User:CaroleHenson/GA review tips

Criteria

Good Article Status - Review Criteria

Further information: WP:WIAGA

A good article is—

1. Well-written:

(a) the prose is clear, concise, and understandable to an appropriately broad audience; spelling and grammar are correct; and

(b) it complies with the Manual of Style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation.

2. Verifiable with no original research:

(a) it contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline;

(b) reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose); and

(c) it contains no original research.

3. Broad in its coverage:

(a) it addresses the main aspects of the topic; and

(b) it stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style).

4. Neutral: it represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each.
5. Stable: it does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute.
6. Illustrated, if possible, by media such as images, video, or audio:

(a) media are tagged with their copyright statuses, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content; and

(b) media are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions.

Approach

1. Clear out my sandbox to start drafting the review.
2. Read through the article
3. Article ready?
   1. Determine if the article is review-ready, or if copyediting, etc. could be done to the article before the review begins.
   2. If the article is not quite ready, state why on the review page + update the status on the GA nominee template on the article talk page to "on hold" and provide the reason in the note field
4. Start the review
   1. Determine if there are just a few minor edits (wikilinks, singular/plural, tense and other minor edits) that needs to be done. If so, make those changes. If there are a lot, though, identify the type of issue and provide one example
   2. Using the GA criteria, review the article and add comments to the "Overview" section regarding the extent to which the article does/does not meet the GA criteria.
   3. Depending upon the number of issues within each section - either group edits by the issue/criteria type (style/layout, content, etc.) or break it down by section (intro, etc.) of the article.
   4. Note comments or questions, with the following in mind
      1. When wording comments, try to be as neutral as possible and state the positive side of the situation first

.....

1. Attitude, keep a cool attitude and avoid getting pulled into conversations that take things side-ways

Saved conversation re: GA reviews:

GA Review help request

Hello Protonk -

I am working on a GA review of Einar Jolin with a contributor who has a remarkably cooperative, positive spirit and desire to create articles. It's my second review with the user, W.carter; the GA for John Bauer (illustrator) was passed recently. The person is Swedish, a good writer, with a good, near native command of the English language (really better than a lot of Americans, English-speaking people).

There was a recent conversation that concerned me because of his (maybe? don't know gender) frustration with the questions that I asked for clarification. Just for background: The Jolin article I took a different approach and did less actual editing during the GA process because mid-review for John Bauer I realized that the individual had a great command of the English language.

Do you mind looking at the conversation at Talk:Einar Jolin/GA1 and letting me know what you think I could have / should have done differently? I took my stab at what I thought the issue was and your input would be helpful.

As I mentioned in my post to W.carter: "Obviously, it seems like I could use some coaching on approach, because you are such a rare person to work with that has both a remarkable cooperative, positive approach with others + a true desire to make good articles."

Thanks so much for signing up to be a GA mentor - and your input is much appreciated!--CaroleHenson (talk) 15:41, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

• Hey @CaroleHenson, it looks to me like this was a pretty good review. Some of the chronology is hard to tell (i.e. it looks like you were updating the rubric over time making it hard to see what happened when), but that doesn't matter so long as both you and the editor behind the article knew what was going on. I'd say that frustration is unavoidable in a lot of GA reviews. In this case it was also "helped" by a translated article and a (very) minor language barrier. ;) I think the comment here "I thought your role was to just point and say: That is not good. Re-do this. What does this mean? Etc. And instead you were helping me?? :)" is a good sign.
• Setting aside that I prefer your style of GA reviews (lots of comments + suggestions), I think that style can provoke some of these frustrations even if it is useful overall. In some cases (and this really has to be your judgment based on the editor's past interactions or the quality of the article) it can make it seem like the hits keep coming or the challenge is insurmountable. However broad comments like "prose needs to be tightened up" are less helpful and less actionable, even if they're not likely to engender the same frustration or (sometimes!) despondence.
• The one thing I would've done would be to dispense with the rubric and offer a short prose assessment of the article (or do both). What this lets you do is give an informal assessment of the article for the editor in question. If you feel that the article is basically very good but is hampered by some style choices then a short assessment lets you say so. If you feel that a part of it is particularly interesting or well put together then you can say that too. I've seen some GA reviews where certain parts of the article were phenomenal but the article as a whole needed some tweaks to get up to standards. Saying so makes the communication between you and the editor working to improve the article very clear. It can also ground you while you're working line by line. If your rough assessment is that the article needs a lot of work, then you can probably detail that work in bullet points. If, instead, you feel that the article is basically there then you can refer back to that when choosing which nits to pick. :)
• Does that help? Protonk (talk) 16:06, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

Yes, that absolutely helps! That approach will be much less tiring for me, too! Love it! Thanks so much for your thoughtful response.--CaroleHenson (talk) 16:22, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

@CaroleHenson: Sounds good. To be clear, I still think line-by-line is great. What I recommend (if you're willing to drop the rubric) is a short assessment giving your broad opinions of the article followed by specific notes on what needs to be fixed. Without the rubric you don't have to fill out comments on a section of the GA criteria where there isn't much to say, but you can still offer actionable comments on individual elements which may have problems (or be especially awesome!). As I mentioned above, the short assessment may lead you to line-by-line less if you realize that the article is basically where it needs to be, but it's possible you might end up writing just as much. :) Protonk (talk) 14:13, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the clarifications! I think I understood the spirit of what you were saying As w.carter said, we've been putting in a lot of intensive work and the going back and forth is tiring, so I took a 24 hour or so break (which I discussed with w.carter and then "thanked" him for his most recent posting on the review page yesterday).

The GAtable is a method I find helpful - but, I processed the points about it (the rubric) to mean: use it to provide a summary, but not to use it for a continually updated running conversation - in which it's difficult to follow the discussion. I was planning on updating the top #1 and #2 sections + removing the comments in 3a and 6b, thinking the others are probably ok.

Picking up the review now, I intend to integrate your comments without having the line-by-line comments for each example. I processed your comments to mean describe the nature of the issue without going into tons of detail and without going into a lot of examples / "nits" to pick. Perhaps one example could be used for illustrative purposes. I didn't understand that I might be "writing just as much"... Do you mind if I "ping" you here or on the GA review page after I finish making edits and summarizing the edits for your feedback? ...maybe that's the best way to see if I'm taking your feedback in a constructive manner. Thanks, great feedback!--CaroleHenson (talk) 16:38, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

@CaroleHenson: If you want to point me to an example that would be great. Using GAtable or not is up to you. I recommended replacing the rubric with a beginning summary purely to cut down on work, because writing a summary plus suggesting changes line by line can be a lot; however, many people like the rubric! :) What I should probably do is review a GAN and send it along to you as my guesstimate of good practice. I can't promise I'll do that in a timely fashion because GA reviews take a considerable amount of time for me to do, but I'll try. Protonk (talk) 16:48, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

<continued discussion, but the key points are above>

Example

@CaroleHenson: Take a look at Talk:FreeBSD/GA1 for a review I completed this afternoon. I'm highly allergic to rubrics, so the comments are broken down into roughly separable categories rather than the GA criteria (I realize that's a habit not everyone would like to pick up), but the basic breakdown of narrative intro followed by line-by-line is one I find to be effective in reviewing articles. Protonk (talk) 19:50, 10 September 2014 (UTC)