Wikipedia talk: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. Questions may also be asked at the GA Help desk. To check and see if your question may already be answered, click to show the frequently asked questions below or search the archives below.

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Frequently asked questions (see also: GAN instructions)

October 2024 Backlog Drive

Good article nominations

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WP:GAFAQ

This is the list of Frequently asked questions about nominating and reviewing Good articles. If you cannot find the answer to your question here, you might want to ask for assistance at the GA nominations discussion page.

Nomination process

The backlog is huge! Is there something we can do to restrict nominations?: There have been complaints about the perceived backlog in reviewing since the Good article status was created in 2006. Generally speaking, we don't want to restrict nominations along their path to GA. In the beginning, as many as 100 nominations were waiting for a reviewer to volunteer. By 2011, each day typically listed 330 nominated articles, of which 260 were waiting. By 2016, 580 were listed, 460 waiting; by 2021, 470 were listed, 300 were waiting. For comparison, today there are currently 632 nominations listed and 535 waiting for a reviewer.; While it may seem overwhelming, a large backlog isn't a bad thing. It shows that many nominators want to use GA as a tool to improve the encyclopedia. It also allows reviewers to choose from a wide selection of articles that interest them. From a nominator's perspective, the main concern is the expected wait time before receiving a review, not the number of articles on the nominations page.
Can't we force nominators to review articles?: Quid pro quo reviewing (editors must review an article before nominating, perhaps after a grace period) was regularly proposed and always rejected as likely leading to lower quality reviews and fewer nominations from excellent content creators who may not wish to review another person's work.
What order do nominations appear on the Good article nominations page?: One advantage of reviewing articles to help the Wikipedia community is the GAN appearance order: the more articles you have reviewed relative to articles you have nominated, the higher up in the queue your nomination will appear on the GAN page. Note that above this, order preference is given to nominators who are new to GA.
What if the nominator is a (perhaps dynamic) IP address?: Any editor with significant contributions to the article may nominate an article for GA status (while only registered users may review), so significant-contributor IP nominators are permitted. Non-significant contributors should follow the advice above for editors who have not significantly contributed to the article. Dynamically changing IP nominators may want to clarify to the reviewer that, despite their signature, they remain the same person.
Can I nominate an article I haven't significantly contributed to?: No. Nominations from editors who have not substantially contributed will be removed unless the nomination shows that the article's regular editors were consulted on its talk page alongside a note on the GAN template showing their commitment to the process, e.g., |note=Adopted following extensive improvement by another editor. In the past, many drive-by nominators did not know the article or its sources and did not respond to questions by the reviewer.

Review process

I want to review an article. Do I have to review the oldest unreviewed nomination first?: Thank you for deciding to review an article for GA. You may review any nominated article you are not involved in, regardless of the nomination's age or position in the queue.
As a reviewer, I want to help the nominator improve the article, but it already meets the criteria. What am I supposed to do now?: The purpose of a GA review is to determine whether the article meets the GA criteria. Article-improvement discussions are intended to prevent near-misses in nominated articles that almost meet the criteria. If the article already meets the criteria when you first review it, then explain exactly what you've checked in each of the main criteria (e.g., "I have verified there is no original research, copyright violations, plagiarism, unreliable sources, bias, edit wars, or untagged images.") and list it as a Good article. "Quick passes" are as legitimate as quick fails, although they are less common. Please do not make a list of nitpicky details or exceed the written requirements of the Good article criteria in an effort to make the review look rigorous. Instead, thank the nominator for presenting such a polished article, and encourage them to submit another.
Who can respond to the review?: The nominator is expected to respond to the reviewer's suggestions to improve the article, while everyone interested in the article is encouraged to participate in the review, not just the person who happened to nominate it. Nominators have no special privileges over other editors except that they can withdraw the nomination.
Should nominators respond to reviewers' concerns? And what should reviewers do if they don't?: The nominator has an interest in seeing the article become GA, so the nominator will likely want to respond to the reviewer to improve the article. In fact, all editors interested in the article are encouraged to respond to reviewers' concerns. However, nobody, including the nominator, is required to. If the reviewer identifies concerns directly related to the Good article criteria and no one addresses the concerns, then no one should be surprised if the reviewer declines to list the article. If the article does not meet the Good article criteria after the reviewer has waited a reasonable amount of time for the nominator to make improvements, the reviewer is sure to fail the nomination. Future article editors may benefit from review comments on how to improve the article.
The nominator disagrees with the reviewer. Can another reviewer take over?: If your GAN experience is not going well or if you are disagreeing with the reviewer's decisions, then you may allow the review to fail, take the reviewer's suggestions into account, then renominate the article immediately (to get a different reviewer). If the reviewer has not yet failed the nomination, you may try asking them to ask for a second opinion. Other than these, another reviewer does not normally take over an active review. You might want to read What the Good article criteria are not. To prevent avoidable disputes, reviewers should either not make comments unrelated to the Good article criteria, or they should carefully label those suggestions as optional (e.g., "I know that citation formatting is not required by the Good article criteria, and I will not consider this when making my decision, but if you might send this to Wikipedia:Featured articles later, then that process requires consistent citation formatting").
Does an article have to be on hold for exactly seven days?: No. Whether to place the nomination on hold at all, and the length of any such hold, is for the reviewer to decide. Depending on the quality of the article and the responsiveness of the nominator, a hold may not be necessary. If the reviewer decides that it is, they may choose longer or shorter periods of hold time. The reviewer may even modify the {{GA nominee}} template on the article talk page to include a "time" parameter, for example, "time=fourteen days", and the {{GANotice}} template used to convey messages to the GA nominator to include a "days" parameter, for example "days=fourteen". Keep in mind that protracted reviews show up as exceptions on the GA nominations report page.
What should I do if a review page becomes inactive?: This can happen for a number of reasons. Review pages should only be started by reviewers who are willing to take an active interest in the article and are committed to completing their review of the article in a timely manner. Sometimes another editor (such as the nominator) starts the review page by mistake. A reviewer can fix this by placing their signature after "Reviewer:" towards the top of the review page, but if no reviewer is forthcoming, it may be best to delete the review page: requests for such deletions may be posted at the discussion page. If a new reviewer is truly needed, follow the instructions page under "What to do during a review if it seems abandoned". Do not use this process to void a review you disagree with.
I failed the article, and the nominator just nominated it again without fixing the problems I identified!: That's okay. There is no time limit between nominations, and this is the recommended process if the nominator disagrees with your review. Let someone else review it this time. The new reviewer is sure to read your comments while independently deciding on their assessment. If your concerns were legitimate, then the new reviewer will doubtless agree with you and also decline to list the article as GA. If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the Good article criteria, you can initiate a reassessment.
How can GA be reliable when a single reviewer decides?: The quality of a Good article is only as reliable as the most recent review and articles may deteriorate if unattended. The GA process deals with both of these issues by allowing repeat reviews by any registered user at any time. The process aims to encourage article improvement and build consensus on quality through multiple reviews—even though a single reviewer makes the decision whether to list the article according to the GA criteria. Any editor may contribute to any review discussion and reassessment is available when the "one reviewer decides" model breaks down.
What if I have concerns about the quality of a review or need to resolve a dispute over the GA process?: You can bring those concerns to the discussion page to get help from other editors. Remember, however, to notify all users about whom concerns have been raised or who are involved in any dispute that you have.

