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Proposals to address the backlog
We are now three weeks into the backlog drive and, to me at least, it feels like a Sisyphean task. We're doing a lot of work to push the backlog down, only for it to grow out of control again before we've even gotten the chance to breathe. The last backlog drive we did was in August 2023 and during it we managed to bring the backlog down by 69%, from 638 unreviewed nominations to 198. This was a huge effort, but even then, what we were left over with was still quite a long list, a big undertaking. By the time of the current backlog drive, we had 655 unreviewed nominations. This time, we were able to cut it down by 25% to 493 unreviewed noms, before dozens of nominations were dumped onto the list en masse, setting back our efforts by two weeks.
I'm glad that these backlog drives have been happening, but it should be clear that they are not a sustainable way forward for cutting down on the backlog of unreviewed nominations. Even if this nom-dump hadn't occurred, at the rate we were going, we would still have needed to keep the drive going for another month in order to cut down the same amount we had in the last backlog drive. And the moment they are no longer going, the backlog just starts ballooning all over again. The drives become our only way of actually addressing it.
As such, I wanted to make some proposals for addressing the backlog in a more sustainable manner. I'm going to sort them from the least drastic to the most drastic options. If you have other ideas for helping bring down the backlog, feel free to propose them here. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 1: Regular backlog drives
After the subject of another backlog drive was raised, it took us a month to figure out the details and another few weeks of milling around before it actually began. I don't recall many notifications being sent out for this one and the results show. I think rather than this ad hoc and reaction-based approach to backlog drives, we need to accept that these need to become a regular thing: one or ideally two times a year, at the same months, leaving us time to get the word out. I propose that we have a backlog drive set for every March and September of each year. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Codifying biannual drives, and the procedures surrounding them, is I think a good step forward. It also opens the door if anyone wants to organise shorter "blitzes", as I believe they do at WP:GOCE.
Support in addition to any other proposal. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Backlog drives are fun and help entice people to review. I like the reward structures with extra points for old and long articles. —Kusma (talk) 17:21, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed. Maybe even have it 3 times a year (January, May, September) or 4 times a year (January, April, July, October). MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think four times a year would lead to very few reviews being picked up in the off months. That might not be such a bad thing if we get the backlog drives really moving, but it's something to keep in mind. -- asilvering (talk) 17:51, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I recommend January and August, where (going off of memory) we've had successful GA drives in the past. I vaguely recall another project (GOCE?) routinizing their drives and finding steep drop-off when it was put on a calendar, but I equally do not recall the timing of those drives being isolated as a factor in that drop-off. I suggest picking times when most editors are enjoying a staycation. But the dates can be decided later. czar 18:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think 3 backlog drives per year would be reasonable, too. Skyshiftertalk 19:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This might slow reviews off-cycle, but I still think it's good practice to have the drives be more predictable. It seems the WikiCup has a large impact on both noms and reviews, so let's try to align the drives with that and perhaps whatever else might be going on outside of the GA bubble. Grk1011 (talk) 15:50, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm in support of this idea, but there will need to be willing coordinators prepped in advance. Unexpectedlydian♯4talk‽ 18:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Three or four times a year would be best, biannual isn't enough at the rate the current backlog seems to grow.
Agreed. GoCE run a drive of some sort every month and it works, so maybe, as suggested above, more frequent drives, and/or some variety in them. Eg every non-major drive month have a seven day "snap" mini-drive focused on just whichever section has the biggest backlog; just a suggestion. Gog the Mild (talk) 13:50, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unsure on the frequency (once a year is not enough), but something regular would be good. (Personally, I'd probbably not be contributing if it's the same month as an NPP backlog drive, which aren't regular.) -Kj cheetham (talk) 19:52, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think two to three drives a year, with considerations for timing (as discussed), would be effictive. Averageuntitleduser (talk) 00:54, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
I oppose and believe that the proposal for regular backlog drives might be a counterproductive solution to instead increase the backlog rather than the indention to decrease it, for the following reasons: reduced incentive outside drives (regular backlog drives could potentially reduce the incentive for contributors to review articles outside of these events; this could inadvertently increase the backlog rather than decrease it); routine fatigue of regular backlog drives (over time, regular drives could become routine and lose their novelty, so that it could lead to a decrease in participation as the drives might not evoke the same level of enthusiasm or urgency as they do now with occasional backlog drives); reviewer time-pressure (the time-pressure on reviewers could increase with regular drives, potentially leading to burnout or decreased quality of reviews; it is important to ensure that reviewers feel appreciated and supported in their roles and not time-bound). Maxim Masiutin (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Regarding timing, I highly agree with czar. March-April is rough for a lot of students and teachers, and I expect that covers many people involved in GANs. -- asilvering (talk) 19:05, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I think the concept is good, you need people to run the drives, and right now coordinators are fairly thin on the ground and subject to burnout. It's one thing to make a schedule; it's another thing to be able to staff the drives per said schedule. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be for designated GAN coords the way FAC, FLC, and FTC/GTC have coords. Obviously they wouldn't be checking every nom like those coords do and would only have to be active during a backlog drive. Additionally, I'd be for having a lot of them, maybe somewhere around the neighborhood of 10 if it helps with alleviating burnout. AryKun (talk) 13:09, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have no strong opinion on this either in favour or against, but I try to think about what the unintended consequences (for all proposed changes) might be, and I share Grk1011's concerns about this leading to reviews being postponed to when there is a backlog drive, in other words redistributing the reviews to the drives at the expense of the rest of the year. TompaDompa (talk) 16:27, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There is need for fundamental changes. Instead of focusing on simple solutions such as regular drives, it might be more beneficial to address fundamental issues within the reviewing process so that it could include providing better protection and support for reviewers, promoting a friendlier environment for newcomers and old editors, and acknowledging the efforts of reviewers more effectively. The atmosphere of wikipedia is explained by my friends as hostile and highly toxic. The admins do not follow the rule of minimality of punishment, punishments are often maximal (permanent block) for trival offences that could be addressed by other means than blocks, one admin on asking to unblock a user who wrote Good Articles replied that Wikipedia does not have lack of editors. It might be beneficial to experiment with different approaches to managing the backlog and adapt based on the results. We can try this approach, and see whether it increase or decrease the backlog, however, I opposed this proposal because I think it will increase the backlog. Measures that could actually help could include mentoring programs, reviewer protection measures from pressure and threats for their opinion expressed in the review, such as treats to ban for incompetence; and there should efforts to enforce a principle of friendliness towards newcomers and also towards older editors. The current environment on Wikipedia might be perceived as hostile to newcomers. This could discourage potential new editors and reviewers from participating, contributing to the decline in editor and reviewer numbers. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 16:55, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 2: Cap open nominations
Currently when somebody goes over 20 open nominations, the new ones they open get put into a green expandable box at the bottom of the list. (Right now we have these boxes at the bottom of 10 of our lists) This puts mass nominations out of immediate sight, but it does nothing to address the de facto monopolisation of the process that mass nominations encourage. Instead of putting them into a box, I propose we cap open nominations at 20 per user. Honestly, I think the cap should be a lot lower (no more than 5). I frankly do not think it is fair to reviewers to submit so many nominations at once, but I also think it's bad for the nominator, as the individual qualities of each article get lost in the sea of nominations; you just can't keep track of what you are doing with each one if you have dozens in the pool. But as 20 is the limit we currently have before overflow, I'm happy to propose we cap at 20 for now and maybe discuss lowering the cap at a later date. --Grnrchst (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is done at WP:FAC and seems to work just fine there. I'm sympathetic to the idea that we don't want to discourage anyone from improving content, but we have to find ways to manage the GA process. Our current system, where we have a long queue and submitters wait months for review, could also discourage folks from improving content. Ajpolino (talk) 18:18, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This works fine at FAC. I'd propose 10-15 as a cap for nominations, rather than 5. As slow as reviewing throughput as been, I can see 5 becoming a problematic cap so a higher number would work better. As of 22 March, 77 out of 695 nominations are by a single editor (11.1%). I see no reason why one nominator should be allowed to contribute that sort of amount to the backlog at once, and I can also remember the days when Coldwell would have loads and loads up at once. I would give an analogy to when a lawn mower engine will "flood" if you try to start it too much, but don't know how to phrase it well. Hog FarmTalk 21:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. It works well at FAC with minimum grumbling, hiccups or unintended consequences. Having run 107 articles through GAN and reviewed 160 I see no reason why it should not work equally well and without unintended consequences. As an alternative, set a limit on nominations not currently being reviewed? Personally I would think a limit of five nominations about right, but I can see that that is never going to fly; unless the "not currently being reviewed" suggestion is taken up. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:05, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
The current soft cap does the trick. —Kusma (talk) 17:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of the people with large numbers of GANs write high-quality articles in a niche subject area. This would punish them for no particular reason. People mass-nominating low quality articles would be handled via quickfails, presumably. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 17:21, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I largely stand by what I said when the (soft) cap was suggested back in 2023: I don't think this is a good idea. For one thing, I'm not convinced that the existence of editors who nominate a lot more than they review is in itself a problem. Writing high-quality articles and reviewing nominations are to some (not insignificant) extent separate skillsets. For another, limiting the number of open nominations would not in itself reduce the effective backlog, only hide it. If an editor has 20 articles that are ready for nomination but they can only nominate 5 of them, the other 15 may be hidden from the publicly visible backlog but they are in practice only put on a waiting list to be nominated. Without an increase in throughput, limiting the number of open nominations does not in any meaningful way ameliorate the backlog issue. The idea that editors might spend more time reviewing is, I think, a bit optimistic. As I said, reviewing requires a different set of skills and I think it's more likely that they would either keep on doing what they're doing or disengage from WP:GAN entirely. That last point is the most important one to me: this might discourage the nomination (and for that matter creation/curation) of high-quality articles. That's not, to me, an acceptable price to pay for reducing the backlog. TompaDompa (talk) 17:28, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We want the encyclopedia to be full of good articles. Mass-noms are a symptom of the backlog getting out of hand, not the cause of it. -- asilvering (talk) 18:04, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per asilvering and my last oppose—and remove the soft cap. There is an issue with mass nominations of poor-quality articles. There is no issue with mass nominations of good-quality or nearly-good-quality articles. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
per asilvering & Bilorv! sawyer * he/they * talk 01:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is a need to reopen this. The soft cap achieves the goal and automates what would otherwise be mildly annoying paperwork fpr nominators. CMD (talk) 12:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While well-intentioned, I think this will have the adverse effect of pushing the backlog somewhere where this isn't visible. Prolific nominators with actual high-quality content would be disadvantaged, especially if there was a lower hard cap (e.g. a cap of 5 is completely infeasible for nominators who work in obscure subject areas and have to wait months for a review). This will also have no effect on the actual issue, which is that there aren't enough reviewers; as mentioned above, it is a symptom of a larger problem, not the problem in itself. Epicgenius (talk) 22:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most of our prolific nominators are also people who review a lot and whose articles are almost invariably high-quality. I don't think artificially removing articles that are good enough for GA from GAN actually furthers the purpose of improving articles.
We should not simply cap nominations using the formula max_allowed_monimations=20 as proposed, but use a formula as prescribed to have twice amount of reviews than nominations, plus some theshold, say, 5, i.e. there should be a formula max_allowed_monimations=5+(reviewed/2)Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Mass nominating low-quality articles (at present, one editor has submitted around a tenth of the nominations currently at GAN) is not very respectful of other editors at the process as a whole. That said, I have nothing against mass nominations of good quality articles either, if the nominator does their work in reviewing. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What about lowering the cap? For people who are genuinely doing high quality work this shouldn't hit them too hard (because at least when I was super involved in GA, those people's reviews rarely tended to sit for huge amounts of time). Barkeep49 (talk) 18:43, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As someone whose main editing interests are in an area where there are limited numbers of nominators and reviewers (mathematics), I have been nominating roughly 1-2 articles per month and despite this the long waiting period for reviews routinely causes my number of nominations to exceed five. If the cap were lowered to five open, I could easily imagine situations where the wait for reviewers caused me to be locked out of the process altogether for months or longer. I can live with a cap of 20 (it is not a number I have come close to) but 5 is too low. Better would be a limit on rate (number of nominations per unit time) rather than on total number of open nominations. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:13, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We should not simply cap nominations using the formula max_allowed_monimations=20 as proposed, but use a formula as prescribed to have twice amount of reviews than nominations, plus some theshold, say, 5, i.e. there should be a formula max_allowed_monimations=5+(reviewed/2) Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:00, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 3: Introduce a QPQ system
I understand that this has been proposed before and it wasn't a popular proposal, but I think it deserves restating. QPQ is necessary for the functioning of the DYK project and it is already an unwritten part of the FAC process (even if they don't like admitting it). The backlog is never going to be sustainable so long as the barriers to nomination are so low and the requirements for reviewing are so intense. We used to sort lists by reviews/noms ratio, but this proved confusing, so it was reverted to the queue system. But now we have nothing to incentivise nominators to review other nominations, so we have just ended up with people that review little and nominate a lot effectively dominating the process. It's very common to see users with dozens, even hundreds more nominations than reviews. These represent the largest contributors to the backlog being so unsustainable. Users that review more than they nominate just can't keep up. So let's just get it over with and start requiring QPQ reviews. We could even use the ratio to scale how many QPQs are required, the higher your nomination/review ratio, the more reviews you should be required to do for each nomination. (i.e. More reviews than nominations = no QPQ required; more nominations as reviews = 1 QPQ required; more than twice as many nominations as reviews = 2 QPQs required; etc.) --Grnrchst (talk) 15:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support the scheme outlined in the last sentence of the proposal. That said, there's no chance it'll ever be implemented. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 16:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per Airship. GAN suffers badly from the tragedy of the commons: more people want to write than want to review. The current system of crossing our fingers and hoping that people will chip in puts the burden on those of us who are actually willing to help others out. Nominators who can't be bothered to do reviews benefit from our hard work while doing nothing to help others in return, and thus the backlog grows. The system doesn't work unless we all share the burden. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:30, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, at least for a trial period. I do think the concern about low quality reviews is worth taking seriously. But I think we should try this for a month or two, then see how much of an issue that is in practice. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 04:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, you know what? I think we ought to try this out and at least see if it really does lead to poor quality reviews. I know it is a perennial proposal, but if it has never actually been implemented at GAN, can we really say for certain that it wouldn't work? And besides, as PMC says: if people give bad reviews, we can just topic- ban them, or at least temporarily stop them from reviewing for a period. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 03:51, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The current system doesn't seem to provide any assurance of quality. Getting nominators to review more will help in two ways. It will help them understand what's required and so nominated articles should have less issues. And, by adding a cost to the nominations, there will be less free-riders and this should reduce the number of nominations to a more manageable level. Andrew🐉(talk) 10:01, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. We have already a recommendation to do twice reviews than nomination. This recommendation should become rule and enforced. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:03, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
I stand by what I said the last time this was proposed: The potential benefits do not outweigh the drawbacks of potentially (1) discouraging high-quality nominations and (2) encouraging low-quality reviews. TompaDompa (talk) 16:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Having a backlog is preferable to having poor quality reviews. If we do not have a method to ensure high quality reviews, we should not force people to review. —Kusma (talk) 17:18, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As performing an indepth check of all of the article (grammar, neutrality, verification, copyvio etc.), it would not be fair to have reviewers needing to do a QPQ in order to nominate. Another issue is that the nominations at GAN are much larger than at DYK. Therefore, the reviews themselves take much longer to complete. While reviewing articles at GAN are important, having QPQs delays new nominations. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:44, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per MrLinkinPark333, but with the added note that, frankly, QPQ isn't fit for purpose at DYK either, so it's the last thing we should be emulating. ——Serial Number 54129 17:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Very no, per TompaDompa, but I do support mild badgering of the prolific writers who aren't doing their share of reviews. -- asilvering (talk) 18:01, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
