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Revision as of 16:37, 2 September 2013

view · edit Frequently asked questions Main Criteria Instructions Nominations FAQ January backlog drive Mentorship Review circles Discussion Reassessment Report Shortcut WP:GAFAQ This is the list of Frequently asked questions about nominating and reviewing Good articles. If you cannot find the answer to your question here, you might want to ask for assistance at the GA nominations discussion page. Nomination process The backlog is huge! Is there something we can do to restrict nominations? There have been complaints about the perceived backlog in reviewing since the Good article status was created in 2006. Generally speaking, we don't want to restrict nominations along their path to GA. In the beginning, as many as 100 nominations were waiting for a reviewer to volunteer. By 2011, each day typically listed 330 nominated articles, of which 260 were waiting. By 2016, 580 were listed, 460 waiting; by 2021, 470 were listed, 300 were waiting. For comparison, today there are currently 705 nominations listed and 621 waiting for a reviewer. While it may seem overwhelming, a large backlog isn't a bad thing. It shows that many nominators want to use GA as a tool to improve the encyclopedia. It also allows reviewers to choose from a wide selection of articles that interest them. From a nominator's perspective, the main concern is the expected wait time before receiving a review, not the number of articles on the nominations page. Can't we force nominators to review articles? Quid pro quo reviewing (editors must review an article before nominating, perhaps after a grace period) was regularly proposed and always rejected as likely leading to lower quality reviews and fewer nominations from excellent content creators who may not wish to review another person's work. What order do nominations appear on the Good article nominations page? One advantage of reviewing articles to help the Misplaced Pages community is the GAN appearance order: the more articles you have reviewed relative to articles you have nominated, the higher up in the queue your nomination will appear on the GAN page. Note that above this, order preference is given to nominators who are new to GA. What if the nominator is a (perhaps dynamic) IP address? Any editor with significant contributions to the article may nominate an article for GA status (while only registered users may review), so significant-contributor IP nominators are permitted. Non-significant contributors should follow the advice above for editors who have not significantly contributed to the article. Dynamically changing IP nominators may want to clarify to the reviewer that, despite their signature, they remain the same person. Can I nominate an article I haven't significantly contributed to? No. Nominations from editors who have not substantially contributed will be removed unless the nomination shows that the article's regular editors were consulted on its talk page alongside a note on the GAN template showing their commitment to the process, e.g., |note=Adopted following extensive improvement by another editor. In the past, many drive-by nominators did not know the article or its sources and did not respond to questions by the reviewer. Review process I want to review an article. Do I have to review the oldest unreviewed nomination first? Thank you for deciding to review an article for GA. You may review any nominated article you are not involved in, regardless of the nomination's age or position in the queue. As a reviewer, I want to help the nominator improve the article, but it already meets the criteria. What am I supposed to do now? The purpose of a GA review is to determine whether the article meets the GA criteria. Article-improvement discussions are intended to prevent near-misses in nominated articles that almost meet the criteria. If the article already meets the criteria when you first review it, then explain exactly what you've checked in each of the main criteria (e.g., "I have verified there is no original research, copyright violations, plagiarism, unreliable sources, bias, edit wars, or untagged images.") and list it as a Good article. "Quick passes" are as legitimate as quick fails, although they are less common. Please do not make a list of nitpicky details or exceed the written requirements of the Good article criteria in an effort to make the review look rigorous. Instead, thank the nominator for presenting such a polished article, and encourage them to submit another. Who can respond to the review? The nominator is expected to respond to the reviewer's suggestions to improve the article, while everyone interested in the article is encouraged to participate in the review, not just the person who happened to nominate it. Nominators have no special privileges over other editors except that they can withdraw the nomination. Should