Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 10

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Rename proposal

I suggest that "Meteorology and atmospheric sciences" renamed as "Environmental sciences" to allow articles like algae bloom (ok, i know it's not a GA article, I'm only giving an example) to fall into the newly renamed section because algae bloom is not strongly related to meteorology and certainly not atmospheric science. OhanaUnited 06:35, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't it belong in biology better? Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 06:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Environmental sciences is corelated to almost every topic if you can stretch it a bit. It can belong to Philosophy (humans shouldn't destroy forests because it's home to other animals), Recreation (eco-tourism), Economics & Law (how businesses change their practices to comply the law), Politics (reasons pretty obvious), and the whole department of Natural Science. It seems best to rename it to cope with the future entries that falls into multiple topics. OhanaUnited 07:26, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I still don't see why algae bloom is related to weather. Having a catch-all could be accomplished by a Miscellaneous category. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 07:30, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Algae blooms are one of the major proposed methods for alleviating global warming, since they suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Seeding the ocean with fairly small quantities of iron can evoke large algae blooms which can pull half or more of the carbon dioxide out of the local atmosphere. linas 03:39, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Apparently, the algae bloom article doesn't actually state this. Too bad :-( linas 03:45, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Civility and the zeitgeist

Many editors have probably noticed all four of these, but for those who don't have all the pages on their watchlist, there have been conversations with a similar background at WT:GA/R, WT:GA, WT:FAC and WT:FAR in the last few days. I'm posting this note at all four places, to make the point that incivility (of various levels) and needlessly aggravating language is noticed and has a real impact. Here are some section links:

I don't have a prescription for this, but it doesn't seem coincidental to me that these threads are all going on at once. Mike Christie (talk) 02:37, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

I tend to agree with that. Frankly, many of these talk pages have become so contentious that it has driven me to other tasks at wikipedia. My hope is that this will all blow over soon.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:21, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I think you may have misunderstood what Mike is saying here, but I'm not sure. Geometry guy 12:19, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Here's the problem

Those suggesting and supporting this, as best as I can tell, are expecting WAY TOO MUCH from GA reviewers and are throwing out some ridiculous accusations along the way.

First of all, as mentioned previously, GA/R isn't a drop-off overhaul service for lazy article custodians who feel they are above having to do the work necessary to bring an article to GA themselves. It's a REVIEW. We review the article, make our recommendation, list the issues, and wait for the custodians to fix the problems. If you, as the custodian of an article that has been nominated for delisting, want your article to keep its GA status, it is your responsibility to fix it. You say we're too lazy to get off of WP and go do some research, I say it is you that is too lazy to look over WP:WIAGA before flipping your wig over your article being nominated. If it's not up to standards, then it's not up to standards. It's our duty to delist it. It's yours to fix and renominate.

Secondly, we're not self-righteous, power-hungry editors who choose to review articles for the sake of feeling important. While not all reviewers bother to do a thorough review, I take personal offense to the comment that none of us actually look at the references past counting them. That proves to me that you haven't bothered to do any research before making this ridiculous suggestion. There are editors involved in this process that go through every bit of an article during the nomination review. While GA/Rs aren't typically as indepth, it usually doesn't take that much to determine if an article deserves to keep the GA status or not. For me, and you'd know this had you bothered to look, if an article is brought to GA/R for delisting and the custodians participate in the discussions and show that they are willing to make the necessary changes to keep GA, then I will go through, along with other GA/R reviewers, and do a complete review.

The major problem with the process of GA/R is not the reviewers. It's the custodians of the articles brought for delisting. Too many want to piss and moan about the nomination and gripe about the process when it would be less time consuming, less stressful, and a great benefit to both Wikipedia and all involved editors, if said custodians would just stay off the talk pages and do the work.

Improving articles to GA improves Wikipedia. That's my view and that's why I participate in the process. I help make changes to articles that I've failed or delisted (either in votes or action) when the custodians of that article ask that I do, or when I see they are making great strides in the improvement of the article. For COI reasons, I have no further participation in the promotion of those articles. And I do it because I want to, not because it is a duty as a GA/R editor. The piss poor attitude that comes along with some of these GA/Rs is pathetic. You bash and insult us because we don't want to promote your article while it's substandard, and because we won't fix it for you. I'm sure that will help us catch up on the backlog really quickly, when we not only have to find all the issues, but go in and fix them, too. And imagine how many more articles would be nominated once everyone realizes it doesn't have to meet standards to achieve GA... because the reviewers will just bring it up to standards for you.

I support merging GA into A-class. This is something I've thought about for some time. I oppose the remaining points of the proposal, specifically the ridiculous additions to the delisting process. Regards, LaraLoveT/C 19:43, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Just to add, i've been doing things with GA/R almost since its inception, if anyone looks at the GA/R archives beyond the first few, you might notice my name is the only one there archiving anything, and I for one would know, that there's never even been an explicit command in GA/R to actually suggest specific ways to improve articles in GA/R's. It's simply that people volunteer to give explanations for their opinion which can be as thorough as they want. The page used to be named Good articles/Disputes, and the only reason the name was changed wasn't because anyone felt that people shouldn't just be disputing an article's status, but rather, to make them give their time to make very thorough suggestions for improvement, but only because someone felt that "Disputes" sounded too hostile. Just because the name of the page can get confused with the actual reviewing process of an article initially doesn't mean that every time someone has to give an opinion on Ga/R, that they have to give their own individual and thorough review of an article, so really, people who frequent GA/R and actually give specific suggestions for things to fix are actually going above and beyond the requirements of commenting on a GA/R. I'd still like to see the page moved back to Good articles/Disputes, though I admit, the new name is more consistant with FA/R, though of course, GA/R doesn't have two steps to it. Homestarmy 19:59, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
Clearly there is widespread belief that there is a problem - this whole L-0-N-G discussion wouldn't be here if there wasn't. If there is a problem, we should try our best to fix it if at all possible - and that means changing something. So - I have a quesion: Which do you (with your extensive experience) think is easier to change: Half a million editors - or a few dozen reviewers? I suspect you'll agree with me that whilst (as you said above) we have a big problem with the attitude of some editors - we can't fix that by directly changing their behavior. Instead we have to find ways to change the way we review GAC's and GAR's in order to better convey what we wish of our editors. That requires some kind of change to the way we review - the process or the mindset of the reviewers - it's not that they are at fault, it's that this is the only thing we CAN change in order to try to effect an improvement.
In an ideal world, every editor would read the WIAGA - carefully check that the article meets every word that is written there - and every single article would pass on the very first try. In fact, we'd hardly need reviewers at all. But we know that doesn't happen. So editors are fallible - highly fallible. So what is the job of the reviewer? You can say that the job is to summararily reject articles that don't meet WIAGA and that's where it ends. I think some reviewers take that attitude. If we had infallible editors then the very fact of being rejected would tell them to go back, double check the article against the WIAGA standard and fix it. But we've already established that they don't/won't/can't do that - and that this is a problem that we have no control over. Hence we need the reviewers to do more than simply accept/reject. They have to explain - perhaps in some detail - why the article failed to meet the standard. If we wish to avoid this becoming an adversarial thing (which it often is) - then I think it would help if the reviewer would actually fix some of the problems. In so many cases I see complaints about the length of the introduction or something. The amount of typing involved in complaining about that is often considerably more than the effort involved in simply fixing the intro...especially if that decision has to be debated with the editor(s). So shifting the emphasis from accuser to co-editor can't hurt the process at all - and who knows, it may even make things more relaxing and harmonious for the overworked reviewers. But when there is a problem that's not easily fixed - it is essential that the reviewer explain precisely in what way the article fails to live up to WIAGA. In the example above, we had an article with 20 references - with the reviewer saying "this is too few for the length of the article" - that's a terrible review. It's bad for two reasons:
  1. It doesn't say what an acceptable number would be. "For an 35Kbyte article, I'd like to see at least 30 references and you only have 20." - that would at least have told the editor that he needs to go off and find 10 more books before he can come back and try again. If you don't say that then he might add two more references, come back, fail again (with the same "not enough" comment)...over and over.
  2. Having some fixed number of references depending on the length of the article isn't even a requirement per WIAGA. It says that every contentious or potentially contentious fact should be backed up by a reference. That's the standard that has to be met here - and a 100kbyte article may talk entirely about facts that can be fully backed up by just a couple of really good references - or a 2kbyte article about sports statistics may need 100 references just to back up the numbers in a table somewhere. So let's tell the editor precisely that - we need to be quoting the precise criteria against which the article failed - we need to say why it failed that criteria. ("The following facts are not referenced and they need to be per WP:WIAGA criteria number 7, so regrettably I can't accept your article.") - this tells the editor precisely what went wrong and ensures that articles are not rejected for the wrong reasons. Obviously, in some cases there are going to be far too many unreferenced facts to list - but let's list the first few at least so the editor gets a feel for what he's doing wrong.
The consequence of that terrible review is a page and a half of rants about how awful the GAC process is and half a dozen pissed off editors who will probably never try GAC/FAC again - as a consequence, nobody there will realise that they need to add more references to the article because there are unreferenced facts - and as a direct result, we missed an opportunity to improve an article that (otherwise) was pretty great. That could have been completely avoided if he/she had taken an extra minute to explain that there are a lot of unreferenced facts in the article and that WIAGA requires them all to have 'cite' tags next to them.
These things are necessary in order for GAC to be a driving force that makes better articles. If it's just an awards ceremony then it's pointless because it'll upset more editors than it helps. It doesn't help to categorize editors as lazy - that's so unfair. Lazy people don't give up their spare time for free to write encyclopedia articles. No one of our editors is a lazy person. They may not be as competent as we'd like - they may woefully fail to read every line of WIAGA - but they aren't lazy. They are also motivated...someone who just wants their favorite band to have an article isn't going to bother trying to get it through GAC. Anyone who comes here understands enough about how Wikipedia works to actually have discovered WP:GAC - it's not exactly well advertised.
SteveBaker 21:23, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
If the main concern is that most of the reviewers aren't doing thorough reviews, then that's something we need to address specifically. It frustrates me as much as article custodians to see an article come through review that was passed with a "Looks good to me! I'm promoting it to GA," when there are obvious issues that need to be fixed. Or when they fail it with a "The articles fails to meet criteria, therefore I am not listing it as GA." I get that there are many reviewers that do this, but it needs to be realized that there are, especially as of late with the backlog, a lot of new reviewers just trying to "help". On top of apparently thinking that clearing the page is what is most important, they don't know the criteria well, nor do they have any experience reviewing articles. There isn't really much of a guide to go on for how to review articles (as far as I know). There's the list of criteria, you read it and judge articles based on it. Possibly it would be worth the effort to create a detailed guide for how to appropriately review an article. Explain the specifics of what to look for and how to relay issues to the custodians appropriately.
As far as the continued suggestion that we, as reviewers, should fix minor issues rather than list them. While it may appear it would be easier to just fix it instead of type it out, that's not necessarily the case. For me, when I do a review, I list the issues in a separate tab as I go (what really dedicated Wikipedian doesn't have at least four WP tabs open on FireFox at all times?). To stop that and go through the edit process not only takes more time because of my laggy internet connection, but it throws off my momentum in reviewing. I am one to review the entire article and submit the review (sometimes over a period of time for particularly long articles or those on topics I'm not familiar with—as it takes me much more time to verify information). If the custodians take that review, appreciate what it says, and move forward with the suggestions, then I will, if I have time, help them work through them. I make mistakes and they tell me. We talk them out and resolve them. If I'm not specific enough, they let me know, I expand my explanation. It's that simple. The process itself isn't necessarily broken. We just need a way to better ensure that all those who choose to participate it in do it properly. LaraLoveT/C 04:09, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
There is one point that needs to be made. A-Class is granted by users who supposedly know something about the subject, while GA can be granted by anyone. That makes A-Class a higher grade than GA (and theoretically FA, but you don't want to open that can of worms). As all of the other grades (B, Start and Stub) are given by editors that also supposedly know are familiar with the subject matter, it would be inappropriate to merge GA-Class into A-Class. Two options remain: either the status quo, or to delete the GA status from {{grading scheme}}. WP:1.0 has discussed this before and GA was left in the scale. It is underneath A because of the reason stated above, and because articles that are given A-Class status should in theory have no problems passing FAC. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 04:44, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I think both LaraLove and Steve raise important points, and I'd like to add to those. This project is supposed to be for review, not for cleanup, we shouldn't lose sight of that. At the same time, there must be some detailed feedback when an article fails, and often one of the best ways to show how to improve the English is to do a copyedit. I think every case is different, though, and we shouldn't require specific numbers of edits by reviewers.
This is an optional review process. If you don't like the GA system, don't use it. If you do like it, nominate an article that you think meets the criteria, or do a review.
What I've seen in a few of the remarks above is a lack of WP:AGF. Reviewers at the GA project are (IMHO) mostly very dedicated Wikipedians who care so much about improving Wikipedia that they spend hours trying to give fair and honest opinions on the nominations. After passing judgement, they may have to suffer the ire of editors who have seen the nomination fail. I have nothing but the highest regard for folks such as Homestarmy who do this important work. LaraLove, thank you for those hours you spend checking citations! The result of their feedback is almost always going to be a reality check for the writer, and also (after the changes are made) a better article.
At the same time, editors/writers are also dedicated to making Wikipedia by adding valuable content. The editors who submit for GAC here clearly believe their articles meet the criteria, and reviewers need to help them see where there may be a deficiency. There are times that the reviewer misunderstands some aspect of the article, often in a specialised topic outside the reviewers main area of expertise.
We are all human. We get hurt when people criticise our work (be it writing or reviewing). Some of us are great at reviewing, but poor at copyediting - we need both. Some are good at judging verifiability issues, while others are better at judging content quality and comprehensiveness. No review will be perfect, but it can still be helpful. As long as the reviewer provides reasonable feedback, and an editor is willing to work with that, we have made Wikipedia a little better.
This isn't some cosy effort on my part to make people feel good. I'm trying to remind people why we all work here - not because we're on some big ego trip, but because we all care about Wikipedia and the free dissemination of knowledge. That means we should respect each other's contributions, even if we don't value them highly.
In recent months I've suffered the indignity of seeing a large number of articles delisted that were largely written by me. Of course this hurt, of course some of the comments were superficial, or represented a misunderstanding of the topic (chemistry), and not all of the criticisms were valid. I have been too busy elsewhere to bring those articles back to GA, though I will be working on a few over the summer. A few of the criticisms annoyed me. But I know that I will read every criticism carefully, and by the time I'm finished I will realise how much better the article is, all because of the GA reviewers comments. I may complain that the reviewer doesn't understand chemistry properly, but then again the reader may not understand chemistry either, so I probably do need to make things clearer. I may gripe that GA has got too tight on inline citations, but if I respond and add to the referencing thoughtfully the article will be better for it.
As for changing things, I think the name "Good Article" is fine and I think WIAGA is looking better than ever. I still believe that GA shouldn't be part of the 1.0 assessment scale, but I can accept that others do like it there. I'd be interested in discussing an A/GA merge in the assessment scale, I think it's an interesting idea; my initial inclination is that it's a great idea in theory, though it may be hard to set up. It may be better to merge once the system matures, when (hopefully) most WikiProjects have formal reviews of promotions to A-Class. Remember that many projects have only started using the scale this year, so at present the variation in A is much wider than for GA. In response to Tito's new post, any new system for A would have to involve both an internal (WikiProject) review and an external review, IMHO; the project would in effect say the content was all there, while the external review would in effect sign off that it's readable for a lay reader and it meets the stylistic aspects such as verifiability and well-written. I don't think we're ready for that yet, though.
In summary, we need to respect what we all do, which is all for the greater good. Please keep nominating and reviewing GAs, if that's what you want to do; if you think that's a waste of time, keep adding content and writing "good" articles. I think we should all get on and do what we do best! Walkerma 05:40, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Well, ideally, yes. The best way to do so is to make GA a pre-requisite for A-Class, or to make a WikiProject referral a pre-requisite to GAC. I'm not sure either WikiProjects or GA would like that, or are ready for something like that. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 05:49, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I strongly object to either of those suggestions. See my discussion below for detail - but basically, the A-class thing is a tool for WikiProjects and putting the S-L-O-W GAC process in the way destroys it's value to them. Requiring a WikiProject referral to get into GAC is unacceptable because there are a ton of articles out there that don't belong to any existing WikiProject and we should not exclude them from being labelled as 'Good Articles' if they are indeed good articles. SteveBaker 13:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I would like to second nearly everything that LaraLove said up there. I would also like to add, to counter the people who say we should just edit and improve every article, that sometimes that may be practical, but I personally have trouble with it for several reasons:

