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In the course of reviewing Elizabeth Cady Stanton, I made a series of minor edits that involved punctuation, ref placement, and minor reorganization of words and/or sentences. I just wanted to make sure that, despite making (admittedly insignificant) contributions myself, I can still promote this article to GA w/out it being a COI. Obviously, I'm not going to take any sort of credit as a contributor to the good article, on my userpage, in my mind, or elsewhere. --Malachirality (talk) 22:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Based on these edits I might consider abstaining - fixing typos and wikilinks is one thing, once you start copyediting you're sort of in too deep. It's up to you, it's not a clear cut COI yet, and considering the backlog you might wanna just wing it (it looks like a GA anyway), but in future cases I wouldn't go into copyediting. In this case I suggest you pass it, and we AGF on your behalf :) — Dihydrogen Monoxide _(Review) 22:11, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Out of curiosity, would it be considered COI to review an article written by a user who has previously reviewed and passed one of your articles and is about a subject whose Wikiproject you are a member of? Rufous-crowned Sparrow (talk) 22:20, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

In my opinion, only if you've directly edited the article, or if the user nominating it is influencing your judgment in passing/failing/on-holding. However, with Where We Land I requested a 2nd opinion, see the talk page for details. — Dihydrogen Monoxide _(Review) 22:23, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict, responding to H2O) *Oh oops, sorry about that. I do some ce stuff for the LOCE too, so I guess instinct just kicked in :-/. Not to make excuses, but the article was already pretty good as it was that I didn't consider the changes I made important enough to bring in the contributors (who don't seem to be responding). Anyways, I won't do that again. I think I'll leave the nom up for a day or two and see if other users object to the changes and promotion as COI (please comment below). Alternatively, I could just list for a 2nd opinion (but again, considering backlog). Thanks for the clarification. --Malachirality (talk) 22:31, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree with the comment "once you start copyediting you're sort of in too deep". There is no conflict of interest here, and reviewers are encouraged to fix problems that they find with articles under review. This includes quite extensive copyediting, and even minor content fixes. The goal is to ensure that only articles which meet the criteria are listed. If reviewers can help the article achieve this, so much the better for Wikipedia. I believe in this case you are being thoroughly objective, and encourage you to promote the article if you believe it meets the criteria. If anyone disagrees, they can propose delisting the article or challenge your decision at WP:GAR. That is a key advantage of the one reviewer system. Geometry guy 22:47, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Geometry guy, though I do have one word of warning. I've been sniped at more than once for trying to help copyedit, so be prepared that, sadly, some people don't really appreciate it. I try to be modest, especially if I've never reviewed for them before. If I know that they're pleasant to work with, however, then I go ahead and copy edit to improve the article. Cheers, CP 22:51, 28 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I believe you're saying you went to review an article, saw that it was nearly a pass, fixed a few minor issues, and want to know if you should then pass it or leave it for another reviewer to look at?

My answer would be (in this specific scenario only) pass it there and then. Leave your usual review, and mention that you fixed a few minor issues (what they were and why). What you're doing is helpful to Wikipedia, and is far more editor friendly than placing an article on hold because, say, there's a badly formatted reference or a comma in the wrong place. --kingboyk (talk) 11:05, 30 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

• I've listed it as a GA; quick question--do I have to update the total GA article count (currently in the 3000s) manually?

No, this is regularly updated by a bot. Geometry guy 19:06, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, is anyone interested in looking over an article, but not for GA? Thanks, –thedemonhog talk • edits 00:27, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There are other more conventional places where to ask for this, like the irc channel and the peer review thingy, but whatever...drop it like it's hot here, I'll take a look. --Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 00:34, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, the article is Greatest Hits (Lost), which has already been peer reviewed. At its FAC, a user has said that "nearly every sentence needs fiddling… find someone to run through the whole article." I have listed it for review by the League of Copyeditors, but it will be weeks before someone gets to it. –thedemonhog talk • edits 00:54, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I know nothing about Lost so I had some trouble following the -Plot- section, apart from that, I don't think it's a terrible article. I have a MOS doubt though, I'm not sure this:"April 9, 2007 to April 12", is OK, wikilinking speaking.Yamanbaiia^{(free hugs!)} 01:46, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

From my experiences with Tony1 (at FAC) he'll generally provide some examples of what's bad about the article, if you ask. Then you just have to check for re-occurances of said issue. — Dihydrogen Monoxide 04:00, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If it's still relevant/needed, I'll be happy to copyedit the article. --Malachirality (talk) 04:13, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Please do. –thedemonhog talk • edits 04:16, 31 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Happy New Year! Here is the latest edition of the WikiProject GA Newsletter! Dr. Cash (talk) 04:12, 3 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

The Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles Newsletter

I just ran the Page History Stats tool on this page (it was the first run, so in future it should be quicker) and got some rather interesting results. The top editor of the page (with 407 edits) was Lincher who seems to have retired. Next was Canadian Paul, followed by Dr. Cash, Nehrams2020, and yours truly, all with over 270 edits. Nice work all involved. — Dihydrogen Monoxide 08:47, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder what happened to Lincher. Doesn't look like he was involved in any wikidrama, his edits just stopped. That's too bad, he was a good editor. --kingboyk (talk) 13:57, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Those who have read the latest GA newsletter will know that the current backlog is extremely large. The latest report has 275 articles at GAN, 239 of which have no reviewer yet. It is not surprising that the backlog has increased over the festive season, but the extent of the increase should cause pause for thought. Furthermore, the backlog has not fallen below 200 since 21 November, and has been over 175 since 9 September. It seems to me that the problem is quite obvious: up to late 2006, Wikipedia grew exponentially; it is no longer doing so, but instead articles are maturing and the exponential growth is feeding through to good articles. The number of reviewers and/or reviews, however, has not grown so rapidly, hence the crisis.