nominators respond to reviewers' concerns? And what should reviewers do if they don't? The nominator has an interest in seeing the article become GA, so the nominator will likely want to respond to the reviewer to improve the article. In fact, all editors interested in the article are encouraged to respond to reviewers' concerns. However, nobody, including the nominator, is required to. If the reviewer identifies concerns directly related to the good article criteria and no one addresses the concerns, then no one should be surprised if the reviewer declines to list the article. If the article does not meet the Good article criteria after the reviewer has waited a reasonable amount of time for the nominator to make improvements, the reviewer is sure to fail the nomination. Future article editors may benefit from review comments on how to improve the article. The nominator disagrees with the reviewer. Can another reviewer take over? If your GAN experience is not going well or if you are disagreeing with the reviewer's decisions, then you may allow the review to fail, take the reviewer's suggestions into account, then renominate the article immediately (to get a different reviewer). If the reviewer has not yet failed the nomination, you may try asking them to ask for a second opinion. Other than these, another reviewer does not normally take over an active review. To prevent avoidable disputes, reviewers should either not make comments unrelated to the Good article criteria, or they should carefully label those suggestions as optional (e.g., "I know that citation formatting is not required by the Good article criteria, and I will not consider this when making my decision, but if you might send this to Misplaced Pages:Featured articles later, then that process requires consistent citation formatting"). Does an article have to be on hold for exactly seven days? No. Whether to place the nomination on hold at all, and the length of any such hold, is for the reviewer to decide. Depending on the quality of the article and the responsiveness of the nominator, a hold may not be necessary. If the reviewer decides that it is, they may choose longer or shorter periods of hold time. The reviewer may even modify the {{GA nominee}} template on the article talk page to include a "time" parameter, for example, "time=fourteen days", and the {{GANotice}} template used to convey messages to the GA nominator to include a "days" parameter, for example "days=fourteen". Keep in mind that protracted reviews show up as exceptions on the GA nominations report page. What should I do if a review page becomes inactive? This can happen for a number of reasons. Review pages should only be started by reviewers who are willing to take an active interest in the article and are committed to completing their review of the article in a timely manner. Sometimes another editor (such as the nominator) starts the review page by mistake. A reviewer can fix this by placing their signature after "Reviewer:" towards the top of the review page, but if no reviewer is forthcoming, it may be best to delete the review page: requests for such deletions may be posted at the discussion page. If a new reviewer is truly needed, follow the instructions page under "If a review seems abandoned". Do not use this process to void a review you disagree with. I failed the article, and the nominator just nominated it again without fixing the problems I identified! That's okay. There is no time limit between nominations, and this is the recommended process if the nominator disagrees with your review. Let someone else review it this time. The new reviewer is sure to read your comments while independently deciding on their assessment. If your concerns were legitimate, then the new reviewer will doubtless agree with you and also decline to list the article as GA. If the article is passed and you do not believe it meets the good article criteria, you can initiate a reassessment. How can GA be reliable when a single reviewer decides? The quality of a Good article is only as reliable as the most recent review and articles may deteriorate if unattended. The GA process deals with both of these issues by allowing repeat reviews by any registered user at any time. The process aims to encourage article improvement and build consensus on quality through multiple reviews—even though a single reviewer makes the decision whether to list the article according to the GA criteria. Any editor may contribute to any review discussion and reassessment is available when the "one reviewer decides" model breaks down. What if I have concerns about the quality of a review or need to resolve a dispute over the GA process? You can bring those concerns to the GA nominations discussion page to get help from other editors. Remember, however, to notify all users about whom concerns have been raised or who are involved in any dispute that you have.

