Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

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Articles on "HOLD"

Given the current backlog of articles I suggest that the use of On Hold be discouraged or resticted to a smaller time frame say 48hrs, as its keeping the lists longer than necessary and realistically if there are issues with an article then fail it or fix them during the review. Gnangarra 05:10, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

War

is given as a subsection under both Everyday Life and Social Sciences--- which is it? --plange 23:14, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

As much as war is (sadly) becoming part of everyday life in many parts of the world, I would still put it under social sciences. --NoahElhardt 23:28, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

• War under "everyday life" sounds like someone's trying to make a point. Social sciences is where it belongs. JimmyBlackwing 00:21, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

  I second that, even if it is necessarily part of our life, more than three quarter of the wars were fought before the 20th century and so these aren't really part of Everyday Life. Lincher 01:58, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! I've deleted it from Everyday Life based on the above discussion --plange 01:59, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Review problem

I have been watching the GA candidates being review and they get less and less reviewed (See Vincente Fox's talk page). And in that I mean that people go to just typing which criteria was failed to no message about the GA process on the talk page of the article. WHY? We are suppose to be somewhat of a peer review process along with the GA classification process. So would the reviewers PLEASE give a list of comments with the failed articles. Lincher 15:00, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I would concur. I think an overriding objective to get articles up to a status where they would be considered "Good Articles" and so for a failed article I like to leave enough specific information that they are can craft a "To-Do list" to work on. You figure that it takes most articles 2-5 weeks to get reviewed for GA, at least give them some feedback that is worth the wait. Agne 15:52, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

We can discuss about it here, but to solve this major problem, we would need more and more reviewers. I just joined and try to help out. Maybe there should be lists organized by interests of the reviewers, so a nominator could ask a reviewer in that topic/area to have a look at the nominated article. NCurse _work 16:14, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I wholeheartedly agree with the more reviewer part. I think there should also be a sort of GA-fail review books--not to over turn a fail GA discernment but rather if the editors of the article felt that they need more feedback in order to meet GA criteria they could ask for other editors to take a look. This is better then them to shoot in the dark, guess what needs to be fixed and then wait another 2-5 weeks for review. I would give a short time frame to ask for a review (maybe 3 days after the GA fail) As reviewers, we could make these request a priority to answer promptly. Agne 17:39, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Those are 2 wonderful ideas, I just wonder how this can be implemented? Having more subpages (people wont look at them) or adding stuff on the candidate page (we try to WP:KISS) so I just don't know how we can achieve that. Lincher 17:58, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

If people are adequatly reviewing the articles and actually commenting on the criteria a good bit, that should be helpful enough to constitute advice. However, it really does not help when people give un-specific fail messages, and at this point with so many articles not being passed with comments, maybe we need some sort of new policy where we automatically delist any articles which don't even appear to of been reviewed? Homestarmy 19:16, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Well the good article page shows recently added pages, maybe we could have a box with the 10 most recent fails listed on this page. As reviewers, we could take it upon our selves to glance at the talk page and see if specific reasons for failing was given. Agne 20:04, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Is that updated manually or automatically? Homestarmy 20:08, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure what would be the best way. I'd like it to be automatic, but I'm not that code savy to know if that can easily implemented or not. Agne 20:22, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

A spin-off on these ideas could be to have articles be reviewed by 2 people at least. I mean, if the article is good, that person can pass it but if not, just leaving comments on the talk page would let other assessors know that the article has been read and may not be to that reviewer's good article status (since we all assess differently) and the second reviewer could come around and have the final word in the assessment. This would also assure that every article has some information left on their talk page and that they get well-commented on. Lincher 21:45, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

My only concern with that plan is the potential conflict among reviewers because, as you mention, we do tend to review differently. There are somethings that one reviewer might view as borderline and for another review it's failing. Agne 22:35, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, I want to clarify that with my idea about GA review would not be about overturning another reviewer's fail but rather to ensure that specific comments are left and to answer any questions that the article editors may want clarified. Agne 22:37, 9 September 2006 (UTC)

So my suggestions:

• create subpages divided by topics
• create a list with interest fields of the participants, reviewers
• and make a disputes page where potential conflicts can be discussed by other reviewers
• in the candidates' list, a nomination that is being reviewed should get a (under review) tag

NCurse _work 07:21, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I am sorry to butt in, but I guess this is all heading towards being more complicated than there is need for it to be. The present system, with a single page etc. works just fine, it's just that some people do not leave detailed reviews on the talk pages. I would say a good solution would be to formally require {{FGAN}} to be placed and filled out while failing each nom, and prepare a boilerplate text for editors to be able to inform a (perhaps inexperienced) editors that they need to leave a more detailed summary - all clearly described in the intro part.

Moreover, if anything should require a "second take", it is PROMOTING articles. I see many people doing that quite carelessly and not paying attention to the criteria. As a means of experimenting, I have nominated three articles of varying quality and two of them were promoted, though I personally would have reservations to one of them. The promoting reviewer, when questioned, revealed it was his first review and he "just thought it is a good article", not paying attention to criteria. I there might be much more articles reviewed that way, which leads to the list becoming infested with improperly-referenced, poorly-written etc. etc. articles and further depreciates the GA status. Either a two-reviewer system, or using a template such as FGAN (but serving as an "alright checklist"), or even both, could be a solution to alleviate that. Bravada, talk - 12:08, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I understand. What about the list with interest fields of the participants, reviewers. When I first saw WP:GA page, I was suprised (after working hard on Wikipedia Release Version 0.5) that anyone can pass an article. I know that everybody is afraid of elitism. But what if we would have a relatively small group of reviewers (who've been working on GAs for a long time) and if someone wants to join, then he/she gets a "coach" who'll have to care take of that new member's reviews for a time? NCurse _work 14:34, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the fact that reviewers need to leave improvment comments but I should point out that just as only one person is needed to pass an article, only one person (and a reason) is needed to delist an article. Tarret 15:29, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Here's my two cents. Don't rush and modify the process yet (such as adding a second reviewer and so forth). Better to provide a reviewer advice page which provides some boilerplate text ("This article has failed due to criteria x..."). The reviewer that failed Vicente Fox did have a good reason to fail it (stability - criteria 5), but it was kind of hidden in the discussion. So another piece of advice is to make sure there is a subsection clearly showing the advice. See if things improve and if not, then... perhaps... consider a process change. RelHistBuff 08:05, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

You gave me an idea RHB, I think that we should make a boilerplate for new reviewers to put on their talk page that states what is needed to do when reviewing (in like 3-5 short sentences) in order to help them know what the process is all about. This should also be given to everybody who reviews and needs to refresh what are the rules and things to focus on when reviewing. Lincher 12:48, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be a perfect soulution. NCurse _work 13:07, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I have created a template-like message that can be added to people's talk page, feel free to modify it or add to the discussion if unsure how to change it. Lincher 14:59, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi, and welcome to your new role as a Good article reviewer. This project aims to rate articles on their quality and give feedback to the articles' writers. Please carefully read the instructions and criteria. While reviewing, please: Add an edit summary so others can track what and when articles have been reviewed. Add extensive comments (thus a peer review) on the talk page or on a subpage. Make use of the On hold procedure only if really minor modifications are required of the article's writers. For other questions see the Good articles project's participants. ~~~~

I changed the wording a bit. I like this version better, but I might be the only one. JimmyBlackwing 15:16, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the biggest help to the situation would be for anyone who nominates an article to review at least one in return. This is mentioned in passing on the candidates page, but I think it would be good if we stressed that a bit more. It's too easy for editors to drop off a candidate (or two, or three, or four all at once) and forget about the whole project until they get their little GA tag. If every nominator took the time to review one article per nomination, there would be no back log. Kafziel 15:22, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with this practise even though it would be a nice way to remove the backlog. The reasons are that when you are working on an article, you want it bettered, you don't always want to go on other articles and assess them. Second reason, there are the editors and there are the assessors, sometimes people can do both, other times they will want to do only one and not the other (even though we are a community, we have to respect that). Third reason, if we ask nominators to assess articles, they might not take it seriously (I don't mean to generalize here) and review poorly, for example, not give feedback, just stick to the criteria or simply pass articles because they like the subject. Lincher 16:41, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

We already ask people to do this, right in the "How to nominate a page" section. I'm just saying we should place it more prominently. Raul's third law correctly states that you can't make people do what they don't want to do, but it doesn't hurt to encourage participation. Improper reviews can be overturned if necessary, just as they are now. It's easier to review a review than it is to review an article. Kafziel 19:21, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this backlog problem can't be solved from a global view. For example, I review just science-medicine-related articles, and try to clean the whole nomination list (now alone). 2 or 3 reviewers could remove a backlog in a topic. That's why I wanted so much that participants' list with special interests. Groups could work on specific topics. NCurse _work 17:12, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Concerning that welcome template, I don't like how it's worded, "Your new role" sounds like it's telling users they've been given some obligation to do something, and editing Wikipedia is not obligatory at all, it's supposed to be voluntary. Homestarmy 19:25, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Be bold is wikipedia's first rule, then discuss, just change it to your liking till we find a compromise on what to do about people who review poorly. I think that by reviewing articles you become responsible and acquire responsibilities and for such, it should be mentioned that they are now viewed as reviewers, if they like it or not. Please keep in mind that not even 5% of the articles in the encyclopedia are of GA quality and above which means that the reviewing process is necessary to help writers bring their article to an encyclopedic state and one where people will be learning when reading it. Anyway, we need some kind of welcoming message to help the new reviewers that might already feel overwhelmed with the amount of work in assessing.

As for the idea behind the participant list, I was wondering if the participant list on the project page could be cut down into interests in order to help us know who is interest in which and what will they be happy to assess. Lincher 19:36, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

I felt bold, so I created this: Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers... Comments? NCurse _work 20:02, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Comments? Well, it's a pretty page. Now tell us why you created it. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 21:51, 11 September 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you haven't read the above discussion. We've talked about that list here for days. NCurse _work 14:45, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

But it's an empty page, and I suspect it's going to remain an empty page.

I see no strategy to let potential reviewers know about it, no compelling reason for potential reviewers to list themselves on that page, and no strategy to let potential article-nominees know about it. I don't see any mechanism for keeping it from getting grossly out of date. As it is, I can waltz through the list of nominated articles, pick out something especially old and needy, something that isn't terminally boring, and take a quick look, and if TPTB decide that I've got something better to do, I can easily abandon my appraisal of the candidate article without pressure, because nobody knows I started it. I don't want to list myself, so people are constantly pestering me to appraise their article, and I sure don't need another page to maintain with stats. I don't think I like the idea of people going judge-shopping, either.

If you want to clear the backlog, you don't want to DISCOURAGE people from reviewing articles. If you were to go to Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles and set up a signup for people who want help learning to review articles, that might work; people who are willing to help could then contact someone on the list.

But your page asks reviewers to sign up so that they can get articles to review. They don't need to. There's a backlog of articles available for them to choose from. And people who want their articles reviewed already have a mechanism to get their articles reviewed: they nominate them.

As you say, you have talked about it for days, but while being bold is to be encouraged, it helps if you have some idea why you're doing what you're doing. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 17:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok, then. I wanted to create that page because: the backlog is enormous. If we want to remove it totally, then we should give a chance for nominators to contact someone in their topic if there's nobody to review their article. The nominations are in the candidates' page for several days, sometimes for weeks. If I nominate an article in a field where nobody wants to work at that time, then I can check that list to find a reviewer in my topic, and I can ask him/her to take a look at my article. It can ease removing backlog. So it wasn't created without any idea, just you still couldn't read this discussion entirely. :) I put that list's link into the candidates' page. I hope it'll help. Believe me I want to do my best, try it and if it can't work, I'll remove it and ask somebody for deletion. Cheers, NCurse _work 19:18, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any harm in trying it out. I'm in enough Wikiprojects as it is (I need another newsletter on my talk page like I need another hole in my head) but I don't have a problem with having my name on that list. This may not be the best way to help with the backlog, but I suppose it's worth a shot. Kafziel 19:27, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I, for one, do not review too many articles, as I would find it hard to pass an article from outside the scope of my "expertise", as in no way I could make sure it is comprehensive and accurate. I can fail a really bad article for some obvious reasons (which happened once when I noticed a nomination pretty poor on all accounts), but other than that, I would rather not reivew articles on e.g. gastroenterology or Pakistani history.

Another problem with GA is that the GA status is both low profile and not held in highest regard. The relative easiness to pass and the perceived occurence of abuse is why GA is often dismissed as a proper quality criterion. Another thing is the self-propelling vicious circle of low profile/low prestige, little interest, little reviews etc.

One thing that I have thought about is getting WikiProjects involved in pre-screeing and perhaps also self-assessing articles. For example, the Computer Games WikiProject seems to be submitting relatively good candidates, as they apparently have some internal review process (anecdotary evidence only, so I might be wrong). Some WikiProjects participate in this Version 1.0 Assessment system, perhaps if more of them adopted it, they could make sure they only nominate really high-potential articles. Moreover, this could be a way to split the "accuracy/completeness" and other formal requirements review parts.

Just some random thoughts. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 01:00, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

We've just had Polar coordinate system reviewed and I like the way User:Indon did it. He basically broke the review down into the different criteria, giving a rational for sucess failure for each critaria (see Talk:Polar coordinate system). The though occure to be is that this could be a way to ensure consistancy between reviews and ensure reviewers give goo feedback. How it could work. You have a template, say Template:GA review feedback, with the criteria listed and space for feedback. This template works as a pro-forma form and the reviewer subst it into the talk page. The reviewer then fills in the parts explaining whether it meets the individual criteria. As well as ensuring a basic level of review it might also deter some for the more speculative candidates. When submitters get use to the fact thay are going to get this form of feedback they may be more selective on submissions. It would also help propogate the criteria more widely. --Salix alba (talk) 15:59, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem with more reviewers and having 2 for an article is: getting more reviewers and it'll make the process even slower. Some sections of GAC have averaged a month or more lately and I think that is too long. Rlevse 11:47, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

low profile/low prestige, little interest, little reviews

I'm creating a splinter discussion off of a very good point that Bravada makes which I think is relevant to our overall problem. The Candidates page includes the note Review carefully—the standards of good articles are only as high as those of the most lenient reviewer! and by extension the corollary The standards of being a good article is only as high as it's weakest article.. Personally, I think we should be a tad more strict in our standards. A Good article is suppose to be a presentation of some of the best that Wikipedia offers, especially of articles that would never be the length that a FA would require. Similarly, for articles that can become FA we should hold them to that standard in order to point them on the right path towards FA status. For a potential FA candidate, the acheiving GA status should be the equivalent of reaching 3rd base in a baseball metaphor with the next step being home plate.
Personally, I think we should be more bold in maybe re-evaluating some articles that have passed. However, if we do de-list then they should be given a detail reason and review of what needs to be improved. A lot of GA are passed by new reviewers who don't necessary appreciate the scope and standards that these articles need to be in order to quaify as GA. I will tell you that when I did my first pass Ryan Leaf, I didn't quiet grasp those concepts myself and I'm possibly going to de-list that article by the weekend. A newbie mistake. Agne 04:16, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Fyi, there were discussions on delisting articles in this talk page (see Quality standards). It was mainly about potentially delisting articles that passed under older, more lenient standards. RelHistBuff 09:32, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh yes, articles on the GA list now are certainly subject to delisting at any time should someone find that they do not meet GA standards. Homestarmy 13:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's like the section title shows it. We have constantly re-reviewed articles that are of GA status and adapted these to the new WIAGA criteria, and we have also elevated the level of quality of articles that become GAs. The BIG problem there is, as of now, is ACCEPTANCE. People not involved with the process don't believe in it for they think it is another step toward FA and because it is a copy of PR and because it is more like a pat in the back of the editors. We need to remove 2 mentions that might help us become serious and more accepted. One, remove the backlog mention for the reason that we don't want any jo-blow perusing articles and passing whatever they want and making more job on the reviewers hand. Two, remove the Review carefully—the standards of good articles are only as high as those of the most lenient reviewer! mention as it shows that our quality standard is not good and also tells the others (not involved with the project) that we will keep these articles GA even if they aren't THAT good. Lincher 18:56, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

Good points (especially on the flip slide of the quote).Agne 19:05, 12 September 2006 (UTC)

I beg to differ with Lincher on that - backlog is backlog, there is one, there's no need to change that. It can only encourage experienced users who would browse such category, and perhaps also other users who would want to nominate, and can either reconsider dumping a host of articles "just to see if they pass", or review some other in the respective "category" so that there would be more chance for their article to be reviewed when somebody else takes to this "category". And the message is a properly worded caveat for newbie editors, and its true.

If anything could be done to improve the GA image, it could be a massive re-review campaign. How about setting out to review all "old GAs" using stringend, current criteria, and delist all of them who do not meet them, while at the same time notifying major contributors and related WikiProjects that this and this GA got delisted for this and this reason, but we would gladly see it attain the GA status back again after necessary improvements are made? After all, delisting is much easier than listing :D And THEN, we could divide the categories between us (perhaps with at least two people per category, so that every article gets at least two reviews). I guess this would be a much easier "negative" review, as we would only look for obvious flaws, and could be feasible to complete in 3-4 weeks, if enough people would participate.

I also do not understand the need to create a formal list of reviewers etc. It would rather be better to encourage users to review, and closely monitor the page for passes/fails done by "new" reviewers - if you see they failed or promoted the article wrongly, didn't provide an appropriate review summary etc., then you should instruct them how this should be done. So - first do our best to entice more users to review, secondly - spread good practice. Sounds good? Bravada, talk - 00:00, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

(same subject)

I agree, I see that there is a backlog and I see that there is a need to re-review the old GAs so if we are to coach the newbies, fine with me about leaving the backlog tag but if not, we don't need beginner reviewers listing GAs if they don't understand the process. For the re-review, we should use the list of reviewers and assess like 4 articles/day per reviewer in order to maintain the project healthy and with correct nominations thus being able to show good articles to other people who come to the project.

On the point of removing the part of the quote about having the articles' quality only as high as that of the most lenient reviewer!, it should be removed upon a re-review of the GA articles. Lincher 02:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Lincher, you have surely been a "newbie" sometime ago, and if not for you starting somewhere and gaining experience, you wouldn't be able to consider yourself a "full-fledged" GA reviewer which I believe you do. There is a constant need for "flesh blood" to keep the process running as WP expands (and certainly now, as the backlog expands), and, just like Wikipedia itself, GA should be open and inviting for new people, even if they are to make mistakes first. The whole trick is to make sure their mistakes will be pointed out and they will be helped to fix them and avoid them in the future. So, yes, we should coach the newbies (I myself believe I still could benefit from some coaching, and I hope somebody was and will be looking at my promotions/fails).

As concerns the other paragraph, the sentence you mentioned holds true all the time, and there is no need to remove it - it is a good reminder for every reviewer, inexperienced or experienced!

