Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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

Frequently asked questions (FAQ) (see also: GAN instructions)
Is there something we can do to restrict nominations?
There have been complaints about the perceived backlog in reviewing since the good article status was created in 2006. Generally speaking, we don't want to restrict nominations along their path to GA. In 2011, each day typically listed 330 nominated articles, of which 260 were waiting for a reviewer to volunteer. For comparison, today there are currently 509 nominations listed and 425 waiting for a reviewer.
While it may seem overwhelming, a large backlog isn't a bad thing. It shows that many nominators want to use GA as a tool to improve the encyclopedia, and it also allows reviewers to choose articles that interest them. From a nominator's perspective, the main concern is the expected wait time before receiving a review, not the number of articles on the nominations page.
Can't we force nominators to review articles?
Quid pro quo reviewing (editors must review an article before nominating, perhaps after a grace period) is regularly proposed and always rejected as likely leading to lower quality reviews and fewer nominations from excellent content creators who may not wish to review another person's work.
I want to review an article. Do I have to review the oldest unreviewed nomination first?
No. You may review any article you are not involved in, regardless of the nomination's age. As a courtesy to nominators who have been waiting a long time, however, you are encouraged to review the older nominations at the top of the queues first.
The nominator disagrees with the reviewer. Can another reviewer take over?
If your GAN experience is not going well or if you are disagreeing with the reviewer's decisions, then you can ask for a second opinion if the reviewer has not yet failed the nomination. You may also allow the review to fail, take the reviewer's suggestions into account, then immediately renominate the article (to get a different reviewer). You may even request a community reassessment. Other than these, another reviewer does not normally take over an active review. You might want to read What the Good article criteria are not.
Is the "nominator" a special position?
No. Anyone may nominate any article, including unregistered users and people who have never edited the article. Nominating an article is not the exclusive privilege of an article's primary authors, as nominators have no special privileges over other editors except that they can withdraw the nomination. Everyone interested in an article is encouraged to participate in the review, not just the person who happened to nominate it. However, "drive-by" nominations (nominations by editors who do not normally edit that article and may not be watching it) are not encouraged, as the nominator is expected to respond to the reviewer's suggestions to improve the article.
Should nominators respond to reviewers' concerns? And what should reviewers do if they don't?
All editors interested in the nominated article are encouraged, but not required, to respond to reviewers' concerns, not just the nominator. If the reviewer identifies concerns and no one responds, then no one should be surprised if the reviewer declines to list the article. "Drive-by" nominations, which are permitted, are one source of non-responsiveness. If the article does not meet the good article criteria after the reviewer has explained how the article requires improvement and has waited a reasonable amount of time for the nominator to make improvements, the reviewer is sure to fail the nomination.
What if the nominator is a (perhaps dynamic) IP address?
Any editor may nominate an article for GA status (while only registered users may review), so IP nominators are permitted. Remember that communication between nominator and reviewer usually takes place on the review page, not via user talk. If the IP nominator's IP address dynamically changes as they sign their comments on the review page, they may want to clarify to the reviewer that they remain the same person. An IP nominator that is responsive to the reviewer presents no problem to a successful GA review. If a nominator or other article editors are unresponsive and the article does not meet the criteria, then the nomination may be failed. Future article editors will benefit from good review comments on how to improve the article.
Does an article have to be on hold for exactly seven days?
No. Whether to place the nomination on hold at all, and the length of any such hold, is for the reviewer to decide. Depending on the responsiveness of the nominator, a hold may not be necessary. If the reviewer decides that it is, they may choose longer or shorter periods of hold time. The reviewer may even modify the {{GA nominee}} template on the article talk page to include a "time" parameter, for example "time=fourteen days", and the {{GANotice}} template used to convey messages to the GA nominator to include a "days" parameter, for example "days=fourteen". Keep in mind that protracted reviews show up as exceptions on the GA nominations report page.
How can GA be reliable when a single reviewer decides?
The quality of a good article is only as reliable as the most recent review and articles may deteriorate if unattended. The GA process deals with both of these issues by allowing repeat reviews by any registered user at any time. The process aims to encourage article improvement and build consensus on quality through multiple reviews—even though a single reviewer makes the decision whether to list the article according to the GA criteria. Any editor may contribute to any review discussion and community reassessment is available when the "one reviewer decides" model breaks down.
What should I do if a review page becomes inactive?
This can happen for a number of reasons. Review pages should only be started by reviewers who are willing to take an active interest in the article and are committed to completing their review of the article in a timely manner. Sometimes another editor (such as the nominator) starts the review page by mistake. A reviewer can fix this by placing their signature after "Reviewer:" towards the top of the review page, but if no reviewer is forthcoming, it may be best to delete the review page: requests for such deletions may be posted at the discussion page.
However, in rare occasions a review page is created by an editor who intends to review, but then withdraws due to illness or other reasons. In such cases, the first step would be to contact the reviewer. If this does not resolve the issue, then a new reviewer is needed. In order to find one, follow the instructions page under "If the reviewer withdraws". Do not use this process to void a review you disagree with.
What is the difference between GA and GA-Class?
GA status is determined according to the good article criteria, while GA-Class is a WikiProject classification. GA-Class is conventionally given to articles which have GA status. GA-Class is higher than B-Class but not as high as A-Class (although, depending on the WikiProject, an A-Class article may be required to be GA). The input of WikiProject editors can be invaluable in assessing GA nominations and involvement in WikiProjects is encouraged, but GA nominators and reviewers are not obliged to follow WikiProject criteria. GA reviewers who have passed the article should update any WikiProject templates on the article talk page by changing the "class" parameter value to "class=GA".
I failed the article, and the nominator just nominated it again without fixing the problems I identified!
That's okay. There is no time limit between nominations, and this is the recommended process if the nominator disagrees with your review. Let someone else review it this time. The new reviewer is sure to read your suggestions to improve the article while deciding on their review. If your concerns were legitimate, then the new reviewer will doubtless agree with you and fail the article again. If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the GA criteria, you can initiate a reassessment.
What if I have concerns about the quality of a review or need to resolve a dispute over the GA process?
You can bring those concerns to the discussion page to get help from other editors. Remember, however, to notify all users about whom concerns have been raised or who are involved in any dispute that you have.

