Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations

Good article nominations

WT:GAN

This is the discussion page for good article nominations (GAN) and the good articles process in general. To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the Add topic link above. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click the link to the FAQ above or search the archives below. If you are here to discuss concerns with a specific review, please consider discussing things with the reviewer first before posting here.

To help centralize discussions and keep related topics together, several other GA talk pages redirect here.

Archives

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11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20
21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30
31, 32, 33, 34

GA: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

Criteria: 1, 2, 3, 4

Reassessment: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

GA help: 1, 2

Nominations/Instructions: 1

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Backlog Drive

May starts in two weeks, and so does our next GAN Backlog Drive. We've already established a theme, so it'll be newbie-oriented. Is anyone willing to coordinate the drive besides me? Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 14:03, 17 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I am happy to help:) DaniloDaysOfOurLives (talk) 20:42, 19 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging our previous coordinators @IntentionallyDense and Ganesha811: to see if they're interested. :) Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 19:22, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm traveling next month so I won't be able to coordinate, but I'll probably participate and do a few reviews! —Ganesha811 (talk) 19:23, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Have fun traveling. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 20:32, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Happy to help! I'm not great with the technical stuff but I do like helping newbies. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 19:37, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Good to hear! We'll do our best. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 20:36, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bless you guys. I nervously remembered I hadn't done anything to set this up a week or so ago but was buried in other stuff, and was then reminded of it again by the watchlist notification. -- asilvering (talk) 23:15, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I hope that more newbies will sign up for the drive in the coming days. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 10:39, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We could send talk page messages to invite recent newer reviewers? IAWW (talk) 12:33, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds good. However, we'd need a list of reviewers who have less than 6 reviews and were active in lets say past three months. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 16:33, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think I could provide a list like that, once you're agreed on what the numbers are for those parameters. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 16:49, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Potential reviewers could also be added to the list, that is persons who have nominated an article or two for GA but have no reviews yet. -- Recon rabbit 17:14, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds good to me. We could also notify them. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 17:21, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

less than 6 seems good to me! IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 17:18, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

oops i meant also to say i agree that 3 months is a good range for activity. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 17:20, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Good articles/GAN Backlog Drives/May 2025 is up! Please sign up. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 11:04, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't know about this until I heard about it through Wikipedia:Discord. Maybe a notification message should go out? -- Recon rabbit 14:25, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed, a MediaWiki talk:Watchlist-messages watchlist message should go out. —Ganesha811 (talk) 14:27, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll request one now. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 15:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I had no idea about this until recently IAWW (talk) 14:28, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA review did not count

Yesterday, I failed the article Life Till Bones. However, it is still showing up on the album nominations page, does not show up in Toolforge, and my review count has not gone up. I reviewed it normally; I hit start review and failed it, following the typical instructions. What is causing this? Locust member (talk) 18:27, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The bot isn't updating WP:GAN currently. Cos ^{(X + Z)} 20:23, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'll take a look at the bot's log when I get a moment; tonight, I hope. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:05, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this edit should fix it; the next time the bot tries to update GAN it should work. The problem was the user signature, which had a user space link to a subpage instead of the main userpage as the first link. EF5, ChristieBot currently can't handle your signature -- you don't have to change it, but if you nominate any other articles, would you change the nominator parameter in the nomination template to a simple link to your user page? I'll take a look at handling this situation a bit more gracefully as soon as I can, but the basic issue is that the bot has to use whatever is in that parameter as the name of the nominator, and it can't always easily tell which of multiple links in a signature is the right one. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:36, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've now updated the bot so it will not crash when this happens, but it won't correctly identify the nominator. This is what the result would look like if the nominator parameter has this issue: the nomination for EF5 drought gives the nominator incorrectly, which will screw up the stats for users who have this sort of link in the nominator parameter. I'll put this on my list to fix but it will take longer. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:14, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Interesting, thanks for fixing it. Enjoy the drought article. :) — EF5 ^(questions?) 15:21, 26 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Help

It's many years since I nominated a GAN, and I might have made an error. I'm trying to nominate Caerleon pipe burial, and I left the subtopic blank since nothing seemed appropriate, but that seems to have sent it into limbo, can't see it at Miscellaneous or anywhere else. Thanks Jimfbleak - talk to me? 13:21, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's in Miscellaneous now. Sometimes it takes a bit to update. CMD (talk) 13:38, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