If we don't address this core problem, GA will be overwhelmed (and the statistics suggest that it already is). We desperately need rapid growth in reviewer numbers. I have been raising this issue repeatedly in the last months, but feel I have been whistling in the wind. Potential new reviewers are clearly put off by the complexity of GA, but there is a reluctance among many regular GA contributors to bite the bullet and simplify GA to attract more reviewers. (For past discussion, see Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_8#On_hold_and_second_opinion, Wikipedia_talk:Good_article_nominations/Archive_8#Scalability and Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles#Recommendation:_make_GA_less_process-oriented.)

I am ready to give up: there is a chance that GA will emerge from the backlog in 2-3 years as the drop in article creation feeds through here. However, I have promised on several occasions that some simplification could be achieved by automating some of the drudgery involved in the GA process, and I want to make this promise concrete...

...

Take a look at WP:PR and WP:Peer review list. Both of these pages are automatically generated using the {{peer review}} template on article talk pages. This saves editors the burden of listing peer reviews on the PR page. The same technology could be used to autogenerate the WP:GAN page, so that no one would ever need to edit it. At the moment, it is the hottest page on my watchlist, so I know this would save a lot of edits. But this cannot be done without a price.

1. Nominators would have to specify the subtopic of the article in the {{GAnominee}} template. (Making it harder to nominate successfully may be a good thing, however.)
2. The different statuses ("On review", "On hold", "Second opinion") would have to be listed in separate sections. In my view, these statuses are a bureaucratic waste of time, but a few of the best GA reviewers seem to be wedded to them. Is it okay to list them separately or must they be listed together?
3. It would be impossible to add comments to the GAN page (such as "I will review this in the next 2-3 days."). (This freedom is often abused to add talk page comments to the GAN page, so I don't think it would be a great loss, but others may disagree.)

In the long-run, the same technology could autogenerate WP:GA from the talk page template as well, but GAN is easier to automate. Is there any appetite to do it? Geometry guy 22:55, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I would love you forever if you did this. As far as I can see, ultimately we need to simplify the process to the point where only the article's talk page is edited - changing the GAnom template to the GAonhold template to the GA template will cause a bot to edit this page, and WP:GA, as necessary. WP:PR is the precedent that this can be done, and I see no reason why we shouldn't follow. I think the statuses (your 2nd point) could be listed the same way they are now, and controlled by editing the article's talk page. So, what do others say? — Dihydrogen Monoxide 23:09, 4 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree: the goal is to do everything with talk page templates. However, that means that the talk page templates have to inform the bot where on the GAN (or GA) page the article should be listed. The technology I have available for doing this is via categories: a template of the form {{GAonhold|subtopic=music}} (or perhaps {{GAN|status=on hold|subtopic=music}}) would place the article talk page in a category of the form Category:Music GAN on hold. This would cause the article to be listed on the GAN page in the Music subsection of the Art and architecture section. Notice that this is quite a proliferation of categories: there are 34 subtopics and 4 statuses, yielding 136 categories! In my view, this is a clear sign that GAN is intrinsically too complicated.

Anyway, the limitation of this technology is the following: if you want to be able to see, on the GAN page, which Music GANs are on hold (rather than nominees, on review, or 2nd opinion), then all "Music GANs on hold" would have to be listed together: it would not be possible to mix them in with "Music GANs on review" etc. Is that a deal breaker, or is love still in the air? Geometry guy 19:32, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I am also in favor of automating this process, but have two questions. One, would archiving / closing noms also be automated? This caused a problem at WP:PR initially, and it seems that removing GAN from the list would be a potential problem. Two, and this is related, would it be possible to switch to a separate GA page? This would then be consistent with what is already done for WP:PR, WP:FAC, WP:FLC, etc. Thanks for offering to do this, Ruhrfisch _><>°^° 20:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

At the moment, GA reviews are not archived, so archiving/closing noms would be straightforward: change the talk page template, and, if necessary, list at WP:GA (until that is also automated). The article would automatically be removed from GAN. One could certainly have a separate debate about whether GA reviews should be archived, and whether they should be transcluded from a separate page, but there is a long tradition of having GAs on the talk page, and it is not clear that it would be easy or worthwhile to change this tradition. Geometry guy 21:43, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

