:::<s>No, I'm not joking. I was trying to be helpful. But by your tone I sense that your just looking for someone to yell at. I suggest you give yourself some time to cool down before coming back to this. When you do, I'm sure you'll find plenty of active editors in the GA project willing to help. --[[User:Jwanders|jwanders]]<sup>[[User_talk:Jwanders|Talk]]</sup> 01:13, 10 July 2008 (UTC)</s>
:::<s>No, I'm not joking. I was trying to be helpful. But by your tone I sense that your just looking for someone to yell at. I suggest you give yourself some time to cool down before coming back to this. When you do, I'm sure you'll find plenty of active editors in the GA project willing to help. --[[User:Jwanders|jwanders]]<sup>[[User_talk:Jwanders|Talk]]</sup> 01:13, 10 July 2008 (UTC)</s>
:::Okay, that first reply was rather harsh. I do understand how upsetting it can be to work on achieving something here only to find it's "fallen apart" while your back was turned. But that's really not the case here. All the work you did to get the article up to the old GA criteria is still there, it's only the criteria that have changed. And, yes of course if I knew you had been working closely on the article I would have dropped you a message—but I didn't, and can't change that now. But, at least you do know ''now'' how the article can be improved, and can do the work you would've done if you'd been told sooner.--[[User:Jwanders|jwanders]]<sup>[[User_talk:Jwanders|Talk]]</sup> 02:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
:::Okay, that first reply was rather harsh. I do understand how upsetting it can be to work on achieving something here only to find it's "fallen apart" while your back was turned. But that's really not the case here. All the work you did to get the article up to the old GA criteria is still there, it's only the criteria that have changed. And, yes of course if I knew you had been working closely on the article I would have dropped you a message—but I didn't, and can't change that now. But, at least you do know ''now'' how the article can be improved, and can do the work you would've done if you'd been told sooner.--[[User:Jwanders|jwanders]]<sup>[[User_talk:Jwanders|Talk]]</sup> 02:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)
==Looking for mentoring==
You're up on the list of GA mentors, and I'm running my first GA review on [[Kimberella]] which I think is relatively close to passing (just need a good quick definition for a [[protostome]] and a couple other minor details which are listed on the talk page). Would you mind taking a look at it before I sign off on it? It's not a long article. [[User:Somedumbyankee|SDY]] ([[User talk:Somedumbyankee|talk]]) 23:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)
Revision as of 23:54, 14 July 2008
I tend to do my wikiing in about fortnight long binges. If I haven't been contributing for a while and you'd like to reach me, please feel free to send me an email.
Feel free to write here in any language.—Vous pouvez écrire ici en n'import quelle langue.—Nango de kaitte kudasai.
Energy portal & future selected articles
Hi! Over the past couple of months I've been spending much more time than I should developing the Energy portal, and intend asking for a portal peer review within the next day or so.
The portal provides a showcase for energy-related articles on Wikipedia. One of the most prominent ways is via a the selected article that is currently changed every 6 weeks or so. It would be good to increase this turnover, and with three Wikiprojects dedicated to energy-related topics and a good number of articles already written, I'd like to suggest that members of each Wikiproject might like to use the 'selected article' to feature some of their best work.
With this in mind, I'd like to suggest that your Wikiproject bypasses the normal selected article nomination page and decides collectively which articles are worth featuring - or these may be self-evident from previous discussions - and add short 'introduction' to the selected article at the appropriate place on page Portal:Energy/Selected article/Drafts, which includes further information. Your personal involvement would be welcome!
You are listed as a participant in WikiProject Energy development, so I am asking you to please consider helping to improve the plug-in hybrid article. This is an ad hoc article improvement drive. BenB408:13, 17 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
This form message is being sent to you either due to your membership with WikiProject Good Articles and/or your inclusion on the Wikipedia:Good article candidates/List of reviewers. A new drive has been started requesting that all members review at least one article (or more, if you wish!) within the next two weeks at GAC to help in removing the large backlog. This message is being sent to all members, and even members who have been recently reviewing articles. There are almost 130 members in this project and about 180 articles that currently need to be reviewed. If each member helps to review just one or two articles, the majority of the backlog will be cleared. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the GAC talk page. --Nehrams202000:11, 25 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Environmental Record Task Force
You are being recruited by the Environmental Record Task Force, a collaborative project committed to accurately and consistently representing the environmental impact of policymakers, corporations, and institutions throughout the encyclopedia. Join us!
A new elimination drive of the backlog at Wikipedia:Good article candidates will take place from the month of July through August 12, 2007. There are currently about 130 articles that need to be reviewed right now. If you are interested in helping with the drive, then please visit Wikipedia:Good article candidates backlog elimination drive and record the articles that you have reviewed. Awards will be given based on the number of reviews completed. Since the potential amount of reviewers may significantly increase, please make sure to add :{{GAReview}} underneath the article you are reviewing to ensure that only one person is reviewing each article. Additionally, the GA criteria may have been modified since your last review, so look over the criteria again to help you to determine if a candidate is GA-worthy. If you have any questions about this drive or the review process, leave a message on the drive's talk page. Please help to eradicate the backlog to cut down on the waiting time for articles to be reviewed.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations has recently exploded to 236 unreviewed articles! Out of 264 total nominations, 17 are on hold, 10 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (47 articles), Film and cinema (25 articles), Television and journalism (16 articles), Art and architecture (15 articles), and Politics and government (14 articles).
