Wikipedia talk:Good articles/Archive 4

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

Archive 2

Archive 3

→

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)

I would have expected that any article thats FA is by default a GA article Gnangarra 16:23, 17 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)

The long and short of it: two types of GA

It seems to me that there's something of a dichotomy within GA at the moment, with two broad categories of articles being identified. First, there's high quality short articles, which basically meet FA standards but are not long enough to realistically be said to represent the best of Wikipedia. An example might be HD 217107, which is certianly comprehensive but too short to be an FA. Second, there are lengthy articles which would not pass an FA nomination because while they are long enough they don't yet meet other requirements - generally these have a lot of content but a lack of the attention to detail required by FAC. An example could be Illinois - lots of content but in need of honing.

I originally set up GA with the idea of identifying the former type, and laying out the standards that all articles longer than stubs but shorter than about 15kb or so should meet. I have previously suggested that we concentrate only on the short articles, but several people, including User:Walkerma who does a lot of work on assessing articles for WP:1.0, have said that identifying the latter is also useful.

It seems to me that while identifying both types of articles is useful, listing them both in the same place might not be so useful. People looking for excellent short articles, and people looking for articles nearing featured status to work on, both don't find entirely what they are looking for in the current GA list.

So what to do? I think for both articles, our system of reviewing works very well - for short articles, one person can quite easily judge whether an article is high quality, while for the long ones, more people are needed to assess whether it is high quality but one person can judge whether it is just 'good'. However, longer articles can bog down the process because people tend to be less likely to review them and leave them there for longer, and it's something of a deterrent for new listing when there is a substantial queue already.

After some consideration, aided by a very useful discussion on my talk page about GAs, I think one of the following two ideas could work:

Split the current GA into two similar processes, one to identify excellent short articles and one to identify articles that are potentially featurable but not there yet. This would have the advantage of clarity but if we split the efforts of the people who do lots of work on reviewing GAs and maintaining the page that might be a considerable loss.

Keep the current process and single page, but have two lists - taking the short articles in the GA list as it is and moving them to an 'excellent short articles' page, and letting reviewers decide which category they want to add articles they pass to.. This would avoid splitting efforts but could be potentially confusing.

What does anyone else think? Worldtraveller 13:40, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

What if we take the nomination page, split it into "long article nominations" and "short article nominations", and then change the GA template to specify if articles have been identified as a "Good, short article" or a "Good, long article" or something to that effect? Homestarmy 17:34, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

I actually agree that we could split nominations - in fact, much as I hate to add bureaucracy, perhaps the best place to take long articles is a "good articles review" page where more than one user comments. However, I am not confident that the two types are utterly different. If enough information was available (and this might involve copious research) most of the short good articles could still be turned into articles long enough to feature. The obvious exceptions are the astronomy articles for which the sum total of information known about a body may well produce only a short article. Generally the difference between "long" and "short" articles is simply the way they have been written and the path they are taking towards (hopefully) FA status: some start off erratically, expand rapidly then get quality-enhanced, some start as "high quality" (i.e. well-written and clearly referenced) shorts but get expanded gradually with the careful addition of more information. Generally the former are more "general interest" and the latter have been written by more specialist, expert editors. However, I'm not certain whether "long vs short" is actually the most relevant way to characterise the split between types of good article, or indeed a distinction that is useful to make. Both sorts of article are actually "quite good" in Wikipedia terms, and both need some sort of work to turn into FAs (long ones often need better structure, referencing or writing quality; short ones need more research and expansion; the exception here again is those articles that are short and genuinely utterly unexpandable, not just "it'll take a Wikipedian with a freakish degree of interest in this minor topic to ever expand it" unexpandable). In other words, it's a distinction that is useful for difficulty-of-reviewing considerations but not actually so great for article quality/content (my opinion is they are about as good as eachother, and generally both need some more work, it's just that one type is harder to review). Length is also a matter of degree, so I'm uncertain whether the split is natural or well-defined. A further consideration is whether different quality standards should be applied: I doubt they should be, in which case the two types will continue to have a lot in common quality-wise. Vir suggested an alternative split, based on referencing: there is a genuine and clear distinction between those articles whose referencing system makes the provenance of individual claims clear, and those that don't. This could correlate to a split between (if I remember correctly) "B" and "C" class articles on the 1.0 article assessment scale. This does seem to me to be a useful distinction in terms of content type, possibly more useful in fact than length. The "C" articles need a specific type of improvement to reach "B" grade, and are in some senses "worse" articles needing more attention (certainly far further from reaching FA status). However, there would be no need as far as I can tell for different reviewing systems for B/C- the problem when reviewing is clearly length. It's just that I can't see why length gives a useful split post-review. Another option would be to maintain a unity in GA grading - just one recognised type of GA - but to have different reviewing tracks for long and short articles. TheGrappler 20:02, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I agree that short articles, if expanded, could become featured, but I don't think that's always necessary or desirable, and I think an excellent short article is inherently more valuable than a mediocre long one. I think there are vast numbers of topics which are encyclopaedic and deserve an article, but do not warrant the 20kb+ that could see them become featured (like say Boltysh crater or HD 217107 b. For example, London should ideally have an article of featured quality, but for small towns a short excellent article (a Good Article) would suffice. An article on, say, French, ought to be of featured quality, but an article on a language spoken by few people ought to have an excellent short article on it. Ultimately, every single article here should meet the GA criteria, and the very best should meet the FA criteria.

