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Good article nominations

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. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click to show the frequently asked questions below or search the archives below.

Increase in 6 month nominations

For the last few years, GA reviews have generally not lasted in the queue longer than four months or so, and it was rare to have a six-month-old nomination at all. But since the sort order was changed a few months ago to ignore wait times, there's been a dramatic increase in wait times for the longest nominations. As I write this, there are now 21 unreviewed nominations that are at least six months old, and it's gradually trending upward. 13 more nominations are set to become six months old in within the next week. Ideally, this number should always be zero. Some sort of change needs to occur to prevent these massive wait times that aggravate the backlog, whether it be in how we present pending nominations or a more systematic way to get older nominations reviewed.

In the meantime, I highly encourage everyone to try to grab some of the outstanding 6+ month nominations so we can get that number back to zero:

• Impeachment of Andrew Johnson (nom)
• Renewable energy in Turkey (nom)
• Declan Costello (nom)
• Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2001 (nom)
• Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 (nom)
• In the Best of Families (miniseries) (nom)
• Ghidorah, the Three-Headed Monster (nom)
• Pete Johnson (Mississippi politician) (nom)
• Shōnen manga (nom)
• Flight Deck (California's Great America) (nom)
• Songbird Sings Streisand (nom)
• Construction of the Minnesota State Capitol (nom)
• Where the Crawdads Sing (film) (nom)
• David Fletcher (baseball) (nom)
• Severo Aguilar (nom)
• Duran Duran (1981 album) (nom)
• Pirates of the Mississippi (nom)
• Roswell incident (nom)
• Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2022 (nom)
• Greece in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019 (nom)
• New Victory Theater (nom)

Also, shoutout to editors like AirshipJungleman29 and Onegreatjoke (among others) that have already been working on the 6+ month backlog. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Ah, a list the eye can comprehend, oldest. Maybe those should be at the top ;-} --- I'll take one now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:45, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm starting to think the sort order change was a good idea with bad unintended consequences. I'd probably support going back to the old system. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 13:53, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

As the nominator of 4 of these (and also 2 other 6+ month noms that were recently passed this week), I think this is directly related to the sort order and decreased visibility for older noms. I also probably shouldn't have inundated the queue with so many similar articles, but I had the time back then! The recent changes did prompt me to start reviewing GAs, which I had never done before, but I quickly lost interest since they're based on a ratio (# reviews/# GAs). The top sorted articles are always newer editors to the process since it's so easy to have a good ratio with so few noms and reviews. At this point, I could review 10 more nominations and likely not even get my noms to move up in the list. I wonder if the ratio method should be reconsidered and the top sorted articles could be based solely on number of GA reviews completed? I'm nowhere near the top of that list either, but it seems more respective of effort. It would on the other hand push newer editors to the bottom of the list, which I think would delay their noms instead and not really set them up for continued interest in the process. I'd agree with Trainsandotherthings that this doesn't seem to be working as intended. There are other ways to nudge people to start reviewing. This sort order was supposed to entice people to review noms, but it doesn't appear to keep that momentum. Grk1011 (talk) 13:59, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

We've talked about restricting both the GA and review parts of the ratio to some recent time period -- six months, or a year, perhaps. Would that be better? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:07, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's the same thing. Windowing the dates in the sort order changes how recently you have to be active to make your nomination more visible, but doesn't cause the older nominations to float to the top. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:33, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Grk1011, rereading your comments, I have another question. You say the change in sort order prompted you to start reviewing, but since that didn't get you to the top of the list you gave up. I don't want to pick on you, but I'd like to understand that a little better. Not everyone has the time to do reviews, and there's no requirement to review GAs, but we all understand that GA would have an instant turnaround if every nominator reviewed an article every time they nominated one. What would get you to do more reviews? A lot of the people who participated in the discussions about reviewing are editors who already review more than they nominate. What do you think would encourage editors with more GAs than reviews to start reviewing more? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:15, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Mike Christie I'm a bit of a box-checker in that I hate having things pending for a while. I like to improve an article as quickly as possible and get it over with. My "work list" is rather arbitrary; I randomly feel inspired to completely redo an article with the intent of bringing it to GA. For me, GA is an appropriate stopping point for articles about the subjects I focus on. Right now, given my work load in real life, I'm not too bothered by the delay in having my nominations reviewed, but it definitely has discouraged me from bringing any additional nominations here. Not only that, but I've more or less stopped feeling encouraged to do comprehensive edits to get other articles ready, instead spending my time on organizational or consistency edits across similar articles or updating recent events in their chronology. I'm not really a half-in type of person. I've thought about what articles I could review from the nomination queue, but I keep going down the path of things like "ooo I could review all of Floydian's 11 highway noms and what a personal accomplishment that would be!". I just don't have the time right now and after thinking of goals like that, one-offs seem boring or futile. They also take me away from the articles I actually do want to edit, but am currently not because of the lack of the task-completion feeling. Honestly, I'm not sure what would get me to naturally start reviewing more, but I hope you can at least understand my mindset. Grk1011 (talk) 13:18, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I've begun to think the issue with the sort order is that we were aiming to prioritize nominations by frequent reviewers, but instead the system just pushes all of the nominations by editors who have had no prior involvement with the GA process to the top. Take, for instance, the warfare list as of this point in time, where the top 6 nominations combine for 1 review and 0 GAs, while 7-12 combine for 1,854 reviews to 1,128 GAs, 13-18 combine for 5,298 reviews to 4,962 GAs, with 19-25 being 94 reviews to 236 reviews. It's nice to put new contributors here as priorities, but it's just resulting in burying the nominations this was suppose to highlight. And if the editors with good review to nom ratios are getting buried, imagine what's happening to those with poorer ratios. Hog Farm _Talk 15:41, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree it should probably be revisited. I've just started reviewing GAs again, and am trying to focus on new nominators, for a couple of reasons. One is that I do think they are a priority -- whether they are experienced editors or new to Wikipedia I don't want newcomers to GAN to immediately learn that you have to wait 3-6 months for a review; I don't want that to be the norm. Another is that I think this group is where new reviewers are most likely to come from, and encouraging them by reviewing their work quickly seems like it might be a good way to bring editors into the GAN community. I also wonder if things might look different if the current backlog of nominations by new nominators were cleared; that is, that the situation we're seeing is partly because the list is in a transitional state.

I think there should be a prioritization benefit for frequent reviewers. If the current sort order isn't working, another approach might work better, but I'm not yet convinced that we'd better off going back to just the age of the review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:13, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I also think we should play with this a bit and try to see what works. Basically, I think waiting time should play a role. Let's say that every user gets points for waiting time based on their review quotient, and we then sort by points. If users with a bad review quotient get 1 point per day and users with good review quotient (or newbies) get 5 points per day, we might get a more reasonable outcome. —Kusma (talk) 16:47, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I like that idea. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:10, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I worry that every change we make off the simple "oldest first" formula will only make the listings seem more arcane and complicated. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:51, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

As the listings are done by bot, the complicated formula is behind the scenes. In my idea, new noms go to the bottom and are easy to find, they just rise at different speeds as a carrot for reviewers. If we get the point scores right, I hope this leads to a usable compromise system. —Kusma (talk) 19:14, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

