Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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Good article nominations

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

RfC on the sort order of WP:GAN

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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How should the nomination categories at Wikipedia:Good article nominations be sorted?

• Option 1: by age, with oldest nominations at the top of sections and newest nominations at the bottom (the pre-2023 system).
• Option 2: by the nominator's ratio of reviews to nominations, with higher ratios placed at top and lower ratios at bottom (the current system, adopted after the proposal drive in early 2023).
• Option 3: as at option 2, but with the ratio calculated using only reviews and nominations from within the previous 18 months (an adaptation of the current system proposed above by User:Mike Christie).

~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Option 4: by a score that incorporates both age and nominator's reviewing activity

—Kusma (talk) 09:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Survey

• Option 1 I supported the change to the current system at the proposal drive. A year and a month on, I do not think it has accomplished its aim of encouraging reviewing. The older system was fairer to all and just plain simpler; the added complexity introduced by the new sort order was not great. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Ultimately, I also think the current system is a bit of a failed experiment. It's pretty hard to understand what exactly makes a GAN "score" higher. And moreover, often times being good at reviewing and being good at content creation are separate skillsets (although they often overlap). Generalissima (talk) 04:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. Like Airship, I supported the change at the proposal drive, but have come to see it as a mistake. The sharp increase in backlog can be dated almost precisely to the end of the proposal drive, and I can't see it as unrelated. The dated sort order is, as I said above, transparent, obvious, and impartial. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:07, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 Currently, there are 228 articles that are 3 months or older at GAN. Of these 228, 57 are 6 months or older. Currently, the oldest nomination (9 months) is in the middle of the Politics section. Therefore, I think reordering by nomination date to show the backlog would be more helpful. Perhaps the ratio can be revisited once the backlog of nominations has been lowered to 3 months and under. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 05:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 4. The change to review order has led to significantly faster reviews for my noms, which is very pleasant and has encouraged me to keep my reviews-to-noms ratio high. However, I believe nominations should slowly rise to the top with age. Let's have both instead of one or the other. —Kusma (talk) 09:15, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 I don't think it will make any difference in the review rate, but I agree with some comments above that there is some value to having a simpler system that folks can understand at a glance. I'd still like a reviewer's ratio of reviews:nominations to be visible as I personally prefer to review articles from those who contribute to the process. I'd also support finding some way to highlight newcomers' nominations for review, though I'm not sure what form that should take. Ajpolino (talk) 14:49, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 is simplest, easiest to understand, and neutral. The experimental order has been interesting but as others have commented has not reduced the backlog, rather the reverse, though whether it was the cause is not easy to determine. Chiswick Chap (talk) 16:44, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, but I think Kusma's idea is probably worth trialling. I think it will be a more useful test if there's a reset to the earlier status quo and a backlog drive between now and a change to Option 4, though. -- asilvering (talk) 17:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, the most straightforward of all. Also not opposed to Option 4 or still showing the ratio between reviews and nominations. Skyshiftertalk 17:42, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2. I like the current prioritization, and especially the way that it groups all nominators by a single nominator together. Option 1 doesn't have that feature. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  @David Eppstein Hypothetically speaking, would you prefer this option or one that's grouped first by nominator? Right now they're grouped into headings by topic before being grouped by nom. I think it would be interesting to see GANs grouped by nom, in order of review ratio (highest reviews:GAs at the top), without the articles being sorted out by topic first. -- asilvering (talk) 20:39, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

  I definitely want them grouped by topics first. That is the first thing I look for when finding nominations to review. Most of the big popular topic categories are of no interest to me and having to wade through their nominations to find the ones I care about would be very off-putting. Grouping by nominator is secondary to that. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1. To the extent there's any perceived need to organize these by some other method for certain purposes, that might be something automatable with software (e.g. generate it on another page, or use the same page and render a sortable table, or whatever).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  13:06, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1. I find the old way fairer and more straightforward. I do think there are ways to keep nudging people to review, which was ultimately the reason for the previous change. Definitely keep showing the numbers of reviews and GAs for each nominator. Suggest maybe bolding the nominations of new nominators? A goal was to help keep the backlog down, but I'm not sure that we were accomplishing that since there was no direct reward for your efforts. I'd rather see a predictable GA backlog drive schedule and closer coordination with other efforts such as the WikiCup, or new pages patrol drives. Let's think outside of the GA silo and more about editor engagement overall. Grk1011 (talk) 19:11, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 for now but I'd be open to Option 4. The current system results in some nominations just not ever being picked up because they appear low-priority despite being among the oldest, while flooding the tops of the lists with 0/0 nominators whose submissions are often well below par or are drive-bys that don't warrant high priority. We should encourage new nominators, but not by burying nominations by experienced nominators who have kept good review/nomination ratios below loads of low-quality 0/0 submissions. Hog Farm _Talk 15:53, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 2 - I believe that prioritizing newer nominators and incentivizing frequent nominators to review is worthwhile, and the benefits of this outweigh a possible reduction in total reviews completed. However, I can see that Option 1 will likely be re-adopted, and it does have the genuine advantages of simplicity and clarity. —Ganesha811 (talk) 20:16, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1, to encourage priority of older articles, for efficiency’s sake. Zanahary (talk) 00:51, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 keep it simple. JM (talk) 03:34, 27 February 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 – Age should take precedence, and the current system doesn't add enough weight to push older nominations through. SounderBruce 00:16, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
• Option 1 makes the most sense to me. -- ZooBlazer 00:21, 1 March 2024 (UTC)
• I like option 4 in theory, but in practice I believe option 1 is most practical. I share the thoughts of those who previously supported the change (I was one of them) but it seems clear to me it has led to a major increase in old nominations. As long as the nominations/reviews ratio remains visible, I have no issue with the change since I can still ignore nominations by those who refuse to review. My ultimate preference would be a sortable table making this entire issue moot. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:17, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

  Is User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms what you're looking for? Or (for example) would it also need to be divided by topic? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:59, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

• Option 1 seems the easiest to understand. TheDoctorWho (talk) 05:59, 4 March 2024 (UTC)

Discussion

• Of course, many thanks to Mike Christie for giving so much time and effort to allow us to fiddle with the sort order in the first place. Your efforts are much appreciated. Ajpolino (talk) 14:53, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• For what it’s worth, the current system encouraged me to do my first two GA reviews. It’s nice to see an immediate impact of my reviews by looking at the queue. If we go back to a simple time-based sorting, I think it’s worth exploring more ways to positively reinforce reviewing GAs. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 20:31, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
• One thing I've noticed about the current system, that I'm guessing is an unintended side-effect, is that it incentivizes quickfailing nominations to boost one's own review statistics. I've certainly been much more inclined to review clearly-premature nominations as a result—it is a much more modest commitment of time to identify disqualifying issues than to rule them out (let alone highlighting them and making sure that they are resolved before closing a nomination as successful). Whether this is a good thing is perhaps something people can have differing opinions about. TompaDompa (talk) 21:04, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
• Consensus seems to be clear already, and this RfC can probably be closed in favour of option 1 before the full 30 days (per WP:NOTBURO, and it might be useful for those competing in the current backlog drive), if anyone is willing to do the closing. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:31, 4 March 2024 (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.