If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!
Reviewer of the Month
Dihydrogen Monoxide is the GAN Reviewer of the Month of December, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 of the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Dihydrogen Monoxide hails from Brisbane (which, incidentally, is almost a GA, kids ;)) and has been editing Wikipedia since August 2006. He mostly likes to review articles relating to music, Australia, or anything else that takes his fancy! He also has two articles waiting, and notes that there's still a huge backlog,... so get cracking!
Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of December include:
This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
GAReview Template
Lots of you that frequent WP:GAN have undoubtedly seen the articles under review, marked with "Review - I am reviewing this article. ...". The articles have been marked as being under review by an editor using the {{GAReview}} template. The purpose of this template is essentially to prevent two editors from reviewing the same article at the same time, so it's essentially a common courtesy notice to other editors so that they don't pass or fail an article while you're in the midst of collecting and writing comments. However, just because an article is marked, shouldn't preclude another editor from contributing to the review. If you'd like to review it, go ahead; simply collect your comments and write them down on the article's talk page – but don't pass or fail the article – leave that to the other reviewer.
To use this template yourself, simply write "#:{{GAReview}} ~~~~" on the line immediately following the article's nomination at WP:GAN. You can even leave additional comments as well (e.g. "#:{{GAReview}} I will finish my review in the next 24 hours. ~~~~"). Reviewers marking articles with this template should also observe some common etiquette; please don't mark more than 1-3 articles as being under review at a time, and please try and finish your review within 3-5 days of marking the article.
GA Sweeps
After openly requesting the community for more participants into the Sweeps, we have 3 more members on the board. They are (in no particular order) Canadian Paul, VanTucky, and Masem. Canadian Paul will be sweeping "Middle East and the World" articles. VanTucky will be sweeping "Religion, mysticism, and mythology" and "Literature" articles. Masem will be sweeping "Television episodes". We're still looking for more reviewers. Interested individuals should contact OhanaUnited for details.
At this moment, participation in the sweeps project is by invitation only, as we desire experienced reviewers who have a thorough and extensive knowledge of the criteria. This is to ensure that articles that have "fallen through the cracks" would be found and removed, and that additional articles don't fall through the cracks during the sweep.
Currently, there are 16 members working on the project, and we have reviewed 74 articles in December 2007. Of those that are swept, 275 articles are kept as GA, 126 articles are delisted, and 5 promoted to FA.
Did You Know,...
... that the total number of good and featured articles is now over 5000?
... that GA was formed on October 11, 2005 and was formerly called "Half-decent articles"?
... that many discussions were made over the years on whether GA should have a symbol placed on the main article space, yet at the end always removed?
... that there was a proposal to change the GA symbol to a green featured star?
From the Editors
Happy New Year, everyone! I'm just filling in for Dr. Cash as he's busy (or away) in real life. This explains why I wasn't prepared for a full-length article on GA process, and instead I resort to a tiny DYK for GA.
OhanaUnited
Happy New Year as well! I'm still here, and haven't totally disappeared. I had to cut back on editing and reviewing during the month of December as I made the transition from Flagstaff, Arizona to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But I should be about settled in the Keystone State, so I'll be contributing more to Wikipedia again in the new year. Thanks to OhanaUnited for putting together much of the content for this newsletter! He's been working hard with the Sweeps, and the 'Did You Know' section is also a great idea, so I think that will become a regular feature now! I also figured out how to have a collapsible newsletter, so that will change our delivery options a bit. Cheers!
There are now 3,485 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 206 unreviewed articles. Out of 251 total nominations, 37 are on hold, 7 are under review, and 1 is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (57 articles), Theatre film and drama (34 articles), Music (19 articles), Transport (17 articles), Politics and government (16 articles), World history (13 articles), and Meteorology and atmospheric sciences (13 articles).
If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!
GA Sweeps Update
During January, 57 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 35 were kept as GA, 20 delisted, 9 currently on hold or at GAR, and 3 were exempted as they are now Featured Articles.
Reviewer of the Month
Ealdgyth is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for January, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Ealdgyth, known in real life as Victoria Short, hails from Central Illinois, and has been editing Wikipedia since May 26, 2007. In this short time, she has made significant contributions to 9 Good Articles, including Baldwin of Exeter and Hubert Walter. Her interests in editing are in the areas of the Middle Ages, History, and horses. Outside of Wikipedia, she is starting her own photography business, and owns three horses. She likes to read science fiction, history, and geneology books. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for January!
Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:
This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
On Hold versus Failing an Article
This month, I thought I'd focus on a less technical and more of a procedural issue at WP:GAN – determining what the appropriate course of action to take when reviewing an article. Currently, there are four options to decide what to do with an article:
Failing it – it does not meet the criteria; remove the article's listing from WP:GAN and add {{ArticleHistory}} or {{failedGA}} to the article's talk page.
On Hold – The article meets most of the criteria, but might fall short in a few areas; keep it listed at WP:GAN, add #: {{GAOnHold|ArticleName}} ~~~~ below the listing and add {{GAonhold}} to the article's talk page.
Second Opinion – Similar to the on hold option, except an editor is either inexperienced or not knowledgeable enough about a given topic and asks another reviewer to offer another opinion before passing or failing; add #: {{GA2ndopinion|ArticleName}} ~~~~ to WP:GAN below the article's listing and add {{GA2ndoptalk}} to the article's talk page.
So how to you know when an article fails outright, or fails initially, but meets "enough" of the criteria to be placed on hold? The answer to this question probably varies by about the same amount as there are reviewers of Good Articles! Everybody treats this slightly differently. The most important thing to consider is that articles should not be on hold for longer than about one week. Although there is no hard and fast time limit for this, most editors would probably agree that five to seven days is enough time to address any GA-related issues with the article to get it to pass. Some editors have extended this a few days in the past, due to other extenuating circumstances, such as an article's primary editor being very busy with school or work, so they have asked for extra time. But as a general rule, a GA nominee that is placed on hold should meet enough of the criteria to be able to be passed within five to seven days. Some examples of articles that might be placed on hold would be:
the article is mostly complete, but might be missing one topic (subcategory).
minor copyediting is required (needs a few minor manual of style, spelling, or grammatical fixes.
mostly well sourced, but missing maybe a handful of references.
a couple of images need to be tagged with appropriate copyright tags.
On the other hand, an article should be failed if it:
is missing several topic categories, or there are several sections which are very short (1-3 sentences per section).
contains numerous sections which are just lists of information, as opposed to written out as prose.
there's entire sections of text that have no references, or there are a lot of {{cn}} or {{unreferenced}} tags.
has evidence of an active edit war in the article history.
has any {{cleanup}} or other warning tags in various places.
Did You Know...
... that on July 19, 2007, 1,548 good articles that have not been categorized at all were categorized in 15 days?
... that in Chinese Wikipedia, articles need to have at least six net support votes before they are promoted to GA?
... that the English Wikipedia has the most Good Articles, the German Wikipedia has the second most (at over 2000), followed by the Spanish Wikipedia (at over 800), the Chinese Wikipedia (at over 400), and the French Wikipedia (at over 200)?
... that Simple English Wikipedia has zero Good Articles?
... that "Sport and games people" category has the most Good Articles?
... that Virginia Tech massacre (which is now a featured article) was promoted to GA just only about one month after the shooting incident, but took more than seven months to reach FA status?
From the Editors
Originally, I wasn't planning to do "Did you know" other than as a fill-in for Dr. Cash. However, I decided to continue writing this section until I ran out of ideas.
OhanaUnited
Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.
Thanks for the detailed GA review for Graham scan. The previous GA delisting was very brief, and as the nominator noted, both points had been addressed, but this left the article fairly far from GA quality. Two tiny things about the text on the talk page: On the "stability" section, one of your image tags is broken, and you did not sign the review, but I'm not sure if you are supposed to (I had to check the history for who to thank). JackSchmidt (talk) 04:03, 12 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the relist. Sorry about the attitude. I really thought we'd have to go the the whole process again. I'm glad I was wrong. It was actually nice to have some feedback on the article to address. It's been pretty quiet for a while. -AndrewDressel (talk) 20:16, 14 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Incorrect DGAs in articlehistory
Hi, Jwanders, your DGAs have been showing up daily in the articlehistory errors; can you please read the instructions at Template:Articlehistory? If you scroll to the bottom of the article talk page after you work on articlehistory, you can see the red error category highlighted when there's a problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:13, 15 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for participating in my 2nd RfA and supporting me! My RfA passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. I would like to take this opportunity to thank AndonicO and Rudget for nominating me. I also want to thank LaraLove for persuading me to keep going after I failed my first RfA.
To be really honest, I am surprised that my RfA passed without any oppose or neutral. Being an administrator means more responsibilities, especially when I'm now an administrator on both English Wikipedia as well as WikiSpecies. I promise everyone that I will use the tools effectively to serve the community. If you need help on anything, don't hesitate to leave me a message on my talk page and I will get back to you as soon as possible.
Last but not least, remember the motto for Ohana: "When it comes to family, nobody gets left behind."
