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This is the discussion page for good article nominations (GAN) and the good articles process in general. To ask a question or start a discussion about the good article nomination process, click the Add topic link above. Please check and see if your question may already be answered; click the link to the FAQ above or search the archives below. If you are here to discuss concerns with a specific review, please consider discussing things with the reviewer first before posting here.

Older GARs needing participation

Posting here to encourage participation in reassessments from more people than the regulars at the GAR page. These are older discussions where improvement is not ongoing and which could use more participation.

Any comments on the above would be useful. Many thanks, ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:26, 1 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps it is relevant to note that three out of five of these do not have any cleanup tags or banners? If there is reason to delist an article, it should be possible to make that reason specific enough to tag the article with it. Or maybe if the article does not deserve any such tags, the GAR should be closed as a pass.
This comment was triggered by another recently opened GAR, on an article that had and still has no cleanup tags whatsover (but where those tags could reasonably have been placed): it is better to fix problematic articles before they reach GAR, and cleanup tags are a good way to request those fixes. If cleanup tags languish too long without attention, that may be a sign that GAR is needed. But opening a GAR out of the blue on an article that hitherto has seemed unproblematic (even if it does have hidden problems) can come across as hostile and as a barrier to getting it fixed: fixing one cleanup tag is a task that may be easy or hard, but at least is bounded. Satisfying GAR reviewers can come across as a Sisyphean task where whatever you do they just keep coming back with more and more quibbles until somebody gets exhausted, and why would I want to enter that sort of game when it isn't even my GA nomination in danger of delisting?
So I would like to ask: place cleanup tags first, and then wait a reasonable time before opening the GAR. If you're not willing to put that much effort into trying to rescue the GA, why is it reasonable for you to expect another editor to do even more cleanup work getting the article back into shape? And if you don't want to get articles back into shape and are instead using GAR as a process for delisting as many articles as you can as quickly as you can, you're doing it wrong.
Details deliberately omitted because I don't want this to be about the individual GAR opener but about the GAR process more generally. —David Eppstein (talk) 08:08, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps it is relevant to note that three out of five of these do not have any cleanup tags or banners? If there is reason to delist an article, it should be possible to make that reason specific enough to tag the article with it. Or maybe if the article does not deserve any such tags, the GAR should be closed as a pass. I haven't looked at any of these examples, so no comment there, but in general the fact that an article does not have any {{citation needed}} tags, for example, does not mean that no citations are needed, and nothing in the WP:GAR instructions requires the placing of cleanup tags or banners. It does suggest that before beginning a GAR, one should Consider raising issues at the talk page of the article or requesting assistance from major contributors. Requiring that someone concerned about an article both say "there are issues with citations" on the talkpage, and add a template to the article saying exactly the same thing, seems like bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:32, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(Further, in theory the GAR itself should say what issues the reassessor noticed. If no valid issues have been raised, or if all the issues raised have been solved, the reassessment should be closed as keep; if valid issues remain unresolved it would be a much better use of everybody's time to address those issues than to argue about which cleanup tags should be placed. If you are genuinely uncertain what the issue is, ask for clarification, but otherwise requiring tagging for the sake of tagging is just obstructionism.) Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 08:36, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There's a school of thought that whether an article qualifies to be a GA should not be the main factor in classifying it as a GA. You'll sometimes see people at WP:GAR trying to argue that non-qualifying articles should continue to be classified as GA. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 14:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
When I have added citation needed templates in the past, I have been accused of being "disruptive". I now only add them when asked, and am happy to do so. Editors can also use scripts like User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages.js to help find potentially uncited statements. Also, @David Eppstein: I am happy to be pinged when there are concerns about my editing. Z1720 (talk) 16:05, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, let me put it a different way. I regularly check cleanup tags for GAs and FAs in my area of interest via the cleanup listings generated by bambots, among other reasons in the hope of heading off GARs and FARs. In this process I see some other GAs (not the ones I focus on) that still have decade-old cleanup tags. Surely these are the ones worth focusing on?
If instead people are just going to nominate untagged articles for GAR, without past evidence of neglect of cleanup tags, then it feels like being ambushed. Why should I have had any earlier reason to try to fix the problems that weren't noticed as being problem? If the issues had been properly tagged, earlier, there would have been more time to deal with them, but instead everything is rushed and in the context of a review. That doesn't seem as constructive and as likely to lead to a good outcome. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:48, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I understand the sentiment but I at least am hesitant to insert a bunch of cleanup tags into articles; I'm sure that if people went around putting tags on GAs there'd be wailing and gnashing of teeth from a third group of editors regarding WP:TAGBOMBING.— Preceding unsigned comment added by Hog Farm (talk • contribs) 17:07, May 3, 2025 (UTC)
@David Eppstein: I posted concerns on the talk page here and waited 9 days for a reply. There was no reply, nor edits to the article. While some editors monitor cleanup tags, many do not and articles will sit with cleanup tags for years. In fact, 32% of GAs have a cleanup tag on them (although not all clean-up tags highlight a concern that would be contrary to the GA criteria). An article does not need a GAR after it gets clean-up tags: it needs a GAR when it no longer fulfils the GA criteria.
Yes, there are worse articles that need to be cleaned up: I am looking for them and will bring up concerns when I find them. Help would be appreciated. Another way to help is for editors who care about articles in a category to review them before I do. A quick way to review articles for citations is to use User:Phlsph7/HighlightUnreferencedPassages.js, while User:Phlsph7/ListUnreferencedParagraphs.js allows editors to check multiple articles for uncited passages. User:Headbomb/unreliable.js Will colour code the references at the bottom of an article by reliability, which is helpful for spotting potentially unreliable sources.
I also do not want to overwhelm one category of GAs, so I try to spread them out amongst many topics. Hence, why last night I nominated at GAR a British TV show, a phylum, a biology debate, a weather phenomenon, a railway line, a math array/table, an American TV show, an American TV show episode, a religious historical event, and an association football article. I try not to nominate articles with similar topics, so even though I have three Family Guy articles that I have noticed, I will not nominate the next one until I Take Thee Quagmire is closed.
GAR is not a hostile attack on an article: its a review. Wikipedia is a volunteer service and no one has to respond to or fix up articles that need work. If any editor chooses to work on an article, that's awesome! I am happy to put any templates in an article when asked. I also encourage editors to avoid waiting for me to respond with templates and tags before fixing up an article. Go find those uncited statements at the end of paragraphs!
So David Eppstein (and everyone else reading this) the short answer is: No, I will not put citation needed templates in an article unless asked, and I will continue to nominate articles to GAR if I think a GAR is necessary. I hope you do not consider this response a deflection and I am happy to answer any specific questions here about how I edit, why I do the actions that I do, and what can be done differently. Z1720 (talk) 19:24, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720, can you at least place a maintenance tag on the article? You don't have to go and tag-bomb them at every place where you think it needs a citation, but not ever tagging them for maintenance at all and then going to GAR is nuts. I wouldn't expect any editor to have every GA in their topic area watchlisted. -- asilvering (talk) 21:12, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Why is a maintenance tag necessary on top of the fact that we already ask people to post on the talk page and then wait a week and then go to GAR? What difference will that make? Will we start asking people to wait a week after the maintenance tag too? There is so much effort devoted to instruction creep for GARs for so little actual increase in preventing articles from losing their GAR status. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:18, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because the point is to have articles that are good, right? Flagging articles that need attention is a basic, helpful part of how we do that. @David Eppstein has said, above, that he specifically checks articles in his topic areas for maintenance tags. I do, too. What I don't check is talk pages of articles I don't watchlist. Tagbombing is disruptive and I'm not asking anyone to do that. But I can't understand why someone would observe a problem with an article and decide to start a delisting process without flagging it for attention first. The delist process takes effort! Tagging an article with a maintenance tag or two is the work of seconds. -- asilvering (talk) 21:23, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: In my opinion, editors who care about an article's GA status should do more than wait for another editor to post maintenance tags: they should informally review articles regularly to ensure all necessary text is cited and prose is updated when required. There are lots of GARs where no one responds to the talk page notice or GAR posting. Adding more work for reviewers takes away their valuable wiki-time. At a certain point, competency is required and editors can find the same uncited statements or outdated statements that I do, especially when it is entire paragraphs or sections. If editors look and still can't find the concerns, I am happy to clarify or add cn templates when asked for a specific article. Z1720 (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Obviously the point is to have articles that meet the GA criteria. We should encourage people to maintain their own GAs and look over older ones so that they continue to meet the criteria. We shouldn't be expecting people to do a bunch of notify/tag/advise make-work that doesn't actually result in more articles meeting the criteria.
Z1720's experience, which I've seen them discuss before, is that no matter what method they use, editors rarely if ever bother to fix up an article before GAR hits. I recall a previous discussion within the past few months where (IIRC) Hog Farm mentioned having similar results. By and large, people just do not care until you brandish the possibility of losing the GA sticker. That's the motivator, much as nobody likes to admit it. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 21:43, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps you did not notice the remark above where I pointed out that I patrol a list of error categories for articles in my area of interest and periodically check specifically for GA and FA articles on the list? The cleanup tags and banners definitely catch my attention. There are thousands of articles on these cleanup lists, I cannot watchlist them all, and I cannot clean them all up (more tags keep getting added, often faster than the old ones are cleared) but those tags will definitely get some attention, as will comments to WikiProjects, much more than comments on individual article talk pages. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:55, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
With all due respect, you appear to be the only person who actively does this, and we cannot expect an entire process to revolve around one person's workflow, when time and time again we have shown that tagging, posting to WikiProjects, and posting on talk pages achieves very little in the way of action. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 22:07, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I propose a simpler way to resolve this. Let's mark all articles as GA by default so we can start from the other end and work our way back. If someone believes that an article does not meet the GA criteria, whether it be a new article or a previously-existing one, then they are expected to improve it until it does. It will remain GA until it is fixed because it's unfair to put the burden of fixing them on others and it doesn't make sense to take away GA if it could some day meet the criteria in the future. You might notice that under there's system there's no scenario that involves in a delisting—this is by design. Once universal GA is put into effect, WP:GAR will be marked as historical. That way it's fair for everyone, and we can finally focus on improving articles without being distracted by checking or evaluating them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
As David Epstein puts it above, In this process I see some other GAs (not the ones I focus on) that still have decade-old cleanup tags. This fits with my experience: articles can have cleanup tags left unaddressed for years, regardless of either importance or quality assessment. In my experience tagging articles is not an effective way of getting problems fixed in general, or of ensuring that GAs stay at the standard they should be specifically. Obviously having articles that are good (rather than Good Articles) is ultimately the most important thing to the encyclopedia, but in most cases tagging an article with issues is not an effective way to address that. Some issues are fixed by people who patrol those particular tags (I've done some of it myself!) but if a sub-standard GA is going to be brought back up to standard, it's almost certainly going to be done by people who watch that page in particular. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:46, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My point is that because we still have GA-listed articles with these stale tags, those are the ones that should be focused on in GARs. Yes, other articles may be more secretly problematic, but articles with stale cleanup tags are openly problematic and there is evidence in the staleness of the tag that they are not well maintained, so they are the likeliest candidates for removal. Why are we targeting other articles instead? —David Eppstein (talk) 21:57, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You are always free to start GARs for those articles when you come across them if you feel it's important. One might alternatively argue that ae should prioritise articles which haven't been abandoned for GAR's attention as they are the most likely to actually be improved. Either way, as we are all volunteers here, everyone is free to spend their time in the way they want even if it isn't the most theoretically optimal use. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:40, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So if you "wouldn't expect any editor to have every GA in their topic area watchlisted", what exactly is it you expect a drive-by tagging to accomplish asilvering? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:27, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There are listings of cleanup tags in many areas maintained by User:CleanupWorklistBot. Tagging puts an article onto those lists. Users who patrol those lists looking for things to do will find them there. Not tagging means that, from the perspective of users patrolling those lists, the article is unproblematic. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:59, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: I noticed a GA today with a cleanup banner from 2013. I have brought other articles to GAR with even older templates. Also, sometimes there is only one citation needed tag for one sentence: if this is the only concern, I will not bring the article to GAR. I appreciate that you patrol cleanup tags, but I think you are the exception as evidenced by the 32% of GAs that have a cleanup tag, 32% of FAs that have a cleanup tag and the Guild of Copy Editors having a steady increase in articles needing a copyedit since 2021. An article at GAR will not be delisted if editors are actively making improvements. I try to bring articles to GAR from a variety of topics: if you know of math articles with older concerns, please feel free to bring them to GAR. Z1720 (talk) 22:22, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
How many editors patrol those lists? I, for one, didn't know they existed before this discussion. Judging by the fact there are over 3000 GAs with basic citation needed tags (out of a total of 41,000), I think your commendable efforts may be the exception rather than the norm. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:24, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
2013 beats the 2015 example I had in mind, quantum electrodynamics. I think for articles with such long-stale tags, there can be no reasonable objection to bringing them to GAR. The editors who care have had plenty of time to deal with them and haven't. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:10, 3 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's more than just editors patrolling the lists (though I'm confident there are more people doing that than you think), but also all of the maintenance categories. It's very common for editors to adopt whatever maintenance category and try to start clearing it, or at least wearing it down. There are certainly more people who care about maintenance categories than there are people who care about GAR. If what we're actually after is to get someone to fix up the articles, tagging them is a pretty easy first step. Again, it's the work of seconds. It's a lot more work to put something up for GAR, so I don't at all understand why someone would go to the trouble of GARing something but object to the idea of tagging. -- asilvering (talk) 06:09, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Asilvering: No, it's not the work of seconds, it's hours of talk page messages when an editor decides to berate you for daring to point out concerns on their favourite article. Or it's hours of talk page messages when the editor is upset that you nominated an article a week/month/year after posting the maintenance tag, which is "not enough time for them to fix the concerns" even though the uncited text has been in the article for years. Or it's hours of work when you posted the banner but didn't add citation needed tags so how could they possibly find uncited statements on their own? Or it's hours of talk page messages when the person disagrees with the tag and starts arguing about it. If an editor wants an article to be a good article, it's their job to maintain it and not a reviewer's job to hand-hold editors through the criteria. If an editor cares about every article in a category, then they are putting a lot of work on themselves to maintain all the articles, which is their choice. It's OK for an article to be delisted as a good article, and Wikipedia will continue to function. Z1720 (talk) 12:58, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that it is ok for an article to be delisted as a good article, and I think you're losing the forest for the trees here. -- asilvering (talk) 15:20, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