per everyone else, and also totally agree with Asilvering that we ought to be a bit harder on those who have 50+ GAs and zero reviews. if one has dozens of GAs, then they should be familiar enough with the criteria to do their part. sawyer * he/they * talk 18:40, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If not by requiring QPQ, how else might we "be a bit harder on those who have 50+ GAs and zero reviews"? Mokadoshi (talk) 03:27, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am willing to do QPQs myself, but I think making them required would worsen the quality of reviews too much. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We are building a long-term system to robustly measure quality (as well as reward editors). Rubberstamping and shoddy reviews will cause us problems later down the line. Many more people are interested in GAN than GAR. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Too many people are never going to be good reviewers, and the GA quality will suffer if you try to make them in order to submit their own GANs. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:06, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The incentive structure would exacerbate existing issues. CMD (talk) 12:08, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This would be a disincentive for me. Someone folks like writing, others like reviewing. Grk1011 (talk) 15:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I understand the intention, it would just encourage poor-quality reviews. This is especially true if we tied the number of required reviews to the review-GA ratio - there is nothing stopping prolific nominators with few reviews from doing improper quick fails or quick passes. Epicgenius (talk) 22:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In my opinion, this takes away the right from editors to either prefer writing or prefer reviewing. A decent amount of good standing, active editors already review when they nominate anyways. In areas like DYK, this type of system works, since there's promoters and QPQ is fair when there's a chance to make it onto the front page, but here? All I could see coming out of this would be less people interested in the GAN process long term, or rushed GAN reviews that have to be taken to GAR at a later date. I can't see this proposal being beneficial to the project at all. λNegativeMP1 03:59, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The potential downsides outweigh the benefit. Both nominators and reviewers are doing a service to the encyclopedia, either by creating good content or by ensuring that truly Good content is recognized as Good. Some people will naturally gravitate to one or the other. Personally, I find reviewing more satisfying than being reviewed, which is stressful. As Kusma put it, a backlog is preferable to having poor quality reviews. —Ganesha811 (talk) 12:35, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In principle, it sounds like something that could have benefits, but, I accept a number of those expressing concern that forcing a review to be done before being able to nominate will inevitably lower the quality of reviews. It also should be considered that some editors much prefer writing and developing articles, rather than reviewing the work of others, and the two should not necessarily go hand-in-hand. If QPQ ever becomes part of the process, it should be on a reward-based approach, rather than something of absolute necessity (by that I mean, if we limited the number of open noms an editor could have at any given time, QPQ could allow for additional active nominations beyond a community-agreed cap). Bungle(talk • contribs) 09:35, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What's your definition of "works"? It's an end in itself. What I'm saying is that I think people who submit far more articles than they review should face some social disapproval. That's all. If someone wants to submit dozens of articles and review none of them, that's annoying, but that's all it is. -- asilvering (talk) 18:08, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Has this ever been attempted at GA? And if so, was there proof that the quality of reviews decreased? If not, could we look into a trial period of a month or two to see whether QPQ would work, as suggested by Ghosts of Europa? Unexpectedlydian♯4talk‽ 18:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It blows my mind that every time this comes up, those who oppose continually assert that if we do this, everyone will for sure start doing bad reviews. Why do we make this bad faith assumption? Do we really have such a poor opinion of our fellow contributors? Or are we admitting to our own laziness here? And keep in mind that bad actors can always be TBANned, just as they can be now. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 03:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, I can say I'm not making the assumption that that would happen, but I think the incentives are misplaced, and incentivizing behaviour you don't actually want to see doesn't tend to be a recipe for success. I simply don't think getting a GA stamp on an article should require anything other than writing the article. People who like writing and hate reviewing should also get to participate. Should those people get to suck all the energy out of the room? No, that's why I strongly support Proposal 16. -- asilvering (talk) 03:57, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, I don't like participating in qpq-type transactional systems. They gross me out. I don't volunteer to do things because I expect someone to do the same back to me. I'd be horrified to learn anyone had done so on my behalf. -- asilvering (talk) 04:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Collaboration is a fundamental aspect of the project. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not at all sure what that has to do with my statement. -- asilvering (talk) 04:47, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It means that doing stuff for other people is necessary in order to keep this part of the project rolling. The very act of nominating an article for GA is a request for someone else's time. Editor time is the most valuable commodity on the project. Therefore, in my opinion, anyone who is willing to request that someone else spend time on their work should, in the spirit of collaboration, be willing to offer their time back by doing a review themselves. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 00:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 4: Formalize "horse trading"
I love the idea of a QPQ, I think it's the radical sort of thing we need for the project. But looking at how they actually work: DYK QPQs just aren't good quality. For most people (and there are luckily exceptions) they're something people crank out in a few minutes because it's a chore you have to do before nominating the article you really want to DYK. Do we want GAN reviews to fall into that level of quality? Grnrchst has pointed out that FAC reviews are something of an informal QPQ. That exists for good articles too—I've seen it called "horse trading." Ultimately, the problem with a backlog is that GANs take a while. This might not ultimately be a bad thing for everyone; I had some pretty old outstanding GA reviews until recently and I didn't really mind it. If someone does mind it though, they could request a horse trade with someone in a similar subject area and each would review each other's articles. To prevent abuse, it'd be important to make sure that fails count for the trade, and for some cursory overview by a coordinator of some sort to make sure that none of the GAN review process has been ignored (most commonly, source-checks). Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 16:51, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Horse trading = log rolling = cliques of friends get easy passes for each others' articles while everyone else gets locked out of the system. It is a recipe for corruption and dubious GAs. It is something we should discourage, not encourage. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:49, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Formalisation isn't needed. Informal agreements to review each other's work is okay so long as the people involved aren't afraid to fail the nomination or bring up substantial issues if needed. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not sure there is much in actuality that needs formalising, and I can't see what a formal option would be that isn't QPQ (already being discussed above). CMD (talk) 12:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've seen editors start a review with "please also consider reviewing one of my open nominations" and I think that's fine. Not sure what "formalizing" might mean or accomplish. Grk1011 (talk) 15:52, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, moreover, I see no reason why GA is linked to DYK. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:04, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
I'm not really sure what you mean by "formalize", since you don't have any formal language in this post. What specific language are you proposing to formalize? -- asilvering (talk) 17:55, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I interpreted it as something like adding "Agreeing with another nominator to review each others' articles is allowed, so long as the reviews are of good quality" to WP:GANI. That said, that is acceptable now, so I guess I don't understand why it needs to be formalized. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 18:00, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's precisely my question: what are we formalizing, since this appears to be no change whatsoever? -- asilvering (talk) 18:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh, I didn't actually specify. Apologies; I meant having a separate page and review system for this. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 18:20, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I still don't follow, sorry. -- asilvering (talk) 18:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What I don't get is why? I can say to you, "if you review Michael Block I'll review Centennial half-crown", and as long as they're thorough reviews, that's acceptable? Why is a separate page needed? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If someone is currently reviewing one of your GA nominations, it's a conflict of interest to review or promise to review one of their nominations, because then if they discover any problem and fail your nomination they might reasonably expect you to be more hostile to their nomination. Therefore, they would be incentivized to look the other way and pass your article rather than pointing out the problem. This is not something we should be encouraging or formalizing. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:38, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I wouldn't do it personally for that reason, even though I would hope that I/fellow editors wouldn't take a fail in that way. As far as I know, though, it's not forbidden by the GA instructions. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:48, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 5: Incentivise reviewing
For a while, the sort order of GAN was not by date of nomination, but only by the nominator's review to nominations quotient. This was great for wait times for frequent reviewers (I rarely had to wait long) but was discouraging especially to nominators with many legacy nominations. We could try to find a compromise position where reviewing in general helps to reduce wait times. For example, we could sort reviews by (wait time)*(reviewer bonus), where "reviewer bonus" is a number between 1 and 3 depending on how frequently the nominator performs reviews. So every new nomination would start out at the bottom of the list, just some of them would climb to the top at a faster rate.
Support
As proposer. Happy to hear other suggestions for incentives. —Kusma (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am in favor of the concept of incentivising reviews in a thoughtful manner. Barkeep49 (talk) 18:41, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i think this is worth a shot! sawyer * he/they * talk 18:44, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The soft reviewer bonus system with appropriate leeway for new nominators seems a nice subtle nudge system less problematic than requiring QPQs. CMD (talk) 12:13, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Maybe, we should add a fair weighting queue, similar to hat used in internet packet routing. The weight should be determined not only by the number of reviews done by the nominator, but on the article size, age of being in the queue, etc... the formula may evolve over time, but I agree that the number of reviews done by the nominator is a good factor. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:07, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
I think it's best to keep the main list by wait time alone, at least for long enough to work through the backlog that's been here since the articles were ordered in the reviw-to-noms way. But I do think it's helpful that we have the "highest priority" list of reviews at the top of the page. Having a couple different top-five lists could be really helpful. "Oldest articles by GA newbies", "oldest articles by people with a better than 1:1 review ratio", etc. -- asilvering (talk) 17:59, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Wait time is what has worked. I would like to see incentives remain outside sort order, such as through barnstars. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We just got away from sorting by an opaque algorithm that did nothing to incentivize reviewing, especially of older nominations. Let's not go back to it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 12:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it didn't work. If barnstars or other pats on the back work for people, that'd be fine. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal is not marked as an RfC, so probably doesn't have the WP:CONLEVEL to overrule the RfC done only a few weeks ago. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:07, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
I am in principle decidedly in favour of incentivizing reviewing, though less sure about this particular suggestion. I had no strong opinions on either changing the sort order to be by review ratio or changing it back, but both[1][2] had fairly strong consensus in favour at the time. The sort order by review ratio did incentivize me to review more than I otherwise would have, although this mainly took the form of encouraging me to pick up clearly-premature/unprepared/deficient nominations to close as unsuccessful rather than ignoring them as I otherwise might have—which may or may not be the kind of behaviour we want to encourage. TompaDompa (talk) 16:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@TompaDompa At least personally, I do think that's the kind of behaviour we should encourage. The sooner obviously unprepared articles exit the queue the better. -- asilvering (talk) 20:57, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To address PMC's point, the proposal incentivises keeping one's review-to-nom ratio high, which gives an indirect incentive to review (and that did work for me). It does not remove the current incentive to review older nominations (if you just review everything above your own nom, your nom will become the top one), but it makes it slightly less work for frequent reviewers. —Kusma (talk) 19:22, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That was exactly the justification for the switch to the algorithm sort last time. There was strong recent consensus to change it back because it wasn't providing that incentive to most reviewers. I recognize that you're the admirable exception but it just doesn't seem to work for most people the way it did for you. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:58, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 6: Swap Unreviewed nominations with Old nominations at Backlog Drives Progress
Currently, there are 186 GAN nominations that are 3 months or older. Of these 186, 32 of them are older than 6 months. This means that over 70% of them (502 out of 688) are under 3 months old. While 688 nominations are a concern, the majority of them are not that old. I think that the Progress bars at the Backlog drives should track Old nominations (3 months and older) and the Total number of nominations like at Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Backlog elimination drives/March 2024. While nominations of older nominations have been started, 28 of them have open reviews started more than a month ago per Wikipedia:Good_article_nominations/Report. An open review does not guarantee that it will be completed. Therefore, I think tracking the number of old nominations in the progress table would be more encouraging. Cutting back the backlog from 8 months to 2 months would be a massive accomplishment. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:10, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's only a backlog if old nominations are in the queue. If many nominations are in the queue then this could (in theory) be a well-functioning, active process with quick turnover. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i think this makes more logical sense than what we have right now sawyer * he/they * talk 01:50, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per Bilorv. The backlog becomes an issue when people have to wait for months for somebody to come along and review their article. I think it's still important to keep track of overall unreviewed nominations in backlog drives, but refocusing drives on old nominations would produce a massive benefit for the whole project. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like this. It seems more in the spirit of eliminating the backlog. Our backlog isn't really noms in general, but the ones that linger. This would help address the concern about folks who dump a bunch of new noms periodically. They shouldn't be chastised for being active and productive. It's only a problem if no one reviews the noms for months. Grk1011 (talk) 15:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, since I don't see any potential problems that this change may cause, better visibility should at least not harm the situation, probably. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:08, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Discuss
This would be more like the GOCE, which has the total articles needing copyediting, and a specified set of the oldest articles needing copyediting: the drive specifically lists the months being targeted—for example, the current drive is targeting the December 2022, January 2023, and February 2023 articles that need to be copyedited, and the initial 263 listed has been reduced to 164; however, the total articles needing copyediting has only been reduced from 2509 to 2461 because new articles are being tagged with a {{copyedit}} template. However, the count includes those that are already under review (there are 123 unreviewed that are 90 days or older, 11 of which are over 180 days). While old open reviews don't guarantee that they will be completed, the vast majority are completed, and the rest eventually find new reviewers, and more frequently during backlog drives due to the extra points offered. (That's less true this drive than in past ones, admittedly.)
However, in past reviews, a quickly dropping number of unreviewed nominations has proved a major encouragement. That hasn't been true this time, but it might in future. On the other hand, past GOCE drives have sometimes had to add in a new month when the original targets are used up (they also give a bonus for old articles), which seems to invite new energy to reduce the number again. Note that the total changes for GOCE are to the total outstanding copyedit requests, not the targeted ones, which is different from how we work (we show the reduction in those articles waiting for review). BlueMoonset (talk) 04:26, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 7: Organize nominations into sections based on months at GAN
Inspired by Mike Christie's comment below, how about we organize all of the nominations based on User:SDZeroBot/GAN sorting? We could have four sections:
Nominations that are 6 months or older
Nominations that are older than 3 months old
Nominations that from 1 month to 3 months old
Nominations that are under 1 month old.
To prevent the sections from getting too large, we could keep the topics/subtopics under each section that applies. Therefore, the oldest nominations are first and are not buried in the GAN page. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Seems to serve no purpose except for making the topics I want to review harder to find. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 19:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly I don't mind what happens on that sort page because I don't ever look at it. I find the main nomination page fine the way it is and it allows me to find articles in subjects I'm interested in. Grk1011 (talk) 15:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a decent idea to highlight the problem of the backlog, but I imagine it would put people off reviewing by not being able to determine which articles they would be interested in or have expertise in. Unexpectedlydian♯4talk‽ 18:21, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would break up the straightforward list-by-time structure. It's already evident which items are oldest, they're at the top of each list. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am only interested in reviewing certain categories of nominations, often small ones, and lumping them together with dozens or hundreds of video games, recent shows and music, and sporting events (big categories that I am not interested in) to organize by date instead would make these much harder to find. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:27, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: why not simply sort by age? What will these additional categories give? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:09, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
152 nominations that are between 91 to 179 days old (older than 3 months but less than 6 months)
209 nominations that are between 31 to 90 days (older than 1 months but not over 3 months).