You don't have to build articlehistory if you're not interested or don't know how; just use the old templates, so others don't have to clear out articlehistory errors. It's much harder to go back and rebuild a complete history when an AfD was left out, then to just let GimmeBot run the whole thing from templates. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you
Thanks for the barnstar, I really appreciate it. I noticed on your user page that you have multiple user boxes, and since you have joined in the sweeps, you could add {{User:LaraLove/Userbox/GAPQTF}} if you wish. Thanks again, and based on your current rate, you should catch up to me in no time! Happy editing, Nehrams2020 (talk) 02:36, 28 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
GA Sweeps update
This is a form message being sent out to all of the GA sweeps reviewers. Thank you for all of your dedicated work in the difficult and time-consuming task of ensuring the quality of articles within the GA project. Many reviewers have taken time out of reviewing articles at WP:GAN (this may be one factor in the expansion of the backlog), writing articles, and probably getting some sleep! I have sent this message out to update you on our current progress and to remind you to please keep up with completing your reviews and updating GARs/holds. As of March 1, 2008, we have swept 20% of the 2,808 GAs we started with. At our current progress, all of the articles will be assessed in just under three years (based on when we started). If we want to complete the sweeps sooner, we need to continue reviewing at a higher rate (consider doing one or two more reviews a week or whatever you feel comfortable with) and inviting new, experienced reviewers. If you are taking a break, focusing on GAN, writing your own GAs, or are already reviewing articles like crazy, I still want to thank you for all of your hard work and hope you are pleased about our current progress. Keep up the good work and happy editing! --Nehrams2020 (talk) 09:11, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Congratulations on starting a bot account, and thanks for rescuing my description of GA from the archives! Of course it is not up-to-date: in particular, GAR is now sufficiently automated that I no longer hate closing discussions! In terms of small steps, I suggest the next one might be to put in a bot request to do category listing in the VeblenBot style: Carl's original request is here. If you mention also that the bot may do category intersections as well, then we might have a bot capable of automating GAN. Geometry guy17:25, 1 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
GA storm articles
Thanks for the second opinion of Hurricane Kenneth. As I said, other GA articles on the same subjects have used the same techinical language without always explaining. I hate the imply something, but I have noticed that most of these articles have often been reviewed by somebody who is an expert in the field/members of the same wikiproject. I just found one now where the reviwer clearly had made significant contributions to the article long before the GA nomination so it was not part of the review process (Tropical Storm Jose (2005)). Though some users such as the nominator of Hurricane Kenneth re-nominated their articles if this occured, I do not believe this is always the case. I was wondering if you could advise me on how to proceed? I'm quite concerned even though I've only checked 4 or 5 articles. Million_Moments (talk) 09:58, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I find overuse of jargon is a common problem on wikipedia and especially in GA. As to how to proceed, I'm not sure what would be the best option. I think it's important we remember to take the long view here and keep things in perspective: although jargony GA articles are not good, I'd think it's less important in a specific hurricane article than in a general topic (see Special relativity, for example). Also, my impression is that the "hurricane people" have put together a very effective process of getting articles dependently up through both GA and FA, so I feel they must be doing something right.
On the other hand, as you suggest, this may be a case of being too close to the topic. I wouldn't assume bad faith, but just that it's not easy to recognise jargon you're familiar with. It's deliberate that the GA process does not restrict reviews from the same project from reviewing: I suspect that if we did, articles on storms and roads, for example, would never get reviewed. But we still expect these reviews to be done properly.
More concretely, yes if you feel comfortable with it, you're welcome to delist any GA articles that you feel don't meet the criteria. The instructions for this are at good article reassessment but note that you only need to post the article for reassessment there is disagreement. If the article is "within reach" of GA status, you can post a list of what needs to be done and wait a few days to see if the article improves; if it doesn't, or if substantial work is needed, you can delist it directly. In either case, include a detailed review on the talk page explaining which good article criteria the article doesn't meet.
You could also drop a note at the hurricane project, explaining your general concerns and that your delisting isn't a personal vendetta against the project, but an effort to help them maintain a high standard. If it is rampant, you might open a discussion on the talk page of WP:GAN—we might need to revisit the "same project non-restriction" or come up with a new solution. And of course, if you have any questions or encounter any problems, feel free to ask.
P.S. If you'd like to ensure the GA status of more articles, you might consider joining the Good article project quality task force. We're reviewing all GA articles to ensure they still meet the criteria. To ensure only trusted reviewers, "membership" is by requested invitation only, by we're not as elitist as that makes it sound ;-) --jwandersTalk16:15, 2 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I really need to know if I am supposed to re-review hurricane kenneth or if you do it now they've made the improvements. I would have thought it was you. I am being asked by the nominator. Million_Moments (talk) 11:38, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry to take so long to get back to you; I've been unwell. I don't think it really matters who closes the nom—generally, I defer to the original reviewer, as for second opinion I don't review the article completely but focus only on the aspects in question.--jwandersTalk16:59, 14 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 3,647 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 185 unreviewed articles. Out of 237 total nominations, 42 are on hold, and 10 are under review. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The top five categories with the largest backlogs are: Sports and recreation (39 articles), Theatre, film, and drama (34 articles), Transport (23 articles), Music (21 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Culture and society (13 articles), Places (13 articles), and World history (12 articles).
If every participant of WikiProject Good Articles could review just one article in the next week, the backlog would be almost eliminated!