And I think you're unfairly dismissing the experience of the person actually doing the GAR work. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 19:28, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a net loss for the project, a disappointment, and a failure for an article to be delisted as a Good Article. Far better to rescue the article so that it continues to deserve Good Article status. We need as many deserving Good Articles as we can get. —David Eppstein (talk) 19:36, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No it isn't. The article already isn't a GA because it doesn't meet WP:GACR. At this point the GA circle is just inappropriately applied and needs to be removed. Trying to keep GA status on articles that don't meet WP:GACR isn't only disruptive, it's dishonest. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 19:53, 4 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I am disappointed that so many articles were important enough to editors that they wanted them promoted to GA status, but not important enough to maintain the article and ensure that text is cited and information is updated. It is frustrating to me when editors are upset when an article is nominated for GAR, but did not showcase that passion by reviewing the article before a reviewer posted concerns. I am happy to share how I review articles if anyone is interested. Z1720 (talk) 01:48, 5 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's fair to criticise editors for not maintaining all existing GAs. Articles will entropy over time, that's just a natural part of the cycle. CMD (talk) 07:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sure, articles which are not maintained will decline over time – but I think Z1720 is right here: if you think it is important that a particular article not decline over time, you should work to maintain it; if it's not important enough to you to maintain, then you can't reasonably complain when someone points out that it hasn't been maintained! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 12:05, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis: 100% agree, it is unfair to criticise editors for not maintaining all GAs. Wikipedia is a volunteer service and everyone chooses how to spend their wiki-time. Articles need regular maintenance, and an editor who cares about an article's status should either choose to maintain it (in order for the article to keep its status) or choose not to maintain it, which will lead to the article potentially getting delisted. I wish the community would tell editors more frankly that if they care about the article's status, they need to maintain it, but that it's also OK if the editor doesn't want to maintain an article. I also wish the community was more frank in telling editors that it is unacceptable to insist the reviewer maintain an article themselves, or that reviewers should ignore GAs with issues and just let them keep their badge. It is a lot of time and work to maintain an article, and even more time and work for an article you don't know a lot about and don't really care about. Z1720 (talk) 14:15, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Editors come and go but our articles stay and it should not require a GA-review-level effort every month for every good article by the nominator or some designee to keep their status.
Your article reads to me that you feel that nominators are acting inappropriately entitled to their status and resting on their laurels, and that this entitled attitude makes it justifiable for you to be entitled as well, entitled to demand that others put in significant amounts of time and effort in cleanup work or risk losing their badges. I think this focuses far too much on the editors and far too little on the content. It is the content of the encyclopedia, ultimately, that we should care about; everything else we do here is with the goal of improving that content. Among other reasons, focusing on editors and badges makes it solely the badge-holder's responsibility to defend their badge; focusing on content instead could bring in a broader crew of editors interested in the improvement of content as a collaborative effort.
I see nobody here insisting that reviewers maintain articles themselves. But I also don't see tagging articles for problems as being maintenance, any more than initiating a GAR is maintenance. Both are steps towards telling other editors who might watchlist and maintain the article that they should do some maintenance. But tags like [citation needed] are a smaller request for maintenance, and a GAR is a much bigger ask: handling a [citation needed] tag might take a few minutes, but rescuing a GAR-nominated article might take days or weeks of effort. All I am requesting is that someone (and it doesn't have to be a GAR reviewer) take the smaller steps first, before escalating to the bigger ones. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:59, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused, the nominator is surely Z1720. They are the one initiating the GAR. All of the GARs I've seen Z1702 nominate focus entirely on the content and not at all on the editors. CMD (talk) 18:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: Editors don't lose badges, articles deteriorate so that they no longer adhere to the GA criteria. If no editors want to maintain an article, they don't have to. The consequence, though, is that the article (not the editor) might get reviewed and delisted if the article no longer adheres to the criteria. I want to also highlight your statements": "tags like [citation needed] are a smaller request for maintenance, and a GAR is a much bigger ask: handling a [citation needed] tag might take a few minutes, but rescuing a GAR-nominated article might take days or weeks of effort." I want all GAs to adhere to the GA criteria. If tagging an article with cn tags will only fix one problem, but the rest of the article wouldn't adhere to the criteria, then I would rather nominate it for GAR. Z1720 (talk) 18:22, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
From a non-GA perspective, what happens once the article does get delisted? From the way this conversation is going, it doesn't seem like the issues get addressed. Does the information on the article's flaws that you've gathered just then... sit in the talkpage archive? Given how infrequently talkpage archives are looked at or consulted, that seems like sort of a waste of all the time an effort you put into analyzing the articles. Additionally, from a reader's perspective, I mean, I'd like to know when statements fail verification or aren't cited, have issues with NPOV, or if the article won't give me a complete picture of the topic. The green button (or lack thereof) meant nothing to me until recently; they're much more so a Wikipedia-writer thing, imo. The maintenance tags at least let the readers know there's issues, and lots of them are pretty easy to fix (especially for newer editors). GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:31, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenLipstickLesbian: From my perspective, your analysis of delisted articles is correct: the comments sit on the talk page and rarely get addressed. This is why I avoid leaving detailed reviews until someone offers to address concerns: it's a waste of my time to list every concern when no one is going to address them. That is another reason why I think GAR is so effective: it allows non-article etalk page watchers to notice a deteriorated article and offer to help. I think the same thing happens for maintenance tags: they usually sit in an article for several years unaddressed. That's why I do not add them unless asked, as it is a waste of time. Also, anyone reading the article can see that a statement is uncited: it doesn't need a cn tag at the end of every paragraph for the reader or interested editors to figure that out, in my opinion. Z1720 (talk) 18:40, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Being deliberately vague as you describe is a way to cultivate the appearance that you don't want anyone to find out what problems you have in mind and that you don't want the problems fixed. It is not a promising start to a GAR, nor anything that might be inviting to drive-by rescuers. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:45, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is becoming a WP:1AM problem. Many people now have tried to explain to you why articles that don't qualify as good articles should not be classified as good articles. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:34, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien Argumentum ad populum...sorry, sorry, WP:1AM is an essay about content disputes... and it advises the many to seriously reexamine your own position and Work with the lone holdout. Besides, he's not arguing that articles that aren't deserving of being Good Articles should remain as good articles, he's arguing that the encyclopedia would be better if there was more of an emphasis on improving troubled articles than delisting them. Now, the counter argument is that people won't, and anybody saying that is just trying to stop the process. I can see how that would be true in some cases, but I do think believing that's true in all, or even the majority of, cases requires me to assume a lot of bad faith that I'm not comfortable assuming. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 04:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I figured WP:1AM would be politer than WP:IDHT. No one needs to argue against delisting as a whole if we create a system that will effectively cause this to happen either way. This whole fracas wasn't a response to some sudden mass-delisting; it was a response to a routine request for people to please participate at GAR at all. If the expectation is that any article falling below the GA criteria should be improved, then I reiterate my very serious proposal. There are a few million articles desperately needing improvement, and I don't see how it contributes to improving any of them if we falsely check a handful of them off as "good" when they aren't. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:49, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, from my perspective, this whole fracas started because a couple editors said "hey, could you describe the issues you spot in a place people will see?" and that's... going to somehow lead to every random stub being put on the front page as a featured article? Sorry, the second bit's getting a little hyperbolic. I mean, not too far off from the proposal you're suggesting, so gosh maybe it's not that hyperbolic. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 05:13, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We don't have to assume anything. All the GARs are listed collectively, a quick scroll at Wikipedia:Good article reassessment will provide you a quantitative estimate of participation. The idea that editors here don't want articles to improve is something literally everyone agrees with, and it's weird it keeps being brought up. I don't see how you feel uncomfortable assuming a lot of bad faith, but are happy to repeat the idea that editors here don't want articles to improve. CMD (talk) 04:50, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Chipmunkdavis I have very deliberately avoided stated that editors here don't wish to see articles improved, thank you very much. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 05:08, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You've wrote "he's arguing that the encyclopedia would be better if there was more of an emphasis on improving troubled articles than delisting them", and that others are countering this argument. No-one is countering it. CMD (talk) 05:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I did summarize another person's argument. And then summarized other people's (specifically TBUA's) counterargument and apparently very serious, proposal. But I'm not stating it, I'm stating that other people state it. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 05:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The summary of the first argument missed a lot of its relevant points, and thus the supposed counter-argument was an off-mark misrepresentation. If you don't want things to be your own statements, it would be clearer to use quotes, especially when presenting the second argument as an example of an assumption of a lot of bad faith. CMD (talk) 05:21, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, what relevant points do you feel I missed? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 05:26, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The original argument was not about improvement vs delisting, it was "place cleanup tags first, and then wait a reasonable time before opening the GAR", ie. it was a proposal to change the process, adding an additional step. (This comes in the context of very recent discussions which already changed the process to make it longer.) "Now, the counter argument is that people won't, and anybody saying that is just trying to stop the process" meanwhile does not reflect the other views expressed at all. Everyone is quite pleased when GARs receive attention, and "anybody" in particular is somewhat out of place given the long history. CMD (talk) 06:11, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, and the argument which led to that proposal was the idea that if an article's issues aren't severe enough to be tagged, labeled, or otherwise described, then they are not severe enough to open a GAR for. Concerning the second part-you've read TBUA's very serious proposal, right? Let's mark all articles as GA by default and so on. His argument is, quite literally, that people don't really want the issues to be identified, and that people asking asking for others to tag are just using it as an excuse to prevent articles from being delisted. (courtesy ping to my favourite events inclusionist incoming @Thebiguglyalien: I haven't misread you, right?) And yes, just to restate myself, I do find that to believe that, I'd have to assume a lot of bad faith.
But re, the history thing - yeah I can really see that the history everybody in this forum has with each other is getting in the way. In no other place on Wikipedia is is normal to argue that you shouldn't tag, or fix articles, just go to the Twilight zone back-non-reader facing area and argue with people about your right to not tag/explain your tags until you're satisfied they'll act on them immediately. And that is my opinion. I don't know why the act of merely saying "hey, please put reader-facing tags when you see articles with severe issues because people might fix them" is such a terrible, terrible thing. If you'd like to deprecate tagging, WP:TfD is thataway. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 06:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
TBUA's argument is a caricature of the frequent discussions that often come up here, where efforts to open GARs often lead to very personal invective directed against those users. As for tagging, that is not the argument that was made, the argument was that made was that tags should be used instead of opening the GAR, with the GAR being a later step. (It also relies on the assumption that a GAR is more aggressive than peppering cn tags throughout an article, and I'm not sure there is evidence for this.) CMD (talk) 06:43, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just reread and had completely missed you were actually saying in that second paragraph. Nobody has argued that people should not tag things. That is a complete and entirely bad faith red herring, and the TfD suggestion is somehow goes even wider than TBUA's super serious proposal. CMD (talk) 06:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean...
No, I will not put citation needed templates unless asked (Z)
We shouldn't be expecting people to do a bunch of notify/tag/advise make-work that doesn't actually result in more articles meeting the criteria (PMC)
what exactly is it you expect a drive-by tagging to accomplish asilvering (Airship, who actually has called it drive-by tagging a lot)
I think the same thing happens for maintenance tags: they usually sit in an article for several years unaddressed. That's why I do not add them unless asked, as it is a waste of time (Z again)
Caeciliusinhorto called adding tags "bureaucracy"
In response to three different editors saying "GAR is fine, but I think we'll improve more articles if we tag smaller issues first". There's a very explicit argument being made that because some people don't feel that tags contribute to the GAR process, then reviewers shouldn't bother putting them. In fact, Z went further, and implied that somebody asking for tags was a CIR issue. (They linked to the essay, so it's not just poor wording). If that's not an argument against tagging, then I don't know what is. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 17:50, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Caeciliusinhorto called adding tags "bureaucracy". This is a serious misrepresentation of what I said. I said: Requiring that someone concerned about an article both say "there are issues with citations" on the talkpage, and add a template to the article saying exactly the same thing, seems like bureaucracy for the sake of bureaucracy. My position is not that adding tags is bureaucracy, it's that requiring both adding tags to an article and making a notification of the exact same problem on the talkpage (which is the current GAR process) is unnecessarily bureaucratic. They are not the same thing Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 18:26, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Caeciliusinhorto Okay, apologies. You said that requiring people to add tags and explaining the problem is unnecessarily bureaucratic; current consensus is that you should explain many taggings on talkpages or in edit summaries, so I assumed that you were referring to the tagging portion as the bureaucratic part. I am sorry for making that assumption.
My current position remains unchanged - I can think of no good reason why somebody wouldn't prefer to see a bunch of changes, critically analyze an article for and find several flaws then... not alert the reader to potential issues, or mark the issues to make it clearer to other editors that assistance is needed. Talkpages aren't nearly as widely monitored as maintenance categories (for most editors - I'm aware the GA peeps tend to disproportionately use talkpages and many of them prefer to remove all pre-existing article content and write most of the article themselves, which means cleanup tags aren't needed). I know the issues might not get solved by the end of the GAR, and yes, sometimes people may disagree with the tags, but if your end goal is improved content, then it seems like a logical thin to encourage. I am aware that most people on this board are mostly focussed on the green sticker part, however, so I understand if they'd not want to waste energy on an article that isn't going to meet that standard. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:33, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
At the risk of explaining the joke, the underlying point is that a former GA is no different than any other article that needs improvement. If we're going to keep the GA classification for articles that don't meet the criteria, we may as well add the GA classification to every article on Wikipedia that don't meet the criteria. And to your other point, I don't think anyone here is challenging tagging. I'm pro-tagging myself. The problem is when it's used as a bureaucratic hurdle to say "you have to do this this and this before we actually re-evaluate the article's status". When these hurdles aren't raised, GAR is a lightweight process. But some people will go out of their way to say that no action should be taken against a GA, and this behavior has been ongoing for years. Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/John von Neumann/1 stands out as one of the more infamous examples of stonewalling the process. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 06:46, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Mate, I'm sorry to say it, but it just looks like consensus was against you in that GAR. WP:1AM? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 17:53, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Canvassed WP:STONEWALLING is not consensus. I don't understand why you're going to bat for people who are deliberately slowing down a process just so they can artificially inflate the number of badges. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 18:23, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If that's the way you still insist on seeing it, then I'm sorry but that's where I think we're ending this. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 18:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Just so y'all are aware, this portion of the discussion is off-the-screen on mobile due do the number of indents, you may want to bring it down to a new line. — EF5 22:59, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