  • I can spot grammatical and other sorts of errors, but I am not that great at fixing them. Sometimes, a sentance has grammatical errors that make it impossible to parse correctly; as I don't know the intent of the original writer or have access to the sources he/she used, I cannot fix the problem; I can only note that it exists and needs fixing.
  • Likewise, I can spot when an article makes superlative claims or expresses challangeable opinions or offers direct quotes. However, again without access to the sources used to write the article, I cannot add inline citations to specific places where they are needed.

Any article that is to maintain its Good Article status needs custodians willing to look after it, so that additions made are properly written and formatted, and that any questions that arise about the article may be addressed. Articles with no custodians (that is, without people with ready access to sources to write from) cannot be adequately fixed if needed. That is the big problem here. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 05:55, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree that there are often cases where you can't fix the article - and that's fine - but when you can, it should be a general principle that you should fix rather than complain. SteveBaker 13:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I think if anyone bothered to look at some of these GA/R and GAC reviews, you'd note that many of us do make minor changes. I will frequently correct errors with citations, punctuation, simple copy-editing, etc. And many other reviewers do as well. It all depends on the article and how many issues it has. But it's a preference and should not be required, or even strongly recommended. If an editor has the motivation to put forth a thorough review but doesn't want to make any changes to the article themselves, that should be acceptable. We don't want to deter volunteers from helping out here. There was already an issue with lack of participation. GA/Rs sitting for weeks with no consensus because of a lack of votes... and now this has come along to run some of us regulars off for the time being. Worry about the half-assed reviews and be happy with the thorough ones, regardless of whether or not they did a copy-edit for you. LaraLoveT/C 05:30, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

On the A vs GA debate.

There is a fundamental difference between the Stub/Start/B/A (SSBA) scale and the GA/FA processes. The latter are typically initiated by the 'owner' of the article - it tends to be an active process between the editor and the reviewer. The way the SSBA scale works seems to be much more passive - a WikiProject looks at the pile of articles that fall under it's umbrella and simply works through sorting those articles by importance and quality. These (in my opinion) are complementary processes - they don't naturally work together. There are plenty of high quality articles out there that could easily be A-class that are not GA's. Why not? Because none of the principle editors could be bothered to mess around with the process - because they didn't even know that WP:GAC existed? Because there is a backlog in GAC/FAC? Because the process needs improvement?...Who knows? But that shouldn't force the WikiProject to be forced to put a clearly A-grade article into the B-grade category.

Wikipedia needs to have every single one of the 1.8 million articles out there have some kind of a grade and an importance. That means that we need a way to rapidly review hundreds to thousands of articles quickly enough that a project with a thousand articles can grade them all with just a handful of people doing the work. The GA and FA processes can at best pass one or two articles per day - and fail maybe a dozen - that's nowhere near fast enough - we are getting new articles created at a rate of several per minute.

Sure, the SSBA grades are going to be kinda rough - there is little or no formality or regulation or oversight. But there ought to be a good measure of consistency within each WikiProject - and a not outrageous amount of difference between WikiProjects. It's going to be tough to compare an article in WikiProject:Pokemon with one in WikiProject:Chemistry - so we have to expect differences in what constitutes a B grade or an A grade between those two projects.

  • The GA and FA processes are about finding the best articles in Wikipedia and promoting the idea that being one of the chosen few is a mark of quality. This acts as a way to get individual editors interested in pushing the quality of the articles they are passionate about up to meet the gold standard. It works to make even articles on the most obscure topics become great works.
  • The SSBA scale is about helping to grade the entire encyclopedia for importance and quality - remember it started in the CD-ROM project as a way to swiftly grade an enormous quantity of articles to decide on the couple of thousand that would make it onto the CD. The SSBA scale allows WikiProject people to see where there are problems. It's all about measuring the size and nature of the problem that we have. A WikiProject team can look at articles flagged as both 'important' and 'start' grade for example - that says that we need some WikiGnomes out there pushing them up to B grade at least. Then there are the 'important' and 'stub' articles - a WikiGnome ain't gonna help there - we need subject matter experts to flesh out the articles with raw data. Are we spending too much effort on 'minor' articles? Are there articles out there that belong in this WikiProject that aren't even listed? Is there a disproportionate amount of effort going into the top ten most important articles to the detriment of the others? The GA process is just too slow to help with that. If just one WikiProject (I work extensively with the Automobile project - so lets use that as an example) were to dump all of it's articles into WP:GAC in order to discover which were B's and which were A's, you guys here on WP:GAC would be reading car articles from now until doomsday! That's not good enough! The automobiles project needs to know where the big holes are NOW!

So let's recognise that the SSBA system and the GA/FA system are complementary - they serve different needs and work by different methods to achieve different goals.

It's constructive to offer guidelines that roughly place B-grade a bit below GA and A-grade between GA and FA - and it's OK to take those few articles that have passed GA or FA and place them between B and A - or above A respectively. That kinda helps to tie the two schemes together - our WikiProject reviewers should notice if none of the articles they stuck an A grade on are passing GAC - or if lots of articles they stuck a B onto are passing FAC! The GA and FA standards and processes serve to anchor the SSBA scheme together across WikiProjects. There is also a way to feed GAC and FAC - I'd hope that the WikiProject folks would be asking the authors of B-grade articles to give GAC a shot (and A-graders should be shooting for FAC) - but I definitely don't want to prevent a WikiProject from awarding an A grade just because an article hasn't been through GAC. If it's been through GAC and failed - then it certainly shouldn't be A grade - but I don't want to impose a bottleneck to WikiProjects classifying their articles because GAC is bottlenecked - and if you made it a RULE that you couldn't be A grade without passing GA then the GAC in-box would be a thousand times longer than it is now.

SteveBaker 13:01, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

This is is a fantastic piece of commentary, clear and well-argued, and I hope others will read it carefully. I agree with almost everything you say, apart from some of the last paragraph. Up to that point, you make quite a strong case that SSBA and GA/FA are independent, which suggests quite powerfully that WikiProjects which include GA on their ratings scale between B and A (and most do), should reconsider this set-up.
In the last paragraph, you move away from this argument, although your commentary is still very well thought out. However, the issue (which initiated a lot of this discussion) is that GA does not currently sit comfortably between B and A grade for technical articles (e.g. science/math) because it can't provide quality assurance or suggest improvements across the whole of WP:WIAGA for such articles. (I'd be interested to know if there have been any cases of "Delist 3a issues" at GA/R for technical articles!) Consequently it focuses on checkable formal issues of copyright, stability, the manual of style, prose style, references, and, of course, inline citation. Even with 2b (citation), 2c (original research) and 4 (neutrality), the process is often not able to determine whether these are satisfied, only whether they seem to be satisfied:
  • I very much doubt that reviewers are able to check that an inline cite really does provide a source for a technical statement;
  • many sentences can appear to be original research when they are not, whereas technical original research is easily missed;
  • and how can one tell whether a section on some advanced physics is neutral unless one has some expertise in the area?
Instead there seems to be a certain amount of overcompensation: those aspects of WP:WIAGA which can be scrutinized by GAC and GA/R are subjected to unreasonably high standards by many reviewers (which, in my opinion, means that it could be perfectly reasonable to have an A-class article which has failed GA).
Now there is nothing wrong with having a project which checks articles for formal issues of copyright, style, and citation, and also checks that other policies at least appear to be satisfied — indeed it is vital for the credibility of Wikipedia that some such procedures are in place, and the reviewers should indeed be proud of the work that they do. The concern of science/math folks, is that this procedure does not work as an overall assessment in the same way as SSBA does, particularly for technical articles (in any field), and that for the reasons which I have just explained, even the name of the project is misleading. Geometry guy 14:58, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Steve, I may be reading what you're saying wrong, but it sounds like you're saying that articles have to be a GA before a wikiproject can award them A class, and I don't think that's true. I've seen several A class articles that aren't GA's, whether they simply failed a nomination or were never nominated. Wikiproject Chemistry already ignores GA class compleatly. Grades that aren't GA or FA really do seem to be the responsibility of Wikiproject members, and the standards between Wikiprojects can differ. As far as i'm concerned, the only time as a GA reviewer I ever touch non-GA grades is when i'm raising things from B or lower classes to GA class, or lowering things from GA class to B class, and if I have changed grades any other way, its only because I felt it was blatantly obvious that something wasn't the grade it was given. (Often when two wikiproject grades are radically different, like one rank being stub or start and the other being B) There's nothing forcing Wikiprojects to consider GA in any one particular manner in their scales, and I really don't think this is the place to be deciding what to do about how GA fits in the quality scales, that scale uses the GA classification by its own editors choice, so I think the place where that scale is managed should be where this discussion belongs. Homestarmy 17:38, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I don't think he is: his comment is partly a response to a suggestion remark by User:Titoxd in the previous subsection that GA should be a prerequisite for A-class (see the edit history, and his reply in the previous subsection). It seems that he, you and I firmly disagree with such a suggestion. Geometry guy 18:27, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
If you read my comment closely, you'll see I'm not actually suggesting that. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 18:51, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for misrepresenting your view! Instead you raise the idea that GA could be a prerequisite for A-class, but then do not support it. Is that a fair interpretation? Do we have more agreement, then? Geometry guy 19:07, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
If there is agreement that GA does not fit into the SSBA framework (and in particular, is not a prerequisite for A-class), then the question is: should Wikipedia 1.0 and individual WikiProjects include it in their scales? I appreciate Homestarmy's comment, that this may be a question for these projects to discuss, but I would have thought that people here might want to express an opinion, especially as it does reflect on whether GA is appropriately named, and whether it should attempt to measure overall quality or only those aspects which are easily checkable. Geometry guy 19:17, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
(edit conflict) No problem. My comment was more of a plural you, as I see that people got the wrong idea about my reply to Martin. But on the larger issue, Stub/Start/B/A and GA/FA do not need to be separate; GA and FA are useful anchor points for the scale. Just as it is not required to get A-Class articles to GA status, it is not necessary to push them to FAC. Some editors have their own beefs with the Featured article process, so they decide to not send articles there. The same happens here, but that does not diminish the usefulness of either the FA or GA designations. As a result, there is not point in removing them from the assessment scale, as they provide reality checks to WikiProjects with regard to their own assessments. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 19:19, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Some of the lack of communication between contributors manifested on this page can be explained by the simple fact that some contributors assume the nominated articles have "owners", while others assume that the articles do not have "owners". For example, my contributions above should be read in light of my position that Wikipedia articles do not have "owners". It appears in fact to me that a majority of people expressing satisfaction with the present process are assuming the "owner" position (whence, for example, adversarial terms), while the majority of people wanting to see adjustments assume "no ownership".  --LambiamTalk 21:25, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
I really appreciate the work Steve Baker (in particular) put in to his summary above, which started this section. Thanks also to Geometry Guy for a response that helped me understand what is at issue in this debate; the various prior discussions have been a bit difficult to narrow down to straightforward points.
If I understand Geometry Guy's concerns correctly, addressing the hierarchy of SSBA and GA/FA is a goal only because of the perceived poor fit of GA to the science/maths articles. If that's true, arguments to keep the hierarchy as is won't gain traction with science/maths editors unless they also address the (perceived or real) problems with GA. If I am reading the responses correctly, there is little chance that significant changes to the hierarchy will be implemented -- it's too deeply embedded, and provides enough value in the eyes of other editors.
That means that editors of science and maths articles were are dissatisfied with GA can:
  • ignore GA, and GA/R, completely. They could use SSBA and shoot for FA without GA; or
  • work on making GA more suited to science and maths/articles
  • give up and use GA as it stands without trying to improve it
They could also start a separate process to evaluate articles to something "equivalent" to GA in their minds, but this would effectively be an A class review and hence is the same as the first option above.
Either of the first two options would improve articles and prevent discord. If everyone is willing to assume good faith on both sides, I think that GA could be modified in ways that would help resolve some of these issues. But some editors from the science and maths side would have to put in some serious process wonk time on helping GAC make those changes. Putting an A class improvement track in place inside science and mathematics WikiProjects is also a very constructive answer. However, I think the dramatic changes suggested to date (renaming GA, and the "concrete proposal" approach) have little chance of passing, and I'd like to see us look at more likely outcomes. Mike Christie (talk) 22:29, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks: I am just trying to articulate (and rephrase in a positive way) the many concerns I have read. However, it is not just for science and math that there is a problem: for any technical content, there are potential issues along the lines I raised.
As for your suggestions about separate process, at the Mathematics WikiProject, there is already a B+ rating, which is increasingly been seen as equivalent to GA, but without the overemphasis on inline citations and other presentational issues. Meanwhile, I have been making some serious efforts to propose minor improvements (here and elsewhere) to the system to improve its credibility with regard to technical articles. Some regular GA editors have responded, others have dug in their heels. I'm not sure what the outcome will be. Geometry guy 22:39, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing me at the discussion you started at GA/R; I'm not an habitué of that page so I hadn't noticed it. I think your suggestions there were well-motivated, though I don't agree with everything; I've proposed something on that page myself. Mike Christie (talk) 14:56, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
The problem of reviewers ignoring the criteria of WP:WIAGA and wielding instead privately invented criteria based on a count of footnote citations mixed with those of WP:WIAFA, cannot be addressed and solved by simply changing WP:GAC. We have suggested quite a few possible changes, but all are met with obvious reluctance, and no consensus is anywhere in sight. My personal diagnosis is that WP:GA/R has become a subculture in Wikipedia.  --LambiamTalk 22:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
What's wrong with telling the reviewers that they're wrong? (I don't know, I don't frequent GAC that much.) Most of the time I receive more or less fair reviews, and I'm pretty sure that part of this can be reattributed to people falling outside the two standard deviations from the mean. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 22:33, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Your contribution is a perfect illustration of what I just wrote above. What do you mean by "I receive reviews"? Are you an article under review? And by "fair", do you mean "fair to the principles of Wikipedia", or is it "fair to the 'owner' of the article"? These formulations have only meaning under the ownership/adversarial interpretation of the process. To give just one example, 769 editors have made edits to Bertrand Russell. Who in this case received a "more or less" fair review? What does it mean? Elsewhere on this page someone wrote about another article, similarly the result of the collaborative effort of many editors: "This article was clearly warned regarding inline citations, which you may hate". What does it even mean? Has the article now been properly punished for not heeding the warning?  --LambiamTalk 23:47, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Pardon my metonymy. I meant that the articles I submit receive fair, detailed reviews. As for the "you may hate" comment, I have no idea. I'm not defending the process either. I'm just saying that there's more than one explanation to this. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 00:16, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Why can't more of the GA reviews be done by the science and mathematics experts? Epbr123 22:22, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Would that solve anything? The remarks made by these editors tend to be ignored or derided. And look at what happened with the review of Bertrand Russell.  --LambiamTalk 22:28, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Again, I see this as a reason this project should refocus on style issues rather than content issues. Have two ratings: one for style, issued by this project, and another for content, issued by the appropriate wikiprojects. This dual-grading scheme would deflate the need to bicker, by deflating the overall importance of style, and elevating the overall importance of substance, into a more balanced approach that might suit all parties. linas 03:33, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
Yet another real life example: Klee's measure problem, which is ranked "GA" by this project, but is considered to be "start class" i.e. not even B-class, by the governing wikiproject. Also, please note that at WP:M, there is now a proposal being made to delist the GA process entirely from all mathematics articles. I presume the physics wikiproject would follow suit. linas 04:05, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I think GA would benefit if more technical editors were involved in the GA and GA/R process. However, the problem is that many such editors are disillusioned with the process because of a perception that it focuses too heavily on issues of form an citation, rather than overall quality. There is something of a vicious circle here, of course, and some good will is needed to turn it around. I have now delisted Klee's measure problem because it doesn't meet 3a, but I could easily imagine a B-Class technical article meeting the GA requirements, by being very polished on formal issues of presentation and policy, but a bit lacking in technical content. This certainly brings into focus the question of whether GA should be attempting to assess quality of content for technical articles and I think the case for separating it from the SSBA scale is quite strong.
As I mentioned above, this is not to diminish the importance of the GA process: it is vital to have some procedure for checking articles against WP policy such as verifiability, and also setting some minimum standards of article style. This seems to be the mission of GA in practice, so why pretend otherwise? Geometry guy 14:43, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
I see a serious impediment to the hope that "more technical editors were involved in the GA and GA/R process." The problem is that there are very few qualified editors. That is, although there are many subject domain experts, their expertise is quite narrow. On-the-ground coverage is quite thin; and I notice that many subject experts visit WP for 3-6 months, and then leave.
For example, although I have read some of Georg Cantor's papers, I am very far from being a historian of science, and don't think that I am qualified to judge the technical accuracy of this biography. Its not obvious to me there is anyone at WP who is truly qualified to perform a technical review of this biography. This is another reason to split apart technical review, and style review: the style review can be done at any time; the technical review can only be done when one has the full attention of a technical expert (which is not often). Quite often, the attention of a technical expert results in a major re-write of an article. Its tricky.
The shamefullness of the review of the Cantor biography was that the reviewers seemed to be unaware and ungrounded in basics, and had some rather bizarre objections. I don't see that a greater participation from technical editors would resolve this problem; you'd just be back to arguing what the words "a stronger result" mean. linas 02:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Status indictator