To get an article up to FA quality takes a lot of effort. To get all the articles on all the Messier objects, say, up to featured status would take, I would estimate, about four wikipedian-years, but to produce excellent short articles on them all would probably take about three wikipedian-months. I'd expect many readers to want to read 20kb+ about the Crab Nebula but if I wrote that much about something like Messier 10 I doubt many people would bother reading it. I think my time is far better spent writing an excellent short article in a day or so rather than spending a couple of weeks digging up obscure and not terribly interesting details to try and get it to featurable length.

If FA is perceived as the only desirable end state for an article then I think we will have three significant problems: 1) all the many topics about which only a short article can realistically be written are likely to be neglected; 2) it will take decades for the list of 'finished' articles to cover a substantial and useful range of topics; 3) lengthy articles on minor topics will be produced, at great expense of time and effort, which will not be of interest to the majority of readers.

The first of these three problems is already highly significant - click 'random article' 10 times and you'll be lucky to find even one article that's got references. Generally, I think there's a perception that references are only really required if you want an article to become an FA, which is why I would like GA to define the qualities expected of all articles that are bigger than stubs but smaller than FAs.

Any split between long and short is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, but my concern is that I do feel two different sets of standards are already being applied. The long articles are generally being judged as 'OK, a bit of work needed and they could have shot at FAC', whereas the short articles are judged to a higher standard.

These are somewhat philosophical points, and more practically I think we do agree that the long articles are more difficult to review than short articles, and as we have about 50 articles on nominations at any one time, separating out the long articles would probably make our process more efficient. Should we try splitting the nominations page into 'short articles' and 'long articles'? Worldtraveller 13:09, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem between having a FA-like system for short articles and a system similar to the one already here is that there are several logistics problems that have not been considered. What is a short article? How short is short? Those are only two questions that come quickly to my head. It would also seem awfully repetitive, if not simply redundant and inefficient, to have FAC and an identical process for small articles. Editors would need to figure out if an article is short, and reviewers would need to spend their time at more than one place, which has the result of creating unwatched backwaters where articles of lower quality are promoted. That's the reason I believe that any article that meets the stringent standards at featured article criteria should be allowed to have featured status, regardless of size, and WP:GA should specialize on the articles that are close to FA status, but not there yet. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 01:53, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Short is arbitrary, of course, but very few if any current FAs are below 15kb. The reason for a dual process is that FA is very very slow, with an output of about 1 reviewed article per day, a rate at which we will wait decades for a list that's in any way broad enough to make an encyclopaedia from. Reviewers already have many places they can spend their time, such as peer review and the various different types of featured content - I don't think this creates backwaters by any means. In my opinion, reviewing of articles and certifying them as meeting some defined quality is something Wikipedia needs far far more of. As I said on the FA nomination for Hurrican Irene, the problem with very short FAs is that I can't see how they can represent the very best that we have to offer, but of course we should still recognise excellent content - hence the idea behind GAs. Short articles are far quicker and easier to review than long ones - FA reviewing works excellently for the latter and I think GA reviewing works very well for the former, allowing us to list articles much more quickly here than at FA. As for the articles that are on their way to featured status, isn't peer review supposed to be the place for them? Worldtraveller 08:29, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The way short articles represent the best Wikipieda has to offer is that they usually are about topics that other encyclopedias would not even bother to cover. Similar to the deletionist and inclusionist debate, where many users claim that having articles on less-notable subjects is desirable, and is one of the advantages of the wiki model, having high-quality articles on more obscure topics is part of what makes Wikipedia unique. If editors desire to go through the lengthy FAC process, there should be no impediments for them to do so, even for shorter topics. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:42, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree on a semantic point here. While short articles may demonstrate the very best of Wikipedia in the sense of showing how broad its coverage is, I don't see how the articles themselves can be considered to be among the very best articles Wikipedia has to offer. Consider a featured article like Mount Pinatubo and a good article like Volcan Santamaria, and even if the latter might nominally meet the FA criteria, the former is simply in a different league, and to my mind it would devalue the status given to Pinatubo if Santamaria was given the same status. Worldtraveller 05:15, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with that; I don't see how giving FA status to Santamaria would degrade Pinatubo's status. FA status is a quality seal that symbolizes that an article has gone through Wikipedia's editorial process and has been slowly polished to perfection; it is by no means a measure to mark some articles as "more important" than others. I don't know about Santamaria's geography to tell if the article is complete or not, but if it is, I sure would like to see it as a featured article. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 05:26, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, criterion #1 on WIAFA is that the article represents the very best we have to offer. If Santamaria is considered the very best, then doesn't that somewhat take away the incentive for me to write much longer, more detailed articles like Pinatubo? Why put in the effort to write 25kb if a 5kb article can be considered the very best? This is why I think there needs to be a process to identify the very best, and a process to list all the articles that are not the very best but nonetheless are high quality. Worldtraveller 22:33, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with that is that you're implying that size == quality. The criteria I am looking for is comprehensiveness, and if an article requires 50 KB of text to be comprehensive and another requires 20, it is because the subject has a different scope. Why should WikiProject Tropical cyclones put the effort to make an article such as Hurricane Katrina featured when there's small articles with the featured tag? Because the small

