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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]

Suggestion: I'm not sure if there would be a big enough time benefit to this to make it worth it if it were implemented, but is there a way to have a bot check all articles for a lack of sources/cleanup tags and auto-fail articles that would be quick-failed? Corvus coronoides _talk 00:15, 6 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]

Okay thanks. Corvus coronoides _talk 00:12, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

FWIW, maybe I have insanely high standards, but my ratio is a little different. I have found a ratio of 60-40 for pass-fail, roughly. Personally, I do see a problem that certain editors are mass nominating not articles that they have worked on, but articles they feel are important but have worked on little, if any themselves. Many of these do not meet the criteria at all, and thus can be failed, but it still takes the time to review. Even worse, when an article is decent, but not quite there, one takes a lot of time to do a thorough review to get it to GA, then finds the nominator has no interest in fixing the article and just wanted to see if it could pass. For example, when I reviewed Star Trek and informed the nominator of the hold, they just posted on the Wikiproject and said "here's what you need to do to get it to GA" and nothing was ever done. I'm not saying that the majority experience, after all I've got a 60ish% pass rate when quickfails are taken out of the picture, and obviously not all fails fall under that category, but even if it were true for 10%, that would be 30 more articles. So while I don't think it's "the" problem, or even a large one, I think it's part of the issue. Cheers, CP 01:34, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

You may be a more stringent reviewer than me (likely!), or it could just be that the music articles are generally good. I don't know. Also the fact that I don't go looking for quickfails (not saying that in an accusing tense, just noting). In any case, I do agree that nominations where people don't do anything after the hold are a bad thing, though I can't think of anything to do about it (short of sanctioning users, which is a really bad idea). By the way, I fixed a link in CP's comments, as he had accidentally linked to Extras rather than User:Canadian Paul/Extras. — Dihydrogen Monoxide 01:49, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for fixing the link. The 60-40 ratio does not include quickfails, so it doesn't effect my results. In any case, you're right, there's probably nothing we can do about it, but I meant to note that it's part of the problem that indicates a backlog will likely always be present and that no amount of rearranging, short of, as you say, sanctioning the users, will solve it. So it's better to spend time in review than reorganization. Just my opinion though. Cheers, CP 01:52, 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. I wholly agree with CP here; substantially changing the nominations process will put off those who have taken the time to learn the criteria. Making it so that the only activity is on the article talk will draw in those who don't know squat about the criteria, and thus will significantly lessen the quality of reviews. Is it so odd to think that the only way to solve the backlog is to review articles? The only reason we have a big backlog now is because the holidays coincided with an unusual excess of nominations. 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]

Goodness me, VanTucky, I find it hard to believe that it is an experienced editor like yourself commenting with such closed-mindedness and ignorance. "People hate PR precisely because it is an automated process that produces useless results." Where did that come from? My best guess is that you are referring to the reviews generated by semi-automatic scripts such as this. Some editors don't like them, and I don't much like them myself, but they form a very small part of the peer review process, which is actually rather active and popular. But we're not talking about semi-automatic reviews here. My point of view is: let bots do what bots are good at (tedious repetitive tasks), and let humans do what humans are good at (make assessments based on judgement and reason). I'm just talking about automating some of the tedium, not the review itself.

"The only reason we have a big backlog now is because the holidays coincided with an unusual excess of nominations." That's a heads-in-the-sand attitute if ever I saw one. How do you define "backlog"? Before the holidays there were still over 200 articles at GAN and there have been for many months. Is that not a backlog? It has been steadily growing because demand for reviews is outstripping supply. How large does the backlog have to get before heads come out of the sand? 300? 500? Geometry guy 13:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I’m constantly amazed at how many people think the process is complicated and/or confusing. Aside from some contradictory polices/phrasing, it seems perfectly simple to me. If I am indeed unique in this regard, I echo the points already raised: the perceived complications serve as a useful barrier to entry which 1) ensures new reviewers have a genuine commitment and 2) requires reviewers have a thorough understanding of the “rules”. I think the problem, if you can call it that, is more so that doing a proper review is a large time commitment; I think a lot of editors feel their time and efforts are better spent elsewhere. Reviewing can also be contentious, as editors do not always respond well to criticism. Spending a lot of time to go (at the least) unappreciated is not the most attractive prospect. Ɛƚƈơƅƅơƚɑ _talk 00:42, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I'm a minor reviewer. I do a review here and there. The process is a bit complex. It is actually simpler to fail outright an article than to go through the process of passing an article. Reading a couple of the above responses leads me to think that a process to move through the back-log quickly would be to identify those articles where an actual review is pointless. Obviously, an article that meets the quik-fail criteria should be got through quickly. The "Bot" idea sounds good. Another group of articles as CP mentions are those who have no active editors. Before writing the review, it is probably best to confirm if there is anyone 'home'. No one home = quick fail. Anecdotally, I've seen an interested potential reviewer or two who would post a technical question on this talk page and quickly realize they have no interest in jumping through techinical hoops in order to review. They leave. A recent example can be found here. Anyway, I'll try to do two or three this week. Cheers! Wassupwestcoast (talk) 01:51, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

A couple observations:

• complexity of process: When compared to other Wikipedia procedures, or when considered by people who are fairly comfortable with technology, the process does not seem extraordinarily difficult. But those may not be the best metrics. I would say that, like many other procedures on Wikipedia, this one is too complicated. That's not a slam on anyone -- I know it's something that was made by volunteers. But it's important to keep in mind that the core skill we probably want in GA reviewers is the ability to assess and edit the written word, which is generally a "humanities" type skill. Many with those skills are not nearly as comfortable following lists of instructions and remembering or looking up little strings of code as are programmers and the like. I think there's plenty of room for improvement/simplifying, whether or not this is the "core" problem.
• An incomplete suggestion: Personally, I have yet to do a GA review. Part of this is, I'd rather review an article that is more or less in my area of interest. If the only way for me to find that is to scan through long lists, that's a fairly high bar. Yes, I know that in theory, reviewing any article is in the best interest of the overall project, but I suspect many people would be more motivated to review within their area of interest. If there were some way to rearrange things such that it's possible to see when articles in a certain category, or within a certain Wikiproject, come up for review, that might be helpful to drawing more people in. (Note, the existing classification system is better than nothing, but it's a one-to-one relationship: for instance, the Cascade Mountains couldn't be under geology, and Oregon, and Washington. You gotta pick one spot.) -Pete (talk) 01:58, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]

In response to the complexity of process section. I don't review GA, but I do try review at PR, FLC or FAC because that's what you can do there, review. You need no other skill, but simply read the article, and add your comments. No other complexities. Peanut4 (talk) 02:12, 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]

From an architect's point of view it may be. One reason art and architecture are grouped together is because one of the categories for featured articles has long been "Art and architecture". That isn't a particularly good reason of course! However, if you look at the articles we have on architecture, they aren't really engineering articles. They are more about the significance and artistic design of buildings and other structures. Some of them are more like history articles even. Listing them with arts is a compromise, but not such a bad one in my view. Geometry guy 13:16, 6 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]

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 5th January 2008. Dihydrogen Monoxide is therefore awarded with The Good Article Medal of Merit. The top five reviewers of the week were:
1. Dihydrogen Monoxide
2. Canadian Paul
3. M3tal H3ad
4. Casliber
5. AnonEMouse.
Epbr123 (talk) 14:37, 6 January 2008 (UTC)[reply]