Oh, I promised below to expand on long articles. For me, reviewing a long article takes considerably more time than a short one, and it is disproportionally longer than the sheer difference in "size" would imply. I also find that most "long" articles I have looked into could be failed for pretty basic criteria, but I never had the time to give them a full review and thus didn't do so. See below for what I think of "long articles". Oh, a small caveat - some articles appear "long" to the Wiki engine due to the amount of links, images etc., so in borderline cases, the amount of pure text, w/o external links, references etc. should be taken into account. So, I believe that excluding long articles in principle could significantly streamline the process and make the meaning of the GA status more clear.

I believe for the re-review process, we could use a list, with everybody choosing a topic or two, but first we need to close the discussion below so that we all use the same standards. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 09:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for that answer ... I have forked the discussion below to talk about long articles and their future as some reviewers tend to be lenient (I include myself in there) about the whole process for long articles.

As for the list, I have created one here User:Lincher/GA, we can start now. Lincher 15:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Lincher, I took the liberty of moving it to your Userspace, as you have placed it in the main namespace, where one should only create articles. Anyway, I think it's a very good starting point, though I believe we have to wait with that until the online citation criterium is agreed upon. I see this list working like that - click on the article, review it, if it's OK, put your user name by it. If you are the second one to review it and it's OK, it's "safe". If you find it inconsistent with any criterium, delist it (regardless of whether there was a previous "positive" review") and leave messages on the talk page, as well as inform former major contributors to the article and relevant WikiProjects that the article was delisted for this and that reason and this and that should be improved for it to be able to pass again.

I think in the meantime, while we discuss the issues below, we might create some boilerplate texts/templates to use when failing the article, to inform contributors/WikiProject. Bravada, talk - 17:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the move, I intended to make a userspace edit but by mistake and overboiling about another issue I did it wrong, my bad.

I like the way you're going at it about the review in order to review everything fast and objectively. Lincher 17:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Fork : What are the criteria

Lets be clear and go into details about the criteria for GA status :

1a&d. Do the scientific terms need to be clearly defined on the article's page or just a wikilink is necessary.

1b&c; 2d; 3a; 4 & 5. EASY to check.

2a. how can we verify that all sources have been given? Do we WP:AGF and that's it?

2b. if there are no inline citations, is it ok? I would guess so, after the talk we had 3 months ago.

2c. if there are no book sources is it ok? if there are only internet sources, is it ok? If it only cite encyclopedias is it ok?

3b. should we cut trivia sections period? or are we lenient?

6. do we accept Fair use images if they state their rationale?

Should we review the part about the "we only review small articles" criteria.

We should give examples of articles dealing with fiction that are properly formatted (not my cup of tea).

Are we to refuse lists whatsoever, if so, then I'll change the policy. Lincher 02:20, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

In WP:WIAGA, it is stated the criteria very similar to the criteria for featured articles. Then, in regards to small aricles it gets a little vague with mention that prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. I think this needs to be more clear as we define "less then brillant". When I think of WP:FAC, I think of it as a fine tooth comb and scrutiny similar to how a person's life & words are subjected when they run for US Senate. GAC is more along the lines of running for state Attorney General. I think the standards should be high but with not as nit pick for scrutiny. That said, in response to Lincher...
1a&d. Do the scientific terms need to be clearly defined on the article's page or just a wikilink is necessary.

• Depends on context of the term. If immediate understanding of the term is required to make sense of what follows then it should be defined. Example (while not GA status in many regards) the article on Sweetness of wine includes a basic definition of the scientific wine term Brix to the degree that is required to understand the article. In Nikola Tesla, under the section Direct-energy weapon the term charged particle beams is merely wiki-linked because you don't need immediate understanding of what exactly that is to understand the context of how it's being discussed.

1b&c; 2d; 3a; 4 & 5. EASY to check.

• I agree for the most part but and I think the WP:MOS is one of the points where the "fine tooth comb" vs GA distinction comes into play. I think we should be strict about the standards of WP:Lead, WP:LIST, use of quotes, sub-headings contruction and basic capitalization and grammar. Articles should at least be College Freshman level in style (while I would compare FA to upper level College and graduate paper level).

2a. how can we verify that all sources have been given? Do we WP:AGF and that's it?

• For minor issues, yes but for substantial claims (especially those intrinsically tied to notability) I try to do some outside verification. Either follow an online ref link or with book reference having at least a google search will bring up non-reliable sources regurgitating the claim. If there is a primary reliable book source you have to take on good faith that it's being used in context.

2b. if there are no inline citations, is it ok? I would guess so, after the talk we had 3 months ago.

• This is where I disagree most with the current WP:WIAGA because definitely think this is an area where we need to be more strict. In-line citations are vital and at the very least they should be used to some degree in combination with other reference styles. For one, it promotes good habits that is nearly required for FA status but is viewed favorably throughout the project. We want GA to be an example of some of the best work in the project and while we can't expect every writer to be fabulous in prose, being firm on WP:RS and presentation of in-line citation for the sake of WP:V is an easy thing to do that will dramatically increase the quality of articles across the board.

2c. if there are no book sources is it ok? if there are only internet sources, is it ok? If it only cite encyclopedias is it ok?

• Here is another fine tooth comb, as long as the sources are reliable then they are okay--even if they are only internet or only encyclopedia. (Though in the later, I would be more vigilante in verification to ensure there is no copyright vio) However in the suggestion area I would encourage diversification of sources.

3b. should we cut trivia sections period? or are we lenient?

• This is a case by case basis but more often then not the Trivia section is not needed and any relevant information can be integrated into the article. I would put the article "on-hold" and request the information to be worked in. If the editors can give a compelling reason to maintain a Trivia section, then I would let it pass. But again, more often then not it should go.

6. do we accept Fair use images if they state their rationale?

• As another "fine tooth comb" area, I would accept images that are properly tagged even if they are only with a rationale fair use tag. In FAC they can scrutinize that rationale more. If it makes sense to the reviewer and doesn't throw up red flags about potential violations then we should let it pass. If you feel uncomfortable with the rationale, put the article on hold and request clarification. Agne 04:18, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with most of what Agne said, but I have to differ on a few points. Let me start with detail and then move to the bigger picture.

• 2b (comment) I strongly believe there should be inline citations for every paragraph, and sentence, where applicable. This makes it easy to find where a given claim was sourced from and is a good way of automatic OR prevention (see below) or POV sneaking. Just dumping a few "sources" at the end of an article is an easy way of trying to "legitimize" an article. I personally try to "inline cite" every part of the articles I create (if they are up to a certain standard, that is), and it's not THAT hard to do. As we are trying to make the GA status even more meaningful, I believe that strenghtening this requirement can only be beneficial.
• 2d (comment) is more or less easy to check as long as there are inline citations for every paragraph and sentence. That said, we cannot be sure whether the information in the article is actually directly to be found in those sources.
• 3a (disagree) is almost impossible to check in many cases when the reviewer is unfamiliar with the subject. For example, when reviewing a biography of a person I don't know, I don't know whether there is a significant episode or aspect of his/her life/work that has been omitted, or whether he/she had significant influence over some area, which should be discussed. This is a good reason to try to split the review into "factual", which could be done by people close to the subject and/or author, and "formal", which should rather be done by an impartial, unrelated reviewer IMHO. The latter would also be more appropriate to review for 1a and 1d.
• 2c (comment) I'd say online sources have one big advantage - they give us an opportunity to check them! That said, of course diversification should be promoted, and in many cases printed sources are more credible than online ones. But I wouldn't fail an article for only using online sources.
• 3b (disagree) "Trivia" sections absolutely do not belong in an encyclopedic article, and are a result of either poor editing skills, laziness of the editors, or an attempt to sneak something improper. In most cases, the trivia can be split into parts that can easily be incorporated into the relevant parts of the article and stuff that is irrelevant and/or even strictly POV. I believe it should be a formal requirement that those, and all other "laundry list" sections be integrated into the article.

GENERAL STUFF NOW:

I disagree about the comparison to Senators and State Attorney Generals - first of all, becuase of some examples of people that held/hold seats in the US Senate, I'd say the FA criteria should be MUCH stricter. If I was to name a real-world example of a position, it would perhaps only be the (modern-day) Pope. That said, good candidates for the Holy See fail NPOV by definition, but that's another thing ;) .

More seriously, I believe the standards in general should be regarded equal, BUT the requirement that is relaxed for GA is the "depth" of the article. As an example, a GA should be an article that would be at home at an "abridged" version of a first-rate print encyclopedia, whose "unabridged" version would contain an FA on the same topic. As is mentioned on the WIAGA page, and I learned from discussions with the GA "Founding Fathers", the idea was to promote articles that cannot, for some reasons, be long enough to pass FA (for example an article on a not-very-special planetoid, which would never cross the 15kB limit and would hardly be worth showcasing as FA). I would also extend that for some articles that could, perhaps, be FAs one day, but it's better to have a well-rounded shorter article on the topic, than a lenghty, poorly-edited piece of POV blabber. So, I don't know what you understand by "College Freshman level" , but I believe that a GA should be of appropriate quality to be printed as-is in a serious encyclopedia.

Secondly, the alternative name for GA on the early stages of the concept was, AFAIK, "excellent short articles". I believe that an "abridged", summary/overview encyclopedic article should not exceed 32kB. If it is over 32kB, it should be eligible for FA status by itself. If that's not the case at the moment, it should either further be improved to make it an FA, or perhaps trimmed down to create a good "short" encyclopedic article on the topic. I guess a "halfway" article, i.e. a GA expanded, but not quite complete by FA standards, is neither a GA or FA. It's nice to reward people for their work, but I guess we should only assess "complete" (more or less) articles, and not "work in progress". I will also give more rationale for excluding "long" articles from GA above. Bravada, talk - 08:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to add that I have had long discussions on criterion 2b, the citation of sources requirement. See the Clarification of citations criteria section on GA criteria talk page. As a summary, I pushed for raising the standard that inline citations should be required. Right now, criterion 2b is ambiguous: it states citations are essential but inline citations are not mandatory. This is confusing. We require citations (i.e., the source/page of the source or website should be noted for an assertion) and then we say one does not have to use certain formats like cite.php, Harvard, or embedded links. I am not certain how many other ways there are to cite a source, so why not just require inline citations? Otherwise nominees are allowed to submit articles with just a list of references at the bottom ("See I stated my references, now it's up to you Mr. Reviewer to see if you can find the POV assertions in my article"). With inline citations, any potential assertion becomes verifiable and thus passes the Wiki standard. RelHistBuff 09:33, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your extensive answers, as of now I am tending to change the criterion 2b with stricter rules. Since 2b was

the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory

, it should become something that looks more like :

the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Lincher (talk • contribs)

I think this could be put more clearly - how about:

every statement in the article has to be referenced to a source by means of inline citations (at the end of statement or paragraph)

Bravada, talk - 17:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

That is asking too much for even FA doesn't request that. The every statement can be misinterpreted in asking that all lines be sourced. Also, there is a need to have a reference section and a footnote/note/inline citation section. The former to let people know that if they want to read more, they can read this book or this book from which the text was taken from and the latter in order to let fact-checkers know that statements are cited by appropriate sources. Lincher 18:08, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Another take at that would be :

the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory

Oh, I thought this was the standard now. Your last proposition is OK with me, as long as we can interpret it the way that we can ask for any individual statement or claim that we find "suspicious" to be referenced to a specific source. Bravada, talk - 18:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

This mandatory inline citations thing goes against WP:IC, which states that "There is no specified amount of inline citation that an article must have before being eligible for nomination." Cite format is variable, and inline cites need only be applied to contentious or potentially confusing statements. Kafziel 18:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree, and for that matter if we look at Mark Antony or Elias Ashmole of FA status they only have a Reference section and that is why it is necessary to have a policy that can go with both needing to have confusing/contentious statements inline cited and only sources if no statements are contentious.

1: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations is mandatory upon request

2: the sources are to be cited in a section and the use of inline citations for contentious statements is mandatory

Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC) Lincher 19:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Both are too ambiguous in my opinion. It just opens the door for articles to have simple reference lists. I prefer your first one:

the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory

and one could add another line referring to the WP:IC guideline. By the way your examples of FA Mark Antony or Elias Ashmole do have inline citations (the first has one footnote reference and the second has embedded HTML links). RelHistBuff 20:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

After re-reading the Elias one, I have to agree with you, they are embedded HTML links that aren't a prefered method after all.

So it will be this :

the citation of its sources is essential, and the use of inline citations is mandatory

Lincher 03:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

When you change WP:WIAGA, the section in WP:IC concerning "IC & FAC" should be edited to "IC & GAC/FAC" RelHistBuff 08:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I repeat: This mandatory inline citations thing goes against WP:IC, which states that "There is no specified amount of inline citation that an article must have before being eligible for nomination." Cite format is variable, and inline cites need only be applied to contentious or potentially confusing statements. There is no basis in policy for making inline cites mandatory. Kafziel 17:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Fork : What to do with long articles?

This was taken from the previous discussion in order to have people decide or choose an idea over what to do about long articles : Secondly, the alternative name for GA on the early stages of the concept was, AFAIK, "excellent short articles". I believe that an "abridged", summary/overview encyclopedic article should not exceed 32kB. If it is over 32kB, it should be eligible for FA status by itself. If that's not the case at the moment, it should either further be improved to make it an FA, or perhaps trimmed down to create a good "short" encyclopedic article on the topic. I guess a "halfway" article, i.e. a GA expanded, but not quite complete by FA standards, is neither a GA or FA. It's nice to reward people for their work, but I guess we should only assess "complete" (more or less) articles, and not "work in progress". I will also give more rationale for excluding "long" articles from GA above. Bravada, talk - 08:48, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I will say, that long articles (that means 32k +, when it was last decided on) in the GA process should be (a) shorten in order to cope with the criterion about staying on the topic if they can't achieve FA format or (b) just give extensive comments about style & expansion in order to send the article to the FAC process. Thus, the GA process will only contain articles that are abridged versions of what would become FA articles, will not contain work in progress and will not contain long articles that can easily reach FA status.

Please voice your opinion on this important idea that could become a modification in the reviewing. Lincher 15:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. GA should not have a length requirement at all. It should be here to recogize articles that can be trusted, are reasonably complete and can be recommended to those interested in a subject. It should provide a home for articles that do not meet the qualifications of FA status, including not being in summary style. So, I'd like to leave the size issue out of consideration for GA status. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 16:24, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree, a length requirement for GA articles would be a bad idea. Some articles may never reach FA, due for example, to editing conflicts and the type of dense defensive prose this produces. As I recently passed the uncontroversial article enzyme through the FA process, I would look with horror on the prospect of trying to do the same with GA nominee Homeopathy, a good, comprehensive but closely-debated article I have also been involved with. Such a nomination would take many months and would likely never reach consensus. TimVickers 16:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

To CTSWyneken - Frankly speaking, I can hardly imagine an article that is long, does not meet or come close to meeting FA standards and meets GA standards as I defined them above. If the article fails WP:FA? criterion 4, it's not a good article either. If an article becomes bloated with too much detail on some aspect of the subject, the solution is to carve it out into a new article - and what remains should be close to either GA or FA, depending on length. Other WP:FA? criteria are more or less equivalent to WP:WIAGA, perhaps except for the "brilliant prose" requirement - which is not to say that poorly written articles should be GAs, just that nobody should object on accounts that the prose isn't "brilliant" (but we all should if the prose isn't too good - good articles should read well and represent proper style).

To TimVickers - you might not have noticed, but stability is an express WP:WIAGA criterion (see point 5), so an article which would be problematic to pass through FA would be equally problematic to pass through GA. As an example of possible conflict-generating and "current" FA, see Tony Blair - I believe there were quite many problems with that too, but I think a group of editors managed to bring it to a state in which it is fairly neutral and stable in that all "vandalism" and "POV pushing" can be easily reverted to a certain "stable" version, without removing vital information, which the article already contains. So - this ain't a problem either. And, well, some articles are much tougher to bring to FA status then other. It's a sad truth, but it is so.

In conclusion, I still don't see any reason why there should be room for long articles that aren't FA on GA. We should promote the best work, and not just "not bad" work. Bravada, talk - 16:56, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It is not a question of current stability, but the instability produced by the process of FA review. A long article that is currently fairly stable and neutral on a highly controversial topic will generate a huge number of contradictory and heated reviews and edits when passing through the FA process. Indeed, some articles may be of good quality but be so controversial that it is practically impossible to reach consensus in these high-profile nominations. I see in these cases a choice between GA recognition of article quality (in itself a deterrent to POV pushing) or no recognition at all. TimVickers 17:09, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

To Tim - if an article is relatively stable due to its obscurity, it is ilusoric stability and NPOV. As long as there are valid arguments to be raised, they should be discussed, so trying to sneak the article is not good practice. As I said, with some articles it is harder to achieve FA status, but using GA as a loophole to avoid "laundry cleaning" is not good practice IMHO. If you believe there are significant influential parties that would push POV on e.g. homeopathy when it would be nominated for FA, it's a more general issue and should be recitifed by Wikipedia community at large. Bravada, talk - 19:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm going to assume good faith in this comment and assure you that I am trying to do no such thing. I know from my experience that maintaining NPOV is difficult, and I am sure that the more prominent a controversial article becomes, the more difficult this struggle becomes. With work, and hopefully feedback from a GA reviewer, [HINT] homeopathy may one day make it to FA. However, as I said I dread to think what the review process would be like. TimVickers 22:16, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Case in point is the Martin Luther article. We've listed it, but it cannot make FA due to the fact that it is not in summary style. It tends to be controversial, especially on the issue of his words about the Jews. The only way to solve the summary style problem is -- you've guessed it -- reduce the size of the article. Something like this can be said for a number of GA long articles. FA clearly favors article sets for long, complex subjects. Why not let an article move from stub to article of substance, from article of substance to GA, from GA to peer review and then FA? Along the way, the article may need to shrink or grow, its prose be more tightly written and sub articles emerge. While GA should have some standards, it should not aspire to be as strict as FA. If it is, what is the point in GA status at all? --CTSWyneken^(talk) 17:30, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I do not have time to give the article a thorough reading and review (I mean Martin Luther), but I have taken a brief look at its FA candidacy discussion, and I must say there are two major problems raised - 1) poor content organisation 2) POV. Either of them would prevent the article from becoming a GA too, actually, so that's not a good example - it's an example of a very large article which is, well, not good.