GA Sweeps Update
Two members joined the sweeps team this month. They are Jwanders and jackyd101. Jwanders swept Physics sub-category quickly and is now sweeping "Astronomy and astrophysics". Meanwhile, jackyd101 is sweeping "Armies, military units and legal issues".
During February, 66 Good Articles were reviewed. Including those articles that were under GAR or on hold, 33 were kept as GA, 21 delisted, 17 currently on hold or at GAR, and 1 was exempted as they are now Featured Articles.
Reviewer of the Month
Blnguyen is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for February, based on the assessments made by Epbr123 on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Blnguyen is from South Australia and has been editing Wikipedia since 2005. He was also the reviewer for the month of December 2007, so this marks the second time that he has been GAN's Top Reviewer for the Month. Congratulations to our GAN Reviewer of the Month for February!
Other outstanding reviewers recognized during the month of January include:
In this issue, we will focus on one of the requirements for good articles: a good article article should follow Wikipedia's guideline on lead sections. So what does this guideline say, why does it say what it does, and how can good article reviewers help?
The lead section is particularly important, because for many readers, it is the only part of the article which they will read. For instance, they may have come to the article by following a wikilink in another article simply to obtain a quick overview before they continue reading the original article. They may only read the first paragraph, or even the first sentence. On the other hand, one of the joys of Wikipedia is the way that it embodies the endlessly branching tree of knowledge; if a lead is well written, it may encourage even such a reader to read on and learn something new.
This is reflected in the terminology: "lead" is a word taken from journalism, where it recognized that many readers will only read the beginning of a newspaper article, and so it is important to convey the key points first, before going into detail. Note that "lead", in this sense, is pronounced as in "leading question" and is sometimes spelled as "lede" by journalists to distinguish it from lead, the metal, which was once very important in typesetting. Wikipedia supports both spellings.
Wikipedia:Lead section is written with all this in mind, and describes two different roles for the lead: first, it should introduce the topic; second it should summarize the article. This is not always as easy as it seems; indeed, it is almost impossible to write a good lead if the article itself does not cover the topic well. It has a side benefit that an article which satisfies this guideline is probably also broad: if the lead is both a good introduction and a summary, then the article probably covers the main points.
The good article process is often the first place in which an article is judged against this criterion, yet many current good articles may not meet it. A common fault is that the lead is purely an introduction, while the rest of the article contains other information, which should be summarized in the lead, but isn't.
So, how can reviewers help to improve this? One approach is to read the rest of the article, and not the lead, first. Make a note of the significant points discussed in the article. There is usually at least one important issue in each section. Then, go back to the lead and ask the following questions:
Does the first sentence of the lead define the topic, as described in the article?
Is the most important information mentioned in the first paragraph?
Is the lead a suitable length for the article? The lead guideline recommends 2–4 paragraphs depending on the article length, but judgment is more important than counting.
Are each of the significant topics that you noted mentioned in the lead?
If the answer to each of these questions is "yes", then the article probably meets the guideline. If not, you may be able to fix it yourself by summarizing the article. If you can't, then it suggests that there are not only problems with the lead, but also the rest of the article. That is the beauty of Wikipedia:Lead section.
Finally, there isn't universal agreement on whether the lead should contain inline citations. As long as the material in the lead is developed and cited elsewhere in the article, then inline citation is not required. There are exceptions, the most significant being quotations and controversial material about living persons.
Good luck helping more articles meet this important criterion!
From the Editors
Well, this is somewhat GA-related but at the same time not totally GA-related. However, I think this is important. Thanks to everyone who supported me at my 2nd RfA. It passed unanimously at 79 support, 0 oppose, 0 neutral. As many are impressed by my work in Good Articles processes, I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone giving me a very enjoyable time at GA. There are 2 people that I want to explicitly say thank you to. They are Nehrams2020 and Epbr123. They patiently taught me how to do GA reviews properly in summer 2007. I couldn't achieve better without them. Now that I have the mop and the bucket, some of my time will be working on reducing Commons image backlog. Nevertheless, you will still see me once in a while in matters related to GA.
OhanaUnited
Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.
Thanks for taking care of that. In theory, my ISP says they have fixed the issue. I'll believe it when it lasts for a few days! Thanks again though! Ealdgyth | Talk21:46, 3 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Hi, I have made a proposal that no peer review request be archived without some response. To aid in this, there is a new list of PR requests at least one week old that have had no repsonses beyond a semi-automated peer review. This list is at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog.
There are just over 100 names on the PR volunteers page, so I figure if each of these volunteers reviewed just one or two PR requests without a response from the list each month, it would easily take care of the "no response" backlog (as there have been 2 or 3 such unanswered requests a day on average).