Adding a note to say I've seen this and will probably be able to make the change this evening (US east coast time). Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:10, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Done, I think; let me know if there are any issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:03, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

I've updated the guidelines (which are transcluded at the top of GAN) to remove the explanation of the sort order, since we're now sorting by age again. The guidelines still have a box that shows the "5 highest priority" unreviewed articles, with priority defined by the old sort order. Do we leave this in, and change its description, or just remove it? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:22, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Personally, I think leaving it up is a good compromise between the old sort order and the by-age sort order. -- asilvering (talk) 00:01, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Microsoft Gaming Another invalid GA review

Well, this might take the record for the quickest quickpass. Talk:Microsoft Gaming/GA1

@Cocobb8: Please review the Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations/Instructions and various GA reviews similar to the one you're reviewing.

Coords: I am not sure how to undo an improper review, but can we put this one back on the list? Generalissima (talk) 15:25, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Generalissima. Sure. May I ask which criteria you think is not met? I have spent much time thoroughly reading and reviewing the article and reading sources to check verifiability. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:29, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Quickly skimming through, the criteria may very well be met, but you have to do a prose, source, and image review even when an article passes. Read through the text and make sure that there are

• no parts that are unclear or difficult to understand, that it fully complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation (criterion 1a and 1b);
• check at least some of the sources to make sure they agree with the sections cited by them in the article;
• make sure it doesn't have any neutrality issues such as unattributed praise or criticism;
• check the history to make sure that it is not currently affected by an edit war (this one is the easiest);
• and review the images to make sure none of them are improperly licensed. Generalissima (talk) 15:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

For reference, here's another review of a Microsoft-related GA: Talk:Microsoft_Office_XP/GA1 this is the level of depth you have to do, even for an article that primarily meets the criteria! Generalissima (talk) 15:38, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Cocobb8: The point of doing the review page is for you state what you checked and that the article passed each criteria. You cannot just close the review as "passed" because we can then doubt your honesty. You claim to have checked sources for verifiability but with no notes, how can we be sure about statements like rivalry in the console market? Did you check the images for licensing? Please take a look at my past GA reviews to orient yourself to expectations. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:37, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Ah, I see what you're getting at. I didn't know I had to write about what I had been reviewing! Thanks for letting me know. Is there anything I need to do now? Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:42, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

If all criteria are met, you should at least present a source spot-check. Skyshiftertalk 15:51, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

All right. Would you like to re-assess the article as B-class for now? I will need a couple days to complete that. Thanks! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:53, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I would also take notes about my progress and be in contact with the authors for areas of improvements if encountered. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 15:55, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

You are meant to follow the instructions at WP:GAN/I#R3. Wikipedia's processes are an open book test. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:01, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I see, thank you. Is anyone able to move the article back to B-class for the time being? Thanks! I will also be letting the nominator of the article know about this. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 16:04, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

It's not necessarily the case that the article has to revert to B-class. Could you post on the GA review page notes that show what you reviewed, including what you spotchecked? It sounds like that might be enough to meet the GA instruction requirements. If there's still an issue we can talk about that then. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:05, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Ok. I will be completing this over the next few days. Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 16:13, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Cocobb8, if it helps, this is an example of an easy GA review I did recently where the article was a very obvious pass. The review is still 13,000 bytes long (and I don't request any minor grammar changes - these are only questions/edits I couldn't sort out myself while reading). Furthermore, it's worth keeping in mind that even if you think an article is an obvious pass of the GA criteria and don't have any changes to request to get it up to that level, it's a good idea to give some feedback for improvement. (Just don't imply that these are necessary for the article to pass review.) For a lot of articles going to GAN, this is really their first moment of collaboration. It's not just about putting a seal of approval on an article. The more constructive you can make it, the better. -- asilvering (talk) 20:11, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Reading this discussion, I can't help but think about the fact that my own reviews can be quite short when the article is in good shape. I just looked at my last twenty or so reviews; this is the shortest, but there were two or three others not much longer. Would that be an acceptable review under current standards? I did check all the criteria; I just didn't say so. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:17, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

With the spotcheck presented, I think it's perfectly acceptable. Skyshiftertalk 20:18, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

OK -- then I don't think we should be asking new reviewers to do more than that, either. I understand that for a first-time reviewer we want a bit of extra confidence that they did check the criteria, but if they list what they spotchecked and the article doesn't seem an obvious fail, should we be pushing new reviewers to write more than I would write? I'm asking because (as discussed here many times) every time we raise the bar, we drive away another small percentage of reviewers. I think perhaps both I and Chris T overstated above what Cocobb8 ought to be putting in their review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:31, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you all for the feedback! How about I complete my review (I will aim to write quite a lot), and then you guys can give me some feedback? Also, where can I find some templates for review instead of writing out everything from scratch? Thanks again... Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 20:48, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

The templates are at Wikipedia:Good article nominations/templates. Reminder to keep Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions#Reviewing open while you work, until you've got the hang of it. You may also be interested in User:Novem Linguae/Scripts/GANReviewTool. -- asilvering (talk) 20:52, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you! Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 21:33, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

@Mike Christie I think it's clear enough, and it's 1500 bytes, so that's very short, but not so short that it would be disqualified in next month's backlog drive, for example. In this case, the article itself is also very short, so I wouldn't expect a huge review. You could use one of the checklist templates if you wanted to make it more obvious that you'd checked everything. I would say that personally I don't think spot-checking only three footnotes is sufficient. Others disagree with me on this, but I literally always turn up something in source-checking, so I would never stop at three. Sometimes it's only minor stuff, like the review I linked in my previous comment. Often though, I find something that suggests to me that the article is missing something important, so I don't check off "broad in coverage" until the source checks are over. -- asilvering (talk) 20:36, 27 February 2024 (UTC)

I have finished my review. How does that look in terms of notes taken? Cocobb8 (💬 talk • ✏️ contribs) 16:04, 28 February 2024 (UTC)

Inactive nominators

Has there ever been a discussion on how to handle articles awaiting review if the nominator is inactive? It seems unfair to the reviewer if they're working on a review where the comments are unlikely to be addressed, especially if the reviewer didn't notice the inactivity warning. I wonder if hiding the noms or moving them into a separate section (like when a nominator has too many noms) might be a good idea. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

