Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Academy/Closing an A-Class review
 | This page is part of the Military history WikiProject's online Academy, and contains instructions, recommendations, or suggestions for editors working on military history articles. While it is not one of the project's formal guidelines, editors are encouraged to consider the advice presented here in the course of their editing work. |
The Military history A-Class promotion criteria are unique to our project, and assessing them requires an internal review. While anyone can file for, or comment on, an A-Class review, authority to close these reviews rests solely with the current tranche of coordinators and the current cadre of Coordinators Emeritus.
Closing A-Class reviews is one of the few coordinator-only functions in the project. To close a review, you should be able to interpret consensus as well as apply sound reasoning and judgement to make sure that the integrity of the review process is upheld. In addition, a degree of technical ability in updating templates and keeping track of edits across multiple pages is desirable.
Prior to 2014, all project A-Class reviews were closed manually in a rather tedious and time consuming process that required a very high degree of technical knowledge and an ability to track pages off multiple tabs. Thankfully, this project's A-Class reviews are now closed by MilHistBot (talk · contribs), which handles the bulk of tedious work. Using the bot requires that you make a few edits for the bot to hone in on and close the A-Class review in question. This essay will therefore serve as a guide on what to edit to ensure that the bot closes an A-Class review properly.
Finding reviews to close
[edit]There are two places to look for article reviews that are ready to be closed:
- The A-Class review section of our review page displays all current A-Class reviews in nomination-date order, latest at the top.
- The ACRs for closure section of the coordinators' talk page links to reviews that are due for closure. Reviews aren't listed here automatically (generally only those that need uninvolved coordinator attention).
Closing a review
[edit]General advice
[edit]- There is no deadline: if work is ongoing and the article appears to be close to meeting the requirements for promotion, the review may be kept open until the consensus is achieved. There is no timeline or deadline to close a review, sometimes it could be five days, or 100. The point to remember is that the review should be active and the nominator should be making improvements to the article to address the comments.
- Any review may be closed early if its outcome is not in doubt. The "not in doubt" caveat is important. Unaddressed criteria-based opposes in particular should not be dismissed even if there is otherwise significant support for promotion; one reviewer may have picked up valid issues that the others have missed. For more guidance on early closures, see Early closures below.
- Set aside enough time to do a thorough job if closing an A-Class review manually. Depending on the outcome, your familiarity with the process, and the number of pages that have to be updated, a manual review can easily take 30 minutes or more to close.
- Recuse yourself from closing A-Class reviews where you may have a conflict of interest. As a rule, you should not close an A-Class review if you have been a major contributor to the article or if you have reviewed the article. This is mainly a procedural check to ensure that closing coordinators cannot be accused of having an interest in seeing the article passed or failed, although some leeway may be possible depending on your level of involvement. If you are unsure if closing a review puts you in a potentially awkward position, then refrain and request someone else do it. Such requests are normally posted in the ACRs for closure section of the coordinators' talk page.
Early closures
[edit]A review can be closed after a minimum of five days have passed. Reasons for early closure are:
- the nomination will clearly pass. Proceed as for successful nominations, though take care that the review is not being closed before the article has received proper attention.
- the nomination will clearly fail. Proceed as for unsuccessful nominations. Often this type of early closure is a courtesy to the nominator, to prevent demoralising pile-on opposition where it is apparent that an article has no chance of being promoted.
- the nominator has withdrawn their nomination. Proceed as for unsuccessful nominations.
If you are unsure about closing a review early, raise the matter on the coordinators' talk page, and post a comment announcing your intentions on the review page.
Deciding the outcome
[edit]If you are not already familiar with the criteria, read our A-Class criteria.
Carefully read the review, looking for support and in particular oppose comments. The following questions may help to guide your thought processes:
- How many reviewers support promotion? A minimum of three is required, although this may be counterbalanced by outstanding opposition.
- Has an image review been provided?
- Have any reviewers that initially opposed struck their opposition, or opposed after initially supporting? It can be easy to overlook (or even double-count) "support" or "oppose" comments that come at the end of a review and are buried in the text.