LMAO. I usually use the laptop for reading heavy discussions in such a way, and sometimes mobile. Haven't seen this problem in mobile recently. Will check it later. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:16, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can you clarify, because it is ambiguous. Do you mean more than there is now, or simply "a good GAR system would primarily emphasize article improvement"? Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 05:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I mean, what's so wrong with a tag sitting in an article for years until it's addressed? They're valuable warnings to readers. Because, and I know given that you hang out in GAs, and this is a board full of GA-peeps this may be surprising, but actually no, a lot of readers don't know how to spot uncited text. Many of them don't even know what citations do. That's.... that's actually something you have to explain to newbies a lot, what a citation is and what is does, how it works. And those are people who want to edit Wikipedia, which automatically is a very self-selecting process. And a lot of our readers are kids or teenagers, aka people who are still learning that you can't believe everything you see on Tiktok. And that's something you find obvious - what about the less obvious, even to you, issues you find, like with source-text integrity, POV, or broadness? You don't really expect those to be easily seen by readers, do you? I do see where you're coming from though - again, the GA/FA processes are very insular. So I think I know how you've come to the opinion that these issues are, well, obvious to anybody other than you.
Again, this is coming from a readers-first perspective, not a backend-wikipedian-article-rating one. Again, you can put your time to whatever you wish! We're all volunteers, after all. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 20:26, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that maintenance tags should be added, and that adding them is helpful in itself. Good articles are just articles where we've already checked them for original research, NPOV, etc, and confirmed that they're good to go. If we no longer feel confident that they meet basic standards, we remove that classification, at which point its issues have the same priority as any of the millions of other articles with problems. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:38, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well the more I here it described here, the more it seems that any article rating process apart from FAC/GAN doesn't seem to involve that much meaningful article improvement! Is that... inaccurate? Please tell me it's inaccurate. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 21:01, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's really inaccurate. It's pretty impossible to improve every article that is rated... Ratings tell us what articles need to improve. If we improved every one we rated up to a high standard, then we wouldn't really need ratings. IAWW (talk) 21:33, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I think that outside FA/GA, the rating system mostly records the state of the article at the time it was reviewed. It might potentially trigger improvement at some future date by editors who use the rating system to guide what to edit (for instance, destubbing stubs, or targeting close-to-ready articles for GA) but that's beyond the rating process itself and is mostly invisible to us. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:51, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I completely agree maintenance tags should be added for this reason. I also find them extremely helpful as a reader. However, as you note, that is a separate issue from the GAR process and I don't see why they need to be combined. IAWW (talk) 21:30, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenLipstickLesbian yes, exactly. If what we care about is that content gets improved, maintenance tags are a good way to signal that. Sure, "GAs" that aren't really GAs anymore shouldn't have the little green dot. But most readers don't even know GAs exist. Maintenance tags, everyone can see. And, again, they take seconds to apply. -- asilvering (talk) 19:10, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Emphasis on "deserving". If an article is listed as a GA but does not deserve the status, that also does a disservice to Wikipedia, and delaying a reassessment process does not help that.
I still don't understand why people interested in article cleanup cannot work within the bounds of GAR. Any sort of time limit was deemed hostile, so reassessments can pretty much be kept open indefinitely. But apparently drive-by tagging articles and waiting years for people to notice it is better than targeted improvement? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 08:12, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I honestly think it's wishful thinking: "If we just X, people will fix it!" But despite having this discussion roughly forty times a year, and despite the pressure on GAR editors to do more and more and more before taking an article to GAR, time after time, the only thing that consistently motivates any action is the looming possibility that an article will lose its precious green circle (and often not even then). ♠PMC♠ (talk) 08:26, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The goalposts just keep moving to kneecap the process more and more. Lots of people get up in arms about the process moving too fast, so we give them what they want and we see hardly any participation despite leaving things open for a month or longer. It seems some will not be satisfied until it becomes nearly impossible to delist an article, no matter how poor of a state it is in. Trainsandotherthings (talk) 21:17, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The process just isn't that important, so your doomsaying about kneecapping it doesn't resonate with me. It's the article content that is important. If the process as it is currently implemented is process for process's sake rather than something that improves content, then the process should change. The regular GAR nominators keep saying here that GARs typically do not result in improved content. That should be a red flag that the GAR process is not working well. —David Eppstein (talk) 21:53, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
For me, the GA process has no value without GAR, in the same way that Wikipedia has no value without deletion processes. If no articles were ever deleted on Wikipedia, the quality of the encyclopedia would be irretrievably diluted. AfD has over a 50% deletion rate and a ~15% straight keep rate, meaning not much improvement gets done there. Would you really describe it as "process for process's sake"? No, because keeping project-wide standards up is more important than keeping substandard content for content's sake. Similarly, within the confines of WP:GA, maintaining the value of the criteria is more important than keeping substandard content for content's sake. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:29, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with AirshipJungleman here - GA status loses a lot of its meaning if there's no attempt to keep a project-wide baseline standard for these. Hog Farm Talk 23:12, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're arguing against a strawman. Nobody here is arguing for shutting down GAR nor for keeping the GA rating on substandard content, for any reason. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:15, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What I am arguing about is this growing instruction creep that keeps making it progressively harder and harder to open a GAR. Not that long ago, GAR standards were to open the article without prior notification on the talk page and keep the GAR open for a week. Now we're at a discussion on an article talk page, with an indefinite period to wait for nothing to happen, followed by the article sitting around at GAR for a month, usually with nothing happening there as well. And a further proposal to require adding tags with another indefinite wait for nothing to happen on top of that ... At least in my mind, it's enough to have the understanding that 1) multiple articles in a narrow topic area should not be nominated at the same time (and preferably a break between nominations, not just a string of one constantly at GAR for months at a time) and 2) leniency with the amount of time editors have to work on an article once it's at GAR. I don't have a great definition for narrow topic matter, but we should be able to trust people to use common sense. FAR has the ability to place nominations on hold, which could be useful at GAR as well. At least from personal experience, I felt that the GAR process for Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Battle of Antietam/1, Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Gettysburg Cyclorama/1, and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Mark Kellogg (reporter)/1 was done in a manner that was conducive to fixing up the articles. Antietam was part of a somewhat disruptive string of GAR nominations by a now-blocked editor, and I did not see the notice and was not monitoring the articles for the other two, with the GAR coming as a surprise (especially Kellogg, which wasn't on my radar at all). The Gettysburg Cyclorama GAR was able to occur at a fairly leisurely pace while I was very busy with work. Hog Farm Talk 23:34, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
GAR inherently allows nominations to be held. There is no rush to close, and practice is to leave it open while someone is working on it. The one-month limit was brought in to stop delistings. CMD (talk) 02:01, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You were arguing that GAR is an unimportant process for process's sake because it results in little article improvement, no? I was arguing against that. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 00:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
False. I was arguing that we should initiate GARs in a way that encourages improvement rather than in a way that aims towards delisting at all costs, and that doing it only as process for process's sake is a wasted opportunity for improvement. You failed to address any of that, instead pretending you were arguing against some imaginary person who said you should not do GARs at all. —David Eppstein (talk) 00:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think you're quite getting it. You, not an imaginary person, are arguing that the GARs you see as "process for process's sake" should be replaced with an "improvement-encouraging-GAR". I am arguing that the GARs you see as "process for process's sake" have a very definite use. If you can't see what I'm trying to get at, let us end this conversation after your reply. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 01:27, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Respectfully, I daresay that characterizing it as a way that aims towards delisting at all costs is at least as much of a straw man as what you described in those terms ust above when it came from someone else. TompaDompa (talk) 22:15, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Could've fooled me. I personally will continue to nominate any article to GAR if I notice that it does not meet WP:GACR but erroneously has the GA circle in the corner. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:28, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What a brave stance to take against imaginary opponents. —David Eppstein (talk) 01:03, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's a net loss for the project .... for an article to be delisted as a Good Article How is it a loss for the project? What exactly do you propose we are losing by delisting an article which no longer meets the criteria? Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 09:47, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are losing the opportunity to have a better article. Better articles are what we should be aiming for. The badges are merely a way of incentivizing people to make better articles. They are not important in themselves and taking them away from the undeserving serves only the tertiary goal of keeping the badges meaningful in the hope that meaningful badges will encourage article improvement. —David Eppstein (talk) 18:47, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure this GA is "merely" an incentive program. Putting aside editors using GAs as templates for writing and sourcing, editors also use it to get structured feedback on their writing/research and to have a more discrete line to work articles up to. I don't think either can simply be understood as incentivizing content creation except in a very loose sense. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 23:35, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Ok, but that only really works within the process of reviewing new GA nominations, and would work the same if we kept GA status forever or forgot it immediately. I don't think it is so relevant for GAR. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:39, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You're right, and it is a bit off topic.
I understand your comments here to have two threads: 1) if we have a set of articles that do not meet the GACR, the ones we put through GAR first should be the ones with old tags. 2) When editors leave a comment on the talk to say an article doesn't meet the GACR (e.g. for neutrality, too detailed), they should also tag the article itself.
I can see your point with #1. All else equal, if I have two articles that don't meet the GACR I may preference the long-tagged one as it means editors have had more of an opportunity to address issues, it will generate less pushback and feelings of being blindsided. I also think that all else often isn't equal, and another priority for putting articles through GAR may be the most flawed. I understand at GAR they are working through a generated list, which seems not optimal for delisting the most flawed articles, but optimal for preserving reviewer time. Maybe a new list could be generated (GAs with oldest tags)?
For #2, I think the template point I raise above, and AJ29's comment adequately establish why a GAR process that doesn't improve the article is still good. Adding steps will a) give more work for people who work in GAR, reducing the number of articles that can go through GAR or reducing their time for other Wikipedia work, b) disincentivize editors from putting an article up for GAR as it is more work, c) improve some articles as editors who don't go through talk pages to see why something was delisted and people who adopt tags can work through. These effects have to be weighed up.
My opinion for #2 is that if an editor wants to know where articles can be improved, there is no shortage of backlogs. I also think that if we want to encourage tagging of articles to get improvement, we should do that in areas where there isn't a not insignificant tradeoff, and we should do it to articles we want more urgently repaired. I don't want a GAR reviewer to waste their time tagging chocolate in savory cooking for issues, it's just not the most valuable use of their time, especially if that extra step will drive people away from nominating articles.
Hopefully this wall of text has some value. Rollinginhisgrave (talk | contributions) 01:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We are losing the opportunity to have a better article. How? I genuinely cannot understand what you are suggesting here. Surely if the promise of a GA badge only serves as an incentive to improve an article, we should be delisting articles faster so as to reintroduce the incentive! Caeciliusinhorto-public (talk) 10:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps we have a fundamental disagreement over what GA is for. If it were merely for recognizing content that is already good, then GA reviewing would be much less work: almost every nominee would fail, we could immediately say so, and be done, like a quickfail. But (as a nominator and a reviewer) the best nominations, for me, are ones where the nomination process itself produces significant improvement to the articles through the process of peer review. It takes a lot of work, though, on the order of weeks on both sides. The reason I nominate articles, and the reason I review nominations, is not for recognition: it's because by interacting in this way between a nominator and a reviewer I can contribute to better results, better content, than would happen if I merely edited articles on my own without the feedback.
If GA were merely for recognizing content that is already good, then also GAR would be much easier. Nominate an article, at a fixed version with no updates considered, come to a consensus that it has fallen out of GA status, dust hands, done. Allow people to get recognized again by renominating. Maybe in practice that's what happens a lot anyway for articles that through time and attrition have lost their maintainers and nobody else steps up.
But if, as it is to me, GA is about improving articles through a back-and-forth with a reviewer, then that sort of quick and easy GAR has lost the plot. And the kind of GAR that I have seen, where the nominator says basically "this article is not GA but I'm going to make you figure out for yourself why not and then only tell you at the end if you're getting it right" has lost the plot as well. There is no real back and forth, no attempt to improve articles, only the goal of delisting for the sake of delisting. Maybe that provides an opportunity for someone else who has not been disillusioned by this kind of non-review to re-nominate, but that's a slim chance to trade for a missed opportunity for review.
The part that frustrates me, though, is that every time I try to articulate this desire for GAR to at least aim for a proper back-and-forth review (and succeed in the rare cases when there is a maintainer willing to do the reviewing) I get shouted down by a crowd of GAR regulars who appear to want it to only be a quick and easy re-evaluation and will distort everything I say to argue against it, as has happened here. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:36, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
"this article is not GA but I'm going to make you figure out for yourself why not and then only tell you at the end if you're getting it right" it reminds me about Wikipedia:Featured article review/Emmy Noether/archive1 and Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Vector space/1 where I had to slightly intervene. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Gosh, I had a biology teacher in highschool who would do the "I'm going to tell you your work is terrible, and how much a terrible stupid person you are for even daring to ask me why I think that". Complete jerk. Spent more time doing "binder checks" (to make sure your binder was "properly organized") than answering questions or explaining the material. He played the victim whenever anybody complained about him, too, insisting that all his students just didn't want to put the effort in, they wanted an easy 'A'. Second worst teacher ever. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 04:31, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@AirshipJungleman29 Just want to come back to this - do you really think the sorts of tags that would be placed would be so minor and poorly-explained as to be drive-by-tagging? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 04:21, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion at Talk:Shapley–Folkman lemma