While I don't really care, I also don't buy the argument that people aren't becoming GA reviewers of the difficulty of the process. I just don't see any evidence that that's anything but a subjective interpretation of our current situation. Wikipedia is a volunteer job. Good Article reviewing is a volunteer job within a volunteer job. Someone was asking me questions about Wikipedia and they asked me why someone would spend their time working on Wikipedia. My response was that it was like any volunteer job, it's because you get some sort of satisfaction out of it. It's up to the individual person to have their reasons why they contribute. My best guess, and I admit that, like your idea, it is just a guess, is that, for the majority of the variety motives people have for contributing to Wikipedia, the motivation does not extend to reviewing the works of others. While I don't doubt that some potential reviewers are put off by the current system, my hypothesis is that a rough equal number of older reviewers would be put off by the newer system. They'd stop contributing not out of spite, but because of shifting motivations, wills and desires. So my theory is that any large such change will merely shift the experience level of the reviewers, not the numbers. Since I can't prove it, however, I have no formal objection, I'm just merely pointing out that the time spent on all this organization might be better spent on actually reviewing a few of the articles. My other question is, if we're so worried about making things accessible for new reviewers, why have we been continually consolidating the nominations? Maybe it's just me, but if I were a newbie, I'd find several large lists of nominations more intimidating and I'd feel like I could make less of a difference. I originally started reviewing because I saw several smaller lists and thought "well I bet I could review all of those articles." Everyone is different of course but, personally, I see contradicting efforts at work here. Cheers, CP 21:24, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You make interesting points. It is very difficult to obtain evidence for editor's motivations, as these usually don't get expressed on-wiki. My argument is that each complication in the process has the potential to put someone off reviewing: this affects the probability of attracting new reviewers, and hence the statistics. One piece of evidence for this can be found here.

I agree entirely that making big changes could put off existing reviewers. One of the features of the PR automation was that the appearance of the PR page did not change at all. Even though I dislike the complexity of the 2nd opinion, on hold business, I am entirely happy to automate the GAN page on that basis, with as little change to the current format as possible. I have mentioned above that there would be a small change in appearance, as within each topic, on-holds, 2nd opinions etc., would be broken down into separate lists. However, this may be a good thing according to your last point.

Concerning this, there is definitely no agenda to consolidate the nominations. Instead there is a tension between a pragmatic break-down of topics and a logical one. My own view is that we should be consistent between GA and GAN, and this has driven most of the recent changes. However, any proposal to split a subtopic into two (both here and at GA) would be welcomed. This has already happened with "Recreation" (now split into "Sport and recreation" and "Video and computer games") for example. Geometry guy 22:00, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm afraid I agree with Canadian Paul. I don't think the current process is a major reason for the lack of reviewers. The effort it takes to process a GA review is negligible compared to the effort it takes to do the actual review. Learning how to do a GA review, including reading all the guidelines and examining other reviews, is far more intimidating for a newbie than learning how to pass or fail an article. Epbr123 (talk) 22:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Questions: Is the current backlog problem due to a lack of reviewers or to an excess of nominees? Meaning - are most of the articles nominated actually at GA quality (or close to it)? What are the statistics on GA nominees - how many pass/fail? I wonder if the backlog is due to the fact that there are too few reviewers for lots of good articles or if the problem is that reviewers spend too much time on articles that fail.Corvus coronoides _talk 22:09, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I haven't failed an article straight out for over a month now...I've failed a few on holds due to no effort being put (and I mean zero effort) into dealing with the issues, but I'd say I've passed about 80-90% of my reviews (via on hold) in the last month and a half. And I've reviewed a heck of a lot in that time ;) — Dihydrogen Monoxide 00:08, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm only making one comment here: I have always opposed and will continue to oppose any automation of the GA process. People hate PR precisely because it is an automated process that produces useless results. Anything that is worth doing takes time, and a temporary cycle of backlog problems is no reason to rush off and butcher the process. Is it so odd to think that the only way to solve the backlog is to review articles? VanTucky ^talk 00:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I've got the GA page on my watchlist simply so it's easy to go to, to check recent additions every now and again. But when I first came across GA, I was completely put off the review process because it sounded so complicated. I don't know if others would be the same but having seen this section, I thought I'd simply add my own experience in. Peanut4 (talk) 00:11, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

To match long overdue changes at GA (see WT:GA), film and drama are now listed under Arts and architecture. This includes television and radio drama, dramatic comedy, soap operas, fictional characters etc., but not television and radio journalism and other non-fiction. Apologies for any temporary inconvenience finding your GAN listings. Geometry guy 21:30, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In view of the discussion in the previous thread, any ideas for subdividing this subtopic would be welcome. The same probably applies to the Music subtopic, which is also rather large now. Geometry guy 22:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

P.S. Why is architecture grouped with arts? Isn't architecture primarily related to engineering? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhaluza (talk • contribs) 22:27, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Judging by the number and thoroughness of reviews performed, I have chosen Dihydrogen Monoxide as the GAN Reviewer of the Week for the week ending Saturday 29th December 2007. Dihydrogen Monoxide is therefore awarded with The Good Article Medal of Merit. The top five reviewers of the week were:
1. Dihydrogen Monoxide
2. AnonEMouse
3. Canadian Paul
4. Scorpion0422
5. Elcobbola.
Epbr123 (talk) 23:47, 5 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]