- Is support or opposition implied by reviewers that haven't explicitly stated a preference? Sometimes reviewers will confine themselves to a comment—perhaps because they are unsure whether a potential issue should affect promotion or not. You may need to exercise your own judgement as to how much weight should be given to such remarks.
- Are reviews based on the A-Class criteria? Reviewers will generally explain why they support or oppose. Beware of reviews that don't seem to be criteria-based: "Support because I like this article" is not a valid reason for promotion; neither is "Oppose because according to Randy in Boise the article is inaccurate" a valid reason for failure.
- Which criteria were considered? Some reviewers prefer to specialise and will confine their comments to an individual criterion such as prose (A4) or factual accuracy (A1). In such cases the reviewer will normally indicate which criterion they have reviewed against. In closing the review you should be careful not to translate assessments based on a single criterion into assessments for the article as a whole. To take an extreme example, if a review had attracted the requisite three supports but all reviews were based on individual criteria, the article could not be promoted. There must be evidence that the article in its entirety merits promotion—either through at least three full-article reviews, or an accumulation of single-criterion reviews that amount to at least three full-article reviews, or some combination of the two.
- Is there any outstanding opposition? A single criteria-based oppose that hasn't been satisfactorily dealt with can prevent promotion. However, you may need to apply discretion in cases where an oppose seems to have been addressed by the nominator but the reviewer hasn't struck it out. This could be because the reviewer's opposition stands, but could also be simply because the reviewer hasn't revisited the review recently—in which case a note on their talk page may help to resolve the issue.
- Is there a clear consensus among reviewers? No consensus means that the article is not promoted.
Closures
[edit]Make your decision! For a review that isn't a reappraisal of a current A-Class article there are two possible outcomes:
- The article is promoted. To close a successful nomination, change A-Class=current to A-Class=pass in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
- The article is not promoted. For closing an unsuccessful nomination, change A-Class=current to A-Class=fail in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
The MilHistBot will carry out the necessary work within an hour or two.
Reappraisals
[edit]Occasionally one of our current A-Class articles will be nominated for reappraisal to ascertain if it still merits its A-Class status. Although the considerations for deciding the result are largely the same as those outlined in Deciding the outcome above, there are a few minor differences:
- The result will be one of either kept or demoted
- The article is kept. To close a successful nomination, change A-Class=current to A-Class=kept in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
- The article is demoted. For closing an unsuccessful nomination, change A-Class=current to A-Class=demoted in the Military history WikiProject banner on the article's talk page.
The MilHistBot will carry out the necessary work within an hour or two.
Manual procedure
[edit]Normally the MilHistBot performs all the steps in the manual procedure described below. The manual procedure is not normally required.
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As noted above, prior to 2014 all A-Class Reviews were manually closed. To assist with this process, in case of bot failure, set out below are the various stages you will need to go through to ensure that when a review is closed, the closure is sound and all appropriate updates are made. In time you will undoubtedly develop your own method of closing reviews; the sequence described here is only one way of performing a closure and not intended to be definitive. Technical note: The following makes extensive use of the technique of opening links in new browser tabs. In most modern browsers this can be achieved by holding Ctrl while clicking on the link, or by clicking on the link with the middle mouse button (or pressing in the wheel) if you have a three-button/wheel mouse. Successful nominations[edit]The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.
Step 1: Closing the review page[edit]Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you are busy with other parts of the process.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. Article promoted EyeSerenetalk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC) I am nominating this article for A-Class review. —Ed!(talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
etc... The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Step 2: Preparing the article page[edit]Although you will probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
Step 3: Updating the article talk page[edit]The review is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains: It is possible that the article history template will be missing; more on that later. First... Military history WikiProject banner[edit]
Note that we share reviews and ratings with some other WikiProjects, such as WikiProject Ships. Where our partner projects' banners are present, they can be updated at the same time. Article history template[edit]If the Article history template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it is missing you will need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
Step 4: Archiving the review[edit]The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.