Actually, I would, and did, dispute the POV thing. Most of it came from editors who were pushing their opinion on one issue in the article. Since then, and before the GA nom, much work has been done there. I would argue that the article in its current state is a little long, but by far not poorly written. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 19:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I admit to believing the opposing party had some merit on learning about the nature of your profession :D As I said, I cannot assess if the article is written good or not, but the TOC is surely a sign that something is wrong with the structure (i.e. there shouldn't be only top-level sections). Fix the structure and renominate it for FA, calling for impartial reviewers to give their opinions on the POV thing. I would even go as far as asking Raul to look into that personally. Bravada, talk - 19:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

As concerns crappy article -> better article -> ... -> GA -> PR -> FA , I don't necessairly agree with that. GA should first and foremost be used to single out articles that are very good examples of WP work on all accounts, conforming with the criteria listed in WIAGA. GA should not be used for "work in progress", i.e. expanded, large articles which weren't "polished", cleaned from POV etc. It's rather for really "polished" articles which either cannot be expanded further due to the limited scope of the subject (see the planetoid example) or have been prepared with a lower level of detail in mind. Bravada, talk - 18:55, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm glad that you are looking to single out high quality work, however, I have to disagree with you on what we should be about. If we hold articles to FA or near-FA standards to be worthy of GA, why bother with GA at all? --CTSWyneken^(talk) 19:14, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

First of all, because it is possible to write a very good "summary" or "abridged" article on a subject, and it would be good to have those rather than various number of articles in "arrested development". Editors should strive to finish their work, either by making a super-duper FA, or, if they do not have enough material, a good "short" article on the subject. Secondly, some good articles will never be featured because the subject is too limited/uninteresting (those aren't proper words, but I hope you get what I mean) - like said planetoids (I can imagine a host of articles on planetoids becoming GA, but I guess it would be hard to make them FA). Bravada, talk - 19:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The sole purpose of GA was to give examples of our good work 1) for the short articles, they will be brilliantly written 2) for the larger articles their quality may tend to be lesser than FA. Lemme explain for number 2, I think work in progress is good to show as long as they are short, not NPOV, somewhat cover the topic clearly (but needs more for people that know about the subject) and that are well sourced.

We are now tending to have 2 things happening, the first I mentioned was the GA was for short articles and the second says that the GA process will be like the FA process with approximately the same criteria/goals or simply not assessing long articles. Is that what we want? Lincher 19:26, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

What I'd argue for is a standard that suggests the articles are trustworthy. They are clearly written, substantially cited and with enough links within wiki, the internet and through citations to let interested readers follow the breadcrumbs to more info. Frankly, I'd like to stop telling my students not to cite wikipedia. Some articles, almost all on the GA list, I'd be comfortable finding on a cited works page. I really don't see the point in having GA otherwise. It simply then is a clone of FA with less hassle and leaves my students in the same boat. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 21:39, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Good Short Articles and Potential Featured Articles

If GA is near-FA...why have GA at all? (repeated from above). Worldtraveller would kick me for showing up again to criticize, but: no shit. GA should be scapped (that was my initial thought on it) and the work devoted to FA, where it matters, or GA should be much better specified in terms of its intent (this is what WT talked me into). See here for a long conversation on exactly the long/short article problem and the nature GA.

Note too, WP:ESA (excellent short articles) was actually created... Marskell 19:36, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, GA is near FA with regards to the formal side, but without the "covering every small detail" requirement. No other requirement should be lifted, as the other ones are ones that every article should actually fulfill from day one (like sources, being well-written etc.) The fact that many different people edit articles in different ways is the reason why not every article is like that, therefore we have GA. The GA is either like an excellent "summary" of a possible FA on the topic, or a super-duper article on a short topic. The ESA has a rather low profile now, and there also articles between 15 and 32 kB to be covered (most FAs tend to be over 32 kB). Bravada, talk - 19:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I think Worldtraveller makes an excellent point that sums up alot of the value in the GA process. "there's an incentive to improve the latter, adding references and improving the text, which FA does not provide. Click your random article link 10 times and I bet you will be lucky to find one article that's got references - for most articles, FA does not provide an incentive to add them because most articles will only ever be quite short." For articles that will never get a sniff of GA status (not because they're not good but because they can't reach the length and depth required.) there is a continual incentive for improvement. For articles that can be FA, we're here to help them reach that. I say the difference between GA and FA is the "Fine tooth comb" line because you're dealing with the difference of one set of eyes versus several-which aids in uncovering more details and imperfection. A GA review should approach the review with the highest standards but naturally won't be able to detect all the details that a full group can. However, a GA can make damm certain that all the basics of good quality is covered. Agne 19:52, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

I will also note that I really like Marskell idea from his link conversation about having a separate Featured Short Articles and Potential Featured Articles listing. For the "long" articles they would go into the latter category and that could potentially help with the dispute over "Long" articles because then the context they're being reviewed in would be made more clear. Also, since they do take longer to review, this seperate list wouldn't contribute to the backlog of reviewing the quicker, shorter articles. Agne 19:57, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

It used to be that way : See This and then they complained. The nominators were angry that their articles weren't with the normal pack of shorter articles and so I settled by just adding the LONG tag and we were back where we started from.

Something that can be done though is to have a split of the GA page, in that short GAs that are excellent can be on one page and long GA, pontential FA can be on another page. Lincher 20:07, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

(Rephrased after two conflicts--bringing thread together)

There is no "covering every small detail" requirement, in reply to first. There is a comprehensiveness requirement which states that the article should be comprehensive. I'm sorry, but the real difference between the two is that FAs are good and have been picked over (recent ones, that is—there are still dozens of poor ones from '03 and '04) while GAs are good, but hey, we don't need to look too close right now. GA, at present, is a matter of tagging while FA is a matter of double-checking; this may actually be a Scroogish way of looking at the process (reading second). You can well argue that mass tagging of this sort is needed to create various plateaus and that it accomplishes something. But I do not understand this "GA is almost FA" idea. If your GA is that close to FA, here is the place for it.

Re length, 25k is probably a more accurate level than 32k. It's perfectly possible to pass something under 30k at FAC at the moment, AFAIK. In fact, the long, unwieldly ones are often denigrated based on the TOC. As for ESA and a low profile—I don't think it has a profile, does it? Does anyone work on that page? It's actually a very good idea. All long GAs are not GAs—they are potential FAs. All short GAs are "Excellent short articles". Marskell 20:12, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

My last post (posted after two conflicts) sounds rather harsh and doesn't quite make sense. In reply to Agne and Lincher: yes, let's thrash out a concept in which the GAs are split into short and long. The short as an identifiable plateau; the long as good, but ideally FA. Marskell 20:43, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I understand the "comprehensiveness" requirement for FA as "covering every detail", as it is usually understood that way, which is why FAs tend to be longer. Anyway, if you'd look at WIAGA and FA?, the former is actually even more detailed, and both are comparable, which should result in articles up to the same formal standards! So, well, the standards are defined the way that makes GA so close to FA. Again, I have outlined above how I see the role of GA status (promote completing of editorial work, i.e. bringing the article up to a stable and sensible, high-quality form), which is IMHO quite against promoting long articles which are "not that bad" but "not yet there".

That said, it might be helpful to split the process into GA for articles under 32kB and over 32kB (with the former incorporating the de facto defunct ESA). Perhaps the "short GA" could be renamed "ESA", or the "long GA" could be renamed something else (how about A-Class articles, as outlined in Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment?), especially if they are to be held to different standards. Regards, Bravada, talk - 02:38, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I strongly oppose any splitting of this project into long and short GA's. When it was tried, the Long ones were virtually ignored. Splitting them off onto separate pages would have the same effect. FA's don't have different standards for long and short one (and yes, there are short ones - its comprehensiveness, not length that is the critera) so GA's should not have different standards for short and long ones either. There is no need to make GA more complicated. It works best as a simple project. Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, an article might be comprehensive when short if there isn't a ton of information about a subject. Also, comprehensive is not the same as detailed, don't mix the two. I think you guys are missing the fact that Comprehensiveness has nothing to do with length, therefore, we shouldn't be splitting anything on the basis of length. We ask a for lower level here than complete comprehensiveness of course, but the same principle applies. Personally, I don't see what's so broken about GA that we need to fix it. It does a good job of identifying those articles that are good, but that don't meet the stringent FA requirements. That's its original puprose, it works and its useful. pschemp | talk 03:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I disagree about the last statement. GA doesn't do this work too well, as it is often pointed out that articles promoted to GA are of so varying standards that the GA tag is almost worthless. I guess if the GA status is to mean anything, we need to have more uniform standards, and make sure all reviewers use them.

As concers long GA nominations - I ignore them by default anyway, as I believe it is virtually impossible to provide a good review of a long article single-handedly. I can go nitpicking and fail any long article if I find a good reason, but I can't imagine passing a long article by myself. I believe long articles should be reviewed by more than one user by default, and that random nomination of long articles should be discouraged, as they are time-consuming to review and quite often actually not even close to GA standards as I understand them.

I would also like to reiterate the proposition to split the assessment of comprehensiveness and factual accuracy (which can only be done by experts on the subject) and formal issues. I believe anybody can assess whether an article is up to formal standards, but it would be rather embarassing to have articles that are factually inaccurate as GAs. Bravada, talk - 03:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, let's not overly devalue the project. GA is still relatively young and the norms and processes are still evolving. I agree that we have to tighten our own reviewing standards and that's done by removing ambiguities in the standards themselves and by coaching reviewers. But we will have to accept that there will always be varying degrees of quality with the GA badge. That's the nature of wiki. But in my opinion, the main goal of the existence of GA is satisfied. The quality of articles are increased by giving an incentive to editors and content providers who have little chance of reaching FA (whether long or short). I have to agree with pschemp. I don't agree that short and long articles should be split. Let's not try fix what is not broken. RelHistBuff 08:33, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Psh, the point was identifying pieces that are literally too short to become FAs, such as an article on lunar crater. That was GA's original purpose, at least as explained to me. (Why does the GA page state: "generally, because while they nominally meet Featured article standards they are very short"?) And this doesn't confuse comprehensiveness and length at all; I've seen comprehensive FAs at 20k (which is why I don't think the split should be at 32k) but I also know some topics literally cannot grow past a certain length (until, say, somebody lands in that lunar crater) and are inappropriate as FAs. Why should pages of this sort be lumped together with the Great Pyramid?

And I agree with Brav that it's dubious how well the work gets done with the GA tag. On my watchlist, I see people show up with it that have never edited the article. So what is that, a five second look? On my last FA, mid-way through a couple of weeks of heavy editing, someone tagged it a GA candidate—I removed it. You want to work on the page, great, sit down and do so. You want to look for five seconds and tag it, I don't see the point. Marskell 08:47, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I think you've experienced the old standard when people went around slapping up the template willy-nilly. With the nomination process implemented earlier this year, people will know that they will be judged, so they will work to improve their articles. And with better reviewing, even a failed article will get advice on improvement. And sorry, why shouldn't an article on a lunar crater and the Great Pyramid be under the same GA umbrella? We are not judging on notability, but by editorial standards. RelHistBuff 09:13, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I wasn't aware that it was required to have edited an article to nominate it, nor imho should it be. --kingboyk 12:17, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree wit kingboyk though when you decide to father an article in the GA process it should become yours and you should then answer to the questions that are coming and do the necessary changes pertaining to the ON HOLD procedure. Lincher 12:26, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

To respond quickly. Rel, as noted, a page on a luner crater and the Great Pyramid qualitatively differ b/c the former cannot be an FA and the latter can; for those that can't, we need a specific article category. Re new standards here, it just begs the question: if the idea is review/improvement, why are person hours devoted to this when PR and FAC exist precisely for this reason? GA just becomes a massive diversion of resources away from FAC through duplication. King, I have no idea whether you're supposed to have edited as I've never nominated one—to the extent that people haven't, it only emphasizes that this is a tag driven, rather than content driven, process. Marskell 12:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

It would only be a diversion if editors who normally like to do PR's and FA's are splitting their time here instead, and I pretty much never do FA or PR stuff, and really don't want to. Considering how much people outside the GA system generally don't think we're such a great idea, I don't see a large diversion of effort being given out here. The real problems here come from people passing articles and not listening to the instructions, which clearly state that you're supposed to show how an article has passed, and if you've examined it long enough to show this, then you could probably also give a few comments on how to improve it, a suggestion the candidate page makes anyway.Homestarmy 13:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

In response to Marskell, yes, the qualitative difference is obvious. But what is being proposed is to divide into categories based on a *quantitative* criterion (i.e., kilobytes). The cutoff would be arbitrary and will not necessarily correctly categorize the articles qualitatively. RelHistBuff 13:36, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

This is true (to Rel) but you'd just modify the instruction: is it under 20/25k and does it appear it's essentially not going to get larger? This would apply to a lot of technical articles (though in the conversation linked at the top it was observed that there many not be that many "excellent short articles" out there...)

Replying to Home, I don't fully understand how you can accept working on this and not the FA process. Follow instructions, show you've examined it, and offer suggested improvements. This is exactly what's done at FAC except the improvements are requisite before passing and there, more and more, people do follow instructions or it gets knocked off early...

One way to put it: if this were explicitly just a matter of tagging you could make a better argument for its use. Let's tag a total of somewhere in the mid five digits, ship the list to Wikipedia 1.0 or 0.5 and say "Ok, these are good, but we're not making promises on the specifics." And yet the argument presented here is "no, no these are being gone over. They're, you know, close to FA, just not quite there..." If that's the argument then this is just FA-lite and is a bad kind of parallel process. It encourages people to pause on a plateau just before the summit. Marskell 14:16, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, i've never been very interested in the FA process because I don't have an eye for being exceptionally critical on things, but i've normally liked the GA standards, because first their more lenient, and second because i'm used to grading articles by them. On FAC, the "suggestions" are mandatory because those suggestions often involve raising articles to the highest of standards, whereas suggestions for Good Articles can offer the same thing, except Good Articles aren't supposed to meet the highest of standards. However, right now, I think we have a big problem in terms of just how qualified most Good Articles are, i've been trying to do a mini-sweep right now, and what i've seen so far isn't promising. Before we even get into just what sort of quality a Good Article should be at, we need to sweep this list. Homestarmy 14:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

(reply to Marskell)

Not at all, it is not a FA-lite process and it isn't a pause before summit kinda project, it is an assessment project where we, with fixed rules, decide if the article is of that level of quality or not. It is somewhat of a stepdown from FA, in terms of breadth, of quality (not to a big extent), of sources, of quantity of pictures and of length in general. It is a project that reviews articles so they can comply with the assessment scale in stating that the article is no more of B-class but not yet of A-class and that is why the one-reviewer-only is the way it is done. For sure, there will be articles that will slip through the cracks and that is why we have a FA review for those ones. So, in maintaining the GA process functional, we have to give a clear review that if failed, the article missed all those criteria and if passed, the article was this & that but may need some of this and some of that for the FA status or the A-class for that matter. Lincher 14:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, look at "What is a Good article?" It completely mimics FA and I personally find it pointless—if you can't obviously distinguish the two, one or the other doesn't belong (and we're obviously not scrapping FA). And there's something of a catch-22, as noted in the last paragraph above: the more steps, reviews, criteria, procedure etc. here, the more this comes to resemble a parallel process and the more person hours it diverts. If the articles here actually meet the criteria on "What is a GA..." then they're practically FAs already and might as well go to FAC; if they don't, this process is not doing what it suggests.

But then there is (supposed to be) a difference: the length bit we've being discussing. "What is a GA..." suggests 15k or less, for instance. Marskell 14:47, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Nominators & reviewers don't agree with this length anymore, a more accurate number, and I've changed it, is 25kB or less.

Secondly, my comment above just states that it doesn't mimic FA in that it assess articles more than it reviews them. It also is a step down from the FA and the A grade on the assessment scale. I will start another thread for a change I want to see happen about the length & GA/FA process. Lincher 14:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Whew, another fork! :-D Anyway, concerning the difference between GA and FA, the standards are close, but there is another important difference. The processes. It's less bureaucratic and less intimidating. And it serves two purposes well:

1) recognition of articles that will not reach FA, due to being too "short" or not notable enough or not having "brilliant prose" or being too controversial, etc. and

2) recognition of articles on their way to FA due to authors perhaps new to wiki who would like some kind of recognition by peers before taking it further.

RelHistBuff 15:25, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

(to Homestarmy) I will be starting the sweep too at User:Lincher/GA. Lincher 15:32, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I've just been sweeping randomly, the majority of articles I look at are clear failures and seem to of sneaked through the process through the backdoor, so there will probably be far less articles on the list as we do this. Homestarmy 17:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Wait, what has changed exactly?

I haven't been following this discussion closely because, alas, I wasn't here when it started, but now there's a template on the main cnadidate page saying there was recently some change or something and to see this page, but as far as I can tell, everyone is still discussing the main definitions of GA's. Did something new get decided? Homestarmy 23:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

The tag was rephrased, though I am still not too happy with the wording (the discussion "IS", not "WAS", to start with). Lincher, perhaps you could look for a standardized template for such use, I think I saw it somewhere...

Such template doesn't exist ... I had to adapt one to this, be bold and rephrase it. Lincher 03:05, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

As to what we are discussing:

1. Whether to include the use inline citations as a requirement for GA
2. How to interpret GA standards vs. FA standards
3. A proposition to re-review all current Good Articles to make sure the list really contains articles complying with WP:WIAGA
4. Propositions how to make people take more care to abide by the policies when reviewing, including leaving appropriate review summaries when failing articles
5. Whether or not to exclude long articles from GA

I hope I managed to summarize the main points appropriately, and that it would be of any help to you. I also invite the others to correct me if I'm wrong. Bravada, talk - 02:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the fast summary, we have to get this bagged up fast because other projects are waiting to find out what will the outcome be and will also be necessary to help with article assessment. Lincher 03:07, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

This is a wiki, there is no rush for anything. Other projects can go on and do their thing without us.

As of now, the only change that has happened was the inclusion of inline citations in the reviewing process See change to WIAGA.

We will still be discussing the other issues. Lincher 12:27, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Long article review policy/ideas

Since we can't find an agreement on what to do with lengthy articles (that is to say 25kB+ of prose or 32kB+ counting everything), I would suggest an idea that can stir comments or bring us somewhere with this dead-end/no consensus. I think lengthy articles should, when you feel it would be a GA after assessing it yourself, it would be more reasonable to kick that article into the FA process meanwhile letting the nominator know that his article will be going there and that it is outside of the scope of the GA process, for length & quality. Please make your voice heard as this solution would remove 2 things, the on hold procedure where we wait for the article to have the reviewers nit-picks modified and bring more articles to the FA process, thus helping the articles getting better reviewed. Lincher 12:35, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't like it at all, we'll have to remove a ton of articles from the list, and finding good, short articles isn't easy, most of them don't have any active editors who would even find the GA system in the first place. Also, most long articles I see coming here would never pass FA standards, even by the most lenient of voters. Homestarmy 12:47, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Per the comments from two threads up, this is what we should do. Send the big ones to PR and put in the improvement work there. And then rename this thing Excellent Short Articles to avoid the generic title and better specify what it is. Marskell 12:53, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

To stay on the topic ... 1) GA is here to stay as articles are still being assessed by many and will keep their status; 2) Homestarmy, I agree with you that the articles that come here aren't FA material but make another suggestion to how we can cope with having excellent short articles and OK to passable long articles. Lincher 13:05, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I checked out the GA list for a second, and found one such long article, B. F. Skinner. Nobody put any note on the talk page about passing it, and it clearly was no GA at all. When we used to sweep the GA list things like this wouldn't slip through the cracks, long articles are supposed to be held to the same standards as all other GA's, and I suspect many long articles are just sort of slipping on by. When we used to do sweeps frequently, this sort of problem didn't really affect us. Homestarmy 13:15, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Sweeps are done easily when you have like 100 to 500 articles, but the amount of articles we have now is humongous and we have to make sure we find a system that may be able to tackle 100k articles one day. And so you know, there is a sweep that will start in a few days on User:Lincher/GA, we've discussed it above and it is a way to let the different articles that one criterion was modified and see if the article still fits the WIAGA. There is also a page called Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers, you can add your name to the topic you are most likely to review. We have yet to find a place to put this page in the project. Lincher 13:20, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

To shift back to the separation thing, note that at WP:ESA WorldTraveller had actually already separated everything under 20k up until May. There are 422 listed there, and the GA list was at 1040 odd at the time of its creation. Thus, there's already a base to start from. I think maybe go back to that list and deduce not just what is short, but that which can't be long. I'm even thinking 20k may be too high a limit. White's tree frog, a nice little FA, is just 15.4 kb. Marskell 14:55, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

And again, I say separation is not neccessary. If a short article is really good, send it to FA. The requirement there is comprehensiveness, not length. Not to mention that GA is a much more widely used project than ESA, yet you seem to want to kill it Marksell. I don't see anyone else around here agreeing with that. You've been told over and over that GA is not a mini FA, yet you don't seem to get or agree with that. However, again, your opinion is not that of most people on this page. If you think ESA is so great, go work on it, but getting rid of GA is not the answer. pschemp | talk 16:22, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh take it easy. The short article thing is just a decent way to fill a gap—acknowledging the work on short things that don't have enough meat for an FAC (I suppose a de facto requirement is that it be long enough for a good main page read). And I don't want to kill anything, just specify terms. I've been told over and over that it's not an FA mirror followed be a general absence of reasons. If it walks like a duck, and all that.