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• WT:GAN

Million Award?

I'm working on an award for editors who bring high-traffic articles to GA or FA level, which I'm tentatively calling the Million Award. My goal is to create a fun incentive for editors to work on Misplaced Pages's most-read content, which is often neglected because of the difficulties in improving it. (An important inspiration here is "Improving Misplaced Pages's important articles", which has some good facts and figures about this).

The three tiers of the award would recognize editors who successfully promote articles with an estimated quarter-million, half-million, or million annual views. (Estimated is a key word here, as this award would not be strictly supervised or regimented--it's for editor encouragement only). This would include almost all topics at WP:Vital articles/Expanded as well as popular contemporary topics. Recent qualifying articles would include Nazi Germany, Nelson Mandela, Thaddeus Stevens, Sea, National Football League, Skyfall (song), and Jefferson Davis.

You can see the full proposal at User:Khazar2/Million, though the graphic design still needs to be done. Since this award would most commonly be given to GAs, I thought I'd ask here for feedback. Any thoughts, objections, or dire warnings before I move this to article space? Is anyone interested in helping to design the award? Thanks to all, -- Khazar2 (talk) 12:35, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I think that it sounds like a great idea. SL93 (talk) 18:51, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

A great idea- I'd certainly be happy to link this award with the WikiCup, which also offers large amounts of points for highly important topics (though we judge importance in a slightly different way). (Might I also suggest that you allow people to remove themselves from the list if they so wish? That's one of the things that caused such problems at the Four Award.) J Milburn (talk) 19:59, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Good idea, but I don't think anything less than 1 million annual page (2740 daily) views is high traffic. I don't work in the high traffic area and I have some that probably get a 1/4 million.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 20:14, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I rarely even review high-traffic articles. However, I know that LeBron James became very difficult due to a lot of outside editors, which discouraged the nominator. Bill Clinton was one I reviewed and watched. I also watch Tiger Woods. Those are articles that are difficult to get in shape and keep in shape. Down below 3000 page views, not so much. You should focus on million and multimillion, IMO. Otherwise, you will just be giving out awards to people who do articles. You should be focussing on rewarding the difficult ones.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 20:22, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

A good idea, and one that can learn lessons from recent controversy by viewing itself as a barnstar and taking itself no more seriously. Resolute 20:38, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, everybody. I've gotten positive feedback in some other forums, too, and will proceed in some fashion when I design (or get someone else to design) the graphic and userbox for it. I don't know if that'll be a day from now or a month; we'll just have to see.

@J Milburn and Resolute, that's definitely my intention; I want this to be as informal as possible. I'll make that explicit in the instructions.

@Tony, I agree to an extent, and am still debating that issue with myself. But I'm hoping that awarding a more common lower level will inspire people to go for the elite higher level. ~650 daily views (a quarter million views annually) would still put an article in at least the top 10% of GAs, so far as I can tell. Unscientifically clicking through 20-30 random nominations just now, most had only 20-50 daily views; none had more than 200 daily views. For every Jefferson Davis or Colin Farrell, there seem to be about 10-20 Texas Recreational Road 8s. -- Khazar2 (talk) 20:46, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I don't know which is my most heavily trafficked, but I don't have many. Anthony Davis (basketball) (137K page views in last 90 days) is up there and it has few high traffic issues. Neither does Trey Burke (120K), Tim Hardaway, Jr. (105K). Rewarding me for these would be wrong. There are no issues. I watch a lot of high page view articles and understand the issues, but the threshold you want is higher even if the award is infrequent. Maybe creating the award will change the frequency.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 20:57, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

P.S. I don't know which subsection you were at when you were sampling. Surely more than 10% of TV shows, Celebrities, Politicians and other subjects in the news and on TV meet your threshholds.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 21:06, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Thinking of my own, Calgary Flames and Jarome Iginla are usually good for a quarter-million a year. "In Flanders Fields" is over a half-million, and Terry Fox nears 700,000. Though yeah, that's four out of about 80 GA/FAs. Resolute 21:17, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I've just been looking through stats of some of my GAs. I think the best one I've got is Keith Moon which hits about 750,000 a year. On the theme of roads, Blackwall Tunnel, a pretty well known landmark I'd have thought, gets less than a tenth of that. Ritchie333 21:20, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, looking at the 10 most-recently nominated TV articles, it looks like 2 would potentially qualify. You have to remember that most TV-category articles are about individual episodes, which get only a few views a day. Out of the 10 most recent Politics articles, only 1 would potentially qualify. Out of the 10 most-recently nominated song articles, none qualify. Out of the 10 most recent album nominations, only 1 would potentially qualify. Out of the 10 most recent sports articles, none qualify. Out of the 10 most recent history articles, none qualify. And this is leaving out some categories like Warfare, Transport, Earth Sciences, Geography, and other categories where high-traffic articles are even rarer. So I feel like 10% seems like a fair estimate; if anything it's probably a bit high. -- Khazar2 (talk) 21:37, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I think this an excellent idea. While taking any article to GA status is worthy, as it provides something a reader can trust to be complete and correct, a sense of priority to the general readership cannot be underestimated. I would dearly love to see The Holocaust at GA status again (and at FA status even more), but just don't have sufficient sources to do it justice myself. When I've got Hammond organ out of the way, I might see if I can tackle some more general-purpose instrument articles - I might be able to give saxophone a go as some friends work in a dedicated Saxophone warehouse and have books on the subject coming out of their ears (well, nearly). Ritchie333 20:50, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