I want to move a discussion out from Talk:Shapley–Folkman lemma#Article quality to this talk page, as it relates more to conduct and less towards improving the article.

I posted a notice on the article talk page, (of which the wording is a modified version of what Chipmunkdavis suggested on my talk page in February). I also added cn tags and an orange banner to the article a couple of hours ago. David Eppstein responded in a way that I view as uncollaborative and has made me resistant to review math articles in the future. Specifically, in this post he accused me of hounding him for editing an article on his watchlist. When another editor suggested that I review another math article (and I agreed to do so in the future), DE stated that he would consider my review as hounding him as he had made significant updates to that article as well. He repeated accusations that I was targeting him, that I should conduct my "badge-police activity" on articles with older tags, and to set up a GARR on articles that I have nominated to GAR.

I'm not planning on reviewing any math articles in the near future because it's not the next category on my GA review rotation and real life is about to get busy for me. But I fear that this reaction will happen again the next time I comment on any math article. I want to bring this somewhere to get other opinions on if this is how the GA community wants the pre-GAR to proceed, and how to stop reactions like this from happening (without stopping the GAR work). I also want to highlight that this response sometimes happens when I review articles.

I am happy to open separate threads about some of the points that DE brought up, like the relationship of WP:GA? 2b with WP:CRC, or how many articles in a category should be noticed at the same time. However, I want to move conversations about my conduct in reviews off article talk pages. If others think there's a better place to open this thread, I am happy for it to be moved. Z1720 (talk) 20:21, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