The one point that Lincher makes that I do see is "more assessment less actual review". One idea, to create a proper differentiation, is to rank it in more intermediate ways as checklist scale, rather than in top-level terms that are still basically a cut-and-paste from the FA criteria. For example, "a Good article will be grammatically sound but the prose may not be polished," "references will exist, but individual lines may require better sourcing" etc. If in practice the articles already look like this perhaps it's a better idea. Marskell 18:18, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

GA/FA & Length

Can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :

These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.

A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.

To :

These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.

For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.

Lincher 15:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Can we split the difference at 20k?
2. "Long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria" is a contradiction. If you meet the FA criteria you are at FA standard.
3. Still all one list? Should the long and short be broken out seperately?
4. Should moving the long ones to PR be suggested or required?
5. "Brilliant" is not actually an FA criteria, but a suggestive point. "Well written" is the criteria. Marskell 15:30, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Concerning the level of writing, we should say that a GA is clearly written, easily understood by most readers of English or something like it. I also would like us to encourage in-line citations with a concrete suggestion such as: "at least one in line citation per section." --CTSWyneken^(talk) 15:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see the need for requiring that specific # of citiations, besides, I'm not sure we should require that they be inline either. It is possible to have small sections that don't need a citation. The citiation police will disagree, but there are some obvious things that don't need them. pschemp | talk 16:40, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I will quick answer your questions :

1. Ok but most articles will be called long articles then.
2. I get what you mean. May I say, might fail FA criteria for length, for controversiality and sourcing.

   If you meet the FA criteria you are at FA standard. , not true, plenty of articles aren't well organized enough to be FA but meet the FA criteria.

If it isn't well organized it doesn't meet the criteria. Organization is part of the criteria (2 and 4). Marskell 18:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

1. I doubt it.
2. I thought so but we have to assess the articles anyway.
3. Let's change it to well-written then.

For CTS ... lets do so, and add it to the current criteria.

Pertaining to the re-assessment/sweep at User:Lincher/GA, we can start now and see what we get and work our criteria to meet the current GA batch or fail the ones that don't meet the present criteria. I've had it with the talking about short or long and that is why I made the suggestion above since we wont split ... creating more job for nuttin'. And we wont send articles to PR or FA since if people come to GA in the first place is to know if they are on the good track, let's not get the beaten first thing off while they're newbies, let the gradually go toward FA candidacy. Lincher 16:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree here about PR. Its a separate process, is not as friendly as GA and we shouldn't be automatically kicking anything there. pschemp | talk 16:42, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is everyone obsessed with retaining the primarily short articles wording? It is clear that through practice, GA has morphed into a vehicle for identifying good article regardless of length that are just not quite FA material. Now, why are we retaining out of date wording that doesn't make sense for this project anymore and as far as I can see just causes arguments over what is long and what is short. Lets be bold and throw out the whole primarily short articles thing especially because that hasn't been practice for a long time. Instead let the wording reflect the current practice. Old things like that are not set in stone, and as the project evolved, its mission has evolved and the statement of it should reflect that. Think outside the short article box. pschemp | talk 16:31, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes I second this. Through the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment GA is now being seen as a root to A-class and evential FA status. It could put a big spanner in the works if longer GA candiadates were not reviewed. --Salix alba (talk) 17:10, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Finally, some new blood. I have to agree with both of you it is a process that assess a quality of/grades articles and in such a way, long articles shouldn't be disadvantaged. Also, we should have the same criteria to judge both short & long articles. If we have the same criteria than FA then so be IT. The BIG difference is that we are doing a one-man job and there might be articles that slip through the process anyway. GA is to be seen as a platform toward FA articles and in so all articles should hope to meet FA standards but will unfortunately loose when it comes down to the length criterion. Lincher 17:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

GA has always seemed to me to be a stepping stone not in how rigorous people are checking the standards, but because the standards are all slightly lower, for instance, we ask for "Well-written prose" instead of "Brilliant prose", we don't require inline citations in the footnote format, and in a few other ways it just isn't as strict as, well, the Highest of Standards. Even the Good Article collaboration says we're supposed to raise articles to the Highest of Standards, so it seems clear to me that GA's don't have to be quite there yet. Homestarmy 17:57, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, I know when I'm a minority of one :). I think the above is dead wrong—you remove the length issue and the criteria will not mostly mimic, but completely mimic FA. A well and true parallel process with a contradiction at its heart—these are not quite up to FA despite fact that the criteria are the same as those at FA (unless the difference between "broad" and "comprehensive" is a difference in kind). And denigrating PR is a shame—it's an extremely under-reviewed process that could do more than any page to improve quality. But, so consensus goes.

A last thought, repeated: FA does not ask for brilliant prose. Just to be clear. It asks for a well written prose just like this does. Marskell 18:01, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, the last time I remember looking at FA criteria, it said brilliant prose, so I dunno what happened there :/. Homestarmy 18:04, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

It suggests well-written prose may be "compelling, even brilliant" but the requirement is well-written. You weren't seeing things :). Marskell 18:11, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

(same subject) Now that everybody is on the same side and is all up to date about GAs and FAs, lets be constructive and have ideas onto werther we change the length issue and what do we do about inline citations (I have moved the discussion over to the WP:WIAGA's talk page for there is disagreement with a WPdian there).

Sorry if you feel that we have hurt PR, I didn't mean too but in a way, it is looking dead or close to dead to me, we should revive it with fresh ideas once the backlog & the sweep is done here (IMO). Lincher 18:12, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

See last para from thread above. Perhaps thinking outside box should include reworking criteria to reflect practice rather than passing a bar. Marskell 18:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

I want to be bold and change the criteria but I'm always getting a slap on the hand for having done the wrong thing, would it be someone else for a change. An example of what I'm talking about is the inline citations thing that I'm discussion with Kafziel on WIAGA's talk page. Lincher 18:39, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

How about giving things a day or two to try to reach some kind of consensus? Relax. I'm sorry if you feel like I've slapped your hand, but the criteria for GA have been in place for quite a while. Just because the people who worked on them aren't around today doesn't mean these changes have garnered their tacit acceptance. Kafziel 18:48, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

In WP:WIAGA you asked where in WP:CITE does it say to use inline citation. It doesn't specifically say to use "inline citations". Section 5 in WP:CITE says about how and where to cite sources. Then in section 5.3 it defines the three accepted citation styles. It just so happens that those three citation styles are the exact same citation styles listed in the WP:IC article. So inline citations are defined to be one of those three styles (embedded links, Harvard, and cite.php footnote). If I am wrong somewhere, please someone correct me.

Inline citations are not a negative thing. They are not just for "lazy researchers" as you claim. They are there for verifiability and just as Lincher said every peer-reviewed journal requires them. More arguments are given by others above. Requiring them would be a plus for GA. RelHistBuff 21:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong; I like inline citations. I put them in every article I write. They're great. But verifiability isn't diminished in any way by simply having a references section at the bottom; the only thing that's diminished is the ease of verifiability. You might not like the description of "lazy researchers", but do you really want to go to the library, find all those books and magazines, and read every single one to find the info that's in doubt? Of course not. So when it seems like something might be contentious, it's good to give somebody a more specific place to look. All I'm saying is that it's not required to have them for every statement made. "IBM makes computers" doesn't need an inline citation. Articles would be unreadable if we did that. "IBM built the first large scale digital computer in the United States" probably should have one, because someone might doubt it for a number of reasons. But even if it doesn't have one, because most people think it's obvious (not saying that's true—it's just an example), that information should be sourced somewhere at the bottom and that's good enough for most things.

While we're on the subject, there also seems to be some misconception about the number of references that are needed, and that if an article has "too few", it's no good. That's patently false. All the information necessary for an article could, in theory, come from one comprehensive source. Assuming an article is no good because it doesn't cite 20 or 30 sources doesn't have any basis in policy or even common sense. In fact, the more sources one is forced to cite, the better the chances are that some of those sources will be less than stellar. Kafziel 22:02, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

Hold up, I can't help but feel that one ref comment was said for my benefit, because that's more or less the basis on which I failed several articles on today. If there is but one source out on the internet that has all the information one ever needs for something, why would anybody write an article on it, just post in the article (See: This super cool comphrehensive source which is the end all be all of this subject.) and then you're done. If there is a single reference from one single thing for a subject which is 100 percent comphrehensive, it's likely the subject is limited, and probably either not notable for an article or unable to ever grow beyond a stub. Homestarmy 22:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

The reason we don't do the link thing is that Wikipedia is not a collection of external links. But there's not supposed to be any original content here, so it is possible that in some cases one or two sources will have all the information we need. The mathematics case offered by Salix alba (below) is an excellent example. How many reliable sources do you need to confirm mathematical results? One should do it. Two, if you're really paranoid. Plenty of religious subjects can be well-covered with just a few sources. Works of art, kinds of food, military figures, automobiles... there are comprehensive and respected sources for all those things and many more. If there's one definitive source and hundreds of smaller sources based on that source, there's no need to include them all unless they offer something different that you feel is of some importance. Requiring people to provide excessive amounts of sources just leads to cramming needless citations where they don't belong, and (particularly in a non-scholarly environment such as this) to kids just finding titles and slapping them on without actually using anything from them (or even knowing what they actually say) just for appearances' sake. If a few good sources is all it takes, then that's all it takes. By the way, I didn't intend that comment to be only for you; our conversation did get me thinking about it, but it's a problem I've seen before on FAC. It was nothing personal. Kafziel 23:23, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

That math article is different, it has around 10 or so good references, and several notes point to particular parts to cite material specifically out of those references. A "Low amount" of references, at least in this article's case, certainly doens't look like 1 or two to me. Homestarmy 23:52, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

In mathematics articles, especially those most likely to be put forward to GA/FA status, much of the mathematical information will be common knowledge, arrearing in ten or hundreds of different text books. Also because of the nature of mathematical proof, most mathematical statements are non-contriversal. In these cases a few good references at the end to the better textbooks can be more usful than a lot of inline citations. However, the historical information seems to more in need of in inline cites as this is less well covered in the standard text books. Theres discussion on this issue at Wikipedia:Featured article review/Eigenvalue, eigenvector and eigenspace. --Salix alba (talk) 22:43, 14 September 2006 (UTC)::

Indeed. I agree here, I think GAs should have citations and a proper amount but specifiying which type and how many is too restrictive. pschemp | talk 02:45, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Some more conclusive thoughts from Bravada

Gosh did we start a fire! It is taking up almost all of my WP time just to catch up with the discussion! I've been thinking quite a bit about the whole issue and I must say many of the things said here gave me a lot of food for thought. Here are my conclusions - I hope they are constructive:

1. Inline citations - while they do not necessairly augment verifiability etc., there is a rather high danger of some OR sneaking through when those aren't present. When an article is rife with inline citations, one can more easily single out an unreferenced statement. Of course some mischevious editors will abuse the fact that it is quite hard to verify everything o the spot, but in general the need to use inline citations and the possibility of being asked to reference any given statement might at least help some (and I believe quite many) editors be more considerate. Not to mention that it will then be easier to sort out issues with articles significantly modified by other editors later on (e.g. you just put a list of references at the bottom, then somebody adds a bunch of stuff and suddenly it appears as the new stuff was taken from one of the sources listed).

1. How to require inline citations - I am against any quantitative numbers, but to require that the articles includes them in general. Moreover, editors should be advised to reference all the important statements that can be contested before submitting to GA, and that any GA reviewer can ask for any statement to be referenced. I believe this should work as a self-regulatory mechanism promoting the real goal of inline citations as defined above, while a formal criterium (like "5 citations per article) can easily go awry and become contested.

1. GA vs. FA - I do agree that the GA criteria mimic the FA criteria very closely because, well, articles that are good are good... I believe the main difference between GA and FA are not the criteria, but rather the review process - while FA is lenghty and detailed process to establish beyond doubt and by means of consensus that an article is really superb, a GA is a fast, no-hassle/no-haggle way to award a "quality mark" to good, complete work thanks to one-person reviews.

sorry, I think and indeed by the way they are stated, the GA and FA criteria are different, and should remain so. All your comments here seem to aimed at making GA into FA and I think that's the wrong way to go. Its fine as it is. pschemp | talk 02:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Implication for long articles - The above does not mean the standards should be lower, or the reviews less thorough. It's quite equivalent to a one-person review in the FA process, perhaps without concerns on the reviewer's side about the "superbness" of the article, but only about compliance with WIAGA. That said, while reviewing a short article is quick and painless, reviewing a long one can be quite a kerfuffle and not anything that you can do in 10 minutes spare time. Therefore, I believe that submitting logn articles should be discouraged as proposed.
   So, what to do with long articles? Well, if they grew so long because they are very thorough and complete articles on a broad topic (I mean one that is not a planteoid you can say everything about in a few paragraphs) - then there is no reason why they shouldn't be submitted for FA. Another situation can be an article that got "heavy" on one aspect of the topic - then, a solution would be to carve out the topic and link to it as "main article", leaving out a "summary section", to create a more balanced good article. The third, and unfortunately the most widely represented group of articles, are the ones that are long but not really up to standards, more of work in progress than complete - as much as the contributions to such articles should be valued, such "unfinished" articles shouldn't be recognized as "good".

I have to comment here. The reason long articles shouldn't be submitted to FA is because they don't meet FA standards. Why waste FA time on something guarenteed not to pass? YOu don't seem to be getting that fact that what can be a GA may not be an FA reagardless of length. Length has nothing to do with how good an article is. pschemp | talk 02:37, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Complete, finished articles - the above brings me to an important notion. IMHO, Good Articles should be complete and finished in the way that in their current state they aren't likely to be expanded any way, and can serve in that state as a really good article on a subject. For example, an article on a less notable musician that does not delve too deep into the intricacies of his/her personal life, musical style etc. but just adequately summarizes his/her career and role in the development of the musical genre is an example. If neither of the editors developing the article sees it fit to further work on it in the forseeable future, they can nominate it for GA. This is actually an interpretation of the "being stable" criterium, and by applying this principle we further fend off the "competition with FA" (as an article that is nearing FA status would not be reviewed, as it is still "work in progress")

I think your interpretation of being stable here is too broad. "aren't likely to be expanded any way" is way too restrictive. They should be able to be expanded, and indeed expanded to meet FA criteria. GA is not the end of the line, again, you seem to be confusing it with FA. pschemp | talk 02:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

1. Competition with FA - still, I understand the concerns of making GA a competitor with FA for the resources such as reviewers' time and attention. I believe the above, and a simple solution, can protect us from this possibility. I.e. when a reviewer sees a good article that is more than just a good article, but a good featured article candidate at that very moment, he/she should suggest to the editors that they make it an FAC immediately. By keeping the article on their watchlist, the GA reviewer can later submit the conclusions of his/her review as a support vote in the FAC process. I would not propose the reviewer to automatically nominate the article for FAC, as there should be a declaration of interest on behalf of an editor in replying to requests and concerns raised in the FAC process. Otherwise, it would be a waste of time of the FA reviewers.

Indeed, right now GA doesn't compete with FA, so why change it? pschemp | talk 02:42, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Regards, Bravada, talk - 01:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Dear Pschemp,

First of all, do excuse me and do not take it too personally, yet I can't help but feel that the way you address other users is the most "aggressive" of all the people taking part in this discussion (I don't mean this section only, but to an even higher extent your previous comments). I was quite surprised to learn that you are an admin - I am more accustomed to admins representing more conciliatory and balanced style. I am also afraid you are jumping to conclusions before reflecting on what the user actually means - in other words, you seem to sometimes not understand other users' intentions. I hope I did not offend you in any way, but please do consider that (but please do not reply, that would be pointless).

Please refer to the discussion above to see how GA and FA criteria are indeed very close to each other, or just compare WIAGA with WIAFA. The differences are mostly in wording and the balance of accents to say so. With small differences (like the "brilliant prose" thing that keeps popping out) they could be probably swapped and work just as well in the other respective role. So, my conclusion is that to look for difference between GA and FA one should not refer to criteria, but to the process. As the criteria can be applied quite liberally by the reviewers, focusing on them would make the implicit statement that they can be applied in a more lenient way to GA than FA, which is why some users here feel the need for some change or perhaps just clarification.

You seem to have misunderstood what I said about long articles. My major point is that the GAC page should discourage the nomination of long articles for the reasons I gave. In some specific cases, long articles are ripe for an FAC, but not always. More often than that, they are just unfinished, and submitting them requires a reviewer to spend a considerable amount of time to prepare a full review just to inform the editors about it. It would be more beneficial if the editors reflected on their articles before nominating, and not just submitted "to see if it passes" or "because they think it is good" (not paying attention to WIAGA). And if the article is really superb, it is also worth checking if it would not also meet FA criteria by the way. As simple as that.

As concerns "stability", I meant that it is a waste of time to submit an article for GA if you are willing to further develop it into an FA. If you feel you are finished with an article, and it is not quite a good FAC, you can see if it is not a good GAN and if you feel so, nominate it. I see quite many articles being submitted being "work in progress", as people misinterpretate the GA->PR->FA chain. A GA has to be balanced on all accounts, while quite many articles submitted are brilliant and quite FA-level on some accounts, but a terrible mess on others. I believe it should be emphasized that GA is not to give an attaboy to people working on articles, but to identify the ones that are good per se (and not because "I've spent so many time working on that").