It certainly would provide some sorely needed impetus for someone to work on such important articles as Human penis size, List of Sex positions and Justin Bieber instead of such elitist drivel as Koala bears and Lactarius indigo or the Duino Elegies. User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:05, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Maunus, can you not imagine a Misplaced Pages where people work on both? Of course there are worthy less-viewed topics and "unworthy" high-traffic topics (though koala easily exceeds the million annual viewers mark, so it might not be the best example to lead off your second list with). Rewarding one kind of article doesn't have to mean deprecating another. -- Khazar2 (talk) 21:19, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I think they are working on both already.User:Maunus ·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy obscure GAs, particularly if one of the "usual suspects" like Eric, Drmies or Dr Blofeld has had a hand in it, but the man in the street won't understand that, or much care. (If they did, Eric Corbett wouldn't be a redlink, would it?) Ritchie333 21:38, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Ditto; I was actually the GA reviewer for Maunus's example of Duino Elegies and had a great time with it. I also write some extremely low traffic GAs myself--one or two get fewer than 5 views a day. So I'm not trying to deprecate anybody else's work here, just give an added thanks to people who take on the challenge of editing popular content. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:00, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• How will you be handling spikes. The day I nominated Barack Obama 2009 presidential inauguration and the day after it combined for over 300,000 page views. Now, First inauguration of Barack Obama might get about 100,000 page views in a year.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 22:39, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• I'm just going to leave it up to the discretion of the awarding (or self-awarding) editor. I agree it's a potential issue, but I'm reluctant to make any hard-and-fast rules. Perhaps I'll just add a note to the effect of "common sense should be used in evaluating articles with enormous one-time spikes". With regard to this specific example, I do have a note in there suggesting that main page appearances be discounted; the inauguration article appeared that week in ITN. -- Khazar2 (talk) 22:47, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

• Slogging through more of my articles, I continue to find the my 1/4 and 1/2 million ones have none of the high volume issues. Among my FAs, Juwan Howard (175k last 90), Cloud Gate (103k) and Trump International Hotel and Tower (Chicago) (65k) all require almost no extra effort to keep in shape. On rare occaissions Barry Bonds (165k) takes a lot of time to keep in shape. The only article that has high-volume issues is almost 1 million (Michelle Obama, 238k). I continue to think the 1/4 mill and 1/2 mill won't really be recognizing anything, if the point is to note the extra effort for high volume articles.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 17:33, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

• I appreciate the input. I'd still argue that improving a popular article like Barry Bonds or Cloud Gate is an important contribution, regardless of difficulty, but I don't mind that we disagree. Obviously, anyone is welcome to restrict themselves to giving out and accepting whatever tier of the award they feel is worthwhile. -- Khazar2 (talk) 17:53, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

• Well during its 4 GAC attempts, Barry Bonds was a little higher volume article and a lot more contentious article than it is today. I am running out of data points for this discussion, but Jabari Parker (90K) as a high school athlete, has had few high volume issues and was not a contentious article (except when he was on the Sports Illustrated cover). Basicallly, I would not award for less than a million, but at a half million some issues pop up. I still think Michelle Obama is my only high volume issue article and oddly there are enough editors to watch it that I don't really get involved in it that much.--TonyTheTiger (T/C/WP:FOUR/WP:CHICAGO/WP:WAWARD) 15:51, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Alternative criteria

Determining whether or not an article meets the criteria for the award based on the number of views will be difficult, and many people might not want to do the complicated math. An alternative (and much simpler) criteria is: the article promoted to GA/FA status needs to be listed at WP:Vital articles.--FutureTrillionaire (talk) 03:03, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The problem is that a lot of major and popular topics still don't reach Vital Article status (even in the expanded list). Looking just at US History, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, Andrew Johnson, and Jefferson Davis don't make the cut for the Vital Article list, but these are all the sort of articles I'd want to recognize. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:30, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

I should add, too, that there's no reason your proposed award and my proposed award couldn't simultaneously exist--that is, an award for high-traffic articles, and an award for Vital Articles. (It's kind of ridiculous that the latter doesn't already exist, actually, though I know the Core Contest and WikiCup both recognize this in their own forms.) The two would overlap sometimes but certainly not always. If you're interested in creating a complementary award, I say go for it. -- Khazar2 (talk) 03:58, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