CMD, thanks. As I said, it's been a long time since I posted on GAN Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:43, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Template-protected edit request on 28 April 2025

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

In my GAN (1992 Flores earthquake and tsunami) in Earth Sciences in Natural Sciences, can someone make it known that I will be self-blocked until May 30 due to school stuff? WFUM🔥🌪️ (talk) 18:58, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Wildfireupdateman, you can add a note to your nomination under the "|note=" parameter at Talk:1992 Flores earthquake and tsunami. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:00, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I've added a note to the talk page.WFUM🔥🌪️ (talk) 19:12, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Evaluation of the copyediting criteria

Looking over GAN reviews, many tend to be dominated by long lists of copyediting nitpicks. Under the GA criteria, the only copyediting issues that should be evaluated in a GAN review are:

Whether there are any parts of the article that are unclear
Whether the article is concise
Whether the article complies with Wikipedia:Make technical articles understandable
Whether there are any spelling or grammar errors in the article

Excessively detailed copyedits have become a major contributor to scope creep at GAN. It increases the overall time for the reviewer to check the article and the nominator to respond to the reviewer's concerns. If reviewers feel there are copyediting fixes to be made beyond the listed issues above, I encourage them to do so through the normal editing process, to list the other issues they noted separately in the review as "additional suggestions outside of the GA criteria", or even to fix things as they review if they're minor non-controversial changes. I also encourage nominators not to feel like they're obligated to write perfect FA-level prose if the article already meets the listed standards above. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 18:59, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I second that reviewers should clearly delineate the points not relevant to GA, and encouraging a much more hands on approach. Maybe these should be added to the GA reviewing instructions? However, I find ironing out all the grammar errors is normally one of the biggest if not the biggest time consumer in GAN reviews. Fixing dangling modifiers, WP:CINS mistakes and unclear sentences normally contribute a lot to the "long lists" of prose points. Sure, these could all be fixed directly by the reviewer, but then nominators are more likely to make the same mistakes in the future which leads to even longer review times. I think making articles fully grammatically correct is just a big job a lot of the time, and there is no way to avoid it. IAWW (talk) 20:20, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

To a certain extent I think we're overly-focused at GA on perfect rather than understandable grammar. If the error makes part of an article unclear in some way, it's worth pointing out. Otherwise, I honestly don't know that it matters at the GA (rather than FAC) level whether the commas are perfectly placed (or other minor errors of precision rather than clarity), so long as it's reasonably, well, readable for the reader. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:14, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, but isn't that just not what the GA criteria says? It says "spelling and grammar are correct", not "spelling and grammar are mostly correct"? IAWW (talk) 07:59, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm new looking at the GA project, so take this as the opinion of a newb. I just got through my first GA review (took a LONG time, largely my fault but there was a few issues that popped up with reviewers) on the article for Technical geography. I was looking at the Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and honestly I'm not sure I can tell the difference between what I'd expect from FA and what I experienced with GA review. I'm honestly not sure what the difference is between the article types at this point. Would be nice to see clearer differentiation between them. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:10, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GeogSage, if you can't tell the difference, sounds like your GA review was unusually harsh. -- asilvering (talk) 23:21, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I wouldn't want to say that exactly, Talk:Technical geography still has them visible if you'd like to judge. One reviewer got banned mid review, and I had a move/new job that really delayed my response to the second one, so they took FOREVER. That said, looking at the feedback and what I changed, I'm not sure how much a FA review would do differently based on the criteria I read. I'm hesitant to nominate that article until I have more time to dedicate to a project like that though. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 23:25, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, at a glance, Talk:Technical geography/GA1 seems unnecessarily nitpicky and time-consuming. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:40, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I have to scroll to reach the end of the table of contents. Hard luck, @GeogSage. This was definitely not normal. -- asilvering (talk) 23:53, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I've said before that we should be screening reviews, especially from new reviewers. That was in the context of them being too light, but perhaps we should also be nudging people who make their reviews too heavy. The former hurts the process in making the ratings less accurate, while the latter hurts the process by making it difficult to go through. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:01, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sounds like you should sign up for next month's backlog drive! -- asilvering (talk) 00:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How would screening reviews work? Would they ever need individual manual approval (e.g. marking as patrolled) or are you more envisioning a culture of checking in on new reviewers to give feedback? Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 02:34, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