If you would be able to help out with a review or two a month from the "no responses" backlog list that would be great (and much appreciated). Please discuss questions, comments, or ideas at the PR talk page and thanks in advance for your help, Ruhrfisch><>°°00:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Vicarious arousal
A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Vicarious arousal, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the {{dated prod}} notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page. Also, please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. If you agree with the deletion of the article, and you are the only person who has made substantial edits to the page, please add {{db-author}} to the top of Vicarious arousal. Mattisse (Talk) 23:21, 21 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 3,868 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 267 total nominations, 57 are on hold, 13 are under review, and 2 are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (27 articles), Sports and recreation (25 articles), Transport (24 articles), Music (19 articles), War and military (19 articles), Politics and government (18 articles), Religion, mysticism and mythology (16 articles), Literature (14 articles), World history (14 articles), and Video and computer games (14 articles).
The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of March, a total of 92 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 74 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 18 were delisted. There are currently 14 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. Congratulations to Nehrams2020 (talk·contribs), who sweeped a whopping 51 articles during the month! Jackyd101 (talk·contribs) also deserves congrats for sweeping a total of 26 articles!
This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
To delist or not to delist, that is the question
So you’ve found an article that, on the face of it, does not merit its good article status. What next? Especially where there are many glaring issues that need addressing, it’s tempting to just revoke its GA status and remove it from the list, but although we are encouraged as editors to be bold, this approach (known to some as "bold delisting") is not recommended good practice. There are many reasons why a listed article might not meet the assessment criteria—it’s always possible that it never did, and was passed in error, but more likely the criteria have changed or the article quality has degraded since its original assessment. Either way, we should treat its reassessment with no less tact and patience than we would a fresh nomination.
This, in fact, provides a good starting point for the delisting process. Approach the article as though it has been nominated for GA review. Read it and the GA criteria carefully, and provide a full reassessment on the article talk page. Explain where and why the article no longer meets the criteria, and suggest remedies.
Having explained why the article no longer meets current GA criteria, allow its editors time to fix it! In keeping with the above approach, it may help to treat the article as on hold. There is no need to tag it as such, but give editors a reasonable deadline, and consider helping out with the repair work. Bear in mind that more flexibility may be required than for a normal hold—the editors did not request or expect your reassessment and will probably have other projects taking up their time. They may not have worked on the article for months or even years, and at worst the article may have been abandoned and its authors no longer active. As always, communication is the key. It sometimes helps to post messages to relevant WikiProjects (found at the top of the article talk page), or to contact editors directly (this tool is useful for identifying active editors for any given article).
Only once the above process has run its course, and sufficient improvement has not been forthcoming, is it time to think about delisting the article. Communicate your final decision on the article talk page, even if there was no response to your reassessment and hold, and take the time to fill in the various edit summaries on the article talk and GA list pages to ensure the delisting is transparent and trackable. If you have any doubts about your final decision, you can list the article at Good article reassessment or contact one of the GA mentors, who will be happy to advise.
Article reassessment is perhaps the single most controversial function of our WikiProject, and the one with the most potential to upset and alienate editors. Yet it is one of the most necessary too, since without the ability to revoke an article’s status we would be unable to maintain quality within the project. However, if we approach reassessment sensitively and with the goal of improving articles to the point where sanctions are unnecessary, we will ensure that delisting is the last resort, not the first.
As we near the 4,000 Good Articles milestone, the project continues to grow and to gain respect in the Wikipedia community. Nevertheless, we continue to have a large backlog. If every member of WikiProject Good Articles would review just one article each day during the month of April, the backlog would be eliminated!
Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.
Hi Jwanders, I noticed your message at User talk:AndyZ regarding problems with the automated peer review script. I seem to be having the same problems. If you managed to fix it, could you tell me how you did it? I'm on Mac OSX.4.11 & Firefox, but not too computer savvy, so I didn't really understand your message on AndyZ's talkpage. Anyway, hope you can help, thanks, --BelovedFreak17:46, 7 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
My edit of you private page
I took the liberty of editing your private page, WanderBot/GAN, because the syntax for the template {{shortcut}} is in the process of being updated. Your implementation, which worked previously, broke the new syntax. You can find more information at CAT:SHORTFIX. Best wishes. --DRoll (talk) 23:47, 25 April 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 4,050 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 195 unreviewed articles. Out of 227 total nominations, 16 are on hold, 14 are under review, and two are seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (45), Sports and recreation (34), Music (18), Transport (15), World history (14), Politics and government (13), and Places (12).
Noble Story (talk·contribs) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for April, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Noble Story joined Wikipedia on May 16, 2007. He is a big fan of the Houston Rockets, and edits many related articles, as well as articles on basketball in general. Congratulations to Noble Story (talk·contribs) on being April's GAN Reviewer of the Month!
Other outstanding reviewers during the month of April include:
This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
GA Topic
Do you know what a GA topic is? If you are not nodding your head, or don't know what I'm talking about, then you should pay attention to this article.
There are ten GA top-level topics (but you will spot the eleventh as this article goes along). These topics are: Arts, Language and literature, Philosophy and religion, Everyday life, Social sciences and society, Geography and places, History, Engineering and technology, Mathematics, and Natural sciences. Each of these topics are further narrowed down to more specific topics. For example, Arts can be narrowed down to Art and architecture, Music, and Theatre, film and drama. But let's not get into sub-topics in this article because of its depth.