As to your last comment, some detractors of the original GA idea have always felt and apparently do still feel that GA in a way competes with FA or is redundant given the existence of FA, and I felt the need to address that, as I see the arguments put forward valid. Furthermore, as we are discussing "tightening" the currently quite loose process, it is important to indicate that the proposed changes would not make it competitive with FA either.Bravada, talk - 03:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

weighing in

I'd like to weigh in my thoughts on this -- I also see this process as working fine for the most part and see it as a stepping stone to FA. Being new to WP, I like the tiered process of nominating to GA and seeing if at least one person thought it met the criteria and then getting a peer review and an A-class rating, and then nominating to FA. It's a lot less intimidating and helps encourage article improvement, IMHO. Also, I don't think length should be discouraged. Long articles should be held to the same standards as short ones, and though it does sometimes require more work on the part of the reviewer, the ones that are a mess/work in progress are easy to spot and fail accordingly. I think the definition (and placement in the hierarchy on Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment works really well and makes sense to me. --plange 02:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. While the process can and should be tweaked, there is no reason to go nuts on it and make it more restrictive. GA is meant to be convenient. pschemp | talk 03:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(to Plange) Is there any formal way of attaining an A-Class status then by peer review within a relevant WikiProject that is working using WP 1.0 review standards? Anyway, A-Class is a higher status than GA, so it would be even more desirable to achieve it. Therefore, if the article is becoming long, why not rather submit it for peer review in the WikiProject, where it could be easier to find a user willing to spend an hour or two reviewing a long article on the Finnish Civil War or Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (to use examples of currenlty nominated long articles)? Again, I am not saying that long articles should NOT be reviewed in the GA process (I might have suggested so before, but above I acknowledge that I was convinced this is not the good way to deal with the issue), I am saying that, as long articles require much more time to review than their comparative length might imply, and therefore augment the backlog further (and we are now trying to find ways to trim down backlog effectively without copromising the integrity of the GA process), it would be good to advise the users submitting long articles of the above. Please bear in mind that the process was designed with short articles in mind, and not surprisingly long articles cause some problems when being subject to such process. Bravada, talk - 03:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

For most WikiProjects A-class is assigned by reviewers during peer review, except for WP:MILHIST, which has a formal process requiring 3 support votes, etc. A-class is higher than GA and is generally reserved for articles that are better than GA and are a hair's breadth away from being FA. I really think the distinctions already enumerated on Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment are still valid and useful and clearly shows where GA falls in the hierarchy. Perhaps we do this: If others agree with my statement above that badly-formed long articles are easy to spot (no references, not a single inline citation, a 1 sentence lead or no lead at all (I've seen 'em!), chaotic layout), that we do an immediate fail (no hold). This clears out ones that are clearly a work in progress and keeps the flow going and doesn't obligate the reviewer to do a more in depth review. If in scanning a long one it appears in a quick scan that it's well-formed etc and could possibly be A-class, we put it on hold and ask the nominator if they are willing to go through the peer review process instead, i.e. "This has the potential for being an A-class article and eventually FA, I'm thinking you should probably skip to this step and do a peer review" etc. If they are newbie's and still want to "test the waters" and get the GA first, then we oblige.... --plange 03:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

pschamp writes "GA is meant to be convenient." But it's not. It's meant to be a recognition of Good Articles. Original research is convenient. Failing to cite sources is convenient. Watching "House" is convenient. Writing well, to standards, is damnably hard work. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 04:14, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Words of wisdom here. Everybody please do read and consider! Bravada, talk - 04:24, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Registered user thing

I was a bit curious myself when I read that in the rules, how long had we had that rule? I might be forgetting some conversation from a really long time ago.... Homestarmy 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know for how long but I didn't know about it either. Maybe we ought to drop a line somewhere when these changes are made so that we don't loose track of what is asked of nominators & reviewers. Lincher 12:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Intro wording

A couple of weeks ago, someone (ironically, an IP user) altered the "How to nominate a page" section to say that only registered users can nominate articles. While that might help keep the nonsense to a lower level, it certainly wasn't discussed or, in fact, even mentioned in the edit summary. It just happened, and I didn't notice (did anyone?) until Tarret removed a few just now. Here's the diff:[1].

Anyway, I've returned the wording to the way it's always been and replaced the nominations. I don't see any discussion about it and, much as I hate to say it, anons can do pretty much anything on Wikipedia. If they can nominate FACs, they can certainly nominate GAs. Kafziel 00:34, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

As a supporter, in most cases, of anonymous editing, I am happy to see this change reverted. While there are good reasons from limiting the ability of anons to review articles, I don't see the harm in letting them nominate them. Eluchil404 00:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Eluchil404. pschemp | talk 03:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Wording change

Ok I went bold and rouge and made the change to simplify the stated purpose of GA. I'm not adverse to tweaking it if it needs it, but this is the general change I was suggesting. It now reads:

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable 
featured article candidates at the current time.

The makes the length argument a moot point, and explains that while these articles are good, they are not ready to be FAs, though they may become one in the future. I think the previous statement kind of hinted that GAs can never become FAs and that's not quite right. I think this states the current usage of this a place for good articles who aren't ready or suitable for FA in a manner more in line with reality. Its useless to state why each and every article is not ready for FA, the important thing is that they posess good content, which is the focus of this entire project. Good content is the raison d'etre for GA. pschemp | talk 02:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Now all you guys have to work out is what to require/not require in the way of citations and we're good. :) pschemp | talk 03:01, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Pschemp, you have clearly mistaken being bold for chaning Wikipedia policies/guidelines without consensus. We have just established that another changes made to GA "main pages" (WP:GA, WIAGA and GAC) without consensus were bad practice. If you want to change the principles by which GA work, and which were set out by the GA founders, "being bold" and changing them single-handedly is not the best way. Do propose your changes, but do not force them. And also do pay attention to what the other users say. Thanks, Bravada, talk - 03:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You need to read WP:BOLD. I am not doing anything in an underhanded way. I invited discussion here, and already proposed my change many paragraphs above. No one said don't do it. I did and do pay attention to what other users say, and no one said it was a bad idea. In fact, Lincher said he would do it but was afraid of getting yelled at. How about instead of yelling at me and calling my actions "bad", you discuss it constructively? As for the GA founders, a wiki is a dynamic thing. Their word is not sacred, and as projects change, we changes things to reflect practice. This happens in policy wording all the time which is much closer to being "sacred". In fact, three editors agreed with me, and one disagreed. That looks like consensus to me. pschemp | talk 03:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

OK, your proposition of changing wording had obviously slipped my attention due to the pace at which this discussion progresses, now I have found it. Of course I am against it (and I would have expressed that earlier if not for it not coming to my attention), so there is no consensus, and therefore I believe it would be good practice not to change anything. Even though the wording is not sacred, we are discussing a fundamental thing here - is GA to become some "midway" status for articles in development, or a way to distinguish really good articles which could not be distinguished in the most prominent way (FA). I am all for the latter - the WP 1.0 assessment scheme is for assessing articles "in development", the GA status seems to me to be shoehorned there (I'd put it above A-Class if you'd ask me). And if we are to change it the way you propose, we need a similar process for A-Class status, otherwise it doesn't make sense. Bravada, talk - 03:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I still see 4 editors who agree and 2 who don't. That is consensus. Consensus doesn't mean unanimous, it means most people support it. GA is both a midpoint and a place for articles that can't make FA, and that's fine. Why restrict it to one or the other? Like i said, it doesn't matter why articles aren't FA, it matters that their content is good. As for A-class, its nice you want to relate the two projects, but they aren't related and what happens here requires nothing there. pschemp | talk 04:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

My understanding of consensus is striving to find a solution that satisfies all parties. Now we are on the stage where we have just stated our diverging views, then I think we have to discuss until we find a solution I mentioned, that would be a consensus. I believe only after a really lenghty discussion when it becomes clear that such a solution cannot be found the "majority" principle should be put to use to avoid gridlocks. The current majority is hardly overwhelming, so I find it hard to accept that a consensus is found. Bravada, talk - 04:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Are you kidding me? Really lengthy discussions are required now? This change makes the words reflect what is currently being done. It doesn't change anything about what GA will be in the future. Why should we have an outdated description? I'm sorry you don't accept the consensus, but a supermajority is not a requirement. It seems to me that your goal is to make this a complicated process when simplification is what's called for. pschemp | talk 04:10, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'll second that. Seacrest... out. Kafziel 04:15, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I am not trying to make it a complicated process, I am calling for it to be more consistent. Currently it is like "oh well, this article is good so let's pass it". I don't think the GA tag is worth much therefore. The criteria are being constantly ignored in this part or another. I do believe they set quite a high standard, and indeed close to FA in many respects, but what gives if they are not applied. Again, if you want to push, I will back off. I am having enough stress with dealing with that discussion after the last few posts. I guess I will just have to join the group of grumblers who say that "GA has no value", and at least I will have the nice feeling of being among the majority. Sun has just rised (?) where I live, so I wish everybody a good day. Bravada, talk - 04:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Honestly I think that making sure GAs really are GAs is a good idea, but I think you just got mixed up, because that's not what the wording change adresses, that's a whole different issue. I understand your point, its just that that has nothing to do with the change of words. Keep that thought, it needs to be adressed, just not in this discussion. (Though personally I *don't think* that people are passing stuff arbitrarily, but like I said, that's a different topic.) pschemp | talk 04:25, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

To me GA is a stepping stone to FA... articles go through a progression of goodness from stubs to good enough (and new enough) for DYK, to "B class" to GA to FA. Not every article can or should make it all the way to FA. But I think that length has nothing to do with anything and I support this change. That FA seems to focus on long articles is a flaw in the FA process and should have no bearing here. ++Lar: t/c 03:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the stepping stone thing. I think GA is an excellent way of rewarding very good articles which are perhaps not yet outstanding. I've also found GA to be a far more useful system on the road to FA than peer review is; we tend to get either confirmation of quality or a full and practical list of what's wrong with an article, and quickly. 1/3 of the articles within the scope of WP:KLF have the GA badge and it's been such a boost to us to get some feedback and quality recognition before going through the long, stressful FAC process. --kingboyk 12:54, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, for all comments regarding the "long article issue", do read what I say above carefully to see why this issue popped out at all. Bravada, talk - 03:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I read what you said and I am afraid I do not agree with you. The change pschemp made is a good one and will, in my view, improve things. The stuff you are talking about seems to be bound and determined to turn GA into a junior FA. GA needs to be a convenient and less stringent process than FA. Also I think you may have misthreaded my comment a bit by putting your chronologically later one in front of mine, but no matter. ++Lar: t/c 04:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the proposed change is a good one. A simple scale with small graduations of recognised quality backed by an increasingly-rigorous peer-review system seems a very good way of increasing the quality of Wikipedia's content. TimVickers 04:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree with TimVickers. --NoahElhardt 05:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I second Lar's statement but will qualify it by saying it's less stringent and so because of that it's more convenient, as it's a good way to get good articles recognized during their progression up to being excellent articles (FA). Length should not matter --plange 04:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

And why are you so afraid of "junior FA"? Secondly, why do you believe that "less stringent" is better? And in what way should GA be less stringent - please be specific? Bravada, talk - 05:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

No one is afraid of Junior FA, but Junior FA is a duplication of effort that isn't neccessary. Alos, Plange is talking about what GA is now, not what it should be. Right NOW, it is less stringent than FA and that's a good thing so that articles not up to FA can get recognized. Please understand we are talking about present tense, not future. pschemp | talk 05:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I am talking future tense because it is "to change" or "not to change" and I believe a change is necessary, as a combination of "less stringent" and "convenient" produced "careless and of little value". Secondly, by "Junior FA" I understand "also stringent and thus also recognized and of much value and meaning" but with less kerfuffle and for articles that are "junior" to their FA cousins, to say so. Bravada, talk - 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(To Plange) And why do you believe we should recognize articles on their way to FA? If they are on their way, let them reach the destination! Articles reach FA in a million billion ways, I am for example working on an article that I develop section by section, so it is partially up to (my private) "FAC standard", and partially totally in shambles. It will never be a "GA but not FA". Creating a GA in the process of creating an FA requires some divertion, as it requires to even out, cut corners etc. and create a good article - which means it is not simply a step in the development, it is a separate thing. It might happen on the way to FA, it might happen because there isn't nobody interested in developing it into FA, it might happen because developing the article into an FA is impossible. How it happens is not important. To what standards we hold GA is. Bravada, talk - 05:04, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what happens to an article after GA, the point is to recognize it as good. Anything after that is out of the scope of this project and needs to remain so for simplicity's sake.GA is often a step in the development, but it also doesn't have to be. GA works for both, that is the beauty of it. Why should we change this process? Some people have the time to get an article to GA, but not to FA. Why should we not then recognize it? pschemp | talk 05:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I am in absolute agreement with you - GA is a very good way of recognizing really good articles that nobody had the time to do the tideous work to developed into a full-fledged FAs, but are really up to high standards nonetheless and can serve as examples of, well, really good WP articles. And the process itself should not change (one person nominates, another reviews, fails or promotes, and yet another can delist), it is only that it becomes ineffective because of some more minor flaws resulting from imprecise definitions and poor information which we I believe we should rectify. One sign of something being wrong with GA is the proliferation of not-quite-up-to-standard articles on the list, another is the growing queue. We can purge the GA list and do away with backlog for the time being, but I believe we should make sure we also try to get rid of the causes of both. Which is what I am trying to develop solutions for in this discussion, and I have been believing so are others. Bravada, talk - 05:26, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Bravada, you are going to get your wish for a lengthy discussion because you keep going off topic. I don't think you understand how GA is currently used in practice, and that this change reflects that. If you want to change GA totally, start a new topic about changing it, but right now we are discussing what it *is* currently. I don't, however see a consensus for drastically changing how GA works. Other than you and Marskell, everyone else thinks its fine, with maybe a few tweaks, but not a large overhaul. Everything you are talking about adds complication to what is fundamentally a simple process and should remain so. pschemp | talk 05:19, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

And I thought it was me who was getting overly personal here... Anyway, what else can I say is read the above paragraph and do not try to imply things I didn't said just because I didn't agree with you before. You might hate me with vengeance but let's not try to go overboard in twisting the discussion to push our point forward, ok? If you prove to me in discussion that my point is wrong, I will gladly concede. But if you are going to imply that my point is different then it is just to make it easier for you to dismiss, I will not be too satisfied with it.

Read the above and please do not claim that I am going off topic, do not understand how GA works (it actually works in a million billion ways, as every reviewer understands it a bit different) and that I want to add complication. Thanks. Bravada, talk - 05:30, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You are going off topic. You are discussing what GA could be, not what it is and what it is right now is the point of the word change. You are also interpreting my comments way too personally, I am trying to explain to you what is going on, that doesn't mean I hate you or any such thing. You comments are not making sense in the current context, and as such I simply suggested you move them to another place, where they can be discussed properly. Unless you have another comment about the wording change, complaints about how GA works and what is effective do not belong in this section. This section is for discussing that word change only. If you think GA is working terribly, start another discussion somewhere else, but this is not the place for it. I don't know how to make that any clearer. pschemp | talk 05:38, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You have established a discussion on a wording change that you yourself have said would make much of the above discussion pointless. I don't think it is pointless and I believe we should focus on the principle - establish how GA should work in detail - then propose specific changes to wording here and there and then implement. Bravada, talk - 05:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(Edit Conflict)I'm not going to comment on recent exchanges, but do wish to clarify that what is under discussion in this sub section is whether or not to change the wording (that GA is for short articles) to reflect current practice. Let's have a straw poll for the proposed change, which is:

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are not suitable 
featured article candidates at the current time.

Voting is evil. Its not neccessary here. So far on this page 7 people have supported the change and 2 have disagreed. (not including Noah who voted before I could put this message up) There is no need to make everyone come by and comment again. We are certainly capable of keeping track of who said what. Everyone has already stated clearly that they agree or disagree. Disregarding their opinion because they don't come back to say the same thing over again is silly. pschemp | talk 05:52, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

People who supported - I won't remove their comments, but a poll isn't neccessary. pschemp | talk 05:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

1. plange 05:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
2. NoahElhardt 05:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC) , see comment below

Although I support this version as being better than the old one, it still falls short of a good definition. Merely having "excellent content" is not enough to merit being a good article. I recent failed an article that had a lot of excellent content, but in which most of that excellent content was focused on area, making the article rather one-sided. Also, the "excellent content" was not cited. Maybe we could expand the definition further, to match WP:WIAGA? --NoahElhardt 05:51, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Noah on the above and disagree with Pschemp on the below ;) Bravada, talk - 05:58, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Well that's what the rest of the page does, it explains excellent content, or should. The intro needs to be a short summary of this. Details go below in the explanation. An entire essay about what a good article is shouldn't be the firs tthing that greets people. pschemp | talk 05:55, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Essay should not, better wording should. Many people nominate articles believing they have "excellent content", to say so, and they are sometimes right in their belief, but wrong in thinking this is enough to make a GA. One can surely develop a good, concise, one-sentence explanation that would be more precise and unambigious. Bravada, talk - 06:06, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm all for wording it better, but the only difference between the proposed change and the current one is the omission of this phrase only: "- primarily because they are not very long" so the "excellent content" part is pre-existing. In the interest of moving this forward, how about this?

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured articles. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)

I just took out the same phrase and re-worked first clause. If this doesn't suit, please propose alternatives --plange 06:12, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that's a very good proposition, I was just wondering whether we could somehow direct people to read WIAGA right from there. Thanks for coming up with that! Bravada, talk - 06:23, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! How about the change I made of just linking "good quality"? Or we can put in parentheses directly after: (according to specific criteria) --plange 06:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(tally at this point, 8 for, 2 against) pschemp | talk 05:57, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

(To pschemp) Sorry, was just trying to bring focus back to the question at hand. Was not implying that people had to come back, etc., or we'd disregard their opinion. In other areas where lengthy discussions are going on with a lack of focus I've found that clarifying and simplifying question at hand does wonders in focusing everyone. --plange 06:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Np. Only one editor was not focused, so I didn't think we needed to do something redundant. I think this needs to say "are not suitable featured article candidates" otherwise it gives the impression that GAs will *never* be FAs. And we are talking about candidates here, since GAs are not even candidates for FA, that's why they are here. If they are suitable featured article candidates they go there, not here. pschemp | talk 06:27, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Good point, how about this then?

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)

--plange 06:32, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Pschemp is absolutely right, it slipped my attention that it didn't say "candidates". I'd say let's accept it for the time being and try to work on a version that would point to WIAGA, because it is still not obvious that there are criteria, and many people are likely to read just that, if anything at all. Bravada, talk - 06:46, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. Btw, I would also suggest removing the link to list of reviewers (it is not in your proposition, but it is on the GAC page) while we are at it, I believe it is redundant.

How about this:

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)

--plange 06:50, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Support Bravada, talk - 07:16, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Holy smokes, a great deal of discussion over a small wording change. In the most recent version I still wonder if "not suitable" is really what is intended. Some articles never will be. Some just aren't yet but might be at some future point (remember, I regard GA as in some cases part of a progression to FA) ++Lar: t/c 17:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC).

Well, I think the intro needs to remain simple and "not suitable" is deliberately vague so that it can apply to the different reasons why it might not be suitable, without overburdening a quick and dirty intro with a bunch of clauses. If the current draft isn't suitable, please propose a new alternative draft. The only way I can see to incorporate that concern without over-burdening intro is this:

Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles considered to be of good quality (according to specific criteria), but which are unlikely to be suitable featured article candidates either at present or ever. The system is unbureaucratic: everyone can nominate good articles, and anyone who has not significantly contributed to an article can review it. This list is for proposing possible promotion of articles to the community for consideration. (Consider joining Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles if you are doing lots of reviewing!)