More the latter; the former has been discussed over the years but was deemed impractical. I urged Mike Christie to make User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms for this reason, but it doesn't really get used much. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 02:38, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not really sure how I would use it for this purpose. I would want a list of GANs under review and the ability to sort reviewers by number of reviews. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 02:49, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the feedback. The hardest part was the losing the first reviewer, and ultimately starting a second review because of that. The page is likely much better because of all the feedback, which is the point and ultimately a good thing. I want to bring the page to FA status at some point, it's a passion project of mine to get looking good, and I hope the reviews make that process smoother. Glad to hear that this isn't the normal thing to expect though, as I'm planning to nominate a few more down the road... I'm looking into trying to learn how to review as well, so good to know that level of detail isn't expected. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 02:35, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@GeogSage, the backlog drive next month is a good way to get into GA reviewing - there's a process for having new reviews checked by an experienced reviewer in this one. You should sign up! -- asilvering (talk) 03:53, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I will consider helping. My new job has sucked the free time and energy out of me the past few months, but I have a much lighter load during Summer and would like to help. GeogSage ^{(⚔Chat?⚔)} 04:09, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I second what asilvering said. If you need help with reviewing GANs, you'll get it at the next month's backlog drive. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 10:45, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree wholeheartedly. Drives me batty when reviewers ask for changes that take longer for them to write out than it would for them to fix. -- asilvering (talk) 23:23, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think some reviewers are (perhaps unnecessarily) afraid to make changes themselves. They may be concerned about crossing the line into being a major contributor and thus too involved to review; I also think some may be worried about stepping on the nominator's toes. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:26, 28 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks TBUA for the reminder, I know I can be guilty of this. I also flagged in a recent review this quote from WP:AGF: Many people misunderstand Wikipedia's "assume good faith" policy as meaning "assume another editor performed due diligence" or "assume blind faith" regarding a reference, editor, or content. However, the actual intention is closer to "presume good intent", which does not mean "I do not have access to a source, so I 'assume good faith' about the source's content."

I've seen (and done) this in reviews a few times and it may be helpful to give it broader attention. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 02:45, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think it necessarily makes article review take longer, as a reviewer should be reading the article, but c/e concerns do end up as an unnecessary area of focus. I suspect this is due to a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's a really easy area to comment on, and thus perhaps an area a newer reviewer may feel comfortable digging into. Secondly, this sort of nitpicking dominates FACs, so I suspect that bleeds over a bit. Thirdly, as PMC notes, directly editing may not be attractive to a reviewer, so if they see something they feel they would change they want to note it somewhere, so it ends up on the GAN. Lastly, copyediting can mix in with other issues, such as reflecting sources well, so it pops up in discussion of other criteria. Perhaps, as with the occasional overfocus on images, we need to better encourage the notion that in this respect a GA does not have to be perfect, and that a reviewer can pass an article even if they have copyediting concerns. CMD (talk) 04:51, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree. The prose needs to be understandable, but not of a professional standard like for FAs. Therefore, I encourage reviewers to copyedit and fix grammar mistakes in the article, but not to considerably change how the article looks (this should be rather left to the nominator). Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 11:03, 29 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Bold GACR/GAI changes

In light of this discussion, I have boldly added the following footnote to GACR 1a: Prose at the Good Article level is not expected to be at a professional level like it is for Featured Articles. Minor grammatical or style issues that do not impact clarity are not prohibitive of GA status. To the GAI reviewing instructions step 3.4, I have added This includes correcting typos, making minor copyedits, and repairing formatting. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:03, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think this is a great change. I do think the main criteria wording should be changed to "spelling and grammar are [mostly] correct" for consistency with this footnote, but I guess that changing the wording of criterion itself is a change that would require further discussion? IAWW (talk) 22:11, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I think "correct" grammar has a lot of wiggle room, so I'm happy with the footnote compared to the criteria. CMD (talk) 02:31, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Older GARs needing participation

Posting here to encourage participation in reassessments from more people than the regulars at the GAR page. These are older discussions where improvement is not ongoing and which could use more participation.

Vampire folklore by region, (link to reassessment)
Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic, (link to reassessment) – Union republic of the Soviet Union
Harold B. Lee Library, (link to reassessment) – Main campus library for Brigham Young University
Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy, (link to reassessment) – 2003 video game
Magnus Carlsen, (link to reassessment) – Norwegian chess grandmaster (born 1990)

Any comments on the above would be useful. Many thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:26, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it is relevant to note that three out of five of these do not have any cleanup tags or banners? If there is reason to delist an article, it should be possible to make that reason specific enough to tag the article with it. Or maybe if the article does not deserve any such tags, the GAR should be closed as a pass.