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Open reviews for over two months

There are currently 11 reviews open by user Iazyges that are hanging "on hold" since August 24, and one extra since July 22. The user either forgot about them or doesn't care anymore. Is there something that someone could do abot this situation? Cléééston (talk) 15:10, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Iazyges. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The most recent edit Iazyges made was on September 22 at Talk:Rose C. Davison/GA1, which referred to getting back to the review there: I'm planning to; I've been busy recently and I'll get around to it as soon as I can. Past experience would indicate that Iazyges does eventually get back to reviews, but it can take several weeks. Perhaps they would agree to open only a couple of reviews at a time in future so if they do get busy in real life, only one or two are left hanging. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:13, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is it cool if I take over the review? I'm brainstorming what to do next for article creation and I usually use this downtime to review GANs. MX (✉ • ✎) 17:42, 13 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm cool with anything that get those reviews done. Cléééston (talk) 03:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Apologies, I'll get to them ASAP. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:45, 31 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Iazyges I was just noticing this also. I count 11 nominations you started to review, as far as placing the template on the article's talk page, and then nothing happened. They seem to be primarily in the areas of Hawaii/south seas, royalty. Perhaps you could just release the ones you don't have time to work on in the near future, and let some other interested reviewer step in. — Maile (talk) 00:14, 11 November 2018 (UTC) These are the ones I see, and the date the review template was opened:[reply]

July 22, 2018: Reign of Marcus Aurelius - put on hold for improvements, but it looks like nominator Векочел has made a lot of edits since then; Ptolemy XII Auletes

July 23, 2018: Kulottunga I (Chola Empire royalty)

August 24, 2018: Ambrose K. Hutchison (Hawaii); J. W. Lonoaea (Hawaii); William Henry Daniels (Hawaii); William P. Ragsdale (Hawaii); Hiram Kahanawai (Hawaiian royalty); Kiliwehi (Hawaiian royalty); Emma Kaili Metcalf Beckley Nakuina (Hawaiian royalty); Angata (Rapa Nui royalty)

Failed at failing

The other day I reviewed the article Goosebumps (film) for GA, and failed it. I left the usual helpful info and saved the review page (Talk:Goosebumps (film)/GA1), but noticed a while later that the usual things (notifying the nominator, incrementing my review count) did not take place, and eventually the nomination was just removed from the GAN list during a bot maintenance run. I assume that the issue is with how I carried out my review somehow, and was hoping that someone here would both know what it is that I did wrong and whether it can be fixed or not. - adamstom97 (talk) 00:35, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure why any of that happen, so perhaps an experienced GA project member can shed some light on this. However, if you want to manually increase your review count, go to User:GA bot/Stats. The bot will update the WP:GAN page with the newest review count when it runs its next maintenance. MX (✉ • ✎) 01:37, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- The bot does not like it if you start the review and fail it in one update. If you want the notifications to all occur, you should claim, wait for the bot to update (roughly 15 minutes), and then quickfail. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 01:42, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - Thanks for the replies guys. In terms of fixing this, does anyone out there have suggestions or should I just go through and manually do it? If so, is there anything else I need to do besides notifying the nominator and incrementing my own review count? - adamstom97 (talk) 21:06, 19 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - I'm going to stop watching this page now, and implement the changes that I gave in my last comment. If anyone else sees this and has any more advice then please ping me or leave a message at my talk page. - adamstom97 (talk) 19:42, 23 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Review count

