Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:Good articles. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 1

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Archive 3

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Archive 10

A version with icons

Adding to what was there already, I've had a bash at putting icons in for each heading. I've used yellow as a complimentary colour to the blue. I realise that there are a couple of display issues with it at the minute but for look and feel, has anyone any feedback for an approach like this? (or is it all regret code?...) The page is here, and it actually only adds 2 kb to the page size. Cheers SeanMack 16:11, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

I've sorted out the glitches, checked it in IE and firefox and the colours(colors) are web safe. Does anyone know if there is functionality to +Show and +Hide for these templates for the whole page? I've had a play with it and it helps me at least see the conceptual groupings a bit easier. Let me know how your milage varies... SeanMack 16:46, 15 March 2006 (UTC)

Anyone there? SeanMack 11:45, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

I like the look of that - I am experimenting with a slightly different version at User:TheGrappler/Good3. I thought it looked better with the first colour put darker (blue) to give it a clearer definition. I changed a couple of icons too. What I am hoping to do is find a way to reorder the articles so that there are no repeated subheadings. This may be easier said than done! I also want to find a way to deal with a few anomalies e.g. military history is split between History and War. I am also in favour of removing the article counts after each subheading - they tend to get out of date and I can't really see the benefit from them. TheGrappler 18:33, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Do you mean the main title bar and the first heading being the same? If so - just remove the first heading, eg Art, architecture, and archaeology User:SeanMack/sandbox/Good2. I agree with making blue the first heading. No strong feelings on the icon changes either way. I agree the sub counts don't add much value.

My thoughts on military history, historical wars are part of history so they should be in History. War and military for me should only be for warfare and military articles for the present day. This would resolve the problem(?) I guess there are going to be many cases where an article could feasibly belong in multiple areas. Categories are one way that this issue was tackled, so that an article can be grouped into higher level amalgamations of related information. I'm not sure that our list needs to do that. I think each article should go into the most appropriate section even if it could feasibly fit into others, if someone clicks on the article, they will find related articles through Categories. Do you think it worthwhile pursuing the look and feel I suggested? There wasn't any interest apart from yourself... Cheers SeanMack 05:09, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I think it looks very nice! It makes the page look more "professional" IMHO. Walkerma 08:49, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

I'm not sure about the colour scheme or whether icons are the right way to go. Personally [1] is my favourite. But keep up the good work. Cedars 09:32, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

If you don't repeat the first heading then you can't do section editing, which is a real shame, because that makes editing so much easier. My feeling is that the sections can be broken down, like the Transport one is, so that becomes a non-issue. If we are going to break down in the same way as WP:FA, then military history would go under military, even if that seems strange. Not sure what to do about crimes and criminals, probably they should be filed under Law (there doesn't seem to be a precedent on WP:FA). Similarly, even if it is underpopulated, we ought to keep "Awards and decorations" - given the number of FAs for that topic, I am sure there are some more good articles out there. Does anybody object to removing the section article counts? I can't see the benefit of them if we have another way of counting up the total number of articles, and they add to the maintenance issues of the page. TheGrappler 12:04, 19 March 2006 (UTC)

Complete list?

May I know if Wikipedia:Good articles/Archive 3 represents a complete and exclusive list of all good articles which have gone through the due process of nomination and approval, and if not, where may I find such a list? I noticed that the {{good article}} template was applied to Celtic F.C. but I can't find it on Wikipedia:Good articles/Archive 3, so would like to check whether it's an erroneous edit or not. Thank for any help in advance. --Pkchan 17:03, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

If it isn't a mistake, it wasn't labelled correctly, good articles are supposed to have a {{GA}} stamp on the talk pages rather than a dot in the corner, and I did not see someone comment on it. Check to see if it meets the criteria, (it shouldn't take long) and if it does, put the GA banner on the talk page, and if it doesn't, just remove the dot. Homestarmy 17:08, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply. I have removed the dot for the time being and left a message on its talk page to notify its authors to go through the due course from the beginning if they are to represent Celtic F.C. as a good article. --Pkchan 17:26, 16 March 2006 (UTC)

Categorisation as a criterion?

I have come across some GAs that are uncategorised. There is actually a clean-up tag for this - it would be odd to have something requiring clean-up still being listed as a "good" article! Perhaps one of the criteria at WP:WIAGA should be that the article is appropriately categorised? TheGrappler 19:41, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be a given that a GA has none of the flaws that would lead to it being listed under one of the {{opentask}} categories: being a stub, lacking sufficient verification, needing wikifying, NPOV issues, clearly out-of-date, etc. Sad to say, not only is Wikipedia uneven in its depth of detail & use of references between articles, but some articles are very uneven -- quite good paragraphs are mixed in with slabs of text that read as if they were written on the bus on the way to school. (I know of one article that I originally wrote, & have since found quite mangled by someone with a POV to push.) If you want to nominate an article with a cleanup problem, please fix the article first. -- llywrch 04:23, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

It should be a given - but this particular criterion isn't actually explicitly stated (infact it's not even a condition for FAs, and I have seen poorly categorized FAs in the past too). What I found interesting was that I came across an article somebody else had listed as good, thought it a bit odd that it required cleanup, then realised that it actually did meet all the conditions at WP:WIAGA. Just suggests to me that this particular "given" might need to be made explicit! TheGrappler 05:08, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Heh. Give the issue some time, & I expect you'll start seeing FAs delisted because they aren't properly categorized. (Every time I look in to that forum, it seems that the denizens have again raised the bar.) But if we insist on this for GAs, it doesn't mean that the nominator can't fix these (relatively) minor issues first. -- llywrch 07:03, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

Bot Request

I see we have a bot that determines what articles are tagged for GA, but aren't on the list. Could someone make a bot that updates the GA counts automatically, since not everyone has been doing that manually? Seems like a simple bot to make... and much less wiki-server intensive than the current bot we have. Fieari 20:03, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Proposed new look for Good article page

I am proposing a new look for the page based on previous work mentioned on this page already. Thanks to TheGrappler for working on this and feedback from Cedars and Walkerma.

The Proposed new look.

Points to note:

We have kept the colour scheme in line with the project page as it exists presently bearing in mind the comments by User:Cedars. The list seems to be clearer starting with the darker colour - blue.
It includes editable sections to facilitate moving things around within a section. Without this I would not have suggested it...
It provides an excellent structure for growing the article list, without overwhelming - this is especially important as I think the good articles list will eventually dwarf the FA list by a large margin.
Many new sub-sections have been introduced to help group together related articles. A large amount of work went in here from User:TheGrappler, and I approve of the structures within the main sections.
Sub-section counts have been removed. I agree with the comment that these make the page higher maintenance without adding a huge amount of value.
More distinct article separator - namely this thing here: ♦ separates things visually ♦ quite well ♦ but isn't an image ♦

I want to get feedback from as many editors as possible and hope that you will support this new look. I have used it myself to update the page slightly from the version of the page that I took at one stage, as a test of it's usefulness. I found it quite easy to find and change sections and sub-sections. It is a bit out of date at present. I didn't want to spend too much time keeping it in synch with the current page unless there was support to implement it. I make a commitment that if it is accepted I will ensure that all the articles currently in the GA page will be transferred into this page before implementation. Lets be bold! Thanks for your time. Any feedback can be either here or my talk page. Regards all. SeanMack 16:37, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Replies to feedback

Thanks for the feedback so far. To reply to Joturner, I did try the blue background for the top sections but thought that it didn't look that good in big sections, also I think the new proposal is a big step away from the FA look and I like the fact that at least the top section mirrors the FA page. Also regarding the spacing you mention - In a way I agree with you if the list was to stay around the size that it is now, however I do think that the sections will eventually contain quite a lot of articles as I think there is a huge number of potential GAs out there. I think eventually the extra "white space" will help to make the sections not look too crowded. If I do implement the change I feel it is not mine and anyyone of course is always able to tweak it, maybe that is the way forward? Does anyone have any thoughts whether I should just be bold and make the change? Or, should there be a vote? Please let me know as I have some free time this weekend to make sure that the current list can be done in the new format and I am keen to either do it soon or put it off indefinitely until I have free time again. SeanMack 11:30, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

If I am to include a count of articles, should it be section counts or fine grained sub-section counts?

Mmounties, that seems to be the default operation of the SHow Hide buttons. I agree it would be good if it did what you suggest but I have no idea how to do it...

Looks good to me! Homestarmy 17:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Looks great to me - only thing is that I did quite like the subsection counts. I think Cedars' GAAuto script can calculate them so maintaining need not be a huge bind. Otherwise, excellent stuff, it looks very clear and reader-friendly. Worldtraveller 19:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Overall, I think it's great. However, as Worldtraveller said, I like the subsection counts. What I don't like is the total article count (although I don't think that will be removed) because people forget to update that far more often since it requires making clicking an additional edit link. In addition, that number is hard to verify (unless someone loves counting or adding numbers). I think if you're going to go with the blue color scheme, you should change the regions at the top to shades of blue. Lastly, section titles and links appear to be spaced out too much. Maybe if you eliminate the line break between the bolded section titles and the links that follow (but keep the line break before the bolded section titles), that would look a lot better. Overall though, SeanMack, your attempt to create a more aesthetically pleasing Good Articles page is going well. joturner 23:19, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Like the new look - the extra horizontal rule was a bit confusing at first but now I know it's to allow editing of entire sections I'm fine with it. Cedars 15:06, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Like the new look as well. I also like the subsection counts. One more thing I noticed is that if I click to expand a bar towards the bottom of the page, it expands but it doesn't scroll down the page to make it visible. Would be good if it automatically moved the page focus down to include the entire expanded navigation box. --Mmounties (Talk)

15:23, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

The fact that the page doesn't scroll down with the bar annoyed me too, but I don't know how to get that fixed. I think the new design is a significant improvement, especially bearing in mind potential expansion in the future. TheGrappler 13:37, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

War and military

There doesn't appear to be any distinction as to why articles are placed under this heading, versus under its sub-heading, "Military history." Any thoughts?--Lordkinbote 04:52, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

I agree, I have already proposed to move military history articles into War and Military as part of the new look proposal. TheGrappler 20:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Delisting for instability

I have a question after reading the following at Wikipedia:Good articles/Disputes#Zoroastrianism (note that I am not taking any position on that particular article; this question is a meta-question about the process):

"If there's a dispute, it isn't stable, and thus isn't a GA. I've put up the DelistedGA tag, and am removing it from the list now."

It seems to me that this bar is a bit low for delisting—though I have no problem with it for initial listing. If an article is listed as a GA, and for whatever reason, I don't want it to be listed, it sounds like I can just start a dispute in order to get it delisted, even if it otherwise meets the criteria. In egregious cases, I might get called for violating WP:POINT, but disputes occur on all sorts of articles, even featured articles, all the time. The mere existence of an occasional dispute doesn't seem like it should be a disqualifying factor.

The FAC process has a rule against inactionable objections disqualifying an article to prevent exactly this sort of thing, where a single editor just doesn't want an article listed no matter how much it is improved. Keeping an article stable seems inactionable to me—there's nothing I can do, as an editor who wants an article I've invested time in to be recognized as a GA, to prevent another editor from nuisance disputes. Am I missing something here? --TreyHarris 04:47, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

I think article stability more refers to an article not being the subject of a massive, constant edit war, with daily or even more frequent significant changes. A good example of this is the George W. Bush entry. For those type of entries, an article may be listed one day and have to be delisted the next. OTOH, I took a look at the Zoroastrianism history and didn't seen anything that would cause the article to be significantly unstable, so I don't think it should have been delisted. General disputes and hashing out of issues shouldn't keep an article from being a GA, nor should single-editor vandalism/nuisance edits. Air.dance 05:02, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

No...

I can't believe we're going to add {{Good article}} in the article namespace. It seems very stupid to tell the reader 'you know, we consider this article good'. It should be the standard. Yes, I know many articles are substandard, and I do see some merit in WP:GA, but I think it is a very bad idea to indicate this in the article namespace, especially since the number of GA's is bound to raise very high. Again, it should be the standard visitors expect. — mark ✎ 09:00, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

We're discussing this at some length over at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Good_articles#Icon. Would you come and comment on what we've come up with? Air.dance 09:14, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

i also oppose the proposal, GA should remain talk page only. btw, where did you see that it was gonna be added to article namespace? Zzzzz 09:09, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Air.dance, thanks for pointing me to the discussion. Zzzz, just check 'what links here' from {{Good article}}. — mark ✎ 09:21, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

so can whoever ran the bot to auto-place GA tags on hundreds of article pages without bothering to consult anyone on this major policy change first, please now run a bot to remove them all again. thanks. Zzzzz 09:31, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Implementation of proposed new look

I jumped in and made the change. I spent a long time trying to ensure all the recent changes made it in, and getting the article counts right. Please help fix it if I have missed anything. I also put biography formats in surname, firstname order which they should be for look up purposes. Regards SeanMack 14:56, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Oh, man. I can tell you worked really hard on this and I definitely appreciate it, but.. I don't like it at all. I think the original layout (similar to FA) was much cleaner and easier to navigate and edit. We'll wait for other opinions before doing anything, though. Thanks for the hard work. Air.dance 01:25, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate you prefer the FA version, but would you agree that the potential number of good articles will be massive? I don't think that the FA style with a very long list will be that easy to work with imo. Are there any specifics you can name that could be worked on? It's pretty dis-heartening for someone to say they don't like a change without some constructive ideas for improvement. Or even if you think there is no future in it, it would be helpful to hear why. Regards SeanMack 04:29, 26 March 2006 (UTC).

Hey, I was just on my way here to comment again! :D Actually, the more I play around with it, the more it's growing on me. I hadn't really thought about how many articles would end up being listed, hence needing a hide/show feature, and that is definitely something you've addressed well with your change. There are two main things that bug me -- the fact that the icons are clickable and the alternating blue/white title bars. I know you may not be able to do anything about the clickable graphics, since they need to link back to their templates, but I find myself clicking on them unconsciously to expand the section and end up at the template page. As for the blue/white, I think I'd prefer all white, since we already have the graphics for color, and the blue gives it a clunky, My First Computer feel. I apologise for not being more specific in my original comment -- I was caught up in the template argument. You've done a fantastic job and the more I use this new format, the more I like it. Air.dance 04:35, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Many thanks for expanding your points, I do appreciate all feedback even when negative - it's an opportunity to improve, I like to think. We could actually do something with the icons. If you check Wikipedia's sister projects on the main page you'll see they use a hack to make the icons a clickable navigation aid. To link an icon to an article or portal would be easy. However I'm thinking it would either take an expert template designer or a developer to implement an icon click to "Show" the section. I have no idea how to keep track of the javascript needed to do the show and hide.... I just tried to expand on what had already been suggested and approved of. I have no strong opinions on alternating colours or even what the colours should be. Feel free to have a play and improve it. If there is support to link the icons to certain pages I would implement that. Regards SeanMack 05:47, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

This is relevant to any discussions of how to change the functioning as icons as navigation aids: Template_talk:Click#Confusing SeanMack 09:52, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

If we are going for a new look...

I think that the introductory text on WP:GA could be seriously cut down on, on the model of WP:FA, so that it just includes the basics: brief introduction (mention difference between FA and GA), article count, summary of criteria with link to WP:WIAGA, nominations and disputes procedure, a note on page maintenance with a link to Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles, then straight on with the article list. My proposed look would be:

This page is a proposed Wikipedia policy, guideline, or process. The proposal may still be in development, under discussion, or in the process of gathering consensus for adoption. References or links to this page should not describe it as "policy".

Good Articles in Wikipedia
About 0.1% of Wikipedia articles are featured articles, which have been thoroughly reviewed and designated as the very best of Wikipedia. However, there are also many articles containing excellent content but which are unlikely to become featured in their current state; so long as they meet certain quality standards, they may be listed as good articles.

Currently 862 articles are listed here as meeting the good article criteria: to be well written, factually accurate, use a neutral point of view, be stable, referenced, and wherever possible, contain appropriately tagged images to illustrate the topic. Good articles may not be as thorough and detailed as our featured articles, but should not omit any major facets of the topic.

The process for designating articles as 'good' is simpler and quicker than that by which articles become featured. If you find or write an article matching the criteria, you can add it to the nominations page, where it will be assessed by an impartial reviewer and either added to the list or rejected, with pointers given on how to improve it. Articles are removed from this list if they are promoted to featured status (the {{GAF}}) template is usually left in their talk pages) or if they are delisted for not meeting the criteria. Anybody can delist an article, removing it from this list and leaving on its talk page {{DelistedGA}} or {{DelistedGAbecause}} and a note to indicate what needs to be improved to meet the criteria. If editors disagree about a delisting, it can be resolved at the disputes page.

You can help to maintain this page by ensuring that articles are correctly sorted, that article counts are up to date, or by monitoring the disputes and nominations pages. There is also a WikiProject Good articles.