I thought having each of these age sections and breaking them up by topic would be easier. Instead of merging them all together, especially the 209 between 31 days-3 months and 152 being between 3-6 months, it would be more feasible. If it's easier to group them by age instead and not worry about the subtopics, then that works too. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:30, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Many reviewers seem to check in specific topics, this would not help them and may hide even obscure the older nominations in that topic area. CMD (talk) 12:15, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And who says that there has to be a single nominations page, that it has to be either the current layout or another? We can keep the current one as the "primary" nominations page, and have others that organize the same items with other layouts that we may find useful (such as order by nomination date, by article prose length, by users with the most present and past nominations to the least, by users with the most reviews to the last, by nominations/reviews proportion, etc). The WP:GAN page itself is 100% run by bots anyway and the same can happen with those, once set up those extra pages would require no active work from us to keep ordered. Cambalachero (talk) 20:13, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
The major way WP:FAC trims their queue is by having un(der)reviewed nominations time out and fall out of the queue. The downside of this is obvious: it's unfair. A nominator waits in line only to be told to get back in line, starting at the back. I think there are some legitimate upsides though. Nominations that are in poor shape, or from editors that don't review much or are difficult to work with are probably most likely to fall down the queue, where under this proposal they could non-confrontationally be removed from the queue. We would add an automated message to the nominator that sadly their nomination wasn't reviewed due to an insufficient pool of reviewers, and that they can help by reviewing more GANs, or seek further feedback on the article at WP:Peer Review. The result of enacting this would be that reviewers' limited resources are spent reviewing relatively recently nominated articles, where the nominator is more likely to be around and have their sources handy. At FAC, the timeout is handled by coordinators based on momentum. I'd suggest here we instead set a time limit, perhaps 45 days. Ajpolino (talk) 18:35, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support
As proposer. There's been a substantial backlog at GAN for as long as I can recall. I realize this would be a dramatic change, but perhaps it's time to consider trialing some dramatic options. Mike Christie's efforts to rebuild the GA bot and reorder the nomination list were a fantastic boon for the project, but revealed that tinkering with the list order probably isn't going to be sufficient to make a dent in our backlog. Similarly, backlog drives are great, and build community, but I very much doubt they can keep the backlog in check. I'm not saying this is the answer, but I think it's worth considering. Ajpolino (talk) 18:39, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
I agree that the result of this is that reviewers' limited resources are spent reviewing relatively recently nominated articles. I also think the result of it is that people with social capital in GA are at a huge leg up over people who don't and that's not the thing I wish GA would learn from FA. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:40, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it would be fair to have someone who has been waiting for a long time have their nomination removed at GAN. The nomination could not be reviewed for a various of reasons: potential reviewers don't have access to sources, length of article, topic of article etc. Nominators do not have control in how fast or how soon their article is reviewed. Removing older nominations and telling users to review other articles might discourage them for resubmitting their article. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 18:44, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per Barkeep. This seems to me like a problem with FAC, not a solution. -- asilvering (talk) 18:53, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per Barkeep. Also, why would we punish people who wait for a long time because they do not find reviewers by waiting even longer? —Kusma (talk) 20:32, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is an editor of a specialized topic that takes months to find an interested editor supposed to do? Keep re-nominating and re-nominating in the hope that eventually one of the nominations won't time out? Get their topic permanently banned from nominations because it has timed out too much? I don't see how this helps the backlog nor the GA process. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:52, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As well as specialised topics, this would discourage people from working on articles with large scope (e.g. vital articles). Long and large scope articles often linger for many months. — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
per Barkeep & David Eppstein - also, selfishly, i worry that as someone who works on obscure topics, my future nominations would get stale in this system. sawyer * he/they * talk 01:54, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's simply unfair to those who nominate in good faith, especially (as noted above) the less popular categories. One reason we have backlog drives is to add an incentive to review the nominations that have been sitting around the longest. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have the institutional or organisational structure for this. CMD (talk) 12:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per everyone above. This is something I already found absurd about the FAC process, it'd be even more punishing here. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:04, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is exactly what we don't want to happen. Old and 'hard' articles need to rise in priority, not fall off a cliff. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not to pile on more opposes but reviewers' limited resources are spent reviewing relatively recently nominated articles it's tautological that if we forbid older nominations that most nominations will be newer. But it doesn't address the backlog, unless we're hoping for a significant number of these people to get fatigued and give up. Thank you for bringing it up, this is worth discussing, but not a proposal I support. Mokadoshi (talk) 03:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Now, if the proposal had been to time out stale reviews, particularly where the nominator has not been responsive, that could help clear some deadwood away. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:31, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Don't we basically do this already? I've checked in on a handful once the backlog drive started, and when I've let one run too long before I had someone pop in to remind us to close it. -- asilvering (talk) 04:34, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do that, and I know others periodically patrol that page. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:52, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Without naming names, I've noticed at least 2 editors who have many noms but are not currently active. I'm sort of torn what the response might be. I feel like someone should start the review anyway with "I know you're inactive right now, but it's time for this review. You have 7 days to let me know if you will be able to respond, if not, this will be a quick fail and you can renominate when you're ready to return." Even when I don't have time to actively edit, it's never hard to check-in and respond to someone's quick question. If you don't have time to edit, you don't have time to have pending noms. Grk1011 (talk) 15:48, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some nominated articles are GA quality without any further improvement, so nominator inactivity shouldn't be a quickfail reason. If someone is a significant contributor to an article that wouldn't normally be quickfailed then I believe they deserve a full review and feedback, even if that feedback is only something that can be actioned outside of the GA process or by another volunteer. — Bilorv (talk) 21:13, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. As a reviewer you can always write out the reasons for a fail (assuming none of the changes are addressed), then fail after a week or so if you don't hear anything back. -- asilvering (talk) 21:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Proposal 9: Group nominations based on months at GAN in each topic section
I propose an adjusted version of my proposal #7. In each section and subsection (Agriculture, food and drink, Art and architecture etc.), we could group nominations based on the amount of months that each nomination has been at GAN while keeping the information that's already there in each nomination (description, review/ga ratio, nominator, date). For example:
Computing and engineering
3 months or older:
DOM clobbering - 10 November 2023
1 month or older:
Open-source license - 22 February 2024
Under 1 month old:
Texas City refinery explosion - 29 February 2024
Reinforcement learning from human feedback - 15 March 2024
Therefore, we can keep the existing topics and see which areas have more backlogged articles than others. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 19:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think anyone needs section headers to tell how many months ago November was, or whether a nomination from 29 February was under a month ago. You can just count, or look at a calendar. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:36, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All noms have the nomination date there already for those interested. CMD (talk) 12:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not necessary, and indeed adding clutter, per the comments above. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as I don't understand what is the difference between the sorting or categorizing proposed earlier? Isn't what was proposed in the other proposals the same? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:11, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Proposal 10: Finish doing some or all of the things we agreed on last time we did this
WP:GA2023 resulted in consensus to do several things that were never implemented:
Proposal 2023.4: Proposed model reviews
Proposal 2023.4A: Recognize exceptional reviews
Proposal 2023.5: Make the mentorship program more visible
Proposal 2023.15: Invitation
Proposal 2023.21: Make GA status more prominent in mainspace
Proposal 2023.30: Add a category separating GAs by month and/or year
Support as proposer and per consensus found at WP:GA2023. I had intended to revisit "Proposal 2023.15: Invitation" once the backlog drive ended and I believe it should be given priority. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
no reason why we shouldn't implement these ideas that already have consensus sawyer * he/they * talk 22:02, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support and see below for details on the "Invitation" and "Proposed model reviews", Rjjiii (talk) 18:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the invitation to review would be most effective. I'm not quite sure what the criteria are for GA backlog drive invitations, but it would be good if we try to target a slightly different demographic. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 14:52, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support. Or why are we even spending time on the proposals above? Gog the Mild (talk) 14:10, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These proposals look good; this goes without saying. Averageuntitleduser (talk) 03:18, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
These are mostly the good proposals. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:11, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
Discuss
I mean, sure, but all of them require people to do the things. If you want to showcase model reviews, reward good reviews, be a mentor, or anything else, get on with it. I stepped forward with GAR and have been basically running the process for a year. It's no use vaguely handwaving at work and expecting that others (well, a certain someone else, let's be honest) will wave their magic wand and implement it, and complaining when they don't. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:33, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After the initial somewhat complex plan to review the reviews stalled, I created a model review banner template and discussed it but never moved it to Template namespace or attempted to put it into practice. My thought was to have a template that someone could post to a review, the template would automatically add any marked review to a model review category, and optionally a bot could then auto-post a message to the reviewer's talk page. Rather than voting, the process could just be that if anybody removes the model review template, it stays off. Additionally, I drafted an invitation User:Rjjiii/Invitation that could be substed onto users' talk pages. I'm fine if any other editors want to modify that, push it to template space, or steal any ideas that seem usable. Rjjiii (talk) 18:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
that sounds like a great idea! sawyer * he/they * talk 18:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Love the Model Review idea. GAN reviewers are unsung heroes, and any effort towards recognizing them more effectively is good in my book. Fritzmann (message me) 13:55, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This looks great and I think such a system for marking and categorising model reviews would be fantastic. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:08, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This looks great! Some head-on solutions to the problem. The model review system would be a good reference for new reviewers, while the invitation would help us get those new reviewers in the first place. Averageuntitleduser (talk) 03:15, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For proposal 34 there's a category, Category:Delisted good articles, which I think serves the same purpose, though I don't know how accurate it is. For 30, I think I looked into it and ran into technical difficulties, which I can dig up if anyone is interested. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:22, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 11: Collaborate with WikiProjects to make GAN reviewing part of their process
Members of WP:MILHIST and WP:VG watch their respective GAN categories, and nominations in these categories are handled more efficiently than others. Editors familiar with the GA process should work with other major WikiProjects to increase the overall focus on GAN nominating and reviewing, incorporating the same strategies used by MILHIST and VG. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:46, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
seems like a solid idea sawyer * he/they * talk 22:03, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good. WikiProjects can help keep the backlog down in their specific sections of interest and hopefully bring new editors from those WikiProjects as well. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:16, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
There's nothing really to do here. Any Wikiproject interested in GANs can see them in Article Alerts already. At most Wikiproject sizes this would end up being small cliques reviewing each other even if this does work. (I personally sometimes avoid reviews that touch on areas I am one of the few regular editors in, fresh perspectives can be better.) CMD (talk) 12:19, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per below, I fail to see what this proposal actually means. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:23, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unclear what action this would actually involve. The two big WPs already have enough interested people to handle their GANs well. The proposal won't help the rest. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as there is currently no explanation on what does it mean and how can it be enforced, and what are the penalties of non-conformance, and what hampers from considering that already implemented, as the members of WP:MILHIST and WP:VG may already watch their respective GAN categories. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:13, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Most WikiProjects are somewhere between dead and extremely understaffed, so this proposal only works for a few limited content areas. —Kusma (talk) 22:43, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah. There is a reason that the two most active WikiProjects have the two most active GA sections. I'm not really sure what "strategies" Thebiguglyalien is thinking of, other than "have a WikiProject that isn't a graveyard". ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:28, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had initially listed a few different things when writing this, but I decided to leave it open-ended. One thing I had in mind was to design a more streamlined template banner that lists current GA (and FA/PR) nominations in a given topic—many WikiProjects use this, but it can be improved upon, standardized, and made more prominent. Another was to make use of WikiProject talk pages to notify them of recent nominations (also something that could be automated). Medicine, film, biography, women, politics, television, anime, albums, and sports all have active WikiProjects with untapped GA potential, among others. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 23:38, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:AALERTS seems to be active for most of those projects, which handles notifications; I'm not entirely sure how you can streamline something like Wikipedia:WikiProject Film/Article alerts, so I'd like to see a mockup of that. In any case, unless I've missed something, I haven't seen any reference to specific "strategies used by MILHIST and VG", so I'd like to know what that refers to. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:58, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Women already has a whole wikiproject dedicated to GAs. It's WP:WIG. -- asilvering (talk) 04:42, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some wikiprojects may have standards for prose, structure, and sourcing that aren't exactly aligned with the larger community's (like basing most of an article around non-independent local newspaper quotes and primary stats). See e.g. the former roads project's historical overuse of primary map/government/non-independent sources and exhaustive route outlines, and the general tendency of enthusiasts to include every minor detail on a topic. I would worry about some projects developing OWNership over their GANs and green-lighting articles that a neutral reviewer would have problems with. We already get QPQ-like partnerships where editors nominate and pass dozens of each others' articles, what's to prevent even bigger walled gardens developing when overseen by a wikiproject? JoelleJay (talk) 02:32, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The real reason you don't like a QPQ-like partnership because it means you wouldn't be able to participate since you don't do any actual writing on Wikipedia, especially with regards to Good Articles. –Fredddie™ 22:45, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Lol do you have some kind of alert set up for wikispace mentions of "roads project" or are you just following me? JoelleJay (talk) 01:08, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's behave here and not start any drama. They are allowed to respond anywhere. It's not like GAN is a hidden page for admins only. Mitch32(it's youI like.) 03:15, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mitchazenia Maybe I'd assume more good faith if he didn't have a history of suddenly popping up at policy discussions slinging variations of this same personal attack at me and another editor.You two had better take it easy. If your actions push more groups into forks, you might have to start editing in the article space because there won't be anyone else left.[3]But you see, the nominator has a pattern of butting into topics that simply don't affect him because he doesn't contribute content to the encyclopedia.[4]What really gets me going are the policy wonks who don't write articles trying to set and enforce policies on those who do. If we're creating ridiculous policies, maybe AfD should be limited to those who have written a Featured Article.[5]Why do you care so deeply about this? NOR only affects editors who research topics and create articles based on that research. Judging by your contributions, that does not apply to you. So why do you care?[6]As I suggested here, the people who don't write articles sure do want to impose their strict interpretation of said policies on those who do write articles.[7]And they definitely have never sniffed FAC. Yet, they're perfectly comfortable dictating their narrow vision of policy to those of us who do produce content.[8]JoelleJay (talk) 00:04, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Neither. Self-admittedly, I'm kinda lame, but I'm not that lame. –Fredddie™ 03:20, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You've got it quite backwards. A qpq system would not shut out reviewers with no GAs, but rather the reverse. -- asilvering (talk) 18:53, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 12: Allow Partial GA Reviews
At FAC, reviewers can focus on specific criteria and let others handle the rest (e.g. one person checks sources, another reviews the prose, another looks at image licenses). At GAN, we expect one reviewer to do everything. This means that if I love editing prose but hate checking sources, or vice versa, I can't meaningfully contribute to the backlog. This also makes it more intimidating to start reviewing.
