Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Signpost/2020-05-31/WikiProject report

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#4 is most interesting to me of the suggestions, but the ArticleAlerts bot already aggregates open GAs by discipline so wouldn't be needed for that reason. Not quite confident that the other suggestions will address any core need apart from generating more administrative work. If I recall correctly, more frequent (and shorter) review drives were suggested somewhere, yes? I'd be interested in efforts intended to glorify or recognize the work of reviewing. czar 04:17, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think all of those suggestions are worthwhile. I review GA's from time to time and find it enjoyable, but it can be an involved process if the article needs a lot of work. Everything mentioned would help the project. Ganesha811 (talk) 15:27, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I think that focusing on the GA project is the wrong area. The MilHist Wikiproject example is probably a better one. I think there are far more editors who are really into a specific topic and could be convinced that they should also review GA noms on their favorite topic (i.e. Military History editors deciding to help MilHist nomination reviews), then there are editors who just love GAs regardless of topic (and would want to join WikiProject Good articles). I'm not sure what there'd even be to talk about at the GAs-in-general Wikiproject, aside from perhaps rare changes to the review criteria. Most likely any time spent there could be more productively spent on reviewing nominations and sweeping old existing GAs for any egregious declines in quality. SnowFire (talk) 18:19, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Completely agree with SnowFire - a GA I recently got within the Milhist scope was picked up in less then a day, whereas others sit in categories like Architecture and Arts for weeks or months. -- puddleglum^2.0 19:26, 3 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I believe all WikiProjects should have a GA task force, it could make things easier and faster. It has to be decent. As GANs become more popular, so does this idea I just thought of recently. «Iias!:,,.:usbkI» 20:54, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

As someone fairly immersed into the idea of good articles, this article was very thought-provoking and, ironically, good. User:Thatone~~weird~~wikier | Oh, Toodles! 20:13, 12 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- But many (can I say most?) WikiProjects are semi-active or inactive. We're no longer the 2006-2008 Wikipedia. WikiProjects and their task forces only work when you have a sizable community and participate in their discussions. When it falls below that critical mass (which we know based on the declining editor count each year), we see WikiProject talk pages with many topics but minimal (if any) replies. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:17, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
An easier solution is to host backlog elimination drive once a year (similar to WikiCup competition). That should put enough of a dent to the backlog number. OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 05:13, 17 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

First it is great to see this part of Wikipedia get some love as I believe it is one of the more important processes we have to improve article content and I would encourage anyone who has thought about reviewing an article to just jump in and do so. It can be very rewarding. Thanks Eddie891 for putting this out there. However, and I am probably in the minority here, I feel the backlog drives are at best a bandaid solution and possibly cause more damage than good (rushed reviews, reviewer burnout etc). As noted above they are not a long term solution. Also you are not going to reactivate the Wikiproject, WT:GAN has served as the de facto organisational center of GA for as long as I can remember and I don't see that changing. As for sweeps, the numbers are two large for any meaningful ones at the moment. Myself and a few other editors go through User:AnomieBOT/C/Good articles in need of review and the cleanup listing every now and again, but it is a big job and like many review processes here lacks the number of willing editors. Also authority already exists to easily demote them through individual reassessment (please do that if the article is not controversial and you are confident enough in the criteria - for the community reassessment process is even more broken than GAN). Just note the tags, contact the major contributors and wikiprojects and give them a week or so to respond. We do need a new bot operator as we can't implement many changes if we can't update the bot so this is definitely a priority. As a final thing I am not convinced focusing too much on getting wikiprojects to review there GANs is ideal. I much rather prefer a lay person to review any articles I nominate as it means I can fix anything too technical or hard to understand. At the end of the day we are an encyclopaedia for the general public not specialist groups. A-class exists for many of these projects if you really want subject matter experts. This is pretty low on the list of GA problems though. AIRcorn (talk) 06:44, 30 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]