Shortcuts

Good article tools:

Project page

GAN Backlog Drives

Related pages

I have consciously banged on and on about the criteria rather than use the word "good" since I have noticed in talk pages and disputes, people have been using the subjective standard ("this article isn't good, in my opinion") rather than actually assessing against the opinion. I fear my truncation misses some of the intricacies (e.g. is the GAF template meant to be applied or is it just a suggestion?) and doesn't go into as much detail about being bold not being the same as being brutal. However, I thought some of that was more appropriate for WIAGA (one of the reasons I mentioned the criteria so many times). At the moment, the introductory text reads like the cross between a a mission statement, a call to arms, a justification, a maintenance policy, and a list of GAs. This was probably more appropriate when the system was being established, maybe it's less so now. [[WP:FA] seems to have struck a better balance; I suppose it is because the FA system is so established, robust and tough, no need is felt to justify its existence! Eventually we ought to get this page into a shape where it doesn't give instructions to readers, as it shouldn't be assumed that readers = editors. TheGrappler 19:25, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Go for it, makes sense to me. SeanMack 01:27, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Agreed. Much more streamlined and it doesn't overwhelm the actual list like the current intro. Air.dance 04:37, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

Multiple listings; Recently Listed; Statistics; Portals

It seems to me that some tidying up of the list is in order. Something that I think we should explicitly allow is multiple listings - so, for example, Bill Gates could be listed both under computing (perhaps with Alan Turing, who could also stay listed as a mathematician) and as a businessperson; Arnie could be both a politician and an actor - I have put him under both in the past and been reverted - either somebody doesn't count him as a politician, can't believe he's Governor of California (though I guess, neither can I...), or thinks multiple listing is disallowed. Looking at the way the German wikipedia organises their "good but not featured" content is interesting - I think there would be more openness in the process, as well as giving a bit more limelight to articles, if there were a "newly listed articles" section at the top, with perhaps 3 days worth of new listings included (a whopping 18 articles on German wikipedia!). Their project also has a by-date list of promoted articles, effectively a "good article log" (since it also contains dates of promotion to FA/delisting from GA, this must be a small nightmare to maintain, and I wouldn't recommend it), a statistics page (rather nice, it illustrates the growth in number of GAs, we might want to copy it) and a very nice set of links to "good articles in this topic..." parts of Portals. If we were able to step up co-ordination with topical WikiProjects a bit better then maybe that is something we could aim to do?TheGrappler 21:56, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

The script that automatically formats the list would prevent multiple listings. It could be made to handle multiple listings if there was enough support for such a proposal. A newly promoted article log could also be managed if there was enough support for such a proposal. A statistics page is a bit excessive in my opinion. That said, there is a value in keeping things simple - multiple listings and a newly promoted articles would probably add to the complexity of the process. Cedars 00:01, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The thing that would be most complicated is changeovers of days if "3 days worth" of articles are shown - perhaps a better model would be to stick with a fixed number of promoted articles (say, 15). Most editors would feel confident in their ability to stick their article at the top of that list and delete the one at the bottom, without it adding too much work to the task of listing an article (as it stands, they need to delete the nomination, change the talk page template, and add it into appropriate part of this list, which is three steps - use of the new articles showcase would be a fourth, but not the most difficult/time-consuming one). In de. it serves as a bit of a showcase; from our point of view (due to the limited amount of vetting here - .de has FAC-style noms and voting) it would aid openness and quality control too. I think keeping a log runs the risk of instruction creep. As for multiple listings, I think Arnie shows why the bullet may have to be bitten - it would be far neater to only sort by one thing, but he is a paradigm of crossing two rather different spheres. It's absurd not to list the Governor of California as a "politically significant person", especially with a vocal Arnie-for-President movement, yet it would be unusual not to list a man who was one of the world's biggest movie stars as an actor. Dual listing ought to be discouraged, of course, but I think in a couple of cases we really need it.TheGrappler 00:26, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The multiple listings should not be too difficult to support but I am going to cap the number of multiple listings at two so people are forced to restrict themselves to two categories where the subject is really significant as opposed to inflating categories that the subject may loosly be related to. Like you seem to suggest, I believe strongly the feature should be sparingly. I will also add a "New good articles" heading but this will take time to implement, I am going to cap the number of new articles to seven (lucky seven :-)). I am going to change the good article nomination pass procedure (step four) from "Update the counters at the ends of sections and at the top of the Wikipedia:Good articles page." to "Optionally update the counters and new good articles listing on the Wikipedia:Good articles page — otherwise this will be done automatically for you within a few day's time." Please be patient these changes may take a week or so to be implemented. Meanwhile, if anyone else has any objections or comments, please speak now. Cedars 03:08, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

That sounds great! Should be "days' time", or just "a few days", perhaps? As for a selection of 7 recent articles, I found: |-

| colspan=2 width="100%" style="padding:1em 1em 1em 1em; border:1px solid #dfdfdf; background-color:#E0EDFA" valign="top" align="center"|

Miami, Florida

Recently listed good articles

Cape Town - Óengus I of the Picts - Transhumanism - Microsoft Windows - Manchester - Miami, Florida

|} worked quite well as a format - see this old version with it on. I quite like the .de style sample picture, but it could be a hassle for a last updater. (I guess with more articles, lasting a longer time frame, it would need updating less) Is the problem at the moment that your list updater would effectively be picking up these articles multiple times? Or is the implementation just a question of you needing time to get round to it?TheGrappler 05:44, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Dual listings should now work. Cedars 08:52, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Good work, thanks :) Do you think that maybe 14 rather than 7 articles on the "recently listed showcase" would be a good idea? That would be two lines worth, which would work well with a de: style picture (also it would mean that the pic didn't have to updated so often). TheGrappler 16:42, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

I also did a statistics page - only needs updating once a month though, so it ought not to too much hassle! On current trends, it seems likely that GAs will overtake FAs in about a month. TheGrappler 17:55, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

The recently added section is now a part of the good articles page and can now be updated by the script. There may be some minor hiccups with the script for the first few weeks of operation. Cedars 11:26, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Delisting instructions

I have noticed that a lot of people haven't been following the delisting instructions when they are delisting an article (very often, the article is removed from this list and the "GA" template simply deleted from the talk page, without a replacement {{DelistedGA}} and sometimes without even a comment explaining what has to be done to meet the criteria). This is problematic for a number of obvious reasons. One solution might be a "good article log" system, enabling delistings to be checked to see whether they have gone through "properly". However, I suspect that the cause of the problem is actually that our delisting instructions are obscured at the moment (they are in the middle of the WP:GA blurb, there isn't a "how to delist" link on good article templates, and there isn't a simple step-by-step instruction box given like there is at WP:GAN. So, I have a multiple part proposal:

Change the introduction at Wikipedia:Good articles/Disputes to cover both contested delistings/failed nominations and listings which are disagreed with

Shortcut

WP:GA/D

Good article disputes

Wikipedia:Good articles is an unbureaucratic system to arrive at a quick consensus set of good articles: everyone can nominate good articles, and everyone has veto power. However, sometimes editors disagree whether an article reaches the good article criteria. This page is for dealing with such disputes.

If you believe an article should be delisted

If you find an article listed as good that does not actually satisfy the good article criteria, then you can delist it:

Check the good article criteria to see which criteria it fails to meet.
If the problem is easy to resolve, it might be better to be bold and fix it yourself.
If you can't fix it, remove the {{GA}} tag on the article's talk page and replace it with {{DelistedGA}} or {{DelistedGAbecause}}.
Remember to explain what the problem is and what needs to be improved to meet the criteria.
Remove the article from the list at Wikipedia:Good articles.

If you find an article that you suspect should be delisted, but aren't certain, then you can ask other editors to review the situation by adding the article to the list below.

If you believe an article should be listed

If you disagree with a delisting or failed nomination, it's best not to just take the article back to the nominations page straight away.

Read why the article was judged to fail the criteria: there should be an explanatory note on its talk page.
If you can fix the article to address those concerns, and satisfy the good article criteria, you can just renominate it: there is no minimum time limit between nominations!
However, if you believe that the explanation given was unreasonable, and that the article does fulfil all the requirements, then you can ask other editors to review it by adding it the list below. A brief discussion should be sufficient to establish consensus on whether the criteria are met.

Alter the blurb on Wikipedia:Good articles

If the instructions were moved to the disputes page, and made clearer, there would be less need to spend so long in the introduction to good articles talking about how to delist them (there's been a bit of an imbalance since most of the nominations instructions are kept on the noms page). A shorter, crisper introduction is an added bonus.

Good Articles in Wikipedia
About 0.1% of Wikipedia articles are featured articles, which have been thoroughly reviewed and designated as the very best of Wikipedia. However, there are also many articles containing excellent content but which are unlikely to become featured in their current state; so long as they meet certain quality standards, they may be listed as good articles.

Currently, 888 articles are listed here as meeting the good article criteria: in short, they should be well written, factually accurate, use a neutral point of view, be stable, referenced, and wherever possible, contain appropriately tagged images to illustrate the topic. Good articles may not be as thorough and detailed as our featured articles, but should not omit any major facets of the topic.

The process for designating articles as 'good' is simpler and quicker than that for featured articles. If you find or write an article meeting the criteria, you can add it to the nominations page for an impartial reviewer to assess. Successful candidates are added to this list. Articles are removed if they are promoted to featured status or delisted for not meeting the criteria: anybody can delist an article by following the delisting instructions. If an article's nomination fails or it is delisted, pointers should be given on its talk page on how to improve it to meet the criteria. Disagreements can be resolved on the disputes page. WikiProject Good articles helps to maintain the process.

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Alter some of the "tag" templates

{{FailedGA}} is presently:

Good articles/Archive 3 is a former good article candidate. Please view the comments posted below regarding areas that need improvement. Once the objections have been addressed, you may re-submit the article to the good article nominations page or you may attempt to apply for featured article status.

I suggest:

Good articles/Archive 3 is a former good article candidate. There are suggestions below for which areas need improvement to satisfy the good article criteria. Once the objections are addressed, the article can be renominated as a good article. If you disagree with the objections, you can seek a review.

{{DelistedGA}} has a particular issue, in that it seems to contain instructions for the applier rather than guidance for the reader:

Good articles/Archive 3 was removed from the good articles list. Please discuss the rationale for the removal and improve the article to such an extent that it can once again be listed, or help this article reach featured article status.

I suggest that it should be kept similar to the failed GA template, as fundamentally the article is in the same position:

Good articles/Archive 3 was removed from the good article list. There are suggestions below for which areas need improvement to satisfy the good article criteria. Once the objections are addressed, the article can be renominated as a good article. If you disagree with the objections, you can seek a review.

{{GA}} currently doesn't mention how or why to delist, which I think is one reason "bad" delistings happen.

	Good articles/Archive 3 has been listed as a good article; it adheres to certain quality standards. If you can expand it or improve it further, please do so!
This template adds articles to Category:Wikipedia good articles.

I suggest, very tentatively:

	Good articles/Archive 3 has been listed as a good article for adhering to certain quality standards. If you can expand it or improve it further, please do so! If it does not reach these standards, you can delist it, or ask for a review.
This template adds articles to Category:Wikipedia good articles.

The problem with this is that it seems to be downplaying "good article" status. However, the strength of the system comes at least partly from people's willingness and ability to delist articles they find which don't meet the criteria. And we ought to admit that just because, once, somebody judged the article to meet GA criteria, isn't a guarantee that it still does and forever will. It also partly answers the accusation that {{GA}} is just a piece of back-slapping talk-page pollution (see its TfD...) by emphasising the importance of maintaining GA quality.

I also, strongly, recommend deprecating the template {{DelistedGAbecause}}. It is rarely used, but regularly accidentally edited! It also doesn't leave an infobox like the others do, so is liable to get hidden when archived.

Alternative template proposal (as per Worldtraveller)

An alternative would be to deprecate {{DelistedGA}} and {{FailedGA}} and stick to {{DelistedGAbecause}}, on the grounds that it's less obtrusive.TheGrappler 18:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I appreciate that this is a large proposal, covering 6 different pages/templates! I don't believe that it constitutes instruction creep - the same instructions (I hope! As far as I can tell, I've not changed any procedures) are there, they've just been written more clearly, made more accessible (moved to a relevant place and made easier to link to), and links have been added to potentially useful guidance from relevant templates. I believe this is important as not everybody who comes across the good article system (and most people will do so via the templates) is versed in its intricacies: the nomination/promotion system is deliberately simple, but I suspect (from what I've seen on talk pages when "sweeping") a lot of people don't realise there is a disputes system, or a procedure for delisting. As a result, some people delist without going through the procedure, others huff and puff on a talk page about how such a bad article can be called "good" (and they're often right!) in the belief that good article status has been imposed "from above" and they can't or shouldn't challenge it. They certainly shouldn't have to decide to navigate to WP:GA and then read through 3 paragraphs of text to discover that the relevant procedure actually does exist. A process that relies on only two people to identify quality content (nominator and promoter) and allows just one person to delist entirely must rely on its transparency, clarity and accessibility of instructions, and ease of use. This is the main aim of my suggestion. Any thoughts? If you disagree with only parts of my suggestion (e.g. you don't like my template changes but like my disputes page rejig) then please say which bits work and which bits don't! TheGrappler 02:04, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

A lot to consider here! I have only got time at the moment to comment on one thing - the use of {{DelistedGAbecause}}. I personally would strongly recommend only using this template when delisting, and deprecating the others. The reason is that many people have objected to a large tag being displayed on talk pages giving the impression of a consensus decision having been reached when only one person will have reviewed the article. I could see their point so I created the less obtrusive template. I use it often, and the reason it looks like it's not used often is that I (and I expect most others) substitute it in. This stops the problem of subsequent editing as well. Worldtraveller 16:31, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, that makes a lot of sense. I have altered my suggestion to take account of the alternatives. However, "delisted" GA doesn't make much sense as a template name when applied to failed noms (even if readers don't get to see the template name, it's confusing to editors) - perhaps we should rename it {{NotGAbecause}}? If we are going to actively recommend using it, any instructions for its use should mention that it is applied at the bottom of the talk page using subst: , but that's easily done. It still wouldn't address my concern that there are editors "in the know" about our (basically quite simple) nomination->fail/pass/pass but then delisted->review if needed, but most aren't, and we should make it easier to seek a review (it increases transparency). One of my reasons for the suggested rewordings on the other templates was to make it clearer that it wasn't a community decision to delist, and hasn't been imposed from "up above" - you can challenge an unfair rejection or delisting if needs be. What about changing the header message to read "PAGENAME not a good article (you can ask for a review of this assessment)" or similar? TheGrappler 18:23, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

I support the disputes and GA blurb changes. I have no objections to the template changes either. Cedars 11:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

The disputes and GA blurb changes have been made, since they do not appear to be controversial. Could do with a way of implementing a TOC on the disputes page though. I won't act on the template changes until more feedback arrives. TheGrappler 14:55, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with the Ga blurb change. I did it already as I think it will be very helpful in solving this problem. Tarret 18:25, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I object to Zzzzz's delisting of actor's pages on grounds of filmographies

User:Zzzzz has been on a rampage to delist (in a span of less than 15 minutes: Britney Spears, Ashlee Simpson, Robert Clark, Milla Jovovich, Miranda Otto, Andrew Robinson, Arnold Schwarzenegger) articles whose filmographies are listed newest first. He references Wikipedia:Filmographies, an inactive page, to which hes changed the order of the examples from newest as first to newest as last. Then he proceeded to use it as an authoritative source and threatened to delist articles if not addressed. There's little consensus on the said wikipedia page and by no means has a consensus been drawn up.

For rewriting a wikipedia page to suit your argument and then using said page as authoritative and as proof of consensus, I smell bad faith editting on Zzzzz's part and I wanted to raise this here before he delists every actor's page (FA or GA) that doesn't suit his seemingly personal tastes. The discussion of order has kind of started on Wikipedia talk:Filmographies#Chronological ordering.

Ultimately the ordering is a style issue (nothing more, nothing less) and it is generally frowned upon to make a change to an article specifically to suit your personal style preference. I can't imagine delisting based on your personal style preference should be encouraged nor tolerated. Cburnett 03:37, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, conforming to the WP:MOS is not a criteria for a good article. Let alone a page (while not even attempted to be included in the MOS) that is inactive. Cburnett 04:08, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

That may (inadvertently) have been my fault. When I asked User:Zzzzz for a link to demonstrate the rationale for the change at Lindsay Lohan, I was shown Wikipedia:Filmographies, after which I noted that the text below the tables (demanding newest last) differed from the tables themselves (which listed newest first). FWIW, I did not intend to deceive (and I did not expect that I might be assisting in any deception), nor do I assume necessarily that the editor's actions were not part of a good-faith effort. Radio Kirk talk to me 04:24, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for clarifying some of the, uh, "history" behind this.