This comment was triggered by another recently opened GAR, on an article that had and still has no cleanup tags whatsover (but where those tags could reasonably have been placed): it is better to fix problematic articles before they reach GAR, and cleanup tags are a good way to request those fixes. If cleanup tags languish too long without attention, that may be a sign that GAR is needed. But opening a GAR out of the blue on an article that hitherto has seemed unproblematic (even if it does have hidden problems) can come across as hostile and as a barrier to getting it fixed: fixing one cleanup tag is a task that may be easy or hard, but at least is bounded. Satisfying GAR reviewers can come across as a Sisyphean task where whatever you do they just keep coming back with more and more quibbles until somebody gets exhausted, and why would I want to enter that sort of game when it isn't even my GA nomination in danger of delisting?

So I would like to ask: place cleanup tags first, and then wait a reasonable time before opening the GAR. If you're not willing to put that much effort into trying to rescue the GA, why is it reasonable for you to expect another editor to do even more cleanup work getting the article back into shape? And if you don't want to get articles back into shape and are instead using GAR as a process for delisting as many articles as you can as quickly as you can, you're doing it wrong.

Details deliberately omitted because I don't want this to be about the individual GAR opener but about the GAR process more generally. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it is relevant to note that three out of five of these do not have any cleanup tags or banners? If there is reason to delist an article, it should be possible to make that reason specific enough to tag the article with it. Or maybe if the article does not deserve any such tags, the GAR should be closed as a pass. I haven't looked at any of these examples, so no comment there, but in general the fact that an article does not have any {{citation needed}} tags, for example, does not mean that no citations are needed, and nothing in the WP:GAR instructions requires the placing of cleanup tags or banners. It does suggest that before beginning a GAR, one should Consider raising issues at the talk page of the article or requesting assistance from major contributors. Requiring that someone concerned about an article both say "there are issues with citations" on the talkpage, and add a template to the article saying exactly the same thing, seems like bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:32, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

(Further, in theory the GAR itself should say what issues the reassessor noticed. If no valid issues have been raised, or if all the issues raised have been solved, the reassessment should be closed as keep; if valid issues remain unresolved it would be a much better use of everybody's time to address those issues than to argue about which cleanup tags should be placed. If you are genuinely uncertain what the issue is, ask for clarification, but otherwise requiring tagging for the sake of tagging is just obstructionism.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:36, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There's a school of thought that whether an article qualifies to be a GA should not be the main factor in classifying it as a GA. You'll sometimes see people at WP:GAR trying to argue that non-qualifying articles should continue to be classified as GA. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 14:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When I have added citation needed templates in the past, I have been accused of being "disruptive". I now only add them when asked, and am happy to do so. Editors can also use scripts like User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages.js to help find potentially uncited statements. Also, @David Eppstein: I am happy to be pinged when there are concerns about my editing. Z1720 (talk) 16:05, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, let me put it a different way. I regularly check cleanup tags for GAs and FAs in my area of interest via the cleanup listings generated by bambots, among other reasons in the hope of heading off GARs and FARs. In this process I see some other GAs (not the ones I focus on) that still have decade-old cleanup tags. Surely these are the ones worth focusing on?

If instead people are just going to nominate untagged articles for GAR, without past evidence of neglect of cleanup tags, then it feels like being ambushed. Why should I have had any earlier reason to try to fix the problems that weren't noticed as being problem? If the issues had been properly tagged, earlier, there would have been more time to deal with them, but instead everything is rushed and in the context of a review. That doesn't seem as constructive and as likely to lead to a good outcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:48, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I understand the sentiment but I at least am hesitant to insert a bunch of cleanup tags into articles; I'm sure that if people went around putting tags on GAs there'd be wailing and gnashing of teeth from a third group of editors regarding WP:TAGBOMBING.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hog Farm (talk • contribs) 17:07, May 3, 2025 (UTC)

@David Eppstein: I posted concerns on the talk page here and waited 9 days for a reply. There was no reply, nor edits to the article. While some editors monitor cleanup tags, many do not and articles will sit with cleanup tags for years. In fact, 32% of GAs have a cleanup tag on them (although not all clean-up tags highlight a concern that would be contrary to the GA criteria). An article does not need a GAR after it gets clean-up tags: it needs a GAR when it no longer fulfils the GA criteria.