When people were causing the same issues about a year ago, I said it would be necessary to seek administrative action if it happened again. This is still true. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:34, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720 Looking at the first example of a statement you felt needed citation, the one you linked just here, you decided to question the validity of this statement:
In his paper, Starr studied a convexified economy, in which non-convex sets were replaced by their convex hulls; Starr proved that the convexified economy has equilibria that are closely approximated by "quasi-equilibria" of the original economy; moreover, he proved that every quasi-equilibrium has many of the optimal properties of true equilibria, which are proved to exist for convex economies
A statement which is so obviously cited that I question the experience of anybody who can't figure out where it comes from; the paper is linked in the sentence immediately preceding the statement, and the in-text attribution makes it blindingly obvious to anybody paying the least bit of attention. If this is your first example of constructive tagging, or a statement so poor that you feel it needs a GAR, then maybe you shouldn't take on this role. Tagging or removing statements like that displays the level of carelessness that I see from brand-new and over-enthusiastic NPPers, not seasoned administrators. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 20:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @GreenLipstickLesbian: The GA criteria is stricter than WP:IC and requires the citation at the end of the paragraph. The cn tag was commenting on the article's adherence to the GA criteria. Whether the criteria should be stricter is a separate conversation. Z1720 (talk) 21:17, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No, the GA dictates inline citations. What I was reading was the very definition of an inline citation. If you'd like to change the definition, you're more than welcome to try - but you cannot argue in good faith that this statement was anything remotely resembling unsourced. Similarly, you have misstated (I don't know or care if the misstatement was intentional) the GA criteria- it requires merely that reliable sources be cited inline, and All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph. This is fine under the current rules; the statement was cited inline, and it is arguably closer to a plot summary at that point anyway. Again, how were you unable to verify the statement? You've said now, that you needed a citation to verify one -but I'm beginning to suspect you (or a script) are conflating "citation" with "html reference tags". GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 21:25, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There was an RfC confirming the stricter citation requirements if anyone remembers where it can be found in this page's archives. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 21:37, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Thebiguglyalien Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 29#RfC: change GA criteria to require inline citations in all cases? This one, that produced the currently wording requiring inline citations? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 21:41, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:INTEXT: "In-text attribution is the attribution inside a sentence of material to its source, in addition to an inline citation after the sentence" (emphasis mine). ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 21:41, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Two things - first, that's in-text attribution, which is specifically referring to citing opinions and descriptions. And, even if that was the definition of an inline citation, well, that'd be rather circular, given that the linked page about in-line citations makes it clear than an in-text citation is an inline citation. And, again, you're not arguing that the text could be reasonably challenged, or that it was unsourced in any way shape or form. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 21:47, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    "the linked page about in-line citations makes it clear than an in-text citation is an inline citation" personally I don't see that at all. I see an information page with no community consensus behind itsaying that in-text attribution is technically an inline citation but is normally not used alone; I'd expect good-faith editors to at least acknowledge that last bit's existence. If we say that page can "make it clear", I'd like to cite the Wikipedia:Glossary's definition of "uncited". If we don't want to go down that rabbit hole, let's stick to the actual WP:PAGs?
    I also see that a WP:PRIMARY source is being used to cite an entire paragraph on itself, in contravention of point five of that policy. We can already see errors creeping in using citations to primary sources; for example the first sentence of that paragraph is not verified.
    On your later edit: if in-text attribution ” is specifically referring to citing opinions and descriptions” (it isn’t), one wonders why you felt Wikipedia:Inline citation#In-text attribution necessary to mention in the first place. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:10, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Because I have a migraine and I'm a terrible debator when I have a migraine, sorry. So, avoiding all technicalities, wikilawyering, I'm going to ask you something very directly:
    What about that statement tagged is unsourced, or do you find difficult to verify?
    Please answer. I've asked several times. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 22:25, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    All of it is unsourced. I find it all difficult to verify, probably because I'm not a mathmatician. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:35, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You seriously find the statement "In this paper, Starr said this", with the paper linked in the preceding sentence, hard to verify? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 22:38, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The article is mostly unsourced throughout and should have gone straight to GAR without all of this filibustering. Also noting that if we're citing the findings themselves, then A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge. (emphasis mine). Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:45, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, if by "this" you mean "the convexified economy has equilibria that are closely approximated by "quasi-equilibria" of the original economy; moreover, he proved that every quasi-equilibrium has many of the optimal properties of true equilibria, which are proved to exist for convex economies". How can I verify something I have no hope of comprehending? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 22:48, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Two points - not the original statement Z tagged, but I suppose thank you for trying? Secondly.... I'm trying to figure out a way to diplomatically state that "just because you don't have the background to understand something, doesn't mean it's unverifiable", but.... are you arguing that we can't have complicated topics as GAs? No medical content, no mathematical content, no in-depth history, niche weather, sciences, complicate political theories, no anything that might use words others are unfamiliar with? What in the Harrison Bergeron? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:09, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the point they're making is that you can't use a primary source to verify a statement that requires the kind of "further, specialized knowledge" that this obviously does. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh, yeah, you can disagree with the sourcing all you want; that's a normal part of the process. But Airship didn't say that, did they? How can I verify something I have no hope of comprehending is a very different statement that I understand this claim, and I think we need a better source for it. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:29, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, correct, he said the first thing, not the second thing, which you've invented. But again, he was saying that in reference to the point that we can't use primary sources to source things that require "further, specialized knowledge". This is one hundred percent the kind of thing that requires "further, specialized knowledge", which we shouldn't be using primary sourcing for. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:46, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    PMC, I have not disagreed with you about the fact you could request superior sourcing. But Airship said they found the statement hard to verify because a)not a mathematician and because ab)they don't comprehend it. If they meant something different, then they should have said it. GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 00:00, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Taking something to GAR that you don't understand it is disruption, pure and simple, and grounds for an indefinite block. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:47, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Literally no one has done that and suggesting an indef for it is hyperbolic. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:05, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Re User:Z1720: "The GA criteria is stricter than WP:IC and requires the citation at the end of the paragraph": No. That is not what it says. It requires the citation no later than the end of the paragraph. If the citation happens to be earlier than the end of the paragraph, but still obviously applies to the claim in question, then it is cited. Again, if you are going to make yourself into a self-proclaimed enforcer of GA rules, your failure to understand the rules that you are enforcing is quite troubling. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:49, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @David Eppstein: My interpretation of "All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph" is that citations are required at the end of the paragraph that it is citing, as discussed at this GA conversation and this second conversation (which is where I think the current criteria wording comes from), and discussed at MOS:CITEPUNCT ("All reference tags should immediately follow the text to which the footnote applies, with no intervening space.") However, since there is lots of disagreement about this, I would appreciate if someone more neutral in this discussion than me open a new RfC with a clear question of if GA citations need to be after the text they are verifying, as this question has come up multiple times. I do not think disagreeing with me requires calling me "a self-proclaimed enforcer of GA rules". Please stop name-calling me. Z1720 (talk) 00:09, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not AT the end. BEFORE OR AT the end. That is the literal meaning of "no later than the end", the wording in the rule. There are multiple situations where putting the citation exactly at the end would be the wrong thing to do:
    • Paragraphs like the first paragraph of Matrix (mathematics)#Size where the actual claims in the paragraph are sourced, but then are followed by a simple example. The example does not need a source by WP:CALC and also we should not copy an exact example from a source because doing so when there is no need of copying would be copyvio. So the part of the paragraph that needs a source has a source and the part of the paragraph that does not need a source does not have a source, even though this leaves no footnote marker at the end of the paragraph.
    • Paragraphs that end in a displayed (separate line) equation, like the first line and the equation that follow it in Matrix (mathematics)#Addition. Here the convention is to put the footnote on the text line, not on the equation, even though logically the equation is really part of the same paragraph. The footnote is interpreted as applying to the equation that follows. There are at least two good reasons for this: footnote markers on mathematical equations could easily be misinterpreted as part of the mathematics rather than being a footnote marker, and the standard wikiformatting for displayed equations does not allow anything but the equation itself on the same line.
    —David Eppstein (talk) 01:00, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I would like to make only two points here, one about conduct and one about Good Article criteria.
About conduct: both GAR and tagging articles for improvement are constructive processes in general. However, when one editor follows another to articles that would not otherwise catch their attention and makes a point of seeking out excuses for tagging for improvement and threatening GAR, as appears to have happened by Z to me in this case, it is a violation of WP:POINT and WP:HOUND. When GAR and tagging are done, they need to be done as a way to improve the encyclopedia, not as a way of carrying out grudges. I would not ordinarily have escalated the matter beyond Talk:Shapley–Folkman lemma unless the evidence of doing so were more clear (for instance by extending it to another article than the two already involved, Matrix (mathematics) and Shapley–Folkman lemma, but Z has done the escalation to here and so here we are.
About the Good Article criteria: WP:GACR #2b requires citations on "content that could reasonably be challenged", directly linking to the essay WP:CRC for the explanation of what it means for content that could reasonably be challenged. On Talk:Shapley–Folkman lemma, Z has explicitly rejected the guidance of WP:CRC. If I understand their reasoning (unlikely) their statement is that the fact that GA has stricter citation standards than some other parts of Wikipedia allows them to impose a stricter standard on what is reasonable than is described in WP:CRC, and that the linkage of CRC in GACR does not have the force of consensus as part of our GA rules. If Z is going to continue to act as an enforcer of GA standards, this absolutely needs to be clarified. The need for such a clarification is all I really meant by my not-very-serious request for a GARR of Z's GAR reviews. —David Eppstein (talk) 22:05, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
threatening GAR – GAR is not a threat, it is the expected procedure for supposedly-GA articles that do not meet WP:GACR. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 22:07, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
+1 It's simply "this article doesn't meet WP:GAC (why does that redirect to GAN) anymore, so why should it stay a GA?" — EF5 23:02, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the usual course of GARs, that interpretation would be the obvious one. Perhaps you missed the first sentence of my comment where I stated that normally GARs are constructive. For a GAR where I am in a dispute with the person leaving the comment, where I created the article, where I list it on my user page as one of the GAs I take responsibility for, where I am name-dropped on the initial GA review, where I am the creator of the lead image, and where the GAR nominator has taken the trouble to tag-bomb the article as a possibly-pointy response to my request to focus GARs on articles with stale tags, after I previously complained about the GAR nominator initiating GARs on articles for which no trouble was already in evidence, a different interpretation might come to mind. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:16, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@David Eppstein: I'm not following or hounding anyone: I don't check the article history when I review articles so I don't know who has made substantial contributions. Furthermore, before today your last edit was this ISBN change on April 24, then a short description change in January 2022, then this citation style change in August 2020, then fixing a citation bot error in March 2020. xTools says you contributed 2.3% of article's text: if this was submitted to GAN, I would not consider you a significant contributor to the current version of the article. Z1720 (talk) 23:00, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It hasn't changed much since 2011 when it passed GA, but you should have paid more attention to the ISBN edit: it was a situation where a new issue with the article had appeared and was immediately repaired. Because I do that. I have been maintaining the article. Also, bean-counting is shallow thinking. Try looking at who created the article in the first place. —David Eppstein (talk) 23:27, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It's clear that this isn't going to be resolved here, so I've made a post at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#David Eppstein and Good Article Reassessment. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 23:53, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Considering the problem is somehow due to GAR editors' claim to continue any nomination of GA that no longer meets the "six criteria", I prefer to hand over those articles to the user who understands the subject. For example, when Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Derivative/1 was introduced, ARJ29 did not specifically list the quality's problem, so XOR'easter and I had to figure it out ourselves, solely to preserve the content until the nominator is satisfied. The similar problem continued when a similar nominator in Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Vector space/1 in which I had to intervene to list the problems, and similar to Wikipedia:Featured article review/Emmy Noether/archive1, and the last is the possibility pre-GAR Shapley–Folkman lemma when Z introduced the quality article, from which my interpretation is suggesting the citation putting at any latter sentence of a paragraph instead of improving other than fives.