Not to keep replying to myself but one other point that makes me lean toward bad faith is threatening to delist FA's and GA's because of this order. While FA's must comply with the WP:MOS, GA's do not. Furthermore, Wikipedia:Filmographies is not apart of the MOS so threatening (and in several cases: following through) to remove an FA/GA based on an inactive page seems very specious. Cburnett 05:33, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree but, to be fair, I'm not completely ready to let go of the possibility that a little too much zeal may be the driving force. :) Radio Kirk talk to me 13:07, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Since WP:MOS is inactive and not policy, a guideline, or really anything, I can't understand why those articles were de-listed. Homestarmy 15:38, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:MOS is neither policy nor guideline because it's not about WP procedures and rules. It's WP's official style guide that describes the format in which articles should be written. As it describes itself, "This page is a style guide for Wikipedia. The consensus of many editors formed the conventions described here. Wikipedia articles should heed these rules. Feel free to update this page as needed, but please use the discussion page to propose major changes." WP:MOS is one of WP's most cherished, important, quoted and must-follow documents...though it also tends to be one of the most argued about :=/ TheGrappler 16:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

Everyone's got their own way of doing things, which is why style guides are needed. No style guide, I believe, would lead to even more arguements. If filmographies had their own style (which was sorta attempted) then this whole argument would have been avoided. Cburnett 02:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Additionally, some of the articles Zzzzz delisted have been changed "to conform to the style guide" yet he hasn't relisted them. I guess his real motivations elude me. Power trip? "Do this but I won't do it because it's a lot of work but if someone doesn't do it then I'll delist it." *shrug* Cburnett 02:35, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Oops, I should of typed in the location to the filmography thing instead of WP:MOS :/. Homestarmy 03:50, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Makes more sense now :) Anybody got any comments about the bundle of proposals above? I was expecting more vocal resistance to putting "How to delist me" instructions onto the good article template... TheGrappler 04:31, 7 April 2006 (UTC)

Review under way of the GA template deletion decision

I am concerned about some of the summaries of the nature of the votes and discussion regarding support for keeping the Template:Good article, which was deleted. This issue is being discussed again here: Deletion review of GA template (see Template:Good_article subtopic under April 4). I want to point out the above discussion in case any of you have something substantive to add. It occurs to me that it could be helpful to add some constructive input there. Especially, there is a need I think to correct a perception of lack of attention to, or care for, process (in general) by folks in the GA group. This isn't so, I think. It could help to have some clear restatements of the utility of the GA template while acknowledging the procedural correctness of deletion of a template for a project that is not approved is something reasonable (if you think that way). Another point: I am puzzled by the idea or policy suggested on the page above that one is not supposed to call for input in a project areas affected by a vote. That is a rather strange idea to me. Not sure I read that right. I don't see any GA supportive comments at the above link though. I guess they don't want a vote war. Well, that seems unlikely in this case. Anyway, the approval of GA project is much more important. Bottom line: Helpful statements about process and utility are needed. --Vir 06:48, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Top level categories

The top level categories for this list deliberately mirror the featured articles list. I strongly suggest that any changes to top level categories here should only be undertaken if the same is applied to the featured article list and there is support for it on that page. I know they are imperfect, but as a way of breaking down all the topics this system has been used for some time and is fairly well-respected. I really think it would be a bad idea for the two different "reviewed content" lists to have different top level category systems. I can see the point about archaeology being a "social science" but it intuitively fits very well with art and architecture. Ultimately, this inuitive aspect is probably more important than what abstract field it lies in. Of course, feel free to disagree! But I think it should really be argued out at the featured articles talk page, since that is the "more prestigious" of these two pages, and in general I think WP:GA should defer to WP:FA. TheGrappler 14:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

As for process of keeping GA & FA reconciled, that is a good point. I happen to agree on this for the long term. But, I disagree on this on the short term (since the FA category list has various structural problems, is too long and is user unfriendly). Perhaps it is best for major changes to wait until an alternate system for both GA & FA is proposed and agreed. First though, is there another option? Can this edit simply be made proposed on the FA page on the basis of the following? Or can this relatively minor correction be made at FA (hoping it floats) while giving a good explanation that includes citing point below and an error due to lack of understanding how to categorize this field?

There are lots of intuitive connections and overlaps amongst categories. However, Archeology is a social science. To quote Archeology: "The goals of archaeology are to document and explain the origins and development of human culture, understand culture history, chronicle cultural evolution, and study human behavior and ecology, for both prehistoric and historic societies. It is considered to be one of the four sub-fields of anthropology." This is flat out a definition of a social science. (And, Anthropology is a social science.) For ease in finding information, by readers and new or occasional reviewers (the strong majority of users with both combined), archeology needs to be with culture and society and especially social sciences.

As a social scientist, perhaps I am quite biased on this -- but, I would never think to look for Archeology under or with Art. If noting that grouped there, I would be puzzled. While greater prestige of FA project is important (and while GA not being a full project is important), the correctness and usefulness of categories (and the utility and doability of minor changes to both lists) is important too. --Vir 14:21, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the length and "fragmentation" of the list isn't entirely a bad thing. Rather than trying to find abstract conceptions to cover things (ultimately, Wikipedia settled on four fundamental article categories - "information", "nature", "systems" and "thought" - and I would hate to see this list classed under these headings), it bunches a lot of things together by topic e.g. "war and military" that in theory cross over fields from technology, law, politics and history but which is in practice a useful "theme". However, it also contains lots of overlaps that people not might want so badly. I do not believe that moving archaeology out of its category counts as a "correction" - it was put there for a reason. There might be a rival argument for moving it to "history". Because this isn't as simple as there being a true/false correct/incorrect dichotomy I don't think we should attempt to "correct" the list, but we might want to "improve" it. Now thematically "art, architecture and archaeology" makes a bit of sense because the individual articles under archaeology will not usually be about abstract theory of archaeology - we can expect to see articles about excavations of ruined buildings or statues, for instance - there may be a running theme. And whatever we do, we have to remember that it is the connection between the articles that matters, not the abstract or academic nature of the topic (since most articles in some subsections will not be about abstract theories but about concrete examples, this can be a distinction worth drawing - it kinda makes more sense to sort "Egyptian pyramids" with "Sanssouci" rather than with "gay bathhouse" and "Chinese New Year"). There are, of course, different alternative themes and structures that would make sense. But rather than talking about "correcting" them it might be better to acknowledge that they are all ultimately rather arbitrary, so it ought to be done in a co-ordinated manner and with substantial discussion. Also, since WP:FA is inherently more conservative than here, that's the best place to discuss these things - what gets adopted over there will be easy to adapt over here. If we come up with our own system here, there is no guarantee that WP:FA will copy it, and then we've made things messy. TheGrappler 15:13, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Length and fragmentation are not helpful to the general reader who wants to find a type of article quickly. A long list is unhelpful. A long list may be philosophically interesting, but it is not a way to organize information for casual browsing (though cataloging as in library classification is another issue). The four categories you mention above need work and I agree with not using those. But, using 4 categories is not a bad idea. I prefer the four over on the nomination page (obviously, as I revised them).

You seem to be using a postmodern view of categorization above. I use position that is a moderation (or in between) a modernist and postmodernist view of the nature of truth and knowledge. So, there are some differences but some similarities between our views. I believe that there is an underlying social reality, beyond many surface variations, but that there are a plurality of possible and reasonable ways to talk about reality. These can seem incommensurate on the surface, but a deep structure may exist. For instance, regarding your point: "There are, of course, different alternative themes and structures that would make sense." Yes, different associations make sense. Archeology is historical. Yes, it deals with similar content matter as architecture and art, sometimes. However, anthropology (and archeology) go directly with the study of culture and society -- that is their central focus, so archeology, in the case of the FA list, should be with Culture & Society.

Perhpas more than one set of categories need to presented (as alternate top level category systems) to capture that there are fundamentally different ways to represent in 2 and 3 dimensions what is a multi-dimensional reality. Alternatively, while I think consistency in a category system is helpful, a compromise amongst factors and possible systems for one global top level, across Wikipedia pages (probably needed), might involve a hybrid system. There will be different ways to compromise yes. Anyway, yes, all of this needs discussion on the FA page *or* in some project related to revising classification. I wonder if FA is an effective place to do this as I have interacted there before regarding editing categories. Somewhere this needs to be dealt with due to inconsistency in category outlines in Wikipedia. --Vir 15:35, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

One possibililty would be to have alternative categorizations available - "click here to see this list arranged by academic discipline" for instance. I have to say, I'm not really all that interested in being a postmodernist or modernist categorizer! We need to remember that we are organizing a collection of individual articles and not attempting to organize (abstract) knowledge or acacademic fields. An article on a tank may be about technology, about the effects of nuclear weapons may be science, about "prisoner of war" may be law, about some battle may be military history - but they all fit together thematically excellently, and people like to browse by theme. So long as it is a managably long list of sufficiently closely related themes (e.g. there has been some discussion about "biology and medicine" in the past, but I guess human biology binds the two sufficiently deeply) I don't have a major problem with it, even if it could be done in other ways. My main advice is focus on grouping related articles, not academic disciplines - frankly, I have no idea what really counts as "social science" and what doesn't (psychology? languages? linguistics? food and drink?) but I know what I am likely to find in "food and drink", "transport", "war and military", "art and architecture" (and archaelogy, assuming the old system gets stuck with) and so on.TheGrappler 16:08, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I also feel that archaeology seems out of place with arts and architecture. While I agree maintaining a loose resemblance to the featured article subjects is a good idea, I have no problem with departing from the featured article set-up where there is a good reason. Overall, I feel it is important good article matures on its own. I strongly oppose alternative categorizations - as it will further burden those who promote good article and add to the difficulty of maintaining the good articles page. Cedars 16:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

To reply to Grappler: Yes, if such are very well organized, we probably need alternate categorization systems (a small set of them, different types, that are refined over time). Different people will find different types of schemes helpfu. You are knocking down a straw dog in your example above -- some of the factors you mention are aspects of society. Here is list of disciplines from social sciences, all of which include a social science aspect: Anthropology, Communication, Cultural Studies, Economics, Education, Geography, History, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Social Policy, Sociology. One might ask then: what isn't potential a social science. Or, in this case, one could ask: what is a general social science. Archeology is one such.

It is fine to subset of social sciences in a long list, as on the FA page, but, to repeat, a long list of over 20 categories is not helpful for browsing, for which the FA list is used. It may not bother you but it will confuse (or slow down) a portion of the first time (and like me, multiple time) FA list visitors (who come from the link on the main page).

Excuse me, but "organizing individual articles" with emergent categories is more or less a postmodern strategy. It is a bad strategy as the top level for one entry into encyclopedia navigation -- which, I would like to emphasize, the FA is. One needs to use some sort of easily navigable knowledge scheme. A pomo emergent category effort that combines knowledge domains impressionistically is a highly flawed strategy for the FA purpose and main function for readers, in my opinion.

To get specific again: To quote the Archeology article again: "As with most academic disciplines, there are a very large number of archaeological sub-disciplines characterised by a specific method or type of material (e.g. lithic analysis, music, archaeobotany), geographical or chronological focus (e.g. Near Eastern archaeology, Medieval archaeology), other thematic concern (e.g. landscape archaeology), or a specific archaeological culture or civilisation (e.g. Egyptology)." So, archeology includes the study of tools, ethnobotony, landscapes and culture generally and historically. It is much more than the study of ancient art and architecture. Archeology goes with society &/or culture cat. Um, period. Archeology goes with other social general social sciences (sociology and anthropology). Perhaps I'll have time to suggest that on the FA list. But, it is probably a time sink. Perhaps better to develop and comprehensive revision -- and this might be one place to discuss that -- or report regularly on such efforts. Vir 16:34, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm not a massive fan of the current location of the archaelogy, but I can see why it got to where it did. I think an even more obvious candidate for change is the "royalty" section - it's not entirely clear when someone should be listed as a historical figure and when they should be listed under royalty. Perhaps this says something about the cyclical nature of Wikipedia, but WP:FA has actually moved in the opposite direction, starting out with "Philosophy, Mathematics, and Natural Science", "Social Sciences", "Applied Arts and Sciences", "Culture" and "Biography" (and the self-referential "Wikipedia", which got dropped) and then broadening out to a more thematic basis. Archaeolgy got merged together with art apparently to deal with the triplet of Greek art – Oxyrhynchus – Parthenon, which was certainly thematic, and, as you point out, not great conceptually. While the study of archaeology is no doubt a part of anthropology, the subjects of its articles will tend to be on ancient sites, particularly buildings and cities - archaeology might deal with a landscape, say, but the article on that landscape (which may cover its archaeological dimension) will get dealt with under "geography". If I'm being postmodern, it's entirely accidental :) And while it is an impressionistic scheme, and one with many flaws, the topicality may actually be helpful for browsing, which as you state is what the list is for (since it is only a list of articles with good article status, it isn't a great place to actually search for a specific article, for instance). My real contention isn't any particular structure (I can certainly see the merits of having it like FA used to, with four "main" sections, though like I said, I found that harder to browse than a topically sectioned approach - I wasn't intending to attack any straw dogs, I am just saying that I honestly wouldn't know how some stuff that had social aspects would get classified, and I suspect many other people wouldn't either) but whether or not we ought to diverge from the FA way of doing things. It seems like unnecessary and confusing duplication to have two different front-page categorization schemes to deal with quality-reviewed content. However, Cedar is also correct to state that we should mature a little on our own, and Vir's point that the current scheme is unsatisfactory is certainly true. It's probably because GA tends to get compared so much to FA, and indeed, they are attempting similar things, that I am so keen to stick to the FA way of doing things and if it needs changing, change it there. TheGrappler 17:58, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Somewhere recently you mentioned the cyclical nature of Wikipedia. This is very interesting to me. Do you know of other WP examples of this? Are there WP spaces this has been discussed? (I feel that we may have explored enough details for now about Archeology.) So...

I've been contemplating this cycling theme a bit this afternoon: In a dialectical view, one might expect that cycling in a social process could progress towards integration of opposites. Alternatively, in one form of systems thinking, one might conjecture that a dynamic open social system might have a tendency alternate between various opposed options. This might occur without integration, where there is enough energy/input for divergent interests to drive maintenance of each option as a distinct phase. Evolution or cyclical alternation? Which is it that might unfold in exploring category structures? I prefer evolution of a multi-dimensional or integrated helpful system. I think that a way to work towards this is to develop various outlines that speak to extremes of categorization styles -- and at same time work on hybrids. Some main collectively preferred variants could be maintained in ongoing way. The question of how to easily manage, navigate and present multiple structures then comes into play -- a meta level of cycling. Put another way: Cognitively, some folks are lumpers and some are splitters. WP might need categories that serve both cognitive styles -- as well as a good compromise perhaps for default top level. There are also different sorts of qualities that can be used to organized categories. It is a long project to explore many types of classification options... I'm sort of plodding towards delineating these sorts of options. I suppose others are too. Need to link up. Vir 20:19, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

As for the cyclical nature of Wikpedia: good articles has freakishly mirrored the development of FA. At first both were lists that anyone could add to or take away from. Then both developed nominations page. For a while, both then went through a period of "if the page stays on this nominated without objections for (some time limit) then it will automatically get promoted". Then both stopped doing this. Basically, we have almost gone through all the same mechanisms for assessment - the next stop would be individual discussions and voting for noms and delisting, which I really hope doesn't happen! Even more freakishly, many of the articles involved in the early days of GA and FA were actually the same. Both GA and FA had ding-dong battles about including or excluding the capitalism article, for instance. I did try to see if I could drum up support for a WikiProject: Institutional memory to document all these things (almost everything that gets proposed has been before - especially in respect for new mechanisms for deletion and categorization - e.g. the topic of DEWEY classification comes up and goes away again quite often, usually because someone mentions copyright problems!). There is something going on at Wikipedia:History of Wikipedian processes and people however.

As someone who has a rather overloaded Babel section of my user page (though mainly it's low numbers in high quantities ;)) I am very interested in parallel developments on other wikis. For what it's worth: German wiki's excellent "good article" page (which was partly the inspiration for the redesigns of this one) uses the following categories: "Persönlichkeiten – Geschichte – Philosophie & Religion – Politik, Wirtschaft & Soziales – Kultur & Gesellschaft – Architektur – Geografie – Biologie – Mathematik/Weitere Naturwissenschaften – Technik" to split up it topics. Each of these sections is then subdivided thematically.

By contrast, the Norwegian wiki uses "Biologi - Geografi - Historie - Kultur - Samfunn (Society - War is filed here rather than in history!)- Teknologi og vitenskap (Science)" and is again subdivided thematically. Swedish wiki uses "Geografi - Humaniora (Humanities, currently empty!) - Historia (surprisingly not part of humanities) - Kultur (art, music and literature go here) - Mat och dryck (Food and drink, not part of culture) - Matematik - Naturvetenskap ("Natural sciences" - subdivided into astronomy, biology, physics, chemistry and medicine) - Religion - Samhälle ("Society", subdivided into economy, law, politics) - Sport - Språk (languages) - Teknik (Technology)".