I propose we allow reviewers to opt into a Partial Review system, where they can complete the parts they're comfortable with and then pass the baton to someone else. Individuals are still encouraged to complete the full review if they're comfortable doing so. Ghosts of Europa (talk) 21:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
worth a try! sawyer * he/they * talk 22:07, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely agree! My expertise is verification and copyvio checks, while grammar and neutrality take a long time for me. MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 22:15, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As someone who enjoys digging through sources while, as an ESL, being somewhat limited in prose, I fully support this. AstonishingTunesAdmirer連絡 00:52, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I like this idea! I'm better at reviewing prose, anyways, and spot-checks take a long time for me. Spinixster(chat!) 02:00, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't participate in GANs because I have a tendency to be thorough to the point of self-injury when writing/evaluating (non-technical) prose. On the other hand, I think I would enjoy tracking down sources. JoelleJay (talk) 02:49, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oooh, I never would have thought of that. I like this. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:34, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is a fantastic proposal, it directly addresses an issue a lot of people have been raising for a while. I do wonder how this could be implemented (maybe a dedicated noticeboard?) but opening the door for it will be worth it, I think. --Grnrchst (talk) 13:00, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but maybe weight partials based off of the amount of partials of that category in the queue, if it’s all as airship says, “plz do spot checks” (sounds like me) maybe disallow any more partial reviews that leave out the spot check until that queue is reduced. Geardona (talk to me?) 04:17, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, I hope the "partial review" section doesn't end up being a long list of "pls do source spotchecks for me". To expand, if a person to share the load with isn't found within a suitable timeframe (a week or two?) then it is still on the original reviewer to fulfil the full review. This cannot be an "indefinite hold" mechanism. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:23, 24 March 2024 (UTC) EDIT: moved to oppose[reply]
I support this, with the caveat that any reviewer pair ought to be decided before the review begins. I think this will reduce the likelihood of the stall-out problems that oppose/neutral editors have mentioned. Regarding "I think this will cause problems"-type responses, I don't think the stakes here are so very high that we should be discarding ideas simply because they might cause problems. We can always do a test run of these new changes, then decide afterwards whether it was worth the change or not. It looks like many of the opposers think the problem will be "everyone clamouring for source checks", but we have three editors just in the votes above saying that's precisely what they'd like to do! We should at least give it a shot. -- asilvering (talk) 20:19, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
This sounds chaotic; delay seems likely; and a key difference between GAN and FAC is GAN's single point of contact reviewer – it's already the case that others can add comments. I note that many of the "Discuss" comments below read much like "Oppose", too. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:51, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This needs more thought. I would suggest to coordinate "reviewer teams" that can commit to a full review, but would not want people to start partial reviews without clarity on who will finish. —Kusma (talk) 17:03, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
At FAC, partial reviews often meant that editors avoided source reviews. I fear this would be the case if implemented at GAN. Z1720 (talk) 17:38, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Knowing how hard it is to get a reviewer to finish off a not-yet-complete review under the "Second opinion" rubric, I wouldn't want this to go forward as proposed. I would expect the number of incomplete reviews to balloon just like the number of unreviewed noms has. BlueMoonset (talk) 21:31, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After thinking, while a fair idea, I just can't see it working in practice. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:43, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - not a bad idea, but I ultimately think that the benefits of this proposal are already covered by the "second opinion" section, while the drawbacks would be both novel and considerable. —Ganesha811 (talk) 13:59, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately I don't think this will work. The GA criteria aren't really set up in the right way, and a GA reviewer really needs to have a broad-ish understand of the article. Someone doing prose check + someone else doing source checks + someone else doing formatting feels like it would get chaotic and lead to reviews taking ages. Unexpectedlydian♯4talk‽ 11:08, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Would be curious to see a more detailed proposal, but at the moment opposing. As I noted below handling it partially is already possible in an ad-hoc manner, if someone wishes to test, although we still need a single editor to certify passing/failing. FAC is mentioned as an example, that process has coordinators who handle it. CMD (talk) 15:04, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel that this would slow down the review process (when is it done) and folks wouldn't be as invested in their review. If this is something that we really want to see happen, I think the proposal would have to be a bit more detailed/specific. Grk1011 (talk) 20:23, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose. The GA process is intentionally a lightweight process that should be quickly completed rather than doing a multistage multistep partial review process. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Who decides the final fate of the review? Right now, it's the reviewer who opens the review page who has the final decision (unless they crap out). Is it whoever has the baton at the moment the one who gets to decide whether to approve, fail, or pass the baton? (We'd want to be sure that backlog drives encouraged the completion of partially complete reviews.) BlueMoonset (talk) 04:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i think realistically it'd probably be fairly informal; once all the criteria has been met to the respective reviewers' liking, it'd be passed by one of them. sawyer * he/they * talk 04:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we implement this, we should make it clear that it's optional and up to the original reviewer to invite, rather than turning every review into a free-for-all. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
definitely agree; this shouldn't be the default, just an option. sawyer * he/they * talk 04:47, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Those interested in partially reviewing should post to the user talkpage or the relevant article talkpage with their comments. I have done so in the past when I see a GAN I want to comment on that isn't open. If it is open, comments can be added to that page. You still need someone responsible for closing the GAN. CMD (talk) 12:22, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Apologies for misunderstanding. Are you saying that your proposal suggests that the partial review may involve different users reviewing depending on their skills (such as reviewing the writing and facts, or checking the verifiability of the sources)? If so, should the second opinion be the alternative one? I don't quite understand here. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 13:38, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In regards to partial reviews, would that be counted as a .5 review in the stats? If so, how would that be tracked? --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't oppose this but I worry that it would become chaotic, and as AirshipJungleman29 says it might turn into "please would somebody else do the source review and spotchecks". Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:03, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Now opposing, having been convinced by the pessimistic comments in this section and the oppose section that this is too likely to cause more problems than it solves. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:31, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe we could have a subpage of the project where editors can add themselves as interested in doing source review and spotchecks? Then other editors who want to do the rest of the review could recruit one of them before opening the review. JoelleJay (talk) 16:28, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am not categorically opposed to this suggestion, but I think the risk of unintended consequences—as noted by several editors above—is very high and I am far from convinced that this would not just replace one type of problem with another (possibly even worse). TompaDompa (talk) 18:23, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am agnostic, but like the idea of encouraging reviewer teams. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:12, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 13: Barnstars / Thank You Messages for Reviewers
When a GAN passes, ChristieBot posts an encouraging message on the nominator's talk page. For the reviewer, however, the end of the process is an anticlimax. I propose that ChristieBot also post an encouraging message / barnstar on the reviewer's talk page at particular milestones (e.g. "Thank you for your first GA review!", "Thank you for reviewing 5 GAs!"). People love positive reinforcement :) Ghosts of Europa (talk) 21:54, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Positive feedback is cheap and I believe it would be effectively. Could we have some new award (like Triple Crown), automatic or given out manually, for reaching milestones like 5 reviews, 10 reviews, 20 reviews etc.? — Bilorv (talk) 01:17, 23 March 2024 (UTC
Seconding Bilorv. I think part of why people don't do many reviews is that we put so much emphasis on being a "content creator", listing number of GAs, etc, but not on the processes that actually make any of that work. I started listing the reviews I've done on my userpage two years ago. In all that time, I can count the number of user pages I've seen with someone doing similar on one hand. Honestly, maybe it's only two editors. But people list their GAs all the time. -- asilvering (talk) 02:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I think this should be doable. If this passes it would be good to get agreement on the wording and layout of the various messages and barnstars; adding the functionality to ChristieBot shouldn't be that hard. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:10, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If it's any consolation, Asilvering, I keep a list of my GA reviews but not my GAs. That being said, I don't really show it off to others but rather maintain the list for my own sake—largely because it helps with future reviews to easily be able to reuse phrasings for recurring pieces of (at times, necessarily lengthy) feedback, refer to relevant policies and guidelines that come up now and then, and so on. I similarly keep a list of my DYK nominations and reviews for this purpose as well as to keep track QPQ-wise. TompaDompa (talk) 17:45, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not that I need any kind of consolation, I just think it's a clear statement of what the community values, that people list their GAs but not reviews, etc. -- asilvering (talk) 20:18, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Currently, writers of good articles can display the {{User Good Articles}} userbox, that displays a simple "This user has helped promote X good articles on Wikipedia." We can implement a fancy badge like those of Wikipedia:Service awards, but with the rules of having a number of reviews as well as own good articles to climb in the categories. Cambalachero (talk) 20:23, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've gone ahead and created File:Good article review icon.svg as a thing for GA reviews. I have also created {{GA review user topicon}}; if someone could create a userbox that would be great! Hopefully, a dedicated "award" you can only receive for reviewing will encourage people to do more reviewing? Or, potentially, advertise that reviews are needed? HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 01:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also: if it's of any use. Rjjiii (talk) 02:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: My thought process was that we should create a unique "award" which can only be achieved by doing a GA review. Do you think there would be protests if we swapped the logo, either to the one I created or something else entirely? Or should we create an alternative version for people to use, that uses a unique logo? HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 02:22, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@HouseBlaster I think we should leave Template:User Good Articles reviewed as-is (it appears to be what @Cambalachero was hoping for in the first place) and save your icon for whatever specific award you have in mind. Or maybe for "model reviews"? That's been suggested somewhere in here. -- asilvering (talk) 02:28, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: fair enough :) I think I will let it evolve naturally. HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 21:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 14: Backlog drives should address only a subset of the backlog
I think we (by which I mean the regulars at GAN) are asking for contradictory things, all of which are good goals in themselves. We want
A small backlog and a short wait for reviews
No obligation to review in order to get one's own nominations reviewed
No incentive to do poor quality reviews
An environment that does not burn out editors who review a lot
I support all four of these -- I hesitate over 2, but I don't see why we should prevent an editor from reviewing one of Another Believer's nominations, though I would not review one myself. I don't think we can have all four at the same time. I think 1 is unresolvable because of these mutually contradictory goals. We currently have 2 and 3, and per the proposals above those look like they're going to continue to stand. So can we do anything about 4? I think backlog drives actually harm the motivation of some reviewers as they feel their good will is being taken advantage of.
So I propose that backlog drives are limited to some subset of what's at GAN: only R/G > 1, or something similar. That is, there would be a page showing which nominations are part of the backlog, and only reviews from that list would count towards the backlog barnstars.
Added, after MrLinkPark333's comment: perhaps make every other backlog drive like this, not every backlog drive. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:58, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support
As proposer. I would be much more likely to participate in a backlog drive that was structured like this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:01, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would support perhaps R/G > 1 within the past year, or something similar. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 13:05, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would prefer backlog drives that give bonuses to articles from a particular list while still allowing all reviews to count. For example, a list could be drawn up at the start of the drive of all submissions from editors with >1 review ratios, and taking one of those could get a bonus point. But while I'd prefer that, I wouldn't oppose the suggestion as written. -- asilvering (talk) 23:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
I disagree with this idea. If one of the oldest nominations happens to be from an user with R/G < 1, their nominations should not be ignored. Backlog drives should allow any nomination, not disqualify ones based on ratio. --MrLinkinPark333 (talk) 17:40, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: a subset may limit the match between reviewer qualification in a particular topic and the articles from the subset. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
Proposal 15: Ban the specific guy who dumped all those extra nominations on you from making more nominations
Procedural closure; TonyTheTiger's rapid nominations are already being discussed elsewhere. This is not the appropriate place to start a discussion about bans of any kind. (non-admin closure) —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 04:49, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
I don't get why all the proposals above are so cagey. The opening statement tells us "dozens of nominations were dumped onto the list en masse". Why the passive here? "Were dumped"? No, there was a particular editor who dumped the nominations – TonyTheTiger. Why not ban him from nominating articles until he learns to respect volunteers' time and energy? It wouldn't fix the whole problem, but it would help a bit, right?
If the regulars here want say to something along the lines of "this section is for discussing GAN's higher-order systems, not individual editors' conduct, go to ANI or something" then sure, I'll respect that. But it seems to me a large part of the problem here does hinge on an individual editor's conduct.
Support
As proposer. – Teratix₵ 15:44, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
No. It's annoying if you're one of the reviewers working on trying to bring down the backlog, but you can't penalize an editor for staying within the existing rules. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:28, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AirshipJungleman29 makes good points about Tony's nominations, below, but I agree with Kusma that this is not the right venue even if a ban were warranted. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 17:56, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is the wrong venue for a ban from GAN; I am uncomfortable preventing an editor from nominating without a consensus at WP:ANI. Excluding TTT from the WikiCup (a totally optional game) is a lesser sanction that can just be done by consensus of WikiCup coords; it might actually be more suitable here. —Kusma (talk) 17:28, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
not the right venue; take this to WP:ANIsawyer * he/they * talk 18:07, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Discuss
(Incidentally, could someone reading this consider quickfailing Heath Irwin under QUICKFAIL #5? Tony has immediately renominated the article without substantially addressing the issues raised in my review). – Teratix₵ 16:00, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is the rules haven't been followed, Mike Christie. WP:GAN/I#N1 instructs nominators to ensure compliance with the GA criteria before nominating. TonyTheTiger has not done this—he has nominated dozens of articles he hasn't edited in years, in some cases for almost a decade, and unsurprisingly many of them are clearly sub-par. Take for example Malcolm (Macbeth), which Tony last edited in 2016 and which doesn't meet several criteria. For related discussions, see Wikipedia talk:WikiCup#Open season on qfing me, where Tony takes exception to the fact that he has failed to do the literal step 1 of GA nominating, and this discussion on his talk page. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:11, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Malcolm (Macbeth) really is a conspicuous example. I saw it nominated, looked at the article, and thought to myself "What am I missing? This is clearly nowhere near WP:Good article quality, yet it was nominated by an editor with hundreds of successful nominations". I pondered for a few days whether I should review it as an obvious WP:QUICKFAIL before being beaten to the punch by AirshipJungleman29. If this is in any way part of a pattern, something needs to be done—even if just a stern talking-to. TompaDompa (talk) 17:27, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i concur with airship here. not even the slightest amount of due diligence was done with these nominations. sawyer * he/they * talk 18:14, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that we all feel uncomfortable about TTT's input to the queue here, could a coordinator have a quiet chat with him sometime? Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:57, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looking at the user's talk page, I see that within the last 24-hour time period (20:25 UTC on 22 March to 20:25 UTC on 23 March), no fewer than 25 "Failed GA" messages were left by (ChristieBot on behalf of) ten different reviewers. I suggest that it would at this point be more kind to simply remove all their outstanding nominations than to keep this up—and it would also be a better use of the community's time. TompaDompa (talk) 20:25, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This behavior of immediately renominating failed articles until the reviewers get too tired or lazy and just pass it anyway was a big part of the reason Doug Coldwell's nominations became such a big problem. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:41, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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.
Proposal 16: Cap open nominations for editors with a negative review-to-GA ratio
One reason backlogs happen is that some editors nominate more articles than they review. This proposal would only cap the number of open nominations to editors who have more successful good articles nominations than they have reviews. This would hopefully encourage them to review articles instead of adding to the backlog. After all, the limit will be lifted if they review articles. The ratio is already tracked on WP:GAN, and I hope this won't be too hard to implement. If an editor doesn't want to review articles, they can still nominate a set number of articles (maybe 5?) and wait until a review is finished on one of them before their next nomination. This proposal would also "reward" editors who review as they would not be limited in how many open nominations they have.