I would also support a return to the old system. I think the reasoning behind the change is good in theory but flawed in practice: there is little stick and even less carrot. It turns out that people don't care if their nominations go into a chaotic mess in the middle of a list, because there will always be a number of nominations by people who haven't put anything into the process at the top. As far as I can see, the new system doesn't really encourage anyone to review, so it's a failure with respect to its foremost goal. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:49, 23 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, the current ordering might as well be: nominations from people who have never successfully written a GA first, everybody else second. The ordering within those two groups is much less significant than the fact that the first group is first. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:02, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Pinging those who participated in the first sort order discussion at WP:GAPD23: @Rjjiii, Lee Vilenski, Olivaw-Daneel, Buidhe, Eddie891, Sparkl, Shearonink, Epicgenius, Sammi Brie, Unexpectedlydian, Czar, Chiswick Chap, Iazyges, JPxG, Ganesha811, Lord Roem, and Chipmunkdavis: ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:36, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I'd favor retooling the formula like Kusma discusses above and trialling that before reverting to the old format. Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 13:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, I think the idea behind changing the sort order was well-intentioned. But, as it turns out, if one group is prioritized then that means someone else has to go to the back of the line. Perhaps we should try Kusma's idea, giving "points" based on noms' review ratios. – Epicgenius (talk) 13:44, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I am certain the intentions were good; I agree it doesn't seem to be working terribly well; and for all I know Kusma's approach might work – or perhaps it won't, and we'd be better off with the old system. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:59, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

If it's not working, it's not working. I don't have any issue with changing it Rjjiii (talk) 14:41, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I wonder, is it possible to order nominations by how many reviews they did and not by a ratio of GAs to reviews. Like for example, the people who've reviewed the most GAs have their noms at the top while the ones who've reviewed the least go to the bottom. This could possibly incentive more people to review articles as they would desire to go higher up the nomination list by reviewing articles. Though that may just be some wishful thinking. Onegreatjoke (talk) 13:48, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

That too might work, and could certainly be worth a try. I guess the question is what do we want to achieve, really, and following on from that, whether we really think we want to prioritize in some way. If we do, we might ask ourselves whether submitting a GAN is a cost or a benefit to the system. If it's thought to be a cost, then the current system of dividing by the number of GANs someone has made makes some sort of sense (even if it doesn't seem to be working as a method); if it's actually a benefit – readers get more good stuff to read, the encyclopedia gets more good stuff to show, and reviewers get a necessary input so they have something to work on (grist to their mill), then the current system is actively counterproductive. Perhaps we should be ADDING nominations to reviews, not dividing the one by the other...... Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:59, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Personally, I'd say having the ratios is enough - I'd like it to be sortable on preference, rather than a list of what a specific set of users would like to state. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:06, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Among the bad effects of the ratios are that all the GANs by any one editor get lumped indigestibly together; this in turn makes any new ones (or the oldest ones) hard to spot in the mass. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:43, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree with this comment. If someone nominates one article in December, and another in March, it doesn't make much sense for them to be in the exact same place in the list. Historically we have long considered it important to review older nominations first, and I'm finding the sort order change makes this harder, not easier. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:45, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

A couple of other ways to think about this occur to me.

• A sortable table instead of a list might please everyone, but might be uglier.
• We could add icons, colours, or mark certain nominations in some other way, instead of changing how they sort -- e.g. a "NEW NOMINATOR" icon of some kind, if we want to mark nominations by new nominators.
• One thing that would reduce the number of "0 GAs" at the top of the lists would be to change the metric to count the reviews received, not just passed GAs. For example, I just reviewed Gdańsk, which was top of the list, but which had recently failed a GA and still had most of the same errors.
• There aren't that many of these new nominators clogging up the top of the lists - about 18 or 20, at the moment. That represents three or four days of reviewing throughput. If after two months of the new sort order, we still have them sitting on top of the lists, does that mean the sort order doesn't have that much impact on what gets reviewed? Would we still have the same concerns if every one of those was under review?
• There seem to be two separate issues: do new nominators deserve to be top of the list, and does the sort order work for everyone else. Some of the comments such as Grk1011's above are solely about the second point. I think we need to keep these separate in the discussions.
• Putting in the sort order was an attempt to change behaviour by changing the algorithm, and seeing if the resulting order looked more appropriate. Can we change this around and agree on which nominations deserve to be top of the list, then figure out what the means the algorithm should be? For example, in the Transport section, here are some nominations, reduced to just the nominator, the R and G stats, and the nom date. These are in the order currently listed. I've skipped a few, as this is just for discussion purposes but the data is real.
  1. IP nominator, 0 reviews, 0 GAs, 10 Feb 2023
  2. Sturmvogel 66, 883 R, 827 G, 23 Feb 2023
  3. John M Wolfson, 9 R, 9 G, 1 Mar 2023
  4. Trainsandotherthings, 20 R, 25 G, 21 Feb 2023
  5. X750, 3 R, 4 G, 11 Mar 2023
  6. HoHo3143, 2 R, 3 G, 6 Jan 2023 (and a dozen others more recent)
  7. SounderBruce, 74 R, 189 G, 2 Mar 2023
  8. Floydian, 9 R, 101 G, 4 Oct 2022 (and a dozen others)
  9. NotOrrio, 0 R, 1 G, 6 Feb 2023

  What order do we think these should really be in? Looking at this I think NotOrrio doesn't deserve to be at the bottom, and I think Floydian and SounderBruce are unfairly doomed to stay at the bottom even if they do a dozen reviews in the next two weeks. I think the IP nominator shouldn't be above Sturmvogel 66. Other than that I think the order is mostly OK. If we can agree on how this list should be sorted perhaps we can work backwards from that to something the bot can do.

-- Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:10, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

• (edit conflict) I opposed Prop 9 because I didn't think this would be effective, but it seems to be accomplishing what it set out to do: changing default behavior away from reviewing the oldest noms. For it to be used as a priority worklist, the sort order needs to be apparent to the viewer whereas now it appears haphazard (i.e., no easily distinguished reason for what goes to the top). My suggestion would be to revert to first-in, first-out date order and to more promiently display alternative sort orders to encourage editors to work from different views of the list. (Or, if those alternative sort orders were maintained, pull the "top five" for top sorts as a discovery page: five oldest noms by reviewers with good ratio, five oldest noms by new editors, five noms in need of second opinion, two oldest noms in each category.)

Changing the default sort order is bikeshedding because it only seeks to affect the default editor behavior in a very small pool of existing GA reviewers. The point of the GA reforms was to expand the pool: to make GA as an overall process more accessible and easier to complete. I think there are clearer ways to do that (I proposed several) but I also don't think the community wants it enough to try the bigger changes that would be needed. czar 14:22, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

A sortable table seems like the best solution to me. That way prospective reviewers can sort by whatever criteria they desire, be it review age or nominators' review to GA ratios. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:36, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

• During the proposal I wrote that I did not oppose as I did not think that the sort order would have a large impact. If it is having a large impact, I would reconsider, and I'd like to know if anyone has any stats for the usual number of 6 month old noms. That said, there was a strong consensus for this change, and per the logic of the consensus surely we would expect an increase in older unreviewed nominations? Switching from age was somewhat the point of the change. CMD (talk) 14:42, 24 March 2023 (UTC)

Something that is sortable would be useful. I personally want to know how many GANs & how many Reviews an editor has done, it's important to me but I do think being able to sort on a variety of topics - oldest 5 GANS in a particular subject, oldest 5 GANs overall, best ratios of noms to Reviews for a GAN'er and a GAR-editor, newest Nominators efforts, whatever... - is important to various editors. Maybe what I want isn't applicable to another editor and that's ok. And if a sortable table doesn't work? well, at least something was tried. We can always go on and try something else. Shearonink (talk) 01:45, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

Update: despite the reviews that were taken above, the number of nominations waiting for at least six months has increased to 25. We also have a 7+ month nomination now, with a few more in the above list set to hit seven months in the coming days. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:57, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

How long before we have to use the tactical nuke? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:25, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I'm not happy about these old nominations, but as CMD said it's what we should expect given the sort order change. A change away from sorting by age can only increase the age of the oldest nominations because it will divert reviewing to other nominations -- more deserving nominations, in theory. The question is "what does 'most deserving' mean?". Switching back to sorting by age would mean we think a six-month-old nomination by someone with 70 GAs and no reviews is more deserving than a five-month-old nomination by someone with 10 GAs and 40 reviews.