at the top is a seal of quality, a seal of rigorous verification, and that's why we're going to do it. However, removing the incentive of FA status to short articles does not help in removing the 10K-article backlog at Category:Stubs. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 20:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Quality verification is one thing; identification as the very best of Wikipedia is quite another. The former is something all articles should undergo, but the latter should, by definition, be very selective. If 'very best' is meaningful, then clearly all articles cannot be FAs. All articles can and should be GAs though. Worldtraveller 21:10, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Proposal for Unreferenced Good Articles project

Following suggestion, I've set up a daughter project that will be concerned specifically with articles that are well-written and illustrated, but lack references. I feel that these are a particular quality concern for Wikipedia, and should be given proper attention.

You can find the proposal here.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 22:13, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Delist or Dispute?

I'm not sure if this has come up somewhere before, but it doesn't make sense to me that there is an option to delist a good article that isn't actually good and an option to dispute it. Shouldn't all questionable articles go through a review before delisting? Others have brought up the issue of giving each editor veto power on GA status. I have that same issue. joturn e r 04:11, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

"This article is a former Good Article candidate, see [[its review page]] for suggestions on how to improve it"? Nifboy 07:14, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

It says "If it does not meet the criteria, or has ceased to since its inclusion, you can delist it or ask for a review." in the {{GA}} template. joturn e r 09:37, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

This discussion is currently taking place over there. It would seem a good idea to keep it in one place; why not participate there?  JEREMY 04:02, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Avoiding overlap with peer review

It seems to me that for substantial articles, we're actually doing them something of a disservice by listing them here, by taking on a task that would be better handled by peer review. Articles that are only a little bit below featured status really ought to go for peer review, and our one person review system could easily mark an article as 'good' which actually has deficiencies. Peer review, on the other hand, allows many people to comment. For longer articles I'd prefer to discourage nominations here and encourage nominations for peer review. Any thoughts? Worldtraveller 11:03, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Clapping* Having discussed this with you extensively, please don't think this is User:Marskell showing up just to take pot-shots at GA. Definitely, Peer Review is a better place for the longer articles that are close to FA. The question is buy-in. It would be easy enough to direct people's nominations there, but would people actually do the reviewing? One possibility that I noted to you was some form of "adoption" where at least three editors say "yes, I'll take this through PR and eventually an FAC." Marskell 11:26, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Following our extensive discussions, the thought would not even have thought about crossing my mind! Absolutely, I agree that whether people would actually review it is an issue, and I'm trying to think of ways to improve PR's responsiveness as well as concentrating our focus here on what this process is good at. I suggested on Wikipedia talk:Peer review that splitting requests into broad subject areas could help to get more nominations commented on. I'm also thinking that tying reviews to some kind of output helps a lot - the fact that reviews here determine whether something gets a certain rating is an incentive to list and an incentive to review. 'Adoption' sounds great in theory but how would you see it working in practice? How would the adopters be recruited? Worldtraveller 12:08, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

The problem with Peer Review is that it is completely unresponsive. WikiProject Tropical cyclones has sent about ten articles to peer review at different times, and the commentary given back is anemic, if any commentary is given at all. GA reviewers give more commentary on passage and failure than the one given there, so it is indeed starting to replace Peer Review for some groups. Tito xd^{(?!? - help us)} 18:44, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

There is, as near as I can tell, only one spot on GA that explicitly encourages editing (as opposed to tagging), which is the Wikipedia:Good Article Collaboration of the week. Now, with GA having mimiced FA to a large extent, it seems people there are mimicing the WP:AID. This strikes me as wrong-headed as we don't need an elaborate voting system to get to work on something and we don't need to limit ourselves to one a week (actually, if I had my way I'd scrap AID too and redirect to Peer review—it strikes me as an incredible waste of "better spent on editing" energy). Now what if you made the collaboration the process...