I want to propose that GA has an indictator on the top right corner to indicate it's GA (similiar to FA). Other wikipedias have this already so english wikipedia should have this as well. An example is Sir Robin Black (Chinese Wikipedia). OhanaUnited 11:44, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

The anti-metadata crowd may become very displeased were we to implement such a thing.... Homestarmy 14:45, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - I believe someone added it at one point - maybe a year ago. It lasted about a week. Personally I think this is valuable to our readers because it enables them to see at a glance whether the information in the article is at least somewhat reliable. (It's never a cast-iron guarantee - but better than nothing). As to the bloat of metadata - I'd get rid of all of the template junk saying that this is a stub or it's unreferenced or contains too much trivia or...any of that stuff. That is all VASTLY more distracting (and less useful) than a teeny-tiny green '+' in the top-right corner. (I would personally go with a silver star - fitting better with the iconography of the FA gold star. SteveBaker 15:59, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Or you can just grab chinese wiki's GA image, copy and paste the code to here. It's readily made for us. All we need is put up a drive to ask people to put up the template onto each main page. Silver star is not obvious because monobook's background is white, doesn't stand out. OhanaUnited 16:32, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
I copied the code from Chinese Wikipedia and adapted it for use here. If you want to see what it looks like go here. --Psychless Type words! 20:08, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
As Homestarmy says, people oppose such a thing as metadata. It has been implemented at least a couple times, and deleted almost immediately. Even the FA star is not without some controversy. Gimmetrow 20:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Still, we haven't stirred up nearly enough trouble already with people trying to move or radically re-write the GA system, we need to pile on more controversy, lets get an ArbCom going at least, whaddya say guys? :D Homestarmy 20:34, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
  • The problem with this is that GA is not really a consistent measure of quality. FAs go through a big long review process which requires substantial community input, while GAs are reviewed by one person. And as demonstrated above, people have large concerns about the fairness of assigning GA status based on the current process. So there is no point in telling readers that an article is a GA. -Amarkov moo! 14:28, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
If GA requires substantial community input then there won't be any difference between GA and FA except its criteria (which many GA reviewers actually use FA criteria when reviewing GA). GA is the smaller version of FA and anyone is allowed to change the article status from GA back to B. So there is a mutally agreement in the GA system that if someone doesn't agree with the review, they can downgrade it as long as they give their reasons. And getting back to the meta-data issue, many admins use {{administrator}} on their userpage and nobody removes this from their pages. I have gone to Metadata's talk page and couldn't find the controversy mentioned by Gimmetrow. OhanaUnitedTalk page 13:12, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
If you would like to know we tried it once and this debate ended it. I would however suggest you take it to WP:DRV if you want to bring it back. Many of us here will gladly support you. Tarret 01:28, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:GA list

I've implemented a bot which can keep up with the WP:GA list. The perl script messed up too many unicode characters. Relevant diffs: [1] [2] and [3]. I've fixed the bug in the first diff which listed an empty section as having two articles, and can remove underscores from links. Any other problems? I plan to have this script go manually after each FA promotion cycle, but it could be on a fixed schedule. Gimmetrow 20:13, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Huzzah! Homestarmy 20:36, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
Is the bot capable of updating the most recent GARs in the Template:WikiProjectGATasks? That would be great if it could be updated daily instead of various users attempting to update it every few days when they remember. --Nehrams2020 21:40, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm sure anything could be programmed, but this would involve parsing an entirely different page for quite different information. Gimmetrow 19:20, 5 June 2007 (UTC)
It also appears - as of June 3 - to be sorting the articles alphabetically. Unfortunately, it isn't making a good job of it. For example, look at the list of artists which now reads "Alan Moore — Astrid Kirchherr — Auguste Rodin — Banksy — Canaletto — Caravaggio — Han van Meegeren — Hiroh Kikai — Isidore van Kinsbergen — Jack Coggins — Jean-Claude Mézières — Paul Rand — Ralph Bakshi — Romaine Brooks — Vincent van Gogh — Yoshitaka Amano — " i.e. it's ordered them all by forenames not surnames. This now leaves us with a job of reordering all the sections. If you want to run this again, I suggest you drop the sorting code or find some way of improving it. - Joe King 20:05, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

Bar Graph Progress Indicator on Talk Pages

I propose a template for talk pages that would be used to chart the progress on various issus such as legality, neutrality, writing, sources, and citations. For example look at:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Progress

I want there to be something like this. If the graph should be vertical, then horizontal lines should denote the level of completion of each category (I have just listed 5): "More than a little more is needed to be sufficient" (Stub), "A little more is needed to be sufficient" (B-class), "Sufficient" (GA-class), "Thorough" (A-class). This allows the editors of an article to know which parts of the article require immediate attention. To ease the read of the indicator, a color should be filled in on the basis of the progress on a given issue category. The indicator, when the bars are very low, can also speed up the decision making process for those who are reviewing articles.

On a additional note, I think this template should be applied through a transcluded page onto the talk page, so that the actual values on the progress indicator can be discussed more throughly with noinclude tags around the dicussion.

Sincerely, ◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 01:08, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I decided it would be worthwile for myself to create a graph like this as a proof of concept.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 01:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Good articles
SCORES IN KEY AREAS
Legality A A A A
Neutrality B B B
Writing _
Sources - -
Citations B B B

Note, these values do not reflect Wikipedia:Good articles. This is just an example. The template is made.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 02:44, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

This is an interesting idea which could be useful in article assesment. Did you ever pass the suggestion but the core topics wikiproject? Tarret 01:03, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Category deletion discussion

Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_June_14#Category:Good_articles_by_quality

Basically, Template:GA and derivatives are sorting articles into three separate categories, which are functionally identical. One of them, Category:GA-Class Good articles is part of a sequence going all the way down to Category:Stub-Class Good articles of which no other category has a single thing in it. Let's trim out some category cruft. Adam Cuerden talk 17:52, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

I suspect these exist just for ease of processing information for WP 1.0. I will leave messages in a couple of appropriate places. Geometry guy 09:50, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Editors forgetting to update the count

Some editors forgetting to update the count. Can we make this automatic? --Aminz 20:41, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

I think there's a bot that does that already, User:GimmeBot. --tjstrf talk 21:12, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
Aye, every once and awhile it'll run and update everything, replaces the old GAAuto script. Homestarmy 01:33, 22 June 2007 (UTC)
Should we just remove the instructions on updating the count since the bot does it for us? Homestarmy 00:39, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
It would probably be better to direct reviewers to completing other parts of the process. Some reviewers are simply changing the project template ratings, without adding a {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}} entry. It's confusing. Gimmetrow 02:30, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I also caught two invalid passes in the log, are some people treating the GA ranking as something thats the same as the 1.0 rankings? Homestarmy 02:31, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Operation Gibraltar was passed and properly listed on WP:GA, although the reviewer didn't leave a message on the article talk page. Does that make it invalid? Gimmetrow 02:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I didn't see the talk page template, that's why I failed it. I'll relist it back to GAC. Homestarmy 02:55, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

By the way, there are a number of articles in the GA category (from the talk page template) which are not listed at WP:GA. Some of these are due to reviewers listing the article *only* in the top section of "new" GAs, without categorizing it. Gimmetrow 02:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

GA symbol

Featured articles have a star symbol at the top of the article. Why not have a symbol for GAs? I suggest a tick/checkmark such as Mark83 20:16, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

We do not know if the sentiments expressed in Wikipedia:Templates for deletion/Log/2006 March 25#Template:Good article would once again make this problematic or not. Homestarmy 20:54, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
I wondered if there was a previous discussion. Thanks very much for the reply & the reference. A quick read of the template for deletion discussion makes me think there are too many problems associated with such a tagging system. Thanks again. Mark83 21:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)
There are many discussions about this because apparently the so-called no-metadata don't hold much evidence. Cleanup template, dispuate template, etc. are all metadata and I don't think these templates will be deleted in the meanwhile. I think it's time to bring up this issue again since the template deletion took place in March 2006, which is more than a year ago and now the GA criterias are much better than at that time. Should we go for a vote here and determine if it's time to have a GA system (a green +) like the FA icon on top right corner of the article? OhanaUnitedTalk page

I really think we should, the Chinese Wikipedia does. (I stole the code from them for this after all...) To see an example of what this will look like I've inserted the code that we will use in my message. You should see the symbol at the top of the page. Here it is:

Hit edit to see the code. --Psychless 18:29, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

If somebody really does want to file a deletion review for this kind of thing, (As I understand it, irregardless of when something is deleted, if somebody wants it back, they really should file a DRV over it first) I think it would be a better idea if this time, we plan to make it official in the instructions somewhere that Good Article pages are marked with the GA icon at the top, assuming that the icon is undeleted of course.Homestarmy 19:52, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I would suggest looking over the links to four previous deletion reviews at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#GA_template. Templates which add items to the upper corner in article space are routinely deleted at TfD; this isn't just a GA-specific issue. Gimmetrow 20:40, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Let me point out some points to consider:
  • The deletion took place more than 1 year ago
  • GA criteria has improved since that deletion took place
  • Top-right corner icon exists everywhere including Template:Administrator, yet nobody contested about it because it contains metadata or being top-right corner icon
  • Metadata are (direct quote from Pyrospirit) already accepted metadata in articles like cleanup tags, for one.(end quote)
I'm not too good at filing a deletion review, so if someone wants to do it, please do so. OhanaUnitedTalk page 13:16, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
I'm not so certain that enough people will agree that the GA process as a whole is quite good enough yet to warrent making GA's more apparent to the public... Homestarmy 16:42, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

User talk space listed as a good article?