Now you will probably ask, "I already knew this, so what is your point?" What I want to illustrate is that some people often forget a step when they promote an article to GA. After they have posted their review in the article talk page, added the article name to the corresponding topic in the good article page, increased the GA count by 1, and added the {{GA}} to article talk page, many reviewers tend to forget to add the topic parameter in {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}}. You can browse the topic parameter abbreviations at on this page as well as what each top-level GA topic means, because sometimes it can be chaotic and confusing to pick a topic. For example, should On the Origin of Species be placed under the Natural Science topic (because it's related to evolution), or under the Language and Literature topic (because it is a book)? The correct answer is to place it under Language and literature topic, because its categorization as a proper title supercedes other categories.
Let's go back to the page that shows GA topics; does anyone spot the eleventh topic? Yes, Category:Good articles without topic parameter is the 11th topic, only it shouldn't be there. Articles that do not have a topic parameter in either {{GA}} or {{ArticleHistory}} will be placed in this category. The topic "Uncategorized" is not very informative, is it? So if you have time, you can consider cleaning up the articles that are left in this category and move them to the appropriate category by adding a topic parameter.
That's it for this month, I hope you learned a little from it.
GA Sweeps Update
The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of April, a total of 26 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 15 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and two were delisted. There are currently six articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions. One article was exempted from review because it was promoted to FA. Two articles were exempted from review because they were already delisted by another member in the community.
We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.
...that different languages have different symbols representing GA? (Alemannic uses , Bavarian uses , Czech and French use , Estonian, Icelandic, and Swedish use , Esperanto and German use , Polish, Spanish, and Turkish use , Portuguese uses , Russian uses , Ukrainian uses )
Note: Lithuanian and Serbian have their own symbol but only uploaded locally. Other languages not listed above either have the same symbol as english or they don't have GA process.
From the Editors
There is currently a debate on adding a small green dot to the top right corner of all Good Articles that pass the criteria, similar to the small bronze star that is added to the top right corner of Featured Articles. Members of WikiProject Good Articles are encouraged to participate in the debate on this page.
Please leave any comments or feedback regarding this issue here.
Thank you for you work as a peer review volunteer. Since March, there has been a concerted effort to make sure all peer review requests get some response. Requests that have gone three days or longer without a substantial response are listed at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog. I have three requests to help this continue.
1) If you are asked to do a peer review, please ask the person who made the request to also do a review, preferably of a request that has not yet had feedback. This is fairly simple, but helps. For example when I review requests on the backlog list, I close with Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, ...
2) While there are several people who help with the backlog, lately I have been doing up to 3 or 4 peer reviews a day and can not keep this up much longer. We need help. Since there are now well over 100 names on the PR volunteers page, if each volunteer reviewed just one PR request without a response from the list each month, it would easily take care of the "no response" backlog. To help spread out the load, I suggest those willing pick a day of the month and do a review that day (for example, my first edit was on the 8th, so I could pick the 8th). Please pick a peer review request with no responses yet, if possible off the backlog list. If you want, leave a note on my talk page as to which day you picked and I will remind you each month.
3) I have made some proposals to add some limits to peer review requests at Wikipedia_talk:Peer_review#Proposed_limits. The idea is to prevent any one user from overly burdening the process. These seem fairly reasonable (one PR request per editor per day, only four total PR requests per editor at a time, PR requests with cleanup banners can be delisted (like GAN quick fail), and wait two weeks to relist a PR request after it is archived), but have gotten no feedback in one week. If you have any thoughts on these, please weigh in.
Because GA nominations are now on a subpage, there's no way to access it after the bot archives it. I was able to fix the temporary Failed GA template, but when the bot archives it there's no way to go to it again. Can this be fixed? Limetolimetalk to me•look what I did!00:12, 29 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
There are currently 4,266 Good Articles listed at WP:GA.
The backlog at Good Article Nominations is 157 unreviewed articles. Out of 215 total nominations, 44 are on hold, 13 are under review, and one is seeking a second opinion. Please go to WP:GAN and review an article or three as soon as you have a chance!
The categories with the largest backlogs are: Theatre, film and drama (31), Sports and recreation (31), Transport (24), Music (13), and Art and architecture (11)
The GA Sweeps process is progressing nicely! During the month of May, a total of 82 articles were reviewed. Of that total, 71 were found to continue to meet the GA criteria, and 11 were delisted. There are currently 15 articles that are still on hold in this process, awaiting revisions.
We are once again recruiting new sweeps participants. Candidates should be very strong and comfortable in reviewing GA and familiar with the GA processes and criteria. If you are interested, please contact OhanaUnited for details.
GAN Reviewer of the Month
Giggy (talk·contribs) (a.k.a. Dihydrogen Monoxide (talk·contribs)) is the GAN Reviewer of the Month for May, based on the assessments made by Dr. Cash on the number and thoroughness of the reviews made by individual reviewers each week. Giggy had a whopping 45 reviews during the month of May! Congratulations to Giggy (talk·contribs) on being May's GAN Reviewer of the Month!