Excellent/Quality short articles get split off. They'd be nom'ed, endorsed, and tagged in exactly the same fashion as now. "But what's short?" Anything under 15/20K. "But what if it's under but could very easily be over if someone obsessed with topic comes along?" If you notice it gets over (and is still excellent) simply graduate it, either directly to an FAC or to the long article section I'm about to describe...
The long articles are placed in the "Good article collaboration" with two sections: "In queue" or "Under collaboration". "In queue" they simply get listed, no tag—you check the list, notice something you like, and sign beside it (if you notice something that's truly awful, simply remove and let your edit summary explain why--this is meant for articles that are close). When two people sign beside it gets moved to "Under collaboration" and tagged—but as a work in progess, not as a plateau, per our discussion. "This article has been identified as having quality content and is under collaboration to bring it to Featured Article status. Please feel free to contribute." After that it's up to the two taggers (three's a crowd, I think); User:Mary says to User:Joe, "I notice you tagged Aristotle and I just did myself. Here's what I suggest..."

"This is stupid. I want to tag an article that's good and I want to do it quick, and this just forces me into a drawn out process." If that's the fundamental attitude, then I would refer back to early comments about whether GA has an utility—it can't just be tag it and leave it. And note there is still a body of listed articles in place. Someone working on Wiki 1.0, for instance, can still refer to the list of "Under collaboration" articles for articles that are at least decent. And notice the throughput for the short stuff changes not at all.

One possibility anyhow. Marskell 18:54, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

In the midst of my massive comment I forget to add one little tweak that had occured to me. Where we now have "recent Good articles", we would instead have "Good article collaborations currently under Peer Review", with bells, whistles and flashing neon. Marskell 19:00, 12 May 2006 (UTC)

Have to say I am a bit mystified by the suggestion that GA is about tagging rather than editing - it's no more or less so than FA is. But anyway.... I personally haven't had anything to do with the collaboration, or AID, for much the same reasons as you - why do all this voting when you can just start working on an article - but I really rather like the sound of your process for longer articles. It has the advantage that, like GA noms and unlike peer review, there's no reason to delist articles even if they wait ages there, and its role would also be distinct from that of PR.

On the whole I'd be in favour of starting an excellent short articles page, and migrating the excellent shorts listed here over to there. The 'Good articles' title could then be used for the kind of thing you describe here. I think under the current title it may be impossible, even with well defined and pretty rigorous criteria, to avoid GA becoming the 'long articles that are somewhat below par' page. Worldtraveller 05:08, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if now I am pot-shotting, but I find myself choking on GA tags sometimes. Given that one person decides it unilaterally, do we really need the FailedGA? A failed FA links you to a full discussion--i.e., its a tag to aid in editing, rather than a tag for the sake of it.

Anyhow, this discussion has evolved to the point where perhaps you should just make the page for the short articles. Get it done and then turn your attention back here. As I say, "Good articles" could be retitled "Good article collaboration" or "Good article drive." This would accord with the general idea above. Marskell 11:10, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

The tag is always accompanied by review comments left at the bottom of the talk page explaining why it was failed. I only ever use {{gan-fail}}, which doesn't include a big tag - I don't know what other reviewers use but I agreed with people who said that a big 'fail' tag was not necessary. Worldtraveller 19:00, 13 May 2006 (UTC)

Anyhow, you want to start on the short article page with a sub page first maybe? Marskell 11:43, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion to rename

After much thought, I've come to the conclusion that 'good', even when quite rigorously defined, is too easily misinterpreted to be useful. Although I've tried very hard to make sure it was clearly defined as 'high quality but too short to be FA', over time it's become 'not bad but still needs work' as well - a very different thing.

I've done some analysis of article sizes and I've found that 592 articles listed here are longer than 20kb. I really strongly feel that the kind of review we do here cannot be as rigorous as these articles deserve, and it is very likely that we're listing articles with significant flaws. Such substantial articles really ought to go through peer review and FAC.

In the light of this, I suggest renaming this page to Wikipedia:Excellent short articles. The title would then be far less open to interpretation, the page would be more likely to fulfil its original purpose of encouraging FA-like standards on even very short articles, and longer articles, instead of getting necessarily cursory one-person reviews, would be directed to more appropriate channels. Worldtraveller 23:45, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

Given that a majority of articles are somehow "not short enough for a proper review", I think ESA should be a separate project while GA goes off and does its own thing. Nifboy 02:26, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Well we aren't supposed to be doing deeply rigorous reviews of articles in the first place, right? Homestarmy 02:28, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