There's already a bot that states they are inactive after a certain period. I usually ping them and then close if they don't respond. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:22, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I've occasionally run into nominators who simply lurk and make no other edits till the nomination is picked up, so I think Lee's approach is a good one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:26, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I boldly remove noms with 50+ days of inactivity, with a comment stating what I'm up to and why, and directing people to revert me if they choose. No ping though. Seems to work reasonably well. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:11, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

There was a discussion on this on the 2023 proposal drive, which led to inactive nominators being flagged by bot. My opinion is that valid nominations (made/approved by significant contributors) deserve to be reviewed properly. If you know a reviewer is inactive then you should assume that the article is static and that you will either need to fix minor problems yourself (in order to pass) or explain what the major issues are (in order to fail). Sometimes you might be surprised to see a nominator respond after several months of no edits, and you can also notify a relevant WikiProject early in the "on hold" period to see if anyone can action feedback. — Bilorv (talk) 22:50, 2 March 2024 (UTC)

I treat them as I would any other review: make comments, leave for seven days if necessary, and pass/fail as appropriate. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:26, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Review accidentally started

An editor left a message on the talk page of Marvel Cinematic Universe: Phase One saying that they unintentionally started the GA review. Can someone please delete the review page? -- ZooBlazer 23:39, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

G6’ed. Courcelles (talk) 23:41, 3 March 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Ariana Grande/GA3

Ariana Grande was poorly quickfailed by a very inexperienced editor yesterday. I have reached out to them on their talk page and they agree that it was not a good review, and don't wish to carry on any further. Since there was commentary, however minimal, I've opted not to G6 the review. Instead I've ticked the count up by one, again, and left it (hopefully??) in the queue in its original position from July last year. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 01:06, 5 March 2024 (UTC)

Potentially non-thorough GA review

My nomination St Melangell's Church, Pennant Melangell was recently promoted to GA after a pretty short review which didn't give me very much feedback - I'd like a second opinion in case there's anything pressing I should improve about it, so that it truly meets the criteria. I've gone and done some tweaking and cleanup since the review, & fixed some of my own mistakes, just to make sure it's in the best shape it can be. Thanks! sawyer * he/they * talk 01:44, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Have you asked the reviewer, Sawyer-mcdonell? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:57, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

done (messaged privately) sawyer * he/they * talk 01:59, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Give me about an hour and I should be good. Geardona (talk to me?) 11:45, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks! I think this should be resolved now. sawyer * he/they * talk 18:37, 6 March 2024 (UTC)

Mathematics articles and adherence to GA criteria

When nominating articles for WP:GAR as part of WP:SWEEPS2023, I am rarely faced with opposition. However, when I nominate mathematics-related articles, I often find myself having to defend the GAR process as a whole against editors who see it as a waste of time (see e.g. the GARs for Derivative or Vector space). As I understand, these editors often feel that WP:BLUE and WP:CALC covers nearly everything mathematics-related, and so adding inline citations is an optional extra, rather than a necessity. Do they have a point?

I ask this here because sitting rather on top of the sweeps pile are articles such as Matrix (mathematics), Hilbert space, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits, and Fast inverse square root. Compared to the articles currently lying in WP:GAN#Mathematics, they seem woefully undercited, but I know that if I were to nominate any of them at GAR I'd get accused of wasting other people's time by nominating articles that shouldn't have to meet the criteria. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:21, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

There is nothing special about words typed into articles labeled as mathematics that exempt them from verification.

(Sorry, but in my personal opinion GAR is a kind shaming process that is pointless; GA invests too much effort on one article. So perhaps the pushback is not what you think it is). Johnjbarton (talk) 22:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

My main argument is that you, AJ29, seem to see GAR as a personal crusade to remove the GA status from as many articles as possible, as quickly as possible, ostensibly as a kind of devil's advocate, but don't really seem to care about engaging productively to make improvements to those articles or actively doing any substantial amount of work to fix the problems you see. It seems to me mostly like a power trip.

I haven't seen a single example where you started by making a talk page discussion, went source hunting, cleaned up prose you thought was unsupportable, etc. Instead you basically lead with the threat "I'm AJ29 and I'm here to take your green badge away". Even the criticisms are vague and low-effort: [I don't think this type of short vague "review" is useful. R]ather than carefully going through and checking sources, calling out specific passages you find [considered] problematic, etc., i.e. something like a peer-review with specific and actionable feedback which would take some effort and demonstrate your good faith, the critiques are along the lines of "violates subsection A.X.5 of the updated GA code" or whatever. These criticisms don't generally seem based in whether the article is clear in scope, well organized, helpful to readers, well written, etc., and in my experience the [challenged] articles you challenge seem generally better in quality than newly promoted GA I have seen. Other editors are forced to scramble, setting aside whatever else they were working on to spend probably 10–100x more effort than you have[a challenger has] to spend to make the demands in the first place. For you [the challenger,] making the challenge takes a few minutes, but you expect other editors [are expected] to spend tens of hours of work satisfying it.

I think this is a demotivating waste of time which undermines the concept of "good articles". Instead of trying to work through the long list of mediocre articles on the site and bring them up to a high quality standard, with some kind of marker to show that progress, GA becomes an exercise in repeatedly jumping through adversarial trials to prove that ever changing bureaucratic checklists have been satisfied.

In my opinion the best way to fix this process would be to (1) encourage GAR fans to start by fixing simple problems they see and start specific talk page discussions about problems that can't be quickly fixed, instead of kicking off threatening formal processes, and (2) require a GAR "review" to be an actual review, akin to the review stage of an initial good article nomination, where a reviewer leads off with a detailed examination of the article, actually going through sentence by sentence or at least section by section and coming up with some detailed feedback, and then goes back and forth with other editors to fix whatever problems were found. –jacobolus (t) 22:56, 7 March 2024 (UTC)

Impugning another editor's motives as you have done here is an egregious assumption of bad faith. I am politely asking you to strike your accusation that he is on a "power trip" and acting out some kind of vendetta. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:34, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

jacobolus, you are correct that the current system has speed as a major priority. You may not be familiar with the previous versions of GAR as a process, which was rather close to your proposed system. It was also so ridiculously slow that reassessments were often simply forgotten about indefinitely. In the end, after discussions like this and the 2023 proposal drive, the process was reorganised so that everything could be carried out much faster.

You may also be unfamiliar with the situation outside of the articles I notify you of. Aside from maths articles, military history articles, and articles on important subjects, most GARs do not get much participation at all (you can see this from the archives). Thus, as with the GAN quickfail procedure, it is a bit odd to demand a full review for an article that clearly does not meet the criteria, and which probably will receive no attention anyway.