While leaving a note for an editor I noticed the GA icon in the upper right hand corner of his talk page. See User talk:OhanaUnited. I did a quick search of the page for a corresponding template, but found none. I also looked on the user page, but didn't find it there either. I'm sure that usertalk and userspace pages are exempt from GA status (for obvious reasons)... I'm confused as to how/why the icon appears. Any ideas? /Blaxthos 17:13, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

The code doing it is in User_talk:OhanaUnited#Good_article_template.3F. People can decorate their user and talk pages pretty much however they want, as long as it's not divisive and doesn't employ fair use images. It doesn't mean the talk page is "GA", just as putting a star on a userpages does not make it a featured article. Gimmetrow 17:27, 23 June 2007 (UTC)
Sorry for the confusion. It's just a small thing that started by Psychless because on that page me and him are talking about the reviving the GA symbol on the top-right corner of the article and he found the code (see User talk:OhanaUnited#Sure) from chinese wikipedia. It's not really meant to be there. He used my talk page as a code testing ground, that's all. Hope this clears up.OhanaUnitedTalk page 18:28, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't really take issue, I was just kinda curious how it got there. I'm not super familiar with metadata and the wikisoftware and the like. FWIW, I think that the GA symbol should be displayed on good articles, just as fprot/sprot/fa are. /Blaxthos 18:44, 23 June 2007 (UTC)

Deletion Review for template

I have formally filed a deletion review for Template:Good article at Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2007 June 24#Template:Good article. Please participate in that discussion. OhanaUnitedTalk page 16:25, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

WP:FICT rewrite

A rewrite of WP:FICT is being proposed at Wikipedia talk:Notability (fiction)#Rewrite proposed. Needs polishing, clarification, and so on, but it's a start. — Deckiller 22:04, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Categorizing

Are there any special tricks or restrictions in the categorization of GAs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hyacinth (talk • contribs)

When you review and OK an article, list it on WP:GA under the section you think most appropriate. It's OK to list an article twice now and then. Or are you asking about something else? Gimmetrow 03:20, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Recently listed good articles

can someone create a template page for this category as updates here means that you have to edit the Good Article page (110+ KB page). Instead, have this the same way we have the GA count template. Any views. --Kalyan 05:42, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

Show all?

Is there a way to expand all the "show" links with one click, short of copying the whole page to a temporary page and editing it into the superior format used by WP:FA? I don't like having all the good article links hidden by default. That breaks Ctrl-f search in a Web browser. Another problem is that many articles might logically fall under more than one possible heading (for example, an article may be about a business, and the business is involved in sports or the arts etc.). I prefer the default keep-it-simple Wikipedia format of having a table of contents and visible sections with visible content. That works fine in thousands of long articles. Why abandon what works and go with an idiosyncratic layout here? One of the things I like best about Wikipedia is its generally simple and straightforward page layout, so refreshing in a world infested with sites that use Adobe Flash primarily to show off. If we need to have a fancy idiosyncratic page, can we also have a simple version with the same content for people who prefer to scan large amounts of text without having to click dozens of little "show" links? --Teratornis 22:47, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

It would be nice to be able to open them all up, but I don't agree with you in regards to the WP:FA page - that is a very poor and unorganised layout which is basically just a ball of mess.--Konstable 23:08, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Automated count

Is there any way we can have an automated count for Good Articles?  Tcrow777  talk  20:37, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I think Gimmebot already handles that. Homestarmy 20:55, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Then why does it give you a link to update the number?  Tcrow777  talk  22:34, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, the number is actually on a separate template, so I guess someone felt it more convienent to put a link there in case for some reason it needed to be updated manually. Homestarmy 04:06, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
"Gimmebot" does not exist.  Tcrow777  talk  21:35, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, wait! It does, but it is case-sensitive ("GimmeBot").  Tcrow777  talk  21:53, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

GimmeBot does update the GA count.  Tcrow777  talk  03:44, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Use same criteria for GA, A, and FA standing. Reward according to consensus.

I want:

"Less bureaucracy. Less hesistation. Fewer rules. All standards. Support or Reject."

How:

"Use same criteria for GA, A, and FA standing. Reward according to consensus."

The simplest way to do it is to define what amount of consensus are needed for each. Use the FA criteria. A 25% consensus may be enough for a Good Article, a 50% consensus may be good for an A, while a 75% consensus may be good for a Featured Article. A new category of articles, such as Top Featured Articles may be warranted when consensus is over 95%.

Qualities which Wikipedia looks for:

FA "Compelling prose" & GA "Well written" - Different people have their own ideas on what is compelling or well written. FA & GA "Stable" - People's feelings about an articles stability may be affected by unrelated criteria. Not everyone will gauge the article's stability precisely. FA "Comprehensive" & GA "Broad in its coverage" - People differ in considering which subtopics or related topics are necessary or not. They will differ on what they consider to be a fair treatment of each topic, given their various backgrounds and personal lives. FA & GA "Neutral" - People may fail to see any neutrality issues even if they are not involved with the article. FA & GA "Manual of Style", "Images", "Factually accurate", "verifiable", and "Stable" - Better to be feel safe with many reviewers than to feel doomed with one. ◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 06:46, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

Oppose There is already a backlog for the GA nominatons. There is not enough people reviewing GA articles to establish this. This will just make the backlog worse. Z1720 07:04, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Then why isn't FA review backed up?◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 07:14, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
A 25% consensus may also mean that 75% of the reviewers think an article is awful, yet it would be granted GA status under the proposal. There's no point to a numerical approach, and no real added benefit. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 07:07, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Then I propose something else. There will be two types of people, those who know good English, and those who don't. Those who know good English will test articles for good english and may restrict themselves to that. "Manual of Style", "Images", "Factually accurate", "verifiable", and "Stable" are individually quicker to gauge by those less proficient in English. It takes a long time to judge the English compared to the formatting, verifiability, and stability issues. Therefore, both types of review must occur before an administrator proceeds to determine the article's status as opposed to "accepting or rejecting" it.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 07:22, 4 July 2007 (UTC)

New proposition

For reviewing the next FA -begin- review FAC -end- consensus on FA status
For reviewing the next A -begin- consensus on stability, neutrality, formatting, accuracy, images, grammar, and mechanics -end- consensus on good prose at FAC review
For reviewing the next GA -end- consensus on stability, neutrality, formatting, accuracy, images, grammar, and mechanics
The same basic criteria are used to judge each article; A or FA.
GA review process is not dropped by the proposition. For any bad submissions to FA (i.e. those less than than A-article in quality) where consensus on stability, neutrality, formatting, accuracy, images, grammar, and mechanics (i.e. WP:MoS) has been achieved, the reviewer may rate the article as GA, but probably not.
The difference between this and the current: The GA process should not be confused with a Writing Contest. Far too many articles are kicked out of GA, and reviewers often give very vague comments about "unsuitable" english when they also try to check for purely yes or no criteria. (e.g. "Do the images have fair use rationales?" "Are there even any references?" "Are there vasts amount of prose which need citations?" "Are there some missing spots?" "Has the article changed signficantly during the reviewing period?") Having well written (i.e. "suitable") English is a bold proposition for those who are "suitably" versed in it. It is high time that process become be seperated from the good article process and inserted into a new "A article" rating. In otherwords, current, and future GAs that need only polishing on the prose and the "suitability" of the English make it to "A article" rating. The middle child needs representation too.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 07:57, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
Isn't A-class given to an article though its related Wikiproject review? Wikiprojects usually know about their topics and would do the best job reviewing their articles. Tarret 19:58, 4 July 2007 (UTC)
What is wrong with the current method again? The proposed method removes WikiProjects from the mix, and essentially A-Class is their input in this thing. The yes/no criteria are the bare minimum any article should have, so I don't see the point of this change. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 01:03, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
It's wrong because it is not as best as it can be. It's wrong because I think it can be improved. Is there something wrong with improvement? That's a point in itself. If you don't know what the point is, or rather, what the points are, then why did you ask?
Points made before:
Point 1) The quality of the GA system can be improved.
Point 2) The category for A articles is not treated by the standard reviewing process and should be.
Point 3) The same process that is applied for FAC should be applied for GA and A articles.
Point 4) Checking to see whether Proving and justifying to the article editor that the article is not "clear prose" and not "broad in coverage" takes a signficantly more reviewing time than proving that the article fails to meet any two other GA criteria and because it creates a longer waiting period these should be removed from GA and added as a requirement for an A-class rating.
New points I have to bring up because of your post:
Point 4) Wikiprojects are not proposed to be removed. They STAY.
Point 5) Wikiprojects and the standard reviews can do ratings.
Point 6) While wikiprojects can grade articles, not every article has or can have a wikiproject, meaning that some articles will never be A's under the current system.
More points I should add:
Point 7) Encyclopedic articles should have a chance to get an A without having a wikiproject currently active in reviewing..
Point 8) In wikipedia, the category for standard A articles is underpopulated since there is no standard reviewing process in which A article status is rewarded.
Point 9) The criteria "clear prose" and "broad in coverage" are the only ones that distinguish the current Good Article criteria from the FA criteria. Therefore, they serve as a natural point by which to define an A article, a point that is important because these criteria are applied in much the same way as some FA criteria, namely the "brilliant prose" and "comprehensiveness" which specificially A articles should be near to.
Point 10) The GA system is controversial, and no one likes it when someone wishes all others to hold a deaf ear to these problems. This is why things need to be done in stages. Having the same process does not mean that everything is on the same page! This is not about changing the FA process, its about splitting the GA process into two but using the same process as FAC. Do you understand how that is possible? Splitting the GA process into two refers to giving potential Good Article editors the option to work on the "clear prose" and "broad in coverage" later when the article follows WP:MoS, has good grammar, and is already stable, neutral, and factually accurate with proper image tags/rationales. I think that excluding the two expert criteria from GA narrows the scope of the GA review enough to reduce the GA backlog from an average of 1 month to 1 week and attract reviewers who are proficient neither in college-level English nor the subject matter the topic entails into successfully testing the article against the (new) list of GA criteria. You can learn how do to new styles of citations and references as well as different kinds of image tagging in a few minutes, but learning good English, especially when dealing with controversial subjects, takes a long time to master if one has learned the wrong way!
Point 11) People are often lenient when it comes to "broad in coverage", it is one of the things which will often be ignored because most reviewers who can judge it will have an opinion rather than a fact regarding the proper coverage. Therefore, it would be helpful to raise the standards for the "broad in coverage" criteria by assigning it as a criteria not for Good Articles but for A-class Articles.
◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 05:22, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

My attempt to make it evident that certain GA criteria should become requirement for A-class instead

May have to read whole article (- hard) One look is sufficient to invalidate it (0 intermediate) Easy to explain the failure to meet criteria (+ medium) One look is sufficient to validate it (++ easy)
Well written (0 intermediate)
Clear prose (- hard) Yes Yes No No
Correct grammar (0 intermediate) Yes Yes Yes No
Manual of style (0 intermediate) Yes Yes Yes No
Factual and Verifiable (++ easy)
References (+++ super easy) No Yes Yes Yes
Reliable sources for controversial material (+ medium) No Yes Yes No
No original research (0 intermediate) Yes Yes Yes No
Broad in coverage (- hard)
Major aspects (- hard) Yes Yes, if an expert (more so the specific subject than the field), No, if not an expert No No
Focuses on topic (- hard) Yes No No No
Summary style (0 intermediate) No No No No
Neutral (-/0 hard to intermediate)
Yes Yes Yes, if it is not due to perceived coverage issues as a result of the lack of expertise the editors and reviewers have in the subject or field (moreso the subject) who see a neutrality issue and think something else should be added but don't know or agree on what "major aspects" to add without getting further from the the topic's focus. This is how some controversial articles can be seem at times of frustration to be eternally damned to B-status. No
Stable (0 intermediate)
No No No No
Images (+++ super easy)
No Yes Yes Yes

As you can see from the chart, which obviously may be of some error, I attempt to list the nature of testing for each criteria. They range in difficulty and time in which they completed. Some activities require only a shallow level of skill in reviewing, while others are clearly more involved. I hope this time you will appreciate why I singled out "clear prose" and "broad in coverage" as criteria that should be singled out for superior reviewers who wish to give A articles their just reward. B-articles do not go through a thorough reviewing process since the key qualities are easy to check for (i.e. Factually accurate, Verifiability, and Images (if applicable) - see chart above). The thoroughness of reviews of Good Articles are highly variable - i.e. some are much more strict than others. So it is a good idea to reserve the A article status to articles which have met the basic requirements which involve an intermediate level of work to check for. ◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 07:08, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Request

Resolved

WinFS was recently promoted as a GA. But it does not appear to have been listed here. Can someone please list it? I am not doing it as I have a COI with the article. --soum talk 10:25, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Done. Carson 17:36, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

GAC backlog elimination drive

A month-long backlog elimination drive has started. There are several awards to be won. For details please go to Wikipedia:Good article candidates backlog elimination drive. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:55, 11 July 2007 (UTC)

Hillsong Church a GA?

The page above indicates it's a GA, but your list on the page doesn't. Any idea what happened here? John Carter 19:42, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

I didn't see the template or any indication that it had ever been reviewed, so I changed the GA rank in one of the wikiproject banners to A rank. Homestarmy 19:44, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Thank you. Please check Spanish missions in California as well. John Carter 19:59, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Looks to be the same. Homestarmy 20:06, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
The copyrighted images need fair use rationales. --Nehrams2020 20:32, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

What category?

