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Referring to peer review

I think we should start referring to peer review articles which clearly won't make it to FA this round (i.e. numerous objections). People are rather reluctant to "vote" to refer (maybe because it sounds less harsh or critical than "object"?), so this would prevent the main FAC page from being clogged up. Thoughts? Johnleemk | Talk 17:42, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Addendum: I have referred the ABBA and Chris Benoit FACs to peer review. Johnleemk | Talk 17:49, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Seconded. I do that all the time. And where the nominator agrees, or gives consent by silence, but doesn't seem to know what to do about it, I also boldly do the moving myself. But, oh, look, the recommendation to refer to PR in such cases is gone from the instructions at the top of the FAC page. It was there until pretty recently. As much as I agree with keeping those instructions concise, removing that particular one is a terrible idea. Probably that's the reason people have become "reluctant"--they no longer see it as an option. I ask the person who removed the recommendation, or anybody else who can find it, to please put it back. Bishonen | ノート 18:08, 14 March 2006 (UTC).

Lo and behold, I have been reverted. Johnleemk | Talk 14:03, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Hear ye, hear ye, you have re-reverted without responding to my attempt to discuss the matter on Misplaced Pages talk:Peer review. :-( Bishonen | ノート 14:19, 15 March 2006 (UTC).

Misplaced Pages:Peer review has some standards

A major consideration has been missed in the effrots to purge FAC of submissions that on the surface do not yet appear to be realistic candidates. Peer Review is not the appropriate place for all types of requests. As stated in the instructions for PR, requests for Pages needing attention, Requests for expansion, content disputes, or Cleanup should be sent to the locations set up for those functions. Due to the differing natures of PR and FAC, a discussion moved directly from FAC without appropriate context looks very much like a content dispute.

While I understand the desire to remove FAC submissions that don't have a snowball's chance, dumping these submissions on Peer Review without appropriate additions/changes does not seem the best way to handle the problem. Instead FAC should work towards concensus on an archiving policy that meets current needs. --Allen3  15:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Yes, I agree, or second that, or whatever is appropriate. I actively visited peer review a few days ago, where I spent time looking through quite thoroughly and also made comments on a couple of articles. It seems to be quite a different place from FAC. In PR, some articles get almost no response (unlike the vast majority of FACs, which do), and more importantly, more general improvement suggestions are often offered (not a detailed critique based on specific FA criteria). I don't imagine everyone going to PR is grooming for an FA star. While a trip through PR can't be bad for a future FAC, moving ("dumping") a FAC on PR, especially with FAC reviews intact, seems to be more of a way to sweep away procedural FAC problems (into another WP area), than improve the article or be "kind" to the nominators. For me, that sends some kind of mixed and bureaucratic message to both reviewers and nominators: if an article comes to FAC, it should be reviewed according to the criteria by the editors on hand, with consensus fairly observed and decisions made clear when requested, and that's that. Hope that's helpful input... --Tsavage 16:27, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

My recent experience with the Mini article was that PR provided very little input - there were only two comments - both of which essentially suggested a rewrite of the introductory paragraph. Contrast that with FAC which has provided a ton of valuable copyedit type changes and a rich set of advice that would have been valuable at the PR stage, IMHO, this is the reverse of how it should be. The nit-picking and layout/linking/references advice should be given in PR - and FAQ should just be a test of whether the quality is good enough or not...essentially just an up or down vote on something that's already been nit-picked to death. Right now, what we have is two stages of peer-review - the second of which is tangled up with the voting process. The mechanism we have in place is a good one - the problem is that the super-star ace reviewers all hang out in the prestigious FAC and don't spend time in PR where their help would be most valuable. IMHO, articles should be required to go through PR before FAC and to pass out of PR via the 'two weeks with no input' rule rather than the 'article still not fixed after a month in PR' rule. Thus, any article that gets into FAC would likely be a great article already and people who just dump garbage articles into FAC would have to wait out at least two weeks in PR and actively work to resolve problems - significantly raising the barrier to people just trying for notoriety. SteveBaker 16:58, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Allen and Tsavage. I have published a more detailed explaination of my opinion below. Cedars 00:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that articles should need to be on PR (i.e. I agree with SteveBaker) before being nominated. That should cut down on the number of FAC nominations considerably, all of them being ones that were never ready to begin with. I don't think it would considerably dis-encourage the active FACers that wouldn't nominate an article that wasn't at least reasonably close -- most of us wait out the two weeks on PR now, even if no comments are forthcoming, and by separating out more of the chaff from the wheat, the whole process will be quicker. Tuf-Kat 00:35, 16 March 2006 (UTC) via edit conflict with Cedars

The problem is that this may clog up peer review with the same sort of problems that FAC experiences. Nominations done more on the hope that they will be able to sneak through rather than a commitment by their submitters to improving the article. That sort of thing could cripple peer review for authors who are genuinely interested in improving their article (with or without the desire to get the article featured). Cedars 00:50, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

My opinion

I have no problem with people submitting their failed or failing FAC to peer review if they are committed to improving the article. After all improving articles is what peer review is for. But it is poor form to simply quote the FAC nomination verbatim - a mere link to the FAC nomination would be much less distracting and serve the same purpose. Equally someone else moving the nomination to peer review serves little purpose unless the person moving the article is committed to improving the article themselves. Firstly because the original submitter may not be aware of where their nomination has been moved to. And secondly because we have no evidence that the submitter would follow through with peer review's recommendations. Some people decide to have-a-shot at a FAC but are not really committed to improving the article, it is wrong of those working with FACs to simply start offloading such people on the peer review page (which is what I was referring to when I talked about dumping). Peer review's resources are limited and are much better focused towards those articles where it can make a difference (because there is an active contributor willing to work on improvements).