I know that you hold the requirement for inline citations in contempt, but as it was added rather recently after a well-attended RfC, and the community consensus is clear that it is as important as being "clear in scope, well organized, helpful to readers, well-written, etc." and that articles without them are, in fact, part of the "long list of mediocre articles".

At the end of the day, all GA is is a classification system. If you don't want to bring the article up to the standards of a set of criteria you hold in open contempt, you can ... just not. I assure you that my ego will not be affected. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:44, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The current system seems to have "remove as many green badges as fast as possible as its current priority". Which seems like a waste of time without particular value added to the project.

The part that adds value is the actual work being done, whether concrete and actionable critique or serious effort to improve articles.

odd to demand a full review

The only folks demanding anything of anyone are the "GAR" reviewers. Other editors generally just want to spend their effort on improving articles. I just think it's pointless to have a "review" that doesn't involve any actual reviewing. At the end of that process you remove some badges, but what good does that do anyone? It hasn't made the articles better. It hasn't really encouraged anyone to contribute who wasn't already. All it does is (sometimes) distract people from whatever site improvements they thought were most important to instead redirect their attention to making defensive marginal improvements based on what one GAR reviewer thought was most important. But if the GAR reviewer cares so much, they should put in some of the work.

The categorizing scheme of "these articles ticked off a list of features and these don't" does not correlate especially closely with article quality and scattering little badges on that basis does not provide any particular value to readers. The part of the GA and FA process that is valuable is the direct peer review part, where someone takes the time and effort to closely read an article and provide clear and direct feedback. I thought the whole point of the process was to facilitate that and encourage people to try to do good work. From these discussions it generally seems like the folks involved at GAR don't actually care about thinking deeply about / working deeply on article quality. So you're right, at that point I think it's a waste of attention. –jacobolus (t) 02:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

At the end of that process you remove some badges, but what good does that do anyone?

It means the articles that say they are good are good. Remsense诉 02:29, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

In practice I just don't find that to be true. I routinely find "unbadged" articles which are excellent and GAs and FAs which seem incomplete, poorly organized, poorly illustrated, misleading, confusing, ... But hey, at least every sentence has a footnote. –jacobolus (t) 02:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

jacobolus are we really going to have another favourite merry-go-round? The one where you tell me "you're an anti-intellectual egomaniac time-waster on a power trip" and I tell you that your arbitrary, WP:V-excluding definition of article quality is at odds with everyone else's? Really? I just wanted to know about how far to tale WP:CALC, for heaven's sake. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:46, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

No, this is totally unfair. AJM is very good with being clear and concise in his review work Every nom of his I've seen was adequate or well-deserved.

Also, regarding your feeling that this undermines the concept of GAs, I feel exactly the opposite. It's nice knowing that the status usually actually means what it says it means, and doesn't also include what are frankly almost always not good articles by the letter or spirit of the criteria. The problem is not that people notice the articles are not up to snuff, it's that the articles are not up to snuff and sit there for years.

You are adamant that cleanup work should be done by the nominator before nomination—just as well, why can't it be done by someone who's worried about articles getting nominated for a review? This attitude borders on childish. Remsense诉 00:52, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Of course anyone can (and should) do whatever kind of article cleanup they think is valuable at any time. But twiddling metadata (e.g. adding cleanup banners) doesn't accomplish any concrete improvement. Only actually putting work in (tracking down sources, comparing them, summarizing them, writing/copyediting prose, making diagrams, checking existing claims, fixing formatting errors, etc.) accomplishes that.

The problem is not that people notice the articles are not up to snuff, it's that the articles are not up to snuff and sit there for years. – the vast majority of articles on Wikipedia are "not up to snuff", including many about essential topics that are viewed thousands of times every day. The only way to improve them is to actually do the work. –jacobolus (t) 02:29, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

If anything, I see delisted GAs as low-hanging fruit, so I suppose I don't understand why the badge both matters as a symbol of pride and directs the effort of editors, but whether it's on or off an article is twiddling metadata. It genuinely just seems like a difference in tact between two people wanting to improve the encyclopedia—all of us want the same thing. I genuinely find both approaches helpful and constructive. Remsense诉 02:32, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Anyway, I'm going to go work on articles now. You folks here can do what you like. If everyone loves removing little badges and wants to get in on the fun, fair enough. Don't let me stop you. I'll try to ignore future GAR posts. –jacobolus (t) 02:43, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Forgive me if I don't believe you; you've said this before. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:47, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

You just made this new post asking for people to explain why they thought this process was messed up, and pinged WT:WPM, so I responded here for your benefit. –jacobolus (t) 03:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

That's not why...did you actually read...never mind. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

What you said was As I understand, these editors often feel that WP:BLUE and WP:CALC covers nearly everything mathematics-related, – that's not an accurate characterization of the critique that editors have presented. –jacobolus (t) 04:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

No, I believe it is an accurate characterization of a critique which accepts that GAR as it stands has a use, and which thus can be discussed productively. As your critique seemingly necessitates the constant disregard for the consensus that has established that GAR does have a use, in addition to the constant use of ad hominem attacks against others, I don't really regard it as productive. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I am telling you you are mischaracterizing people including myself, based on a misunderstanding / misinterpretation of the dispute. In response, you are insisting that you are accurately channeling what you imagine they might say if only they thought what you think.... but they don't, which is why there were arguments about it. Nobody ever said anything remotely comparable to WP:BLUE and WP:CALC covers nearly everything mathematics-related, which is an extreme straw man exaggeration.

You can "believe" whatever you want, and nobody can reach into your head and force a change in that. But that doesn't make it any less a mischaracterization. –jacobolus (t) 04:52, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@AirshipJungleman29 Are you referring to unsourced paragraphs in those GAs? I prefer to improve the article, avoiding the articles potentially nominating to GAR. However, from my experience, this seems very exhausting, especially since the work is difficult for me if I have no expertise in some fields of mathematics. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 02:48, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Assuming you are talking about the articles outlined in my original comment, yes I am. If you would be willing to work on them, that would be much appreciated; could you just note it in the "Notes" column of the table at WP:SWEEPS2023? Many thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:58, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I can't and I have no idea. I could only provide some sources and improvement only. Sorry :-( At least, I'm trying my best. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 03:53, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Quite frankly, that's far more than most do Dedhert.Jr, so thank you nonetheless. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:38, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Inre "WP:CALC" per se, math articles are not fundamentally different than any other kind of articles, in the sense that factual claims should typically be sourced to reliable sources. However, there are some differences in the way that plays out in practice: Specifically, it doesn't make any sense to try to add a separate citation to every step in a proof or derivation or every example calculation, which is the kinds of questions WP:CALC is focused on. Sometimes the argument from a paper needs several paragraphs to summarize/transmit in the body of an article, and requiring separate footnotes at the end of every paragraph of this doesn't help anyone. If a published paper contains a quick proof sketch it seems entirely fine (when otherwise appropriate in context) for an article to expand that for the sake of novice readers, and vice versa if the published paper contains a detailed proof it's fine to give a quick paraphrase. It also seems fine to use different variable names, add intermediate variables for legibility, simplify or reorder a proof, do non-novel types of algebraic manipulation, etc., so long as the idea is fundamentally the same.