These are three quite different variations of our current system. The Swedish one will need time to mature as it is mostly empty but seems even less logical than ours (not putting history under humanities for instance has left humanities totally empty). The Norwegian and German ones both are divided thematically (sometimes in very clever but subtle ways - if you look at their pages, you don't actually need to be an expert in the language to interpret it) but using relatively few top level categories. An interesting result in the German one is that biographies related to a topic get completely seperated from the topic itself, which is something of an advantage in our "thematic" approach. Indeed, WP:FA (where this thematic approach got developed) for some time also had a distinct biographical section, but it was decided to restructure it so that biographies slotted in with the appropriate topic e.g. a politician goes into politics, a General into war and military.TheGrappler 20:57, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

And, mildly to my surprise, it turns out that the German Wikipedia makes "archaeology" part of their first history subsection! TheGrappler 03:05, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

This is very interesting again about the parallel development of FA and GA processes. I'd like to cogitate on this and get back to you. It is going to take me some time to look at categories in various language editions again. I surveyed some a few months ago.

I am not surprised that various WP language editions categorize Archeology differently. It is at once a field of cultural interpretation, a social science and a historical discipline. However, professional archeologists are trained as social scientists. To quote this passage from chapters 2 and 3 of this online guide to the profession of arheology at the website of the Society for American Archaeology (a large professional association): [2]

"The Science of Archaeology"

http://www.saa.org/publications/ArchAndYou/chap2.html

"Because archaeology is basically concerned with people, it forms an important subdivision of the social science of anthropology. Anthropology, the study of human culture, also includes three related specialties—linguistics, the study of human speech and language; physical anthropology, the study of the origins and biological evolution of humans as well as the patterns of human physical variation; and cultural anthropology, the study of living peoples and the great variety of their customs, adaptations, and achievements."

"Archaeology as Career or Avocation"

http://www.saa.org/publications/ArchAndYou/chap3.html

"Intensive academic training in archaeology begins in college. Anyone wishing to specialize in archaeology customarily earns an academic degree in anthropology. Most colleges have a separate department of anthropology, some a combined department—most often with sociology. Others have an office of social studies or social sciences. A few schools have a separate department of archaeology.

"Archaeology also is used extensively to study ancient history, especially in places like Egypt, Greece, and Italy, so classics departments regularly include archaeological training among their offerings. More and more American studies programs also include historical archaeology in the curriculum. ...

"In the long run, a bachelor's degree alone is not enough for a career in archaeology. As is the case in most fields of science today, a complete program of graduate study is necessary if one is to enjoy all the benefits of archaeology as a lifelong venture. In the United States and Canada more than 500 colleges and universities offer a master's degree in anthropology; about 100 of these offer programs that lead to a doctor's degree."

So, there are several fields of entry in which to begin studying archeology and various applications for archeology. However, I would expect the majority of professional archeologists, being trained as anthropologists, consider their discipline to be foremost a social science (and note that history is part social science and linguistics is part social science). Vir 01:28, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Most recently listed

This was originally being done alphabetically, but that would be a pain to update. I've made it chronological and added some "pointers" in the wikicode for the page (e.g. only list 7 articles, and remember to replace the picture with a PD/GFDL one if you remove the currently pictured article from the list). TheGrappler 17:03, 9 April 2006 (UTC)

I like alphabetic ordering but the script could be changed to use chronological ordering. The pointers though will be more difficult for the script to maintain. I think you will find few people will be adding to the recently added list (as stated in the nominations that step is optional) and very few will be changing the graphics. Certainly, there is no problem with people adding too many articles to the list, not adding articles or misplacing articles as the script will just fix the mistake on the next run. Cedars 15:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

That's fine by me! Does the script know which articles are new? It might be an idea to leave a tagged note on the graphic, saying that PD/GFDL is needed, if only to remind us! TheGrappler 20:52, 10 April 2006 (UTC) Incidentally, I quite liked User:Tompw's inclusion of article counts on the navbox headers (see what it looked like here). Possibly a bit big (maybe the text size could be reduced) but I wondered if there was any demand for it?TheGrappler 12:46, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Err, it seems we're about to lose something

Specifically, Template:GAF, seems somebody nominated it for deletion, thought i'd announce it here since there didn't seem to be much mention. Homestarmy 18:53, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

Note that this isn't necessarily a loss: the functionality of GAF has been incorporated into the featured article template. (I reckon it looks pretty ugly there with the titchy good article icon though; I wonder if that could be removed?) TheGrappler 20:57, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

But its such a nice little green dot! :( Homestarmy 02:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

You still get the little green dot. You just add GA=yes to the {{featured}} template, and you get:

	Good articles/Archive 3 is a featured article, which means that it (or a previous version) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you see a way this page can be updated or improved without compromising previous work, please feel free to contribute.
	Good articles/Archive 3 is a former good article.

Do we need to outline this new functionality on the main GA page then? Homestarmy 19:26, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

--TreyHarris 05:03, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Major redesign of German "good articles" page

The users on de: have just done a complete revamp of their good articles page. Interesting facets include:

They now have icons and subheadings too!
Biographies are no longer listed in a distinct section; they have been integrated with the relevant topical section, but in a very neat way.
They have found a relatively compact way to display all 1200+ articles, but still leave a fair amount of white space.

I would suggest anybody who has had anything to do with redesigning or proposed redesigning of this page have a look at it and see if there's anything we can learn from it. I personally like their use of "-" rather than our diamonds and the WP:FA "dot" (WP:FA is also having a redesign at the moment, Raul has pretty much blocked the use of diamonds as a "no-no" and I can see his point... still, I would say that it's an improvement on the "dot" thay have there at the moment). One thing to note is that we couldn't import the de: structure in its entirety. The German Wikipedia is known for strenuous demands for notability, and so it doesn't have much in the way of media or popular culture coverage. It also has relatively low coverage for things outside Europe (we are pretty bad, but their entire "History outside Europe" subsection contains only one article...) Thoughts? TheGrappler 03:36, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I am happy to change from ♦ (&diams) to — (&mdash) or any other symbol. Just say the word and the change can be made in a few seconds. As for other changes I am fairly content with the current page, I do believe it does a very good job of presenting a large and ever increasing number of articles. Cedars 06:43, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Thinking about it, because the de: version matches subsections against each other on a split page it will be a pain and half to maintain, especially if one subsection grows or subsections need to be split out! If there is support for use of a "-" (I know SeanMack deliberately avoided the FA style dot because he believed, rightly in my view, that it was too small to be seen easily) then I'd go for it... maybe wait to see if anybody chimes in here to support the diamond. TheGrappler 14:00, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I think you got me spot on there TheGrappler, I wa strying to separate distinct arricles a wee bit better. I'm not attached to the diamond, dash I'm happy with too. In hindsight maybe the diamond is a bit too showy for wikipedia? Personally I still like it.. One thing though, what about a scenario where the view link have non-breaking spaces within article names, it would mean that they are not split across lines on the page? Any thoughts? SeanMack 15:41, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

1. Support Dashes: I support the use of dashes to separate articles. This makes it easier to read article titles. --Vir 15:54, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

2. Top level Categories: Per the new German GA (Articles worth reading) page, I suggest a compromise between staying faithful to the FA categories and trying to make category navigation more user friendly (for those of us who are boggled by 28 top level categories). How about we stick with the 28 FA categories as 2nd level categories? In addition, how about we use 8 meaningful top level categories to organized the 28 FA catregories? I think it is very helpful that the German edition has topics grouped under 8 main categories. Most English Wikipedia main navigation pages (main, categories, lists, reference) do this as well. The German 8 categories (in translation) are:

geography · history · society · art and culture · religion · sport · technology · science

I suggest we (eventually or soon) use these 8 categories (essentially per this core topics working-in-progress categorization page [Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Core_topics/Category_sets|category sets]), which are based on a synthesis of English and French wikipedia top category sets:

arts · everyday life (includes sports but more) · geography · history · philosophy and religion · society and social sciences · technology and engineering · natural science and mathematics

So, how about fitting all the 28 current subcategories of the FA & GA pages (while keeping those stable) in a top level of main categories? This has various benefits: it makes it easier to click down page (if 8 subcats at top) and would be a helpful aid for navigating some of us (who find 28 categories way to many to skim) and yet it would not detract too much from the 28 categories (especially if designed well) and it would fit in more clearly with the new structure on the nominations page. What do you think? I thought of putting a straw poll here as this seems intuitively a good way to go, a good compromise (between lumpers and splitters) -- but there are some things to talk about: such as which categories, exact wording of category titles, and implementation. ---Vir 15:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)Vir

I think there is consensus for use of a dash rather than a diamond now. I agree that it is premature for a vote on reorganizing yet... I suggest that, rather than do it in a "bitty" way (which is why FA ended up with 28 subcategories, many with overlaps!), a draft proposal gets worked on first (perhaps at User:Vir/Good article makeover) and then we can come to a consensus about that concrete proposal. I don't think the 28 current categories would work well as subcategories - e.g. weapons articles are about technology but battle articles about military history, so "War" would be split. Further, there would have to be sub-sub-headings if biographies were to be kept distinct as they are at the moment. Build up a proposal, get people to comment on it, then we can see if we can arrive at consensus. For the time being I'd suggest to keep using what we've got at the moment rather than making minor changes to it, and then swap over wholesale if there is agreement.TheGrappler 16:58, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, glancing down the list I think the 28 categories would work fine as subcategories. What I was thinking was to simply organize the 28 categories (keeping their existing subcategories in turn) under 8 categories. I won't have time to put together a proposal, with reasoning and options, for about 2 weeks, perhaps more. If someone else wants to do that, great.

Our world is multi-dimensional. For many disciplines, there are always going to be various aspects: historical, social/structural, cultural/symoblic. One categorizes, I think, by selecting some major aspect of an area/discipline. There seems to be a reasonable general way that this has been done at with top level categories of English (and other language version) Wikipedia navigation pages. A few months ago, I played some with a category outline of the FA topics according to around an 8 or so top category structure. I'm pretty sure that tweaking that generally used category system will work here. (Though, we may want to consider other organization schemes, in time.) I think your objections are grounded more not on un-doability/workability/adaptability but on preference for a longer category set. Compromise Solution: have 8 cats & keep the longer categories as 2nd level subcats and have a format that highlights those 28 (not minimizing them). The continuity with FA will be clear. Anyway, unless a great passion is expressed for re-categorization, I'll sit on this idea for a few weeks. --Vir 18:47, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

1.0 project "B-class" articles on GA list -- a review process issue?

These five articles are on the GA list and rated as "B-class" on the 1.0 project core topics table: Agriculture, Crime, Physics, Sound, Statistics. Most of these five articles have few references. A few have short sections or have mostly lists for some sections.

While nice articles, should the above be removed from the GA list because of few references and other issues?

Does this raise the issue of the need for a extra reviews for GA nominations? If so, would merely requiring 2 reviews for promotion, instead of 1 review, help solve problems of non-GA quality articles making it onto the list? --Vir 23:33, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

You are welcome to fail them if you feel they aren't good enough. The quality of GAs is only as low as the reviewers' highest standards. Nifboy 23:43, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I hesitate to remove these articles when there are a batch like this that have a systematic review conflict. I wonder if the 1.0 standards are too high. Or, were the application of GA standards here mistaken in all these cases? I think some discussion is needed. And, I think it is a good thing that there are two different review systems that can be compared... --Vir 23:46, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think a difference in standards is a problem. In particular, I think 1.0 would like its core topics to be comprehensive, whereas GA is fine with a merely broad, well-written coverage of the topic. Nifboy 23:51, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

The GA policy states: "it [the article] should provide references to any and all sources used for its material." Some of these articles have few references at the bottom and little or none in the article. This could be a GA review problem. --Vir 00:12, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The crime article has extensive references and is a strong article. Though it could be more comprehensive, I don't think it should be removed. Cedars 03:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Yes, the Crime article has a number of references. But, Crime has issues, the most serious of which are POV issues and omissions of a number of key topics. Btw, I wrote that "most" of the articles above had small numbers of references (not all). I included crime as it is still rated "B-class" by the 1.0 Core topics, deservedly so using that rating system.

A general review of the article crime: The first few sections of the article and a few others read like a poorly written text book in summarizing some views of crime. Only one definition of crime is presented in summary at the top of the "why criminalize" section, without defining it as a point of view. This is a misleading sort of POV generalization. (For contrast, see the list to the right of the page for different theories of crime.) In the History section, there is attribution, but it deals in a very cursory way with the early modern period (a key period) in a few sentences, before going on to discuss extensively one type (amongst many) of modern theory of crime, not a history of the social development of crime per se in that era, which was the main topic of the section. How modern approaches to crime began to institutionalize in the 18th century is not discussed. A number of key perspectives are omitted, such as Foucault's poststructuralist analysis of the development of modern disciplinary regimes. And, in the article as a whole, I saw little Marxist or Feminist analysis nor a Frankfurt school perspective nor an environmental criminology perspective. (These are distinct and common notable perspectives on crime and social problems.) I saw little or nothing about white collar crime, corporate crime, war crimes, hate crimes, crimes of passion, or organized crime (though there are links at the bottom to some of these). I didn't see discussions of social process that shape crime such as patterns of abuse or racial profiling (though links may be there at bottom as there are wikipedia articles on some of these topics). These are serious omissions, which point to the mostly rationalistic, individualistic bias of view of the article -- one perspective among many. The section on "Trial" goes back to an unattributed POV generalization. And, I'm not sure this approach to trials, lifted out of context of the whole criminal justice system, belongs in a Crime article. Next, the outline list that is most of "Reasons" section is unclear and overgeneralized. The closing section on "Classification" is solely U.S.-centric (POV issue again), and seemed to me a poorly presented summary of that. For an overview article, this version has multiple problems. The article has POV issues. It is very uneven and not clearly constructed in general outline and within some sections. This is not a "good" encyclopedia article. Indeed, it is a very difficult thing to write an overview article for a general topic as complex as crime. The various key missing topics and extensive POV issues could perhaps could be addressed if Crime were turned into portal article lifting short summaries from other existing articles and pointing to these topics (and to a separate more well developed history article). But, the article does pass the GA criteria as you state them below.