If successful, I think we should open another discussion on what the exact limits should be. Z1720 (talk) 21:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support
As proposer. Z1720 (talk) 21:35, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is more than fair, even with a set number as low as 5. I'd also support doing this only with a "soft" cap like we have on 20+ submissions currently. -- asilvering (talk) 23:16, 23 March 2024 (UTC) (response edited in bold and strikethrough -- asilvering (talk) 18:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC))[reply]
If we don't do straight QPQ, let's do something at least. I'm very sorry that this will inconvenience people who don't want to review, but the thing is, GAN is a commons. If people don't take out equal to what we're putting in, the thing collapses under its own weight. The oppose argues that slowing certain prolific nominators down doesn't improve Wikipedia, but you know what else doesn't improve Wikipedia? Articles sitting waiting for feedback for nine months. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:10, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
PMC has convinced me, i think sawyer * he/they * talk 02:13, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, this is a good idea. (Sorry, Epic.) Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 03:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Making it more tedious for Epicgenius and Chiswick Chap to nominate articles for GAN does not improve Wikipedia. —Kusma (talk) 23:20, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sympathetic to this proposal, but this would disproportionately affect our best reviewers as well as our best content creators. I'm not going to speak for Chiswick Chap, but if I were him, I'd feel insulted by a measure like this. He's done as many reviews as the current five supporters of this proposal combined, and there's a level of absurdity in penalizing him for not doing enough. This proposal would quell many contributors who both write and review just because even if they're good at reviewing, they're better at writing (the main thing we're actually supposed to be doing here). This is before considering the fact that just mathematically, it's an immense effort to move a ratio at all once both numbers are high enough. Suggesting a possible alternative in the discussion below. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:45, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our existing soft cap system feels better than a hard cap. Perhaps the soft cap could be tweaked, but that doesn't seem to be what is being proposed. CMD (talk) 06:52, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Both GAs and reviews are valuable to the project, and must be treated as such. Rescues at GAR deserve the same status, by the way. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:07, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per SusunW’s comments. I don’t see any point in limiting what good writers can nominate. I would prefer something like prop 14, which I suggested, because it rewards prolific reviewers without penalizing other nominators. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:29, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Nominators of GAs are contributing to the encyclopedia and the GA process, not taking away from it. I don't like these proposals about limiting number of active nominations because it tinkers with statistics rather than looking at the root cause (people do not feel sufficiently qualified or valued for reviewing): a nominator just starts playing a game where they hold 10 nominations back until their current nominations are reviewed, so the real GAN queue is 10 more than the official figures and the "backlog" has been "reduced" by 10. — Bilorv (talk) 21:51, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per § Proposal 16 and 16b in March 2024 backlog. Adding caps merely hides the problem of not enough reviewers without addressing it, and having a (badly and confusingly described) hard threshold for the cap permanently locks out certain prolific contributors without in any way incentivising them to perform the ridiculous number of new reviews that would be needed to get past the threshold. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose, as the GA is a lighweight process and some reviews may be unfair, so the nominator should not suffer from the reviewers' incompetence, unless there is a multistage appeals process, which, again, is a rate-limiting step. It should not be a negative review-to-GA ratio, but a ratio of nominations and reviews, and it cannot be negative, it can be say, more than 2 or less than 2, but not negative, since neither the numerator nor the denominator can be negative: you cannot have -1 reviews or -2 nominations. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:20, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i'm very sympathetic to this idea, as there are a few editors with zero reviews and 60+ GAs, or even 160+ GAs, which makes me not want to review their nominations at all, and i know i'm not alone with that sentiment. however, Kusma is right that this would hinder some of our most prolific GA nominators (Epicgenius, CC, Sammi Brie, etc). i'm undecided on this as of now. sawyer * he/they * talk 00:57, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It doesn't hinder them from writing good articles (lowercase), if that's what they want to do. It does make it harder to get the little green award on the articles they do write, unless they want to support the process that generates those little green awards. -- asilvering (talk) 03:24, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(if you didn't notice, i did end up putting my name in the support section lol) yeah i've come around to agreeing with this. all three of them are pretty good about reviewing anyways, so i'm sure it would work out. any other editors with huge numbers of GAs and very few or no reviews should certainly pick up the slack; i'm sure we can all agree on that. sawyer * he/they * talk 03:27, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't give a rats about getting a "little green award". My motivation for submitting articles for review is very simple. They are improved by collaboration. Other eyes give input and perspectives that you might not have thought of and peer review is basically broken. IMO, which counts for absolutely nothing, imposing reviews will result in people no longer submitting articles and in turn a reduction in article quality. Maybe that's unimportant to others, maybe the focus is better directed at newbies trying to learn how to present better articles and just considering experienced editors' work "good enough". I have said many times on this page that reviewing and writing are not the same and in the real world, writers write, proofreaders verify/correct, and editors review. WP requires all of these to be done by a single person. Reviews are agonizing to me. It takes me an entire day or more to review any article. Critiquing someone else's work means that I will write and rewrite and rewrite yet again, each and every observation for clarity and to ensure that I am not inserting my own biases into recommendations. I force myself to review, but it is genuinely taxing. If we arrive at agreement to impose QPQ or a specific number of reviews, in all honesty, I will just stop submitting anything, because that would be too much pressure and cause me stress. Since my engagement on WP at all is to learn and to de-stress by doing something I enjoy, it would defeat the purpose. SusunW (talk) 18:37, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To be clear, SusunW, this is the "cap nominations by noms with low review ratio" proposal, not the "quid pro quo" proposal. Anyone who doesn't want to review for any reason could still nominate articles for GA, just not 20 or so at a time. -- asilvering (talk) 22:43, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
asilvering I monitor what I submit (For the record, one of my last GA reviews was done by you, because you specifically asked me to submit the article. I had not done so, because I still have what in my mind is too many outstanding articles awaiting review. I was a bit disappointed by your comment above about collecting awards, because it makes unfair assumptions about nominators' intent.) I know from experience that women's articles sit for a long time before being picked up for review. I've had more than one exceed the term of a pregnancy. I cannot control how soon someone reviews one of my articles so saying I can't nominate if I have X outstanding or if I haven't reviewed X articles submitted by someone else, basically equates to just don't nominate articles. This discussion in a way seems counter-productive, like the goal is to punish content creators, unless they are prolific reviewers and to assume the worst motives for why they submitted an article for review. The cap and QPQ issues are related and inseparable to my mind. I am not trying to be argumentative, at all, just pointing out that there are many more ways to look at any situation than in-line from totally bad to totally good. Whatever is decided will be and I will just have to adjust what I do accordingly. SusunW (talk) 23:18, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, about that. I didn't mean to imply that all nominators are only after the awards and get nothing else out of it, and I do feel very strongly that no one should be required to do reviews to be eligible for them themselves. But from your reply I see that my comment was also more unkind than I intended, and I apologize for that. I have more to say in response, but I need to step away from wp for a minute and wanted to get this apology out first. -- asilvering (talk) 00:41, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. SusunW (talk) 14:11, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Alright, having given it some more thought, my earlier position on this was both wrongheaded and inconsistent with my stated views (both in this wider discussion and elsewhere), so thank you for calling me on it. I've outright said that even mass-nominations are a symptom of the backlog, not the cause of it, and I stand by that. (Except, obviously, here, where I wobbled.) Among other reasons, I'm sure that this comes from frustration with how we put prolific content creators on a pedestal, then wonder why other tasks on the encyclopedia don't get done. Why don't people do more GA reviews? Why don't more people help at AfC? Why don't people run for adminship? Come on, folks: we know exactly why. In general, I think we ought to do whatever we can do to emphasize that we need all kinds of different hands to keep this ship afloat, which is why I still support a soft cap. But, obviously, "all kinds of different hands" does include people who only ever write articles and never do anything else, so when I'm being honest with myself, I don't support changes that make that more difficult.
I do wish more editors approached GAN as you do, as a collaboration that improves the encyclopedia, rather than a stamp of approval or an award to set in a trophy cabinet. It's much more fun to review when both nominator and reviewer agree that that's the point. -- asilvering (talk) 19:30, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
asilvering I appreciate your thoughtful response. I honestly don't know why others don't do things. I know why I don't. In general, don't like telling other people what to do. I am also not competitive (except with myself) and recognize my limitations. I am just not good with certain things. I agree that I don't support changes in general that make it harder for people to participate, but I also know that balance has to be struck to prevent chaos from reigning. That's why I said below to PMC that I don't completely object to a QPQ being imposed. I don't fully support the idea either because it will impact participation and quality, and won't solve articles sitting for months without a review, but if the community decides to do that I'll deal with it. (Somewhere else you posted that you keep track of your reviews. I wish I had thought to do that. I only keep track of articles so that I have an easy way to go back to them. I am horrible with Wiki-technology and the search engine. If on the other hand I have the links on my page, I can immediately pop to the one that I know tells me how to code multiple harv refs in one format, the one that tells me how to format an e-book with no page numbers, or the one that gives me historical context that I think is relevant to another article.) SusunW (talk) 20:35, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One reason I don't maintain a tracking page for my reviews is that a noticeable fraction of my reviews are negative and I don't want to show off other editors' subpar work. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:48, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
SusunW (and others): ChristieBot can generate a review summary for you that looks like this, if you want to see what you've reviewed. That list is for Hawkeye7 but I can create one for any reviewer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:53, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Working on it -- it's been a while since I've done one and it looks like I'll need to tweak the code a bit. I'll leave a note on your talk page when it's done; this weekend I would expect. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:04, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be more open to a proposal that looks at total number of reviews over review ratio. Nominators who have never reviewed would be capped at X nominations. Once you've done Y reviews, you're allowed another open GAN, and every Y reviews thereafter you'd be allowed another GAN until you hit a hard cap of Z. A measure like this—or some further variation if anyone has another idea—would mean that the penalty on prolific reviewers would be minimal, and it would be an even greater incentive for other nominators than just keeping it one above their GA count. For many low-review high-nomination editors, the ratio is skewed enough they'll wonder why they should bother; this would give them a simple attainable goal to open up more GANs, encouraging them to do a few. It would also involve a hard cap, which is something I've opposed in the past but am willing to compromise on. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 04:45, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
i think i'd be alright with this alternative, and you do make a good point about the sheer difficulty of improving one's ratio once one's numbers are high enough. sawyer * he/they * talk 04:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For the record I'd also be in support of some kind of system like this. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:57, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien it might be worth it to create a new sub-proposal for this? 16a perhaps? sawyer * he/they * talk 04:59, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Done. I considered making it a proposal right away, but I wanted to see if there was any feedback first (or if I was just wildly off base). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:26, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with PMC and Sawyer, I'd also support a proposal like this. Generalissima (talk) (it/she) 04:59, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
An article doesn't have to have GA status. Editors with negative review ratios have contributed to the backlog, no matter how much they have reviewed: taking Chiswick Chap as an example, they have 604 GAs and 356 reviews. That means 204 reviewers were nice enough to take time away from their own projects and interests, both on-wiki and in real life, to reward CC without CC taking the time to assess a GAN. I would tell CC that, while I thank them for reviewing so much, it isn't enough and they need to either stop nominating articles until they have reviewed 204 articles or stop nominating GANs. I would tell the same thing to all editors with negative review ratios, especially the most prolific ones. Z1720 (talk) 14:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Z1720, the way you're describing the process, it sounds like you're saying that nominating to GA is a burden, and that reviewers are benevolent for donating their time. But that doesn't add up. If nominating an article isn't worthwhile, that implies we're not actually accomplishing anything by reviewing either. The whole purpose of reviewing is to facilitate the nominating and promoting. The logical conclusion to your concerns wouldn't be to waste more time reviewing, it would be to shut down GA. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 02:05, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien: Reviewers are benevolent for donating their time, as without reviewers, nominators do not get the green badge. That doesn't mean nominating an article isn't worthwhile: nominating GAs allows an article to improve and enforces standards across the encyclopedia. GA status also incentivizes editors to improve articles to get rewards. GAN's struggle isn't a lack of nominations, it's a lack of reviews. Editors on Wikipedia do not want to review so we need to put in processes that encourage editors who nominate GAs to spend less time writing articles and more time reviewing. Z1720 (talk) 18:09, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see why the people who review and the people who nominate necessarily have to be the same? Would we not get the desired effect if we managed to motivate people who are not interested in nominating to review other editors' nominations? TompaDompa (talk) 18:37, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, TompaDompa Both you and Chiswick Chap in his comments below make excellent points. The project is about quality, this proposal to me seems to be shifting that focus to quantity and narrowly valuing only writers and reviewers. Many editors with many varied skills improve our quality. Encouraging those who may not think they can contribute to the project because they don't want to/prefer not to write is a good solution. Sometimes we focus so narrowly on an idea that we miss the obvious. SusunW (talk) 18:59, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In a perfect world, there would be a prolific reviewer for every prolific nominator, but lengthy experience has shown us that there are simply not that many of those people. We have to work with what we have. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Premeditated Chaos, you made me chuckle. In a perfect world, we wouldn't need reviewers as every single article would be well-written, would be completely objective, would use reliable sources and be verifiable, be free of plagiarism and would have multiple images that did not violate copyright restrictions. But, working with what we have, i.e. volunteers and humans, means that we have imperfections and people who do what they are interested in doing and what they find rewarding. The suggestion above that WP should "encourage editors who nominate GAs to spend less time writing articles and more time reviewing" goes completely against human nature. I write what I write because there are gaps in our knowledge. Reviewing does nothing to fill those gaps, nor does it offer any guarantee that my own articles will be reviewed. Perhaps the only solution is to take away the award aspect and truly convert the process to an actual peer review, but I am pretty sure that will never happen. Bottom line, any rule we impose will de-incentify someone, and motivate someone else. Each of us must decide for ourselves how we react to that. SusunW (talk) 17:33, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's unfortunate that we disagree on this. As I've said above under proposal 3, my view on the matter is very simple. Editor time is precious; it's the only resource we have. If you're doing something that asks for someone else's time (ie, making a GAN), I think you should be willing to put your time in for someone else in return. I don't think that goes completely against human nature, and it makes me a bit disappointed to see that you view this kind of teamwork in that way. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:40, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't actually think we disagree. While I spend a lot of time writing, I also spend a lot of time helping other editors in various ways and working on articles I didn't create because we are all trying to build a quality encyclopedia. I divide the time I spend reviewing between people asking for help with new creations, GA and FA nominations, for the latter reviewing more than I have ever nominated. I don't oppose doing a QPQ, but I don't think it will be a silver bullet and solve the problems. I do think it will act to discourage nominations and it will do nothing to eliminate certain articles waiting for months to be reviewed. I think we need to continue to look for solutions, which encourage participation across the board. SusunW (talk) 05:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, what would your proposed alternate solutions be? I would be happy to support anything that I thought would encourage new reviewers to jump in and keep reviewing, or encourage existing reviewers to review more without burnout. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:37, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think if it were simple, we'd have found a solution before. IMO we have to look outside the box, so to speak. Most of the ideas here are focused on incentives to encourage people who are already involved with the project to review or to limit nominations. As Femke said above, I think we need to look for new demographics. Maybe the mentorship program is the answer, maybe reaching out to WikiProjects is the answer, maybe reaching out to WikiEd? I know a lot of Projects have guidelines and help to teach people how to write articles, find sources, etc. Maybe they could be encouraged to teach people how to review? I also know that quite a few schools have incorporated WP into their course outlines and have students work on articles (in my experience, sometimes merely updating existing articles and sometimes working on new ones). Perhaps those programs could be made aware that reviewing expertise is also needed. The problem with implementing any idea is that we each have limited time so if we implemented an outreach scheme, it would mean giving up time for writing or reviewing and would require people to be willing to do it. Would it work? No clue. SusunW (talk) 15:39, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I also think that having nine-month-old nominations is bad for the project because newer editors, who don't understand why that article is sitting on the GAN page for so long, might get discouraged from nominating an article. This is a missed opportunity to welcome that editor to GAN and that new editor might leave Wikipedia. I would rather have less nominations because prolific GA nominators who contributed to the backlog left, as that would lower the number of nominations and would make GANs from newer editors more prominent. Z1720 (talk) 14:44, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Chiswick Chap: Courtesy ping to you, since I mentioned you above. While I stand by my comments, including what I would tell you, there are many editors I could have used as an example instead and I would tell them the same thing. Z1720 (talk) 14:50, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt. See 'Oppose' above for my view. This thing about ratios is very recent; GA has never had QPQ, and the reasons why are discussed in some of the other proposal threads. An attempt to enforce quasi-QPQ, when QPQ has never been the policy, and retrospectively to boot, is hardly good practice. An alternative point of view is that there are many ways of contributing to the project, from gnomishly fixing categories and parameters to writing articles, reviewing, rescuing articles at GAR, maintaining existing GAs, and so on and so forth. It could be said that all of these are additive, each contributing in a small but useful way to the project; and I believe I've done some of all those things at various times. The idea that some of them are somehow "negative" is frankly unconstructive. We wouldn't think of "punishing" Wiki-gnomes for upping their edit-count without contributing citations to articles, or of measuring their usefulness by dividing their citations by their edits, for instance. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:45, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Couldn't have said it better myself (and I've tried to). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 21:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The difference between almost all other editing and a review process like GAN is that GAN by definition is a two-person project requiring someone else's time. Pointing that out doesn't mean I think submitting a GAN is a negative, and I'm certainly not trying to punish anyone for wanting their articles reviewed. But it's a fact of life that the process asks for the time and energy of another person. In my opinion, if you're asking someone to take the time to do something for you, you should be willing to pay back your time to the process for someone else. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:45, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't even understand what a "negative review-to-GA ratio" is supposed to mean. A ratio is something that you get by dividing. If you divide reviews by GAs, you will always get a positive number (or zero, if there are absolutely no reviews). For these numbers, a negative ratio is literally impossible. From the context of the discussion, I get the impression that people are actually discussing the difference, reviews minus GAs? That is not a ratio. Also it's not obvious to me why it's the right formula and why it should be a hard limit. It's not a zero-sum game. Reviewers and nominators both help improve the encyclopedia. That's a lot more important than getting reviewing and nominating badges. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:50, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I assume Z meant "a <1 ratio" — more GANs than GAN reviews. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 06:04, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that; I'm just trying to interpret the spirit of Z's proposal rather than focus on the mathematical accuracy of the phrasing. If this ends up being implemented in the guidelines, I'm sure it can be rewritten to reflect how a ratio works. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 14:22, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 16b: Set a cap on nominations and reward reviews by increasing it
As Z1720 said in Proposal 16, the backlog develops when editors nominate more articles than they review. This proposal would set a cap (to be determined) on how many nominations one nominator can have. For every certain number of articles reviewed (also to be determined), the reviewer would have their nomination cap raised by one. This would continue until reaching a hard cap of open nominations (presumably the current soft cap of 20).