After a quick skim all of Matrix (mathematics), Hilbert space, Newton's theorem of revolving orbits, and Fast inverse square root seem like quite well written articles to me, with many provided sources. Do you have a specific claim or section you are concerned about? –jacobolus (t) 04:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jacobolus I would expect they specifically refer to the unsourced facts. For example, in the Matrix (mathematics), the section about the matrix's size needs citation in order to verify the fact what the source mentions (GACR2b). I do think there are lot of problems before they implemented to GAR.

By the way, this is some kind of positive assumption, in my opinion. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The claim "The size of a matrix is defined by the number of rows and columns it contains" seems to be pretty WP:BLUE to me. But it also doesn't hurt anything to add a footnote to this paragraph pointed at literally any linear algebra book ever written (just as it doesn't really hurt anything to add a citation for a claim about the sky's color, if someone wants to). I don't think the lack of such a footnote reflects in any way on the article's quality, but if someone enjoys footnotes or has a favorite student-friendly book they (didn't write and) want to promote, they are certainly welcome to add one. –jacobolus (t) 04:19, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Well. I would personally suggest to add them whether they are WP:BLUE or not. For some reason, I would not add sources in the case of calculation and common examples per WP:CALC. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

If you want to ground it in something other than vibes—which would be my initial impulse—intuitionists would find significantly more cause to provide citations for derived statements of mathematical fact. Remsense诉 04:33, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

As a concrete example, take Pythagorean theorem#Euclid's proof. I don't think this section is particularly well written: it's disjointed, somewhat stilted, hard for high school students to follow, somewhat anachronistic in the use of algebraic notation, etc. I think we could do better with a complete rewrite. But the sourcing for the bulk of section, in particular the inclusion of the line "which appears in Euclid's Elements as that of Proposition 47 in Book 1", is more than minimally sufficient. Nothing in that section should be attacked for being unsourced, in my opinion, even though there are paragraphs, numbered list items, etc. without footnotes. –jacobolus (t) 04:42, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Jacobolus I see. Speaking of the article Pythagorean theorem, this article is already indiscretion in which some random proofs of the theorem, and some generalizations of the theorem. I would prefer to create the article about the proofs of Pythagorean theorem in many ways, especially the fact that it is an amazement that one of U.S. presidents have proved the Pythagorean theorem in different approach. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:49, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Dedhert.Jr I don't think an article about a specific theorem needs a separate second article about its proofs, but feel free to start a new discussion at talk:Pythagorean theorem. –jacobolus (t) 05:06, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Don't forget to invite other members in WP:WPM. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:12, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

GA is a very low bar. If a section is not particularly well written, then WP:SOFIXIT but do not take it to GAR. Articles wait for months to be picked up at GAN, but someone thinks that we should respond to a GAR in seven days? Hell no. Seven months is reasonable. And no user should open more than one at a time. If someone says: "I disagree", then there is no consensus, and the GAR can be closed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 05:44, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

The more I've thought about this, the more I think we're better off instituting a notification requirement for GAR, like exists with FAR. I really don't see how a week's notification time before sending to GAR would have negative effects and it would resolve some issues with crossed wires. Things like Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/California State Route 11/1 could probably have been handled better from the talk page than at GAR anyway, as well as maybe some of the GARs that request material to be updated when there is a lack of obvious things to include in an update, such as Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Francis Bok/1. A GAR version of WP:FARGIVEN could then be created. Concurrent nomination limits like exist at FAR I think would also be a good idea. There needs to be a balance between removing status for articles that are clearly deficient and making the process respectful and helpful for nominators/maintainers of GAs. I would also say that topic areas like mathematics and physics and such things will have a limited base of editors who are familiar enough with the subject matter to make the needed corrections, so limiting the frequency of nominating GARs in those topic areas would be best to avoid burnout/embitterment among the small number of editors who can actually work on those articles. Hog Farm _Talk 14:10, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I agree in general with HF that a more FAR-like system would be helpful here, including the nomination limit and some more extended time. Even in FAR, we sometimes have an issue where too many articles of a particular topic are up for review, leading to burnout of exactly the editors we hope to keep engaged, so no one is handling this perfectly.

For the record, I think the denigration of AJ29's motives and actions has been unwarranted and tragic, and I'm grateful for their efforts to keep some sort of review system running. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 14:22, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

A notification system for GAN would be helpful.Z1720 (talk) 16:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Sure, I can do that. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:42, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Speaking as an editor who nominates at GAR: I want to emphasise that it is not the reviewer's responsibility to ensure an article maintains GA status, just like it is not a reviewer's responsibility to improve a GAN so it can reach GA status. A reviewer's role is to post concerns so that subject-area specialists can address them. If a fix is minor, the reviewer probably should fix it themselves, but analysing sources to include new prose and inline citations is not a quick fix. Requiring reviewers to look for citations and add additional prose is basically asking the reviewer to take hours, days, or even weeks away from their own projects to fix "your" article of interest. In my opinion, this is unfair; I try to maintain the articles which I want to retain their status, so I believe that if others want an article to retain a status, it is their responsibility to maintain them. Z1720 (talk) 16:04, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

This is such a basic distinction between reviewer and nominator/saver that I'm surprised it's up for discussion. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:17, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

@Firefangledfeathers: And yet there have been many times when people responded to GAN nominations with WP:SOFIXIT, demanding that I improve their article so they can keep the GA status for "their" article. Z1720 (talk) 16:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Sad. I'm not sure what I'd suggest except neutral posts here seeking more input. Hopefully our GAR coordinators are holding the line on delisting if no one steps up to save the article.