--plange 18:13, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

<sigh> Really? We have to talk more about this, just because one person regards GA as part of the FA process, even if nobody at FA does? Come on—let's just get this done with already. No more alternatives, no more suggestions; everyone has already voiced their support of the previous one. That "either at present or ever" thing is pretty shoddy; your last one was fine. Instructions and guidelines don't have to cover every possible semantic objection. Kafziel 18:21, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I certainly agree, I was just trying to set an example that if you disagree with something, give an alternative. I think the previous was fine too. So, do we think we've reached a consensus? I know the major objector (Bravada) has weighed in with his support, so should we go ahead and change, or give it more time? Though, just for the record, Lar was not one of the people in the group you described above. --plange 18:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I made the change. We have consensus. Twice over in fact with the discussion of it below. pschemp | talk 03:54, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Citation of sources should be required for GA

Criterion 2b of WP:WIAGA has been reverted back to the original version. I would like to note again that the original version is ambiguous, in fact contradictory. We say the citation of sources is essential (this effectively means “required” to me). WP:CITE gives three ways to cite sources. Then in the next clause we say “inline citations” are not mandatory. This is contradictory because the three ways to cite sources are “inline citations”. So we either say that WP:CITE is a requirement or it is not. Here is my proposal for the change of criterion 2b to remove the ambiguity:

the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style

No mention is made of the number of citations required. That decision, of course, is left to the authors. It could be 1, it could be 100, but here is where the GA reviewer will need to judge. Contentious articles will need a high density of citations, less contentious a lower density. Please comment on the proposal.

The whole issue of requiring the citation of sources in Good Articles is a no-brainer in my opinion. When I was 16, my teachers required that we cite sources (i.e., provide footnotes and not just a list of references at the end) in our little 5-page, double-spaced papers. For good reason: to teach kids how to make quality, reliable, verifiable reports. Surely we should require citations in Good Articles! RelHistBuff 09:39, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree with this and having seen somewhere that there are 230k plus articles in WP that don't even have a reference section, we ought to show the example. It should be a criterion that is necessary when writing to show that it is not OR, verifiable & NPOV statements. Lincher 12:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I think this is obvious enough that it doesn't need to be discussed, particularly since WP:WIAGA already says sources are essential. Verifiability is policy, not a suggestion. Sources are required for every article, so it stands to reason that they're required for good ones. This just restates WP:CITE and the GA convention as it already is, but if it makes everyone happy, I guess I support. Kafziel 13:08, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure I agree with this, sometimes articles have both the purple ref numbers and the blue ref numbers, and sometimes articles divvy up things between notes and references for some reason. Does it really have to be consistant to be good? Homestarmy 13:07, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Not sure what you mean by purple numbers and blue numbers. Footnotes and references should generally be in separate sections anyway, though; as I understand it, that doesn't conflict with keeping a consistent style throughout the article. Kafziel 13:48, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

The problem if you mix styles is the numbering. Embedded links have one set of numbering and cite.php footnotes has another set of numbering. So mixing them will result in two sets of cite numbers. Not very clean. Having references lists at the bottom along with the citations is ok (see relevant section on this. They shouldn't be divvied up. The information is repeated. However, in the case of Harvard referencing the reference list is absolutely required and is not optional (well we require it in criterion 2a anyway).

By the way, Kafziel, since you objected to inline citations, I am not certain if you understood the proposal. The statement effectively requires "inline citations" because it requires the use of one of the three citation styles (of which all three are inline citations!). RelHistBuff 13:56, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

But it does not require every statement be explicitly sourced, which is an important distinction. In your explanation you said, "No mention is made of the number of citations required. That decision, of course, is left to the authors. It could be 1, it could be 100, but here is where the GA reviewer will need to judge. Contentious articles will need a high density of citations, less contentious a lower density." So long as we are not requiring the use of {{cite}} and are not being unreasonable as to the amount of inline cites needed, I don't have a problem with it. As I said yesterday, I like them. Kafziel 14:13, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

How can an article qualify as "good" if it doesn't even qualify as "acceptable"?

At WP:V, it says "Wikipedia:Verifiability is one of Wikipedia's three content-guiding policies. The other two are Wikipedia:No original research and Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Jointly, these policies determine the type and quality of material that is acceptable in the main namespace."

Every fact stated needs to be supported by a reliable source. If you're doing a comparison, you may need multiple multiple cites for a single sentence, e.g., "The principle agricultural exports of Moldavia are cinnamon (43% of GNP)³, horseradish (41% of GNP)⁴ and velcro (191% of GNP)⁵" If "everybody knows" something is true, then there's no reason to mention it. The Water article doesn't mention that water is wet, after all. If something needs to be said, however, then it needs to be supported by a reliable source. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 18:41, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

You seem to be confusing verifiability with citing sources. Every statement must be verifiable but that does not mean that every statement must list a source. The policy doesn't say everything must be "instantly and easily verifiable"; it's up to the reader to verify most things on their own. Just because a statement does not explicity list a source for you doesn't mean you are unable to verify it. You just need to put forth the effort. In the case of something that is especially likely to be contentious, it's generally a good idea to help people find the source. But not listing a source does not mean a statement isn't verifiable. If the verifiability and citations were one and the same, they would be part of the same policy. They're not. Kafziel 18:53, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Which part of It says that 2. Editors adding new material to an article should cite a reputable source, or it may be challenged or removed by any editor. are you missing?

There are three policies. The NOR policy says you can't insert something simply because it's true; it has to have been published by a reputable source. The RS policy says you can't insert something simply because it's true; it has to have been published by a reputable source. The V policy says you can't insert something simply becaue it's true; you have to show that it's been published by a reputable source. After being beaten over the head three times, we're supposed to pretend that it's not necessary to back up facts by citing where it's been published by a reputable source? Tell me, if it's not necessary to cite where each fact has been published by a reputable source, what do you think those three policies are saying? ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 00:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

If it's not necessary to show cite sources, why don't we just put a link on the sidebar to google, and tell users to check things out for themselves. And while we're at it, why not just redirect users to Google in the first place, if we're not going to be a reliable source for information? ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 00:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, the old "What's the point of Wikipedia if..." etc, etc, etc. Always just a matter of time before that comes up. Look: Verifiable information and verification handed to someone on a silver platter simply are not the same thing. That's a fact. All information should be verifiable, and all information taken from a particular source should cite that source in some type of reference section. Beyond that, if there is some specific point that may cause doubt or controversy, it's a good idea to be specific as possible to avoid potential conflict. I don't know what style guide you're using, but I've never seen one that would require specific cites for each and every statement made. There's no such thing. "Oranges are orange. {{cite}}" "A bicycle has two wheels {{cite}}". That's absurd, distracting, annoying, and pointless. Those are statements. They are able to be verified. But they do not require specific citations. The point of NOR is that all content on Wikipedia needs to be backed up by a reputable source; the point of NOR is not that said source must be reiterated at each and every sentence. If you don't like that, there's not much I can do to help you. This simply isn't the place to get up on a soapbox and try to change Wikipedia. Kafziel 06:06, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

But oranges aren't orange - they're sprayed with color before they hit the supermarket. But the fact is, if a statement isn't backed up by a cite, WP:V says any editor may remove it with no other justification than lack of a cite. Are you proposing to change the Good Article criteria to eliminate the requirement that the article be stable? Yes, there's an exception for repairing vandalism, but IT'S NOT VANDALISM TO DELETE STATEMENTS WITHOUT CITATION.

If you don't like that, there's not much I can do to help you. This simply isn't the place to get up on a soapbox and try to change Wikipedia. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 06:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see how anything you just said has anything to do with anything I said. You're arguing about the color of oranges, then about vandalism, then about the stability requirement. What are you talking about?? All it looks like to me is that you tried to change the subject three times in one paragraph. Impressive effort, but it in no way defends your position. This citing sources after every sentence thing of yours has no support from the community or in any guideline or policy. My position—citing sources at reasonable intervals and more often where needed—is the standard at CITE, WIAGA, and FA. Kafziel 14:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

There are two other reasons at least for inline citation, and they are more important in the scholarly community than verifiability.

1. To give credit to the person who did the research we rely upon.
2. To help a curious reader find their way to resources, both printed and online, that will give them more info about a subject.

While I'm not so much a citation stick-in-the-mud that I want to see hundreds per article (only the most hotly contested need that kind of work) I think it is reasonable to ask for at least one cite per section of an article. Am I alone in this?--CTSWyneken^(talk) 12:22, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

That's pretty much what I've been saying. Regular intervals, more as needed. Despite what ClairSamoht seems to think, I do value inline citations. I always use them, and I prefer to see them in other articles. Just not after every single statement. Kafziel 14:24, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think it is pretty obvious for everybody here that citing sources should be a GA requirement, so I think we agree in principle. I don't think, however, that any "formal" requirement like "one inline citation per section" makes much sense. I'd say - the articles has to include inline citations (that makes two inline citations per article enough actually for those who are afraid of swarms of them), but the reviewer can ask for any statement to be "inline cited" and the editors that want an article to be promoted should be advised that it's better to have all potentially questionable statements referenced beforehand.
From my own experience I have to say that it is not that hard to have a whole article referenced. Most sources dealing with the subject will in this way or another include obvious information such as "Celine Dion is a singer" etc., so when you have a section that includes many non-controversial and obvious statements, you just need one citation at the end of a paragraph. Bravada, talk - 15:16, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

As a new member of this project, who is confused by this long-and-never-ending discussion, let us make this as a consensus. Inline citation is required for GA. I agree with Bravada. Good Article is supposed to be unbureaucratic process, which is why I joined this project. — Indon (reply) — 16:38, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

Is everyone ok with the formulation above? It wikilinks to WP:CITE and requires the selection of one of the three specific inline citation styles. I did not wikilink it to WP:IC as it is only an essay. If there are no serious objections by Monday, then I will modify criterion 2b. RelHistBuff 20:50, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

The three inline citation styles mentioned in WP:CITE are Embedded HTML links, Harvard referencing, and Footnotes. But is <ref>[http://www.farmland.org/programs/documents/Mid-Atlantic_Forum_Summary.pdf Mid-Atlantic Farm Policy Leadership Forum]</ref> considered to be acceptable footnoting? I consider it to be, since it says exactly where the information came from, but I've seen reviewers claim that to be inadequate, in effect demanding that one buy a copy of the Chicago Manual Of Style in order to figure out what is acceptable. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 22:14, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

My guess is that most people don't have a problem with the format of the link, but rather with the content - websites are often considered questionable unless they are a copy of a peer-reviewed publication. If you need style help though, there's no need to buy any books - all the information is online. Try Wikipedia:Reference, APA, MLA, and Chicago. --NoahElhardt 22:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with the wording of the above criterion in that it lets reviewers the previlege to request citations for biaised/NOR/V facts. It also clearly says that we need to have WP's GA have citations even though we don't have a requirement of how many or what style should be used.

A consensus has been reached 2 times over the fact that we need to change the current policy, once before I changed the wording that was reverted and now with the current thread. Please be bold and make the change and we will have to live with this new criterion even if we like it or not. We are also a project that helps show the way to FA/A-class and this is a logical requirement especially because more than 50% of the work on WP doesn't cite their source. Lincher 22:56, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

A consensus has been reached that a change is necessary, but a consensus has NOT been reached as to what change is necessary. I want to see it spelled out, whether showing exactly where the fact comes from is sufficient, if it is necessary to use highly-formatted cites that provide all sorts of extraneous data, such as the date you accessed the URL, the name of the author, and what color his belly-button lint is. It's pretty obvious which way I lean on this issue, but I'm flexible on the details; it's ambiguity that I object to. If we're going to require APA, Chicago, or MLA, we need to say so. If we only require that sources to be cited in a consistant manner throughout the article, we need to say that, too. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 00:08, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I think GA already does expect a consistent citation style/systems within a single article, as few articles are passed without the style being made consistent. The various systems (general source, links, harvard, cite, ref/note, and some hybrid systems) and various style handbooks have different uses appropriate to different subjects, so specifying one particular style might fight against the dynamics of certain subjects. I wouldn't want to rule out articles with good old plain html links. Gimmetrow 01:27, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I am quite surprised that, while exhibiting the link to WikiProject Fact and Reference Check in your sig, you have a problem with using Template:cite web and similar. I found them pretty easy to use and not overly fussy, and I am the laziest Wikipedia editor ever. I guess if WP allows all three formats, we have no reason to require a specific one, though I'd say I have serious problems with accepting "embedded links" as proper citations (not even providing the access date those are pretty worthless), but that's a more general issue.
In conclusion, do we finally agree that we require Good Articles to contain inline citations and that the reviewer can ask for any info in the article to be referenced specifically to a source? Bravada, talk - 01:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I see it more like this then (sorry for the wording ... I'm bad at writing criteria) :

the citation of its sources is required with the consistent use of one citation style, as such, a reviewer may request uniformization of or additional citations

Lincher 01:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Keep in mind that some editors split text comments from citations, and use different systems for each, e.g. Harvard for citations and cite.php for comments. Will this be considered a "consistent use of one citation style"? Gimmetrow 01:57, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

If you are saying that people use cite.php for inline citations/notes than it is ok since we are discussing inline citations and this is using one style. As for a section which is called reference and only bulk dumps the references used than another system may be used, that doesn't matter. Lincher 12:21, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Just one small remark, as I'm confused with this discussion. When I read 3 different citation styles in WP:CITE, all of them are inline citation, CMIIW. If you use embedded citations, you must put it in the article, thus it's inline. If you use Harvard referencing, then you must put (Author, Year) cite format in the article to point to one of the reference in the References section. Thus it is also inline. The cite.php footnote style also yields an inline citation automatically.

So, the WP:CITE as also one of Manual of Style guideline will create automatically inline citations. No matter which style you use. If an editor only puts list of bibliography in the References section, does (s)he follows one of the citation style? I don't think so. This is just my two cents' worth. — Indon (reply) — 13:06, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, you got it. That is exactly what is meant. There seems to be a mistaken impression on other talk pages that "inline citations" only means the cite.php footnote method. That is not true. Both Harvard and embedded links are also considered "inline citations". There is also a mistaken impression that placing just a reference list satisfies Harvard style citation. It does not. One has to put cite info in parenthetical elements next to the assertion (hence making it "inline").

In answer to Gimmetrow, mixing styles is not a good idea. For example, if you mix embedded links with cite.php footnotes, you get two sets of cite numbering (1,2,3,...) in the article which is quite confusing. The example you gave is interesting, however, because Harvard style is purely for citations while cite.php can be used for both citations and comments. If an article has a mix of citations and comments, and since it is easy to convert Harvard citations to cite.php, then my response would be the article must use cite.php in order to stay in one style. Yes, it may be a little work for an editor, but again we are trying to set good standards.

As for other formats than those three, I think we must stay silent on this. We should stick to what is current accepted policy (and guideline) on Wikipedia. As everyone knows, WP:CITE is a guideline for Wikipedia in general. What the formulation above is saying is that WP:CITE is now a policy (a requirement) for Good Articles. RelHistBuff 15:40, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Since even FA allows hybrid citation systems, so should GA. A hybrid system, applied logically, should be a perfectly valid style, and in some cases may even be the best solution. Excluding them would not be setting a good standard. Gimmetrow 18:03, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

If FA allows multiple citation styles, then surely GA should too. Homestarmy 18:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

For reference, the kind of hybrid system I mean can be seen in the FA Rabindranath Tagore. A simpler version in a non-FA can be found in List of rare baseball events. Also note that WP:CITE specifically mentions using cite.php with Harvard. Gimmetrow 18:56, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

How about this:

2. (b) the citation of its sources using inline citations is mandatory

WP:CITE spells out usage and what is acceptable and how things should be consistent, etc. --plange 19:52, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Oppose. It doesn't say what's acceptable and what isn't. I'd much prefer something like

Any consistant citation style may be used to cite the source for the article's content, as long as the source for any given content is identifiable.

I'm not really thrilled with my wording; I'm pretty sure someone else can come up a more elegant statement. But I'd like the sense that editors don't have to use APA/Harvard/Chicago or some other citation style more appropriate to research papers than to an encyclopedia. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 20:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I disagree. WP:CITE itself does say what is acceptable and what isn't. We can use one of three styles:

• Embedded HTML links,
• Harvard referencing, and
• Footnotes.

--plange 21:30, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Please, as WP:CITE is an official policy of Wikipedia, we must choose one of the three styles there, like it or not. I agree with plange proposal above, but a bit change of wording not to use inline citations phrase to wikilink to WP:CITE, as there is one essay (not a policy) about it in WP:IC. — Indon (reply) — 23:51, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Er, no. Not even WP:WIAFA requires an article to follow one citation method strictly. The only thing that is desired is consistency within an article, whether it is by Cite.php, Harvard refs, footnotes, hybrid systems, or some other contraptions we haven't thought of. Titoxd^(?!?) 23:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

In that case, we definitely DO NOT have consensus. Someone listed List of rare baseball events as an article which doesn't have embedded HTML links, nor Harvard referencing, nor footnotes, yet very clearly is doing an adequate of citing the sources used for each rare event.

OTOH, this conforms to Cite:php (which is NOT official policy) but it doesn't do an adequate job of citing the sources for content:

<ref>World Book Encyclopedia</ref>

I would argue that

<ref>[http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html How to store apples for a long long time]</ref>

is quite satisfactory, but the person who reviewed the Johnny Appleseed article found it unacceptable; he demanded that it be in a different format, but when I asked him what formats were acceptable, and which formats were not, he couldn't answer that.

WP:CITE does NOT say that complex APA-style citations like

<ref>''How to store apples for a long long time.'' '''Retrieved September 5, 2006 from [http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/fallick41.html]'''</ref>

are necessary, but obviously SOMETHING is necessary. The whole point of having criteria for GA is that we don't have one reviewer looking at an article and saying, "Looks good to me" and another saying, "Obviously unacceptable", but with ambiguous statements like what you're proposing, that's exactly what we will have. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 00:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

For the matter, cite.php is a technique/program that helps when citing sources and it is not required by anyone. It is although easy to format references with it and that is why it is used throughout WP. When using such a tool, an editor will choose the footnotes or embedded HTML links (in a way that it is more readable). In that case, the editor will then be using on of the required format.

Can we have plange's criterion as it is easily understandable and doesn't include Wikipedia:Citing sources and Wikipedia:Reliable sources which are not policies as of now with the latter being almost universally recognized and the former being only partially accepted among editors. Lincher 02:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I believe we have at least partial consensus. From this discussion it is clear everyone agrees that:

• Citation of sources is required

Where we do not have consensus:

• Citation of sources requiring consistent use of one style
• Citation of sources using styles other than the three listed in WP:CITE
• Additional requirements regards to the citation of sources

So for the moment, I will change 2b to be just what we have agreed and will use a slight modification of plange's formulation. "Citation" wikilinks to the WP:CITE and "inline citations" wikilinks to the specific section of the article.

the citation of its sources using inline citations is required

We can continue discussion on the other issues and change 2b accordingly. RelHistBuff 07:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Concerning consistent use of one citation style, although FA do not require them de jure, it is for all intents and purposes de facto. In any case, we could decide on our own whether to require consistency of one style, i.e., we can move ahead of FA, I am sure they will follow ;-) I am certain any editorial board would frown on the idea of mixing citation styles. And IMHO, the FA example of Rabindranath Tagore looks like an editor's nightmare with Greek letters for comment footnotes and then within the comment footnotes, the authors' included citation footnotes. Ugh, footnotes of footnotes! I would still advocate one consistent style per article.