In this case, any mathematics GA is preferable to cease the user (or probably a user in WikiProject) who understands the topic of mathematics, instead of one who suddenly is out of nowhere pointing out the GARs general comment instead of specifying what the actual problem. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 04:49, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There has been a huge discussion above about wanting GAR to result in improving articles. Looking at the first example, Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Derivative/1 appears to be quite a short GAR, where a problem was specified at the start. The resulting changes went further than that. I'm not sure what content had to be preserved or was at risk, is there something that was lost? I'm not fully parsing that last sentence, but a problem was specified, and was fixed alongside other overall improvements. The end result was a keep. That seems to be the sort of thing that is being requested. CMD (talk) 06:03, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The nominator only explicitly said the missing inline citations on every single part of the facts, but the other criterias is considerably not included at some point, until the discussion of improvement is seperated other than huge. Dedhert.Jr (talk) 06:13, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sourcing is the most common issue, being liable to slowly entropy away, and is an especially prominent issue following a few years ago when we found a large body of GA articles where sources did not support the articles as written. I can't recall a GAR being based on GACR1, it might happen, but it seems less likely. I've commented on some GARs regarding GACR3, but in some respects that also relates to sourcing as they help guide what is in scope. I've seen a couple of GARs for GACR4, but those can be a bit intractable and I've advised sorting out neutrality questions through WP:DR processes. GACR5 isn't really considered for GARs, and I haven't seen a GACR6 GAR either, presumably because it's best solved by simply removing copyrighted images, a commonly accepted practice. CMD (talk) 06:32, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Posting on an article's talk page or at GAR are ways to inform interested editors (who, in my opinion, are more likely to be subject-matter experts) about concerns in the article. Many times I do not fix the concerns myself because it would take me a lot longer to than an interested editor to read the sourcing about the subject, understand what the sources are saying, and add the necessary citations. I also do not provide a checklist of every concern/uncited statement when I nominate at GAR because that takes a lot of time, with sometimes no payoff: of the articles that were closed at GAR in May so far, 12 were delisted without significant comments or edits in the GAR. If I had added citation needed tags or made a checklist of every uncited statement in the GAR, the problems would not have been fixed. Also, when tagging an article editors have sometimes responded that I was ref bombing. I am happy to add citation needed tags when asked, but editors can also find these uncited statements themselves: they have access to the same version of the article that I do. This script by Phlsph7, while not perfect, is a tool that highlights potential uncited statements. Editors do not need to wait for citation needed templates to find and fix citation concerns. Z1720 (talk) 19:28, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Two Lists of Nominations to Review

At the top of the Good Article nominations page, there are two lists of articles that are usually the same. One is labeled as The oldest unreviewed good article nominations are: and the other is labeled as The highest priority unreviewed good article nominations are:. The lists are often, but not always, the same. How is the priority determined? Obviously age is one of the inputs, and usually the most important input. What else if anything is taken into account? (Presumably we only have two lists because there is some difference.) Robert McClenon (talk) 16:57, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I believe that's a leftover from when there was an attempt to encourage more reviews. The second box uses a formula that takes into account the ratio of the number of reviews to the number of good articles. You can see this calculated User:ChristieBot/SortableGANoms. However, the ratio is ignored for newer participants (with a small number of GAs). It's all handled by ChristieBot. CMD (talk) 18:10, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It really should have been removed when we switched back to sorting the nominations in order. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 20:39, 6 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, that's a leftover. I'll remove it when I get a chance. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:15, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Fixed with this edit -- it didn't require a change to the bot after all. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 09:13, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Backlog drive timing

Currently, the Jan-May-Sept timing of the GAN backlog drives overlaps with the regularly-scheduled NPP backlog drives. One of the reasons for this timing was to coincide with WikiCup round scheduling. There's been some discussion at WT:NPP#Schedule offset about this, and Hey man im josh suggested, For the WikiCup, I actually think it would be more interesting, and possibly more helpful for the WikiCup, if it were run in February, after people have already had the time to make some nominations for the cup. I think it could push for more reviewers and more nominations, as people involved in the cup make the effort in order to make it to the next round (if we revert back to the old format) or for tournament points (if we stick with the new one). February is the second month of round 1, June is the second month of round 3, and October is the second month of the final round. I genuinely think it would make the race to the next round more exciting, and the lower totals in January make more people maybe want to give it a shot instead of seeing "well I'll never catch up to all those people". Thoughts? -- asilvering (talk) 15:40, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I would support this as someone who has coordinated some of the drives while also participating in the Wikicup. I found January extremely overwhelming, and in comparison, May seems to have attracted very few participants. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 15:51, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We currently have the GOCE, NPP, and GAN drives happening at the same time. This cannot be healthy for any of these efforts. All three of these are quite general drives where anyone can find something of personal interest to help with, but how, and why, are we being forced to choose between them? I don't want to start setting my watch every year with "oh hey it's that time of year where I can't participate in the drives because they've all come around at exactly the same time and competing in any of them would require the abandonment of the others". I've never had any involvement with the WikiCup but don't like the idea of backlog drives being scheduled to assist any other competition; in that way we're removing the real purpose of the drive, backlogs, and turning it into a WikiCup minigame. Again, my involvement with the cup is nil, so any corrections on that view are welcome. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 15:52, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
A huge volume of GA reviews are done by WikiCup participants; they're not unrelated in the way that NPP and GOCE drives are. But it sounds to me like in any case you're in support of shifting the GAN backlog schedule to Feb-June-Oct? -- asilvering (talk) 15:55, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely supportive of a move to split these drives up - I probably should have started with that! Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 15:57, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note that GOCE continuously alternates between drives (odds months) and blitzes (even months), such that the triannual GAN drive will always coincide with GOCE drives or always with GOCE blitzes. The current Jan-May-Sept GAN cadence results in the former, while a Feb-June-Oct schedule would involve the latter. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 03:38, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@ViridianPenguin, it's probably better to coincide with the blitzes, right? -- asilvering (talk) 04:10, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Because folks have to work at twice the pace to earn the same awards in GOCE blitzes, as compared to GOCE drives, there's a counter-argument that GAN drive participants will either ignore the GOCE blitz or expend all their energy on it instead of the GAN drive. Regardless of which GAN drive schedule we choose, we can recruit knowing that GOCE members can return to that project's events the following month. ViridianPenguin🐧 (💬) 04:28, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If there are a lot of people who participate in several of these drives, then go for it. I sometimes participate in the GAN backlog drives and do not care very strongly when they are. I do not find it easy to predict the effects on the WikiCup. —Kusma (talk) 16:04, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
This is not related to the WikiCup but I would support a June drive because May is the busiest month of the year for a student and even though I have a great desire to participate in a GAN backlog drive, I know that I must prioritize academics before Wikipedia in May. ❤HistoryTheorist❤ 02:57, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good to me. Vacant0 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Month Edits
January 2024 8,477,663
February 2024 9,359,452
March 2024 5,305,579
April 2024 4,854,559
May 2024 4,858,474
June 2024 5,121,054
July 2024 5,803,082
August 2024 5,312,783
September 2024 5,216,902
October 2024 5,844,926
November 2024 5,733,654
December 2024 5,934,212
That's a good point. Taking edits as a proxy for free time, April and May were the least free times of 2024, although at a quick glance the pattern is not as strong in other years. CMD (talk) 03:14, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What in the heck happened in Jan-Feb, I wonder. Wild outliers. What's the 2023 data look like? -- asilvering (talk) 23:11, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of talk page posts apparently? No such outliers in 2023, ranges from 4,607,871 (September) to 5,758,607 (January). CMD (talk) 00:32, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My conclusion from paging through that data is that, from the perspective of overall activity, it doesn't really matter what month we hold drives in, since it's reasonably consistent across all months and doesn't have a super obvious regular pattern of heavier and lighter months. -- asilvering (talk) 00:36, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA criteria, 2b question

This has come up a lot lately in reviews and discussions, so I think the GA community would benefit from a clear answer in a section only dedicated to this question:

  • WP:GACR6 2b states: "reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose)." Does this mean that GAs should, at minimum, have a citation at the end of every paragraph that verifies the information that proceeds it, except for sections that do not require citations (like plot summaries and lead sections)?

It might be helpful to proceed comments with a bolded "Yes", "No", or "Maybe/Comment/Depends", or respond however. Z1720 (talk) 22:37, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