Speaking of saves, it might also help to have a GA Save Award. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 16:31, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Articles don't have owners, cf. WP:OWN. All of the articles under discussion here were edited sporadically by a wide range of people, many/most of the most active of whom are no longer active on the site. If there's an implicit GA criterion of "needs to have several editors permanently commit to rewriting the article within a week any time the GA criteria change and a challenger demands it", that should be stated explicitly. From what I can tell there aren't enough people interested in indefinitely closely maintaining an unbounded collection of GAs from across the site, especially technical articles, so under the current GAR scheme the likely result is that over time the number of GAs will gradually dwindle and end up mostly focused on niche articles with few readers and limited impact. That's fine I guess. We should then calibrate our goals; it ends up being a better use of editors' time to do reviews and improvements of ordinary articles about topics of central importance independently of the GA process, aim for "B" class, and leave the GA badges to people with the time to play point-scoring games full time. –jacobolus (t) 16:54, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

It is up for discussion because while the distinction between reviewer and nominator is basic, it is frequently violated at GAR, where the same person sometimes performs both roles. The person who nominates an article for GAR should not be not the reviewer. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 22:23, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

So what I'm hearing when you write that is that you think the role of nominator is to be a drive-by make-work-for-everyone-else busybody. That is not a constructive thing to be. If that is what our process pushes people to do, we should fix the process to be more constructive. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:05, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Your point about GAR reviewers sometimes playing dual roles is a good one. If there are reviewers that are closing their own contentious GARs, that's a problem worth looking at. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:09, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

When a nominator thinks that their only effort should be to attract subject specialists, without any sourcing effort themselves, for a process that concludes in weeks, in a subject area where new nominations typically languish for literally months for a subject expert to take interest in reviewing, we have a broken process. If that's the process, then why not simplify it to "we should delist all mathematics articles because we don't have enough subject experts jostling to be the first to respond to a GAR". That would be faster and less painful. Instead, we get demands for the attention of a limited pool of editors who have better things to do than to find citations for 1+1=2 (hint: "a thousand pages" of detailed mathematics in Principia Mathematica) because the nominator doesn't understand the subject even at the level necessary to recognize WP:BLUE topics. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:13, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

I have to agree. The number of editors who are both fluent in the subject matter and passionate about inserting footnotes is very small. Each GAR sprung on this population is a demand for a large share of a scarce resource. Moreover, just speaking from my personal experience, the improvements required to get a pass at GAR come down to citations nearly entirely, but the work that the article actually needs to be "good" for readers are in other aspects (flow, organization, etc.). At GAR, it seems that one is always being graded on a small portion of what actually matters, and the grading of that small portion is done in a mechanical way. Trying to "save" an article at GAR is only partially aligned with writing a lowercase-g good article. One is then faced with a choice: spend time at GAR instead of working on pages that are in some ways more important, or stop caring about whether math articles have green stickers. XOR'easter (talk) 02:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Readers don't care about copyright. They don't care about violations of WP:BLP. They don't care about whether the images they see are correctly licensed. They don't care about WP:NOT. Wikipedia does though—that is why all of them, and WP:V, are classified equally as policies.

If you only care about what makes "a lowercase-g good article", I have a solution: grab a copy of your nearest maths textbook, and straight-up plagiarise the relevant sections and post it on a blog. I guarantee that readers will find it absolutely damn perfect. But Wikipedia is for what Wikipedia deems important, and GA is for what Wikipedia, not the readership, deems good. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 02:47, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

The hostility and WP:AGF violations evident in your comment serve no purpose, unless your purpose is to drive editors away from the GA process. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:51, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I guess that's the anti-intellectual in me. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

If you only care about what makes "a lowercase-g good article", I have a solution: grab a copy of your nearest maths textbook, and straight-up plagiarise the relevant sections and post it on a blog. I understand that you are being facetious for rhetorical effect, but even without any problem with copyright, this would be a terrible solution. (a) The math book already exists and math books are not hard to obtain on the internet. Anyone who wants to find math books and papers can trivially find more than they can shake a stick at. But (b) text copied directly from math textbooks usually does not make a good encyclopedia article. Math books and encyclopedia articles serve substantially different purposes with substantially different audiences. They have different focus, different organization, different expected prerequisites, expect different levels of commitment and interest, and so on. Concretely, encyclopedia articles are intended to be reasonably concise summaries of single topics which can read at multiple desired levels of detail from skimming the first paragraph for a basic concept through use as a reference source to look up particular details up to detailed close study and use as a bibliography to find other external sources, whereas math textbooks are intended to be extended summaries of a large topic requiring months of 10+ hours/week focus, usually without much link to other sources.

The important (and hard) part of technical Wikipedia is writing clearly for a general audience, especially when many of the sources being relied on are written very tersely and at an advanced level and often go into extreme technical detail, directed at a specialist audience. Figuring out how to name articles, how to split topics between articles, how to organize each article with some narrative flow, how to include enough prerequisite material for context without getting bogged down reprising a whole course, etc. involves a ton of choices with often sharp trade-offs. Further efforts such as creating good figures takes a tremendous amount of work, for me sometimes hours to make each diagram; a (lowercase-g) "good article" should often include 10+ diagrams. The formal GA criteria focused on putting yet another redundant footnote to the next page of the same few sources after each sentence don't really have anything to do with it. –jacobolus (t) 03:53, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I am well aware of the difficulties of writing for a general audience. See for example my top-to-bottom, year-long rewrite of Genghis Khan, which incorporates top-level scholarly sources in an article which 10,000 readers look at every day, when any reader could just go to history.com. Nevertheless, during that rewrite, I placed the WP:V policy just as high as copyright/NPOV/clarity/any other criteria you wish to define, because the Wikipedia community has seen fit to enshrine it as a central policy. Without rigid adherence to WP:V, Wikipedia is not Wikipedia, and a "good" article can never be called such. That is my position at least; if nothing else, this discussion has convinced me that we will forever disagree on that. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:07, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Wow. That is an incredibly hostile response to a comment I made in the best faith possible. It seems to presume that I don't care about WP:V or WP:RS, which is far from the truth. Did I say that they don't matter? No, I said that At GAR, it seems that one is always being graded on a small portion of what actually matters, and the grading of that small portion is done in a mechanical way. In other words, referencing is part of what an article needs to get right, but elevating rules-of-thumb to rigid codes and applying them in a clockwork fashion doesn't actually help get it right. Moreover, energy spent on doing that is energy not spent on doing anything else, and the GAR system forces it to the top priority, rather than one of several coequal and interlocking desiderata. (For example, there's no point in sticking a footnote on a paragraph when that paragraph should be deleted because it doesn't belong in a broad overview.) A system in which only a fraction of the hard work is seen to count towards success is a thankless system, and not optimal for the benefit of the encyclopedia.