Over the last week or two I've been reviewing only articles by nominators with no GAs. There are few enough of these that I can probably clear them myself in a month or so, but if a couple of other reviewers want to chip in and review some of these, it would eliminate the "two classes" that David mentions above very quickly. I'm also taking the opportunity to ask the experienced editors among those new nominators if they'd be interested in doing GA reviews, but I've had no takers yet.

As for sorting, the bot can definitely do that, and in fact six months ago that was my original proposal for a change to the page -- see User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms for a version from December. There are some downsides -- we have information spread across multiple lines right now which would make a table ugly. But that's certainly an option. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:19, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

I don't see "deserving" as being relevant. Our goal is to bring articles to a certain standard, and anyone that engages with GA, whether as a nominator or a reviewer, should be assumed to be contributing to that goal. Much in the same way editors with higher edit counts or older accounts don't have seniority, editors don't have seniority just because they've written or reviewed a certain number of articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:04, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

As an honest personal aside - Sometimes. *Sometimes*, when I have time for doing a GAN workup and I look over the GANs the loooooong candidates overwhelm the amount of time I can devote to doing it, some of the GANs are just kind of enormous y'know? The amount of time I can honestly devote to a workup, I just can't do them justice. And sometimes the subject matter is something I have little interest or expertise in. Does this possibly ding great candidates? Yeah, yeah, I admit it does but time is precious to me at the moment and I have to be cognizant about how I spend it. Shearonink (talk) 19:34, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Re I don't see "deserving" as being relevant: I know what you mean, but given that we're talking about a scarce resource, any sort order that puts nomination X above nomination Y implies we think X is more deserving than Y. The only way to avoid that would to randomize the list on every refresh. Sorting by age has an implied valuation, just as the current sort order does. I'm not arguing that we should keep the current order, just that age ordering is not neutral either. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:10, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Different reviewers may have different priorities for what to select. Some may wish to prioritize new participants in the process. Some may wish to prioritize participants with a good review-to-nomination ratio. Some may wish to prioritize older nominations. Some may wish to prioritize newer but unready nominations, to spare their nominators a long wait for a quick fail. The original date-ordered listing allowed reviewers to find both older and newer nominations easily, but maybe not to pick out the ones by newer participants or the ones with many reviews. A sortable list could potentially accomodate more of these needs, if the sort keys are chosen well. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:43, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Considering that it's the standard order for every other talk or discussion page on the project, I think it's fairly clear that general consensus believes age ordering is the most neutral. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:45, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

There was a specifically "strong support" for the current sort order at Wikipedia talk:Good Article proposal drive 2023#Proposal 9: Change sort order of GAN page to prioritize frequent reviewers, only a few months ago. CMD (talk) 22:36, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I supported that, with the logic "Prioritisation of those who give back to the community is a good idea"—i.e. I thought dropping the conventionally used sort order in favour of a less-neutral formula would benefit the project. The "strong support" was for the idea, not because I and others believed it was neutral. I now think that the initiative was misguided. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:29, 28 March 2023 (UTC)

This sums up my position - I thought changing the sort order was a good idea and would encourage reviewers to review in order to move their reviews closer to the top. I see now that it has not done so, likely because the reasoning behind the sorting is opaque and people don't realize the connection between sort order and reviewing. I don't believe any twiddling with the sort algorithm will make this less opaque, and I no longer believe the revised sorting is a good idea. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:14, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

I agree that the sort order change is not working. I believe the article's number of views should somehow be taken into consideration. Currently, the Battle of Shiloh has been waiting since October. It gets about 30,000 views in 30 days, and is a level-5 vital article that was demoted to C-Class. I have redone the entire article, and believe it is Good Article quality. It had an informal Peer Review which has been saved, but that eliminates one of the few people willing to review American Civil War articles. I have only done two reviews, so the article will always be at the bottom of the list. Nobody wants to review an article that has 262 citations, even if it is important. The current procedure incentivizes me to find short articles to review or write, and makes it unlikely that I will get involved with long or difficult articles—even if they have a high importance and a high number of views. TwoScars (talk) 16:32, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

Sort order isn't going to change people's reluctance to sign up for reviewing long articles with many citations. That's always been a problem no matter what order the articles are presented in. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 17:07, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

I feel that the current sort order (by ratio) is better than the old one. I think I put in two reviews that I would not have done with the old system, which I found demoralising. The ratio is an intelligent system. It encourages 1st time nominators to start participating in the process and penalises nominators who do not review. But this is not enough. We need to reward reviewers in proportion to the work they do. A fail is less worth than a pass. A long article is more work than a short one. In last resort, age should probably also be taken into consideration so that we do not condemn some nominations to wait eternally and so that a failed nomination does not directly jump back to its previous rank. It might also help if nominations that are not ready are failed rather than improved in longish reviews. Perhaps GA instructions should say something about this. I usually tend to pass even quite unready nominations in reviews that exceed the recommended 7 days by far. Perhaps I should rather do another review during that time. There should be a sentence in the introduction to the list that explains the sorting. I would however also limit the number of nominations a wikipidian can have in the queue. This should be related to the users GAs. Beginners can have only one nomination in the system. Successful GA nominators are allowed more. That might cut back on mass production of nominations that are not ready for review. I feel that GA nominations must make the work of the reviewer as easy as possible. URLs of sources or even of pages in the sources should be given whenever possible so that reviewers do not need to lose their time searching for them. Thanks, Johannes Schade (talk) 21:17, 1 April 2023 (UTC)

It encourages 1st time nominators to start participating in the process and penalises nominators who do not review. This was the intention, the discussion above indicates that this has not actually been the result. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:27, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

(←) I'm not clear on what the new sort order is. My suggestion would be two-tier: 1) Sort by date added, oldest--> newest 2) sort by number of nominator GAs (not reviews), lowest --> highest. So the oldest nom with the fewest GAs under nominator's belt gets priority. That would encourage participation. Participation engenders collegial goodwill; goodwill encourages reviews. As for "no one wants to review long article with many cites", maybe a separate transcluded section with top 5 articles sorted by length, longest --> smallest, as a challenge to the daring § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 04:39, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

The new sort order is by the quotient (number of reviews)/(number of GAs). I don't understand your "two-tier" suggestion. We sort by age, and then we sort the one in a million case of equal age by GA count? There is no practical difference to just sorting by age. But perhaps I misunderstand. —Kusma (talk) 10:57, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Mine is, sort order is (ranking descending by age, oldest ==1, second oldest==2, etc.) PLUS (ranking ascending by number of GAs, lowest == 0, next lowest == 1, etc.).. then score like golf: lowest score wins. § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 11:23, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Ah, I see. I made a similar proposal, just multiplying with a rank-based multiplier instead of adding the ranks. —Kusma (talk) 11:50, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Great minds think alike, and so do ours... § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 11:54, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

I'll give an alternate take on this, since while this discussion didn't arrive at a consensus, it did have a general feeling. I've been meaning for years to do a review for every GAN I nominated- it only seems fair! And yet, when the day came to sort nominations by R/N percentage... I was about 3/4ths down through the list for my section, at 35:100. So, to catch back up, I'll need to do dozens of reviews, and until then I'll be buried underneath other nominations. And fair enough! I have a multi-year backlog to work through, and it seems fair that I don't get special consideration on not doing enough reviews just because I've done a lot of nominations. So, the end result is that I've done more reviews in 2023 then I have in years, which I think is a good result. Maybe it doesn't sting as much because my section doesn't seem to exclusively get reviewed in sorted order- so I do still get reviewed eventually- but I don't think the current sorting is all bad. --PresN 00:50, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I realise I am slightly late to the party on this too, but I thought I would add my thoughts to this anyway. I can see the merit in the introduction of the current ordering system but also it has become apparent that much of the intention behind its creation appears to now have failed to live up to its intention. However, on a positive note, and speaking from a personal viewpoint, the new ordering system has incentivised me to start reviewing GA nominations while waiting for my own to be reviewed, which was something I had intented to do for a long time but never actually got round to doing previously. However I can only speak for myself, potentially as compared to other editors my number of GA nominations passed is much lower and therefore the task of improving my ratio seemed a lot less daunting. I do believe there is still merit in sorting based on GA review to nomination activity, however adding in an age component would also make sense; I myself have noticed the struggle that can occur to pick out which articles have been languishing to be reviewed for a long time. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Implementation of proposal 2: spotchecks