No bold from me, but if we settle on "Yes", then we should drop the "that could reasonably be challenged". Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 22:43, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes – It has always been this way for me in practice, and it seems like the reasonable interpretation of the wording. IAWW (talk) 22:57, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We can't divide articles into "sections where citations are required" and "sections where they aren't"; that would be absurd. We require inline citations for material that requires inline citations, and we don't want those citations to be later than the end of a paragraph. In many cases, that will mean that there are citations/footnotes at the end of a paragraph, but not always. So obviously the answer is "it depends". GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 23:39, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another exception is MOS:BLOCKQUOTE: It is conventional to precede a block quotation with an introductory sentence (or sentence fragment) and append the source citation to that line. Personally, I do not like it, but it is allowed. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 23:53, 8 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've never understood it any other way. All claims need to be supported by a citation except for "implicit primary source citations" (like plot summaries) and for summarizations of cited content (like leads). "No later than the end of the paragraph" seems to be throwing people off; all it means is that you should follow WP:REPCITE. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:12, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No. Criterion 2b requires that every claim likely to be challenged is backed by a reliable, inline citation somewhere before the paragraph (or line) ends—not that every paragraph must mechanically finish with a footnote. Esculenta (talk) 00:21, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Esculenta Just to make sure we're talking about the same thing, are you thinking of any specific cases where the end of a paragraph doesn't need a citation (besides the plot and lead examples that Z1720 included)? Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:35, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Thebiguglyalien – Two everyday scenarios where a paragraph needn't finish with a fresh footnote:
:* Single-source coverage. If the first sentence cites Jones 2019, pp. 42–45 and the remainder of the paragraph is nothing more than a summary of those same pages, adding a second, duplicate citation at the end serves no verification purpose. Anyone checking the text already knows exactly which source (and page range) to consult.
:* In-paragraph granularity. Sometimes each specific claim in a paragraph already carries its own inline citation (e.g. a list of ship specifications where every displacement figure, speed figure, and launch date is individually sourced). Placing an extra, catch-all ref after the final full stop would just repeat information that's already right beside the relevant statements.
Outside the lead and plot sections, every challengeable statement still needs to be verifiable, but criterion 2b doesn't prescribe where the ref goes so long as it appears before the paragraph ends and is clearly linked to the material it supports. Requiring a reflex "citation-at-paragraph-end" would create redundant clutter without improving verifiability. It reads as a request for licence to dispense with nuance. Esculenta (talk) 00:40, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • @Esculenta: In both cases, I would suggest moving the citation to the end of the last sentence that the citation is verifying, as the citation would be assumed to verify all the information before it. Putting it in the middle of a paragraph could mean that it is verifying all the information in that paragraph, or it could mean that, after the information was added to the article, another editor added uncited information after the ref. Z1720 (talk) 00:45, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You could suggest that, but then I could reply that WP:GACR6 2b states that "All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph" and that my interpretation of the rules is reasonable. So there we go in circles, likes previous conversations on this page. I agree in practice citations overwhelmingly occur at the end of paragraphs, but apparently, reasonable people can disagree on the specific interpretation of the guideline. Esculenta (talk) 00:54, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Hopefully the outcome of this thread will clarify which interpretation of this rule is the consensus of GA. Z1720 (talk) 00:58, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Even if you think you've come up with a consensus in your favour, you can't deny what the guideline actually says. Instead of all of this time-wasting back-and-forth, wouldn't it be easier to change the guideline itself to explicitly demand that all text blocks MUST end in a citation? Esculenta (talk) 01:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel like that's what they're trying to get consensus for. Reinterpreting (or changing) the rule to fit the consensus. Nub098765 (talk) 02:37, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) I don't know if the former is disallowed, but it would be bad form to put the source in front of only some of what it supports instead of at the end; that would really mess up WP:TSI. The latter might apply in specific circumstances, but I don't know if I've ever seen it in a GA; whenever I've encountered a sentence like this, I put the last citation at the end of the sentence. Even if we don't outright ban these, I'd strongly discourage both of them. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 00:47, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • (edit conflict) Disagree with the above. Firstly regarding "single-source coverage", it is silly to refuse to place a citation where it is required in the expectation that the reader will just know that the previous citation is still relevant. Why? We use citations to indicate where information has come from. We don't leave a trail of bread crumbs, hoping the reader will figure it out now that we've purposefully removed the helpful markers. Secondly, I think you've misunderstood this to say that this is an attempt to obtain "catch-all" citations. I don't think I've ever seen someone try and shoehorn such in. Every paragraph should end in a citation because every paragraph is made up of information you have obtained from sources that need to be indicated. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 00:49, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Pickersgill-Cunliffe: The wording says that "content that could reasonably be challenged" requires a source. That wording would be redundant if all content required a source. However, it is not redundant: we have content that has been deemed not to be reasonably challenged, such as under WP:CALC. Are you suggesting that when a paragraph ends with WP:CALC-based content that we should somehow shoehorn a source into it? —David Eppstein (talk) 02:37, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    WP:CALC only applies to elementary arithmetic and unit conversions of sourced information. So for example if a source says that there were two apples and three oranges, we can say in wikivoice that there were five pieces of fruit. You still need a source giving you the original numbers. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 03:28, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not just elementary arithmetic. WP:CALC: Mathematical literacy may be necessary to follow a "routine" calculation, particularly for articles on mathematics or in the hard sciences. Hawkeye7 (discuss) 03:52, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It still requires a meaningful reflection of the sources. Compare the fruit with more complex math if necessary, but you need a source for the input. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 04:12, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You need a source for something but it doesn't have to be the input. In Matrix (mathematics)#Size, the example at the end of the paragraph is a meaningful reflection of the sourced notation. The calculation itself is trivial (counting to three) and swapping the data in the example with different data copied from a source would add no value. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:18, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, if there is no citation at the end of a paragraph of the main text then the content preceding this lack is uncited. The criteria already provides the exceptions, being essentially ledes and plots. This should be adhered to. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 00:38, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Pickersgill-Cunliffe Maybe a stupid question, but what would you do with illustrations or examples? For example, Chinese characters (a featured article) lacks a footnote at the end of the paragraph where it introduces how to draw the character 永. Would this count as an exception to the rule laid out above? Similarly, in the section for printings and typefaces, the author made the editorial choice to put the citation above the list, as allowed by the MOS. Would that count as uncited to you? Similarly, there is an uncited table illustrating several examples of Hanja, and the hangul and translations accompanying them (two things that don't need a citation, given that we don't need citations for Wikipedian-provided translations unless controversial). Is this problematic to you? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 01:03, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@GreenLipstickLesbian: Answering your first question, I would consider that akin to the BLOCKQUOTE example provided above by Hawkeye. I agree it's an interesting and rather unique example though. I also don't see an issue with the list you bring up; it's encapsulated in the same way. I do note that my comment focuses on paragraphs of text! Personally I would say that yes, the table is uncited. That's a personal preference I suppose, but in my opinion nothing should be left to the abilities of Wikipedians. We are writing the encyclopaedia, not providing the information and expertise for it and the sources behind it. Pickersgill-Cunliffe (talk) 01:09, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, if I'm good for anything it's finding the weird examples! Because, while agreeing that the first two aren't problematic, I would argue that ... I know it's not fully accurate, but I'm going to call it this, transcluding a usergenerated source (image on Commons) isn't quite the same as MOS:BLOCKQUOTE, but I see why somebody would say it's similar enough. As for the list not being paragraphs... it's a list made out of paragraphs of text? So, for the proposed re-wording, how would you actually define a paragraph? And as for the final thing - I think I'll have to disagree outright. Much information about very valuable topics simply hasn't been translated into English. Either we limit ourselves severely, or we have to accept, on good faith, that basic translations are okay. Without it, we lose so much information. For example, I've had to manually translate things such a non-Latin titles of creative works. If I didn't do that, I'd have had to transliterate them, which is also a process with room for error. Either way, it was either that or simply... not have the information? I mean, don't get me wrong, I'd have loved to been able to consult a published source - titles are short enough that it wouldn't infringe on the external source's copyright, but if you'll pardon a small tangent, larger translations actually have to be provided by Wikipedians in many cases, as modern translations are in copyright and our NFCC go against using non-free material when a free alternative can be generated - but I couldn't. In this situation, what would you do? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 01:26, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, @Thebiguglyalien, I'm interested in your opinions on the above listed examples; each has resulted in (by my argument) a paragraph that does not end in a citation. Are these issues to you? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 01:39, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'd consider these to be the equivalent of image captions, in that they describe visuals on the page rather than making a claim in their own right. For the purposes of 2b, I'd consider the previous sentence to be the "end" of the paragraph as far as sourcing is concerned. But you're right that with this formatting, the end of the paragraph is technically unsourced. Regarding the table itself, I'd allow that it might fall under the spirit of WP:TRANSCRIPTION if not the letter (it refers specifically to sources). Like Pickersgill, I'd still prefer if it was drawn from a source rather than an editor choosing and translating their own examples—see my writing at Profanity#Subjects where I only used examples if they were provided by the source. But this is also a minor case that I'd be willing to accept even at FAC. Thebiguglyalien (talk) 🛸 01:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
So the end of the paragraph.. is not always considered the end of the paragraph? We're going to need to officially define the end of the paragraph in that case, given that I think on Wikipedia, there is a very high portion of people (self included) who have brains who read guidelines in a very literal manner - I think some of that is what leads to friction in processes like these. If it helps, while I do think examples should be drawn from sources when possible, there can be an immense amount of creativity when it comes to compiling examples. If you only use examples from one source, and the example is on the longer side, it's a Wikipedia copyright issue. And yes, some publishers will get fussy about things such as a creative table being reproduced. That's an issue for, less so for us, our content re-users, certainly. But what I'm hearing is that yes, you think it goes against the rules, but you think it's acceptable for an IAR sort of reason? GreenLipstickLesbian💌🦋 02:05, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. There are multiple good reasons for not changing no later than the end of the paragraph to at the end of the paragraph. There are two such cases that have occurred in my editing: (1) Paragraphs where the claims needing sources are sourced at some earlier point in the paragraph, and where the paragraph ends with a simple example that does not require a source per WP:CALC, is not copied from any source, and should not be copied from a source (because copying literal examples without good reason is the same sort of improper copying as copying the text wording of sources without good reason). Example: Matrix (mathematics)#Size, first paragraph. (2) Paragraphs that end with a displayed mathematical formula, such as the first two lines of Matrix (mathematics)#Addition. The convention that has been followed for such material, across Wikipedia, has to put the footnote at the end of the text before the displayed formula, rather than on the line that ends the paragraph inside the formula. There are at least two good reasons for this convention, one being that bracketed numbers in formulas could easily be misinterpreted as part of the formula, and another being that Wikimedia's standard formatting for displayed formulas using <math display=block> does not make it possible to put a footnote marker there. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:00, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify my memory, I went back and reviewed the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Good article nominations/Archive 29#RfC: change GA criteria to require inline citations in all cases in 2023 when we adopted this text as part of the main GA rules instead of the supplementary guidelines. The closure statement went out of its way to quote one of the discussion comments "I see no language in the proposal that forbids putting the citation before the content as in your example". The examples used in that discussion were Featured Article Providence and Worcester Railroad#System which then and now has footnotes prior to rather than after a bulleted list, without footnotes on the items in the list itself, and (non-GA/FA) Universal Declaration of Human Rights#Adoption which has the same structure of sourced text following a bulleted list that does not repeat the footnotes on each item.
    Whether one counts a bullet in a bulleted list as a separate paragraph or the whole list as part of the preceding paragraph is not obvious to me. I think though that these examples clearly meet the current standard that all content is sourced prior to the end of their paragraph (long before, if each bullet is a paragraph, but nevertheless it is clear enough which source is intended to apply) and would not meet the standard under discussion of requiring a footnote at the end of the paragraph (repeated many times if a bullet is a paragraph). I have no opinion whether that means this RFC is asking for a stricter standard than FA or whether the FA example should not be FA. —David Eppstein (talk) 05:47, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @David Eppstein Would you support if these specific examples (bullet points and some math situations) were excluded? IAWW (talk) 07:59, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm not DE, but I think math equations/situations should be excluded because (from my understanding) they are self-proving as correct (that is, the solution of the equation verifies that the math does what it says it does). Lists with bullet points would also be excepted, but that is also not written in paragraphs so I didn't think to specify it in this question: the citation for a list can be before the list or after the last entry, from my interpretation of wiki-policy and guidelines. If the list is formatted by a paragraph, my interpretation of GA? 2b is that the citation would be placed at the end of the last entry (if the citation verifies all list entries) or after the entry that it is verifying. Z1720 (talk) 15:51, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Simple calculations under WP:CALC (not mathematical calculations requiring full proofs, which should be cited), formulas, and bulleted lists are the exceptions I know about offhand. If this is to pass they definitely should be exceptions.
That said, the current wording that the sourcing for material that needs sourcing should happen before the end already covers those situations.
The main effect of this rule, to me, is in freeing reviewers to review superficially, only checking the existence of a footnote marker at the end of each paragraph. The difference between that and the existing situation is the lack of thought into whether a missing footnote marker is actually problematic. We don't want to encourage lack of thought and superficiality in our GAN reviewers. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:11, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes, this is a basic and standard expectation for sourcing, across Wikipedia's content assessment. GA should not differ from it. CMD (talk) 02:21, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes except for explicit exemptions from the MOS. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 07:19, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Almost, but there are some exceptions where it makes sense to put the citation slightly before the cited content. Typical exceptions are cast lists for films or displayed mathematics formulas. Perhaps we could clarify what the exceptions are? —Kusma (talk) 07:32, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm had a look through the guidelines and surprisingly can't find a list of typical exceptions anywhere. Both cast lists and mathematical formulas can fall under the same general exception—under which also fall the common exceptions of block quotes and tables—of not being part of article prose. There is some variance in how these can be best cited (lists and tables can be cited in various ways depending on whether and how they combine multiple sources, block quotes can be cited before the quote or after the author name), but those variations are needed because they are not textual prose. (And if we are being pedantic we should include images and their captions, which do not normally need citations at all.) CMD (talk) 07:49, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • The intention of this question was to ask about citations in prose organised by paragraphs. I didn't intent to ask about charts (of which a citation anywhere in the chart is usually fine), images (because I don't consider captions as part of the prose), and math equations (because I see that they are usually organised like block quotes or images). Block quotes is an exception I didn't think of, and would probably be specified that the citation can be before or after the quote. Z1720 (talk) 15:45, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The layout of equations as a separate block of text is separate from their meanings. In terms of meaning, they are usually part of a sentence within a paragraph, which can continue both before or after the equation. —David Eppstein (talk) 16:13, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Equations are part of paragraphs [1]. 64.112.179.236 (talk) 08:23, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes as being completely within reason. Per above, if you don't have an end-of-paragraph citation by default, how the heck could you verify the last sentence of said paragraph? — EF5 16:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, that is not the plain meaning of the criterion being cited. "No later than" means "no later than", not "at the end of". Just because "at the end of" is a convention that makes sense in most circumstances, that doesn't mean it has to be applied in every circumstance. Fussing so much over footnote placement seems like a distraction --- or, maybe, a way to have a mechanical rule to follow instead of actually checking to see if the writing and the referencing are good. 64.112.179.236 (talk) 08:35, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes It makes it easier for readers to find the source of information. Some elements may have different standards, such as block quotes, mathematical formulas, lists, and tables, but the current formulation is specifically about paragraphs. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:50, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • Yes - Although the proposal is slightly different in meaning from the existing wording, the existing wording is hard to parse. The GA criteria should be very simple & plain. Also, I concur with User:Firefangledfeathers who wrote above "if we settle on "Yes", then we should drop the "that could reasonably be challenged"." Noleander (talk) 01:35, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Also agree with that addendum. CMD (talk) 01:41, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It would not be the first rule requiring inanity in our footnotes. The rule on DYK that the sentence stating a DYK hook needs to be footnoted, even when the same footnote is right there on the next sentence of the same paragraph and covers all claims in both paragraphs, is another. I have defended that rule, telling DYK nominators "I know it looks stupid but it's the rule". But in that case the redundant footnote can be removed and sanity restored once the DYK has run. Requiring unnecessary footnotes on material that cannot reasonably be challenged seems to me to be a step towards making GA about arbitrary rule-following rather than having any justifiable connection to article quality. (The first example I found when looking through some recent GAs was an unfootnoted claim that ⁠1/2⁠ + ⁠1/3⁠ + ⁠1/9⁠ = ⁠17/18⁠, and that ⁠17/18⁠ is less than one: could this reasonably be challenged?) —David Eppstein (talk) 01:51, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Happily the rule would not require inanity in footnotes, or create redundancy. CMD (talk) 02:04, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Well, clearly we disagree. I think requiring a footnote on 1+1=2 would be inane. Famously, the xkcd blog characterized adding [citation needed] to "the night sky is dark" as vandalism [https://what-if.xkcd.com/109/ (see footnote 5) and inspired a generation of vandals to do just that. Not everything needs a citation. —David Eppstein (talk) 02:18, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, you did open saying things would be inane. I'm not sure why you think that is going to entice others to consider your input. But to answer, this example as with the mathematical notation arguments above are taking things immediately to extremis and using that as a norm. If you can show me where 1+1=2 has caused disruption in a GAN I would appreciate it. Your reading of xkcd and cn tags misses that the footnote is clearly about their intent. This is an especially poor comparison to make when you previously started a whole discussion where you asked people to add tags. CMD (talk) 02:31, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It probably hasn't caused disruption yet, because the rule as written doesn't require a footnote on 1+1 = 2, or on . But the rule that people want to change to would either require a footnote or, at best, lead to pointless bickering over "WP:CALC" this and "could reasonably be challenged" that.
    I don't think that the question of how to handle mathematical equations is taking anything "to extremis". Formulas are all over math and science pages. The issue of how to provide references for them is obviously important. Just because articles with technical content are only a fraction of the whole encyclopedia, that doesn't make the issue less important in those cases where it does come up. This whole discussion is about the edge cases, really: the question is about whether a style guide that makes sense 99% of the time must be applied 100% of the time, on pain of losing the green sticker. Nobody is saying that mathematical formulae are the "norm", just that they fall in that percentage where the style guide doesn't make sense, proving by example that the percentage in question is non-zero.
    (The idea that the rule wouldn't cover them because it only applies "to paragraphs" doesn't make sense at all to me. Formulas are part of the paragraphs in which they are included. So are block quotes. And I don't see how putting a bullet point in front of a short paragraph radically changes the situation, either. Either there's a solid principle behind the rule, and so it should apply everywhere, or it's merely an idea that's good most of the time, so it should apply most of the time, but the green sticker award shouldn't hinge upon it.) 64.112.179.236 (talk) 04:55, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Actually, the discussion is not about edge cases, it is about the general criteria. I'm afraid if you think that pointless bickering is prevented by the current formulation then you are mistaken. The particular edge case being raised is a red herring, under the presumption that this change affects mathematical formulas, which it really doesn't, it would be really easy to figure out specifically how to deal with them. Anyone is welcome to propose a way to handle mathematical forumlas, just reply to Kusma above on the actual sub-discussion about edge cases. CMD (talk) 05:35, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There are two different things here that you appear to be conflating: (1) the formatting of displayed formulas, (2) claims that do not need citations under WP:CRC (essay but one linked by our current rules) and that would require a citation under this rule because they happen to be placed at the end of a paragraph.
    I have been presenting mathematical examples because those are the examples I am familiar with, but I have no reason to believe that issue (2) is limited to mathematics. I would much prefer simple general rules than carve-outs for special cases. I believe the current rule, that everything needing a source should have a source, at or before the end of the same paragraph, is a simple general rule that works. I believe that the proposed rule is more likely to cause problems where a reviewer demands a source (because the new rule says so) and the nominator doesn't understand why a source is needed nor how to find a source for something so obvious that no source even bothers to write it.
    As for bickering over WP:CALC: I have been through many GAN processes on both sides where CALC might have been in play and don't recall any bickering. In the example that I provided involving the unfootnoted observation that 17/18 < 1, one of our most experienced reviewers (and nominators), User:Chiswick Chap, didn't even flag it as an issue. —David Eppstein (talk) 06:27, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I recall raising the point on a WikiJournal of Science article (developed from a Wikipedia page), and was politely informed by the mathematicians involved that the calculations would be obvious to any mathematician. My humble 'A level' maths did seem very far away at that moment! Chiswick Chap (talk) 06:57, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My own standard is that basic arithmetic is obvious enough to fall under WP:CALC but that calculations that would require a mathematics degree to understand are probably going to need a source. But I guess this can be a matter where editors differ. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:34, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I am not conflating them, I am responding to their being used as examples. If there is a risk of conflation, that is because of their prior use. We should indeed have a simple rule, and citing text is a very simple rule. If no source bothers to write something, it should not be in an article. CMD (talk) 07:49, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
  • No. With "exceptions" necessary for numerous specific situations, and because not all content can reasonably be challenged, a "yes" is the wrong rule. Fundamentally we entrust great discretion to GA writers and reviewers, who must have the knowledge and expertise to make judgments about irreducibly open-ended criteria, like what level of detail is or isn't necessary, and what is a fair balance of views on a particular subject. Likewise, in assessing the referencing, their good sense and consensus is the real foundation. The criteria should be high-level and general guidance, staying away from mechanical interpretation and from WP:CREEP. Adumbrativus (talk) 06:52, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA statistics bot "SDZeroBot" ... wording in its report could be better