I have very limited time for Wikipedia these days, and I had hoped that my comment here would be a constructive use of that time, but I see that engaging with the GA process in any way continues to be a mistake. XOR'easter (talk) 15:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Incidentally, though, if you're casting around for supposedly-mathematics GAs to scrutinize, The Math Myth would be high on my list. It contains an entirely unsourced "synopsis" section (which as a work of fiction does not fall under the usual allowance of plot summaries without sources), with a lot of evaluation of what the book claims (rather than merely description of a sequence of events), already tagged as confusing. If we're picking and choosing which articles to put effort into cleaning up versus which to leave and let fail, that's one that I don't think meets the criterion now despite its recent pass, and that I don't care to put effort into improving. —David Eppstein (talk) 03:09, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I think you mean as a work of non-fiction. Would you care to nominate it yourself? I am reliably informed that nominating articles at GAR is good for your ego. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:39, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Non-fiction, correct, sorry for the typo. Not me, but I won't object at all if someone else does. Instead I'm putting some effort into eliminating cleanup tags from mathematics GAs before they get nominated (but not that one). —David Eppstein (talk) 03:47, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks David, I'll nominate it soon (if I'm not pulled up for nominating more than one article every seven months). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 03:57, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Proposals

I think it's fair to say both sides have good cause for their particular points of concern and frustration regarding the criteria or GAR process. Perhaps there is room to consider some revision of the criteria to emphasize or elucidate criterion 1, as difficult as that may sound—while perhaps allowing for certain classes of exception regarding criterion 2a. Remsense诉 04:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Some suggestions from above, not all mine:

1. Make talk page discussion of issues a mandatory first step, with some amount of time without action required before the process continues.
2. Make notification of the GA nominators and top editors mandatory.
3. Limit the number of concurrent reassessments that any one reviewer can have open.
4. Limit the number of concurrent reassessments in any one topic area.
5. Lengthen the one week prod-like delisting period.
6. Give out Good Article Save Awards to editors that shepherd articles toward a keep.

I don't necessarily support all of these, and there's much detail to be worked out. Hope this helps as a starting point. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:09, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Numbers two, four, and six are already done. I have agreed above to #1, and I am willing to do #5 (a month? two? I don't think we should hold the backlogged process of GAN as a guide). As I know that the process, like everything on WP, will grind to a halt if a couple of dedicated people don't keep it going, I am opposed to #3, but obviously if consensus is in favour I will acquiesce. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:16, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Could you tell me more about 2, 4, and 6? I'm seeing some soft language in the reassessment procedure related to 2 and 4 that could be much firmer. For 6, are these awards commonly given out? Vector space, one of the examples above, led to a keep. Was anyone given an award? Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:26, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Firefangledfeathers #2 and #4 are required.

For #2, the nomination bot notifies previous GAN/GAR reviewers, but you are expected to notify WikiProjects (see Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Great Salt Lake/1 for one where this was not done, and the nomination was held open for a week after the notifications were given). I have tried to emphasise this; if you feel the language should be "harder", feel free to edit the guidelines.

For #4, see this discussion linked below, which I subsequently added to the guidelines and have done my best to enforce.

For #6, I first configured the barnstar on 28 December 2023, and have tried to give it out since (it has occasionally been declined). For Vector space, the "saver" was also the original nominator. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:37, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

The closest step I can find to #2 is "Consider raising issues at the talk page of the article or requesting assistance from major contributors." Could we change that to "Raise issues at the talk page of the article and request assistance from major contributors and the original GA nominators"?

The closest version of #4 is "If there are many similar articles already nominated at GAR, consider delaying the reassessment request." I'm not sure how to beef that up, but the wording could definitely be more declarative.

For #6, I would still give save awards to original nominators. They might decline. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:45, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

#2: "The user script does not notify major contributors or relevant WikiProjects. Notify these manually."

#4: what do you suggest? People who ignore a request to "consider" will nominate them anyway. I didn't want to say "Nominating multiple articles on related topics is considered disruptive" or similar, because that hasn't actually been formally confirmed yet.

#6: fair enough. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:49, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks on 2. Still thinking about 4. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:02, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Which of these are already done at WP:FAR? And do they have similar issues with bad blood or arguments? I ask because if that process already has a good solution figured out, perhaps we can just steal it. Also, thanks for bringing the discussion back to focus on the process, Rjjⁱⁱⁱ (talk) 04:17, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Analogs of 1, 2, 3, and 6 exist at FAR. I mentioned above that FAR also struggles with 4. Reviewers and coordinators seem pretty willing to put reviews on hold when topic area editors mention they are overwhelmed. 5 isn't something directly comparable to FAR. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I would support #4 over #3. Remsense诉 04:18, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Good thing it's already being done (see Wikipedia talk:Good article reassessment/archive6#Please keep topical limits in mind for the relevant discussion). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:21, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't think I would support a month for GA reassessments with no commentary, especially if we're going to cap nominations by a single nominator. FAR is about a one-month process if there are no improvements, and since GAN is a much more lightweight process than FAC, GAR should be more lightweight than FAR. Yes, we do have GANs sitting around far longer than they should, but I don't see how having stagnant GARs rotting on the vine would be a positive addition to the process. And there definitely needs to be a process to close quicker than that for the utterly deficient ones - Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Great Raid of 1840/1 comes to mind. Hog Farm _Talk 05:09, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I have, in the past, speedily delisted ones unarguably affected by copyright problems, like those affected by the LassieTime LTA. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 05:12, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

For clarity

The current GAR nomination/closing procedure (carried out near-entirely by me) is as follows:

1. Nominate article, with nomination statement referring to GA criteria.
   1. Notify all relevant WikiProjects and primary editors.
2. See if anyone responds.
3. If they do and start improving the article:
   1. If they resolve all issues with substantial work, close as keep; award GA save barnstar.
   2. If issues are not resolved, give them two weeks from last edit to article/GAR, and ping them for updates. They are given three months to improve the article. If they do not respond or respond that they can't continue, return to step 2.
4. If there is discussion, see which way the discussion resolves, and assess consensus; if the result is "no consensus" the article is kept as a GA.
5. If there is no (further) discussion and the nomination rationale is valid, delist after a week.

The suggestions which I am totally willing to implement are: add a first step of talk page nominations, and extend the "week" timeframe to longer (a month). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:30, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Some of your best practices should probably be codified. Glancing at WP:GAR#Articles listed for reassessment, many other GAR nominators are active. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 04:35, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Nominators yes; closers no. Take a look at the recent GAR archives: the vast majority since the reformation of GAR last year (archives 71-present) by myself. You also have experienced editors like HogFarm, buidhe and the GAR coords, who follow the above, or, more recently, WikiProject Weather (which is, unlike WikiProject Mathematics, full-steam-ahead committed to excising GAs which do not meet current criteria, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Weather/2024–25 Good Article Reassessment). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 04:47, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Since many of these affect nominators, I'm hoping to tighten that part up. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 05:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I trust your judgement, so don't be afraid to boldly edit the GAR guidelines subpage to what you feel is best. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 05:10, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Your extended one-month time frame is still a tiny fraction of the amount of time some first-time nominated articles wait for a reviewer. Why should GARs be fast-tracked relative to these? —David Eppstein (talk) 07:38, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I don't see why the backlog at GAN should ever be a benchmark comparison. Yes, some nominations wait six-eight months; that doesn't mean that FACs should last two years. In fact, FAC is almost certainly the best-functioning quality process on the project for one reason: nominations are not allowed to hang on indefinitely. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 11:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