I'm talking to a new nominator about possibly starting to review, and after looking at the proposal drive he asked why proposal 2 was not reflected in the criteria or instructions. It's not mentioned in the default template either. Wasn't the intention of that proposal that some sentence such as "spot check a sample of the sources in the article for source-text integrity" should show up somewhere? I don't see anything like that at either WP:GAN/I or in WP:GACR. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:57, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

• Support, this one is actually a good idea. It's already been discussed and in any case it's time it was documented. I think we should boldly go, etc, without further ado. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:00, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

  Agreed, we didn't get a consensus for a number, but "a sample" feels like it reflects that ambiguity. CMD (talk) 12:52, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

  • As the closer of that proposal, I agree. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:20, 29 March 2023 (UTC)

    Done; how does that look? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:34, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

    Worth adding a "and does not copy copyrighted material" addendum? CMD (talk) 15:32, 30 March 2023 (UTC)

    Just saw this; done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:00, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

Is there a need for a backlog drive

540 nominations waiting for review, quite a few from more than six months ago. Is this the sort of time we start thinking about the tactical nuke option? I know that TAOT has in the past been very disparaging about the amount of manual work needed; I wonder if it would be possible to automate some parts of the process, if Mike was willing. But first and foremost, would it be useful? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:12, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it's useful. I review more during a backlog drive (even if I don't sign up, as I don't like admin). More importantly, as backlog drives contain checks on review quality, this will be an opportunity to make sure everybody is aware of the new spot check requirements. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I'd support a backlog drive. But "checking the review quality" of all reviews is what didn't work so well in the last two drives. We can't have the coordinators check all reviews (too many reviews, not enough coordinators). Either the checking needs to be very limited or it should be crowdsourced. —Kusma (talk) 16:34, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not opposed to a drive but I 100% will not be a coordinator. Not repeating that mess again. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 16:35, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I think either crowdsourcing or sampling reviews is the realistic way forward. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:40, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I’d support a backlog drive but would expressly skip the “awards”/review of the review phases, that's a tangential goal. They take so long as is and instead I see the value in just seeing many people motivated to clear the backlog. ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 16:52, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

There has to be some element of review checking, because during a drive there is more risk of people focussing on quantity rather than quality, so some checking needs to take place to try and mitigate against that. But I've always been in favour of a sampling, similar to the spot-checks we use for source checking: in general, check a few reviews from each participant – if they are fine, AGF on the rest; if any concerns are raised, spot-check a few more from that participant. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 18:58, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I could see some sort of combination between automation and spot-checking. An automated tool that automatically flags passed reviews with less than X words would probably be valuable regardless. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:09, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Shushugah I was thinking of automating that side of the drive; Mike Christie, would that be possible? With Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/June 2022 for reference, I'm thinking that if the review (or user section) is ticked, ChristieBot calculates total score and which barnstar to give? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:20, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I haven't participated in a backlog drive, so I'm not sure I'm following along here. ChristieBot already knows what reviews are started/open/closed, and who the reviewer is. I think it would be relatively easy to post a list page somewhere listing reviews under X words long. Might be better to have two lists -- one for reviews using the template, one for reviews not using the template -- in order to avoid an unfilled template from making it appear to be a long review. What do you mean by "if the review (or user section) is ticked"? And what calculation? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:40, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

Well, as above, people are discussing whether the previous coordinator method (checking every review for quality individually) could be slimmed down to maybe a sampling, after which the user's contributions to the backlog drive would be ticked as sufficient. Then comes the drudgery of the thing—points are added up (one point for a review, 1.5 for an old nomination) and barnstars are awarded based on contributions. If these purely mathematical calculations could be automated, it would make life for the backlog drive coords significantly easier. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:58, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I believe previous coordinators didn't check every review, just a sample of each reviewers. I don't think automating review selection will make much difference (it might even be detrimental?). The point scoring and barnstar awarding though, is an area that could be automated, assuming the automation coding doesn't take up even more time... CMD (talk) 23:46, 2 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure I could write something that took a list of users and calculated the point count for them; I know the age of the nomination when it was picked up. That could be the list of all users signed up for the backlog drive, rather than just the ones that had been marked as sufficiently checked, but either way so long as there's a list somewhere on-wiki it should be easy. Not so sure I want to take on posting the barnstars on talk pages. For either task, we might need to go back to the BAG page -- the current BRFA is here; it might be considered to cover the first task, but posting barnstars seems beyond the scope of that. At a minimum I could run a query and post the results manually every day or two. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

That would probably help, although if I remember correctly barnstars are all awarded at the end, rather than one by one. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:24, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If calculation and posting barnstars is the non-desirable task, I'd be happy to do that part. Can also help with checking reviews. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 01:28, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Chipmunkdavis every review was checked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/June 2022, the most recent one and the only one I can attest to. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:25, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

That's asking the checkers for too much, the model we should look to is Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/July 2021. CMD (talk) 01:46, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think that would be preferable, yes. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:36, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Im all for a new backlog drive, its about time we shut down the Proposal Drive Feedback tab. 🏵️Etrius ( Us) 03:17, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Since this was first posted a week ago, the number of unreviewed nominations has jumped from 540 to 575. So it seems that the answer is yes. But I also think it would be a good idea to rework the instructions and process a little bit before this happens. Namely, we need to provide clear instructions for inexperienced reviewers to confidently spotcheck sources, and we need to decide whether we're going to implement more rigorous citation requirements (rather than the current system which only requires minimal citations). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:08, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Adding the citation req to the GAN drive would be a good way to ease in a rule change for which there appears to be consensus. (t · c) buidhe 16:19, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

May I suggest that people participating in their first drive should have their first completed review or two checked as quickly as possible by coordinators so that they can get feedback on the quality of their reviews—perhaps we should ask them to self-identify during signup so the coordinators know who to prioritize? All reviewers should probably have at least one review checked, but helping to guide new ones promptly will be important.

Another potential issue: back when LegoBot was creating the WP:GAN, it stopped being able to include all the nominations after a certain point once we hit around 700 total nominations on the page on 28 March 2020 due to the transclusion page-size limits. Mike Christie, is that likely to be an issue given the way your page is constructed, or are we safe from that possibility? We're only around 40 nominations away from that size. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:53, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it's fine -- the change to the GANentry templates seems to have increased the maximum size. I just took a look at the size and we're at 854K; the limit is well over twice that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:45, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

@Mike Christie Is there an easy way to note/self identify how many reviews/reviewed articles are associated with each editor though a transclusion? Similar to the GAN feed, this would help coordinators identify newbies early on. Not necessary at all if a huge hassle ~ 🦝 Shushugah (he/him • talk) 16:11, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you're asking for -- there's this recent conversation which didn't reach a consensus. Is that the sort of thing you're thinking of? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:36, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

What's the bar for "significant contributor"?