Does anyone know who is responsible for SDZeroBot? The wording in the report is a bit misleading for the "still GA" statistic. For example, my report says: 

Promoted GA nominations that are still GAs: 3

But in fact I have seven articles that were promoted to GA, and some then went to FA. The bot should say (in my report): 

Promoted GA nominations that are still GA or better: 7

This is not just a matter of stoking my ego  :-) ... the bot should produce a report that is less misleading (espcially if future GA processes ever use the stats from the bot to make decisions). And the bot knows if an article is FA or GA or neither, since the bot also produces FA reports ... so it has all the data needed. Thoughts on this possible change? Noleander (talk) 20:09, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

This has always driven me crazy, so I would love to see it tweaked. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 20:16, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
You can just look at User:SDZeroBot to see that it is run by User:SD0001. Getting all articles that are subsequently promoted to FA right without getting something wrong is probably not as easy as it looks; the current version seems accurate (but I keep my own count on my userpage and make sure I understand exactly what the offset is between my count and the bot count and why). —Kusma (talk) 20:50, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think "GA or better" is necessarily right either -- an article promoted to FA and then demoted is not returned to GA status. I assume it is reset to B, but certainly not to higher than that. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 21:29, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agree.... what I was proposing was that the count include articles that were nominated for GA at one point in time, and are currently GA or FA. Im 99% sure that the bot software already has access to those numbers so it should be an easy matter to change it. Noleander (talk) 22:02, 9 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What report are you referring to? The only report SDZeroBot maintains is WP:WBGAN which does not have such wording. It indeed doesn't count articles that became FAs, as the bot doesn't have data about FAs. – SD0001 (talk) 20:33, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'm guessing this report: https://ganfilter.toolforge.org/g_editor_query/?editor_name=SSSB SSSB (talk) 07:34, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If so, that page is produced by ChristieBot, not SDZeroBot. The number it reports is taken from SDZeroBot's database, but the wording on the web page is ChristieBot's. I can change it but would like to get consensus here on what it should say instead before I make a change. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 08:25, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Well, we do want to know that an article is still (GA or FA), not including demoted articles whether they were at GA or FA before demotion. If that can be done then "still GA or better" or "still GA or FA" would both be fine as wording, in my view. Chiswick Chap (talk) 14:21, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately the FA database that ChristieBot maintains only goes back to August 2006, so any articles promoted to FA before then would not be identifiable. In addition, SDZeroBot's database doesn't include any articles that are no longer GAs, so I would only be able to look up the post-August 2006 information for articles that ChristieBot is aware were once GAs -- again the cutoff for that is around 2007. ChristieBot also does not track FAR. All this means that there would be some omissions in any information ChristieBot could add to the number given by SDZeroBot. Changing the wording used on the web page, if that's what we decide to do, is quick. Adding more information about any articles that are not currently GAs would require changes to the code and for the reasons above would be incomplete in some cases, but if there's a clear statement of what we would like ChristieBot to show, I can look into what it would take. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 14:44, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Question

Is there anyway to have a reviewer withdraw from a nomination? It has been almost a month and the editor who picked up the nominations for Victorious: Music from the Hit TV Show and Victorious 2.0: More Music from the Hit TV Show has not even started despite being active. Shoot for the Stars (talk) 23:07, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Have you pinged them at the review and/or left messages at their talk page? ♠PMC♠ (talk) 23:26, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Yes and they have not responded in days? What can be done? Shoot for the Stars (talk) 04:38, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Poop emoji/GA3

As far as GA reviews, this feels wildly inadequate, I'm not sure any of the criteria was properly considered and the reason given for promoting does not line up with our criteria (cc @Willbill6272 as the reviewer and @Boneless Pizza! as the nominator). I would advocate for this article to placed back into the queue (and or have a proper review done). Sohom (talk) 03:18, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I was about to request it because I felt a bit uncomfortable to that review, but it seems like he promised to another editor here [2]. If he didn't did anything at least for a week then it needs to be reverted back. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 03:21, 11 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Likewise. I requested it after I noticed the incomplete review and was going to wait one week to give some review time before taking further action. I'd leave it up for a few more days, but if nothing is done after then, send it back to the queue. Magneton Considerer: Pokelego999 (Talk) (Contribs) 18:28, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Another user already took some review somehow before this user can. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 21:02, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hm. I only just gave a 2O to an earlier version of that article. Any review should definitely look at the previous review as well when an article has been relisted so soon. The new reviewer isn't obligated to agree with the previous reviewers, but not responding to those concerns at all is not great. -- asilvering (talk) 23:15, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
(To be clear, I'm talking about the reviewer here. I mean, obviously I personally think my own concerns ought to be responded to, otherwise I wouldn't have stated them in the first place, but submitters are always free to resubmit even without any changes at all if they don't like the outcome of the previous review. It's on the next reviewer to determine whether those concerns are important enough to withhold the GA status or not.) -- asilvering (talk) 00:42, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 00:45, 13 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

GA review circles: improve instructions?

I'm really liking the GA review circles, and have used them several times. Small suggestion to improve the instructions at WP:Good_article_review_circles ... the term "cooling off period" is used for Step 3: WP:Good_article_review_circles#Step_3:_24-hour_cooling-off_period. That term is confusing in that context; normally "cooling off" is used after shooting a weapon or exerting oneself to exhaustion. In Step 3 of GARC, a better term may be something like "Confirmation period" or "Ratification period" or" "Affirmation period". Not a big deal, but GARC seems a bit underutilized, so anything to make it more inviting may be helpful. Noleander (talk) 16:54, 12 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Change it if you want to, I guess, but I doubt this is affecting usage of review circles in any appreciable way. ♠PMC♠ (talk) 04:59, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]