I am not sure if anyone cares much about this, certainly it is not something which over-troubles me, but the mechanism for tallying reviews carried out may have a bug. I started assessing GANs in March (2018) and while I have been busy, I seriously doubt that I have carried out 97 GAN assessments in the last eight months.

As I said, this does not especially concern me, but I flag it up here in case it a symptom of something more important. Gog the Mild (talk) 10:37, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Have you commented on review pages other than the ones you've started/created? I've seen that throw off the bot, too. MX (✉ • ✎) 13:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I just did a quick manual count, which suggests that you've done 51. Best guess would be as MX suggests, though it would seem odd to have commented on 46 others! Harrias ^talk 13:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for that. I hope that I haven't caused too much work. I am fond of offering second opinions, and didn't realise that they were counted. I would have guessed that I had offered second opinions or made other inputs into other GANs 8-10 times. Until a few days ago my tally was 63, so that would more or less match. But it jumped to 97 on the back of maybe 3 assessments, maybe less. Which is what caused me post here. I don't care that much, but something is wrong with the bot. There is no way that I have commented on 30+ articles in the past week or so.

I repeat that I don't much care, so if you are happy that nothing serious or systematic is amiss then I shall just move on. Thanks again for the prompt attention. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:33, 30 October 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild, it is nothing serious, just a bot issue that will one day (hopefully) be fixed should we ever get a replacement bot. Much of the jump was caused by the Alexios V Doukas review that you opened on October 28. The GA nomination template was missing the status and note parameters (which means the nominator created their own instead of substituting the GAN template per instructions), so the bot couldn't add the "onreview" status, and kept trying every 20 minutes to do so, adding to your count each time, until I noticed the issue and added the missing parameters, whereupon the bot finally succeeded in adding "onreview" 11 hours after its first attempt. That accounts for 33 extra increments in your total beyond the normal single one; the other 14 may come from similar episodes that were caught more quickly. Contrary to an earlier post, they would not come from commenting on an already-open review; the bot's review-counting mechanism doesn't work that way; only the person who opened the review (whose username is in the top section of the review) is ever counted. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@BlueMoonset:Ah ha, mystery solved. Thank you for tracking that down. Am I going to compound the situation if I manually deduct 33 from my count at User:GA bot/Stats? I have had a busy first year of assessing, but not that busy. Or possibly 45. And is wherever you went to do your "quick manual count" accessible to us mere mortals? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:40, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Gog the Mild, feel free to manually deduct from your count at User:GA bot/Stats, if you prefer a more accurate number. I don't know what Harrias did to get his manual count; the only brute force methods I can think of seem unpleasantly cumbersome and time-consuming, and nothing I'd care to undertake. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It wasn't too bad. I went to user contributions, filtered it to talk space, and chose 'Only show edits that are page creations'. I then manually counted out those which were GA reviews. Harrias ^talk 07:10, 5 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Reviewer MIA

Tplaza64 started reviewing the article Ant-Man and the Wasp that I nominated for GA, but they have not contributed to Wikipedia in the almost two weeks since then. Additionally, Favre1fan93 and I are also concerned that they are not experienced enough to assess the article properly given they only began contributing this January and have made a total of 15 edits (including starting this GA review). My personal preference here is we be allowed to open the article up again for another editor to review it. Does anyone watching know what should be done in this situation? - adamstom97 (talk) 22:47, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Adamstom.97 and Favre1fan93: With an assist from Mz7 the review was deleted, and I have changed the template so that the bot fixes it on its next pass. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Awesome, thanks for the help guys! - adamstom97 (talk) 23:07, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Free review service

I'm offering a free GAN review service. Just leave me a note on my talk page. GANs older than three months will receive priority. Nothing is expected in return other than courtesy. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:52, 12 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Basic question

I've been searching through the GA rules and can't seem to find anything addressing whether a single nominator can have more than one GAN pending at the same time. Is this allowed? Ergo Sum 20:58, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There's nothing "officially" in the rules from what I'm aware of, though back in 2013 there was a discussion of having a limit of 10 nominations. The result was a no-go, but you may want to check out the first question of Wikipedia:Good_article_frequently_asked_questions#General for more information. From that perspective, it seems like we don't want to discourage editors from nominating articles. After all, the ultimate goal of the GAN is to help get articles to GA status. MX (✉ • ✎) 21:13, 16 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Nope, there's nothing in the rules about this, but it is courteous to review articles as well as nominate them to keep the whole thing in balance. Courcelles is travelling (talk) 17:52, 18 November 2018 (UTC)[reply]