The expanded vital articles list is a joke. This is a perennial discussion we have at the WikiCup, where we judge article importance on the basis of the quantity of interwiki links; the logic being that if an article has been created on dozens of Misplaced Pages projects, then it must be important. (In practice, this has resulted in a large number of points for articles we would intuitively say are "important" ones- last month saw lots of points for Henryk Sienkiewicz and Hans Bethe, Nobel laureates, a particularly notable battleship, the already-mentioned sea and Norman conquest of England.) J Milburn (talk) 08:55, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

• Vital articles is essentially an "importance" ranking; the page-traffic approach is essentially a "popularity" one. They often overlap, but there's a lot of vital articles with low traffic and a lot of "non-vital" articles with high traffic. Andrew Gray (talk) 19:13, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Does a bot fix this?

Greetings. I recently passed the nomination for Romania in the Early Middle Ages. I added {{GA}} to the talk page, as advised in the instructions. But the {{ArticleHistory}} template at the talk page hasn't been updated, and it's not clear how to do this. Will a bot take care of it, or it is something I should fix manually? Thanks, – Quadell 13:45, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The bot should take care of it. It may not happen right away though.--Dom497 (talk) 17:29, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Suspected sockpuppet appears to be sabotaging review

A suspected sockpuppet User:FishGF has hijacked a this GA Review. This user’s sole contributions to Misplaced Pages have been to conduct this and to start conducting another GA review. To date 90% of his review has been good, but I suspect that his ultimate plan is to spoil the article by sabotaging the review which I believe are borne out by the more recent comments that he is making in his review.

Although he was reported three weeks ago and ten days ago an SPI clerk endorsed CheckUser request, FishGF’s account has not been blocked and he continues to conduct the review in a manner that looks increasing as if he is trying to spoil it. Is there any way that I can get the review completed without his help?— Preceding unsigned comment added by Martinvl (talk • contribs) 03:58, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

My suggestion would be to simply close the review as a fail and renominate. If you've gotten to the point in the review where you believe the reviewer is a malicious sock (whether or not this turns out to be true), you've passed the point where you can work well together to finish the process out. Since this is an odd situation, I personally wouldn't object to your keeping the same time stamp on the re-nomination so it can keep its place in the queue. -- Khazar2 (talk) 04:10, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Million Award rollout

I've now begun the rollout for the Million Award. If you complete a review for an article with an estimated annual readership of 250,000 or higher, you can now give the appropriate level of the Million Award and a userbox in addition to a regular barnstar. If an article hits the highest level (a million views/year), you can add it to the Hall of Fame.

I'll make some effort to track down editors that qualify for the top tier of the award based on past contributions, but my method isn't comprehensive. If you know of anyone who deserves any level of the award--including yourself--please feel free to award/claim it. It'd be a big help! Cheers to all, -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:23, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

How to withdraw a GAN?

How can I withdraw a GAN nomination if I decide an article is not ready after all? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 16:03, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

If it's not being reviewed yet, just delete the nomination from the article's talk page. If it is being reviewed, ask the reviewer to close it as a "fail" so that any comments so far are preserved in the historical record. -- Khazar2 (talk) 16:14, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Not long ago, I walked away from a GA review which just wasn't going anywhere. I just removed the GA review notice on the talk page and (iirc) a bot picked it up and marked it as failed. There's no real shame in doing this as long as you've made the article better. Ritchie333 16:19, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, the GA bot is likely to regard it as a "fail", simple because it is not a "pass", and list it as a "fail" in both its edit summaries (it takes two operations). If there is an already opened review then this closed review will be itemised in the {{articlehistory}} at some future date as a GAN result = "not listed", but if no review exists this event won't be recorded in the article's {{articlehistory}}. Pyrotec (talk) 20:06, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

What to do without GA bot?

According to User talk:Chris G, Chris is taking a wikibreak and has turned off his bots for the duration, including GA bot. This means that, for an undetermined yet extended period, the nominations page is effectively stuck in time: no new nominations will show up, no closed ones will disappear, no reviews or holds or requests for second opinions will show up. I discovered this by accident when a FailedGA template I added did not cause the nomination to be removed from the GAN page.

I have no idea what might be done—he does give a link to the source code in his message—but I thought it was important to notify everyone here right away. Managing over 400 active nominations strikes me as an impossible task without some sort of automated processes. Best of luck! BlueMoonset (talk) 16:37, 2 September 2013 (UTC)