Yes, there are worse articles that need to be cleaned up: I am looking for them and will bring up concerns when I find them. Help would be appreciated. Another way to help is for editors who care about articles in a category to review them before I do. A quick way to review articles for citations is to use User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages.js, while User:Phlsph7/ListUnreferencedParagraphs.js allows editors to check multiple articles for uncited passages. User:Headbomb/unreliable.js Will colour code the references at the bottom of an article by reliability, which is helpful for spotting potentially unreliable sources.

I also do not want to overwhelm one category of GAs, so I try to spread them out amongst many topics. Hence, why last night I nominated at GAR a British TV show, a phylum, a biology debate, a weather phenomenon, a railway line, a math array/table, an American TV show, an American TV show episode, a religious historical event, and an association football article. I try not to nominate articles with similar topics, so even though I have three Family Guy articles that I have noticed, I will not nominate the next one until I Take Thee Quagmire is closed.

GAR is not a hostile attack on an article: its a review. Wikipedia is a volunteer service and no one has to respond to or fix up articles that need work. If any editor chooses to work on an article, that's awesome! I am happy to put any templates in an article when asked. I also encourage editors to avoid waiting for me to respond with templates and tags before fixing up an article. Go find those uncited statements at the end of paragraphs!

So David Eppstein (and everyone else reading this) the short answer is: No, I will not put citation needed templates in an article unless asked, and I will continue to nominate articles to GAR if I think a GAR is necessary. I hope you do not consider this response a deflection and I am happy to answer any specific questions here about how I edit, why I do the actions that I do, and what can be done differently. Z1720 (talk) 19:24, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Z1720, can you at least place a maintenance tag on the article? You don't have to go and tag-bomb them at every place where you think it needs a citation, but not ever tagging them for maintenance at all and then going to GAR is nuts. I wouldn't expect any editor to have every GA in their topic area watchlisted. -- asilvering (talk) 21:12, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Why is a maintenance tag necessary on top of the fact that we already ask people to post on the talk page and then wait a week and then go to GAR? What difference will that make? Will we start asking people to wait a week after the maintenance tag too? There is so much effort devoted to instruction creep for GARs for so little actual increase in preventing articles from losing their GAR status. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Because the point is to have articles that are good, right? Flagging articles that need attention is a basic, helpful part of how we do that. @David Eppstein has said, above, that he specifically checks articles in his topic areas for maintenance tags. I do, too. What I don't check is talk pages of articles I don't watchlist. Tagbombing is disruptive and I'm not asking anyone to do that. But I can't understand why someone would observe a problem with an article and decide to start a delisting process without flagging it for attention first. The delist process takes effort! Tagging an article with a maintenance tag or two is the work of seconds. -- asilvering (talk) 21:23, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Asilvering: In my opinion, editors who care about an article's GA status should do more than wait for another editor to post maintenance tags: they should informally review articles regularly to ensure all necessary text is cited and prose is updated when required. There are lots of GARs where no one responds to the talk page notice or GAR posting. Adding more work for reviewers takes away their valuable wiki-time. At a certain point, competency is required and editors can find the same uncited statements or outdated statements that I do, especially when it is entire paragraphs or sections. If editors look and still can't find the concerns, I am happy to clarify or add cn templates when asked for a specific article. Z1720 (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously the point is to have articles that meet the GA criteria. We should encourage people to maintain their own GAs and look over older ones so that they continue to meet the criteria. We shouldn't be expecting people to do a bunch of notify/tag/advise make-work that doesn't actually result in more articles meeting the criteria.

Z1720's experience, which I've seen them discuss before, is that no matter what method they use, editors rarely if ever bother to fix up an article before GAR hits. I recall a previous discussion within the past few months where (IIRC) Hog Farm mentioned having similar results. By and large, people just do not care until you brandish the possibility of losing the GA sticker. That's the motivator, much as nobody likes to admit it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:43, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps you did not notice the remark above where I pointed out that I patrol a list of error categories for articles in my area of interest and periodically check specifically for GA and FA articles on the list? The cleanup tags and banners definitely catch my attention. There are thousands of articles on these cleanup lists, I cannot watchlist them all, and I cannot clean them all up (more tags keep getting added, often faster than the old ones are cleared) but those tags will definitely get some attention, as will comments to WikiProjects, much more than comments on individual article talk pages. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