Step 5: Updating the announcements notice[edit]With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it.
Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed. Step 6: Updating the article showcase[edit]The newly promoted article now needs to be added to our content showcase.
Step 7: Updating the newsletter[edit]The newly promoted article also needs be added to the correct issue of our project newsletter.
Step 8: Tracking award eligibility[edit]For every successful A-Class nomination we record the nominator and the article. After three successful nominations the nominator is eligible for one of our A-Class medals. In the case of joint nominations, treat each nominator separately for ACM tracking and award purposes.
Either
Or
Note that if you are unsure about the A-Class Medal nomination process and do not wish to make the nomination yourself, you should instead add a third entry by the nominator's name on the tracking page. This way we at least know that they're due for a medal and another coordinator can complete the medal nomination process. Step 9: Finish[edit]You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page congratulating them on their successful nomination, although this is not necessary as the nominator will be aware via their watchlist of the review's closure and their article's new status. Unsuccessful nominations[edit]The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.
Step 1: Closing the review page[edit]Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you're busy with other parts of the process.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. No consensus to promote at this time. EyeSerenetalk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC) -OR- Nomination withdrawn at nominator's request. EyeSerenetalk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC) I am nominating this article for A-Class review. —Ed!(talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
etc... The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Step 2: Preparing the article page[edit]Although you'll probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
Step 3: Updating the article talk page[edit]The review is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains: It's possible that Article History will be missing; more on that later. First... Military history WikiProject banner[edit]
Article History template[edit]If the Article History template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it's missing you'll need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
Step 4: Archiving the review[edit]The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.
Step 5: Updating the announcements notice[edit]With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it.
Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed. Step 6: Finish[edit]You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. If the editor has not previously successfully nominated an article for A-class, you should leave a personal note on their talk page thanking them for their nomination and encouraging them to renominate the article when the issues identified during the review have been addressed. You may also wish to do this for article nominators who have previously developed articles to A-class standard. Reappraisal nominations[edit]The following uses Battle of Sangju (1950) as an example; depending on the review actually being closed some details will differ.
Step 1: Closing the review page[edit]Before doing anything else the review page should be closed. This prevents last-minute contributions to the review taking place while you're busy with other parts of the process.
The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. No longer meets A-Class criteria EyeSerenetalk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC) -OR- Kept EyeSerenetalk 11:31, 3 December 2010 (UTC) I am nominating this article for reappraisal. —Ed!(talk) 21:25, 27 November 2010 (UTC)
etc... The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
Step 2: Preparing the article page[edit]Although you'll probably not need to edit this page, you will need information from it and should ensure that the version of the reviewed article you record is clean and current.
Step 3: Updating the article talk page[edit]The reappraisal is recorded in two places on the article talk page. Check to see that the top of the talk page contains: It's possible that Article History will be missing; more on that later. First... Military history WikiProject banner[edit]
If the article retains its A-Class status:
If the article loses its A-Class status:
Article history template[edit]If the article history template is present, that too will need to be updated to record the review. If it's missing you'll need to build it from scratch; full instructions are at Template:ArticleHistory or you can adapt the example below.
Step 4: Archiving the review[edit]The closed review now needs to be moved to the archives so we can free up space for future A-Class reviews. Because the review is transcluded from its own page, you actually only need to move the link.
Step 5: Updating the announcements notice[edit]With the review now closed we no longer need to inform our members about it.
Note that you do not need to take action to remove the review from the {{WPMILHIST Review alerts}} template; while the A-class review you are closing is also listed here, the template will auto-update to reflect the closure of the nomination once the above steps have been completed. Step 6: Updating the article showcase[edit]Only complete this step if the article is demoted The demoted article now needs to be removed from our content showcase.
Step 7: Finish[edit]You can now close any remaining open tabs related to the A-Class review closure process. Optionally you may wish to leave a personal note on the article nominator's talk page informing them of the reappraisal's outcome. Summary[edit]
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