This, I think, is the kind of misinterpretation that 'good' can allow. The criteria are rigorous, and reviews should be rigorous if the criteria are to be meaningful. Worldtraveller 16:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm just saying, since GA is currently much different from what WT wants, forcibly re-purposing it as such seems, well, forced. Whether GA in its current form is desirable or not is an entirely different matter from whether ESA is desirable. Nifboy 07:29, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I think the current GA format is useful, it gives useful feedback on articles in progress; though it does not give a quality assurance like FA. Therefore GA should become the "good but needs work" concept. Looking at the FAC on Hurricane Irene, the consensus on that article, which is an obvious choice for ESA, is that it meets the FA criteria with the exception of #1 (that one is contentious). This suggests to me that ESA should be a lot closer to FA than GA - use precisely same criteria as FA, just rephrase #1. If a long article is nominated to become an ESA it should either fail ESA criteria or have a real chance on FAC. I think an FA style process is needed to give an FA level of quality assurance, maybe the number of supports should be 2 (nominator and one non-contributor) but it should stay up long enough for objections to be raised.--Nilfanion (talk) 08:38, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

What I think is that peer review ought to be the forum in which one gets feedback on articles in progress. This is why I'm suggesting a rename, because I feel the secondary function that GA has acquired is duplicated elsewhere already. As for the criteria here, they already are almost exactly the same as the FA criteria - it's just that people often do not apply them strictly, and they become weaker by virtue of what has passed through them rather than what they actually say. I'd be in favour of making them identical to the FA criteria except for #1. Worldtraveller 16:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd be of the same mind if I wasn't looking at things like the 1.0 assessment scale that seem to say Peer Review is primarily useful only to A-class articles; to me, it seems Peer Review overlaps too much with FAC. So I think there is a place for reviewing sub-par articles, and while GA's not perfect, it evolved in order to fill that role. GA was originally supposed to be a less formal FAC, now it's a less formal PR. Nifboy 03:19, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm supporting this obviously, per above comments. Re-purposing this page as Nifboy says may not be best. Again, start with a sub-page and then move back to this one. WorldTraveller has been concerned about throughput, which may decrease somewhat with Nil's suggestions but slightly raising criteria strikes me as OK; ideally ESA would be linked to FA as a compliment to it. There will be some expectation that time was given to address concerns. Marskell 09:16, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Throughput is important, but isn't that really a function of how many articles are submitted, not the length of process? If ESA is to be taken as an FA-equivalent in quality for short articles there needs to be quality assurance. I wonder if there should be a designated editor (or group of editors - one for each section?) to do promotion/failure and so forth, like Raul654 is to FAs.--Nilfanion (talk) 09:40, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

I may make a list of all the current GAs that are under 20kb and put that on a sub-page for now, but on the whole I'd prefer to retitle rather than start something new, because I think the 'good but not great' that would be left behind is already duplicated at WP:PR. I'll see what the consensus is though, of course, and start afresh if necessary. Worldtraveller 16:56, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

OK, perhaps the other way around: place the long ones on the sub-page. Then you can retitle this for Short Articles and leave the long ones to be discussed later. Marskell 14:48, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting discussion but maybe the simplest process is for articles that should go through PR or FA should be referred back to person nominating with a notation this article exceeds the capabilities of GA please nominate for PR or FA but from what I have read and failed/promoted size isnt always the best judgement for this process, articles like Old english language or scientific articles aren't treated well with the FA process. Besides shouldn't GA really be the first stop on the road to FA. Gnangarra 16:20, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

shouldn't GA really be the first stop on the road to FA - as I originally conceived it, no - GA was supposed to be a list of 'finished' short articles, rather than a list of 'getting there' long articles. The problem it was supposed to address was that FA produces just one article a day, and I don't want to wait 150 years for a decent sized body of quality articles to be built up. And I'm not exaggerating - it really would take 150 years to build up 50,000 quality articles, if FA is the only list of them! Short articles can be produced at a much greater rate than long articles - they're easier to write, easier to review. Something needs to provide a substantial incentive to make short articles excellent, otherwise Wikipedia will never be more than a tiny number of excellent articles and a huge number of rubbish ones.

As for the renaming of this, I'd still like to do it. I honestly don't understand why people list long articles here, rather than take them straight to FAC. Worldtraveller 12:20, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

Earwax

I can't find a category to place this GA. Please put it in a category. Thank you.Loom91 06:43, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Top-right icon

Shouldn't there the be a template that puts the "Good article" icon in the top-right corner like featured articles? It'd be easy enough to make, and I'd be willing to do it if everyone agrees.