I'm proposing this as an alternative to Proposal 16b, as this would lessen the negative effect on high output editors who both write and review, and it would make it easier for editors who currently have skewed negative ratios to get back in, instead of asking them to do dozens of reviews to lift a cap (which is more likely to just make them leave). It also encourages editors to get a higher review count overall instead of keeping it just one higher than their GA count. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 05:25, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
this addresses the lingering concerns i had about the main proposal 16. sawyer * he/they * talk 05:29, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Still prefer QPQ but this is an acceptable alternative. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:31, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A poor second to Prop 2, but better than the status quo. Gog the Mild (talk) 14:28, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think this is quite a gentle way of getting more reviews and making the social conventions clear (i.e. please try to review at least a bit). I think I'd like the maximum cap to be a bit higher, because I would not want to stop people like Chiswick nominating core articles :). —Femke 🐦 (talk) 19:05, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support, but it should not be 20, it should be twice amount of reviews than nominations, as suggested long ago, this suggestion should become mandatory less a certain theshold value, e.g. max_nominations = 5+(reviews_done/2)Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:22, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose
For the same reason as my opposition to 16, above. I no longer think it's a good idea to prevent good writers from nominating; I think we should be rewarding prolific reviewers in a way that does not directly restrict nominators. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:20, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Per § Proposal 16 and 16b in March 2024 backlog. Adding caps merely hides the problem of not enough reviewers without addressing it, and this supposed "reward" both prevents the cap from doing much at all and fails to adequately incentivize reviewers. —David Eppstein (talk) 20:21, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know that I played with options to implement this in the discussion below, but on reflection, I think Mike and David are both right. Personally I enjoy reviewing and do not expect to ever hit any of these caps (I am slow at writing articles and usually my nominations get picked up fairly quickly). Any tinkering with these caps would not reward me, but punish a few excellent writers. —Kusma (talk) 21:56, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The real issue is people with lots of GAs who do not review at all, not people who have a legacy pile of GAs from a decade of work. We could allow people to have as many open nominations as they have made reviews: that would make it clear that reviewing is expected. We could even go for "limit of open nominations = number of reviews made in the last 12 months" to ensure people can't just live off their old reviews forever. I generally oppose hard caps, though: all they do is make the backlog move to prolific nominators' userspaces. —Kusma (talk) 09:53, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Trying to understand the logistics of this proposal, so sorry if this question is dumb: Hypothetically, let's say the cap is five nominations. Then, if an editor reviews one article, so the cap is lifted to six. A second article lifts the cap to seven, and this continues until the cap is 20 nominations because the editor has reviewed 15 articles. Since that editor has completed 15 reviews, would that editor be forever able to nominate 20 articles at a time because they reviewed 15 articles? Z1720 (talk) 14:19, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, I believe the user will only be able to nominate 20 articles after reviewing 15. So, if we simplify this, there would be four nominations for every three reviews. That's how I would respond to your query. WolverineXI(talk to me) 20:42, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
From my interpretation of Wolverine XI's response, this would be similar to a QPQ system, but instead of reviewing 1 article to nominate one article, an editor would review 3 articles to nominate 4 (per WXI's example). Z1720 (talk) 20:56, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed with "forever" that is not a great system. Better to look only at recent (last 12 months) reviews. —Kusma (talk) 21:00, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This is correct, though I don't think raising the cap after every review would accomplish much. Like I said in the comments of the previous proposal, "Nominators who have never reviewed would be capped at X nominations. Once you've done Y reviews, you're allowed another open GAN, and every Y reviews thereafter you'd be allowed another GAN until you hit a hard cap of Z." I'd expect Y to be something closer to maybe five reviews, so that you have to hit five reviews then your cap is six, ten reviews and your cap is seven, and so on. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 01:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien, am I reading you right, that this proposal would require everyone who wants to submit more than x nominations at once to first perform y reviews, both of which are hard numbers that don't have any relationship whatsoever to the nom's overall ratio? So if I hypothetically had 0 GAs, and someone else hypothetically had 400, and neither of us had any reviews, we'd both need to perform the same number of reviews to have the cap raised/removed? After which point no further reviews are obligatory? -- asilvering (talk) 20:20, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Correct. Writing GAs and reviewing GAs are both valuable, and I won't support any proposal that creates a negative incentive against writing GAs. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 20:22, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, I thought this was overly complicated, but I was misreading it earlier as a kind of moving target. Something like "do 5 reviews to lift your hard cap of 5 concurrent noms, after which point you can have an unlimited number (with soft cap of 20)" does actually appeal to me. I don't like qpq and I don't like the idea of forcing people to do things they hate or aren't good at. But provided it's a small enough number (like 5), I can see it more like "you should have some experience of both ends of this process if you want to be doing a lot of nominations", which I like. Maybe someone who thought they'd hate it finds they actually like reviewing, maybe they fight their way through the 5 and gain only a deeper appreciation of reviewers' time, either would be a positive outcome. -- asilvering (talk) 20:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Question: if the cap set by this proposal were to be set to, e.g. 5, would that mean I'd have to do 77 reviews before I could ever nominate another article again? (I've admittedly 82 GAs, no reviews – would review things, its just that I am awful at reviewing!) BeanieFan11 (talk) 17:10, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My reading of the proposal as written is that it is for open nominations, and thus if it was set for eg. 5 you could nominate five articles at a time, and after one of those five has its review completed, you could nominate a new article and so on ad infinitum. CMD (talk) 18:45, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@BeanieFan11 I don't believe so. See the thread immediately above this one. -- asilvering (talk) 20:34, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am completely confused by this proposal and how it would work. As it stands, this proposal assumes that reviewing articles somehow means that one's own articles will also be reviewed, but there is no guarantee of that. It also assumes that imposing rules for reviewing will somehow impact the number of nominations. Let's pretend I have reached the cap of articles I can nominate. Say I review 5 GA in a month and none of my articles are reviewed. I review 5 more the next month and again none of my articles are reviewed. This continues for the next 6 months. In that amount of time, I will have reviewed 30 articles, had 0 reviewed, and would be unable to submit any other article. Each of the persons whose articles I reviewed, whether they reviewed an article or not, would be able to submit more articles, but I would not. Also say that during this time, 100 new articles were nominated by other people. The takeaway is that number of files I reviewed has nothing to do with how many articles are nominated. In the example, we would still have a backlog and I would still be barred from nominating, although I reviewed far more than I nominated. Thus the question I would be faced with is am I willing to review and never be able to submit another article? It seems completely illogical to me that anyone would repeatedly do something that offers no direct benefit to themselves. Perhaps the indirect benefit as part of building WP would be enough, but I kind of doubt that. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the proposal? SusunW (talk) 15:09, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SusunW: You are totally correct. Take me for example: I have four GAs and twelve reviews. I now have three articles in the biology and medicine section that need to be reviewed. And, for reference, I once reviewed three articles in a single day in an attempt to reduce the backlog, but to no success. I think I'll just keep reviewing, because it appears to help people a lot. My reviews are also quick, which many of the regulars struggle with. As a man of the GA people, I'm willing to give up some of my valuable time in order to review articles. I also believe you shouldn't benefit from everything; sometimes you have to make sacrifices for others, even if they don't thank you (which happens quite a lot unfortunately). WolverineXI(talk to me) 17:26, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for your input Wolverine XI. I appreciate your insights. I fear your choice of topic, like mine, probably means we must be patient in expecting reviews. I personally think it is admirable that you are willing to spend so much time reviewing. I also don't think there is enough time left in my lifetime to fill all the gaps in our knowledge that I would wish to address. I am truly weighing whether it is best for me to just focus on writing and bypass asking for input. It seems weird that in a collaborative project, collaboration to improve article quality is being limited by rules which discourage writing, but it is probably just that I misunderstand the intent of the proposals. SusunW (talk) 17:56, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If I could get three reviews done in a day I'd do a lot more reviews. Usually (except for quick-fails) a review takes two solid days of my editing time, one for content and one for source checking, and then maybe another day's worth of effort later, more spread out, for back-and-forth with the nominator. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:55, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly David Eppstein. I probably average 2-3 days just to do the review and then at least another day or two in the collaborating phase. I have maybe done only 1 review in a single day, but even that took me the entire day, like 8+ hours. SusunW (talk) 20:03, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SusunW, I don't think that's the case - have a look at the more recent comments higher up in the thread. It looks like, if we assumed 5 reviews was the interval, once you've reviewed 30 articles you'd be able to submit 11 concurrent articles. So if your initial nominations were still in the queue, six months later, having reviewed 30 articles, you'd have been able to submit 6 more articles than you were able to initially. I gather from your comments in general that this still wouldn't appeal to you, at least not at an interval of 5, but it's not quite as restrictive as you had in mind. -- asilvering (talk) 20:41, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Asilvering Thanks for trying to explain it, but I still don't get how this would work. If the cap is 20 and I submitted 20, but none of my articles have been reviewed, I am still at the cap, no matter how many articles I have reviewed. (I totally do not understand how anyone could nominate 20 "at the same time" as is stated above, but if someone said it happens, it must happen somehow.) Or are you saying that 20 is fuzzy and not a real limit, so for some people it could be 20, for others 25 and for still others 30? That seems incredibly confusing. How you would ever know you were at the limit if it's a moving target? My cap in my head is 10 and those will be submitted over a course of many months. Once I hit that cap, unless an article I nominated is reviewed, I don't submit anything, no matter how much I think an article would benefit from collaboration. I don't see how increasing the limit with X reviews solves the problem, as it seems to me that instead of 10 pending reviews I could have an endless number of nominations waiting for review, as long as I keep reviewing, without any guarantee my submissions would ever be looked at. Maybe I'll try to look at it again later, it's 104F/40C and too hot to think. Going to go try to find a/c somewhere. SusunW (talk) 21:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SusunW, this discussion as a whole was prompted by a single person submitting about 60 or so articles all at the same time! So indeed, it does happen. When you scroll through the list of nominations, you'll sometimes see some are hidden beneath a cut - this is because the nominator has more than 20 articles in the queue at once. As for the cap, the idea here is that everyone who has done 0 reviews start with a hard cap of some number (say, 10), and beyond this they can't nominate any more articles until one of those reviews finishes and they have a new slot open. But by doing reviews, you'd get your personal cap raised. Let's say the interval is 5 reviews, and you've already done 15 reviews. That means you've hit the interval 3 times, and can have 3 more nominations in the queue at the same time. So someone who hasn't done any reviews will have a cap at 10 open nominations, but you'd have a cap at 13 nominations, and someone who had done 50 reviews would have a cap of 20 open nominations. That's the general idea here as I understand it. -- asilvering (talk) 21:38, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 17: Develop tools to support reviewers
A basic challenge for the GA system is that it requires people to write reviews, a task which is both somewhat thankless (though there are reward proposals above) and somewhat difficult. Editors are almost by definition not fully informed about the subjects of articles they did not work on; they often find copyright and image licensing difficult; they may not have been good at English grammar at school; they likely do not have access to books and other offline sources. We already have Earwig which does quite a good job at identifying possible copyvios. Tools could be developed to find wobbly grammar; to suggest possibly-missing sections (e.g. a species article with no Taxobox, History of taxonomy, Description, Ecology, or Interaction with humans section might be incomplete); to check image licenses; and perhaps (with an AI engine?) to note that a source does not seem to cover a claim cited to it. No doubt with suitable research effort several other review tools might be developed. The effect would be to lower the barrier to writing a competent review, making it a less daunting prospect for many editors.
There's already a page on how to review good articles. It is also necessary to have some familiarity with the subject matter when reviewing articles. The grammar tool could be useful, but there are already a ton of online resources (like ChatGPT), so I don't think Wikipedia needs to make one. You may be barking up the wrong tree. WolverineXI(talk to me) 20:21, 24 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using AI in the GA process is absolutely the last thing we should be doing. Especially for source checks! -- asilvering (talk) 02:23, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not going to oppose more tools, but they should not be relied upon to this extent. Earwig does a niche job as an indicator, but it very often fails to identify copyvios and it's concerning when a review merely notes earwig was used without elaborating. CMD (talk) 04:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Clearly the choice of tools in the kit is completely open (no specific technology is mandated); and tools can be developed one at a time over a period of years. Each tool will need to be chosen for development on its likely costs and benefits. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:24, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
More tools would be great, but it's dangerous when they are seen as a way to replace human labour. Earwig is a net positive IMO but as Chipmunkdavis notes it shouldn't be the only way a reviewer tries to identify copyvio (you need to check sources, which might not all be webpages). A review is a skilled process and the fundamental checklist is the criteria. I'd love to see a tool that suggests missing sections, but hate to see a reviewer writing "This tool says you need a 'History' section" if the article already contains everything a history section would but as part of a different structure that suits that topic. — Bilorv (talk) 21:51, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Depends on what do we mean by "tools". If it is to automate the whole process, then no, if we follow that logic then just place bot reviews and the backlog is solved. But something that can be welcomed is to add tools that do not replace the human work but give it a framework. The "blank page syndrome" can overcome reviewers as well as writers, and that's what you have when you start a good article review, a blank page. Cambalachero (talk) 20:34, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This proposal is probably irrelevant to decreasing the drive, as the problem is not in the lack of tools. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:24, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Proposal 18: Talk page messages for prolific GA content creators
In Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions, all we have about reviewing articles once you nominate one is (Optional): Consider reviewing two nominations for each one that you nominate. This does not imply quid pro quo. This simply means that helping to review articles will help the Wikipedia community by cutting down the backlog as a way to help pay it forward. It may not be something a lot of people consider. So what if we sent a message to the talk pages of people who have ten or more GAs that haven't reviewed any articles, like one that I made at User:Relativity/Reviewanarticle? This attempt will likely be futile, but who knows? It's possible that someone will want to help. In any case, it would draw more attention to GAN. And there's not much harm in sending talk page messages. Relativity 01:50, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good article nominations
Hello, Relativity! I noticed that you've contributed many Good articles to Wikipedia, and thank you for all you've done to help improve Wikipedia's content. I don't know if you know or not, but there are currently 486 articles in the Good article nominations queue that are waiting to be reviewed. That's a significant backlog, and nominators are in need of high-quality reviews. Have you considered reviewing some articles? Since you've made quite a few Good articles, we're confident that you have a good grasp on the GA criteria and would therefore give high-quality reviews, which we need. Of course, no one is obligated to make reviews. Thank you for your work on Wikipedia! We're very happy that you chose to help keep knowledge free for everyone.