Per this change, drive-by nominations are not permitted any more. I was about to review AC/DC; the nominator, Vaughan J., has contributed less than 2% of the article, and has a total of 66 edits to it. Few of those edits are substantial. They did not post to the article talk page before nominating the article. Would this be considered a drive-by nomination? It seems borderline to me. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:41, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Similarly, Neighbours: The Finale was nominated by U-Mos, who has 3% of the text in the article, though it's clearer in this case that they have edited it frequently. Still, the main editor is obviously Raintheone, who contributed most of the text and has been recently active. I'm not clear how to judge if these are "drive-by" or not. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:48, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Percentage of text written seems a bit of a blunt guide, seeing as my contribution to that article is to thoroughly copyedit/check amend sources etc. after its move to the mainspace (having been collaboratively drafted by two other editors). The guidance does not require GA nominators to be the single most significant contributor, at any rate. U-Mos (talk) 18:07, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I would say that any borderline nominations, where the authorship is either less than 10% or not one of the top five editors, should be preceded with a post on the talk page. In any case, the AC/DC article is definitely not GA standard. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:56, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I can't find any real discussion on this in the archives, but in the case of AC/DC, Vaughn J. has not contributed any actual content to the article that I can find; they have added a couple of sources and done some minor wording tweaks. I would not consider that a signficant contribution - especially as, with the exception of No-Bullet, all of the editors with more contributions have been active on wikipedia in the last few months. 66 edits to the article isn't "drive-by", but nor have they reached the point of "significant contributor". Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 16:08, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think that, like most things, the borderline cases are going to come down to a judgement call. There's no magic number of edits or contribution percentage where a person becomes a significant contributor. In the cases of AC/DC and Neighbours: The Finale, I would argue that neither amounts to "significant" contribution. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:18, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

So just to be clear I'm doing the right thing (since I haven't reviewed a drive-by before) I should now quickfail each of those on the basis that the nomination contravenes those instructions? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

When I came across one, I reverted the nomination on the article talk page, and then left a notice on the nominators talk page: like so. Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 18:14, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

That one is a good example of a genuine drive-by nomination. I did not see any contributions by the nominator in the last 500 edits to the article. (If that were in doubt, though, it could also easily have been a quick fail, on the basis that the article still has a big cleanup banner from 2022.) —David Eppstein (talk) 19:58, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If you are in doubt whether it is drive-by, just assume that it isn't. Better to assess the article on its merits than on technicalities. —Kusma (talk) 19:38, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

To me, having 19 of the 50 most recent edits (as is the case for Vaughan J. in AC/DC) is above the bar for being a drive-by contributor. Drive-by contributors are the ones who make one or two copyedits that could arguably be marked as minor and then nominate. Anything more than that can be taken seriously. Otherwise, there would be no way to bring old well-established and mostly-in-good-shape articles to GA, because if we just measured contributor percentages it could easily be the case that nobody (or nobody still active) has more than single-digit percentages. Percentage is a bad measure of contribution, anyway, because a lot of the effort in bringing something from B-class to GA-class is the sort of polishing that does not significantly affect the authorship contribution percentages of the article, but still can be a lot of work. —David Eppstein (talk) 17:54, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If someone has just done mainly minor wording alterations how can they attest that the article is free of original research, failed verification issues or copyvio? If they have encountered a mostly good article and done due diligence to ensure it's as good as it looks, then they should make a talk page post explaining this. (t · c) buidhe 18:17, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If the writing is already good, but the article uses general references instead of inline citations, what is wrong with someone adding inline citations and then nominating? They will have very little "contribution percentage" but will know the article and its sources well. —Kusma (talk) 19:36, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

What you've described is a significant contribution. The editor had to check the sources and verify which of them matched which content. In contrast, copy editing or altering a small percentage of the article's overall number of citations, is not a significant contribution. (t · c) buidhe 20:03, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

You can't always tell though if people checked. I usually don't tell in my edit summaries I've checked a source unless there is an issue with INTEGRITY. You would only see me making copy edits when I check sources in a decent article. I'd prefer to assume they have when they've made a lot of copyedits. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 20:14, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

It's not a reasonable assumption because in my experience most copy edits do not involve source checking. For example, GOCE does not usually check. (t · c) buidhe 21:06, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it would be unreasonable to quickfail a nomination by a good copy editor just because you have not seen them touch the sourcing (and you should check the sources either way). If you are afraid of wasting your time, just find something else to review. —Kusma (talk) 17:54, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

So many people in this discussion are talking about quickfailing these nominations. You don't have to quickfail the article to decline a drive-by nomination. It's better to just remove the nomination template from the article talk page and leave the nominator a message on their talk page. At worst, if they do turn out to have more involvement than you think, they can just revert your removal and no harm is done. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 18:14, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I think I was the first to mention quick-failing, and you're right that it wouldn't be the right answer; my mistake. But to the point I was hoping to get an answer to: are you suggesting that if, as a potential reviewer, one considers a nomination to be a drive-by nomination, the right approach is to remove the nomination from the talk page and leave a talk page note explaining why? And that there is no more definite way to decide if something is a drive-by nomination than by qualitative assessments such as "significant contributions"? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:22, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

If the article is a quickfail for other reasons, it may be good to quickfail based on those to leave a record for other potential nominators that there is a lot of work to be done. But yes, for good faith nominations by clueless newbies, reverting plus a gentle talk page notice may be the best course of action. Overall, reviewing an article although the nominator is "unworthy" strikes me as less of a problem than mistakenly rejecting a nomination. —Kusma (talk) 18:35, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

The rules do not allow (or even suggest the possibility) of a note on the talk page. "Nominators must have contributed significantly to the article" although this is contradicted with "If you are not a significant contributor to the article, you must secure the assent of the significant contributors before nominating." As David Eppstein notes, this prevents the nomination of worthy articles where the original contributors are no longer active. I have in the past nominated many such articles, most recently Tailhook scandal. Making large numbers of articles ineligible for GA is a blow to the entire process. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 20:25, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

The previous rule was that a nominator who was not a significant contributor to the article should ask the major contributors before nominating; my understanding was that the new rule was intended to remove this option and require a nominator be a significant contributor. If that is truly what was intended by the rule change, then presumably If you are not a significant contributor to the article, you must secure the assent of the significant contributors before nominating ought be removed from the instructions – though like Hawkeye I am not convinced that is actually desirable! Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 20:53, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

The original proposal received strong support; I didn't !vote or comment there partly because I hadn't run into this sort of nomination and didn't want to guess at the right way to handle them. I'm not comfortable failing either AC/DC or Neighbours: The Finale without a clearer definition of what constitutes "drive by", and I don't want to review them if they are not nominated by editors who are familiar with the sources and the article. Based on U-Mos's comments above, I'm going to go ahead and review the Neighbours article as they say they were more involved with the article than it appears at first glance; I'll have to let someone else, or the consensus here, decide what to do with AC/DC. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:11, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Having re-read that proposal, to my mind part of the issue is that drive-by nominator/significant contributor is not a useful binary. I would consider there to be a fairly large intermediate area between them where someone is deliberately editing a particular article, but they are not a significant contributor. For example, an editor who watchlists an article and has a history of reverting vandalism going back years may not be a significant contributor, but they clearly have a degree of investment in that article which distinguishes them from the drive-by nominator. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:39, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it should have been common courtesy for User:U-Mos to notify myself and User:Raintheone about nominating Neighbours: The Finale at GAN. We worked together on the article and are the two most significant contributors to it. Personally, I don't think it was ready, but we shall see. - JuneGloom07 Talk 18:13, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

JuneGloom07, I think the article is not far off a fail and have left notes at the GA. Please comment there if you have time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:54, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

FYI for anyone watching this thread, I've reverted the GA nomination of AC/DC, with a link to this thread. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:59, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Proposal to Split Sports and Recreation into Seven Sub-Topics

See also: User_talk:ChristieBot § Feature Request

The sub-topic "Sports and recreation" is 83 nominations long as of this writing and has historically been the longest sub-topic at WP:GAN. I propose splitting this sub-topic into seven more refined sub-topics, based on the explanation at WP:GAN#SPORT of all the different article that fall under this sub-topic. Thus, "Sports and recreation" would look similar to "Natural Sciences", i.e. a larger grouping of specific sub-topics. I propose the following sub-topics, again based on WP:GAN#SPORT:

• Sports and recreation
  • Football
  • Baseball
  • Basketball
  • Cricket
  • Hockey
  • Pro Wrestling
  • Other sports
  • Recreation

Obviously, the biggest benefit would be better categorization for editors who are interested in specific article topics. Interested to hear everyone's thoughts. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 22:02, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

It is a bit silly that this section isn't meaningfully divided into subsections. Is this list representative of the sports that are most common here? "Football" doesn't really work since there are two incredibly popular and completely unrelated sports by that name. "Association football" and "American football" would probably both need to be subsections in a list like this. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 22:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

I think seven subtopics is probably overkill. How about the three sports that are most frequently in GAN (possibly association football, American football, and basketball), "other sports", and "recreation"? (t · c) buidhe 22:20, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good articles/Sports and recreation breaks it down like this:

• Football (association, American, Canadian, Australian, and rugby)
• Baseball
• Basketball
• Cricket
• Hockey (field and ice)
• Motorsport
• Pro wrestling
• Recreation
• Multi-sport event
• Other sports

I support using that. – Muboshgu (talk) 22:40, 3 April 2023 (UTC)

If there are 83 GANs divided between these categories, probably some will be empty or nearly empty most of the time, which will unnecessarily clutter the GAN page. (t · c) buidhe 01:59, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Maybe I was too aggressive with providing a recommended list. I think my main proposal is to split it up some way to make it easier to filter out. However that break down ends up being would be fine with me. Thanks Muboshgu for catching my error and tightening up the list! « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 02:14, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Muboshgu didn't "tighten up" the list, they added an additional three categories that are not on your list. (t · c) buidhe 02:21, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Assuming Wikipedia:Good articles/Sports and recreation GAs roughly reflect nomination ratios, then significant mileage could be had by just splitting out Football (footballs?). CMD (talk) 09:55, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

"Football" (Association, American and others), "Other sports", and "Recreation" would work for me. Great idea by the way Gonzo_fan2007 ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I've brought this up before, but cue sports currently outweighs cricket for GAs (186 to 148). My big worry with splitting the nominations list, is that people who are say, into football would never get introduced to other articles in other lists (there's also some cross-over, plenty of pro wrestlers have American footballing history for example). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:37, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

That's a good point about cross-pollination. If people are wanting to focus just on one sport, are GANs not popping up on Wikiproject article alerts? CMD (talk) 11:05, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Oppose such heavy stratification, per Lee Vilenski: "My big worry with splitting the nominations list, is that people who are say, into football would never get introduced to other articles in other lists". There is a lot of shared knowledge across sports articles, so I think keeping them together makes sense. I do think splitting Sports and Recreation off, the latter for for theme parks, board games etc. would make sense. By rough count, that would only split off about 10 articles right now, but it would be a start, and hopefully a less controversial first step? Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 11:43, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

@Chiswick Chap: If sports and recreation were split, your yoga nominations would end up in recreation based on current categorisation. Would this bother you, would you be worried you'd be less likely to get attention for those reviews, or happier that they would be in a shorter list where they might get noticed? Harrias ^{(he/him) • talk} 11:46, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Always hard to say; it might be better with a shorter and more specialised list and viewers more likely to be interested. I can tell you with certainty that I'm quite unqualified to review most "Sports" articles. Chiswick Chap (talk) 11:50, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I think it's likely that especially with the current format, your yoga articles are getting lost in a maelstrom of football and basketball articles ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:11, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

* Support (two-way split to Sports/Recreation), ok, happy to go along with that and let's see what happens. Chiswick Chap (talk) 13:58, 6 April 2023 (UTC)

General comment I appreciate what everyone has said above. I am looking at this though as "knowing what we know now, if we started over, how would we split all the topics up". And with Sports and Recreation consistently pulling 10 to 15% (currently 13%) of total nominations, it just seems logical to reorganize the topic. Honestly, even splitting it off to two topics, "Sports" and "Recreation", as Harrias proposed, would help. In that light, I think AirshipJungleman29's proposal would be a good start and I would support that. « Gonzo fan2007 (talk) @ 14:33, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I was just about to suggest that the obvious split would be to create "sports" and "recreation" when I saw your comment here. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:34, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I also agree that we should instead split these GANs into "sports" and "recreation". That way, topics like parks and roller coasters don't get lumped in with sporting events and games. – Epicgenius (talk) 15:10, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Unless there are objections I'll work on this approach first, since we can always split further. A simple split like this is probably a good way to start anyway so I can figure out what's needed. I have house guests and a trip planned so it's likely to be the middle of the month before I can make the change. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:34, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

I support just splitting into sports and recreation. I think that's a good start for now. -- ZooBlazer^talk 18:49, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Support Splitting it into just sports and recreation. Having 7 subtopics for it is far too much IMO. Onegreatjoke (talk) 22:45, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Question about splitting an article

Hi. Hope this isn't a frivolous question. I haven't done GANs in years, and am not very well-versed in current prevailing opinions etc. So, the article is Mi Shebeirach. It's an ancient Jewish prayer/song. There is a contemporary version written relatively recently that apparently is massively popular in Reformed synagogues (and perhaps others, IDK). It's to the point where I saw one source that said it is sung in most if not all almost every week. [Crap, I lost the source, I suck.] My point is, discussion of the modern version seems to be large enough in the current GAN that the article could be split into Mi Shebeirach and Mi Shebeirach (Debbie Friedman song). The latter might even take up more space than the former, haven't checked yet... I haven't checked WP:CLOP yet, but if that's OK, this article is almost certainly "Pass GA", IMHO. So... splitting... what should I do? Tks in advance § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 00:37, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

It's quite a short article, what benefit would a split have? CMD (talk) 00:45, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps none. It just seems odd to me that the modern version seems to almost overwhelm the article. Plus... perhaps in a nebulous way... if it were split, the article about the new song could get its own GA, kudos to the (sadly, deceased) songwriter, etc. § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 00:49, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

[Creator/nominator] I'm undecided myself on whether to split, but I think one thing to consider here is that, a bit counterintuitively, the original Mi Shebeirach isn't very important (relatively speaking). Millions of Jews hear it every Saturday, yes, but it's not really one of the "greatest hits". Anecdotally, I've talked to a number of Jews from both liberal and Orthodox backgrounds about this, and none had any familiarity with any Mi Shebeirach other than the one for healing, and in that regard almost all were primarily familiar with Friedman's version. I'm pretty confident this isn't just some bias on my part, based on the further evidence that 1) none of our Jewish liturgy editors—who tend to write from an Orthodox perspective—had seen fit to create this article till I did and 2) there are literally three academic papers ever published on any Mi Shebeirach other than the one for healing. (None of which are cited in the article, because they're in Hebrew and not available online, even for money... If I ever take this to FAC I guess I'll have to track them down and beg someone who speaks better Hebrew than I, but for now I've cited some sources that cite them.) Anyways, that's not arguing for any outcome, because like I said I'm still undecided, but just wanted to be clear on the significance (or lack thereof) of the older prayer. -- Tamzin^{[cetacean needed]} (she|they|xe) 01:43, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

All things considered, perhaps it's best just to proceed as is. Tks  § Lingzhi.Renascence (talk) 05:31, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

Reviewer blocked

Shawn Teller has been blocked as a sockpuppet of Architect 134, a long-term abuser/troll. There are ten GA reviews that need another look—there were some serious concerns about them even before the block, so the fact that all the reviews were in bad faith probably means they all need to be re-reviewed, in my opinion, even though that's not something we normally do. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 18:40, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

One option would be to list them at WP:GAR, but at the same time that risks clogging an already overworked area. More importantly, this is just more evidence that we need some mechanism to detect this sort of thing. Who reviews the reviewers? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 18:55, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