I think it could also solve something that bothers me. The category "Good articles" is full of talkpages, not articles. I think the category should be removed from the {{GA}} template and put into a top-right icon template so that the article goes into the category, not it's talkpage. - Phorque 08:30, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

It was done before, and deleted after discussion on WP:TFD. Also, the featured star is listed for deletion there right now. Metadata on articles is generally to be avoided. I don't think there's anything we can do about the category listing talk pages unfortunately. Worldtraveller 08:47, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Arg, the category thing just seems so insanely stupid. It irritates me so much. You just can't win on Wikipedia sometimes. - Phorque 08:59, 18 May 2006 (UTC)

Suggestion for dual output

I like our nominations system here; it works very well and fulfils its intent to be unbureaucratic and rapid. However, as I outlined above, we're identifying two types of articles - excellent short articles, which would be worthy of inclusion in a printed edition or CD release, and longer ones that aren't there yet. I maintain my belief that for articles any longer than about 20kb, one person cannot adequately review them, and listing them as 'good articles' does not do them justice. However, it seems people do want to carry on nominating them and reviewing them, so I thought the best thing to do would be to set up a separate page for the excellent short articles - WP:ESA (page design still a work in progress).

What I would not like to do, though, is cause a split in the pool of active reviewers. It seems to me that with the split in the nominations page between short and long articles it would be quite simple for reviewers to simply add short articles that they pass to WP:ESA, and add long articles to WP:GA, rather than instituting another similar review system for WP:ESA. What does anyone think? Worldtraveller 13:21, 25 May 2006 (UTC)

agree excellent short articles should be highlighted(encouraged), because the topic doesn't have sufficient material to create a long article shouldn't detract from from the quality of the work or exclude it from publications.. The 20kb length shouldnt be an arbitary cut of point but a flexiable guide, suggest that the limit be set within a range say 20kb - 25kb that way articles dont get squeezed to fit within the criteria. Gnangarra 00:00, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree that a felxible guide would be good. I'd actually think that 'around' 15kb would be good for these purposes because that's roughly the size of the shortest FAs. There is no reason at all why a 20kb article couldn't be an FA so I'd think the cutoff for ESA needs to be shorter than that. I wouldn't think there'd be many examples of squeezing an article to make it an ESA - much more likely to see padding out an ESA to try and make it an FA, I would have thought! Worldtraveller 00:33, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I really disagree with this proposal. Many people like to browse both long and short good articles in the subject area of their interest. Splitting the short articles would make it more difficult for them. Also too many similar projects are likely to dampen the enthusiasm of potential helpers for all such projects. Cedars 00:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

Whatever the original intention of the GA project, what it has come to identify in general is articles that are not quite up to FA standards, yet still contain useful information, are well written and deserve to be highlighted. That being said, it is important to realize that article length is a sub-reason of "not ready for FA status", rather than a separate reason. Hence, articles should not be separated out in the GA process. While it is more difficult to review a long article, I don't think it is in any way impossible for one person to do so. Using this fact as an excuse is tantamount to stating that human laziness is more important than making sure all Good Articles, regardless of their length should be recognized. I think it is a mistake to try to pull this project (which works fairly well, unlike some other ones) into smaller parts because some articles take more effort than others. There is no avoiding the increased work and subsequent time a longer article requires, but adding layers of complexity is not the solution. I don't even like the fact that currently there is a separate section for long articles. I think a note on the nomination stating that the artcile is over 15-20 kbs would be perfectly adequate. However, I while I can live with the current format as a compromise, there is no need to actually split the page. pschemp | talk 12:15, 27 May 2006 (UTC)

I also do not want to split up a project that's working very well. I just want to see it concentrate on what it's best at, which is reviewing short articles. The problem with reviewing a long article is that no matter how thoroughly I review something that's 40kb long, I'm bound to miss something that someone else will notice. Laziness has nothing to do with it. Multi-person reviews become far more effective as article length increases, and I honestly don't see a great deal of value in a single person review of a long article. I honestly can't understand what benefit there is to getting them reviewed here instead of on peer review or FAC. Worldtraveller 15:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

"Articles too short to become Featured Articles can become Good Articles"

Wikipedia:Good articles/Nominations says "Wikipedia:Good articles is a list of articles containing excellent content, but which are unlikely to be suitable featured articles - primarily because they are not very long."

I was going to nominate Stockholm as a possible good article but it is evident that Stockholm could be expanded into a featured article.

But then I noticed that both Adelaide and Copenhagen are "Good Articles", with Adelaide being 43 kilobytes long...!

So what goes ?

Fred-Chess 10:08, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

See above discussions! GA was originally supposed to be about identifying excellent short articles that were too short to be featurable but nonetheless excellent. Although it does that, it also now has come to list articles which are long and still mediocre. I strongly believe that the single-person reviews which happen here are great for short (<15kb) articles but just not adequate for longer articles. They need the eyes of many people. Peer review and WP:FAC exist for them. With Stockholm I expect you'd get a lot of great input on peer review and would recommend taking it there.

The wider problem is whether GA should more strictly focus on short articles, and if so, what to do with the long articles that are already here. Your thoughts are most welcome! Worldtraveller 15:21, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm

I don't like to have a Wikipedia:Good Article a lazy mens Featured Article. I.e. if you are too lazy to find references and cover the topic substantially, send it to Good Articles instead.