Concerning ClairSamoht point about providing web access dates, there is a guideline about providing a web access date for a web citation. Since we use WP:CITE as our standard, then we don't need to repeat it in WP:WIAGA. RelHistBuff 08:36, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, FA "de facto" requires a consistent style, but a hybrid system is a consistent style. Restricting an article to exactly one of the three systems listed in WP:CITE is a rather narrow idea of consistency, not supprted by FA or by WP:CITE itself. As for Rabindranath Tagore, perhaps the notes should have used Roman letters rather than Greek, but none of the reviewers raised any objections about the note system. It was promoted five months ago. Gimmetrow 11:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Style guides

The way I read the styles guides and policies, references are required, an editor can feel free to remove anything from an article that is not sourced via some sort of inline citation and articles without any references at all may be recommended for deletion. No specific style is required and consisency in style is encouraged. Am I correct? --CTSWyneken^(talk) 11:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think that goes a bit far. References are required by WP:V. An editor may "freely" remove unsourced negative statements in biographies of living people. However, "sourced" does not mean only inline citations - not that this is ideal, but in many cases articles are "sourced" by listing some references at the end. Aside from BLP issues, an editor would not be free to remove all sentences that lack footnotes in an article. Statements which have been in an article a while and are not particularly dubious should only be "challenged", to allow other editors time to find the reference. Gimmetrow 11:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, no specific style is required, but what was proposed was the choice of styles would be limited. And rather than encouraging consistency in style, the original proposal would require consistency in style. I admit though that all this is pushing beyond the requirements of WP:CITE so these ideas should be introduced at that level rather than here in GA. So I guess I will shut up... but before I do I'd like to mention that my nitpick with the hybrid citation system in Rabindranath Tagore is not so much on use of the Greek letters, but this weird footnotes within footnotes system. Notice that the links to the citation footnotes in the Notes section do not work. The fact that this passed FA without comment just shows the weakness of the FA system. And they think GA's are of low value??? :-D RelHistBuff 11:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ah, they don't work because they are after the references tag. The notes section was before the references section when it achieved FA; it has lost a bit from vandalism that will take some time to investigate. I'll fix that when I fix other issues in the article. I sympathize with concern over footnotes within footnotes, but it seems relatively minor; if this were done in Harvard style would it be a concern? Gimmetrow 12:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! What I'm hoping for is to take a step back from our own proposals for a moment and just try to summarize what the generally accepted rules are. I'm a bit confused by what Gimmetrow is saying. I do understand that references in general can be in the equivalent of a works cited list. On the other hand, the way WP:CITE and WP:V talk about the {{fact}} tag seems to suggest that any item without an inline note is subject to removal. Are you saying that a {{fact}} tag could be reverted, with an edit summary that says something like "see reference section below"? --CTSWyneken^(talk) 11:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

A fact tag doesn't remove the statement, it asks for a citation. What's the confusion? (Generally I would think if a fact tag is added in good faith, an inline cite should probably be provided before removing the fact tag.) Gimmetrow 12:13, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

According to the policies, a fact tag can be used to challenge the accuracy of a statement, and, if it is not supplied, is justification to remove that statement. I've have it used in this manner on material I've authored fairly frequently. Since our policies encourage such usage, I believe we are somewhere between encouraging and requiring inline citations in every article in wikipedia. Is my analysis wrong? --CTSWyneken^(talk) 14:24, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

(Random indent) Three points: 1) you originally said "an editor can feel free to remove anything from an article that is not sourced via some sort of inline citation". I took this to mean I could just go to any article and remove any sentence I want, with no prior notice, simply because it doesn't have a footnote. This is apparently not what you meant, because a fact tag is prior notice. 2) This effectively requires inline citations for any statement than some editor honestly feels needs an inline citation. Disputes tend to arise around controversial statements, which really should be clearly referenced. 3) According to WP:CITE, {{fact}} is to ask for a citation, but {{verify source}} is for inaccurate or doubtful statements. Gimmetrow 14:45, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

(undenting a bit) Thanks! I had forgotten about the {{verify source}} tag. I think you've summed it up. So, general reference is OK unless challenged. I think that Good Articles should exceed the minimum standard, but be less than that of FA. So... I think requiring some sort of inline citation would be in order. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 18:12, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I guess this will be a matter of on hold policy. In that matter, giving facts that would make the reviewer go Man I think this is NOR/POV/V, then requesting an inline citation is ok. Then a talk on the article's talk page starts between the reviewer and the editors and a consensus is given and the reference might be given or not depending of how the editors commented. The criterion is as it gives power to the reviewer to ask an inline citation and not be accused of not following the WIAGA criteria and also engage a discussion to let the editors know that we care about the articles' V/NOR/NPOVness in a way that we want to see some statements cited the way WP policies require them to be. Lincher 12:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with RelHistBuff. This matter should be discussed on WP:CITE policy level, not GA. We can only adopt what has been the policy in WP. On the contrary, as the policy is not determining a strict regulation about style guides, then do not be surprised as GA reviewer will not objectively assessed GA nominees. For instance, Michael Jackson and Captain America were recently failed its GA status, mostly because of strict <ref>...</ref> style used by the reviewer, instead of judging its content. — Indon (reply) — 12:42, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the only thing proposed is that we follow the guidelines of WP:CITE, correct? Which requires one of the 3 styles? Can someone who is pointing out hybrids are valid point to a good example (same with articles that it is argued cannot use one of the 3 styles)? I might be using what is called a hybrid style and not know that's what you're referring to. I use the method of refs in a Notes section and then full citation in a References section. I think this will help us judge better. I definitely do not think we can limit to just one of these (don't think this is what is being proposed, but just stating my view in case it is). Also, in the above examples Indon gave, if someone is using the ref style, then it should be used correctly and so reviewer was correct in pointing that out, plus neither failed solely because of this.--plange 14:27, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ooops, you're right. It is a bad example. Sorry. — Indon (reply) — 14:32, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Read above, Plange. I've pointed to an FA and a non-FA using different hybrid systems, and linked to the part of WP:CITE discussing a third hybrid system. What you describe as using is not what I'm calling a hybrid system. Gimmetrow 21:06, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

If WP:CITE were policy, RelHistBuff, then pursuing change at the WP:CITE level would be fine and dandy, but it's not. It's just a guideline.

The Good Article recognition isn't honor roll. It's passing grade. It's an "is it soup yet?" standard. If an article is clear and understandable, and meets the requirements of Wikipedia policies for content, then it's good; if it doesn't, then it's not good. We really should be deciding what meets the standards of WP:V, rather than WP:CITE - and I don't think that's any great loss, because WP:V has pretty darned high standards.

“ I can NOT emphasize this enough.

There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. -- Jimmy Wales in WikiEN-l, Tue May 16 20:30:15 UTC 2006

”

What kind of hell would break loose if GA reviewers were to pursue a policy of aggressively deleting every statement that wasn't sourced? I don't want to see it - but somehow, we need to get the word out that if your article doesn't meet the requirements of WP:V, it's very much unacceptable. Somehow, that bit on "Encyclopedic content must be verifiable." on the editing page regularly gets overlooked or misunderstood. ClairSamoht - Help make Wikipedia the most authoritative source of information in the world 21:57, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Information may be "sourced" and verifiable without an inline citation for that information - which is why GA used to say that "the use of inline citations is desirable, although not mandatory." Note that WP:WIAFA requires a references list, but this is only "complemented by inline citations where appropriate". Gimmetrow 13:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I see that you changed criterion 2b back. It would have been more appropriate to discuss this as we had reached a consensus as shown below. Concerning WP:WIAFA, I also wondered about that. It seems when they say "where appropriate", it means, to place the citation where they are appropriate in the article, not "only" placing them in an appropriate article. As I understand it, inline citations are required for FA. Anyway, even if this intrepretation is up for debate, you should place the criterion 2b back and reach another consensus before single-handedly changing it. RelHistBuff 14:17, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You asserted there was a consensus for the change, and then you changed (yesterday!) the criteria prior to the completion of discussion on this point. I reverted to the prior text. You need to establish consensus for your change. Gimmetrow 14:25, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually there was, or we apparently thought, see above. We agreed inline citations were required but left it at that and are now debating if it should go any further (consistency of style, etc) which is the current discussion. Inline citations are required for FA, so am not sure why this is a contentious point. --plange 14:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I was disputing the proposed change. The change had been previously attempted on 14 September and reverted, with no consensus for this change. I also didn't realize that your proposal of 07:20, 18 September, would be implemented by 09:58, 18 September, despite the ongoing discussion. Gimmetrow 17:36, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I just wanted to declare my full support for the wording of the 2b criterion as of before Gimmetrow's reverse. I also find this revert highly disruptive, and it prevents me from reviewing again, just as I was up to. Can we please close that ASAP and get back to business? Bravada, talk - 14:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

How does this prevent you from reviewing? Were you unable to review articles for the past few months because of that text? Gimmetrow 14:46, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No, for the past few days or so, until we reached a consensus on the new WIAGA. I do not want to review articles knowing WIAGA is just about to change. I am now providing a discussion of the article's compliance with all WIAGA points in particular as a review, and I would like this point to be finally established before I continue doing so. Bravada, talk - 14:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I noted that I was going to do this (see above) and based on the conversation of this section where there was mostly support to require citations, the decision that consensus was made was in good-faith. In addition, Lincher noted this change again in the section "In a nutshell" below. The discussions in fact continued on after the change. Now you have single-handedly moved it back without discussions. I would ask that you change it back and we can discuss the issue again here,... well, preferably in another section at the bottom. RelHistBuff 14:35, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strong Support for Lincher's version requiring in-line citation. It is almost essential in lieu of WP:V and it all around good form. Agne 16:56, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support - especially if we're part of the path to FA, this gets editors trained to use them. Also DYK recommends only picking articles that have inline citations. --plange 16:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Could you point out where? Gimmetrow 17:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Certainly, see bullet points under Selection on WP:DYK - "Select articles which cite their sources. While this is not a hard and fast rule it's a really good idea to do this. Over time, uncited articles are less and less likely to be chosen. At the very least, the item mentioned in the tagline should be sourced in the article." and "cite their sources" is linked to the same page we're linking to in our proposed change: WP:CITE. On that page inline citations is the method for citing. --plange 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

• Strongly support that inline citation is required. That's how we can assess WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. — Indon (reply) — 14:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Kick out length policy ...

... once and for all. It is not necessary anymore as GAs are a stepping stone toward FA and because we should evaluate every articles on the same ground. Since this project falls in the Assessment project also, it would be doubly necessary to forget about the length criterion/idea on the WIAGA page. Lincher 12:31, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Fine with me. Homestarmy 13:05, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

• support I think the distinction on length is lost on most editors not in the core GA team. The previlance of the 1.0 assesment with GA as one step in the process means that this meme is spreading. --Salix alba (talk) 13:59, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

See last proposed word change under the subheading above "Word Change" - if we get consensus on that, which seems likely, we can change the intro to take out the length phrase. --plange 15:02, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, I agree with the re-write of the citation shown in section Word change.Lincher 15:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Looks good to me. Kafziel 15:29, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't know what lenght policy you want to kick out, actually... Good Articles can currently be of any length, there is no limit to that, there have only been propositions to curb on that, but they fell through, so we are where we were with that and that's fine. Or if you want to kick out the marking of long articles as LONG, I don't think it's a good idea, as it only helps reviewers. As a sidenote, I would also like GA to remain independent and if WP 1.0 wants to include GA, it should be them that should worry about how it fits, not the other way around. Bravada, talk - 17:00, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

As I understand it, the proposal is referring to a rewrite of this rather silly (and, I believe, relatively new) intro wording: "Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured articles - primarily because they are not very long." It's basically about removing the "not very long" bit. There are a lot of reasons an article could be a GA and not an FA, and there's no need to specify length right off the bat. It's a pretty minor change. Kafziel 17:17, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

Oh, I thought we have already agreed on that above. If we accept Plange's intro proposition, it is equivalent to that. Bravada, talk - 17:33, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I thought so too, but its good to have some clarity on a talk page with such a vigorous discussion on it. (most pleasingly civil, BTW. Maybe we should list it as a Good Talk Page. ;-) )

So, I support re Lincher's reasoning. --CTSWyneken^(talk) 20:28, 15 September 2006 (UTC)

I made the change according to the second to last wording proposed. It seems to be the clearest. pschemp | talk 03:55, 16 September 2006 (UTC)

I re-iterate my comment way above about length, can we see sections Good vs. featured articles & Length be reworked from this :

These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. For short articles, prose is less likely to reach the 'brilliant' standards required of featured articles, and inline referencing is not as important. Long articles which meet the GA criteria should also more or less meet the FA criteria.

A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. However, the authors of very short articles might consider whether it is more appropriate to merge them into larger articles. For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate than the process here.

To :

These criteria are very similar to the criteria for featured articles. However these criteria and the good article review process are designed primarily with short articles (25kb or less) in mind. A good article may be of any length, as long as it properly addresses all major aspects of the topic. For short articles, the prose will more likely be asked to reach a 'brilliant' standard, close to that required of featured articles and have appropriate inline referencing. With the one-reviewer per article review, long articles which meet the GA criteria will be of a less than FA standard but overall meeting the FA criteria.

For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing of the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates guidelines is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.

And that is to remove the length crieria from the WIAGA page. Lincher 01:44, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Can we also change the Length criteria on the candidacy page, it is not necessary anymore. Lincher 01:46, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see any vital reason to change the "Length" section. The current wording reflects reality quite well without creating any formal requirement concerning length. As concerns the GA vs. FA, the only thing that is really indisputable there is the same what is said in the length section, so I guess we might do away with this section for the time being. Bravada, talk - 01:58, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I didn't understand what you said just there but after what everybody's answer earlier, there are only a few people that want to keep the length policy. Why don't we remove it? Lincher 12:17, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Short summary of what I said above - in the WP:WIAGA page, do not change the section captioned "Length" and remove the section captioned "Good vs. featured articles" and we're there. Bravada, talk - 14:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Support While some GAs have no real chance of becoming FAs, gaining the GA designator seems to be a positive reinforcement for editors who strive toward FA. Durova 22:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Lincher's proposal. It just puts everything in line and makes sense. pschemp | talk 23:29, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok we are going for something concise Bravada, something that can merge both criteria and be easy to master, use and understand for the editors and reviewers. The way I said it was the way it unfurled through the lengthy discussion we just had. Please consider making modifications in a way to remove length from the process as the GA process isn't about length anymore (discussion above is full speed ahead in this direction) and more about having GA being a port of entry to FA though some will never reach it (maybe they will, one day, maybe they will). Lincher 02:59, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Actually, I wouldn't want to try to put this relation between FA and GA in writing now, as it still seems to be discussed both (to some extent here) and in other related talk pages. I'd rather focus on the fact that GAs are articles that satisfy all WP guidelines and policies and provide good coverage of the topic - in other words, they are good encyclopedic articles. I guess the list of criteria at WIAGA is enough to say that. And going for concise, we might just do away with the lengthy blabber on how GA is like FA, but not FA, but maybe something that might be FA, but is not at the moment blah blah blah. The only thing about it that I like is how it hints that the GA process works better for shorter articles, and that longer articles might be more suitable for PR (and later FAC directly), but stating clearly that GA can be of any length.

If you read it again, you will find that the current wording in the "Length" section says all that without being too long or confusing! Bravada, talk - 04:03, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

I support Lincher's change posted above. --plange 04:08, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

That's quite surprising to me, as in your previous edit you have just said what it is all about and agreed with me. I don't get it. Bravada, talk - 04:20, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Because I only read the Length section as that's what you mentioned and so wrote my first comment, then I saw the section right above it called "Good vs. featured articles" and realized that was also part of the equation, hence my change. --plange 14:49, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Last take at the re-writing of the above to not talk too much about comparing GA & FA and to give just a hint about the Length and what to do with these articles : (Sorry for the wording)

The good articles will satisfy the above criteria and will be in accordance with all of Wikipedia's guidelines and policies. The good articles candidacte process will aim at bringing articles toward Featured articles by giving constructive comments and by grading articles in an objective way using the above criteria.

For articles longer than about 25Kb, rigorous reviewing by the Wikipedia peer review and featured article candidates is generally more appropriate and accurate than the process here.

Please consider giving comments and appreciations for the above rewrite of WIAGA's bottom section. Lincher 11:55, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Again, I don't think we really need to mention the relation to FA. There are quite many articles that would be OK with GA and either cannot or don't have to be further developed into FA. The emphasis should be on the fact that GA is entirely sufficient for an article to be a good Wikipedia article, as the name implies. Emphasizing the FA thing will be bringing the comments like "if this is not quite an FA why should it exist at all" etc. It is important that GA is OK to exist alone, not only as a "stage for preparation for FA" (which is what PR is also for and that would be another reason for detractors to dismiss GA). Bravada, talk - 12:46, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) Why don't we just delete the section labeled "Good vs. Featured"? --plange 14:53, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ok. I will remove the GA/FA section. For the section about length, I will change it a bit too, I you disagree, reply here and we will continue the discussion. Lincher 17:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Ironically, an example

I find it ironic that we've been talking about articles being improperly promoted and folks not taking the GA tag seriously and now, for demonstration purposes, an anon user has been adding the GA tag to an article that was recently nominated for speedy deletion. Both myself and another editor have been reverting the tag and I exhorted the user to take the article through the proper GA process. Might be worthwhile for others to keep an eye on it. Agne 16:42, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Article: Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo
User:4.249.0.240

In a nutshell

Changes that have been accepted :

1. Citations are required ... see 2b (of WIAGA);
2. GA/FA section removed from WIAGA;
3. Length section reworked;
4. List section modified (to current idea ... they won't be reviewed).

Changes that could be implemented but didn't get discussed too much :

1. Message for newcomers (was abandoned early in discussion);
2. Try to drop the length criteria (no consensus);
3. Page List of participants was created but didn't get much participants ... it needs more.

Thanks to all who have participated in the discussion ... it gave me ideas on what people feel about GA. It also gives me a dimension of the project and the participants. Now we can work on GA re-review for them to meet the current criteria. Lincher 17:40, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks Lincher, though I'm confused, where do we still have a length criteria? I thought the Length section was just a recommendation, not a criteria.... --plange 18:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

Good good! Though I'd say the previous wording of the length section was better, as it emphasized that GA can be of any length, so that there is no length criterium - there wasn't before, and there was a consensus not to include one, so I guess it stays that way. I will happily move on to reviewing articles now that we agree that inline citations are required, which clears out the most important uncertainty. I am not a fan of the "list of reviewers" though, as I believe it is more beneficial to maintain the liberty of allowing anyone review anything they feel like reviewing, provided they abide by the rules. I wouldn't like to be scrutinized as to how many articles I review or whether I review articles from outside my declared scope or not.