On this topic, Criminology does serve (perhaps inappropriately) as a general portal function, in part (rather incompletely again and with much less text than crime). (Since I wrote this rough draft of general review points up, I'll revise this passage and move it over to the crime talk page--later.) I wonder if part of the function of Criminology could be moved to Crime with Crime focusing on being a portal to types and history of crime and Criminology focusing on theories, methods, and history of that discipline. --Vir 15:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

The major question here is whether Crime completely fails to address a major facet of the topic. If it does, then it also fails GA status on that limb of WP:WIAGA. However, this isn't FA - it is certainly "not a good encyclopedia article" but frankly it is a "good Wikipedia article". I reckon that only our FAs compare to the "good" content in other encyclopedias. If you have ever done the random pages test you will see that most of our articles are really pretty dire! GA rewards those articles that meet basic-but-essential quality standards, and I think that Crime has a claim to. It is currently rather US/UK-centric, and it doesn't really look at some of the major issues in criminology. However, there is a general convention on Wikipedia that articles with titles that are legal terms-of-art tend to get dealt with from the legal perspective; and so "criminology" is being used to cover lots of stuff that some people might naturally expect to appear in the "crime" article. There should probably be more link-over, but purely from a legal point of view, the crime article isn't too bad. If you studied for an academic law degree, the stuff you see in the article is pretty much what you'd see on a "crime" course - in fact (depending on where you are doing your law degree) it is considerably wider than what may appear on a "crime" course and also covers areas that would only appear in a "philosophy of law" or "criminology" unit. It is attempting to cover a vast topic, and it is understandable that some aspects are shunted into other articles. If this was brought up to FA, then I expect that the missing aspects would only be introduced in summary style. What I think is the biggest thing missing in this article is that it doesn't deal well enough with the role of the State from the mid-20th century onwards. It describes the build-up from what would now be thought of as "crimes" from being private affairs to something brought within governmental remit, but not the fact that now there are prosecutions for certain crimes which are effectively "crimes as adjudged by the international order" not just "crimes as declared to be so by the government" - from a legal point of view, that's a big omission, and since this is really an article about the legalities and legal history of crime (not its sociology, politics etc) probably a worse one. What I think would have been more helpful would have been for the GA reviewer to leave a note on the talk page saying "it reaches the basic requirements for GA, which is good, but to get better it really needs to start dealing (probably in summary style) with all the articles at the bottom in the "see also" section, that it doesn't mention in the main body". It's not a great article by any means, but you probably wouldn't mind if your kid was doing their homework from it (they may not get to see Foucault's poststructuralist theories, but even so it is a pretty comprehensive article in legal terms and contains extensive links to the criminology articles where the social and political side of things are dealt with better), and it's definitely making a lot of progress (if you look at its history page you can see how awful the article was previously!). TheGrappler 21:07, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

WP:WIAGA specifically states that inline citation is not necessary. As a result, it's hard to see what claim goes with what source. (Once inlining becomes more common, I suspect the standard will be raised...) If an article has just one reference, and that is a book providing broad overview on the subject, then that will do for me for the moment. Also, the current nomination-review process is meant to be our quality assurance - in other words, the nominator should believe it is of GA quality, so is the first (possibly biased) reviewer. Having three people review an article is almost as many as turn up on some FAC debates! Short sections and lists are not the worst of crimes in GAs. Lists are, in their place, fine in FAs (so long as it's not something that would be better written in full or in a specialised sub-article). The GA requirement is only for "well-written", not the higher quality "brilliant prose" of FAs. To put this all in perspective, try pressing "random article" repeatedly until you find three articles which have multiple sections, including a reference section... I'm sure the GA standard will go up to the point where articles like these are excluded but probably at the cost of some arbitrariness. At the moment GA's most subjective/arbitrary feature is "well-written" (similar to FAC debates about whether prose is "brilliant" or just "very good"). References, image tags and so on are done on an existence-and-plausibility basis, pretty much. Unless we go up all the way to requiring inline referencing (and very many current FAs don't have this - expect them to go through WP:FARC at some point in the near future) then it is difficult to say "this has references, but they are probably not good enough". Inline references allow a reviewer to say: aha, here is an entire unreferenced paragraph! That isn't too arbitrary. The current system (is there a reference section with a list of references in it) is also not too arbitrary. Going in between and saying "there doesn't seem to be a good enough list of references for this article: even though which reference supports which claims is unmarked and therefore impossible to judge, I'm making an informed guess that there are some claims here unsupported by the references given" is a far tougher line call. TheGrappler 05:11, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. If very few end references and short sections or lists as sections are an ok standard, then most of the above articles pass on those issues. I wonder if my interpretation of the GA standards may be a tad high. I haven't failed or deleted any GA articles (that I remember!), but in surfing around, I have noticed articles close to GA standard and have not recommended these articles for being skimpily constructed in places (as opposed to short which is ok). I've later seen those show up here. I'll think out loud some, not having a fixed stance yet: Catching POV issues and breadth of coverage issues are another matter -- see the general review of the crime article above in this comment section. Another matter also is if one review and the standards you mention above are enough for GA purposes. There are various problems that can arise in having few references, such as the breadth of coverage and the greater possibility of plagiarism not being caught (or being nipped by virtue of a more stringent referencing requirement -- and plagiarism is getting more sophisticated on the net, what with more and more text online). --Vir 15:46, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I definitely take your point - I would suggest not nominating any really marginal cases, but continue passing that are justabout the right side of the current line. At some point (probably within a year or two) inline referencing will be considered more normal on Wikipedia, and it will be possible to use that as the standard even for GA. Until all non-inlined FAs have been expunged via WP:FARC it would seem odd for us to hold a higher standard than WP:FA. At any rate, WP:GAN isn't WP:FAC - we don't need to be so utterly rigorous because we aren't trying to find the very best content, just content that meets a few simple quality standards (and which 95%+ of articles currently don't match!). Plagiarism is far easier to spot with inline refs - that's another advantage of them - that's a good point - but I don't see it as a GA reviewers job to sit down with google (or go chasing up in the local public library) to work out if an article is plagiarized. TheGrappler 17:50, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

This is an interesting point about the status of FA articles. (But, would it be helpful to be proactive with standards?) I agree that it should not be the job of GA reviewers to spot plagiarism. It is much easier for specialists to spot that. Requiring inline references up front before GA (before any type of quality status recognition) does two things: it means that articles will be a little more likely to have inline references placed early in drafting (or revision) and it means that professional reviewers and lay persons with specialized knowledge who happen to find time to review an article, early on, will be able to do the job more effectively, not only for spotting plagiarism, but more easily sorting out POV & generality issues and fact checking. The more I think about it the more I think GA should move sooner and not later to requiring inline references as a review standard. If not the review projects, what projects are going to drive improving articles standards on Wikipedia? I think we're not talking here about really high standards for certifying the best content. I think this is about having a system in place that prevents bad content and enables the screening of bad content (that seems ok on the surface). --Vir 18:02, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

As someone who did some of those WP1.0 B-Class assessments (and also some that were A-Class and rejected as GAs!), I think we need to remember that these assessments are (a) fairly subjective, (b) based a lot on aesthetics rather than on hard content and most important (c) done at a different point in time that the GAN. I would expect to see some divergence. I think Vir has done a great job in looking at these carefully - it shows the advantages of two independent assessments to flag possible problems - but I think this "problem" will always be with us. We plan to add dates of assessments into our records so this will help, but I know that some of those assessments were done before GA even existed! Walkerma 19:03, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I think GA is basically coming up to a transition point - because it is still only proposed policy it isn't on the "article roadmap" yet. Hopefully, one day it will go GA (optional) --> Peer review (currently overloaded, overworked, and with lots of articles that make simple slips like not being referenced, failing WP:FICT, having wrong image tags etc that actually GA would be better at weeding out) --> FAC --> FA. However, at the moment, the bulk of the GA work is going over and reviewing the existing corpus of WP - most GA nominations are by GA project people, because (being unofficial and relatively new) we're not on most people's horizon yet. So, since our current task is more "trying to establish what good stuff is floating about already" than "providing a review process that editors can look up to/try to meet the standards for" GA probably doesn't have a great effect on pushing up standards. When we switch more completely into the second role, GA may well have a crucial role in driving up standards, particularly the standards of "bulk" articles (ones that are not likely to get up to FA, either due to choice of topic or due to lack of editors' time). I actually agree that we ought to switch over to inline references as soon as it seems feasible. But I also feel this is too soon - it's still new, too few articles currently have them, and moreover, having any references at all is still dangerously rare. One of the big problems with waiting too long on this is that, due to editor turnover, some things may become impossible to cite (new editors who have "adopted" an article left by a departee may be using different references to the original, and won't be able to check which bits of the text they adopted came from where) and another is that we'd have to do an absolutely enormous purge of the current GA list. Perhaps the best thing to do is, whenever an article is passed, put in a comment about inline references (maybe include links to pages showing how to do it etc) and say "if you do this, it will help push the article to FA standard!"... no use if it is on an inherently short topic, for instance, but it's not the worst of ideas to leave suggestions for improvement. TheGrappler 20:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Grappler, what you say about timing sounds reasonable. What you say about article flow sounds reasonable. Given the early stage in terms of review of most GA articles, “Good” seems to be a misnomer or misleading in several ways. Not all of these articles are "good" in quality, nor are the "good" in terms of being far along in their process to becoming finished articles. The four steps of the review process might be well to define on the top of the GA page (understanding that while some GA articles may get good reviews early, many may not).

Whenever a switch to requiring inline referencing is made, I think it is ok for early good articles to be grandfathered for a longish bit of time (a year or two). This may be a reason to consider renaming this article collection to “(full) Draft not reviewed” or whatever gets at the meaning.

If some GA articles are pre-peer review articles, perhaps they should be labeled differently than “Good.” Brainstorming a bit, perhaps: 1st whole draft. Or Draft status. Or 1st Draft. But, that doesn't capture FA-removed articles and the best GA articles. Some GA articles will have Peer review? If so, could the GA automated rating program keep track of peer review (on basis of peer review tags)? Perhaps there needs to be a distinction within the GA project about draft status and reviewed status. More specificity in labeling might be just the thing. Perhaps: (Full) Draft No Review (DN) (instead of “good”) & Peer Reviewed & Edited (PE). Might it be helpful to designate article status by review stage and not by "good"?

Re: Walkerma's point: “this "problem" will always be with us.” If I understand this point, I disagree. There will not necessarily be a conflict for existing GA vs. 1.0 reviews and not even for new reviews. As 1.0 reviewing and GA reviewing become more defined and as existing reviews more double-checked, conflicts in review quality may well be resolved, except in some cases of new reviews. However, perhaps Walkerma means that there will often be debates in/over reviews. And, that may sometimes be the case! But, other times I think different reviews will balance out in a group process of application of NPOV policy to articles. That is, NPOV can be applied to resolve review disputes. It seems Wikipedians are developing skills in those areas. Very interesting --Vir 21:20, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

Revised review label scheme

Based on the discussion in the post just above:

Do these possible label revisions for article stages make more sense than what is used now (GA/FA) here?

IA - Incomplete article - unfinished draft
DA (or GA1) - Draft article - an "OK" full draft article, ok coverage of topic, no inline references -- what we currently admit as Good articles. (or Good article, draft stage)
REA (or GA2) - Reviewed (at least one peer and other professional review) & Edited (based on review) article - an actual "Good" article with good coverage & inline references (or Good article, reviewed-edited stage)
FAC (perhaps GA3 or GA-FAC when on this list, for this list's usage) - Feature article candidate, some notation or icon on GA list would be nice
FA - Featured article

Or can some other system that captures the last 4 stages of development, and subdivides the GA classification, be used?--Vir 22:22, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

I actually agree that "good article" is a misnomer. I reckon only our better FAs are "good" when compared to commercial encyclopedic content, for instance. However, I can't think of anything better to call them! I noticed that the equivalent of "GA" in other languages is often rendered "articles worth reading"/"worth a look" rather than "excellent articles" (interestingly - if you look at the vote about what to call FAs when the original "Brilliant Prose" scheme was changed, "excellent articles" is what FAs almost got called). However, I can't think of a snappy English phrase for "worth-a-read articles" that doesn't sound (frankly) demeaning, so "good" may be the best we can do. The problem with calling an article draft or reviewed is that every article is a draft (at least as it stands at the moment; if we switched over to having "semi-permament" articles for readers, with editors working on new draft versions with consensus being required to update the currently displayed article, then things would be different) and similarly most articles get "reviewed" in some sense - a plain talk page comment from an anonymous user is a form of review. Peer review is certainly not professional and is rarely done by specialists (stylistic criticisms seem substantially more common than subject-specific ones). Currently, something between 99.7% and 99.8% of articles lay outside both the GA and FA review processes full stop. I would caution against viewing the article roadmap as the definitive pathway... articles evolve their own way, depending on who works on them. Sometimes somebody creates an article in a state that is actually feature-worthy from the start (there is a record somewhere for the fastest article from creation to FA-status), others work their way up to FA level then deteriorate all the way down to clean-up. The "road map" is not definitive by any means, and articles can go in both directions along it! The problem with introducing lots of different stages to describe an article's progress is that it will be very difficult and time-consuming to actually keep even a substantial proportion of articles correctly labelled with the stage they are at. "Good articles" basically avoids that problem because this project is only interested in articles at the top end of the scale (hopefully one day something like 5% of articles will reach these criteria but at the moment my estimate is that about 1% of articles do - which would still mean we need to find and review another 9,000 or so articles!). The effort involved in classifying all those articles below the bottom 30% or so on some kind of clean-up/stub list and the top few articles would be much bigger than worthwhile. Similarly, introducing another level between GA and FA would just lengthen the roadmap and bog people down in more bureaucracy. If you look at a peer-reviewed article, there is a box on its talk page containing a link to the review itself. Actually trying to turn peer review into some kind of rating system would be rather subversive - the point of it is purely to gather constructive feedback/criticism, generally (though not always) with FAC in mind. If a reader is interested in how the peer review went, they can look at the review (it might just be a couple of points about spelling, there might be a thoughtful critique of the article, there may even be a rejection by the editor of the reviewer's criticims, sometimes there is no constructive criticism of any kind - I don't think that an article should get a special badge just because that happens!) and decide how well it has addressed any concerns that came up. I don't think anybody would be in favour of the "peer review police" coming along after a peer review has ended to check whether all concerns have been implemented and giving out a little star if they have been. There is really no point in trying to maintain a large-scale system of article quality classifications just for the sake of it - in general, if you want to get a view of what people think about an article (and this may be quite multidimensional) you can always read the talk page. There are some quality classifications I can see the point of - WP1.0 classification; classification by WikiProjects of their own articles (this lets them co-ordinate their work, and judge how far they have got to go before completely covering their area); FA (because WP's very best work should be recognized as such, and because WP needs a showcase for its best material) and GA (because not all editors will want to target the heady heights of FA, not all topics are well-suited for it, and any article should be encouraged to develop references, proper leads and sectioning, images complete with correct image tags and get copy-edited!). That's already a very expansive quality classification system, especially if all the cleanup and stub categories at the other end of the system are considered too. For any other feelings about article quality we have peer review, WP:AA, project-specific peer review, and talk pages, and my feeling is that constructive commentary on any of those is far more valuable than pidgeonholing the article as being at a particular stage in development. For that reason, and because I believe the simplicity of the GA system is one of its virtues, I would oppose any subdivision of the good article process. It is already probably more complicated than many of us would wish, and has been criticized as such. Trying to split hairs between "good but actually not that good", "good good" and "even better good but not quite featured" doesn't sound like a great idea (although I must say it is pretty well thought-out and it would solve the "grandfathering" problem - I'd recommend putting something like that in place for a WikiProject with a known number of articles - perhaps several hundred - to be covered, and where the project wants to monitor all their progressions; extending it up to cover all of WP, I doubt it would scale well either in terms of number of articles or, perhaps more critically, number of editors). Interesting idea, but I think it would probably be better to focus on something more specific and simple, like trying to bring up all "good" articles to a state where they have inline references, than to quibble too much about what type of good article it is. The reviewing and nominating system is getting a little flooded as it is! TheGrappler 01:38, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd like to emphasize the reasons that I suggested the scheme: The way you characterize this, it sounds like this not be a workable idea (though i'm not sure). The point of suggesting subdividing "good" was to distinguish between articles with inline refs and a peer review, and those without both, however that is done. The point of that emphasizing this division was two-fold: First, to invite and promote more effectively for all good article production to move to including inline references and get peer reviews (or better), by explicitly stating the need for such as part of developing articles. Stating a standard and summarizing the next step on article tags would make a difference. Reminders and stages of labeling, based on needed processes, can make a difference. Second, as you were discussing above, GA might move to the standard that inline refs are required. I was looking for a way possibly to deal with the large mass of articles that are going to be grandfathered in but not meet future "good" standards. A two level rating would seem to do that. Alternately, one could simply note somewhere that review criteria for "good" articles were upgraded on a certain date. [To clarify: The labels I suggested were qualified as "full draft" (not just draft) and "peer review" (not just review). Links to those definitions would make that meaning especially clear. However, what is happening with peer review is not the kind of review I was thinking. Thanks for the clarification. Perhaps the new scientific peer review project could eventually developed across all disciplines -- humanities, social sciences, sciences.] I'm wasn't suggesting rating all stubs. I was suggesting using mainly a two step process in Good articles: Adding one more step. That is not such a big deal, especially if it is really needed and helpful (and rather easily fit in as sub-part of current process -- and so I guess I won't toss in this idea without turning it over some, later on). Anyway, if the above isn't a workable idea, two basic points remain: Moving to in-line refs as the standard of "good" articles is done better sooner than later. Renaming "good" to "readable" or "ok" or "semi-delicious" or "almost eye treats" or something else could be a good idea. --Vir 03:21, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

I don't think adding more steps to the process will get GAs written any faster. If anything you'll have more people go "fuck the process" and do things their way; that's why WP:FF has ten GAs and zero featured articles (one featured list). Nifboy 04:04, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Like I said, I really like the way your proposal deals with grandfathering. If GA moves to requiring inline refs, then we might need something a bit like this, although I think just putting a "*" on the list by articles that lack inline refs is all the complication we need rather than a new class and review system. Otherwise, like Nifboy says, I doubt it will achieve the primary aim of the project, which is to encourage people to produce better quality articles. If the system is hard to get to grips with then people just won't follow it - and people can find relatively simple things hard to get to grips with! TheGrappler 04:48, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Nifboy and Grappler, I just don't know if an extra GA step would be too complex. Going at this from another direction: If not a very common process step (that is easier by virtue being part of an existing process, like GA, rather than an extra work group or sphere of work groups), what is the best way you think for the most WP articles (the widest collection of WP articles) to get inline references and reviews by knowledgeable-laypersons/professionals/specialists, sooner than later? Is high quality impossible here in 5 years for 10,000s of articles? Is really high quality decades away? (I hope not, since this could be the planet's general free knowledge base.) Considering various options to meet this goal is worth the effort. --Vir 05:49, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