I do however find it much easier to write a decent article about a topic than the very tough requirement of Featured Articles. A featured article would in my estimation take a month or so to write, which IMHO is not as much time I want to spend with an article when I could write a fully adequate article in a week. (In additional, I don't like overly long articles to being with because they are so tedious to browse...). So it wouldn't be useful either to not in any way promote those articles that are feature candidates but had some minor omissions. How about moving longer articles to Version 1.0 Editorial Team/List of A-Class articles?

Fred-Chess 15:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Well if there are no references, then it can't be a good article at all, so a "Lazy man's FA" hardly works in that context. Homestarmy 17:35, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Lazy man's FA is exactly what GA should do its utmost to avoid becoming, I think. The criteria are almost identical to FA criteria, so if an article that's, say, 25kb long is judged by someone to meet the GA criteria, it should already more or less meet the FA criteria. What I say is, why not nominate it there in the first place, while we concentrate on short articles here. I agree with what you say, Fred, about it being much easier to produce a decent article than a featured one, and what I mean there when I say decent is short but still well-written, referenced, illustrated and so on. These are the kind of articles I think we should concentrate on here.

It's difficult to know if longer articles that are GAs actually meet A-class standards. Theoretically they should do, but as I say I just don't think one person can adequately review long articles, and a 'GA' long article might have problems that the reviewer was not able to pick up on. Worldtraveller 21:23, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Um right, so where is it written that only one person reviews each article? In my experience, several people have looked at each good article nomination by the time it is delisted or passes. Yes, one person can delist, but the result of a pass is that all who looked at the nomination declined to fail the article. I see nothing wrong with that, and the reason some long articles don't go to FA is because they are not ready to pass, but are still good, useful things. That is the same reason some short articles don't go. In fact, length is not an FA criteria, only comprehensiveness of the subject. Following that example, we shouldn't be discriminating for GA on length either. And while it certainly is possible for one person not to catch absolutely everything in a long GA nom, that can happen in a short nom too. In fact, I think the nom brings exactly the kind of scrutiny that all articles, short or long need. Wikipedia is a dynamic project, and while you keep talking about original intentions, the fact is that GA has grown beyond those into a useful process for long and short articles. What is the point of suddenly removing part of a working process?pschemp | talk 00:49, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Not sure how more than one person can do a GA review. Only one person ever leaves comments on the talk page and there's no way of telling whether or not anyone else has looked at it. Length is not an explicit FA criteria, but in practice 99% of them are longer than 15kb. Wikipedia badly, badly needs an incentive for people to make sure all the articles shorter than 15kb are well written and referenced, because as Fred says it takes weeks to write an FA but much less time to write an excellent short article. We will never build a viable encyclopaedia without the short articles.

Why remove part of a working process? Because that part duplicates what is done elsewhere better. The longer an article, the less effective the review system here, and there are already two effective review systems in place for them - peer review and FAC. What good does a third, less efficient method do? Worldtraveller 01:01, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

GA isnt less effective, its proccess is less confronting than FA. GA has evolve into a process where articles get their first indepth review from others who dont have a direct association with the articles evolution. Gnangarra 03:19, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Limiting a part of the system won't exactly make the encyclopedia better necessarily, in fact, i'd be inclined to think many might just stop examining articles all together since most would be immedietly delisted regardless of non-FA quality :/. Homestarmy 04:39, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I was reviewing the nomination of Dog Day Afternoon it recieved a peer review here Wikipedia:Peer review/Dog Day Afternoon/archive1 please read this review, its rather enlightening as to how the process works Gnangarra 12:02, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

It's gotten to the point where, just glancing over the main list, it looks like one user is reviewing the articles using standard templates. Nifboy 18:52, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

One reason for this problem is that it was once considered that the path to FA was GA->PR->FA. I can't find the place, but this was definitely written down somewhere some months ago. The impression created may have been that people would be rebutted at PR because they had not gone through GA first. It may have been that the original intended meaning was that the natural course for an article would be to go through GA first. This conjecture, however, would be unlikely to hold, seeing that GA is a relatively younger project. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:06, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I vaguely remember it being a basic assumption of those who were worried about where GA "fit" into the PR -> FA scheme. I also remember arguing that, since GA was supposed to be unbureaucratic, appending it to the existing bureaucracy would be countrary to its purpose. Nifboy 20:25, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

From earlier in the discussion:

The wider problem is whether GA should more strictly focus on short articles, and if so, what to do with the long articles that are already here. Your thoughts are most welcome! - Worldtraveller

Well, we have a concrete question here, but no actual suggestions. I would note a) that a lot of effort has gone into compiling the current list, and b) a lot of effort is being taken away from the actual editing by the continued reviewing of articles. Does that sway anybody's feelings one way or the other, to make a concrete suggestion?