With all due respect, you appear to be the only person who actively does this, and we cannot expect an entire process to revolve around one person's workflow, when time and time again we have shown that tagging, posting to WikiProjects, and posting on talk pages achieves very little in the way of action. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:07, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I propose a simpler way to resolve this. Let's mark all articles as GA by default so we can start from the other end and work our way back. If someone believes that an article does not meet the GA criteria, whether it be a new article or a previously-existing one, then they are expected to improve it until it does. It will remain GA until it is fixed because it's unfair to put the burden of fixing them on others and it doesn't make sense to take away GA if it could some day meet the criteria in the future. You might notice that under there's system there's no scenario that involves in a delisting—this is by design. Once universal GA is put into effect, WP:GAR will be marked as historical. That way it's fair for everyone, and we can finally focus on improving articles without being distracted by checking or evaluating them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As David Epstein puts it above, In this process I see some other GAs (not the ones I focus on) that still have decade-old cleanup tags. This fits with my experience: articles can have cleanup tags left unaddressed for years, regardless of either importance or quality assessment. In my experience tagging articles is not an effective way of getting problems fixed in general, or of ensuring that GAs stay at the standard they should be specifically. Obviously having articles that are good (rather than Good Articles) is ultimately the most important thing to the encyclopedia, but in most cases tagging an article with issues is not an effective way to address that. Some issues are fixed by people who patrol those particular tags (I've done some of it myself!) but if a sub-standard GA is going to be brought back up to standard, it's almost certainly going to be done by people who watch that page in particular. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that because we still have GA-listed articles with these stale tags, those are the ones that should be focused on in GARs. Yes, other articles may be more secretly problematic, but articles with stale cleanup tags are openly problematic and there is evidence in the staleness of the tag that they are not well maintained, so they are the likeliest candidates for removal. Why are we targeting other articles instead? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

You are always free to start GARs for those articles when you come across them if you feel it's important. One might alternatively argue that ae should prioritise articles which haven't been abandoned for GAR's attention as they are the most likely to actually be improved. Either way, as we are all volunteers here, everyone is free to spend their time in the way they want even if it isn't the most theoretically optimal use. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So if you "wouldn't expect any editor to have every GA in their topic area watchlisted", what exactly is it you expect a drive-by tagging to accomplish asilvering? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:27, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are listings of cleanup tags in many areas maintained by User:CleanupWorklistBot. Tagging puts an article onto those lists. Users who patrol those lists looking for things to do will find them there. Not tagging means that, from the perspective of users patrolling those lists, the article is unproblematic. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:59, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@David Eppstein: I noticed a GA today with a cleanup banner from 2013. I have brought other articles to GAR with even older templates. Also, sometimes there is only one citation needed tag for one sentence: if this is the only concern, I will not bring the article to GAR. I appreciate that you patrol cleanup tags, but I think you are the exception as evidenced by the 32% of GAs that have a cleanup tag, 32% of FAs that have a cleanup tag and the Guild of Copy Editors having a steady increase in articles needing a copyedit since 2021. An article at GAR will not be delisted if editors are actively making improvements. I try to bring articles to GAR from a variety of topics: if you know of math articles with older concerns, please feel free to bring them to GAR. Z1720 (talk) 22:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

How many editors patrol those lists? I, for one, didn't know they existed before this discussion. Judging by the fact there are over 3000 GAs with basic citation needed tags (out of a total of 41,000), I think your commendable efforts may be the exception rather than the norm. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:24, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2013 beats the 2015 example I had in mind, quantum electrodynamics. I think for articles with such long-stale tags, there can be no reasonable objection to bringing them to GAR. The editors who care have had plenty of time to deal with them and haven't. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

It's more than just editors patrolling the lists (though I'm confident there are more people doing that than you think), but also all of the maintenance categories. It's very common for editors to adopt whatever maintenance category and try to start clearing it, or at least wearing it down. There are certainly more people who care about maintenance categories than there are people who care about GAR. If what we're actually after is to get someone to fix up the articles, tagging them is a pretty easy first step. Again, it's the work of seconds. It's a lot more work to put something up for GAR, so I don't at all understand why someone would go to the trouble of GARing something but object to the idea of tagging. -- asilvering (talk) 06:09, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Drive tab