Excellent, thank you for this. It may not have much impact on the backlog, but I think it's an important message to send out all the same. -- asilvering (talk) 02:27, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But not with the current wording, which is slightly condescending. I still think the best way to go would be to send an invitation once someone has reached about 3 GAs and then maybe one more reminder when they hit 10. We might also consider doing it more informally per Mike Christie below. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:53, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
While I'm not against it, I doubt it will have any effect (positive one that is). The prolific authors already know how the system works and they are fully aware of the backlog. And if we send this out repeatedly it will only be a minor annoyance for them at best and may feel like pointing fingers at worst. AstonishingTunesAdmirer連絡 13:44, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. What I've done a few times with fairly new nominators, if it's clear they have a good grasp of the criteria, is to leave a personal note on their talk page or in the review page asking if they'd consider reviewing. I think personal notes have more impact that bot messages. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:41, 30 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If the backlog drive managed to review every nomination by nominators with a review/GA ratio > 1, I'd feel like that was a major achievement. It does feel like all a backlog drive does is remind nominators that don't review that if they wait long enough their nomination will get reviewed anyway. I don't have a proposal to add above yet, but two rough ideas occur to me: one is to make the backlog drives focus only on reviewers with a high R/G; the other would be to hide nominations by nominators whose R/G doesn't meet some minimum level.
And what about changing the GAN page to a list of different GAN sorts? Right now, whatever sort order is on the GAN page is what we as a group are endorsing. What if GAN simply listed three or four (or more) pages that listed nominations: filtered and sorted for different priorities? If I were reviewing I'd click on the one that said "All nominations by editors who review a lot of GANs", however we were to define that. E.g. it would probably include Chiswick Chap, even though his ratio is < 1, because he reviews a lot. But the point is we could have custom pages and not have a default any more, and everyone could go to the kind of nominations list they want. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 18:19, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'll just note one thing I think GA could learn from FA: not all nominators are treated equally. Could there be a way to allow for faster reviews of well established content creators? Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 18:55, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand your intent here, since this seems at odds with your response to Proposal 8? -- asilvering (talk) 18:57, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's two elements to things. There's the literal "we don't do all the steps for people we've come to trust". I think that is a good idea. There's also the "people who have name recognize are more likely to get anyone to do any steps and if you can't that's your failure rather than a failure of the process" and that's the part I see this proposal promoting and which I think is a bad thing. Best Barkeep49 (talk) 19:37, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"We don't do all the steps for people we've come to trust" was one of the primary causes of WP:DCGAR and the concurrent events. If people, especially newcomers, didn't trust the hundreds of GA icons on Doug's userpage as a sign of community trust (and I count myself as one of them), perhaps the problem would have been identified and watched sooner. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 23:40, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree. I'm not sure what trust has to do with it, when it comes to a GA review. What part would I even skip? -- asilvering (talk) 02:42, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This second paragraph is similar to what I suggested under Proposal 5, and I like it, though I think even people like Chiswick Chap shouldn't appear in the >1 list. For the first, I like that a lot - we could have a list of reviews that need doing generated at the beginning of the drive, and simply stop if we hit the end. I'd suggest also adding noms who have 0 GAs to the list (even if they have 0 reviews). -- asilvering (talk) 18:56, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One possible way to incentivize reviewing nominations from prolific reviewers (whether that be defined by the ratio of reviews to WP:Good articles or some other way) might be to offer additional points for such reviews during the backlog drives, similar to how reviews of older nominations get additional points. TompaDompa (talk) 16:24, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. During backlog drives, some reviews count for more points than others. For instance, reviews of old nominations receive bonus points. Bonus points could also be handed out for reviews of nominations by prolific reviewers. One way could be to give bonus points for reviewing nominations by nominators who themselves have a review/GA ratio > 1. TompaDompa (talk) 20:53, 23 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As a general point, I think we should be careful about not introducing Asshole John rules that target specific undesirable behaviour. If someone causes trouble by violating the spirit of our rules, better deal with them by individual restrictions than by making the rules more painful and restrictive for everyone. —Kusma (talk) 04:01, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Can someone explain briefly what is exactly the problem of proposals 16 and 16b? I have seen so much discussion about the soft cap and the limit of GA nominations, but it does not seem very well at the discussion. After all, I'm planning for a similar proposal, but it does not involve the review—maybe discussing here is mostly safe for me. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 12:54, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I personally don't think these caps address the actual issue (too few people willing to do reviews). They impose obstacles on people like Chiswick Chap who have been very productive both at reviewing and nominating (358 reviews, 608 GAs). By setting a hard threshold at reviews=GAs (with very confusing and mathematically-illiterate language describing that threshold) they either make that obstacle more or less permanent (not going away until CC reviews hundreds more articles) or they eliminate the obstacle altogether (anyone can permanently lift the cap by making only a small number of reviews, which CC has long since done). Either way they don't function as an incentive to do more reviewing. And in any case, putting a cap on current nominations merely means that instead of having a visible problem (too many stale nominations) we have the same problem but we pretend it doesn't exist by pushing prolific nominators to maintain separate user-space waiting lists. (Probably many have these anyway; I've had my own user-space list since 2015, primarily to track not-yet-ready articles but also with others I think are ready but haven't yet officially nominated for whatever reason.) Hiding the waiting lists doesn't change the fact that having too few reviewers is the limiting factor preventing us from having more GAs. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Short GA review
I nominated Merchant's House Museum to GAN back in October. A few hours ago, V.B.Speranza reviewed the nomination and passed it with few comments. With gratitude to V.B.Speranza for taking the review up, unfortunately, the review seems very cursory. For example, I do not think the sources were adequately spot-checked.
As such, I would like to request a second opinion for this GAN. – Epicgenius (talk) 22:54, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm familiar with this user's editing and find they have a poor grasp of the GAN process. I would second the request for a second opinion. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:10, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A second opinion would be somewhat a misnomer here, the review is checklist so any second opinioner would be performing effectively an entire review. If there is no agreement by the reviewer to return to GA1 then opening a GA2 (with the same nomination date) would be better than a second opinion request. CMD (talk) 02:01, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We had quite a few cases recently of this issue, including two checkbox reviews of the article Arithmetic. The solution in those case was usually to declare the reviews invalid (violation of WP:GAN/I#R3) and send the article back to the nomination pool. Phlsph7 (talk) 07:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That will probably be the path here, although it has been just under a week and the reviewer has not edited much in that time. Currently the article promotion was not completed on a technical level, so it's a simple template reset. CMD (talk) 13:21, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Talk:Wii U/GA2 should be also delisted. That article is huge and a lot of the sources were still not used and only minor problems that were brought before being passed immediately. 2001:4455:3AA:B000:258A:2817:BA68:E8D (talk) 01:33, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't really get why the default path of action when discovering an inadequate review, often by a new reviewer, is to come to WT:GAN and broadcast it to over 1,200 page watchers, instead of quietly notifing the editor on their talk. Anyway, I've done the latter now; hopefully they won't feel so shamed that they never again return to a process desperately in need of reviewers. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:12, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed. I was very hesitant to join in as a GA reviewer, precisely because I saw this kind of thing happening on the Talk page here. -- asilvering (talk) 20:23, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's something I've been fighting against for the last while; I ever added direction to the top of the page to discuss it with reviewers first, but of course no one reads that. I'm tempted to start removing these posts unless I see conversation with reviewers first. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 02:15, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@ToNeverFindTheMets: You are welcome to voice your disapproval with the process you're taking part in, but please remember to maintain civility in doing so — comments like this are never appropriate. —TechnoSquirrel69 (sigh) 01:50, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Noted. I'll instead create another fake wiki page that mirrors this faux vampire thing to use as a counter to this guy being prickish. The catch? it's Keanu Reeves] ToNeverFindTheMets (talk) 02:06, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29: First, concerned editors have been bringing this sort of thing to this talk page for years, so it happens at least because other editors see it as a norm. Second, many editors have too much compunction and are averse to confronting new editors and their faux pas. Third, the concerned editor might also be unsure if this review was sufficient and is asking for a compass-check from other editors. With everything being political here on Wikipedia, most non-admins want to proceed from an understanding of consensus. I know I wouldn't care about shaming a new editor, since the fault was theirs. Chris Troutman (talk) 15:20, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I know it is the norm, which is why I described it as "the default path of action"; personally, I wouldn't describe exposing their mistakes to hundreds of others as having "too much compunction". I think Your Power is quite experienced and shouldn't hesitate to open a section on a user talk page, and also think that you, also a very experienced editor, might need to reread WP:BITE, as "even the most experienced editors may need a gentle reminder from time to time." ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 15:30, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You said "I don't really get why the default path of action..." and I explained why. Many people might assume that talking about someone behind their backs (on a WikiProject talk page) is easier than confronting them one-on-one. You might disagree. I, for one, encourage vigorous criticism of all by all and I regularly bite other editors. You've assumed good faith regarding the new editor; maybe assume some good faith for User:Your Power/ Elias, too. Editors who have put in the work to nominate a GA are feeling maximum buy-in and those of us who created content should remember that feeling. But thank you, AirshipJungleman29, for telling new editor that there's a problem.Chris Troutman (talk) 15:40, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that the nominator was blocked due to their personal attack, could the GAN coordinators somehow delete the current GAN page for this article so that another reviewer can take it up instead? I tried looking for a speedy deletion resolution (WP:G5) but it doesn't apply in this case. Ippantekina (talk) 04:27, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ippantekina has just asked me if I can take over this review. Are there any objections to me opening a new review from scratch as a GA2 (and potentially claiming WikiCup points), rather than a "second opinion", as this would be a full review of all the criteria? — Bilorv (talk) 17:02, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If so the first review should be failed, and I don't know how to close that GA1. Ippantekina (talk) 17:27, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If they've vanished, their nomination and its review should vanish with them, especially as the review hasn't yet been posted. Note that reviewer Esculenta has two other GA reviews open (one just a few hours old), so they can work on the others instead. I have just removed the GA nominee template from the article talk page. BlueMoonset (talk) 20:46, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I tried looking for the answer in the archives, but to no avail. Is there a minimum number of sources for a GA or is it based on article length? APKhi :-) (talk) 04:46, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No minimum sources, no minimum length. The only requirement is that breadth is demonstrated. (There is no definition of breadth. 🙃) ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:59, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The short answer is: "enough". Enough to reliably source all content, and (as PMC says) to provide broad coverage of all significant aspects of the topic. Now I'm curious about the fewest we have in a current GA. I have one with only eight sources but I suspect that's significantly more than the record. — Preceding unsigned comment added by David Eppstein (talk • contribs)
Regarding Good Articles, is there any requirement for reviewers to consider a recent AfD, particularly if the AfD was contentious and resulted in a no consensus close, or is the assessment purely based on the GA criteria? Thanks! Dfadden (talk) 08:55, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's nothing in WP:GA? suggesting an article's notability is relevant to its review. ——Serial Number 54129 12:31, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for that. I did find clarification in the link! Dfadden (talk) 10:28, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Corrections to GA reviewing statistics
Per this discussion, I've implemented a way to change GA reviewing statistics. The corrections page is User:ChristieBot/Corrections to GA reviewing statistics, and the format should be obvious. The GA stats will be decreased by one for the "old reviewer", and increased by one for the "new reviewer". The bot does not currently check that the review (here Talk:Pitfall!/GA1 really exists or was opened by the old reviewer; I will probably add that check in the future and will have the bot add a list of discrepancies to the bottom of that page if any discrepancies exist. The comments field is optional.
I have tested a couple of invalid formats, and the code seems to cope quite well, but if there are errors that the bot can't cope with, it will ignore *all* corrections on the page and revert to the uncorrected version of the stats. I will look into adding a message at the bottom of that page that says "Error reading page -- corrections ignored".
I suggest that as many regulars as possible watch that page, just to make sure the corrections are done in good faith. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 15:49, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks so much for implementing this! SnowFire (talk) 16:59, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It has just occurred to me that this same mechanism would also be able to give credit for co-reviews -- that is, if we wish to credit two editors, rather than one, with a review. Leaving the "old reviewer" column blank would probably have that effect, though I haven't tested it. I don't think we should do that without some discussion here, but if someone wants to argue that we should do such a thing it is now technically possible. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:30, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Reviewer vanished
The user User:NikosGouliaros started a GA review for Drug-eluting stent but then stopped replying; I tried to contact via the GA review page, usertalk page, email via Wikipedia interface, and WP:DISCORD, and didn't receive any reply. Can you help? What should I do? Maxim Masiutin (talk) 15:45, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I will carry out WP:GAN/I#N4a ("What to do during a review if it seems abandoned"); this will return the GA nomination to the queue while keeping its original position Maxim Masiutin. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:34, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! If the initial reviewer will return before another reviewer picks up the review, I guess the initial reviewer could re-start. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:39, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep the transclusion of the former (incomplete) GA review at the article talk page. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 17:40, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Using all GA nominations for the GA statistic rather than current promoted ones
I have refurbished an invisible part of ChristieBot that keeps track of all GAs back to around 2006, including failures and GAs that have lost that status (either via GAR or promotion to FA). Currently the "GAs" number on the GAN page only counts successful nominations. I could change it to include all historical promotions, or all historical nominations. I think the former at least would be appropriate, and there's a reasonable case for the latter. Any opinions? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:57, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is the difference between "successful nominations" and "historical promotions"? CMD (talk) 02:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would be interesting information, but I am not sure we should display it on the GAN page. It might have the effect of shaming people for having a lot of old GAs and not many recent reviews. I'm wondering whether we should rather display something like rolling 5 year noms and reviews. —Kusma (talk) 07:06, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@CMD: That was poorly phrased on my part; I meant to distinguish three numbers:
The number of times a user has nominated an article for GA regardless of outcome;
The number of articles a user has had promoted to GA;
The number of articles a user has had promoted that are still GAs.
@Kusma, currently the GAN page shows #3 for each user; I'm suggesting it should show #1 or #2 instead. Wouldn't the effect you're concerned about be an issue now, if it is an issue? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:12, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, for some reason I thought you were talking about adding more old GAs. Ignore that (it is an issue that might be worth addressing separately).
I think #2 would be more appropriate than #3 if we want to show "skill", while #1 shows "workload caused". Personally I prefer #2 as it is weird not to count GAs that have become FAs later. —Kusma (talk) 10:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that #2 would be better than #3, and I've had enough queries from various editors to make it clear that #2 is what they would have expected anyway, so I don't think there would be any objections to switching to #2. As you say, #1 represents work caused, so it does fit the original idea of the G/R ratio better than #2. It would have the effect (for those reviewers who look at the ratio when deciding what to review) of making the R/G ratio worse for nominators who have frequent fails. At the moment there are no negative consequences of a GA fail to point to, but if we use #1 people might start objecting to procedural fails (e.g. abandoned reviews) as it would harm their ratio. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:53, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
#2 is preferable to #1. More intuitive, and the G/R ratio was meant to be a nudge rather than a guiding principle. CMD (talk) 11:01, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If nobody objects I'll make the change to #2 in the next few days. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:22, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also agreed, that sounds like a good improvement. Thank you for the update! —Ganesha811 (talk) 16:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I likewise agree. #3 is somewhat nonsensical as a measure. #2 reflects experience with writing (or, admittedly more accurately, nominating) articles that are up to WP:Good article standards. I think using #1 is a bad idea as it creates incentives related to failing nominations—in both directions: some reviewers might be inclined to fail nominations more frequently to affect others' statistics, while others might be disinclined to fail nominations to not affect the statistics (either by not reviewing the nominations at all or by putting in an outsized effort to make sure the nomination can be passed). That failed nominations do not impact nominators' statistics is, I think, a feature rather than a bug. TompaDompa (talk) 20:45, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Several reviews open at once
I recently reached out to SafariScribe (previously Otuọcha) regarding the reviews they've opened, a total of 22 over the last four weeks:
I've expressed my concerns that this is an unreasonable number of reviews to be doing at once and that they may not be fluent enough in the language to pursue reviewing at this time, but they disagreed. As I said to them, I appreciate their drive and I think they could do a lot of good for Wikipedia, but this isn't the best way to go about it. Previous discussions at their talk page (permalink) and mine (permalink). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 08:06, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've noticed them, but as they haven't actually abandoned a review yet, I haven't engaged. I would suggest that they try to pick up reviews one at a time though. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:23, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hm, the grammar in their replies to you is not encouraging... -- asilvering (talk) 00:57, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
And it's reflected in the copyedits they're asking for in reviews, which is why I was hoping this could be addressed. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 08:39, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Change in positioning of "good article" template in promoted articles
ChristieBot adds the {{good article}} template to promoted articles, if it's not already there. It's been adding it to the front of the article, but that's incorrect; per MOS:ORDER it should be after short descriptions, DISPLAYTITLEs, and hatnotes. I've updated the bot to put the template after short descriptions and DISPLAYTITLEs, but not after the hatnotes as those are much harder to identify safely. The change appears to be working. If you see any problems, please let me know; or if you can think of a reliable way to identify hatnotes in the article's wikitext then please tell me! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
How much detail is too much detail?