Jean Keene was listed for review under Misc. I have passed the article, however, I have no idea under which category to list it. Any suggestions? LaraLove 06:25, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Parks, conservation areas and historical sites (conservation specifically) I'd say. Giggy UCP 09:32, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
But those are places. The geography section just doesn't seem appropriate for a biography. Why is there not a misc. section, or a biography section? LaraLove 04:28, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

Admin help sorting out GA/FAC mess

Please see this regarding the mess at the article that used to be at Raëlian Church, passed GA yesterday. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:52, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

Evolution

Is there a place where we can see the GA growth against time?--SidiLemine 19:12, 18 July 2007 (UTC)

How about Wikipedia:Good article statistics? --Nehrams2020 21:31, 18 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks so much! I always have a hard time finding the Wiki Stats.--SidiLemine 18:52, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Listing without nomination

Can an article be reviewed and listed (by someone not too involved with the article, of course) even if it is not listed. Or does it have to be nominated first? --soum talk 17:51, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

It has to be nominated first. I'll have to double check, but I believe the WikiProject GA coordinator stated that if you feel an article is a Good article, you can nominate it and, providing you haven't contributed significantly to the article, you can review it. It does, however, need to be a thorough and honest review based on WP:WIAGA, so if you don't have previous experience reviewing articles for GA, it may be a better idea to just nominate it and let someone else review it. I'll double check and get back to you. LaraLove 20:01, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
"It's ok to be the same person to nominate and review the article as long as you're not a major contributor to the article. Just make sure that no matter how much you liked about the article, it needs to meet ALL GA criteria before it can be promoted to GA." OhanaUnited 19:10, 18 July 2007 (UTC) found here. LaraLove 20:08, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
The vast majority of articles i've seen passed without being on GAC first were not done with the GA criteria in mind, or if they were, the passing user convinently ignored or forgot them. Best to enforce nomination for the most part I think. Homestarmy 23:28, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot. Yeah I am not too into reviewing articles, but have reviewed quite some. Yesterday I came across an article which matched all criteria. But as I wasnt sure if I could review it as it wasnt nominated. I ended up just listing it. Anyways, thanks again. --soum talk 16:39, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

Could we have good lists?

In the same way GA are sightly less impressive aricles than FA, GL could be less impressive lists than FL. Buc 21:23, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

This has been suggested before and rejected before. There is a lot to seperate FAs and GAs. But there is not a lot to seperate FLs and GLs. --Kaypoh 00:06, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

Somewhat unclear introduction

I feel that the introduction is unclear about whether a featured article is also a good article under the classification. Logically, it is, in terms of classification, ?. I was looking for the number of articles considered "Up to scratch" by Wikipedians and am unsure about whether it is # FA + GA, or # GA.

If an article is a featured article, it clearly would meet the GA criteria, however, not all FAs have gone through the GA process. Additionally, when a GA achieves FA, it's removed from the GA list. Lara♥Love 14:30, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Hi, I got the impression that GA evolved later than FA. I also got the impression that the path to perfection (?) is stub-start-B-GA-A-FA with A being higher than GA due to its requirement to meet the perfect article criteria AND a peer review. If this is true why isnt GA part of the path to FA shown here - {{PR-instructions}}? Pardon my ignorance or if I have dropped a few bricks. Regards, AshLin 16:38, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
The "path" you list is simply ratings or assessments given to articles by various wikiprojects. A-class articles are rated by experts in the field of the topic. These are usually articles of technical or academic topics. FA and GA are both simply projects. FA was, as you noted, created first. GA was later created for articles too short to qualify for FA. The consensus being that many short articles were of high quality and should be recognized for it. Currently, however, GA has evolved to encompass very long articles that, with some extra work, can become FA. In that respect, GA can be a stepping stone to FA if article custodians so choose to take that "path". Lara♥Love 17:20, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
GA started much later than FA, but no GA can be an FA at the same time, FA status supercedes GA status. This can be helpful, because some delisted FA's are very old, and often don't even meet GA criteria. Plus, by the time an FA becomes a former FA, the content may of changed signifigantly, so another GA review would probably be helpful anyway. Homestarmy 23:14, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
Oh, my bad. I wasn't sure, so I checked articles that I promoted to GA that have since become FA and they're not listed at WP:GA anymore. Lara♥Love 05:28, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
I've been noticing a very healthy proportion of GA delists in the 1.0 log are due to promotion to FA status.... Homestarmy 06:58, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Landform & Place confusion

Further to MadmanBot's recent visit to Scotland, I notice a minor degree of inconsistency relating to island GA's. Raasay is an inhabited island and in 'Places- Europe'. Mingulay, Dubh Artach, Flannan Isles and Staffa are uninhabited. The former two are 'Landforms', the latter two, 'Places- Europe'. My suggestion would be to have sub-set of 'Places- Europe' called 'Islands' and put them all there. I'll come back and fix this myself later if there are no objections. Ben MacDui (Talk) 08:13, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Sequence?

Is there a reason that people are listed (in particular, in the music section... I haven't checked the others) alphabetically by their first names? This seems rather difficult to follow, for me. Is there a particular reason for this and, if no, would anybody feel against me putting this (and those like it) into regular alphabetical order? --lincalinca 12:35, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm indifferent. Either way is fine with me. Lara♥Love 15:03, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Other sections use piped names with last-name-first. Do that and the bot will alphabetize automatically. Gimmetrow 06:50, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Cool. I'll do it today. --lincalinca 00:47, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Template question

Is {{GA-article}} accepted by the community? If so then why is it currently used on one page? T Rex | talk 14:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

No, corner icons are controversial. Gimmetrow 15:07, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
If they're controvertial, why are they used for Featured articles? I'm not for adding them, but that's the fact. We also use it for audio pages, like the constitutional pages (1st amendment is fully audio, from memory). --lincalinca 01:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Because many people are against the idea of GA's in the first place. It's fine how it is right now. -- Phoenix2 (holla) 07:31, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
This may be useful reading: Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2006-05-22/Templates for deletion. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 18:13, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

TIE fighter

I wasn't sure what category TIE fighter belonged to so I listed it under video game characters. I'm not sure if that is the best category though. Anyone else have an idea? T Rex | talk 14:03, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I have a feeling it should be under Weapons and Military Equipment. Anyone?--SidiLemine 15:45, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
Is there a movie or fictional character/fiction section? A TIE fighter is about as "military" as Snow White, considering neither exists. ;) IvoShandor 02:18, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
The military section isn't called "real world weapons and military equipment" AFAIK. And you'll have to admit it makes for an awkward character.--SidiLemine 10:36, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
I expanded the heading of the "Fictional characters" to "Fictional characters and technologies". If the section gets to large it can be split down the line. If anyone can think of a better name go ahead and change it. I don't think that it belonged in video game characters as the TIE Fighter originated in the film, so its current location seems more appropriate. --Nehrams2020 06:46, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Stability and completeness regarding ongoing and future events

In order to consolidate discussion in one place, I moved my recent post to Wikipedia_talk:What_is_a_good_article?#GAs_and_Future_Events. Please join the discussion there. Thanks, Johntex\talk 18:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)

GA symbol on main article page?

Hi,

FA have a small star on top right hand corner of the page. Similarly GA should have the circle-plus logo at that location too! Is this possible? If so how can one do it?

Regards, AshLin 01:41, 18 August 2007 (UTC)\

You will find very little support for such a proposal, it has been shot down numerous times in the past, if I recall correctly. IvoShandor 02:17, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
That's a shame. It would really help users identify reliable articles. What were the reasons for not doing it?--SidiLemine 10:43, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
People think GA is not formal enough, as it requires only 1 editor to list or fail the nomination. It certainly is shameful because this puts english wikipedia out of sync with other languages. OhanaUnitedTalk page 10:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
With GA/R taking speed, GA is getting more and more reliable. And GA, even by one editor, is better than nothing.... --SidiLemine 12:20, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(<--) Definitely think that the GA badge would be nice. Besides, how about making sure the reviewing editors know what they're doing, rather than in a way penalizing the people who worked on the article? David Fuchs (talk) 13:08, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Just to show what it would look like, for us aesthetically motivated: GA article David Fuchs (talk) 13:12, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
Another motivation is that it would constitute a great advrertisement for the GA status, an so a controlled improvement incentive.--SidiLemine 13:27, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
David we already have a template, {{GA-article}}. T Rex | talk 16:57, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
So where did those discussions about (not) using it happen? Here?--SidiLemine 17:39, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent) This be what you're lookin for. T Rex | talk 21:02, 20 August 2007 (UTC)
You know, everyone always says one editor, but actually, there are two involved when an article passes GA. The nominator feels it is GA worthy and the reviewer confirms this. In many cases others work on the article during on hold periods, so to say just one person is involved in GA status is really just a bit dishonest. Just a comment for all the GA naysayers. : ) IvoShandor 17:14, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
The arguments during the discussion were somewhat odd- they talked about "self-referential symbols" and "clutter" yet these arguments could apply equally the the FA star... David Fuchs (talk) 18:08, 21 August 2007 (UTC)
Good point. The discussion is a year old, I wonder if consensus could have changed in the meantime?--SidiLemine 11:04, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
It could but I bet if it is tried a thousand people from the FAC gang will descend upon GA to oppose it because they won't feel special if we have one too. How a one millimeter wide symbol can be considered clutter is beyond me. IvoShandor 17:07, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
If anything cleanup and NPOV etc tags clutter pages, and not only do they look like crap, they say the actual page is crap as well. T Rex | talk 17:56, 22 August 2007 (UTC)
In large part the same people who oppose this for that reason (aside from myself Raul comes to mind) opposed introducing the FA star as well, and would still not mind doing away with it. Christopher Parham (talk) 22:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
(unindent)This has been one thing I have always wondered about, was why does FA get a symbol, but not GA also? I see a lot of GAs that are almost as good as an FA. I think this would be something good for articles.--Kranar drogin 03:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
It looks ugly on pages. Let's not use it, or we can create a better looking symbol.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 03:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I added one to the page. Does this work?◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 03:44, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks like a faded FA star, not the GA symbol, and its rather hard to notice at top right. Homestarmy 04:07, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Now I made it darker than GA.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
There's go to be something better! The GA symbol does not look good on the article page.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:11, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
This won't do. Still brainstorming....◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:12, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(←) The GA symbol looks fine. In fact, I think it looks great. It doesn't make sense to use anything else. That is the symbol of GA. Using a faded FA symbol is inappropriate.

The project is in the process of improving various aspects and ensuring quality. Once we've weeded out all the articles that clearly fail to meet the criteria, that should help improve the reputation of the project. If we could get approval to use this symbol on GAs, this would be the time to do it. Sweeps are about to start and every listed GA is getting re-reviewed. If we can tag the articles with this as they pass, it would not only take care of the tagging, but it would also serve as a marker—during this massive task—for articles that have been reviewed... an easy identifier to other participants in the sweeps. What do we need to do? Lara♥Love 04:18, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

It looks fine in normal templates, but not positioned the way the FA star is.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:22, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I added the GA symbol on the top-right of this page. It looks better there than the regular GA one.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:24, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Eh. I give up. I can't make a good symbol either.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 04:27, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

(To Lara) I'm concerned that much of the opposition is coming from this rather odd little argument that the usage of any more metadata would represent a fundamental opposition to some core Wikipedia doctrine somewhere about Wikipedia articles supposedly being easy to transclude into other mediums. It doesn't appear to be founded on anything amazingly persuasive, indeed, taking the raw text from any article would result in a large jumble of Wiki-syntax among all the text, and a little bit more wiki-syntax from a GA symbol at the top won't be the game breaker in terms of transclusion. However, it appears the people who oppose these symbols are extremely adament in their opposition, I don't know how we could convince them to allow the GA circle at the top right of GA's when they seem so increadibly determined to keep the top right area of all articles as clear as possible. I imagine the only reason the FA and semi-protect stamps have been allowed is because there were more than enough FA and policy-making contributors to block any TfD's or MfD's. Homestarmy 04:29, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

So what happens if we get consensus within our project and just start using it? They just go delete the template? Lara♥Love 06:33, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
They just try ;). And IIRC the template already exists. If we do think that the main opposers will come from FAC, why not going there and confront "them"?--SidiLemine 11:55, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm up for it. We can advertise it on GA pages and rally our troops... hopefully most participants in GA would support it. I suppose if not, then consensus will be reached against it and, for the time being at least, there will at least be that. Lara♥Love 21:52, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
Are you suggesting we just put the template on pages now? T Rex | talk 22:59, 23 August 2007 (UTC)
The people who oppose this metadata don't seem to be slouches, if they see this discussion, they'll easily be able to build a case based on the comments above that we're an argumentive cabal of WP:CANVASers who shouldn't be polluting pristine wiki-space with little green dots. Of course, that's not true, but all the same, "rallying the troops" and proposing to start arguments on FAC really doesn't look good at all to the uninvolved editor i'd think, and $yD's comment above about advertising for the GA system could also makes someone's day in terms of an anti-self reference argument. Perhaps it would be better to review the rationale given for the FA star, so a real case can be made for the GA circle? They are probably somewhat similar.... Homestarmy 00:08, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I am opposed to a GA circle on GA articles. On the pages, it looks more like a worthless spam than a badge of authenticity. It does not have the right subjective quality like the FA star does. It also makes FA less distinguished from GA, which is undesirable. In addition to this, the imagery of the GA symbol does not have an obvious meaning to those just visiting wikipedia. That is, the image has no generally accepted meaning in the public like the star does.◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 01:32, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

This is better:

◙◙◙ I M Kmarinas86 U O 2¢ ◙◙◙ 01:38, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see how wanting to extand a debate to people you suspect to be opposed to your opinions can be considered cabalism, but anyway. Examining the FA star rationale would be a great start. Where is it? And my guess is that is this works, we'll have to find a new symbol, a la mascott/WP symbol contest.--SidiLemine 10:48, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Kmarinas, I don't see why you are so hellbent on changing the GA symbol, it's fine as is. T Rex | talk 12:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
Also, why does this new symbol appear on this page at the top right?? T Rex | talk 12:31, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
He's testing it. I don't think a proposal to change the symbol would be successful. There's nothing wrong with the green dot. That aside, Homestarmy has been working in this project for a long time. Whatever he thinks is the best course of action, I'm on board with. LARA♥LOVE 16:56, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
I never felt really strongly on this, personally, I like the FA star because it let's me know right away that the content I am looking at is of high quality, or at least some people think so. I would be interested to see what the main reasons for opposing the FA star/GA sign are. IvoShandor 00:09, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

While it is a good idea I should point out that the original reasons for deletion can be found here. Many were valid then and most likely will not apply now. The next thing we should do is possibly take this idea to WP:DRV when the image issue is resolved. Though in my opinion this would make the article process more consistent. Tarret 17:12, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for posting the link. It appears that most of the delete votes were based on a lack of quality for GA articles. Criteria was just being developed at that point and anyone that works over at GA/R knows the quality of some of those early promoted articles left much to be desired. However, with the criteria in place and the bad seeds, so to speak, being weeded out by the Project quality task force, that should no longer be an issue. Let's do this. LARA♥LOVE 03:51, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Heck yea, let's do it. I think it looks great, and as a recent contributor to GA/R, I can tell you that GAs are being held to an ever increasing high standard. But, in the end of the day, it is what it is: a GA is inferior to an FA. But that doesn't mean it's not an excellent article and not deserving of one little measly icon in the top right. Perhaps once the GA sweeps are done, we should really give this a shot. Drewcifer 04:26, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I'm sticking with the current GA symbol. It looks good and understood by all. Why don't we do it the wiki-way? Introduce and try using it unless it's proven to be harmful. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:32, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The current green plus is fine. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 05:06, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
Seconded. I like that crazy little green thing.--SidiLemine 10:24, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I've only just noticed this discussion has been started (which I have anticipated for quite some time). I know this is merely just a discussion, but I would personally agree that this should be given some serious consideration, particularly in response to what LARALOVE said about the GA criteria now being specific and established. GA articles, although not as high quality as FA (obviously), now must be of an acceptable quality than they had to be when the discussion similar to this took place in March 06, with the reasons for having an FA star, in my opinion, are now as equally the same as having a GA star - you're reading content that has been reviewed and accepted as reaching a given standard of quality. With regards to the image used, I personally have a preference with something other than the "green dot", but that matter is trivial and can easily be discussed/dabated if/when such a process is deemed acceptable. Bungle (talk • contribs) 16:16, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
This is an excellent example of Wikipedia:Consensus can change. I agree with and support the idea of adding {{GA-article}} to articles. It is a symbol to show the reader that the article they have on his screen is an article of more quality than other articles, and that reader will probably use Wikipedia more, and tell all his friends, who may become editors, and ultimately help complete this encyclopedia :-) </2¢> --Boricuaeddie 14:09, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The point of GA is not to duplicate FA

The point of this proposal seems to be to make GA more like FA. The current problem, however, is that GA is already too much like FA. We don't need two parallel formal systems to judge article quality. We have one public standard for high quality articles, which is the "FA" standard. — Carl (CBM · talk) 16:41, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Maybe GA should be more like FA in the way that you describe against it?.. but that would be an entirely different discussion altogether. GA in itself (and I am not bias in any way - I take a neutral stance with regards to the GA policy for varying reasons) is a reasonably well established method of article reviewing and rating, and does work similarly to the FA system, only for articles that haven't reached such an exceptional standard, but give readers the information that it has been reviewed to a particularly acceptable standard. I would personally like to see "A grade" made review-only, with all 3 top-tier ratings having an associated "top right image", but that is merely my personal view. The fact is, GA is around now and likely is going to be for the foreseeable future - alot of the views against it last year, from what I gather, aren't able to stand this time around. Bungle (talk • contribs) 18:00, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
I think GA is not a duplicate of FA. Just by having a symbol, how does GA become like FA. There is no publicity for GA such as that provided by the featured portal, article, list, picture etc. If anything, GAs suffer from lack of exposure. The GA process aims to bring 'good' standards to articles. It is more important that articles reach good before they reach the 'best'. Very few people can raise articles to FA status but any normal reviewer can raise his article to GA. Since they are two accepted Wikiprojects, I dont see any difference in their purpose - to improve articles to meet set standards. They are steps towards excellence at different levels. I get the impression that 'FA-ians' refuse to accept such GA proposals in order to preserve exclusivity. So the symbol issue smacks of áristocracy' to me. But sauce for the goose should be sauce for the gander. So the GA symbol should remain with an article till if fails criteria or is raised to FA. I support the proposal that we go ahead and institute a GA symbol. AshLin 18:34, 28 August 2007 (UTC)
The original point of GA was
"Many articles contain excellent content but are unlikely to become featured; they may be too short, or on too broad a topic, or on too specific a topic, or an a topic about which not much is known. We should endeavour to identify good content that is not likely to become featured."[4]
The point was to recognize articles that weren't ever going to be candidates for FA, not to be a stepping stone on the path to FA. To that end, the approval system was completely unbureaucratic: if a nomination wasn't challenged, it remained. Over time, the process has suffered from instruction creep to the point where it is now virtually indistinguishable from FA (compare WP:WIAFA and WP:WIAGA). Adding an icon would only further distance GA from its original purpose and make it overlap more with FA. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:48, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Just in case people have forgotten: this idea has been through five deletion reviews (after the initial template-for-deletion), the last being in June 2007. Gimmetrow 19:23, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Carl, that link was almost 2 years ago. The first time the symbol was turned down because there're no criterias. People snowballed deletion review since then without any consideration how it has improved. We now a complete system from nomination (GAC), to approve (GA) and delete if the article no longer meets the criteria (GAR). With these, it's impossible to say the current GA system is as bad as when it is introduced. As for "GA is going towards the path of FA", I suggest everyone to take a look at Wikipedia:Compare Criteria Good v. Featured. You can clearly see that they're different in terms of how tough they want their criterias to be. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:25, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

I wouldnt waste your time trying to do this, i tried last year. many long arguments on templates for deletion came to nothing. Seriously save your time but if you do go ahead with it and be bold in creating some sort of template be sure to tell me so i can support it at templates for deletion --Childzy ¤ Talk 21:35, 28 August 2007 (UTC)

Here's the problem

WP:OWN. Obviously FA participants and GA participants are both passionate about their respective projects. Unfortunately, FA has little if any respect for GA. God forbid there be a sister or daughter project to FA for articles that can't (at least not anytime soon) make FA. No, it has to be the bastard little step-brother project.

Whether FA likes it or not, GA has become a stepping stone to FA for many editors. There's a set standard and a checks and balances system (WP:GAPQ). FA is taking ownership of the process. Pissed off that GA mirrors FA in a lot of ways. Well, damn straight. They serve the same purpose, but for a different class of articles, so what's the problem? The fact that the GA process is so close to the FA process is a valid reason why we should have a similar system for marking articles.

The point is to alert readers that the article they are reading has been reviewed and determined to meet certain standards. It's a separate symbol and in no way devalues FA. So, again, what's the problem? Many of the concerns raised regarding why we shouldn't be able to use it (from the link in early '06) are either outdated or stupid. I'd be interested to see what the concerns were from the recent ones. I'd be shocked to find anything valid. It's selfish for one project to prevent another project from doing something that in no way hurts the first project, but rather improves the encyclopedia. Really, it's shameful, in my opinion. Raise some valid claims and I'll eat humble pie. Otherwise, this is just juvenile bs. It's mine! Mine!! And I'm not sharing, so neener.

As far as Carl's comments, I don't really get what that has to do with anything. The current GA process is immeasurably better than what it started out as. To complain that the standards and process for GA has improved seems ridiculous to me. To further distance ourselves from a project that started out as "Hey, this articles is pretty good," said Joe Shmoe editor about the poorly written article on an interesting topic, "I'll tag it as Good," seems completely positive. Why degrade a project for improving as a means of rejecting their request for something they should have every right to use? LARA♥LOVE 06:34, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Not to mention that there is still a huge difference on how articles are reviewed at FA opposed to GA. The criteria shouldn't be weakened because it might step on the toes of some folks in the clique at FA. IvoShandor 06:44, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
So while the criteria are similar (as are the results: an article is deemed to be of a certain quality standard by uninvolved editors) the means of reaching the result is not. In both cases, however, we are essentially saying, yeah this is written well and has sources which back up the text. Neither process truly vets an article for accuracy, so I guess I don't quite understand the view of GA being some bastard child of FA. Self importance aside, both projects intend to improve the encyclopedia but both are also subject to limitations. An icon would only help the reader, especially if it links to WP:GA. Of course, opposition is likely to be ardent (claims that GA has improved aside--mostly because those claims have been made time and again), due to the view that somehow FA is a better hallmark. Sure more editors are involved, but in my experience FA is generally more focused on style and grammar than actual content (not always the case but certainly is in many cases). I think this is mostly due to a lack of experts in many subject areas. Most of the comments on my only FA had never even heard of the event I wrote about. Perhaps I am just rambling now. IvoShandor 06:52, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
By what I can tell from the March 2006 discussions, people's opposition to the idea were either 1) based on the outdatted GA standard, which has since been considerably improved, 2) applicable to the FA star just as much as the proposed GA symbol (Self reference, a "pat on the back"), or 3) elitist rhetoric that insists on the FA project's own importance. Perhaps once we finish the GA sweeps, we should pursue this a bit. And speaking of which, HELP OUT WITH THE GA SWEEPS!!! Drewcifer 07:47, 29 August 2007 (UTC)
I agree with IvoShandor that FA is far from perfect itself. The only comments I recieved on my FACs were regarding Manual of Style issues and complaints against the prose based on personal preferences. I've seen FACs promoted after recieving support votes solely from editors who've worked on the article. Epbr123 08:29, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

(unindent)I would also note that while the general view here is that the GA process has been improved, I have noted other discussions that do not imply the mass of editors feel that way. [5] I could be wrong, but the last time I came across this discussion in the archives I believe it was asserted that GA was a strong process, much improved then, as well. Just a thought, is all. May want to come with much better arguments than GA has improved, if that was one of the arguments we were going to use from this page.IvoShandor 02:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC) IvoShandor 02:47, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

The argument were making is not that the GA process has "improved overall"; the argument is that the GA process has improved "in many ways" that make the GA process a distinct and quality way to promote the quality of articles. Tarret 13:23, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't think any argument we make is going to matter. FA is just going to shoot it down for meaningless reasons. Or hypocritical ones. For example, the "pat on the back" statement from the earlier deletion discussion. Was FA just admitting their star is a pat on the back for their work? No, and now that GA has improved, that argument doesn't apply. How about instead of us defending our project constantly to a project that refuses to accept that we exist and we're not getting deleted, why don't we just use the damn button—tagging only articles that have gone through the GA Sweeps seems like a good start (It will serve a double purpose of letting readers know it's good and also letting us know an article has been reviewed for sweeps). See if any of the self-serving excuses for supporting a delete carry weight at this point. LARA♥LOVE 14:05, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
If I am correct one of the original reasons was that there was "no community consensus" to place the button in the first place. Before we do this we should at least let the wider Wikipedia community know about it before we take any action. Tarret 14:28, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with Tarret, there's no reason to rush things here, its just a button. Besides, it could be a good chance to gauge how legitimate the GA system is to the wider Wikipedia community, something I don't think has ever happened in a formalized poll or discussion about GA related stuff. Most of the contentious discussions so far seems to of been limited to smaller groups of people, like FA folks. Homestarmy 16:12, 1 September 2007 (UTC)
I wasn't a fan of the FA stars either when they were added, and I used to be a regular over there. I'm not sure that either FA or GA status should be used as grounds to tell a reader "this one is a good one", because who knows what has happened to it since. Tarret is right; you've got to demonstrate that the GA process is a great way to judge articles as of a certain quality level, and I'm not convinced that it is—in the past it hasn't been anywhere near as strong as the FA process, and while that could be improving, I don't think it's there yet (more than a few people giving input, etc.). --Spangineerws (háblame) 02:56, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
Additionally, unless one of the reviewers happens to have good familiarity with the topic, neither FAC nor GAC really checks facts or evaluates neutrality or completeness. It's sending the wrong message to readers to say that these articles have been evaluated for quality when these key issues aren't addressed. Christopher Parham (talk) 18:50, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I just came across this discussion and thought I'd put my two cents in. Overall, I do like the idea of having a small GA icon in the top right page, similar to the FA star. And I would support the idea of that symbol being the current GA symbol, not invent something new. If one of the original goals of the GA project was to "endeavour to identify good content that is not likely to become featured," then I think identifying such articles to our readers is actually more inline with that goal than not putting it there.

I am concerned about the feasability of proposing it (but that's not a reason not to do it). Of course, many of the FA folks will argue against it, mainly because they see GA as flawed, an inferior project and a waste of time. In response to that, it should be pointed out that FA is not perfect, either. Having participated to some extent in the FA process, I find that many of the FA reviewers are more concerned with minor semantics, wikifying text, and copyediting, than actual content. And I think much of the reviewers are a little too anal-retentive, going over the whole thing with a fine-toothed comb and opposing something like the units of measurement not having a non-breaking space between the number and the unit. As someone that considers himself an "expert" in the fields of chemistry & pharmacology, I actually prefer to review articles at WP:GAC instead, because it's not quite so anal-retentive on the grammar and wikifying, and I can actually concentrate a bit more on the actual content. Of course, GA's problem right now is the lack of good scientific articles being nominated, in the meantime, I review other things. I also prefer GAC's organization into categories, as opposed to FAC's organization of list them all one one page, and then the page gets so long that it takes forever to download.