Other outstanding reviewers during the month of May include:
This WikiProject, and the Good Article program as a whole, would not be where it is today without each and every one of its members! Thank you to all!
New GA Review Process - Review Subpages
In case you haven't noticed, we initiated a new process for GA Reviews at the end of last month. The {{GA nominee}} template was modified to direct new reviews initiated on an article to begin on a subpage of article talkspace (e.g. [[Talk:Article/GA#]], where '#' is the current number of GA reviews conducted for the article, incremented automatically, starting with 1). The primary reason for this change is to address some concerns made by several Wikipedians that previous GA reviews are not easily accessible in archives, the way that featured article reviews and peer reviews are, since the review is conducted on the article's talkspace, instead of in a subpage of the featured article space or peer review space. The reason we opted to move GA reviews to article talkspace (instead of GA space) is to better maintain the personal relationship between editor(s) and reviewer(s) by keeping reviews done in an area where editors can easily access it. Nonetheless, we still desired to have better archiving and maintenance of past reviews, so that GA ultimately becomes more accountable.
When an article is nominated, the nominator adds the template using a substitution, by adding {{subst:GAN|subtopic=<name of subtopic for article at GAN>}}, as well as lists the article (as usual) at WP:GAN in the appropriate category.
When a reviewer initiates a review of an article, all that needs to be done is to read the template on the article's {{GA nominee}} template on its talk page, and click on the link to start the review. When the reviewer clicks on that link, they will also see some instructions on how to start a review of a GAN. For new reviewers, there's also a link to the Good Article criteria, as well as to the Wikipedia:Reviewing good articles page and the mentors list. Once an article is reviewed, the GA review page should be transcluded onto the main article talk page, by adding {{Talk:Article/GA#}} to the bottom of the talk page. This is to ensure maintain the transparency of the GA process, as well as to make editors of the article in question aware that the review is taking place. When an article is either passed or failed, there's really nothing different to do in the process, although reviewers are encouraged to utilize the {{ArticleHistory}} template, linking to the GA review subpage with the 'action#link' parameter.
I just noticed that Nova laser was delisted, and a generic message posted to the talk page. I cannot find any history of the delist, no discussion, nothing. The reason given in the message isn't even true. Considering the time it took me to get this up to GA, the fact that it was failed without so much as an attempt to call me into the process is extremely upsetting. Maury (talk) 02:34, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm sorry this has upset you, as that was of course not my intention. Unfortunately when I review a page and find it needs delisting, there is no way of knowing who has done significant work on that page and who to contact (Perhaps there should be a talk page header template listing people to contact when making significant changes to a page).
The GA process precisely because two people (nominator and reviewer) are needed for a page to reach GA status, but only one is needed to delist it. Where this not true, pages that don't meet the GA criteria would be harder to delist, and thus render the GA status meaningless.
In the case of Nova laser, unfortunately, it was passed under an older set of GA criteria, which most importantly didn't include a need for inline citations. The article an present only references 4 sources and has a mix of inline citations and general references, while the criteria state that "direct quotations, statistics, published opinion, counter-intuitive or controversial statements" all must be cited. In practice, for scientific articles such as this, one citation at the end of each paragraph is usually sufficient.
Once such citations are added to the article, it should be brought back to good article nominations. I realise this probably seems like a long and convoluted process, but again that's in order to ensure the GA standards are being met as well as possible.
If you disagree with this delisting and would like to appeal it, you're welcome to do so at WP:GAR. Unfortunately, I'm on an extended wikibreak at the moment, so won't be able to personally help you with the process :-( --jwandersTalk15:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Oh give me a break. There are exactly two non-minor editors in the page in question, and you're saying you couldn't figure out who to talk to? And that only one of those two was part of the GA didn't seem useful. And the fact the I posted a detailed message immediately before your post on the talk page didn't twig you onto it either? Are you joking? Maury (talk) 17:22, 9 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
No, I'm not joking. I was trying to be helpful. But by your tone I sense that your just looking for someone to yell at. I suggest you give yourself some time to cool down before coming back to this. When you do, I'm sure you'll find plenty of active editors in the GA project willing to help. --jwandersTalk01:13, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, that first reply was rather harsh. I do understand how upsetting it can be to work on achieving something here only to find it's "fallen apart" while your back was turned. But that's really not the case here. All the work you did to get the article up to the old GA criteria is still there, it's only the criteria that have changed. And, yes of course if I knew you had been working closely on the article I would have dropped you a message—but I didn't, and can't change that now. But, at least you do know now how the article can be improved, and can do the work you would've done if you'd been told sooner.--jwandersTalk02:38, 10 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Looking for mentoring
You're up on the list of GA mentors, and I'm running my first GA review on Kimberella which I think is relatively close to passing (just need a good quick definition for a protostome and a couple other minor details which are listed on the talk page). Would you mind taking a look at it before I sign off on it? It's not a long article. SDY (talk) 23:54, 14 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! 