I might also mention that a moratorium was being discussed at AID a while ago: Wikipedia_talk:Article_Improvement_Drive/archive3#Vote_.233:_Nomination_Moratorium.3F. It seems the reasons for its rejection are specific to AID.

Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:13, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I did make a suggestion. Scroll up to where it says "Fred-Chess 15:49, 28 May 2006 (UTC)"

Fred-Chess 07:19, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I personally dont have a problem with reviewing long articles, they present different challenges to reviewing short ones. GA should be the standard for all articles to achieve with FA being the cream of the crop. I have always viewed GA as part of the process for attaining FA. GA benefits are that the process isnt as hostile as FA and PR purpose is only to find faults not to recognise achievement. splitting out articles on size would only duplicate the processes of GA and dimish the value of GA. Highlighting long articles in the nomination is useful in that when reviewing these do take longer. I have found that the more I review GA nominations the more I contribute to articles in areas where I have knowledge. Gnangarra 08:10, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

In my usual adherence to KISS, I would say that your proposal actually makes things more complicated, Fred. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:58, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I don't think Good Articles should be for just short articles. For longer articles, Good Articles should be a step up to Featured Articles, and a complement to Peer Review. I posted some ideas regarding this at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles/Nominations#Good_Article_Drive_and_other_suggestions. --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Medieval hunting

I created the article Medieval hunting, and while I'm very proud to see it listed as a good article, I'm a bit surprised to see it under the category of 'Sports' rather than 'History'. One of my main points in the articel was that hunting was much more than a pastime to the medieval aristocracy, and that it had wide-ranging social, military and poliitcal connotations. Could it perhaps be moved over to 'History' - 'Europe'? Eixo 22:48, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I think being bold would apply here. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 23:14, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Gee, the site is just too flashy and impressive, but I gave it a try. Thanks! Eixo 04:15, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

Category overlap

Now that this has been done though, it seems to me that 'Biographies of historical figures' under 'History', and 'Royalty and nobility' under 'Royalty, nobility, and heraldry' somewhat step on each other's turf. 'Royalty, nobility, and heraldry' has three articles all together, do we really need this as a seperate category? Eixo 04:29, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm guessing these are somewhat based on the categories used in WP:FA. It may also be the case that "nobility" is meant to refer to current or historically insignificant figures, but this is a wild guess. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 19:45, 30 May 2006 (UTC)

The real problem is that there is confusion between the two, because there are plenty of royal biographies under the 'Biographies of historical figures' section of 'History', but also some under the 'Royalty and nobility' section of 'Royalty, nobility, and heraldry'. This is unfortunate, because you might not find what you're looking for. The system seems to work better for Featured articles. I suggest we either remove 'Royalty, nobility, and heraldry' altogether, or, failing that, conduct a thorough clean-up. Eixo 13:08, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Academic peer review

Taking our lessons from the demise of the Scientific Peer Review project, there is now a much simpler way to attract academic peer review. Feel free to give us your comments, but please remember to keep it simple. - Samsara (talk • contribs) 11:41, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

Finding a good article- too hard

Unlike with featured articles the good articles and links to them are rarely found, I believe that there should be a link in the Featured articles section and in the navigation panel to the list of good articles. We must remember that these articles like featured articles represent the better of wikipedia.

I also think that the top right icon is vital because when a person is browsing and sees that sign it lets them no this is good work. I don't check the talk page of every article I go on.--Childzy 15:42, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree absolutely; 'Good articles' is an important part of improving the quality of Wikipedia. Eixo 13:10, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

I also agree GA need to be more identifiable. Gnangarra 13:29, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

who actually has the power to get changes brought in though? If we had a vote to decide wether a link for good articles should be on the main page and that all articals that are good should have the icons in the top conor then somebody how can get things change would have to read this to get it done. --Childzy 14:54, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Please see discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Good_articles/Nominations#Good_Article_Drive_and_other_suggestions --J.L.W.S. The Special One 08:33, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Double count?

I noticed that Schwarzenegger, Arnold is listed both as a politician and as an actor. He's not counted twice is he? Or is it ok to list articles in multiple categories?--SeizureDog 09:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

What I think is happening was that people used to categorize in multiple categories thus double counting only a few articles. There is a bot counting the number of articles there are, once he finds these duplicates, they will be removed. Lincher 11:29, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

No the article is only counted once by the GAAuto script. Articles can only be listed at most twice. This encourages users to think carefully about where they place articles. Cedars 11:56, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. With this in mind I double listed Megatokyo as both a website and stick it in a new category of "Comics, graphic novels, and manga" in the "Literature" section as it is both equally a website and a published series. --SeizureDog 13:52, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for the clear up. Lincher 11:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)