There is a new "article rating system" in the pipeline but it relies purely on readers (very unlikely to be experts) rating an article on a 1-5 scale. There are no plans whatever for professional expert validation - the best there is is WikiProject-specific peer review (so people with an interest in the topic look at it; this produces an archived peer review that a reader can check for guidance on the state of the article, but not a formal validation) and WikiProject-specific article rating systems (which tend to focus on breadth of coverage, length and style issues) but not all WikiProjects have these and only a tiny minority of articles are actively "shepherded" by a WikiProject. The WikiProjects are the real drivers of organized, systematic, regularly monitored content; the featured article system is the real driver for "high" quality standards on the articles deemed most worthy of editors' time (and that's up to the editors to decide individually, although there is a list of Wikipedia:Vital articles, many shamefully neglected). WP:GA has a chance of becoming a driver of minimum quality standards for a significant minority of articles that don't attract the attention needed to get to FA status (I have heard rough figures from a WikiProject that a GA takes about 10 person hours to produce but an FA takes 50-100, even though the gap between GA and FA quality is far smaller than the gap between the bottom 70% of articles and the worst GAs - it may take 5-10 times the effort to produce a top 0.1% article than to produce a top 0.5% article). I don't think we can expect to see, in the near to medium future, an expert-validated Wikipedia; as has always been the case, it is very much "reader beware", but with the reader's advantage being the chance to inspect talk pages, page history and check out the records of the most important contributors on an article. Outside FA (and bear in mind there have been in the past several instances of wildly factually inaccurate articles getting FA status - they tend to get removed quickly once a genuine expert gets a look at them), this is the primary mechanism by which readers can come to trust the claims in an article. Inline referencing helps since it allows the reader to see where claims are sourced for - not all inline references are created equal (compare the infamous GNAA article's extensive inline references to low quality sources to the more respectable Corinthian War... to put this in perspective, I tried to come up with an "exemplar FA" by randomly clicking on FAs on the FA list and actually I only found an inline referenced FA on my 9th attempt! That was probably a run of bad luck but it shows just how far there is to go!). At the current rate at which FAs are getting created (and ignoring the fact that many current ones are not inline referenced), and optimistically pretending the monthly net increase is 50 not the 30-or-less it has been over the last 6 months (see Wikipedia:Good articles/Statistics) then we aren't going to see 10,000 FAs for over 15 years. In fact it will probably happen significantly before that due to exponential, not linear, growth, but the FA's exponential curve is significantly shallower than, say, total article count - in fact the recent trend has been for the rise in FA numbers to actually be getting smaller (i.e. less than linear growth) perhaps due to increased use of FARC. Even if exponential growth resumes the proportion of FAs is likely to dip to less than 0.05%. This is one of the reasons so many people have embraced GA - sometimes we need to get away from looking at the top few pages and look around a bit more widely.

As far as I can see (especially looking at the FAC page and GAN) the WikiProjects are likely to be what takes the Wikipedia up to the next step. For instance, we have fantastic coverage on Atlantic hurricanes, because there is a strong project devoted to it. Unfortunately, many WikiProjects are dead or inactive and huge areas of Wikipedia are not covered by a project at all. Since projects monitor pages (to try to prevent degradation), maintain lists of pages needing different degrees of attention, bring "more-expert-than-normal" editors together, and sometimes run their own peer reviews, pages under their guard tend to be of better quality. They can also set their own road-maps, relevant to the goals of their project (e.g. "get every article on our subject up to featured status" is a relevant goal for some projects, others just want "to produce a non-stub article for every suburb of the city" or to "produce a featured lists of all..."). I don't know how well centralized organization of articles and roadmaps would work (people have in the past suggested lots of stages for an article and a system to keep track of what stage it is at), but I suspect it may be rejected as unwiki, it would require enormous effort to keep up to date, and it may not scale well, even to only the top few % of articles. I think it's important that whatever monitoring and validation processes there are should be value adding, to justify the time that is spent on them. For instance, adding {{stub}} to an article doesn't add much value, but {{Mozambique-stub}} does because it allows interested parties to seek the article out and expand it; FA adds value because for an article to get through FAC extensive improvements are almost always made; adding a project-specific progress marker adds value because it allows experts on that project to identify the article's level of need; hopefully GA can add some value too - especially if constructive criticism/advice is given liberally. I just don't know whether a system of GA, GA+ and GA++ would add enough value to be worth the effort and bureaucracy, but, most of all, I suspect few people would be bothered with it. TheGrappler 15:36, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for this helpful overview. It seems to me that the issues of inline references and professional review could be uncoupled in the way I phrased points above. In light of current Wikipedia editorial culture and practices, it seems that the GA & FA projects are good places to focus and *communicate* or outline the missions of growing and encouraging the following types of quality enhancing steps. FA already does outline a development process. But, GA will become the "status", if temporary for time, and marked so for ever more articles (1000s at least). So, in regards to the two main editorial issues above, what to do? Will these two steps eventually be part of a facilitated growth dynamic for improving articles at these two stages? Or are these just adjunct review elements that editors use in assessing status? That is, for these projects:

- GA and various wikiprojects: It is good to widely encourage inline references and going to various editorial groups for article improvement?

- FA and the scientific peer review group (and any other expert review process): Does it make sense to widely recruit experts to review in both of these locations?

Obviously, these two steps aren't all that goes on GA & FA. I am just trying to figure out, regarding inline refs and expert reviews, is there a way to highlight the need for those steps and to encourage action on those steps?

So, moving back to a more general place of inquiry, here are some wonderings: How to accomplished something like the above? by notes at top of GA page and articles? by another rating step in GA & FA? by more general how to articles on these steps? (do these exist already?) by a space in the commons? by listservs for this? by prominent links/invites on main page and main portals? by outreach to mobilize academic/professional communities? by more outlines and articles and outreach, linked all over, about high quality issues in WP? by articles for experts on how to do expert reviews in the WP context? by all or many of those steps? Now, much of this may happen organically. Does it make sense to plan some of it? (obviously, I think so -- see last paragraph below.)

The above issues may be obvious from reading some of the WP editorial process pages (such as how to improve an article to FA status). Perhaps GA might seem not the place to talk about all of the above (though it will be the first place new editors might encounter real work on the above issues.) However, I'm wondering, as this GA list will be the entry point for ever more articles, does it make sense to spell out a menu and options for improvement here? And, if not here, where would one discuss these sort of cross-project editorial improvement issues?

I hope the inter-project coordination ponderings above are not seen as unwiki/unparticipatory ideas. Really, I hope they are read as inquiry into how to participate in shared knowledge production rather than allowing a small group of elites to coordinate things behind the scenes and out of view -- which is usually (almost inevitably) what happens without group planning in large projects -- in the social sciences, an argument that this is so is called the iron law of oligarchy -- this iron law doesn't necessarily need to be the case -- but a counter process requires wide discussion and planning. --Vir 17:17, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

Per discussion above, here are two alternate ways to deal with managing a possible conversion of the GA review process to include a new GA inline reference criteria, if and when it becomes policy. I wonder if one of these approaches might be helpful:

Option 1 - Two stage GA system: GA articles with no linline references stay on list as new subcategory.
- GAN - Good Article Nominees: For new GA candidate articles which meet old review criteria, not requiring inline references. Stay on nom list two months or so.
- GA-1 - Good Articles, first stage (no inline reference evaluation): Status for all articles that were previously approved by GA criteria and that are reviewed under the old criteria.
- GAN-2 - Good Article Nominees, stage two: For all GA articles candidate articles which meet old review "stage 1" criteria, and which also have inline references. Stay on nom list two months or so. Options: At this step, an additional review option could be to request reviewers to evaluate articles closely for NPOV (with all major claims considered closely) and for generality issues. To ease review, a very approximate number of inline refs (based a relaxation of the average FA standard) could be tied to word count.
- GA-2 - Good Articles, second stage (extensive inline referencing required): Status of all articles which pass a criteria review of including inline refs.

Option 1 Evaluation: This option is more inclusive in the short and long run. It will generate a longer list than Option 2. This system would generate more quality on the good article list without adding too high a bar.

Option 2 - One stage GA system: GA articles with no linline references remain on list for year or so, and then are deleted.
- GAN - Good Article Nominees: When criteria changes, only for new GA candidate articles which meet new review criteria of inline references are nominated. Stay on nom list two months or so.
- GA-old - Good Articles, old: Status for all articles that were previously approved by GA criteria, that have few or no inline refs. Put these articles on prolonged notice of need to revise to stay on list. This requires the creation of a GA-old template. If and when inline references are approved as a GA criteria, a review panel of a couple of people or more could sort the current list to assign the GA-old tag and leave articles with inline refs with the GA tag. That majority of articles would go to GA-old. These old articles could remain on the main GA list (perhaps with some icon marking them) for 6 months to 1 year or 2 years or so. A notice bar at top of article talk page could include a short note about the criteria to include inline references. When inline refs are included, editors can list the article for GAN review. Articles that drop off the list could go to a GA-old-failed heading and listing.
- GA - Good articles: Status of all new GA approved articles and current articles which pass a criteria review of including inline refs.

Option 2 Evaluation: This option would be complex in the short run and simpler in the long run. The GA list would be shorter than Option 1.

If inline references become a GA requirement somehow and we clearly desire that now (or soon), it would be better if this were proposed and became a new policy ASAP -- to reduce the work load in the conversion and possibly, depending on the new process, to reduce number of articles going off list down the road. Comments? --Vir 18:18, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

With all due respect, aren't we getting "process-bound"? I haven't been as active in this project in the last couple of months as I was before, but in the description of this proposed standard, it still mentions that this is intended to be as rigid or formal as the FA process. And yet I see that this project is creeping slowly towards being a "Feature article" light -- which many of its critics have accused this project of being. Is there really any good reason for this being anything other than the following:

Nominate an article you think is good.
Someone reviews the article, agrees, includes it in the list.
A third party believes the article is not actually a "good article", delists it -- but offers an explanation why.

I've discovered that not only are the criteria becoming very detailed, but there is even a process for delisting. Is this last step really necessary? Is the need for inline references really necessary? A good article ought to be clearly acknowledgable as "good", rather than conform to some set of rules which could always be gamed. -- llywrch 01:32, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Why inline refs? As I understand things, "good" Wikipedia articles, because of the Wikipedia NPOV and "factual accuracy" standards, pretty much need to have inline refs (unless an article is really short). Without inline refs, it can be good writing but not a "good" Wikipedia article.

"Good" is a misnomer for the current GA process. See discussion above about this. One could change the project title to "OK articles" or "Readable articles" but there is also a needed for a way to improve articles that are not heading toward FA status soon (the vast majority of articles probably). --Vir 01:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

On simplicity: Option 1-stage 1 above remains simple. Just nominate and approve an article. Yet, stage 2 really encourages much needed higher quality. Option 1, stage 1 and 2 together, would make this project decidedly not Feature Article lite. Option 2 moves closer to being FA lite, but is there really anything wrong with that, if it improves articles that wouldn't get it otherwise? --Vir 01:54, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm personally of the opinion that there is roughly the right amount of process at the moment, but less would be better than more. The "delisting" procedure hasn't really changed, it's just been linked better so people can have a look at it before implementing it! Inline refs aren't about to happen soon: a very large proportion of FAs still lack them (Harvard referencing is also acceptable, but even rarer). But as more and more articles switch to inline referencing it is inevitable that those that lack it will be, relatively speaking, "less good", and we'll have to deal with it then. Still, that could be several years away so I don't think we need to worry about it now, unless we want to lay some structural groundwork well in advance. Multi-staging looks excessively complicated and probably doesn't have a WP:SNOWBALL's chance of getting consensus. When "brilliant prose" changed to "featured articles" there was simply a mass-re-review of potentially dodgy articles; something similar could happen here. It's not a terrible thing that standards here are getting higher, and more exact criteria help for consistency (FA criteria could probably be reduced to a 15 word sentence and consistency would still be achieved because of the nature of FAC; with GA something more akin to a checklist is probably needed, although it is very true that it risks gameability). WP:WIAGA has grown recently and could probably do with a trimming to make it simpler. WP:GA isn't really here to enforce quality, it's here to identify and encourage it - and to do that we need to avoid complicated process and develop useful criteria (easy to understand, relatively easy to check for either a writer or reviwer, and which actually describe an article of quality if not distinction).TheGrappler 04:48, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

And in response to do we need anything more than "1. Nominate an article you think is good. 2. Someone reviews the article, agrees, includes it in the list. 3. A third party believes the article is not actually a "good article", delists it -- but offers an explanation why" - a rejection at stage 2 or a delisting at stage 3 can come over as a bit combative, so a step "4." for "Someone who disagrees with a failed listing/delisting/isn't quite confident enough to delist but thinks a 2nd look is required" can be helpful, and we have that on the "disputes" page. I can't think of any situation that these 4 steps won't cover in a satisfactory way, so agree wholeheartedly there's no need for a "5" or "6" or more... step 4 is relatively informal anyway, and is basically a replacement to the old "system" (not part of a formal process, but something that happened on a de facto systematic basis) of people posting on this talk page to ask the same things. If there's any part of this system anybody can identify as unnecessary then we need to get rid of it, but I can't personally see any.TheGrappler 04:59, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

A helpful repetition of the same process is not complex. The criticisms given above have mostly related to complexity as an issue. Option 1 above isn't complex or far out in being beyond what GA does. Key thing: Option 1 proposes a second iteration of existing WP:WIAGA criteria, applied with more rigor, consistently. It isn't irrelevant or extra. It allows the largest possible pool of good articles (both "ok" ones and really "good" ones). It simply repeats a process that exists here, one time. For those who care to do it, fine. Those who don't want to wouldn't have to. While this system is not complex, complexity is not a bad thing. There is good complexity and bad complexity. Improvement through iteration of an existing standard at higher level is not a problem -- it is a polishing system, helpful. That is...

A one-time review process iteration with higher standards=more information and quality: This is low cost and voluntary; it is high yield. Rather than rely on a slow gradual sea change of the average body of articles to seep forward, I think it is a fine option for an editorial community to take the already growing upper quarter or eight or even sixteenth of distinct quality articles and recognize that quality. We are talking now of a distinction between often no inline refs -- not a GP criteria -- and inline refs, an actually stated criteria here (though not mandatory). This is a simple distinction and would serve generating more quality articles sooner (and enable yet more production of quality by making detailed reviews easier). I think this issue is worth looking at more, even at length. I'm curious to see ideas sometime about how inline composition could be encouraged. I'd hate to set a standard that no articles follow. But, it seems a shame not to implement recognition of a standard that some articles do follow. I do hope the need for seeing the inline requirement as a strong requirement, instead of optional, comes at more like a few months (and as part of something like option 1), instead of a few years!

An iteration=more freedom: An extra iterated review step is not more bureaucracy -- it is less. Read on. It is organizational intelligence. An extra step allows editors more freedom to rest with the process where they wish or drive for more improvement easily. There is more freedom for improvement or not, to just rest. Avoiding a simple adaptation to a system is to stick to stasis for the sake of simplicity. The option 2, however applied, which Grappler says will be coming eventually -- will shuck eventually some large group of articles from GA status and cut off others from making it. Why not offer people the freedom and option to create more quality? Why impose a bureaucracy of unnecessary simplification which slows down the evolution of Wikipedia? Well, enough sloganeering for one post -- but not nearly enough theory yet about this. --Vir 06:13, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Why not adjust/expand 1.0's grading scheme for this? A-Class articles are the ones that have at least an opportunity of passing FAC, similar to the higher-category GA classifications above. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:13, 19 April 2006 (UTC)

Quality levels

This is in response to "Revised review label scheme", but I thought it was time to start a new section.

I don't see any inherent problem with GA.

But if the goal is essentially to be able designate more levels of quality, I support that at least in principle.

Instead of subdividing GA, it would probably be simpler to set up some other page and process to handle the additional level.

But the name, whatever that level is called, should be clear and straightforward. It shouldn't require any deciphering. Here are a few possibilities:

For a higher level -- "Better"
For a lower level -- any of the following
- "Acceptable"
- "Accurate" (or at least no known factual errors)
- "Adequate"
- "Basic"
- "OK"
- "Meets minimum standards"
- "Usable"
For multiple levels
- ~~Grading scale of "A" through "F"~~ I meant a grading scale of A, B, C, D, F
- Percentage grading scale

Maurreen 04:46, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Simple as A and B: I think the points by Titoxd (end of comment just above) and Maurreen here are helpful. They both mention a letter-based grading scheme option (A and B, at least) to distinguish quality. That sounds simplest.

Label meaning: It doesn't matter what categories are labeled as long as the meaning is clearly associated with the review criteria. One situation in which this is not so clear seems to be the current GA situation. Here, the label "good" refers to some articles that, by existing evaluation criteria, are faulty in one or more ways, hence, are arguably not "good" articles (depending on how "good" is interpreted). This is more of a label issue than a review issue.