I do think that the GA process has improved tremendously in many ways in the past six months. There is a lot more organization, a lot more involvement, and the quality of many of the reviews are getting much better. There's still a lot of work to be done, though, and I don't think GA can just stop and rest. But I have observed that some of the folks at FAC are becoming a bit more accepting of the GA program as a whole. Perhaps the best thing to do is to keep this idea in mind, but let's focus on finishing the GA sweeps process first. Once that's completed, GA's development will hopefully have progressed to a point where the only valid argument that FA can make against it is the stupid "elitist" thing, which won't hold any weight, IMHO. Dr. Cash 21:38, 1 September 2007 (UTC)

It used to be that anyone could list a Good article; lately, however, the review process has become much more rigorous. As the Good Article status more and more means a quality article, it should be acknowledged; especially in a metadata tag, since casual users will know its value immediately and not by searching around. Judgesurreal777 03:56, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure this has been suggested before, but I don't know where to look for the dissenting reasons: Is there any current chance of merging the GA and A-class assessment classes? I think I would support the GA-article-tagging, if that could happen. --Quiddity 17:38, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

Every Wikiproject with their own A-class assessment system would have to be on board, which would be very difficult since the standards in each wikiproject are often very different, and the Chemistry wikiproject would probably refuse outright. Homestarmy 17:54, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
The Mathematics WikiProject would most likely do the same. The best we can hope for, in my opinion is to request the assistance of editors in each wikiproject to help review articles relating to their project. But I don't think it would become a merge by any means. LARA♥LOVE 05:18, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
While getting rid of A-class is probably a long way off (and another can of worms altogether), I do see the A-class assessment as pretty much useless. For one, GA-class, like FA-class, has it's own wiki-wide criteria, whereas A-class really has no "standard" criteria. Different wikiprojects come up with their own criteria. Also, I can't see how an article can be A-class without being promoted to GA-class first -- it doesn't make sense -- but I see this happening from time to time. I'll occasionally rate an article as A-class in the wikiprojects when reviewing for GA if the article goes above and beyond the GA criteria, but this is very rare, as I mostly forget about it entirely.
It would be better to treat FA like an A grade, GA like a B grade, change B to C, and treat Start like D, and Stub like F. Dr. Cash 07:15, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

As IvoShandor mentioned, this has come up many times before, and it has been rejected on the basis that GA is not conferred based on community consensus, so it doesn't belong in mainspace, only on the talkpage. Sorry for the bad news, I believe some dissenting discussions can probably be found in the talk page arhives at WP:FAC, IIRC. I think this is a non-starter. The simple answer is that FA gets a symbol because it's based on community review and consensus, while GA can still be conferred by any single editor and does not reflect community consensus. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:54, 2 September 2007 (UTC)

As the above discussions show, I think everyone here is aware this has been brought up before. That doesn't necessarily mean that it shouldn't be brought up again, especially if key factors in the discussion have changed (and they have, in my opinion). Specifically, the GA criteria have been improved considerably (especially considering that at one point not so long ago none existed at all), and the nomination and review process has also been improved dramatically. But it seems the main concern with the GA standard is that it each article is only reviewed by one person. This is only part true. Although each review is done by one person, the GA/R process has become much more robust as of late. In fact, many of the articles currently up for GA/R were nominated almost immediately after being reviewed. In other words, good article nominations are being reviewed by the GA/R community as soon as they are promoted. So the nominations are slowly but surely becoming a community-based process, only in a slightly different way than FA. The nature of GA being what it is, it would be silly to change the single initial reviewer process to a more community-based voting system simply because there are much more GA nominations then FA nominations. Take a look at the ongoing nominations at WP:FAC versus WP:GAC. 80 vs. 154. And this GAC backlog is only after a month after a review-drive that brough t the count down to or close to zero. It is just unrealistic to change that particular point of the GA process, since the volume of articles is so much higher. Drewcifer 23:51, 2 September 2007 (UTC)
SandyGeorgia, I think GA does get the consensus from the community, otherwise why would Wikipedia version 1.0 and other versions have a class for GA? You're making it sound like GA is an idea come out of nowhere and someone created it in the dead middle of a night. If the article is promoted to GA, then it is assumed (due to AGF) to be a valid promotion unless it is contested at GAR. We don't pose limiations on who can nominate articles to be demoted at GAR so everyone (even new users) can participate in these discussions. SandyGeorgia, to proof your points are valid, can you show us recent differences displaying GA system contradicting to community consensus? OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:52, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
Knock knock. Some observations:
  1. This initiative does not actually do anything substantive to improve the GA process. Does it improve the reviews? No. Does it help the GA sweep? No.
  2. A green plus-sign atop a page does not magically confer credibility onto GA, even despite our most earnest wish that it would.
  3. Everyone is saying GA has improved, and I agree that it has, but the community-wide perception has not caught up to reality. GA still is a dirty word in many quarters. I suggest we focus on maintaining the high-quality of GA process for a long enough time to build a good reputation... and that will be a pretty long time IMHO. Don't ask a cheerleader for a date to the prom until you have a good buzz attached to your name. When someone invites you to a wedding feast, don't try to take the best seat at the table.. wait.. I've read that somewhere before... oh yeah ...
  4. That's all. Let's focus on the sweeps, an on improving the process. -- Ling.Nut —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ling.Nut (talk • contribs) 05:09, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I have to agree with Ling Nut. As much as I think the GA process has improved, we still have a long way to go. Namely, GA sweeps and a few lingering issues with the criteria themselves. And of course, it may be a good idea to re-introduce the process to the community somehow. Of course, it would be silly of us to do all of these merely for the sake of a little green plus, but we should be doing so for the betterment of the process in the first place. Maybe the little green plus can be something we worry about when we really feel everything is tip-top and ready for public scrutiny. Drewcifer 05:33, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
There will always be things to improve on, because GA is not FA. If we go for FA's criteria in GA, then what's the point of making GA? The point is that FA got their star on mainpage first, and they want to make it exclusive to FA so they decline anything that threatens FA's uniqueness. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:40, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

(←) Well, it seemed like a good idea to me that articles that pass sweeps be tagged with the button. In fact, that idea continues to make perfect sense to me. Reviewed by more than one person, passes the criteria... what's the problem? We all know the answer to that, though. Well, whatever. I've busted my ass along with plenty other editors to bring GA up to a respectable quality, and it continues to improve daily. Everyone can keep hating this project, but I'll be damned if GA isn't an improvement to the encyclopedia, even if those so self-righteous on their own project can't see it. Keep a tight grip on the meta-data, but we're still a legitimate project that promotes articles of quality. It's a project that inspires editors to improve articles... some of which may not go for FA, a project that can be intimidating to some. But they get the experience, knowledge and confidence from GA to go for FA. GA is also a great place for editors interested in going to FA to pick articles. GA sets the groundwork for FA articles.

I'm damn proud of my work in GA, and being denied the right to place a button on our articles certainly isn't going to change that. But I still think it's pathetic. LARA♥LOVE 06:14, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to have to respectfully disagree with SandyGeorgia's (or, I guess it was one of the arguments presented in previous proposals of this) "community consensus/mainspace" argument against the GA sign. First of all, if anonymous editors can edit, improve, and add to, any article in the mainspace, why can't GA reviewers (registered users) add a GA sign to pages that meet the criteria? An anonymous editor almost certainly wouldn't get consensus prior to editing (and probably doesn't give a rat's ass about consensus, either),... Secondly, I see that the GA process as a whole is becoming more consensus-oriented, particularly with the use of the WP:GA/R system, as well as WikiProject Good Articles, and sweeps. More and more, I see more than a single editor becoming involved in the process of passing a GA at some point. Additionally, y'all might want to take a peak at a little template proposal over here, that is designed to encourage newer users to seek a second opinion if they are "on the fence" regarding passing an article. Dr. Cash 07:06, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Ling.nut claimed that adding an icon to an article wouldn't do a lot to improve the GA process.. but i think the possibility of such an icon could motivate at least a few more editors to improve articles to a higher standard. a little motivation can go a long way. 131.111.24.187 09:58, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm with Dr Cash on the template. Actually, I was thinking one step further: why not make the GAC process "consensus based" (as FAC) once and for all? --SidiLemine 10:19, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't think a consensus-based nomination process would work, since the volume of GA nominations are so much larger than FAC. There would just be an enormous backlog of articles without enough votes/attention. There's already twice as many articles up for GA as there are FA (80 vs. 154 last I checked), and that's with only one person's attention needed. Drewcifer 11:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Comment: Perhaps I've offended people with my remarks... Let me make on thing perfectly clear: I support GA without reservation. I have been supporting GA for a while (though not nearly as long as Homey ;-) ).. I used to be the one in your position, arguing for GA's respectability. I've taken some snide remarks etc., some from people whom I knew & respected (even from someone I considered my mentor, which was the deepest cut of all). I made the GA award and am very happy it is used for good purpose. I was active in GA/R and in fact plan to return to that (in a limited way) in a month or so. Let's not get confused about where I'm coming from. Having said that, GA needs to spend much more time honing its process. Lara's project is certainly a welcome initiative in that direction, and the work of all GA contributors is appreciated.
  • I've come to the evolved position that most of all, GA needs to have a (largely) standardized product, and a standardized customer-service-with-a-smile attitude. All newcomers should have mentors etc etc. It should project, in a word, the impression that it is really organized. That will take a nontrivial investment of time and trouble into the development of the project and its contributors.
  • The emotional appeal of a green plus atop the page is undeniable... I would certainly like to see it.. but I'm saying two things: its time is not yet come, and we should be focusing on projecting a well-organized image. 'Nuff said! -- Ling.Nut 15:35, 3 September 2007 (UTC)
    • This conversation seems to be rapidly taking on more subjects than just the GA stamp for the top right corner, perhaps starting some new sections would be better? For instance, there's Sandy's comment, a suggestion about A-class assessments, and I don't think there's yet a concisely layed out argument for the GA stamp that would be appropriate in, say, a community survey on the subject or in a TfD debate. Homestarmy 16:03, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

For what it's worth, adding a green icon seems like a good idea to me. Most of the objections I see thus far are around the arguments "It'll take attention away from FA" (why/how), and "It will visually clutter the page up" (a tiny little green dot?). Sure, there may be improvements that can be made to the GA process, but that's not what we're discussing here! Lankiveil 20:36, 3 September 2007 (UTC).

I support the little green dot. I think it would be both a marker and an incentive. The green dot would be a marker - just like the FA star - to indicate the article has been sighted (there's a word getting a lot of use in WP policy discussion) and meets a certain level of WP standard. The green dot is an incentive for editors to achieve this level of standard in the same sense a silver medal is an incentive to race for those who don't get the gold. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 04:48, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I also feel an icon is a good idea. It will inspire people to come up with content of high quality, further enriching Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rajabasu (talk • contribs) 05:56, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

New Proposition

Taking into account all the contributions above, I think there could be some consensus gathered in favor of the GA dot, and the GA process in general, if we: _ Finished the sweeps, _ Advertised the fact that we swept through all the GAs, and that they are now all up to standard, _ Made the process a little less random.

For the third point, I see two solutions:

  1. _ Require not one, but two users to attest that an article is up to par before listing it, or
  2. _ Have sweeps on a regular basis. This could be pretty easy if we modified the GA template to show the date of the last review: reviewers could just check the diffs, and act on that basis. --SidiLemine 10:43, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Why don't we have a GA star, not Gold (as that is reserved for the best, in our case FA article [here's the FA star]), but instead have a silver star. And yes, I think we should have a GA star in the corner of articles. Can anyone do a silver star based on the gold FA star? Davnel03 15:23, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
There are now almost 3,000 articles, probably too much to sweep now. The FA list could probably use a good sweep itself, but do you see anyone saying that FA is useless because many of the articles on its list aren't really FA's? Homestarmy 16:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't see why we'd get a star when our symbol is and always has been the green button. This isn't an award. It's an identifier. To change the symbol now doesn't make sense. The green dot is associated with GA. The point is for readers to see it and know (for those that have been here for some time) that it's a Good article. It will just be confusing to make it a silver star. That aside, I thought FAs had a bronze star, in which case, silver would be the better star.
As far as sweeps, it is going to take a long time, but we're sweeping them all. Particularly the older ones. But we're going to get them all done, and then maintain. Sweeps will be done periodically after that.
Personally, I'd like to see review teams. Two editors that excel in different aspects. I'm a nit-picker for referencing and style issues while others are more about prose and broadness and such. If editors with such differences paired up, I think it would make for better reviews. That's my opinion on that. Lara♥Love 16:22, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree with LaraLove that the green button is the best symbol to use (dispite it being the featured article symbol on wikipedias in a few other languages, for example dutch, i believe). I don't necessarily see the point in waiting until after the sweeps are finished.. but i guess it doesn't really matter. 131.111.24.187 18:52, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