Could someone update the backlog drive tab to display the current drive like we've done in past years? This isn't something I know how to do. Thanks! IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 16:34, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Done, if I did it correctly Nub098765 (talk) 17:13, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Need clarification

Hi. I have nominated Rajesh Hamal for GAN but @Real4jyy removed that nomination. I have asked him for reason behind removal but still I didn't get any response from him. Can you please clarify this? Thank You! Fade258 (talk) 13:00, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The reason they gave in their edit summary was "drive-by nomination". Per the Good Article instructions, nominators are expected to be major contributors to any article they nominate. You have only six edits to that article, none of which are substantive, and none since 2022. I would also recommend self-reverting your nominations of Barsha Siwakoti and Barsha Raut, as they are both far from meeting the Good Article criteria at this time and are likely to be quickfailed. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:09, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Premeditated Chaos, Ok I will and It means that I can only nominate those articles for GAN which was created by me. If I have to nominate other users creation then what portion of edits should I need to made. Can I still review GAN nominated articles? Fade258 (talk) 14:10, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No, it doesn't mean you can only nominate articles you have created. It means you must have contributed significantly to them. The GA instructions I linked have a footnote that explains "The nominator is either the author of at least 10% of the article or is ranked in the top five in authorship". There is no restriction on who can review GA nominations, aside from needing to have an account in order to create the review page. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:31, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Premeditated Chaos, Thank You for your time. I clearly understand now. Fade258 (talk) 14:45, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Definition of drive-by in instructions

I have moved the efn from the lead of the GA instructions into the main text, because it seems clear that people are (still) not reading it. I have also adjusted the wording and removed an incorrect statement that was added in March. The original efn read like this:

If the nominator is either the author of less than 10% of the article or ranked sixth or lower in authorship, and there is no post on the article talk page, it may be uncontroversially considered a drive-by nomination. You can notify the nominator on their talk page. Reviewers have the discretion to remove any drive-by nominations they come across.

The revised version was trimmed to:

The nominator is either the author at least 10% of the article or is ranked in the top five in authorship, and has contributed to the article talk page.

The first portion is fine, but "has contributed to the article talk page" is not an accurate revision of "and there is no post on the article talk page". Merely contributing to the talk page does not make someone a significant contributor or prevent a nomination from being a drive-by. The original intent was that anyone without significant contributions could still nominate an article so long as they made a post on the talk page justifying their nomination, not simply that they have "contributed to the article talk page". ♠PMC♠ (talk) 14:36, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The ~~ridiculously~~ curiously low edit count requirement, by the way, also causes... misunderstandings (here and here). I suggest we remove it and increse the % contribution (perhaps to 25%). Fortuna, Imperatrix Mundi 14:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with this as sometimes just running AIbot will result in you having authorship of 10% of the page. The best way of determining in my opinion is "do you feel like you know the article content and sources well enough to answer questions about them and assess them against GA criteria" however that is far too subjective. IntentionallyDense ^(Contribs) 03:27, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Agree, that line should certainly be amended to something like "The nominator is the author at least 10% of the article or is ranked in the top five in authorship, OR has posted on the talk page justifying their nomination." -- asilvering (talk) 21:26, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I like that requirement the best. If an editor brings an article to GA standard but doesn't nominate it themselves, someone who is familiar with the sourcing and prepared to take it through the GA process should have a method of doing so. IAWW (talk) 21:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Review assistance

Not trying to make the process harder/longer for myself, but this doesn't seem to be the right approach to reviewing. I checked in with @Floating Orb on the review page but they don't seem to be ready to do the full review process. 19h00s (talk) 21:51, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Oh. I don't know what it is. Floating Orb (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry. Floating Orb (talk) 21:52, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

What is the full process? Floating Orb (talk) 21:54, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @Floating Orb, the GA reviewing process can be found at the instructions page (Wikipedia:Good article nominations/Instructions). If you would like, I can help guide you through reviewing? IAWW (talk) 22:03, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So, I am now reading it from top to bottom. There are some citations needed. Floating Orb (talk) 22:07, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question About Purposes of This Talk Page

I see that this talk page is a place for discussion of the Good Article process. Is it also a forum for discussion of questions about specific Good Article nominations? Robert McClenon (talk) 06:17, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, all the time. What's up? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 06:21, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We used to have talk pages for all different parts of the GA process, but it got very confusing, so we streamlined it into one talk page. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:57, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]