Peer reviewing an article is an intensive process, I would argue more-so than the FAC process. If potential submitters are genuinely interested in getting feedback on their article and are committed to improving the article they are encouraged to submit an article. But there should be no shifting of content to peer review unless the person doing the shifting is committed to improvement. Somehow, I don't believe Johnleemk was committed to improving the ABBA article - certainly he hasn't made any of the last 500 edits to the article.

Cedars 00:31, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thinking more about this I have to agree that moving them to PR by someone other than the nominator is not helpful. WP:PR only works when someone is motivated to impliment the suggestions given. If they are not it is a waste of time. And after a failed FAC there are plenty of suggestions that need to be implimented before another PR would be helpful. I do however support removing FACs that do not have a snowballs chance, so readding them to FAC isn't helpful either. When there are several unanimous objections, the FAC should simply be delisted and a note added to it about why and maybe additionally on the nominators talk page. - Taxman 00:51, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

• • I agree the choice of moving to PR or even withdrawing from FAC needs to be that of the editor who nominated. The process its self can be fairly tough on an indiviual editor any way. To leave a FAC one day and wake up the next to find it move could be distressing to point of the editor giving up on the article. If it was me I would be more inclined to leave it nominated for a couple of days and see if I could do the necessary adjustments. Failing that I would with draw altogether then leave it alone for a couple of weeks come back refreshed edit the article then consider what the next options should be. Gnangarra 02:24, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Peer review is too cluttered. I propose that we split it into two parts. One exclusively for articles that will be put up on FAC after a set period of time (this space should be serious: refs should be added and it should adhere to WP:WIAFA); and another for general comments and suggestions. =Nichalp «Talk»= 09:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Nichalp. —Eternal Equinox | talk 23:34, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe that the mechanisms of PR are OK - the problem is that there aren't enough people (or sufficient capable people) working there. How else can one explain the large number of trivial editing problems that are found in FAC even AFTER an article has been PR'ed? If things worked as they should, PR would have removed all of the little issues with articles - and FAC could address the big-picture matters such as "Does the article cover the material? Is it encyclopedic?" - and would essentially just be an up/down vote. If that system was actually working, then PR would be an almost essential thing for an article heading for FAC. The root problem is that it isn't working. Far too many trivial problems are being found in articles that have 'passed PR through no comments after 2 weeks. SteveBaker 14:13, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree that the primary limiting factor for PR is reviewer participation. Page organization and maintenance concerns can be solved if enough people are willing to actively participate in the peer review process, but without reviewers a split solves nothing other than turning one large page into two or more smaller pages. The possibility of a split has been discussed before at Misplaced Pages talk:Peer review, but until someone come up with a way to overcome Raul's 3 law any such plan is more likely to result in multiple peer review pages being ignored by the community instead of just the one. --Allen3  17:04, 17 March 2006 (UTC)

No it won't be ignored. We have split the Reference Desk into related categories and it seems to be working perfectly fine. =Nichalp «Talk»= 16:10, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Archiving

Isn't the last archive a little quick? I understand the discussions were long, but not even letting the current month's worth of topics stand seems a little hasty? --Tsavage 16:50, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Recommendation

If I may make a recommendation (in fact, I think I will), can we add hidden text at the top of the FAC page to remind editors, before adding, that it meets basic FAC requirements? Currently, the hidden text just says, "Add new nominations at the top of the list immediately below." However, it we added one or two more lines which said something along the lines of, "Before adding your nomination, please ensure that the article has references, incline citations, and has been given a proper copyedit for grammar and point of view. Also, you might wish to consider Peer Review as an option before listing an article below".

A lot of the nominations are by fans of a particular rock group, author, etc., and not by prior contributors to an article. As well, although the rules of what should be in a FAC is at the top of the article, I don't believe many nominators read this. We receive a lot of nominations which say "I believe this meets all featured article guidelines" and then don't have a single reference. Perhaps they'd be more likely to read this hidden text as they get ready to nominate their article, and then they could reconsider the nomination or perhaps move it to Peer Review first.

Just a long, wordy suggestion. --Ataricodfish 20:52, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I like it. I agree that a lot of people who nominate articles are fans who think the subject "deserves" to be featured, and even though the link to the requirements is in the intro, it's obviously not being clicked by enough nominators. Adding this request in hidden text certainly wouldn't hurt. Kafziel 21:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

User:Eternal Equinox is banned from WP:FAC for three weeks

Crossposted to User talk:Eternal Equinox
I'm banning User:Eternal Equinox from WP:FAC for three weeks from today for bad behavior and bullying of voters on the"We Belong Together" discussion. EE, "banned" means that you mustn't nominate pages nor take part in discussions of pages you have contributed to. If you do, you can be blocked by any admin, first for 24 hours and then progressively for longer. But I hope you won't. Please instead learn something from this about the culture the community wants on FAC. Don't, when you return, try again to force articles through FAC by wearing down the opposition. You'll be welcome back if you resolve to be courteous to Oppose voters, and above all, if you change your mindset to trying to fix, and learn from, objections, rather than trying to argue them into the ground.

Remember that you'll be free to work on improving articles during those three weeks. If you wish, you may also vote support or oppose on other FACs, that you have not edited, but please make sure you don't abuse this concession in any way. If you use it to post disruptively or in bad faith on FAC, you'll be blocked. Oh, and if you try to get round any of this by using sockpuppets, you'll be in real trouble. Bishonen | ノート 21:59, 20 March 2006 (UTC).