Open reviews for over two months[edit]

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

Pinging Iazyges. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 15:13, 8 October 2018 (UTC)
The most recent edit Iazyges made was on September 22 at Talk:Rose C. Davison/GA1, which referred to getting back to the review there: I'm planning to; I've been busy recently and I'll get around to it as soon as I can. Past experience would indicate that Iazyges does eventually get back to reviews, but it can take several weeks. Perhaps they would agree to open only a couple of reviews at a time in future so if they do get busy in real life, only one or two are left hanging. BlueMoonset (talk) 15:13, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
Is it cool if I take over the review? I'm brainstorming what to do next for article creation and I usually use this downtime to review GANs. MX () 17:42, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
I'm cool with anything that get those reviews done. Cléééston (talk) 03:08, 18 October 2018 (UTC)
Apologies, I'll get to them ASAP. Iazyges Consermonor Opus meum 19:45, 31 October 2018 (UTC)
  • Iazyges I was just noticing this also. I count 11 nominations you started to review, as far as placing the template on the article's talk page, and then nothing happened. They seem to be primarily in the areas of Hawaii/south seas, royalty. Perhaps you could just release the ones you don't have time to work on in the near future, and let some other interested reviewer step in. — Maile (talk) 00:14, 11 November 2018 (UTC) These are the ones I see, and the date the review template was opened:
July 22, 2018
Reign of Marcus Aurelius - put on hold for improvements, but it looks like nominator Векочел has made a lot of edits since then
Ptolemy XII Auletes
July 23, 2018
Kulottunga I (Chola Empire royalty)
August 24, 2018
Ambrose K. Hutchison (Hawaii)
J. W. Lonoaea (Hawaii)
William Henry Daniels (Hawaii)
William P. Ragsdale (Hawaii)
Hiram Kahanawai (Hawaiian royalty)
Kiliwehi (Hawaiian royalty)
Emma Kaili Metcalf Beckley Nakuina (Hawaiian royalty)
Angata (Rapa Nui royalty)

Failed at failing[edit]

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

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

Review count[edit]

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

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

  • Have you commented on review pages other than the ones you've started/created? I've seen that throw off the bot, too. MX () 13:12, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
    • I just did a quick manual count, which suggests that you've done 51. Best guess would be as MX suggests, though it would seem odd to have commented on 46 others! Harrias talk 13:21, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Thank you for that. I hope that I haven't caused too much work. I am fond of offering second opinions, and didn't realise that they were counted. I would have guessed that I had offered second opinions or made other inputs into other GANs 8-10 times. Until a few days ago my tally was 63, so that would more or less match. But it jumped to 97 on the back of maybe 3 assessments, maybe less. Which is what caused me post here. I don't care that much, but something is wrong with the bot. There is no way that I have commented on 30+ articles in the past week or so.
I repeat that I don't much care, so if you are happy that nothing serious or systematic is amiss then I shall just move on. Thanks again for the prompt attention. Gog the Mild (talk) 18:33, 30 October 2018 (UTC)
Gog the Mild, it is nothing serious, just a bot issue that will one day (hopefully) be fixed should we ever get a replacement bot. Much of the jump was caused by the Alexios V Doukas review that you opened on October 28. The GA nomination template was missing the status and note parameters (which means the nominator created their own instead of substituting the GAN template per instructions), so the bot couldn't add the "onreview" status, and kept trying every 20 minutes to do so, adding to your count each time, until I noticed the issue and added the missing parameters, whereupon the bot finally succeeded in adding "onreview" 11 hours after its first attempt. That accounts for 33 extra increments in your total beyond the normal single one; the other 14 may come from similar episodes that were caught more quickly. Contrary to an earlier post, they would not come from commenting on an already-open review; the bot's review-counting mechanism doesn't work that way; only the person who opened the review (whose username is in the top section of the review) is ever counted. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:30, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
@BlueMoonset:Ah ha, mystery solved. Thank you for tracking that down. Am I going to compound the situation if I manually deduct 33 from my count at User:GA bot/Stats? I have had a busy first year of assessing, but not that busy. Or possibly 45. And is wherever you went to do your "quick manual count" accessible to us mere mortals? Gog the Mild (talk) 16:40, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
Gog the Mild, feel free to manually deduct from your count at User:GA bot/Stats, if you prefer a more accurate number. I don't know what Harrias did to get his manual count; the only brute force methods I can think of seem unpleasantly cumbersome and time-consuming, and nothing I'd care to undertake. BlueMoonset (talk) 19:41, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
It wasn't too bad. I went to user contributions, filtered it to talk space, and chose 'Only show edits that are page creations'. I then manually counted out those which were GA reviews. Harrias talk 07:10, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Reviewer MIA[edit]

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

@Adamstom.97 and Favre1fan93: With an assist from Mz7 the review was deleted, and I have changed the template so that the bot fixes it on its next pass. Best, Barkeep49 (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2018 (UTC)
Awesome, thanks for the help guys! - adamstom97 (talk) 23:07, 12 November 2018 (UTC)

Free review service[edit]

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

Basic question[edit]

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

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