The GA criteria say not to go into unnecessary detail, but how much is "unnecessary"? Do excessive images count towards this metric? I am looking specifically at Angels in Neon Genesis Evangelion (promoted 2022), which has many explanatory images for minor details related to each angel, like a diagram of apoptosis to accompany text suggesting one of the angels "undergoes apoptosis"; or a diagram of the Dirac Sea plus a picture of Dirac to help describe the physical and geometric patterns of one particular angel's "AT Field". AFAICT the textual relevance supporting these images is sourced only to offline explanatory booklets from DVD releases and other material produced by people involved in the show. In fact, I'd say a substantial majority of the article is sourced to such primary and/or non-independent sources, which I guess isn't specifically against the GA criteria, but...
Is this really what a Good Article is supposed to look like for manga? JoelleJay (talk) 21:59, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"Unnecessary detail" refers to coatrack articles, where the article gets away from its nominal subject, and instead gives more attention to one or more connected but tangential subjects. As to the second point, there is nothing wrong with the majority of an article being sourced to such primary and/or non-independent sources. Such sources are often preferred, being authorative.New editors sometimes confuse the requirement for independent sources to establish notability with what is required for sourcing. The article in question is fine. Hawkeye7(discuss) 22:27, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
the majority of an article being sourced to such primary and/or non-independent sources.Policy definitely does not agree with this...Do not base an entire article on primary sources, and be cautious about basing large passages on them. and Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources, and to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources and primary sources. and Base articles on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. I'm not talking about notability here. I'm talking about a 150kb article on particular characters in a manga franchise that goes into extreme detail based only on primary and/or non-independent in-universe sources. How do we achieve NPOV if the only sources talking about particular material are directly from the producers of that material? JoelleJay (talk) 23:53, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@JoelleJay, can you point out a particular sentence or two that you find objectionable on the grounds that it shouldn't use primary sources? I had a quick look and nothing jumped out at me. What I notice more is some stuff that looks WP:SYNTHy at a glance, eg, the discussions of the meanings of various names. Again just at a glance, I do think there's a bit of a focus issue here. I don't know that it's "unnecessary detail" so much as it is a list article that has some non-list stuff grafted onto it. -- asilvering (talk) 00:50, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not any particular sentences, it's the whole thing. I realize that the GA criteria do not say anything about primary or non-independent sources, but surely there's a common sense aspect to this where it's worse for 10.5 thousand words of detail to be sourced almost entirely to the manga itself or other companion materials by its creators rather than to secondary analysis by people with no conflict of interest. Policy is very clear that basing an article around primary or non-independent sources is not acceptable. Not to mention we're AGFing that all of that primary and non-independent sourcing, which mostly appears to be offline and in Japanese, actually makes the real-world connections we're presenting in wikivoice and that they are accurately summarized. Not to mention many of the passages that aren't cited to people directly involved in Eva are interpretations by random bloggers... I'm bringing this up now because I'm in the midst of revisiting an article I was involved in delisting last year for being excessively detailed and this seems much worse. Pinging @AirshipJungleman29 and @Trainsandotherthings who also weighed in on that discussion since I've been interpreting this as analogous to the "Keith Miller" series if those articles were instead based largely on his team's own reports and memoirs. JoelleJay (talk) 08:50, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the article that prompted you to start this discussion is a good example of someone with a pet interest who decided it needed an extremely detailed article (or in this case, many someones because this particular show is quite popular). If it were up to me, articles like this would get ported off to some Fandom Wiki where they belong. There are certainly secondary sources present in the article, but so much of it is based on primary sourcing that it makes me wonder if the article should even exist.
Sure, most of this website is just people writing about their special interests (and I'm no exception), but that can't trump the requirements for secondary sourcing, summary style, and avoiding WP:NOT situations. There are sources to support everything in this article, but how many of those sources are about the angels in the show as a topic? I've said before, I could write an extremely detailed article on everything the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad did in a given year, but it would just be cobbling together things from a bunch of sources, none of which would show that the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad in a given year is itself a notable topic. Perhaps the most infamous example of this is the Tolkien madness that has seen more GAs written on things like Tolkien and Trees than we have on wars or famous scientists or leaders.
At the same time, at least they are well sourced and not filled with OR. Perhaps we need to pick and choose our battles. While I don't like articles such as the one that prompted this discussion, I'd take something well sourced over articles filled with unsourced cruft such as this. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 01:51, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
GA requires compliance with WP:OR, which includes WP:PRIMARY. WP:NPOV also encourages (though does not strictly require) independent sources per WP:BESTSOURCES. I haven't read the article, but if the excessive detail is WP:FANCRUFT or could reasonably be tagged with {{Overly detailed}}, then most reviewers would expect rewrites or removals. I don't think I've ever seen images or diagrams described as a criterion 3 issue. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 08:36, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with this, although I note the lead image licence should be updated following the page move. CMD (talk) 11:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, BALASP is exactly what I feel is most in danger of being violated here. If the only people writing about these extreme details are themselves contributors to the NGE universe (or at the very least supervised by its creators) and have a direct commercial interest in promoting NGE, then how can we have a neutral summary of real-world engagement with the material? JoelleJay (talk) 17:15, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should ChristieBot remove old GA transclusions when it transcludes a new review?
This is an enhancement suggested by Prhartcom; I've been working on the code this week so it would be a good time for me to add this functionality if we want it. The idea is that if the bot transcludes review2, it should delete the transclusion of review1, if it's present. I am a bit concerned that the bot wouldn't be able to tell if there was any other trace of the prior review on the article talk page. Perhaps it would be better if one of the bots that creates/updates {{Article history}} removed the old GA reviews once they're linked in article history? Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 23:46, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would we want to remove old conversations about a subject? Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 11:25, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, I don't really see the point. What if a GA gets reassessed and then nominated again? Does the first review still get deleted? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 12:20, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Please don't. Transcluded GA nominations are sometimes the only on-topic content on article talk pages; it is fine to archive them when the talk page becomes full, but simply removing them just makes the talk page less useful. —Kusma (talk) 12:25, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(ec) Prhartcom hasn't edited for a few days so they may not comment immediately, but the example they gave when they requested this was this rev of Talk:Chris Rock–Will Smith slapping incident. A visitor to that talk page would probably scroll to the first GA transclusion and think it was the current one. As I said I don't think it's a good idea to just remove all traces of the old GA, but the bot could change an old transclusion to just a link along with some text that made it clear this was a superseded review. (I don't think the bot can build the article history template, which would probably be the best approach; that's very complicated to do.) However, even changing the transclusion like that might have some negatives -- for example it would probably prevent bots like DeadBeefBot which does implement AH from picking up the old GA and adding it. (Post ec): I agree it should not be removed with no trace left behind, but I don't see a problem with avoiding the transclusion so long as it's easy to see that there was a prior GA. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:30, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Our talk page model is "newest information at the bottom", which is old-fashioned, but once a user understands that, they know where to look. I don't think a transcluded GA review is in any way different from other information on the talk page, and I don't think transclusions should be removed. If you want to make it clearer that one GA review is closed and the other is open, it is better to use closing templates than to hide relevant information. During a new GA review, previous GA reviews need to be as easily findable as possible so it is easy to check whether issues mentioned in old reviews have been addressed. —Kusma (talk) 13:04, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am of the opinion that in general, GA review transclusions should not be removed from talk pages without simultaneously being added to talk page archives. TompaDompa (talk) 15:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If an {{Article history}} entry is made for the previous GA review, I don't see any problem with removing the transclusion of it, since a link to the review will still be accessible from the Article history box near the top of the page (though you'd want to also remove the {{GA}} or {{FailedGA}} from that prior review). As noted, this may not be a job for ChristieBot... BlueMoonset (talk) 21:51, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure a link in a template is a suitable alternative for a long and detailed discussion of an articles quality. I don't really know why we'd want to hide it. If it gets archived along with other discussions (due to time), that's fine, but removing it because it's in a template seems a bit OTT. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 09:31, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to Mike for raising this and of course thanks to him for ChristieBot. I can see where the consensus is going, and it makes sense: Do not remove the old GA transclusions unless they are added to the talk page archives. If Mike were to add that enhancement, it sounds like we approve. If he doesn't want to add that enhancement and leave the old GA reviews on the talk page, it sounds like we are fine with that. Prhartcom (talk) 11:40, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure why we'd need ChristieBot to do this. The old transclusions should be archived the same as other threads. Are they not getting archived? Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 11:42, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect they won't get archived because they don't have a visible timestamp. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:17, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps that's the part we need to come up with a technical solution to fix. Maybe we should actually subst the review when it's been promoted/failed so it can be archived. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 14:47, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hello! I would be happy to address any specific concerns you have with my ongoing review. I have been carefully following the instructions, but if there is something glaring I have missed, I would greatly appreciate your feedback. I have also contacted a good article mentor to make sure my final review is in line with expectations.
Regarding my experience, I understand that I am a fairly new user so if it is truly inappropriate for me to be conducting a good article review I would certainly be open to changing the reviewer. Furthermore, if newer users should not review good article nominees I would appreciate your help in improving the instructions to make that clear. It was not clear to me and I suspect it would not be clear to other new users.
@SyntaxZombie: You checked boxes, but how are we to see that you actually checked what the boilerplate points you to? The article uses four photos. Are they each properly licensed? How did you run the COPYVIO check? This article seems to rely entirely on online sources that are not paywalled. Do each of them actually support what the content asserts? All of these and more are required per WP:GACR. You can find more detailed directions at WP:RGA, which I suspect you didn't bother to read, let alone follow. If you actually checked these items you would probably find problems for the nominator to address, like MoS. If you don't understand MoS, then why are you reviewing a good article? This is QPQ for your GA nom? Please examine any of my GA reviews to see what right looks like. Chris Troutman (talk) 16:22, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see how this tone is helpful in teaching a new user—whose contributions to this point reflect quite well on them—how to use Wikipedia. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 19:47, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Hey! Thank you for joining us in reviewing good articles. Don't worry too much about it, I'm sure you will become a great reviewer after a few small adjustments (and after gaining some experience, of course). The table you used in your review is supposed to be supplementary, used to summarize the review. It sounds like you did follow the instructions, but right now other editors have no way to actually check that and it may seem like you just randomly checked boxes. If you were to express your thought process on the review page it would help greatly to clear up the confusion. It doesn't have to be extremely detailed. Another thing people expect to see in a review is "spot check", a review of sources used in the article. But it looks like you already know that. As for the number of sources you should check, I don't believe there's a specific number or percentage required. In theory, an article doesn't need to reach a certain arbitrary number of sources used, as long as the provided sources support everything. Say, the article could be based on a couple of super detailed books. However, usually articles have numerous sources. As far as I know, you are supposed to check the ones that you would actually question. Sales numbers, chart peaks numbers for music albums, some specific facts, dates, maybe some of the quotes if there are any. And if I run out of these, I just pick a few more random refs to check, until I reach 10ish. Some editors do more, but for good articles you don't need to check everything. Anyway, good luck! I hope to see you again in the future. AstonishingTunesAdmirer連絡 21:36, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's perfectly appropriate for a new user to review GANs. The skills required - careful reading, following instructions, decent writing skills, communication - are in no way exclusive to long-time wikipedians. If you are carefully following the instructions, you'll be fine. -- asilvering (talk) 22:17, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I am confident that SyntaxZombie can review this appropriately as well as take The Prince (play) through the nomination process, given some support. SyntaxZombie contacting a mentor was the right action and the IP volunteer bringing it to this forum was not. The short of it is that while some articles already meet all of the GA criteria at the time of nomination, it is good practice to provide several sentences of feedback: (1) because many editors primarily go through this process in order to improve articles; (2) so that scrutinisers can distinguish a thorough review from an inadequate review. Everyone develops their own style: mine is always changing, even after 50 or so reviews, and my latest idea is to use a "Strengths" section like here to really spell out how I have checked every criterion.Also, you can always find some wording improvements, and almost always find some verifiability issues by reading the sources. (Take a look at RSP, too, which often lists some of the publications used as references. In the case of Maui (Moana) you find that all except BuzzFeed and The Times of India are generally reliable, and you might conclude that those two are appropriate in context for this particular article.) — Bilorv (talk) 00:32, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
They've reached out to a mentor,[9] and I've left a message on their talk page offering to help if that mentor is unavailable.[10]Rjjiii (talk) 04:08, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What is spot-check actually in the case of reviewing articles
I have seen that some article nominations require reviewers to do a so-called spot-check. My knowledge about this means that the reviewer may check the verifiability of the sources and whether they match the written facts. However, sometimes the spot-check may be referred to arrange the format sources properly.
I wonder if some users may have a different opinion about "spot-check". Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:34, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
"However, sometimes the spotcheck may be refer to distribute the format sources." I'm not sure what this means. Can you clarify, @Dedhert.Jr? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:35, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@PMC I haven't copyedited the words. Done. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 05:38, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The spot check has nothing to do with source formatting and nitpicky stuff like that. (In fact, correct source formatting isn't required for GA; per the GACR, as long as the citation points you to the source, it's sufficient.)
The spot check refers to the first thing you said - whether or not the source says what our article says it does. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 05:50, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Slightly more relevant is that we require all reviews to have a spot check, where a reviewer takes a selection of sources and checks that what is in the article is adequately backed up by the sources given. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 11:43, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
New statistics tool to get information about an editor's GA history
I've created a GA statistics page that takes an editor's name as input and returns some summary information about their interactions with GA. It shows all their nominations and reviews, and gives a summary of their statistics -- number promoted, number that are still GAs, and the review-to-GA ratio. Please let me know about any bugs or enhancement suggestions. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:20, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for creating this tool, Mike. I noticed when I input my name, I'm credited for two nominations that weren't done by me. This is because I reverted some out of process promotions (see this diff) and it appears the tool thinks I was the nominator, because I was the one who made the edit restoring the nominee template, even though the real nominator's name was present within the template. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:24, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One other comment: the tool makes it look like my nominations to promotions ratio is lower than it actually is, because it is actually counting GAs later promoted to FAs against me (4 such articles in my case). Is there a way this could be accounted for by the tool? Trainsandotherthings (talk) 14:27, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One comment: it looks as though there's something wrong with the "Promoted GA nominations that are still GAs" field: it returns 0 for me, but it should be 21 (Brothers Poem and Corinna are now FA). I see for your stats it instead reports that all of your GA noms are still GAs, though two (Amazing Stories and Ghost Stories (magazine)) have since been promoted to FA. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 14:28, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What does "Promoted GA nominations that are still GAs" actually means? I have about 150 or so that are still GAs. Lee Vilenski(talk • contribs) 14:46, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
File:Good article review icon.svg as a thing for GA reviews. I have also created {{GA review user topicon}}; if someone could create a userbox that would be great! Hopefully, a dedicated "award" you can only receive for reviewing will encourage people to do more reviewing? Or, potentially, advertise that reviews are needed? HouseBlaster (talk · he/him) 01:39, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
if it's of any use. Rjjiii (talk) 02:36, 31 March 2024 (UTC)
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