One or two processes?: At this late hour, I am rather neutral about whether one or more processes are better for evaluation of more than one quality level. Perhaps there are differing merits to the different possibilities. Intuitively, I lean toward the idea of one process (for similar evaluation processes, if they are similar) being more efficient and effective. But, I'm a lumper. I think Grappler noted on Walkerma's talk page recently that the German and Swedish FAC groups assign both "good" and "featured" status as part of the same process. I wonder what the pros and cons are in that practical context. --Vir 05:52, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Once a decent review process is set up that returns valuable information, then the process of rating articles becomes trivial. The problem is that the current review process for good articles is set up to categorise each facet of the article into either "good" or "not good". Imagine this for a review process:

Comprehensiveness: rated A to F (A is more comprehensive than Britannica, F is barely a stub)
Verifiability: A to F (A is at the level of academic papers, F has no sources and is a suspected hoax)
Writing: A to F (A is brilliant prose, F is barely English)
Structure/approachability: A to F (A being a brilliantly structured article useful to a layman, F consists of random bits of trivia or is helpful only to insiders)

Given such a review, it is easy to say that a featured article must be minimum B in every area with at least two A's, or that a good article must be minimum C in every area. You could even say that articles with any Fs are excluded from dumps for mirrors, define additional levels of "acceptable" articles or whatever.

I do feel that setting up parallel, but not identical, processes for featured articles and good articles involving similar, but not identical, reviewing processes is redundant in a bad way. Stevage 11:18, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Multi-dimensional grading scheme: Nice. I was thinking about what you mention for letter grading (or even percentage grading as Maurreen mentions) in four (or five) article areas late last night. It is a very good way to go. It locates areas for improvement for each article. I think NPOV needs to be added to the above, as in:

Neutral Point of View: A to F (A is all notable views equally represented, F is a very biased push of one POV). Note that an article can be comprehensive but not NPOV ("broad" but not "deep") or NPOV but not comprehensive ("deep" but not "broad"). So both criteria are needed.

Duplicate processes: The English FAC and GAN evaluation systems are quite different -- being as FAC involves many votes and much discussion per article evaluation and GAN involves only 2 evaluations (the nomination and the approval). I brought up the German/Swedish FAC case, which judges good and featured status at same time (presumably), as a rough parallel to the case of judging "Good" and "OK" articles (or A or B average scores and B or C average scores, excluding any with Fs) in the same evaluation system.

Where we are now, and ordering the issues

It seems like there is some support and no objection to adding at least one other designated level of quality. Maybe the next thing to work out is whether any further levels should go through this page or something else. I don't feel strongly either way, but I've had little involvement with GA. Maurreen 17:34, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree it is about time to consider the issue of if and where to use the same review criteria to distinguish article quality levels.

A key issue: Different levels of quality articles are passing GA review. Based on looking at many GA articles, I'd say that GA approved articles range in quality very approximately (using the scheme above outlined by Stevage) from what might be called C average articles to A average articles. Various ways to address this issue have been raised.

Quality level review subpage: Perhaps a next step is for someone(s) to create on a subpage some summaries of options for working with quality levels. --Vir 18:20, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

One problem here is that pages can change rapidly in quality. Attempting to fine-tune the process may be hard - FAs vary substantially in quality, both in terms of comprehensiveness (which may roughly be gauged by length) and quality of referencing (very many FAs lack inline citations, very many are based on only a few references). It is only to be expected that GAs also vary largely in quality - it was meant to be a measure of "minimal good quality" (any article should aspire to be well-written, referenced, and appropriately illustrated) but obviously that would include at the higher end those articles being finetuned for FA status, creating a substantial spread. I am wary of the possibility of labelling a logical consequence of having a minimal quality mark as a "problem". Accurately locating the quality of an article along a scale is substantially subjective (as the experience of 1.0 suggests) and to locate it accurately or "objectively" would take a more complex process than the current one-person-review GA has. So a balance would have to be struck between accuracy and ease of process. A second obstacle is the fact that article quality is very dynamic and every article is a work-in-progress (sometimes very slow progress!) so the metadata that is collected may quickly become outdated. Even the FA metadata (and much effort has been expended to produce it, in terms of long debates on FAC) has a shelf-life of 12-18 months, judging from the the FA Review and FA Removal Candidates. The finer the quality categories by which articles are graded, the faster that metadata may become redundant. A large scale effort to establish accurate, precise article gradings is without doubt doomed to failure. What needs to be compromised, and this needs to be considered with care, is how fine the article gradings should be, how regularly that metadata would be reviewed and how much effort should be expended in checking that the grading is accurate (i.e. how rigorous a process is required?). I think everybody here believes that the previous WP system of "cleanup", "stub", "featured", "everything else" leaves too big a gap in the middle. Accusations that GA lets in articles of too large a variety of quality need to be judged against the previous situation i.e. no special status being given to any non-stub, non-cleanup article, whatever its quality. If a further breakdown of GA status is deemed desirable, it would be a good idea to integrate it very closely with WP1.0, which is something that GA hasn't done terribly well itself. The forthcoming "article validation feature" should really be considered as well. I'm not necessarily "for" or "against" anything (although I am highly dubious that article quality can be established "scientifically", which makes me wary of finer gradings, and think that it's probably more important that gradings have consensus established than that they should be precise) but would like to see a more concrete proposal that addresses the article validation feature, process and reliability issues, WP1.0 integration, shelf-life of the metadata and whether or not there is sufficient interest and enthusiasm to maintain it (GA seems to have developed a large core of supporters who have maintained and extended it; a more complex and technical project might not). The current GA system certainly has flaws but it also has big advantages, especially its simplicity (this seems, judging by talk page comments from casual users not deeply involved in the project, to actually be its major selling point). It is hard to know how to weigh the advantages and disadvantages except in comparison to specific review systems: for instance, it provides less information about an article than WP:AA does (a place where articles are rated separately on things like writing quality, references, images) but it is simpler and the data lasts longer (many AA reviews will now be completely outdated, and are unlikely to be revised for well over a year). It has less effective quality control that WP:FAC but it is simpler and easier as a system and gives recognition to more than the very best articles. It seems to be slightly less subjective than the WP 1.0 ratings, but provides less specific information about quality (although the simpler information may actually age better). It would be nice to see a couple of specific proposals and what people think about it; I would urge that any changes be made with wide consultation, especially with "casual users" of the GA system, who are effectively its most important users (rather than the core of people who maintain it). TheGrappler 19:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

If you have time, could you turn this into bullet points for including on the page below. I included your paragraph as is for now in the following options draft page.--Vir 19:39, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Here is a sandbox page to outline and discuss options:

Outline of quality level options (and associated discussions)
Feel free to add options and discussions, especially outlines of grading/quality level options - or copy the page and rearrange as you wish. --Vir 19:39, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

To me, the point is the amount of meta-Wiki effort that can be exerted towards projects like GA is rather limited. The reason GA actually works right now (unlike WP:AA, which has been stuck on the same topic for over a month now) is that it's a very low-effort, high-thoroughput process. Trying to produce and maintain a better rating scheme requires much more effort; more than is really "out there" for use. Nifboy 20:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Nifboy, Maybe, maybe not. Depends on the skill (and work invested) in refining and implementing a widely useable review process. Because of widely varying quality in GA approvals, the current GA process really seems not to be specified enough. How to better specify the GA process and keep things doable?

Starting with the above comment, I have excerpted main points (on quality criteria and the one or more project issue) going back to a comment by TheGrappler on 20:33, 14 April 2006 (UTC):

Expanded to cover discussions in last 6 days: Outline of quality level options (and associated discussions) --Vir 21:15, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I oppose making this project have any more steps/hurdles/hoops/beuaracracy than it currently has. It is simple, elegant and doesn't need fixed, per se, as the first step an article takes on its move to be WP:FA and WP ver 1.0.

That said, I think the leap from stub to WP:GA is not comparable to that of WP:GA to WP:FA.

We need ANOTHER project that focuses on article in the WP:GA->WP:FA space. Something akin to Good (have) -> Better/Excellent (need) -> Peer Review (have) -> Featured (have) -> WP Ver. 1.0. We need the WP:Better or WP:Excellent project, the closest we have to that is the WP:Peer review., which is not really right either. - Davodd 21:27, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I highly doubt another reviewing/analyzing/rewarding project would have the support necessary to keep it running. It just adds more steps/hurdles/hoops/beaurocracy to the process of assessing articles' quality, even if each step itself doesn't have any added complexity. Secondly, I think the space between GA and FA doesn't allow for an intermediate "step": The random variation in articles' quality is too big. Nifboy 21:40, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

It makes no sense to me (aside from naming scheme) as too what the effective difference is between splitting WP:GA into two (or more) separate projects or into two (or more) separate grading schemes. Aside from adding the bureaucracy that this project supposedly is trying to avoid, adding more steps/hurdles/complicated rules is - basically - shoehorning a second or third project into the current one under the guise of not creating a second project. If your supposition is true that there will not be enough interest to support such a endeavor, in essence by adding a second (or third) sub project to WP:AG we may be threatening to break a working project simply because an extra step is needed after this project. Feels like rule creep to to me. - Davodd 22:01, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The problem: There is wide variability in quality on the GA list. This is arguably a current, extenstive and avoidable GA list problem. If you inspect the GA list, it seems quite a number of articles do not meet two or more GA review criteria -- they are not "good".

Possible solutions: Decrease quality variability through one of these three strategies (or another to-be-defined strategy):

Tighten application of GA criteria: make the application of GA criteria more stringent and reduce greatly the number of articles on the list. (Grappler has argued this will occur over time, several years. I have argued: Why wait and allow a problem to grow? Why loose evaluations of articles down the road? Fix the problem now by adjusting the process.)
Create a new review project (above or below GA): If GA criteria are loosely applied (not fully applied) or applied tightly , this might make space for another review project (or step) above or below GA, respectively.
Create evaulation grades: Have a grading scheme. This need not add bureaucracy in terms of lots of extra reviews. GA could still have only two reviews (the nomination and the approval), per review step. But, it could involve more round(s) of review. --Vir 22:56, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

(carriage return) - Having a wide swath of quality in GA can be a problem, but it can also be looked on the good side: a GA should meet at least some basic criteria, even if it doesn't meet all the criteria for FA. Basically, GA could be used as a "minimum guaranteed quality" mark, and plugging it into the Assessment scale for WP:1.0, we would have something like this:

Article progress grading scheme
FA	Reserved exclusively for articles that have received "Featured article" status after being scrutinized through the Featured article candidates process, and meet the current criteria for featured articles. Example: Medal of Honor
A	The article provides a well-written, reasonably clear and complete description of the topic, as described in How to write a Great Article. It includes a well-written introduction to the topic, and an appropriate series of headings to break up the article. It should have sufficient external literature references, preferably from the "hard" (peer-reviewed where appropriate) literature rather than websites. It should be well illustrated, with no copyright problems. It should be at the stage where it should be sent to peer review, and could be potentially successful in Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. This grade corresponds to the "Wikipedia 1.0" standard. Example: Ammonia (as of Oct 2005).
GA	The article has passed through the Good article nomination process and has been granted GA status, meeting the good article standards. This status should be used for articles that still need some work to reach featured article standards, but that are otherwise good. Good articles that may succeed in FAC should be considered A-Class articles, but being a good article is not a requirement for A-Class.
B	The article is "almost there" but it may be missing one of the following: inline references, balance of content, NPOV or an important section. Alternatively, the English may need a comprehensive rewrite to make it flow, or it may need to be edited to follow standard English spelling and conventions. With NPOV a well written B-class may correspond to the "Wikipedia 0.5" or "usable" standard. Example: Antarctica (as of Oct 2005) is a good start but contains too many lists, and it needs more prose content & references.
Start	The article has a good amount of content, but it is still weak in certain areas, and may lack a table. For example an article on Africa might cover the geography well, but be weak on history and culture. Example: Arithmetic (as of Oct 2005).
Stub	The article is either a very short article or a stub that will need a lot of work to bring it to A-Class level, although there may be a significant amount of material in the article.

The benefit of this is that as a baseline grade, there is a guarantee of at least some quality for the article. Also, if {{GA-Class}} articles are being reviewed, and one of them looks more like a B-Class article than a GA, it gives a few criteria for delisting. Any comments? Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 23:32, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

I think the implication of what you're are suggesting is option 1, defined just above the table: Tighten application of GA criteria. (This is because some current GA-class articles are B-class or even "C-class".)

If so, how can GA editors easily make a refined evaluation between B-class and Good articles? I think it would be easier to just call Good articles "B-class" and perhaps combine or change the criteria a bit. Regardless...

A separate question from final ranking levels is evaluation process (or assigning ranking amongst levels): would evaluating amongst classes be based on a grading scale criteria? Or, would another another simpler evaluation scheme be better, such as a simple pass/fail rating on each of 5 criteria mentioned above (with, for example, failing 2 or more criteria = less than B-class, perhaps called C-class)? For an example of a pass-fail rating system, see: A five part pass-fail outline, which could be applied to differentiate B-class and "C-class" articles. --Vir 00:48, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Current summary, as I see it

I don't see any consensus that GA has a problem or any need to change, and I doubt such a consensus would develop anytime soon.

If it is important enough to anyone to designate an additional level, it would probably be simplest all around for that to be separate from GA. (I had thought myself of doing this before, but it isn't important enough to me, at least for now.) Maurreen 04:30, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

You're probably right about consensus not developing soon about changing the GA process. I think it is worth keeping track of options for dealing with an underlying problem in GA -- the wide variability in quality of articles (some of which are barely "ok"). A separate project might be the thing.

One possibly agreeable change: this project and the English WP might be better served by changing the project's name to something like "Adequate" or "Basic" articles, or other options which you mentioned previously. --Vir 05:22, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

In reply to the comments below the table: essentially, the difference between B-Class and GAs would be NPOV and referencing, in a pass-or-fail scale, the way I personally use the 1.0 criteria for WikiProject Tropical cyclones. Start-Class is essentially equivalent to C-Class, while Stub-class (D-Class) and F-Class would be unusuable for our purposes, so there wouldn't be any need to differentiate among them. I personally think that the 1.0 scale is ok as-is, but there have been several inquiries as to where GAs fall, and due to the uncertainty you mention, they can only be given the least common denominator of GA-Class, and then iff they meet heavier requirements, closer to WP:WIAFA, they can be called A-Class. Confirmation of A-Class would be passing at WP:FAC. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:45, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I'd say that I consider A-Class to be ready to submit for peer review before FAC - since our assessments are generally not expert assessments, the peer review/FAC processes would probably find some minor gaps & problems before it became FA. Walkerma 06:23, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

To me, the line between FAC and peer review is increasingly blurry; FAC just has votes attached to the comments and actually tell you when they like the article. Nifboy 06:43, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Overview of GA quality issue: a summary of the GA article quality problem (which could be evaluated further by looking at a subset of articles) and some possible solutions are here: Quality levels.

The link above includes excerpts of most of the main points in the last week of discussion.

It seems to me that by not coming to consensus about the possible need to change process at this time that this group is tending to a sort of "default" option, described by Grappler: Gradual tightening in which the application of GA criteria will gradually tighten over time, perhaps several years.

Grappler and I seem to agree that "good" is a misnomer for this project at this time. Some ways have been suggested about how to deal with this labeling issue.

I'll be scare for a week or so. Interesting discussions everyone :) See you later, --Vir 15:34, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

What GAs are all about

Due to a lack of time I'll just have to make a really quick point, as I think some people seem to be missing the point of GAs. Some people seem to think that GAs are 'almost' FAs, or are articles with only a small number of deficiencies, or something like that. Absolutely not - making a list of deficient articles is surely a waste of everybody's time. GAs should be excellent articles, as clearly stated on the GA page - the point was to recognise excellent content that's in a form not conducive to FA status, such as being in a very short article. Renaming to 'adequate' or 'basic' articles would make this an entirely different project. I do think that 'good' is not a brilliant name for it, but anything grander sounds like some kind of alternative FA, which this is also not. Worldtraveller 18:54, 21 April 2006

The point is there are a lot of "not good" GA articles, and even, there are a number of really deficient articles, by GA standards, on the GA list. Describing this collection of GA articles as "adequate" seems to be more realistic and honest in terms of what exists. Imho, if the project wants to have a collection of "excellent" articles, it is missing that mark. If that is the aim, the project's implementation of evaluations needs to be changed. What to do?

