, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

It is not the case that fails without holds are common practice in good article reviews. Fails are not common. Holds promote passes. A record of collaboration in promoting articles to good is clear in our community. A random sample of good article reviews is stronger evidence than "in my experience..." or "I myself have..." or the ever-popular "many editors...". 13.54.152.171 (talk) 19:54, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Good article criteria are consistent with good article instructions

The good article criteria WP:GACR explain how to decide pass, fail, or hold, and the good article instructions WP:GAI explain the mechanics of implementing the decision. Neither the criteria nor the instructions are deficient. The instructions are clearly intended to be read once the reviewer has a decision in mind. Our good article instructions do not and need not re-iterate our good article criteria. There is no gross inconsistency that needs to be addressed here. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 18:08, 6 July 2017 (UTC)

Status quo

Some find a smoking gun in a minor edit to WP:GACR from May 2016. The current "status quo" is over a year old; good article reviews have not been disrupted. No pointed sneaky undiscussed edit was recently revealed as maliciously handcuffing good article reviewers. The real status quo in good article reviews is and always has been an emphasis on collaboration in recognizing our good articles, and is accurately reflected in written project documentation. Under our current six immediate failure criteria, a good article reviewer now has and has always had explicit basis for a fail without a hold. 13.54.152.171 (talk) 16:46, 9 July 2017 (UTC)

That doesn't change the fact that no such changes should be made without discussion. The change should be reverted and only reinstated if a consensus to add it emerges. FunkMonk (talk) 12:53, 10 July 2017 (UTC)

Time to close the discussion?

This discussion has been open for almost two weeks with no comments in over four days. I think it's time for closure, which I have requested at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure#Other types of closing requests. Josh Milburn (talk) 22:06, 16 July 2017 (UTC)

I would like to point out to the administrator who closes this discussion that the topic did not come out of the blue, but was preceded by a discussion at the WikiCup talk page This concerned a GA review taken up and failed immediately before the end of the round and which was significant in deciding which competitors would proceed to the next round. The IP 13.54.152.171 was the editor whose GA was failed on that occasion, and several editors who have participated in this discussion had previously expressed their views on the WikiCup talk page. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 18:36, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

That's not the only discussion about this issue that I've seen/in which I've been involved, but it was the one that immediately preceded this one. I don't think that this is an issue inherently tied to the WikiCup, and I don't personally see my proposal as being particularly related to the WikiCup (though it was thanks to that discussion that I became aware of the current wording of the good article criteria). I'm not sure there are many merits to mixing WikiCup discussions with GA project discussions. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:00, 17 July 2017 (UTC)

I wasn't trying to link this discussion with the WikiCup discussion, but just wanted to point out that some of the editors that have participated here are not random members of the community addressing a theoretical issue, but are editors who have already taken a position in a related discussion. Cwmhiraeth (talk) 08:07, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Understood; apologies for the misunderstanding! Josh Milburn (talk) 11:39, 18 July 2017 (UTC)

Any update on this? YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 04:08, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

The closure has been requested, and someone could close the discussion at any time; I think these things take time! Let's just ensure that this discussion isn't automatically archived. Josh Milburn (talk) 22:50, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Yea, I just didn't want this to be archived. YE ^{Pacific Hurricane} 23:08, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Quick question

I've been working on an article, and an admin thinks I should go ahead and submit it to GAN, but first, I had a question. It it required to have a picture of the subject to pass GAN? I have scoured the internet and can not find one int he public domain. ^{(talk page stalker)} CrashUnderride 17:19, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Well the criteria states:

   Illustrated, if possible, by images:
   images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid fair use rationales are provided for non-free content; and
   images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

..so I guess it's not compulsory, but advisable. It may be queried whether a picture does exist or can be added during a GA review, but the lack of one alone should not be a point of failure, assuming you can reason why one doesn't exist. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:29, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

It is not required, but you can acquire a photo, reduce the resolution, and tag it as fair use if you want. Kees08 (Talk) 17:43, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

Please make sure it meets the fair use criteria though - if the article is for a living person, fair-use generally does not apply. Ravensfire (talk) 00:21, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

The person is living and I've search numerous public domain website and found nothing. So I'm gonna nominate it as is. ^{(talk page stalker)} CrashUnderride 03:14, 24 July 2017 (UTC)

GA process question: failing nominations

I had been reviewing Hadrian, nominated by Cerme. Today, I noticed that on July 21, Display name 99 failed the nomination on the grounds that Cerme had not responded to issues raised in the review in over 2.5 months. To be clear, I don't object to this outcome: if I had remembered that the review were still open, I would probably have failed it at this point for the same reason. However, the review closer doesn't appear to have made any attempt to get in touch with either the nominator or me to ask us to progress the review, and by my reading of the instructions, and by all the previous precedent I have seen, that would be the usual practice. Is this a commonly accepted procedure that I have just never come across? Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 09:26, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

I think I could've done that. I have posted notices for editors at other inactive GA reviews-pinging both the reviewer and the nominator- warning them that if they don't respond in 2 or 3 days I will fail the article. However, I also saw that Cerme had not made any edits since May 19. Also, the last GA review of Hadrian was failed (after my intervention) because Cerme hadn't responded to reviewer concerns. So considering the history, and the lack of any activity in over two months, I guess I just decided it wasn't worth it. I've decided now that I still should've pinged you first, out of courtesy, but the fact that you started reviewing an article and then forgot about it for so long isn't ideal either. Display name 99 (talk) 12:06, 27 July 2017 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have been unable to work on the article, but I will be revising it (as I was doing until May 19) according to the reviewer's suggestions as soon as possible. Cerme (talk) 22:38, 30 July 2017 (UTC)

Technical query

On the nominations page, many nominations which are not tagged as having an active review, have a parenthetical comment like (Reviews: 5). What does this mean? • • • Peter (Southwood) ^(talk): 15:04, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

The "reviews" number denotes the amount of reviews that user has undertaken (whether they be the reviewer of the respective entry, or the nominator). It's just a running tally that auto updates. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:12, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

This is still active, right?

I was going to start cleaning up some of the abandoned reviews and the like, but instead I see a nine-month backlog, with reviews sitting there for 6-7 at times, and very few reviews actually being conducted. It's such a large mountain to climb that I don't even know where to begin to try and address the seeming abandonment of this process. Wizardman 21:17, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Nothing really out of the ordinary (counting the last few years), when did you last took at the list? It's not optimal, but the reviewer pool is pretty small... FunkMonk (talk) 21:20, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

While some articles wait around for a long time, others are picked up very quickly. There's a lot of movement in the system, but sometimes certain articles (for a variety of reasons) have to wait in the queue for a while. It would be, to put it mildly, hyperbole to say that the GAN process is inactive. Josh Milburn (talk) 21:37, 29 July 2017 (UTC)

Bad Faith rejections?

What is the proper procedure if I believe that a GA review has not been done in good faith, specifically Talk:Black people and Mormonism/GA1 , in which the reviewer states "This appears to be the official line of the Mormon church, which the (paid) nominator was no doubt instructed to promote, in contravention of policy." I have attempted to engage the reviewer and have gotten nowhere, including the reviewer using obscenities.Naraht (talk) 14:58, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

@Naraht: First, are you actually a paid editor or is that just an unfounded personal attack? ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 15:10, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Also, if you're gonna accuse someone of something, (in this case, using obscenities) you should provide proof. There's no history on your talk page, nor theirs. ^{(talk page stalker)} CrashUnderride 15:14, 31 July 2017 (UTC)