As one of the coords, I think we could handle it. Ideally we'd get engagement from the nominators and other editors, hopefully none would actually be delists. But they do need to be re-reviewed (not Capri-Sun though, as a second review was done). Trainsandotherthings (talk) 22:23, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

We the community review the reviewers, however that requires consensus of some kind. Shawn Teller's GANs are the first 8 of Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 27#February 2023 raised reviews (everything up to Eurovision Song Contest 1999). CMD (talk) 23:48, 5 April 2023 (UTC)

JoelleJay noted at AN/I that the reviews were likely done by ChatGPT (thanks also to XOR'easter for posting at WT:GAR), which is why they sound so asinine. Happily, as Shawn Teller was a sock the GAN pages can be tagged for WP:G5. My suggested solution is to do this, and restore the original GAN tags on each article talkpage (and drop an explanation to the nominators). If there are no objections, I intend to do this in the next few days. This is an indicative sign that we need to become more firm on reversing checklist reviews. CMD (talk) 08:49, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

CMD, having read the contents of one of Shawn Teller's GA reviews after JoelleJay's list of egregious comments, I don't think any of the reviews can be trusted. I agree that a fresh review via GAN is warranted for each (with the exception of Capri-Sun, which already has a subsequent review), and the GA status reverted. It's unfortunate for the original nominators, but perhaps if the original nomination date is restored along with the GA nominee template, they won't have to wait too terribly long for a new review. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:28, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Having looked at only one of these (Talk:Ontario Highway 11/GA1) I am in complete agreement that these should be G5 deleted and the nominations restored. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:55, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

I've done that for the Ontario Highway, seeing that also the nominator agreed. The others are probably deserving of the same treatment, but should be checked individually anyway. —Kusma (talk) 19:02, 9 April 2023 (UTC)

Unfortunately the tags were removed by Why? I Ask, so this process has been blocked. CMD (talk) 14:02, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I don't believe that tag removal was appropriate. These were not real reviews that could give editors any guidance on improving the articles. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree. A mass nomination at WP:MFD is probably the simplest next step. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

They were not good reviews at all; but they are all currently good articles. Until they are delisted, the reviews should stay up. And if delisted, should it even say "former good article" if there is no review to link? Why? I Ask (talk) 14:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This was an unwise move. You're now responsible for the content of those reviews (if you re-instate a blocked editors edits you take responsibility for them per WP:PROXYING), which by your own admission are mediocre. The reviews were to be deleted, and the articles returned to the nomination pool. I suggest you self-revert. It's a strangely bold move for an editor with limited experience in the area having a single pending GA nomination and no reviewing experience. Mr rnddude (talk) 14:35, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Wow, what a bad argument. I hadn't known this discussion existed until I was pinged, but do follow G5 deletions. But from my own wiki-experience, if something is reliant on another page (i.e., a good article tag), then it should not be deleted until the other page is fixed. Why? I Ask (talk) 14:40, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

@Why? I Ask, your logic is sound but we appear to disagree on the right outcome. If you hadn't removed those tags, the reviews would have been deleted and the articles immediately delisted without the need for a GA reassessment. Your removal of the tabs forces more bureaucracy into a process that seems certain to have the same result. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:37, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I didn't know this discussion was underway, and have self-reverted. Does deleting the review automatically delist it, though? Cheers! Why? I Ask (talk) 14:42, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

No, but the GAR coordinators here and the other regulars are watching these reviews and can handle the removals. I'm the operator of ChristieBot which handles the automation of GAs and will have to check to see if it copes automatically, but I think it will. Thanks for self-reverting. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:54, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

GAN templates restored, nominators notified, GA lists fixed, GA icons removed. If there's anything else let me know, it's all up to ChristieBot now. CMD (talk) 01:55, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Thank you for doing this! Now let us quickly re-review these articles. —Kusma (talk) 07:08, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

Appears Christiebot got to it before my above comment! CMD (talk) 01:59, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

As non-admins will lose visibility, I thought it worth copying over some examples of what ChatGPT writes. 2022 South Lanarkshire Council election has "This article inspired me to pursue further research into South Lanarkshire Council elections of years past", and "Easily one of the top ten articles I have read, not only on Wikipedia but including other encyclopaedias as well." Proposed South Shore Line station in South Bend has "The prose is magnificent and fosters a vivid understanding of the proposed new South Shore Line station in South Bend in a manner befitting its unique intricacies. The use of literary devices depicts the subject in a manner befitting the depth of its coverage." 2014 NCAA Division I women's basketball championship game has "Thanks to this article, I have an in depth understanding of the 2014 NCAA Division I women’s basketball championship game. This article breaks down multiple sophisticated concepts into something that won’t just lead to understanding, but also growing." If I ever feel down, I might ask ChatGPT to review some of my articles. CMD (talk) 14:19, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I agree. And then repeated recourse to AI for reviews would count as a form of ersatz m*sturb*tion. § Lingzhi (talk) 14:26, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

Not every nomination of any TV series like Succession?

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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Hi, not every nomination of any TV series like Succession and/or episodes of The Last of Us? Since these are unable to cover the nominations. CastJared (talk) 08:40, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Hi CastJared, it is not clear exactly what you are asking. In general, most if not all articles can become Good articles, however you should not nominate an article that you did not develop yourself. Even if you did write them yourself, it is extremely odd to nominate a few dozen in the span of minutes. CMD (talk) 08:52, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

To add to that, an important exception to the general observation that most if not all articles can become Good articles is list articles (see WP:What is a good article?). So articles like List of awards and nominations received by Zendaya should not be nominated for WP:Good article status, as they are ineligible. TompaDompa (talk) 10:06, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Example: Any Succession related episodes, are set to be nominated. Soon, an editor will pull it's nominations out. CastJared (talk) 11:40, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

For context, see their talk. The issue is not just about being able to respond to feedback on all, but also as has been stated in edit summaries and your talk, your lack of contribution to the articles as required. CastJared nominated many articles for good article status and was reverted on all, eight episodes of The Last of Us (TV series) plus the series itself, House of the Dragon, Zendaya, 95th Academy Awards, Westworld (TV series), Succession (TV series), List of awards and nominations received by Zendaya, List of awards and nominations received by The White Lotus, List of awards and nominations received by Succession. Indagate (talk) 08:53, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

So not all of them are nominated? CastJared (talk) 09:30, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

All reverted so not nominated. Indagate (talk) 09:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

Another example: Remaining The Last of Us are prepared to be nominated. After that, an editor pulls it's nominations away and find out by discussing this. CastJared (talk) 11:52, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Review counting bug

There's an intermittent bug causing some reviews not to be properly counted; I'm not sure why. I'm about to go out of town for a couple of days and probably won't be able to look at this seriously till next Thursday. I should be able to fix whatever it is then, and any uncredited reviews will be added to the stats then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:35, 8 April 2023 (UTC)

This has been fixed and the GA stats page should now be up to date again. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:05, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Closing a Good Article Nomination

Can somebody help me out. I need to close a GAN, but I can't locate the version number that I should be putting in under oldid, here, {{FailedGA|~~~~~|topic=|page=|oldid=}} Can somebody advise. Many thanks. KJP1 (talk) 09:42, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

This is on the list of enhancements for ChristieBot to do automatically, but for now it has to be done manually. What I do is just go to the history of the article and pull the id from the URL of the last page in the history. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:31, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Mike - that did indeed work. Many thanks. KJP1 (talk) 10:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

There's also a script that does the entire closing process for you at User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 15:22, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

Should we make the nominator of GANs clearer?

Especially if a nomination is a quick fail, there's no easy way to see who the nominator was without digging through the article history. Neither the {{Article history}} template nor the /GA subpage currently mentions the nominator name.