What defines a "good article" is too subjective, which could result in rapid removal/replacement of the icon that just creates a lot of useless effort on part of everyone. Better to just limit the icon to featured articles.--Avant Guard 22:01, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
It's no more subjective than what defines a "featured article". Epbr123 22:06, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
Lara, do you mean that these teams would be "set in stone" teams or... what?Cheers, Corvus coronoides talk 23:52, 4 September 2007 (UTC)
If it were "set in stone" teams, it would require much burden on everyone's behalf. I suppose we could have a list of different focuses and require that one person from each focus give a say. bibliomaniac15 Two years of trouble and general madness 04:04, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Definitely not set in stone. It would be a matter of editors signing up to do it this way. No sort of requirement that reviews must be done in teams... at least not at this point. Have the opportunity for editors to pick another editor from the list with, like I said, a different perspective on reviewing, or whatever. Kind of run a trial to see how it works. I'm sure editors who find they work well together would probably become a consistent team, but it wouldn't be any sort of set in stone assignments or anything like that. You could always swap up your partner depending on the topic of the availability of other editors and such. Lara♥Love 04:35, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I would support the green dot and support your first two requirements as pre-requisutes. As for the third, I favour continuing sweeps by experienced reviewers, rather than pairing up. Given the arguments re the backlog, I think assigning teams of two initial assessors would be excessive, especially with so many articles meriting quick failures. Having the back-up step being the sweep strikes me as a suitable protection against over-zealous passing. This should be carried out by more experienced reviewers. Certain sweepers may prefer to focus on recently passed articles, others may prefer to look for ones that have not been reviewed for some time or have been heavilly vetted. That way we get both types of article covered. I also think that encouraging would-be reviewers to participate or at least observe GA/R would be useful.
As for comparisons with A, I think there are two different purposes in the community grading and the project grading. The latter is much more likely to focus on content. For example over at WP:Wagner, we are just beginning to pilot an assessment process for the opera project as a whole. There is a marking scheme based on material we would expect to be covered in decent opera articles (background to composition, synopsis, performance history, recordings etc.) I'm also pushing for an article being well-illustrated includes musical examples. For example, Wagner's later style involves the recurrence of leitmotifs, themes associated with particular characters, objects or ideas. I would expect an A grade article to include sound files of examples and their recurrence. GA or FA reviewers may nto necessarilly know about these issues. Only a portion of marks are covered for things such as referencing and none for style. So the article gets assessed by someone knowledgable on opera as having reasonable coverage of the expected stuff and gets to B grade. Then it goes to GAC for other types of criticism. Then back to the project for polishing to reach A grade and then onto the community as a whole for FA. That way we have a process that both has experts assessing the content and the community checking broader issues and ensuring that a project can't be convincing itself that all its articles are excellent without wider overview. Further there may be different requirements from overlapping projects. An article on someone as an opera performer, may meet the projects requirements as covering their musical career well and deserve a B-grade. But if they become a major national figure involved in politics, their country's national project might still rate them as a start grade. GA and FA should check for a level of completeness that indiv idual projects may not cover themselves.--Peter cohen 13:16, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Oh, okay, I wasn't talking about pairing up for sweeps. I was talking about GAC. I agree about only having experienced reviewers doing sweeps, at least these initial ones, and have put much emphasis on that on the task force page. It's completely counter-productive to have inexperienced reviewers do sweeps considering some of the "bad seeds" were wrongly promoted by them. Lara♥Love 14:49, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
There seem to be far more discussions going on here at once than there should be, are we talking about GA dot implementation, or requiring GAC to have two reviewers for every article? Those discussions are very different in nature, even though one may allow the other to come to a nice conclusion. Plus, people (like me) will have a much harder time joining this discussion if there's two major things going on at the same time. Homestarmy 19:30, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Granted, this has become tangled. Since I started that sub-thread, I just want to say that I love Lara's Idea of having a "specialist" and a "formalist" editor both required for a GA reviw. It makes a lot of sense, and would respond to an oft-raised issue at both GAC and FAC.--SidiLemine 11:37, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Icon at DRV

I put the original icon up at WP:DRV. Anyone who is interested may comment. Tarrettalk 00:38, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

It appears that Template:GA-article is now the same thing, and isn't deleted...? Homestarmy 01:01, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

what's the plan?

So, what is the plan regarding the addition of the icon? Is the consensus to not add it until the GA process has changed? 131.111.24.187 15:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

  • I think there will need to be a significant demonstrated long-term improvement in application of the GA selection criteria before the community will endorse the return of a mainspace template for this. Guy (Help!) 16:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
    That said, the community is not a monolithic entity. Some users recognize the increasing quality trend in GA, and may endorse the mainspace icon. That said, don't add it anywhere until the DRV sorts itself out. Titoxd(?!? - cool stuff) 17:53, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
    From discussions above, there seems to be a consensus to wait at least until the sweeps are over.--SidiLemine 17:59, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
    That's going to be a while. I think we're going to work with a bot to get the articles promoted more than 6 months ago and start with that. That will weed out any really bad ones. Perhaps we can resume the push for the icon after those are complete. But if it's consensus to wait until sweeps are completely over... that's over 3,000 articles, and that number increases every day. Lara♥ 18:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
  • As I said at the DRV, I don't believe it's appropriate to give readers the impression that articles have gone through a quality check process, when the process doesn't include basic activities like (1) fact checking, (2) expert evaluation, etc. that readers would associate with a quality review. And even if these were part of the process, the nature of the wiki means that it is currently impossible to maintain that level of supervision on a continuing basis. Christopher Parham (talk) 00:36, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
By that same logic, is there any way to really guarantee that featured articles go through some sort of 'expert evaluation', either? I think GAs go through a reasonably good amount of fact checking, though certainly not as much as FAs (that's the point). But I would be quite surprised if even half of all FAs had some degree of expert evaluation in it. The lack of expert opinion is one of the greater problems with wikipedia as a whole, not just the GA process. Dr. Cash 00:59, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
FA's get a couple extra eyes on them, which helps, but on the whole the same problem applies. I don't believe we ought to have the FA star either. (Aside from the fact that it's depressing to see a star stuck at the top of your paper, an incentive usually reserved for elementary school students, also applied to Wikipedia editors.) Christopher Parham (talk) 01:05, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
The FAC process isn't perfect either, expert evaluation and fact-checking are not guaranteed, and in my experience many articles pass without them. GAC is not FAC, but let's not put FAC onto an undeserved pedestal simply for the sake of downplaying GAC. Drewcifer 01:09, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

sweeps frequency

Reading some of the above debate in the 'getting far too long section so I thought I'd separate that out over here' section, got me thinking about something regarding the sweeps. I think going back through older GAs is an important process, so this must continue. But as the number of GAs seems to be ever-increasing, sweeping through the whole list over 6 months or 1 year is going to increasingly take more time. Perhaps, there's a better solution.

What about modifying GAbot to automatically list GAs with a review date older than a certain time (6 months? 1 year?) on a page so that that could be re-reviewed. It could either add them as a subcategory on the WP:GA/R page, or on a newly created WP:SWEEPS page. I don't think we want the whole list completely merged with the existing GA/R list, because it's unnecessary, and would probably just add to confusion and increase the backlog that's there already. There's certainly many older GAs that are still in good shape, and won't be contested, but there's also many more that will be contested. But if GAbot automatically could give us a listing of these older articles, then the sweeps process could become a more continuous thing, instead of something that would cycle in and out. Any thoughts here? Dr. Cash 21:50, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

Not a bad idea, I think the list would still be substantial, but it would be much more manageable and would probably be more likely to yield non-compliant old GA's. Homestarmy 21:53, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for it. Fantastic idea. Lara♥Love 02:13, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
Would need an option to mark them after re-reviewing so they don't keep recycling through the "check again" list. -- Ling.Nut 03:16, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The sweeps list should still work, I would think. If the bot ran in cycles, you just update that all articles in each category had been reviewed for that cycle. Also, update the GA or AH template with the current date/review link. We could also put a little green button on the top corner of the ... no wait. Maybe not. ;) Lara♥Love 03:39, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
The idea looks good. We already have a Sweeps page, just that it's hidden from most editors (that is, only the invited reviewers know the link) so that Sweeps can go through the whole list of GAs without letting any bad ones slipping through our fingers. OhanaUnitedTalk page 04:42, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
I'm all for it. Make that and the two-editors thing above work, and we've got ourselves a wonderfully consistent process.--SidiLemine 11:43, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

One reviewer or two?

There's quite a bit of scattered discussion about whether or not GA candidates should be reviewed by just one person or some other form of collaboration. Since those discussions are so scattered about, I thought I'd start a topic devoted to just that. So, the ideas posed so far (as far as I know) are the following:

  1. One initial reviewer, raise any questionable articles at GA/R. (the way it is right now)
  2. One initial reviewer, have sweeps of recently promoted GAs done every so often by established editors.
  3. Review teams, two people informally pair up based on their admitted strengths and weaknesses (style, content, etc). (originally proposed by LaraLove I believe)
  4. Two stages of review, one reviewer initially reviews a candidate, either passing or failing it. Then, each passed article is then re-reviewed by an established editor/Task force to make sure that it was a thorough review and that they didn't miss anything major. After the "go-ahead" by that second reviewer/Task force the article is then officially granted GA status. In a sense this still preserves the one-reviewer per article thing, but adds a check/balance to the process. The details of this re-review (such as how strict to be, what to look for, how to actually set it up) can be discussed and finalized at a later point. I guess my idea is somewhat similar to the FAC process: a review must be closed by Raul 654. Instead of one person, we have a group of people. (this hasn't been raised before: it's just my idea I wanted to bring up)

If I missed anything let me know. I think all of these suggestions are good ones, and one or a combination of them might be a good idea to improve the reliability of the GA brand/status/icon/whatever. Drewcifer 03:31, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Well, my suggestion is somewhat as listed above, but more of a mix of a few of them. I think the informal team of two with sweeps by established editors to ensure articles maintain their quality (done 6 months after pass). Questionable articles still listed at GA/R. I like your idea, but more geared toward GA/R. I believe it would be beneficial to have a group of established editors be responsible for processing (closing and archiving) GA/R discussions. Lara♥ 03:58, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I've numbered the proposals to make reference easier. Anway, #1 (status quo) is the most practical as there is too much to do and few to do it. However, I've seen GA reviews that look oddly like a tag team effort - and the article does not look like it actually meets GA status - where "go-ahead" from a second reviewer might be a good idea. But it will slow things down. Best to stick to the status quo and not re-invent FA. We still have the GA Review for the poor choices. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 15:33, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
That's another problem. Some editors say GA is poor quality because reviews are done by one person. So we try to fix that and people complain that we're trying to reinvent FA. We're not doing that. We're trying to reinvent GA. Teams of two is far from panels of reviewers. It's a matter of checks and balances. Two sets of eyes are better than one. Certainly articles will pass that shouldn't... that's a given. Poor FA noms have been known to fall through the cracks too.Lara♥ 18:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
At this point, are those editor's complaints really accurate? Have they presented any concrete data supporting the notion that currently, our reviews are very substandard due to there being only one person? Homestarmy 21:35, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
From many of the quality reviews I've done lately, I can't say they've presented any concrete evidence, but I could certainly provide some. LaraLove♥ 04:16, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
There's no way to know for sure, but the possibility that substandard articles are sometimes passed by less than thorough reviews is real. And, by my own experience, it does happen. A simple checks/balances process would alleviate that to a great degree, I believe. And really, all that would mean is one person out of a task force/group/board of an undetermined number of people double check the article for major errors, skim the text of the actual review, and officially promote the article. Few minutes tops. Drewcifer 04:21, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

(←) I don't know if we could do this or not, but I think it would be beneficial to end the "anyone can review an article" to a degree. Anyone could still review, but I think it would be better if all new reviewers had to have their first few reviews checked by an experienced reviewer from the aforementioned "panel" or whatever it would be called. The experienced reviewer would look over the review and kind of evaluate it, so to speak, giving tips and such. Then give the new reviewer the go ahead with the pass or fail. Like the adoption program, in a way, when the experienced reviewer feels the new one knows how to adequately review, their given the okay to do solo reviews.

Personally, I would have loved this when I first started. I looked over other reviews to see what to do, what to look for and kind of hoped I did it right. I really would have liked someone with experience to check and critique me. This could be an alternative to the team proposal, or in addition to. I would prefer this one be required while the other would be optional. Thoughts? LaraLove♥ 04:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

If the objective is just to check passes, I think a far more simpler solution would be for people to skim the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Good articles by quality log‎ a bit, and check some of the newly listed articles. I already check all the delists, but lately i've been having less and less errors to correct or wrongs to right, so many of the delists are actually promotions to FA's, and most of the speedy delists seem pretty fair for the most part.... Homestarmy 05:57, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I agree with this. It's sort of what I was thinking of when I was saying there should be sweeps of newly promoted articles.--Peter cohen 10:03, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I can tell you that proposal #1 fails miserably, as we put that into test during GAC backlog elimination drive. Some passes were absolutely horrible and delisted immediately. Proposal #2 will overwork the few established GA editors, so that doesn't work out either. I don't like #3, since often 2 people will have contradict reviews (this person thinks there's enough references, another thinks not) so they'll fight for this matter, which is not encouraging. I will go for proposal #4, but instead we don't need just 1 person to pass everything (because we got more GAC than FAC). Maybe we can put a list of people that the GA community believes that they can take on this cruical role. OhanaUnitedTalk page 15:56, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't think #4 was meant to say that it would be one editor, the Raul of GA, but rather a task force of experienced reviewers. LaraLove♥ 17:05, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Thanks Lara, that's exactly what I meant. They would have the some responsibilities as Raul, but would be X number of people rather than 1. Drewcifer 21:29, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Doesn't that look a bit cabalish?--SidiLemine 10:28, 10 September 2007 (UTC)
We have to find a balance between quality of article, its transparency, and openness. This is the closest that we can get. OhanaUnitedTalk page 21:57, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

Proposed new GA category

I would like to propose that we add an agriculture category to GA. Thoughts? IvoShandor 19:16, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

Yes, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Countering systemic bias where the bias is mentioned: " Wikipedians' areas of expertise and interest tend more towards computer science and popular culture than more specialized areas such as agricultural science or Medieval art." Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 21:19, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't see anything wrong with this proposal, I just don't see which top-level category this would fall under. I would think that it would fall under "Everyday Life" as it relates to food and food production but the topic cover a large set of categories. Tarrettalk 21:37, 7 September 2007 (UTC)
I'd put it under Science. When you study it at univeristy you get a Bachelor of Science in Agriculture degree. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast 04:11, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
I don't see any reason anyone would object. Put it where you think it most appropriate. LaraLove♥ 04:18, 8 September 2007 (UTC)
Science might be good, though I would note that most topics that you can get a Bachelor of Science in you can get a Bachelor of Arts in, there isn't really a connection to art or science implied by the degree conferred. Many universities offer both in a wide array of subjects, for instance I could get a BS in History at the university I attended by taking a few extra math classes. IvoShandor 15:49, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

While we're thinking of this, we might also want to create a new subcategory specifically for drugs. Currently, they're listed intermingled with 'health and medicine' and the main 'biology' category. But there are some inconsistencies; for example, Cocaine is listed under 'chemicals', and Cannabis (drug) is listed under 'recreation' (though Cannabis is also listed at WP:GA/R, but it may just squeak by that after some adjustments).

What about creating a new section called 'pharmaceuticals' - listing it under either biology or chemistry is up for debate - probably biology, since medicine is already there. Also, moving cannabis would result in a section, 'recreation', with zero articles. Dr. Cash 18:23, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't know where to add it. Though, I think many would consider agriculture a core topic for any encyclopedia. Perhaps it needs its own 1.0 thing, I know next to nothing about this though. IvoShandor 11:42, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

I added the agriculture category to the list and combined it with aquaculture which is related to it. As for subcategories under each category feel free to be bold and add them yourself. Tarrettalk 22:50, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

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