I believe we need to work on the "new reviewer message" and perhaps also compose short informative guidelines (I don't mean guidelines like "WP law", just a short introduction and a bit of advice) for first-time nominators and reviewers to be linked to from GAC. I absolutely support joining the re-review effort at User:Lincher/GA. Cheers, Bravada, talk - 18:28, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

PS. Posted after edit conflict, Angela is right obviously.

I feel the citations requirement is inappropriate for very short articles. Just my thoughts. Cedars 08:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Inappropriate? Not at all. Even in short articles there are potentially contentious facts. Paraphrasing WP:IC, these should be prioritized and cited. Maybe only one or two cites are needed, but it is important to satisfy WP:V policy. RelHistBuff 08:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

GA re-review

As we now have the new WIAGA more or less firmly in place, I decided to start re-reviewing current GAs per the discussion above, and using User:Lincher/GA as a starting point. I have reviewed two articles by now, Richard Branson (though it was actually identified for deletion already by Lincher) and Spice trade - both of them clearly failed to comply with the standards, unfortunately. I guess somebody might have a look at those reviews (see talk pages obviously) and perhaps comment on them. I also encourage everybody to join the process on User:Lincher/GA (just choose an article and review, as simple as that!), so that we could have the list trimmed down to really Good Articles ;) ASAP! Bravada, talk - 00:26, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I have delisted 5 just now for various reasons and they were not just for changes in the rules. In fact they were mostly due to poor reviewing or poor implementation of the process. Homestarmy has also found a lot of "Poor Articles" in our Good Articles list. See the proposal in the GA talk page. RelHistBuff 12:01, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Doing something retro active is not a good idea. I been watching the discussion and I agree with the new rules, but to delist someone because they don't follow the current new rules is not a good idea. I think it should be only for new GA candidates, not currently marked ones. Shane ^{(talk/contrib)} 12:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

But how could that be maintained? We would have to keep track of the old standards (this conformed to the Jan 2005 standard, that with the March 2006 standard, and that with the June 2006 standard,...). RelHistBuff 12:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, you're right. This is a great idea! Maybe if we all get together we can tighten the standards and and streamline the delisting process enough to make this whole project completely pointless! Actually, maybe it is already; as of now, there are only 327 more Good Articles than Featured Articles. A whopping 327 out of 1,391,736. Makes it kind of difficult to see the value of the project as a less formal alternative to FA when both of them consist of about .1% of articles. But, no, this is a really wonderful idea. Really. Kafziel 12:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

To RelHistBuff: Just look at the date that the GA articles were added to the queue. Only do the articles that were added after the new adopted rules. Shane ^{(talk/contrib)} 13:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I understood that. But in time, you will then have two different sets of articles conforming to two different standards. So let's say when an older article is reviewed again, do we check to see if it conforms to the older standard? RelHistBuff 13:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Short of disrupting Wikipedia to prove a point, why does it need to be reviewed again? How about just busying yourself with the other 1,390,295 articles? Delisting articles does nothing to improve morale and it certainly doesn't help our backlog of pending requests. This isn't Featured Articles, so we don't need a Featured Article Removal process. Hold the new requests to the new standards, and leave the rest alone. Kafziel 13:28, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Uh, no. This is pretty pointless - many articles were passed when the rules were not tight enough and THAT is why we have to review them all. The same happens with FA - they are periodically reviewed for compliance with the CURRENT rules, starting from the OLDEST ones, and yes, the ones that were rightfully promoted but fail to meet the current guidelines ARE delisted. The only thing I have reservations about is failing JUST for the lack of inline citations - we should give editors a notice and a week or so to add some, preferably mentioning what actually should be referenced. Bravada, talk - 13:30, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I am also careful to note other problems and I am also reluctant to delist due the lack on inline citations only. By the way, in response to Kafziel, I have promoted, failed, delisted, and "on-hold"ed articles plus I have given advice and content to every single article where I have done any actions. For several I have shared advice directly to the main editor of the article. So what's the problem? RelHistBuff 13:42, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No problem at all. Let's be just like Featured Articles in every way. In fact, let's start using a panel of editors to review each article. We're doing it anyway (one editor passes an article, four others second-guess him and delist it) so we might as well just debate each one together, for the sake of expediency. And let's make sure we have really stringent standards for every facet of every article with no exceptions. And let's have a thorough process for delisting articles that were passed by old standards but no longer make the grade, and we can have project editors who do very little but work on that. Have a blast, guys. I'm done with this. Kafziel 13:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

That's a fantastic idea, but the system already exists. It's called Featured Articles. --kingboyk 15:15, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Um, yeah. That was my point. Kafziel 15:20, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

(indent) Ok, Kafziel. Just assess articles for a minute and you will then be able to comment at your leisure but wont be applying the GA tag anymore because the articles are clearly not of GA status yet. There were lenient (not to say lazy) reviewers that just passed tons of articles and it is for that reason that we have to re-review these thousand of articles to make it comply with the standards that were there before the change. If you read what RelHistBuf & Bravada's comments, they say that they use the old criteria to evaluate the articles.

Also, to make it more emphatical just take a look at [2] where it states clearly the same criteria that we have now but in a more concise way. Along the way people (nominators and reviewers) complained that the system wasn't perfect ... or that it needed more tightening for it was tough to evaluate with criteria that aren't strict or clearly stated enough. That was the beginning of trying to expand the criteria to make sure that everything was included, no omissions and no flaws in the system of reviewing. Just so you guys know, the system didn't change much except for the part about citations and maybe requesting better prose and that is all. So there is a need to review articles back when there were no criteria and articles were accepted and in a few days accepted as GA. Once this is done and we have a clear bunch of GAs that solidly meet the criteria, we will be able to build on that and help the reviewers with comparisons. Lincher 15:54, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Also re-review shouldn't be an issue, even if we use new criteria. Criteria changes and so articles should be reassessed. The nature of how GA works says that one reviewer may pass it, but another may delist it. --plange 16:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to make it clear - I do not and will not use the old criteria. WIAGA reads "What is a Good Article?". If an article does not comply with WIAGA, it is not a GA, as simple as that. WIAGA changes over time just like many things in WP and we have to adjust to that. That said, continuing this discussion is pointless. Can we just go on and, like, review the articles? Bravada, talk - 16:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

No one should be rushing around delisting articles until the backlog of current articles is at a manageable level. None of the articles previous marked as GA is so horrible that it harm anyone if it stays at that status while the current things are dealt with. This preoccupation with older GA's does nothing to get the list of current articles reviewed, which should be the major focus of people on this project. Remove the log in your own eye before you attempt to remove the speck from your brother's. pschemp | talk 02:26, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

WIAGA - changes - consensus or stop reviewing

The continual changing of criteria is causing more problems than its addressing. GA needs it criteria to be stable, how can you pass an article today. Suggest that you either accept the current concensus or stop reviewing articles until an agreed criteria is published. Also I suggest that the review of all the current articles be abandoned for now, there is a substancial backlog. Gnangarra 14:51, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

(unable to reply due to continuous edit conflicts) I fail to see why there is a problem. The criteria are either what they have been for months, or something more strict introduced yesterday. Are there many articles that would pass under the old wording, but not now? Gimmetrow 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Again - I, for one, provide a comprehensive review to all articles, failed or promoted, as I believe it helps willing editors offset all problems and resubmit the article as GAN with a very high chance of passing (and also reduces the number of interations, sparing reviewers' and editors' time). Now, I cannot review it according to criterion 2b, given its instability, and then it would be a rather nasty surprise for an editor to find out that his/her article got failed again because a criteron that changed in the meantime. Not to mention there actually ARE articles that could be failed for that - I am mainly reassessing old GAs now, but I cannot imagine passing any article before the 2b criterion is fixed again. Bravada, talk - 15:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

So for the record, I think it would be good to require inline citations, which is more restrictive than require citations. However, I raised a number of issues about this which were not addressed, and I still feel the change is premature. I was arguing about this proposed change immediately after the "notice" by RelHist and the "nutshell" (yesterday), and one of those points is that this appears to be a stronger requirement than WP:WIAFA. Gimmetrow 15:06, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Mmmmkay, so you don't even oppose the change you reverted, so what's the point? Bravada, talk - 15:18, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The point is that the new wording rules out articles such as semantic holism, eliminative materialism, and Bertrand Russell. If they were put up for GA under the proposed wording, they would be immediately rejected for lack of inline citations. Surely at least one or two of them are sufficiently well-written to be considered "good articles". Gimmetrow 16:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

On the reassessment talk page, I suggested to leave a notice on a talk page if the review is positive but the article is only missing citations, preferably indicating what fragments should be referenced, and give the editors a week to fix that. I don't want to instantly fail articles who miss inline citations, because it is a new requirement. I haven't reviewed any of the three mentioned, though, so I can't say whether they are OK, though. Bravada, talk - 19:04, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Consensus was obtained (see In a nutshell section). Unfortunately there has been a single-handed revert. Again, I would ask that the criterion go back to the consensus decision so that work may proceed. If anyone would like to challenge the decision, then it should be discussed here first and another consensus reached. RelHistBuff 14:58, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I concur --plange 15:03, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

To Gimmetrow: However, I repeat again. Consensus on the current wording was reached. We moved forward. There may be other issues to consider. Going back to previous version as you have done is creating problems. And as I mentioned above, I believe there is a misunderstanding of the FA requirement. I was confused by it as well until I saw a clarification about it on the FAC talk page. So could you please go back to the consensus decision? We can discuss your points here. RelHistBuff 15:14, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

As I have requested several times that WIAGA go back to consensus version and there has been no response, I have done this myself. Edit wars in articles is bad enough. But an edit war in standards is deadly. I hope we can continue to discuss the problematic issues civilly. RelHistBuff 15:37, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

(To Gimmetrow) : Take a look at this discussion Pass criterion on GAC where consensus was reached on leaving comments on talk pages when reviewing but if you read carefully you will see that it were the newly arrived reviewers that weren't doing it because we were all doing it pretty much at that time and we the settled to add a line in the Pass guideline of the GAC page. Lincher 16:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

Why is this addressed to me? I fail to see the relevance. 16:39, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

It is addressed to you for your edit here [3] which in my view is just a way to divert and get comments pass through the discussion without people paying attention to what you write. Please follow the thread when adding comments and please try to add comments to talk pages where things are changing not below the radar where you will be able to, later, bring back your objection into the discussion. The article about the grid thing for your information was not up to GA standards before and it isn't now as it reads like an ad, is not well referenced (proper citations) or because there is trivia. Lincher 17:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

The link to that discussion was given in the section above as something to see, so I did. The proposal was the remove all GAs if there were no evidence of process. An example was given, and it was to be examined purely on its lack of process for promotion to GA, not quality. Well, the example given DID follow process, and it troubles me that people would consider demoting articles without sufficiently looking into their history. Now your statement, citing a discussion from July 2006, is irrelevant to a GA passed in March 2006. I am also rather troubled by your insinuations which seem to me contrary to WP:AGF. Gimmetrow 18:33, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

the concern with this is you change the rules/criteria then reassess only to tell editors that its no longer GA because we decided to change the rules. thats like saying to a sports competitor that the rule for this game are now this and that previous winners are longer recognised unless they also adherred to these new rules. Gnangarra 02:06, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The sports analogy is a faulty comparison. GA is a standard of quality acheivement and by its nature fluid. You can also view it as a "club" of sort where the membership dues each year is the price of the level of quality in the article. That price will increase from time to time. (like college tuition) You have the choice to either pay that higher price or "drop out". Agne 04:05, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

We do really need to stop edit warring over this, i've been notifying GA's which have no inline citations but do have references to try and convert their stuff of inline, but if people won't stop switching things back and forth, I dunno what we'll ever be able to do about those kind of articles. Homestarmy 02:08, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

This what I'm trying to highlight is that the frequency of changes to the criteria has reach a point where articles in the backlog where nominated under one set of criteria and are now being assess under different set of criteria, yet this new criteria still has it opponents that are reverting to previous versions of the criteria. If GA community of reviewers cant get come to some form of consensus and stabilise the criteria how can they expect editors to address and achieve the criteria. How can the wider wikipedia community accept GA as a standard if the GA community cant decide what is standards are. I'll again reitterate that the process of reviewing should stop until the criteria is stabilised. GA should also recognise that articles have previously achieved GA under a different criteria and instead of just removing(failing) the article GA reviewers should take some ownership in bringing these upto the new standards, with the obvious realisation that if the main editors of the article arent interested in further developing then withdraw GA. Have a look at the way FA assess articles that no longer comply to the criteria they first try to fixed the issues. Gnangarra 05:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

FA criterion

Gimmetrow raised an issue concerning WP:WIAFA. As I understand it, the problem is the clause "where appropriate". In a talk page (I will look for it), it seems the clause means that an inline citation should be placed where there should be one. It does not mean to put them in an appropriate article. Inline citations are still required. I will try to seek more clarifications, but perhaps there are people out there who know the FA situation better? RelHistBuff 15:40, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

You proposed new criteria wording at 07:20 18 September, and implemented it 09:58 18 September. This had been previously attempted on 14 September and reverted with "no consensus for this change". Discussion of the WIAFA criteria issue can be found here. Gimmetrow 17:50, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

And so when you apply theory and it doesn't work then you revert to experimental practises and, on FAC, you request inline citations when appropriate or, as an editor, you add citations before sending it to either GAC or FAC. I guess we ask the same in the end : no NOR, NPOV, V inclining statements in wikipedia articles and to prevent any of these, citations are the only way to go. Lincher 17:57, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

My general concern is whether these criteria changes end up assuring that only good articles get the GA tag. Any set of criteria depends on the editors applying it consistently and fairly, and that generally involves some bureaucratic oversight. I appreciate that GA intends to be "lite" on bureaucracy, but I do believe it is a large part of why FA works well, regardless of the actual FA criteria. Gimmetrow 20:29, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

And since we aren't FA, and yet work well, there is no reason to add bureacracy to the system. Making things more complicated will do nothing but discourage people from review the huge backlog of articles that are waiting. Not trusting the reviewers to do their job is extremely elitist and anti wiki. pschemp | talk 02:21, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Review standard

Partially in reference to what Gimmetrow stated above, I would like to propose setting a standard for the GA review. There is the Template:FGAN, for one, though I found it more appropriate and useful to quote the actual criteria and comment on each point of WIAGA - see examples at Talk:Louvre#GA review and Talk:Sunol Water Temple#GA review. This lets the readers find out easily what the criteria actually are (or were at the time of the review) and also makes one stick to the actual critetion rather than a "general concept" of or feeling about e.g. "well written" (I hope I do stick!) What do you think of those? I guess if the latter review format is found useful, we might use a page with a boilerplate text (in Wikicode) to be simply copy/pasted and filled with reviewer's comments.

Secondly, at present GAC only requires a written review (or simply a comment) when the article is failed (and also GA/R requires one when delisting), but none is requested for promoting the article! This makes for a rather strange situation where it is easier to pass than to fail a GA, which is not quite what we want if we want to up the standards (or, actually, make them abided by in practice). I believe requiring a review on the compliance with all WIAGA criteria will fend off careless/bad faith "promoters", who would neglect the WIAGA. Of course this adds a bit of bureaucracy to the process, but I found that, if you are actually reading the article and actively considering all the criteria, putting it all down is not that time-consuming and makes making final decisions easier on borderline cases. Again, what do you think about that? Bravada, talk - 01:34, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I like the template idea, but honestly, when people these days actually review the articles, i've taken a look at some of them, and most of the articles being passed currently actually are up to GA standards mostly in my opinion, so there aren't really that many bad reviews right now. Homestarmy 01:57, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

I think requiring a review will make this process more tedious and less people will participate. There is already a huge backlog of articles that need to be looked at, we don't need to add anything that makes that process more complicated. If it is passed, it has obviously met the criteria. There is no need to complicate a system that is working.pschemp | talk 02:18, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Well, perhaps outright abuses are infrequent, but I have just delisted a recently promoted article (I mean one listed a few hours before now), as I found it seriously deficient in many areas. The reviewer apparently was a bit too brief in his review and did not analyze the article for compliance with all criteria deep enough. Another reviewer passed an article for "it's use of inline citations, good prose and sound samples" (while those are nice qualities, sound samples are pretty irrelevant here, and the rest, while important, is not enough). Most of the examples I have given a brief look too are quite "borderline" cases - I would have at least put them on hold. And, well, there will still be examples of really bad decisions. When you review the article really thoroughly, putting your conclusions in writing really isn't too much of a toil, and it even helps you organize your thoughts. Bravada, talk - 02:23, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Forcing people to work the way you like to work is unproductive and elitist. You are free to work in a complicated mannar if you like, but requiring it of others is silly. Why are you delisting articles anyway? You should be focusing on getting the backlog of articles that are current reviewed, then go back and re-review. None of the articles currently listed as GAs are so horrible that they will do harm if they are left while the current and main focus of this project is worked on. Your obsession with the quality of old GAs is unproductive and in no way helps to get the current list reviewed. Note I'm not saying you should never re-review, but that we should work on the huge and current backlog first. pschemp | talk 02:31, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

The collective worth of a "GA acheivement" is dependent on the quality of the articles it is attached to. If sub-standard articles are listed as being "Good Articles" then what's the point in actually taking the time and effort to craft a Good article if any ole thing can pass? Hence the de-listing and review process is neccessary in order to maintain the standards and integrity of the GA process. Yes, there is a backlog which we need to work through and I encourage my fellow editors to split their time between the review and the current candidates but we will always have new candidates cropping up and we shouldn't stop the review just because of that. As for the template, I am in favor of it. It is considered a GA review after all. No one is beaucrating how much time/effort/detail you need to put into review but at least requiring that all criteria be posted and accounted for will be of value in at least making the review (and editors) mindful of what the criteria is. Agne 03:55, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for saying that Agne, do I need to add more? Perhaps that the criteria in their present form are unlikely to significantly change, as making them any more demanding would be getting too close to FA, while relaxing them would seem a bit of "pulling back and forth". So I think we might have reached the fairly stable set of criteria, and it would be good to go back and browse through the current list GAs, some of which were nominated when one could just slap the tag on the article he/she liked, to make sure the list is meaningful in any way. And, well, there are pretty horrible examples, and they don't serve anybody well, as an editor might see that this or that article has a GA tag and later be surprised an article he/she nominated fell through although it is not any worse. Bravada, talk - 10:56, 20 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to add one more comment on yours, when reviewing articles, people will tend, like me, to look at other articles in the same field in order to see if the article is broad enough. Well, nominators will do this too and, after comparison, if they find that their article is as good as our worst accepted GA then it wont meet the criteria but will be accepted anyway because one non-GA article slipped through the cracks. If we allow comparisons because it is not a FA-like process then we ask for an appropriate level of quality. Lincher 11:33, 20 September 2006 (UTC)