Any interest in programming some of the tools or templates to stamp the nominator's name in one of those places ({{Article history}} or the /GA subpage)?

Example: Talk:All your base are belong to us/GA1

If not, no worries. Thanks. –Novem Linguae (talk) 21:43, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I've noticed this as well. It can be a bit annoying sometimes, especially when trying to look at older GA nominations where there isn't a dedicated GA subpage. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:46, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

The question I see is whether it is desirable to have the nominator featured prominently and permanently, especially for fails. It is not exactly rocket science for nominations from the recent couple of years, you find out when the review was closed as a fail and look at the previous version of the talk page to see the nominator featured in the {{GA nominee}} template at the top. —Kusma (talk) 21:54, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

This was a problem when I went trawling through article histories to build the historical GA statistics. I would like to add a "nominator=" optional parameter to FailedGA, and an "actionNnominator=" parameter to articleHistory. I proposed this, I think at the articlehistory talk page and at VPM, and got silence at one place and mild opposition at the other. I still think it would be a good idea. Kusma, it's mostly useful for situations where the talk page history doesn't easily give you that information -- for example because the relevant revisions have been deleted. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:24, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

I would be wary of having it on the talkpage, per Kusma. I wouldn't mind it on the GAN page itself, but perhaps there is a subtle way to include it, such as creating a link to the nomination diff. CMD (talk) 02:05, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

If the nominator gets mentioned on the review page, we should also have the comments field from the nomination copied there, as this is where information about collaborative nominations is usually stored. —Kusma (talk) 05:40, 11 April 2023 (UTC)

This would be great on the GAN page, next to or above the reviewer. I've often spent too much time finding this info too. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:35, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Backup reviewer needed

During the course of reviewing M1841 12-pounder howitzer, I ended up adding a paragraph of content using a source I could access and then nominator couldn't. As a result, I'm not longer independent from the article enough to pass the review. I would very much appreciate getting a backup reviewer to make a pass over the article and then pass or ask for further work as appropriate. Hog Farm _Talk 23:03, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm on it. (t · c) buidhe 23:33, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Using the original edition (available here, incidentally published 1984 not 2005), I've verified citations 37 (p. 109), 38 {p. 148), and 39 (p. 167). I'm willing to AGF on 36, as it's late and I may just have missed it, and allow Hog Farm to make a decision on the nomination. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:39, 10 April 2023 (UTC)

SyntheticSystems again

There was a recent conversation about the revews done by SyntheticSystems; it's here in the WT:GAN archives. Their reviews have generally been very skimpy -- examples are Talk:Magdalena Cajías/GA1, Talk:Schooling and the Struggle for Public Life/GA1, and Talk:Yella Hertzka/GA1, which was the subject of the previous conversation about their work. There wasn't exactly a consensus at the previous discussion, but there was agreement that the rules don't forbid reviews that don't say very much.

SyntheticSystems has a total of 11 reviews, and has nominated 5 articles at GAN, with a total of only 494 edits. These are not drive-by nominations; for the ones I've checked they are the main contributor. The low edit count against this activity made me wonder about the quality of their work. I noticed one of the articles, Verrado High School, was nominated at FAC; the nomination is here. Some of what I read there makes me think this is a WP:CIR issue -- they went to FAC because they didn't want to wait for months at GAN, and wouldn't withdraw despite being told the article was not up to standard; they attempted to make fixes but unsatisfactorily ("Fixed this. -- SyntheticSystems. / Not really. AirshipJungleman29"); they were given an example of an error by reviewer Nick-D ("The statement that "Initial plans for the school failed to consider acoustics within the auditorium" isn't supported by the source") and left that text in the article (and it's still in the article now); to the next comment from Nick they responded "I don't really know how to fix it".

I don't know what the right answer is for a user whose prose and editing skills are not good enough for GA quality. I don't mind occasionally reviewing a nomination from a user like this, but I don't think it helps the encyclopedia to have five nominations from a user like this sitting in the queue. When I review an article, I want to feel that the nominator is able to take the advice and feedback and use it to make the article better. I don't have that confidence in this case, and that also makes me think that the 11 articles they've reviewed, though they technically may have met the criteria we set at WP:GAN/I, were probably not reviewed to the standard we want to see. I think we should consider banning them from reviewing and from having more than one nomination at a time. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:10, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

FYI, it seems like they've indicated that they've quit Wikipedia on their talk page (#Inactivity section). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:24, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

My experience with them has indicated major CIR problems (in addition to what Mike has highlighted above, just see my previous comments on their talk page, or sending in ineligible DYKNs multiple times, or trying to get their own nominations reviewed by doing drive-by reviews on other nominations in the education category). This user just ignores people trying to help them or point out issues. Since they've apparently quit, we might as well pull all their nominations. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

You're literally the one who drove me off this website. Every single thing you've sent has been so incredibly rude. You act like I've been on this website for years and know every single rule and then accuse me of not listening. And then you try to do this. It's so insanely obvious that you have zero regard for new users. Why do you act like this? Are you really going to tell me that "Please do better" isn't passive aggressive? And then in that, you automatically assume that it's intentional. Some conspiracy, like I'm sending in did you knows on purpose! To waste everyone's time! And I'm planning my next move, reviewing good articles!

There is no reason for you to act like this. I just can't even comprehend acting rude to someone who doesn't know the rules. That's not right, dude. I came in here because I thought it was a fun thing to do and I was bored. And I actually found someone who helped me out. Makes it all the more disappointing that you have to flex that you've been in here for 2 years and act better than everyone else. Not cool. And you lack the ability to see that this your impact on me. You're the one who hasn't been listening.

I'm not gonna lie, I make mistakes. But instead of trying to help me, you just do the easy thing of attacking me for making mistakes. You can't seriously expect people to go along with that. And then you lie and say I'm inactive? I literally said I didn't want to review it because I just thought it was way too much and I kept telling that editor stuff to improve it and it still wasn't good enough so I just left it. Way to twist my words dude.

I guess you win. If this is how most of the editors on here act, I'm not going to give them any more satisfaction. SyntheticSystems (talk) 17:51, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Should we explicitly ban AI reviewing?

There has been discussion above about a reviewer being blocked, who seemingly used ChatGPT or a similar tool to create his reviews, with sometimes funny results ("I now understand that Ontario Highway 11 is a paved road that vehicles use to travel."), but which generated a large headache to clean up. It seems prudent to explicitly ban using AI for reviewing, by means of adding a short line somewhere in the instructions along the lines of "thou shalt not use AI", but I wanted to gather consensus before going forward with such a change. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 13:43, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Seems like a sadly necessary (Sadnecessary) rule addition. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 15:36, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we probably need to. If we can tell... Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:13, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

It's common sense not to do that right? It's instruction creep to mention "don't use AI" in dozens of policies. Instructions are probably overly long for new users as is. They instruction, especially around spot checks, already preclude this. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 16:33, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I wonder if this might be something that's better handled at a sitewide level. I get the impression that the community is leaning against LLM content being welcome in any namespace. I'm worried that explicitly listing everything not to do on a review will become a WP:CREEP issue. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 16:34, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

I think we should explicitly say here that we don't accept AI reviews. These are a much bigger problem than people using AI to copyedit. If a sitewide AI ban happens, we can go and remove any redundant instructions at that point. —Kusma (talk) 17:17, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

It should go without saying and it feels like a bit of both WP:CREEP and WP:BEANS to add to the instructions, but on the other hand this is apparently already happening... I agree that it would be preferable to address this sitewide. TompaDompa (talk) 17:13, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Ppl who are using llms are probably not the same ones as read the directions. The main benefit of making it explicit that I can see is to make it easier to overturn bad reviews. (t · c) buidhe 17:40, 13 April 2023 (UTC)

Fair point. TompaDompa (talk) 17:46, 13 April 2023 (UTC)