I think the next step is: Evaluating just how extensive are GA quality problems. --Vir 19:06, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

Maybe you should consider identifing and removing the bad GA articles? Davodd 20:37, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

If there's any quality problems with an article, why is it a GA? I agree, just remove them. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 20:53, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

That could involve removing a lot of articles. The culture and society topic areas (everything that isn't science and tech) are more problematic areas. Whereas in the sciences, you may have one or a few notable points of view at a given time on a subject -- in the cultural and social disciplines you could have more than a few notable views, in some cases. It is hence much more difficult to be comprehensive and NPOV in such cases. I've noticed there are a number of articles in those subject areas that both have few or no inline refs and are not comprehensive and/or not NPOV. So, a number of articles don't satisfy two or more of the GA review criteria. It needs to be evaluated if this is the case for the much of the GA list. There are various ways that evaluation could be made. I think that should be done carefully. If it turns out there are widespread quality issues, a policy/goal change might be a better solution than dumping a large part of the list. It seems to me there could be a mismatch between the goals of this project and the review methods which let through articles that don't fit criteria. A simple solution would be if the goal could be adjusted downward to considering these "basic" or "adequate" articles. There are more complex solutions that might work better than that. --Vir 21:35, 21 April 2006 (UTC)

I have had only limited internet access for some months now and haven't been able to properly review articles listed here, so I couldn't say whether I agree that quality problems are widespread. I will do a sweep of all the physics and astronomy articles (my area of expertise) and report what I find in terms of how many meet the criteria. However, if half the articles listed were to not match the criteria, I'd certainly prefer to delist half the articles rather than downgrade the criteria. At first, when anyone could list articles, probably a lot of substandard articles got through, but now with an impartial review required it ought to be much better in that respect. What I remain concerned about, though, are long articles, which I am not convinced one person can adequately review - substantial articles on substantial topics are perfect FA fodder and should really go there rather than being listed here. Worldtraveller 11:37, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Perhaps we should propose with the GA WikiProject to re-review all the questionable articles? We really should review every article every 3 months or so, articles change a lot. Cheers, H ig hway ^{Rainbow Sneakers} 14:22, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree - regular sweeping will be vital for maintaining a healthy GA list. Worldtraveller 15:26, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

A regular sweep of GA articles would be a way to resolve quality issues (until the list gets really large). But, with what level of expertise by the reviewer? An expert sweep might be needed. I'm going to rephrase a point from above.

A basic challenge: NPOV can be very difficult to achieve at times on cultural and social topics. Though, I do think it can be done. Sometimes, there are more than a few notable POVs in any given field in the humanities and social sciences. Culture and society related topic areas that may be a challenge include articles on the arts, education, history, language, media, philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, royalty, sports, and war. I am not talking about fancruft, but about topics where a dozen and more perspectives may have accumulated in the last fifty years. Related to what Worldtraveller says: More general topics and longer articles present extra difficulties and need more attention.

Solutions?: The extent of possible problems with generality and NPOV in an article might only be obvious to someone having professional training or extensive expertise (who is thorougly familiar with various theories and points of view) in the humanities or social sciences. Possible solutions (at least partial ones) could be: a) outline and highlight things to look for -- such as a page on what to look for and how to review culture and society articles for NPOV and generality. b) recruit a GA quality "doublecheck" (not a written review) by a few expert reviewers. --Vir 16:24, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

Lists?

What's the possibility of including good lists in GA? Maurreen 17:15, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Depends on the list. Did you try Featured Lists? Nifboy 17:21, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

:Ah, I just asked this question earlier today, changing the GA requirements goes in the GA requirements talk page, its to the right of the main page of the GA article. I only asked because somebody failed a list type article earlier simply for being a list really :/. Homestarmy 17:23, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't have a particular list in my mind, just curious in general. Maurreen 17:30, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

How to properly alphabetize Zara Yaqob

Yes, I am peeved about this.

The name of the Ethiopian Emperor is Zara Yaqob. It means "Seed of Jacob". "Yaqob" is not his last name; no one uses last names in Ethiopia. Writing it as "Yaqob, Zara" makes as much sense as renaming "Attila the Hun" "Hun, Attila the", or "Seed of Jacob" to "Jacob, Seed of", or "ice cream" to "cream, ice". Will people please stop doing this???? Sheesh, it really mars Wikipedia's credibility every time I see another well-meaning editor mangle his name like this.

At this rate, I'm tempted to delist this article just because of this continued behavior. -- llywrch 04:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I added a small note in a hidden comment to tell people not to move it. Hope that will persuade you to leave it listed! Worldtraveller 09:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. Some may find it hard to believe, but I don't like to rant at people -- especially when they are trying to help, & their mistake is only due to lack of information. But correcting this was getting tiresome. -- llywrch 20:10, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The GAAuto Script

Hi everyone,

Just an update on the GAAuto script that sorts and updates the good articles list. The script is constantly undergoing improvement and I have just added comment support to the script. This means that Worldtraveller's comment as well as any other comments added next to an article in the list should stay there.

If you have any comments or ideas on the script please feel free to write me a message.

Surprisingly there are still many more improvements to be made to the script. Including previous changes promised to TheGrappler regarding section comments, improvements that cause the whole page to be updated not just the list and maybe even a bot to update the list (I've recently been learning Python and building a bot seems an excellent way to test my skills).

Cedars 12:06, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Great stuff! I wondered how it would treat my comment, good to know it won't inadvertently remove it. Worldtraveller 17:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The point of GA

I'm a bit concerned about longer articles becoming GAs. I just noticed Secretaría de Inteligencia was added to the list. It's 69K long, and I just don't feel that one person can adequately review an article like that. (In addition I really seriously doubt the subject warrants such length). It would be far better for it to get a peer review and an FA nomination. GA should be about recognising excellent content that falls outside the scope of FA, not about recognising articles that are 'on the way' to FA status, and I feel that a lot of the long articles are being nominated because people feel they are the latter and not the former.

I've added a note before to the nominations page about what to do with long articles (say 20kb or more). Does anyone think it should be more strongly worded? I really think if we concentrate on listing and reviewing only shorter articles on smaller topics GA will be much more effective and valuable, and this would also help to ensure that our role is distinct from that of FA. Worldtraveller 17:16, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, some long articles have a bunch of content but nothing even close to "brilliant prose" yet sometimes it certainly qualifies for "good prose", and some long articles don't have everything sourced properly yet there are certainly references, and many articles have larger sizes because they have complicated templates inserted into the text, inflating the kilobyte count way beyond what the text would suggest :/. Homestarmy 17:57, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Good prose rather than brilliant prose is fine, but I still question whether realistically, faced with a 70kb article, one person is capable of reviewing it properly. Long articles really need input from multiple reviewers if a review is to be worthwhile, so I think they're beyond our scope. Worldtraveller 18:04, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, Berlin tops out at 68K, yet somebody seemed to of reviewed it, (and it does seem good enough for GA, just not referenced enough for FA i'd think) and Chicago, which is our Good Article collaboration, comes in at a humungous 72K, and both of those articles are really heavily inflated by bunches of graphs, tables, templates, and whatnot to provide information on the topic like weather, demographics, etc. etc.. Shouldn't length be determined by actual amount of text rather than amount of kilobytes? I mean certainly, there's articles where there's so much text that obviously much of it can be sent off to subpages, but its not always a simple matter of looking at the amount of K :/. Homestarmy 18:11, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I'm sure someone reviewed it, I just don't believe a single person review is actually adequate for an article of that length. I certainly wouldn't want to be the only person to review an article that long. What value does a GA tag add for an article of that length? Single person reviews are very effective on short articles, but I would say not much use at all for articles much over 25kb. Given that GA is about recognising excellent content that's not likely to become featured, and given that a 25kb article which meets the GA criteria should also be able to meet the FA criteria, I think it's a bit of a waste of one person's time reviewing it here when it should be getting closer scrutiny at peer review or FA.

But 25K can be such a small limit, and a great amount of articles would have to be removed from the GA list, and many articles at such a small size are small because there are no references, its just a POV rant, or its some sort of small list or something. Sometimes good referencing, NPOVing, and things that turn Good Articles into Good Articles will make articles longer simply out of improvement, not just bloat. And we don't have to go through a reference-by-reference check of everything in big articles, do we? The GA standards just aren't so strict that a horribly detailed check has to be made out of everything, are they? Homestarmy 18:28, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

25kb is really not that small - in fact almost all of the FAs I've written have been smaller than that. If an article is that long, why isn't it going to FA? Fact checking is easy for one person with a short article, but as you say not so easy for a much longer article - another reason why peer review and FA are better for them. Worldtraveller 18:41, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

Well like I said, Berlin is 68kb, but it only has a few references and there's a big block of improperly reffed links which need to be converted. Much of the information appears to be getting donated by residents of Berlin. Also, there is a huge amount of graphs and things, undoubtably bloating the kb size a good deal. Chicago seems to have even less references and is 72kb, once again having improper refs, and many charts and graphs inflating article size. Length doesn't make quality, and many articles have to be long to be broad in their coverage. City articles seem to follow this rule a bit. And what happens with articles which are promoted to GA at, say, 20kb, yet over time become about 40, yet their references are improved, their much more broad, brilliant prose is included, and there are many more pictures? How would becoming more good make them be declared un-good in such situations? Homestarmy 18:56, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

If we review an article when it's short, and it later gets long, no problem. But we need to stick to our remit of identifying excellent content which is is unlikely to become featured, and I can't at all see how articles on Berlin, Chicago or the Secretaría de Inteligencia fall within our scope. Worldtraveller 23:58, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

But then the GA collaboration will have a tough time trying to improve articles which can never be featured :/. Homestarmy 00:34, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Not sure I get you. We list short articles, mainly. They're only not featurable because they're short, they're not on inherently unfeaturable topics if enough can be written about them. We list them when they're short, and if they get long they can become FAs. Worldtraveller 00:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Well then I guess we're just disagreeing on how we want the GA system to operate, I mean, for now the rule on page length seems just ambiguous enough that we each have an equally valid opinion :/. Myself, i've always seen the GA system as a way to review already relatively nice looking articles, give a couple tips on improvement to FA or near-FA status along the way, and attract attention to them so that they will be on their way to better things. I just don't see how page length has to be a criteria :/. But then, you did create the whole system in the first place.....Homestarmy 00:45, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

(back to the left) Well, for reviewing articles that are already close to FA quality, peer review is supposed to be the thing. That has problems of its own, many articles tend not to get any comments at all, but things like Wikipedia:Scientific peer review may help with that. What I had more in mind was identifying short but excellent articles, like say Boltysh crater, which is as comprehensive as it possibly can be but would never be an FA. The GA system I have in mind is one which mainly provides an incentive to improve such short articles to FA-like standards. If GA evolves away from what I started it as by consensus I don't mind at all, I'm just trying to weigh in and argue for it to be more like what I originally had in mind for it! Worldtraveller 01:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree that about 70k is way too long for one person to review (and probably too long for most articles).

But I'd also prefer that GA not be limited to articles of 25k. An upper limit could be set between 30k and 40k.

As far as I know, the only general aspect that would keep an article out of FA is its quality. I don't see a need for the distinction Worldtraveller is after. But that's just my view. Maurreen 03:00, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I can accept that Worldtraveller originally intended GAs to mainly be articles too short to be FACs, but the way GA has evolved suggests to me that it fulfils another need - to provide a home for (often longer) articles that still need a bit of work for FA. A longish (but <32k) GA like hydrogen peroxide represents probably 20 hours of time (I know because I did many of those hours), but I'm not willing right now to spend another 20 hours getting it to FA. The GA tag shows that the community still values the article, but there is still room for improvement. I don't see anything wrong in using the GA tag in that way. I agree with Maurreen on length, and I'd say let's make it at least 35k.

Secondly, my impression of Wikipedia is that when people say things like, "This can never be important enough to be FA length" this is like these old computer quotes like "We don't see the world market for computers going beyond 5 or 6 machines" etc. Let's not forget that Jordanhill railway station didn't fail as an FAC because there wasn't enough material available, but because some material (no. of employees, etc.) wasn't included. I would say that if a very ordinary railway station can aspire to FA, then almost anything can. So by all means list short good articles, but you can't assume these won't end up as FAs one day. Walkerma 03:46, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I always saw GA as an easy, reliable way to get a second opinion; an article was either "Good enough" or it got some feedback with its failure. Nifboy 04:12, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

That's definitely something I think it works really well as, Nifboy, and through GA I've reviewed, and had reviewed by others, many more articles in the last few months than I ever have on peer review.

I suppose when we talk about length we're coming up to much more fundamental issues. Personally I am deeply concerned about the trend towards extreme article lengths of 90-100kb. It's been a very long time since 32kb was an actual technical limit on article size but I've always felt it's an excellent size to aim for, and only the largest and most important topics warrant more than that - generally, readers are only likely to want to wade though 32kb+ for the largest and most important topics. The trouble is, FA being the only designation of article quality, and lengthy articles being more and more favoured, people are puffing out articles to ever greater sizes, regardless of the general interest in the topic. I think this is harmful. Part of my motivation for starting GA was a hope that people might begin to dedicate the serious effort that FA requires to the articles that most deserve it, and make others just excellent short articles, rather than spending an enormous amount of time on pet topics that are generally of very little interest, just to get them to FA. Frankly, it really depresses me that people are spending hours on obscure topics like minor railway stations when articles on fundamental things like hydrogen peroxide have not yet reached the very best quality.

But quite aside from these more philosophical points, I still would prefer to see GA concentrate on short articles, because the one person review really can't handle long articles adequately. I never review articles longer than probably about 20kb, because I just don't think my time is well spent doing that, and the article would be much better off on peer review getting many eyes cast over it. Perhaps what is really needed is a substantial reorganisation of peer review, that categorises articles according to the outcome of the review, to take care of the longer articles, while our rapid one-person review system takes care of shorter articles. Worldtraveller 20:53, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

I think I may has a solution. Right now, the GA system says that GAs should be broad enough to cover the topic....what if we changed that so that GA's couldn't be too broad? As in, no WP:NPOV#Undue weight type issues and the like, and nothing like massive summaries of small articles which relate to the main article, and issues like that? That way, bigger articles which have to be big won't be disqualified because many times they've made summaries of related articles very short, yet long articles which are waaaaaay too big and have all sorts of undue weight problems (Jesus-myth has this sort of problem, I think like half the article has recently been removed for undue weight and irrelevance) wouldn't pass? Homestarmy 12:32, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Comment

"The point of GA"? There isn't one. Most articles that are still standing after 60k are probably "good" (in the same way my breakfast was good). Secretaría de Inteligencia is actually quite good. Over-bulleted with an over-long history section and TOC, but definitely good. Take it to WP:PR if hasn't gone already and then take it to WP:FAC if you want to do something useful. If you want a slap on the back about decent content you can ask for comment, but IMHO this page is time wasted that would be better spent on making FAs and this page is actually close. Marskell 00:11, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

You don't like the concept of identifying good articles - fine. Just don't pop up repeatedly here to tell us so, it wastes everyone's time. Worldtraveller 00:41, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

You are right, Worldtraveller. On a personal note, I LIKE the concept of identifying good articles. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 19:21, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

GA -> FA

For the many who still don't know the former GA function was removed from the featured template. (See Template talk:Featured) This template added articles to Category:Promoted good articles. This category show cased articles that have been promted from GA status. 69.192.8.106 18:29, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

GA -> FA Tag Strawpoll

Please sign below what you think should be done with the GA tag.

Support (Keep Former GA extension of featured template)

Object (Remove Former GA extension of featured template)

Recreate {{GAF}}

Comments What are we supporting/objecting to? The removal of the GA tag or the addition thereof? Nifboy 22:47, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Removed FDR

The FDR article is continually being censored to the point that maintaining neutral POV is hopeless. I removed it from the "Good articles" list. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.124.31.221 (talk • contribs) 20:44, 1 May 2006.

Someone added it back without comment. I followed the rules, which state that it is subject to veto. I have removed it again. See its talk page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 206.124.31.221 (talk • contribs) 00:06, 2 May 2006.

So is GA a policy already?

The ? notice was gone. Not that it bugs me or something. --Howard the Duck | talk, 10:21, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

How could it be a policy in the first place? There's nothing actionable or binding about it. For that matter, WP:FA is neither policy nor guideline; why should this be so? —BorgHunter ^ubx (talk) 12:20, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

As I've said, it doesn't bug me, but I assumed that if the ? notice was gone, then GA would have been a policy already. --Howard the Duck | talk, 12:29, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

BorgHunter is right. GA is not a policy. --S iva1979^{Talk to me} 14:57, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

'Policy' is not really what it is - the tag was there because it was a proposed idea, and I suppose whoever removed it (I didn't notice that it had gone until I saw this post) thought that it's now got enough support and momentum to be beyond 'proposed'. I'm fine with that, particularly now that we have got more than 1000 articles listed. Worldtraveller 21:32, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Czech version, and including a picture

There is now cs:Wikipedie:Dobré články on the Czech Wikipedia (actually, there is a bit more history behind it than that, but still...) bringing the total number of Wikipedias with GA equivalents to six.

I've also put in a picture on the "recent listings" section... people seemed to stop doing it a while ago, if there was a discussion I missed feel free to revert, but especially now that a longer list of additions is given, there is more room for a picture. TheGrappler 12:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)