It is in some way a benchmark of how realistic it is to expect quick action from a limited pool of editors. If your goal is not to improve things to GA standard but rather to remove as many GA badges as possible as quickly as possible, then I suppose the availability of editors to do the improvements is less relevant. —David Eppstein (talk) 15:50, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I suppose in all this I don't quite understand why improvement and renomination isn't an option. Perhaps there should be a page that lists recently delisted GAs per topic. Maybe GAR nominees should be strongly encouraged to take up the redux GAN. Remsense诉 15:52, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Just delist them all! If you have to wait for them to be re-nominated and re-reviewed, what's the problem? After all, if they're getting reviewed and passed at a rate of maybe one a month, it will only take decades to get back to the status they already had. By which time we'll go through another spate of delisting everything and we'll be back to the start, just like Sisyphus. Won't that make the process more encouraging of article improvement? —David Eppstein (talk) 16:01, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I apologize that I'm testing your patience. Remsense诉 16:03, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

I think we can all agree that the wait times at GAN are broken - why should we be wanting to emulate a broken process? I also expect that a GAR with work occurring at a slow pace would be kept open for more than a month if needed. Hog Farm _Talk 14:06, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Mathematics article and unfixed bug in sweeps nomination script

A large part of the antagonism here might be sparked from the fact that the sweeps are based on superficial mechanical counts of unsourced paragraphs. Many mathematics articles format displayed equations in a way that causes the breaks between the equation and the text to look like a paragraph break, when semantically it is all a single paragraph. This could cause mathematics articles to look less than properly sourced to people who prefer to count clicky blue footnotes than to read and think, and focus undue attention on those articles. This appears to be what has happened here: for instance, the original post complained that [[Matrix (mathematics)] is "on top of the sweeps pile". Skipping the lead, I see one WP:BLUE unsourced paragraph in the "Definition" section, at the start of "Size", but I suspect the script thinks the long single paragraph at the start of "Definition" is really three paragraphs. I seem to remember going over this issue the last time it came around. Has this bug really remained unfixed? Is this whole thread based on a false premise sparked by a script bug?

As far as I know, it's still a known bug. The disclaimer at the top of the Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Sweeps 2023 should be expanded to mention the paragraph break issues caused by the templates used in mathematics and language articles. If I was familiar enough with higher math to determine what requires or does not require a citation in those articles I would go through and update the paragraph counts, but my grasp of mathematics is not good enough for that. Hog Farm _Talk 03:56, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

Well, the script isn't using any actual understanding of any of the other subjects, either. So maybe if it could recognize the three or so different ways of making displayed equations and just not count the paragraph breaks on either side of them as paragraph breaks, we could get a more accurate count of unsourced paragraphs. We still won't get a count of paragraphs that actually need sourcing, and which ones are entirely source-not-needed material (start-of-section summaries of later material, blue sky, routine calculations etc) but we're not getting that in other subjects either. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:06, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

After trying to read it more carefully, in my opinion Matrix (mathematics) needs more help than any of the other math articles recently put up for review or proposed for future review. Nothing in there is particularly controversial so I'm not too worried about content being unverifiable (though it wouldn't hurt to link at least one nice introductory textbook or survey paper for each section), but I think it would take a significant makeover to make it truly excellent. There are sections that aren't appropriately contextualized, the narrative is sometimes disjointed, and some sections don't seem to do full justice to the topic, especially the sections about "computational aspects", decompositions, applications, and history (the latter two should ideally have their own full articles). The article could probably be somewhat more accessible at the low end while also going into more detail at the high end.... On the other hand this is an absolutely enormous topic which is very difficult to concisely summarize, so I'm grateful to the past authors for bringing the article to its currently decent state, from which many readers surely benefit. Bringing this up to the highest standards would take probably at least hundreds of hours of serious work, and authors competent to undertake a job like that might reasonably prefer to work on other articles which are in much worse shape. –jacobolus (t) 05:59, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

ChristieBot may be running at erratic times today

The bot execution environment on toolforge is changing in a way that will stop ChristieBot from running in mid-March unless I make some changes. I'll be working on trying to switch over to the new environment today, which mean I'll be intermittently stopping and starting the bot, and there may be periods of one or more hours when it is not running. If I don't get it switched over today, I'll start the existing version up again and work on it again over the weekend; it looks like just a few lines of code need to change but who knows what rabbit holes I'll find myself going down. I'll post updates here, including when it's done. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:00, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

ChristieBot is now down and I don't know when it'll come back up. See here for the technical issue; I have a query in to the WMF as well and I hope one of those channels will resolve the problem, but I can't say when that will be, I'm afraid. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 20:55, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

Mike Christie, thank you very much for keeping us informed. I've added a post to the backlog drive talk page, noting that the daily Progress updates are on hiatus until ChristieBot is back up. I hope that they answer your query soon! BlueMoonset (talk) 01:08, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks to the help of SD0001, the bot is running again on its usual schedule. Please let me know if you see any issues. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:33, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

GAN Backlog Drives log correctness

Can you please check whether I logged my reviews correctly on the Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/March 2024? Thank you! Maxim Masiutin (talk) 20:01, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

You did. You can update the first two lines of the running totals yourself (the Articles reviewed & Old nominations reviewed). No need to WP:CROSSPOST however :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 21:02, 8 March 2024 (UTC)

3O for Talk:Bona Malwal/GA1

I wonder if someone can weigh in we have a dispute about applying GA criteria. FuzzyMagma (talk) 10:02, 9 March 2024 (UTC)

Current trend of poor quality reviews

There's been a few discussions of late about poor quality reviews being carried out by inexperienced editors and reviewers. For example #Talk:Ariana Grande/GA3, #Microsoft Gaming Another invalid GA review, Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 30#Talk:Chevrolet Volt (first generation)/GA1, and Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 30#System to detect invalid GA reviews.

I wonder if perhaps the GA review process would work better if all potential new reviewers are mentored or shadowed through their first handful of reviews by a more experienced reviewer. Yes it'll slow down the review process, but I think the trade-off is improved quality for both the editor writing the article, and the eventual reader of the article. Sideswipe9th (talk) 05:52, 10 March 2024 (UTC)

I just completed my first review and when I got to the instructions section that says If this is your first review, it is beneficial to ask one of the good article mentors to look at your review I just ignored it as it was daunting (and seemingly time consuming) to pick a random editor from the list and hope they had time to help. If the instructions said to post on a specific noticeboard I would have done that instead. In my case I think a shadow was unnecessary. Is there a list of first time reviews that I can peruse to help check for shoddy reviews?--Commander Keane (talk) 06:22, 10 March 2024 (UTC)